[From the Editor: In 2008, Cutter Fellow Rob Austin described the principles that need to be learned — and unlearned — in an innovation economy. Although nearly a decade has passed since he first wrote the words, his guidance still rings true today. We share his message again here.]

Reading the popular press, you could get the idea that watershed events happen in the business world pretty much daily. We're always hearing how this thing or that thing will change "the world as we know it." Shrewd managers regard such proclamations with healthy skepticism. The most jaded skeptic has to admit, though, that some things happening now do seem like a big deal.

Consider the following example: Internet and transportation networks seem to be rendering the world's many labor markets into one. Jobs move across national boundaries in increasing volume. The competitive playing field shifts in favor of some companies and against others. Most companies in developed economies see these developments, rightly, as challenges — challenges that can lead to opportunities (say, to make more profits by offshoring) and opportunities that can lead to new challenges (for example, competition from offshore firms managed by your former offshore employees, who you've educated into being capable rivals).

Another example: In the developed world, consumers are becoming more affluent, with more disposable income. They spend more on entertainment, fashion, organic groceries, trendy restaurant meals, and cool cars. Also, they'll pay higher prices for these differentiated goods, services, and experiences.

These factors, and others, influence the strategy and execution of a firm competing in the global marketplace. The world is changing. Resist the hype but don't ignore the realities. A shrewd manager is a skeptic, but he or she must still pay attention to his or her surroundings.

So there probably are things we, as managers, need to unlearn and replace with new learning. What they all are, well, that's the subject best dealt with in a book (which, as it happens, Lee Devin and I wrote: The Soul of Design: Harnessing the Power of Plot to Create Extraordinary Products). But here let me suggest a few cherished aphorisms that I think don't quite fit the way the world is going. These are all time-honored sayings that still elicit knowing agreement from practicing managers. But for the world into which we're heading, I submit, these sayings will be less true — or rather they'll be untrue for more and more (but not all) of the things we need to do. They are principles we must unlearn; the actions that flow from them are habits we must break.

By the way, I based what follows on research that involved studying how expert innovators succeed in what they do. This is not stuff dreamed up in ivory towers. Here goes:

• If you don't know where you're going, any map will do. Managers who agree with this statement are pointing out the importance of knowing your final objective when you begin to work, in order to avoid wasting effort. But in an innovation economy, where you think you can go as you begin the work is probably not new enough or good enough to be your final objective. In the innovation economy, if you always end up where you intended to go, you've probably missed opportunities that emerged along the way. Your products and services won't be good enough to be competitive because they will not have evolved in the process of making them. Management processes that maximize the value of emergent features of your products and services are very different from those that assure that you efficiently achieve predetermined outcomes.
   
• Get it right the first time. Hard to argue with this one, right? Well, no. In the innovation economy, you won't get it right the first time. You can't. If you do, it won't be good enough. Imagine a world-class string quartet operating in this mode. Maybe the performers are good enough to play all the right notes the first time, but to really set themselves apart, just playing the right notes won't be enough. Similarly, with your company, you're going to have to go beyond basic execution. Anyone can do that. And you won't achieve real difference, real differentiation, the first time. So "Get it right the first time" is not the right principle. Try, instead, "Make it great before the deadline" — or something like that.
   
• If it ain't broke, don't fix it. In efficiency-based value creation, a surprise is a problem. If a car rolls off the assembly line and is surprising in some way, we have a label for that: a "quality problem." But if a new product, or service, or performance, or any example of differentiation-based value creation does not surprise us in some way, then that's a quality problem. We have long been obsessed in business with reducing, even eliminating, variation in our processes. Standardization, uniformity, and simplicity of operation have been end objectives. But innovation processes require a source of novelty, of never-before-experienced newness. To get this kind of newness, you've got to have variation. Variation, even unplanned or accidental, is a source of new outcomes. And in an innovation economy, it's a problem if your outcomes are not new enough. If it ain't broke, you might need to break it. If it's under control, you might need to inject some chaos into it.
   
• The customer is always right. Not if a thing is truly new. Eventually, the customer has to like it. But in the beginning, a new thing doesn't have a market yet — by definition. If you insist that it has a market already, you'll limit yourself to things not much different from what is already out there. When composer Igor Stravinsky premiered his Rite of Spring in the early 20th century, the audience rioted and threw things at the orchestra. Today, that piece is considered a classic part of the canon, loved by many and no longer controversial. The business world today is full of consultants and authors telling you that you can innovate by listening well to your customers. Sometimes that's true, to some extent at least. But don't believe it in general. If everyone always "trusted the marketing research," many important innovations would never have seen the light of day.
   
• Avoid "reinventing the wheel." Managers like to reuse things. They like to store away things they'll probably need again in a place where they can be efficiently retrieved. This avoids reinventing the wheel. Expert innovators, on the other hand, collect things they think are interesting but that they don't know how they'll use. And they store them in piles, inefficiently, partly because they like to wander through the piles, searching. It gives them new ideas, even when they never find what they started out to retrieve. This helps them reinvent wheels and lots of other things, which is the point, after all, of innovation.
   
• What gets measured, gets managed. This is true only when people are extrinsically motivated. Intrinsically motivated people aren't driven by your measurements. They respond to their own internal sense of what's important to pursue. And social psychology research, by people like Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile, shows conclusively that intrinsic motivation is conducive to creative work and that extrinsic motivation interferes with it. Many great designers care a lot more that they work on interesting projects than that they maximize their profits. It's one of the reasons the design industry is so fragmented (composed of small firms). I once heard the head of R&D at one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies say that he'd finally gotten the performance measurement system in his group to a point where it at least didn't interfere much with the work of his best scientists. I asked him, "Is that the best thing you can say about your PM system, that it doesn't get in the way?" He thought for a moment and then said, "Yes. That's the best I can say about it."