innovation bubbles up

I'd wager that most great ideas are born bottom up rather than top down.

How many innovative ideas stories' start with ... my boss got an email from the CEO. The telephone sure as hell wasn't invented that way, neither was the internet (despite what Al Gore might say) nor the smartphone.

People on top (board members, CXOs, VPs) see problems in convergence. Why can't these two systems work together? I want to draw up an elegant shell on our existing systems. They are looking for issues where the sum is greater than the sum of the parts, which is not a bad thing. The problem is, there is usually a reason systems aren't already converged. Normally, they don't fit that well together and the additional complexity of bundling them negates any potential benefit.

Bottom dwellers live in their respective areas, understanding both the outputs of their systems and their respective environments. They already know what is a bitch to do and what is not, plus normally why. The top layer is generally too far removed, busy, etc to understand or care. They overestimate the companies importance, and more importantly will to impose ideas/solutions on the market as a whole.

A better approach would be a benevolent dictator, who once a month asks all his reports to impress them. What have you and your groups been working on? Why does it matter? What help do you need with? Are you properly resourced? Do you need anything from other teams? Is your idea better than the last/next guys?

Google looks a lot like this, but so do successful auto companies.

Nothing takes the wind out of a team's sails like an idea that will likely never work out. How are they supposed to get excited and behind their work? A death spiral of apathy, low quality work, and tendency for the team to "check out" are sure to follow.

Let's create environments that foster innovation, and share problems but not mandate solutions.