Innovation as a Means of Grace

Innovation is simply seeing out ahead of the present, identifying a need and creating a unique way to meet it. The problem usually comes in the first part of that definition. When we try to see out ahead, sometimes we have moments of amazing clarity and see things as they will become. Other times we miss it entirely. Still other times we think our vision will happen more quickly than it does.

More and more I have been focusing on the process of innovation in the lives of those involved. We usually judge an innovation as successful by what it accomplishes in financial return or human progress. But what if we were to begin measuring how it changes the innovator? I think you would find a much lower rate of failure among innovative efforts if one of the prime criterion's for success was the growth and development of the innovator.

The term "means of grace" refers to an activity that is part of the process that Jesus uses to reclaim our hearts and grow us closer to Him. Any activity can be a means of grace if God chooses to use it that way.

But I think that innovations are very likely to be used as tools by our Heavenly Father because innovative efforts require risk and great effort. In those moments of innovation we are extremely vulnerable and our protective layers are peeled away as we strive and struggle to accomplish the task in front of us.

In those moments, Jesus can show us many things. He can grow us up, tackle self-deception, give us new insights, and so on. So here is the question. If you are in a time of innovation in your life, are you offering this unique time of your life up to God and asking Him to grow you close to Him as you work? I would challenge you to consider that approach to your efforts and you may just find that even if your innovation never makes it to prime time, that you have gained more eternal benefit than you could ever imagine

Innovators Admit Failure

Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. ~Henry Ford

We have become very good at hiding our failures. We hide them by blaming others, spinning the facts, avoiding the subject or finding a new project to focus on. However we hide them, we do ourselves and those around us a disservice.

I know why we hide them. Our culture has trained us to believe that failures mean personal weakness, ineptitude and humiliation. We believe as nonprofits that donors will only support us if we ride one success after another in the journey towards our charitable cause. We also struggle to believe that people will still value us if we have failed in our ministry efforts. We tend to think that failure is a sign of God withholding blessing because of our mistakes or miscalculations.

But below the cultural dogma of success and the misunderstanding of God's blessings, we really do know that failures are good for us . . . don't we? Sure we do. We know that failures help us understand the problem we are seeking to solve and give us new insights into what to try next. We know this because we see it in life. When a baby first tries to walk, there are many failures that slowly lead to learning and then to success. When we learned to ride a bike or drive a car, there were many crashes or grinding of gears before we masted the skill. Most of the time those teaching us did not reject us for those things or think less of us. Instead they encouraged us to persevere and learn from the challenge.

So, in the end, our efforts to hide our failures keep us from learning and growing with those around us and identifying new solutions. There is a new web site called http://www.admittingfailure.com/ that is seeking to help nonprofits get beyond this struggle. The site has been put together by Engineers Without Borders Canada and they are putting out a challenge for nonprofits to share their failures in an effort to learn from each other and create new and better solutions.

This is a powerful idea because it provides each of you with a chance to share a failure and see how that bit of learning will help others. I believe it is also cathartic because we can confess to each other our struggles and our failures and ask for their help and prayer.

Now here is the big question: "Will you be brave enough to selflessly share your failures with others?"

Innovation Rejection

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.