Why, in the Business Innovation Race, Tortoises Often Win

We all know the story of the tortoise and the hare. To cut to the chase, the tortoise won. But what were the real differences between these two competitors, other than that the hare was fast but erratic, and the tortoise slow and steady?

For starters, we might say that the hare was almost completely inspiration-driven, waiting for flashes of energy to come to them. While the tortoise, on the other hand, was more methodical.

Going another level deeper, however, we might even surmise that the hare was a victim of its own past success. And of its own high status as a hare in the realm of animal footraces.

While the tortoise, never endowed with the same natural gifts as the hare, was almost forced to become more systematic and process-driven in the months or years leading up to their storied competition.

There’s a similar dynamic that can play out in real-world business innovation.

In fact, sustaining creativity can come down to your ability to stay focused on the challenge at hand, rather than on your identity as a “creative professional.” That’s according to Dirk Deichmann and Markus Baer, who published an article in MIT Sloan Management Review called “Mix Creativity With the Right Mindset to Serve Up Innovation” in 2023.

And in many cases, focusing too much on the outcome—or the thing that is being created—rather than on the process of creation itself can actually be counterproductive, Deichmann and Baer say.

At the time of the article’s publication, Deichmann was an associate professor at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University. And Baer was professor of organizational behavior at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

First-time inventors, film directors and novelists often have a hard time replicating their early success, according to Deichmann and Baer. And as found in a study published by the researchers in January 2023 in the Journal of Applied Psychology, first-time cookbook writers can also suffer a similar challenge, and for similar reasons.

There are a few steps that people from cookbook writers to individual business professionals and leaders of teams that need to innovate can take to sustain creative work, however, Deichmann and Baer say.

The first is to use a systematic creative process. Most of the cookbook authors Deichmann and Baer interviewed for their study, for example, seemed to lack a systematic approach for developing and refining new ideas. And instead relied more on moments of insight to drive their creativity.

Innovation experts have suggested, however, that it’s helpful to have a systematic process for idea development. Deichmann and Baer say that design thinking offers one such way in.

Emerging over the last half century or so from studies of innovation processes, problem-solving and creativity, design thinking methodologies take an iterative, experimental approach to problem-solving.

One that involves gaining a deep understanding of customer needs; defining a problem area; and ideating new solutions. And then prototyping, testing and refining them, to use the definition of researchers David Dunne, Theresa Eriksson and Jan Keitzmann, writing in an article for the MIT Sloan Management Review in 2022.

A second step identified by Deichmann and Baer for sustaining creative productivity is to collaborate. Working with collaborators can make the creative process feel much less threatening to the individual, according to the researchers.

In a study published in 2018, for example, Deichmann and Baer found that once people had developed ideas on their own, they found teamwork to be a helpful way to sustain their creativity.

Finally, a third step Deichmann and Baer identify is to lower the stakes. Many studies have found that having a sense of psychological safety can enhance creativity, the researchers say. Indeed, developing a nurturing environment in which risks can be taken and failures are seen as opportunities for learning can help make the stakes feel lower.

For Deichmann and Baer’s cookbook writers specifically, this meant seeing failure and the lessons that can be distilled from it as an inevitable aspect of a creative life.

Ultimately, success in creative endeavors seems to come down to cultivating intrinsic motivation for the process of creation, according to Deichmann and Baer. And that’s irrespective of the success of the outcome, which is much less under the control of the individual creator.

Sort of like the weather on marathon day.