What happens when your innovation is rejected? If you are an active innovator, then this has happened many times. Rejection in the innovation business is like bike accidents for an avid biker. You know you when you sign up that you will end up with bumps and bruises.
There are two key components to handling Innovation Rejection:
1. Your Attitude: As an innovator, you need to hold your ideas and excitement lightly. You never know what will catch on, what will work, what will make sense. If you personally invest so heavily in an idea that you can't discard it when it doesn't work, you will not see your innovations succeed.
2. Your Identity: As an innovator, your identity needs to be in Christ and not in your ideas. If you get your value and worth from your ability to come up with new ideas, you will find yourself defensive, frustrated and hopeless. If you get your identity from your ability to innovate, then your very worth as a person will come from your success. So when you fail you will feel worthless.
The innovator that can hold ideas lightly and anchor their identity in Christ will find a creative freedom that is hard to contain. God is ready to let you loose on the world. Failure will be a part of that reality, but in God's strength you will learn from each rejection and go on.
An successfull innovator is not someone who doesn't fail, they are someone who reaches beyond their failures to learn key leasons that will lead to the next great endeavor.
5 comments:
thank you. this is a good reminder :)
i appreciate this blog.
To me, the other side of the coin is tenaciousness. Sure we need to be firm that our identity is in who we are, not what we produce (take that, Batman!). But, if we will successfully innovate and ride the storms that come with being on the edge, we have to believe in what we are doing even when our ideas are misunderstood or rejected (maybe the idea is before it's time).
Now, if an idea does not work, then trash it...hold it lightly, sure...but LEARN FROM FAILURE and try again. Don't lose the vision.
FWIW, Ty
Thanks Heide! I hope that this is a place of encouragement and new ideas for you.
Blessings as you innovate,
Jon
Ty,
Point well taken. This dynamic of when to accept failure and when to push through is a great challenge. I think many times in our low tolerance for risk, we "pull up" too early and miss out. But we have all seen examples of people who won't ever let go of an idea and ride it into the ground.
The balance is in the Holy Spirit's guiding. Keep the thoughts coming.
Jon
A very good reminder each day...I get into the "poor me" mood so easily. Innovation is hard...I've been at it my whole ministerial life - 41 years now. It cost a great deal...in about every way...but it is the only way to go. St.Paul says in the 2nd lesson tomorrow (Proper 16) "...present your bodies (everything you have) as a living sacrifice...which is your spiritual worship..." Ya - Blessings. Steven Quist+
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