Communication and Innovation

Welcome back wonderful Folks!

Today I would like to share with you some insights I have recently developed about the connection between Innovation and Communication. 

I just followed my inspiration and let the virtual pen flow on the paper. 

I hope you will appreciate it.

Good Reading!

When speaking about creativity, new ideas, and innovations, we oftentimes forget to take into account communication. According to Oxford Dictionary, to communicate means to “share or exchange information, news, or ideas”. During this process of sharing, mistakes are likely to happen either in the form of misunderstandings or misconceptions. Thus, it is critical for human beings to actually express themselves, minimizing the likelihood of mistakes when communicating ideas to the external world. As a matter of fact, there is no more ineffective idea than the one that stays in your mind and even worse, than the one that is misunderstood by the people who should support it. The issue gets really critical when ideas are new and therefore, something people have never thought about before. Hence, the question is: how  can communicating new ideas be effective? In other terms, how is it possible to guide people out of their categories? The answer I would like to give today lies in the past.

Two thousands years ago, in Palestine, one of the greatest innovators in human  history was teaching revolutionary values and principles. What would have been “western society” had Jesus been a bad communicator? Fortunately, not only was Jesus an innovator, but also a master in communication. During his preaching, his main audience was composed of no more than simple shepherds and fisherman, who did not have any kind of knowledge of the world outside of their “area of specialization”. These reasons forced the Messiah to use a very effective communication tool, which became also one of the most characterizing method of his preaching: the parable.

The word parable comes from a greek terms meaning “comparison, illustration, analogy” and the third meaning is the one I would like to focus on today. Jesus used this type of analogy adapting his revolutionary message of love and salvation to the specific context he was living in. One of the most famous examples is Matthew 4:19 in the New Testament. Jesus has just started preaching in Galilee when he encounters the fishermen Simon Peter and Andrew. To call the couple to join him he says: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Another clear example is the famous Parable of the Lost Sheep, where Jesus talks about a shepherd who left his flock of 99 sheep in order to find the one sheep who is lost. The Gospel is full of analogies like these, perfectly related to the cultural and historical framework of 30 A.D. Palestine.

The greatness of Jesus as an innovator as well as a communicator was his ability to literally take his people’s hands and guide them out of their categories by using categories themselves as the starting point. As a matter of fact, an effective innovator uses analogies and metaphors linked to the specific audience’s experiences. In this way people are able to easily understand new radical ideas because they are allowed to create a strong mind connection between what they already know and what they do not. However, this is not enough. This approach needs to be matched with another very critical issue when conveying new ideas: the need of simplicity. 

Analogies, metaphors as well as the concepts themselves must be almost instantaneous in order to be properly and completely understood. The only way to achieve this result is by breaking the concept down into different parts. To explain this last sentence I would use an analogy. Guiding people out of their categories has to be a process very similar to the climbing of a ladder: it is a matter of “step by step”. 

Once again the biblical example is a lucid way to understand the “step by step” through which an effective innovator lead people out of their categories. In fact, Jesus’ Parables do not force the audience immediately in the beginning. Instead, they start as ordinary stories, telling usual facts, in order to make people listening comfortable. Only after that, when the audience is in this  kind of “comfort-zone”, the degree of newness becomes to be prevalent, until it reaches the climax in the end, when the new radical message is conveyed. In this regard, the Parable of the Prodigal son is probably the best in showing how a radical new concept needs to be broken down and administered to the audience gradually. 

In conclusion, we could think about everything said above on a larger scale and apply it to society in general. Nothing would change, because society is a group of people sharing the same values and norms, but still it remains a group of people. In other words, a larger audience than the one attending a business presentation. The necessary condition to be an agent of change in every context is always the one that harmoniously matches innovation and communication skills and attitudes. Only in this way the communication process minimizes the likelihood of misunderstanding and reaches its maximum degree of effectiveness, generating the impact hoped. 

As always I would like to leave you with an inspiring quote:

“Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.” - Charles Dickens - 





I really want to point out that every reference on the figure of Jesus is something that in this context has nothing to do with religion; it is just about an insight about Jesus, the historical man, as an innovator and master communicator.

- Michele Bellini -