Killing Innovation - A Manager’s Guide

I wrote a short article the other day about innovation and someone took umbrage at one of my lines that the public sector (as the traditional hierarchical bureaucracy) has 1001 ways to kill a good idea and that we need to move towards a model that has 1001 ways to advance a good idea.  Innovation can often be really difficult for managers who are under time and budget constraints to get the job done rather than look to do things differently. 

I came across this blog post which describes 5 questions that can be raised by a manager to kill innovation.  The beauty of responding with a question is that it makes the innovator have to justify their innovation to you through logical reasoning based on your own assumptions - a phantasmagorically circular way of killing innovation slowly but surely. 

I think we are now up to counting 1035 ways to kill innovation (although we cheated because we started at 1001)!!