Cross pollination

I first studied the concept of pollination in flowers in middle school. It was a sexual message at the time. Years later again as a business manager and strategist I came across pollination again but now the word meant smartness, competitive edge, innovation and much more. Funny thing cross pollination, unlike the flowers where the bees do most of the job, businesses lack those messengers. It is interesting to hear managers talk about exchange of ideas but for some reason every word has a fertility connotation to it. Why not a term like specular and diffuse?

It funny to hear management talk about ideas, Out-of-the-box thinking, but the fact is a significant number of ideas even today are inbreed. It is just a matter of comfort level. Everyone has a comfort zone and most people will quite easily say “Think Different!” but when it comes to “Acting Different” or “Doing Different” it causes them to move out of that comfort zone.

In most corporate cultures thinking different means a new package, a new color, a new fragrance and boom that’s the new and different. Granted no one wants to suffer the fate of New Coke. The problem is not just acting or doing different but even greater energizing people to literally cross pollinate ideas; imaginate and articulate!

Corporations often translate cross pollination to diversity. But is that really so? Cross pollination is quite a tortuous process. It is unlearning what you already know, learning the new business or process and then relating the old to the new to give rise to a whole new world of possibilities. It is the kind of thing one is born with not trained for. Training can only help hone the skill not indoctrinate.