Escaping the GIGO principle of innovation | Thinkergy

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Design in Design Innovation | 0 Comments

Escaping the GIGO principle of innovation

Last week, we began planning a comprehensive innovation project with one of our clients. This project is of a high importance for this Multinational Corporation, which is seeking for new applications in new industries for a highly profitable product that is now locked into one industry and one application niche. The first challenge in this complex innovation project, I told my counterpart on client’s side, would be to understand —and escape— the GIGO principle of innovation.

What is the GIGO principle?

GIGO stands for “Garbage in, garbage out”. Originating from the domain of computer science and information technology, the GIGO principle describes the following fact:

If you input unintended, even nonsensical, data (“garbage in”) to a computer (operated by logical processes), then it will unquestioningly produce undesired, often nonsensical, output (“garbage out”).

In more than a decade of working on over 150 innovation projects, I’ve seen how GIGO also applies to the field of innovation in five dimensions: project, process, money, time, and people.

The project dimension

The project dimension of the GIGO principle of innovation goes as follows:

If you input an unintended, even nonsensical, innovation case at the start of an innovation project (garbage in), then it will produce undesired, often nonsensical, ideas and innovation outputs (garbage out).

How to escape “garbage in” on the project side?

The process dimension

On a meta-level, we can formulate the process dimension of the GIGO principle of innovation as follows:

If you use an incomplete or dysfunctional innovation process method for an innovation project (garbage in), then it will result in incomplete or substandard ideas and innovation results (garbage out).

Moreover, every innovation process consists of different process stages, and employs thinking tools that innovation teams apply while working in a stage. As such, the process-related GIGO principle of innovation has a corollary on a stage-level:

If you enter an insufficient quantity and/or poor quality of inputs into a process stage of a well- structured innovation method (garbage in), then it will produce too few, substandard outputs and results at the end of this stage (garbage out).

The same holds true on the tool-level: Even the best, most carefully selected thinking tools will produce undesired, or even nonsensical, outputs (“garbage out”) if you input low-quality information (“garbage in”).

How to escape “garbage in” on the process side?

The monetary dimension

Going through an innovation project requires an adequate budget investment, which leads us to the monetary dimension of the GIGO principle of innovation:

If you run an innovation project on a shoestring (garbage in), then your pennies will buy you only third-rate delivery partners with faulty innovation processes and limited experience, leading to suboptimal innovation results (garbage out).

How to escape “garbage in” on the monetary side?

The time dimension

Good thinking leading to great innovations takes time. All too often, businesspeople underestimate the time needed to do an innovation project adequately (a phenomenon related to a cognitive bias known as planning fallacy). This leads us to the time dimension of the GIGO principle of innovation:

If you provide inadequate time commitments to an innovation project and each of its stages (garbage in), then it will produce half-baked outputs and results (garbage out).

How to escape “garbage in” on the time side?

The people dimension

The right number of the right people create great innovation to improve people’s lives. Last but not least, this notion is reflected in the people dimension of the GIGO principle of innovation:

If an insufficient number of, or the wrong type of people work on an innovation project (or a particular process stage; garbage in), then they will produce too few or suboptimal ideas and innovation outputs (garbage out).

How to escape “garbage in” on the people side?

Do you plan working on an important innovation project sometime soon, too? Do you want to escape the GIGO principle of innovation? Contact us if you want to find out how we can guide you towards meaningful innovation results with our systematic innovation method X-IDEA.