Uyuni Salt Flats

I work for a big corporation. As with most big companies, the corporate hierachy is pretty tall. That makes it a bit tough to create and/or maintain a culture of innovation: politics and title are usually more influential than a good idea. But blaming management for not accepting your brilliant idea is a cop-out. What if Al Gore gave up on inventing the Internet “because his boss said no?” You don’t want to be a cop-out, so you work the system to make friends, and influence people. But that’s a little like pushing spaghetti uphill. Instead, you could sidestep that whole mess and at least get a running start.

This is where social networking can be more than just an interesting sideshow. There’s a great tool called Yammer. It’s like Twitter for private networks. Maybe I’m slow on the uptake, or maybe I just have a profound grasp of the obvious… but one thing I’ve noticed is that Yammer is (relatively) flat– it completely sidesteps all the day-to-day corporate hierarchies. The CEO and I are somewhere around 6,269 levels removed in the official corporate structure (not to mention half the land mass of the US and then the Atlantic ocean). But on Yammer, we have the opportunity to interact as equals. Most innovation articles I’ve read suggest that flat is good. Flat means that the best ideas– not politics or title– attract the best people. What company wouldn’t want the best people working on the best ideas?

Now, moving the ideas from this ephemeral channel into the real world? That’s another story. But don’t be a phony! Learn some sweet moves and go get something done.