What a strange story! I recently read on a blog an article about the tension between innovation and ethics and all I could think after reading it was that clearly I had missed something. The author referred to an article she had read elsewhere that had caused her to make the intellectual leap that perhaps there was a tension between the two - innovation and ethics. The trigger article is: If You Think It's Unethical It Probably Is, written by Eileen Zimmerman which appeared in the NY Times on October 23, 2010. You should give it a look. It's quite interesting.
Now that I've read Ms. Zimmerman's article though, I think I really must have missed something and I have to say that I don't quite understand where this tension between innovative thinking and ethics became an issue. Ms. Zimmerman's article spends a lot of time talking about how to push back (without killing your career), if you think something you've been asked to do, crosses ethical lines. Never does she suggest that there is a tension, nor indeed does she ever refer to innovation either covertly or explicitly in her writing.
To innovate (per dictionary.reference.com), is to "introduce something new; make changes in anything established". Implicit in that definition is an understanding that that which is created is rooted in truth. Perhaps that isn't implicit to anyone but me, but I fail to see how lying could be considered innovative, unless we are talking about taking an innovative approach to the facts. An old choir director of mine used to joke about people who didn't know the music but would sing their own 'impressionistic renderings' of the songs. That's innovation too I guess except it was greatly discouraged in the choir, as it should be in business. Harmony easily becomes cacophony when people play fast and loose with the truth be that musical truth (the notes) or business truth (the numbers).
I am a big believer that innovation is the only way for an organization to stay relevant but I question whether anything that involves lying or otherwise misrepresenting the true facts of business performance could even be loosely categorized as 'innovation'. I am also not sure that even on the keenest cutting edge of innovation it is necessary to compromise one’s ethics. I am certain that there are areas of scientific endeavor where the ‘edge’ goes beyond anything I can imagine, but where innovation challenges prevailing ethical constraints, processes usually exist to challenge those ethical lines. Think back to the first IVF and the ethical debates that raged then. Think now about stem cell research and the raging ethical debates in that field. Innovation is all about challenging the status quo, but for those wishing to do so ethically, there are ways to challenge without stepping all over moral and/or legal boundaries.
In most businesses, it seems to me, where ethical lines are crossed it is not because of some wonderful, business-saving innovation that runs afoul of prevailing ethical norms (creating some mythical tension), but rather it is usually because of a blind and dangerous (just ask Wall Street) focus on a profit motive.
Once business people take their eyes off ethics and focus wholly and solely on profit margins, P/E ratios and market capitalization, trouble surely follows. Innovation is not the enemy of ethics, greed is. The tension really is between money and ethics. Don't blame innovation. She wasn't even there when the bacchanal began.
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