Orchids Overshadowed Under the Bigtop: When Innovation Misses the Mark

A grandiose dose of silliness and fun
Step right up to The Orchid Show of Wonders, where your favorite carnival and circus attractions come to life in new ways. You’ll walk under Ferris wheel seats, and marvel at unicycles on tightropes and other gravity-defying surprises under the big top. This Orchid Show whisks you away to a whimsical world of 10,000 fresh, vibrant blooms.

https://www.chicagobotanic.org/orchid

Sometimes innovations go wrong.

One of the most powerful ways to create innovations is to take two ideas, two metaphors, and collide them together in a way that brings forth something new and exciting. In this case, the idea was to bring together the metaphor of circus, The Greatest Show on Earth, and fuse it with orchids, one of Nature’s Most Sublime masterpieces.  The end result?

The Orchid Show of Wonders!

But instead, the innovation that was spawned was a disjointed amalgam, a mix that highlighted neither circus nor orchids. It was a Fauxnnovation, a mash of metaphor with little transformation or elevation.

The Circus theme brought flashing lights,  mirrors, and repetitive Calliope music, and that became the backdrop to the soft curves of orchids, a beauty that normally commands introspection and contemplation. 

One would expect that an event at the Chicago Botanic Gardens would place orchids at center stage. But instead, it was almost like they were after thoughts to the Circus theme.  The flowers, the orchids, got lost in the flashing lights.

At a circus you want to keep moving, you want to take in as much as you can during a day, eat as much as you can, play as much as you can. But here, instead of wanting to linger in shadows of beauty, the lights and music created an unconscious desire to keep moving – as if you were at a circus. (Other people I spoke to commented on this vibe as well)

Cool effect but the orchids are an afterthought

The jarring lights and carnival music overwhelmed the delicate orchid displays rather than amplifying their sublime beauty. Instead of evoking awe and tranquility, the competing sensory overloads just created dissonance.

Circus balls and colors clashed, orchid pastels overpowered by flashing and glowing lights and circus music.

It’s a shame really. I love the orchid show. I love innovation. As a photographer, I love taking pictures. There were some photo-ops but not like other times. Many opportunities for photos were unique, but seldom orchid-centric. One couldn’t even catalog the various orchids seen at the show,  like in years before (see below).

These are only a handful of pictures I took at last year’s orchid show. This year I took about this much in total.

I respect the valiant effort and boldness of the creators of this exposition. But sometimes innovations, even when based upon the time honored technique of mashing together disparate metaphors, just don’t work.

5 Insights into Innovation Courtesy of Orchids

I recently attended an Orchid show at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. The displays of orchids of all types, the colors and shapes were wonderfully entrancing. They are a testimony to resilience and innovation in nature. So in honor of our fascinating, flamboyant flower friends, here are 5 lessons on innovation, courtesy of orchids.

1.  Orchid seeds are so tiny they need symbiotic help from fungi to nourish the seeds during the fragile early growth.
Innovation Insight: Creative ideas need nourishment. It’s notoriously hard to get young ideas going, and keeping them going. Fungi provide extremely local and immediate support. Early innovation needs nourishment, and not just financial.

2. Orchids are everywhere. There are more than 25000 species on every continent except Antarctica.
Orchids adapt, and thrive.
Innovation Insight: Innovation requires adaptability.  It involves constantly adapting to changing circumstances and finding new ways to solve problems.

3.  Orchids can be challenging to breed and grow, requiring patience and persistence.
Innovation Insight: Creating new flowers is a type of innovation on its own.It often requires persistence and a willingness to fail and try again. Nature uses multiple simultaneous experiments. So should innovation labs. Successes move on to the next round.

4.  Orchids, like all living things, are constantly adapting and evolving. Cross-pollination creates combinations of unique traits with novel advantages.
Innovation Insight: Continuous improvement and iteration are the foundation of incremental innovation. The cross-pollination of ideas, metaphors,domains, etc., powers both incremental and radical/disruptive innovation. Find the means for minds to experience cross-pollination.

5. Orchids are beautiful, graceful, mysterious,and wondrous.
Innovation Insight: Beautiful innovation is hypnotically attractive. Functionality doesn’t have to be, ‘meh’. Captivate.

From the fragility of their beginnings,  orchids remind us that innovation involves not only problem-solving skills but also creativity, cross-pollination of ideas, beauty, and resourcefulness. By embracing these lessons from orchids, we can cultivate the innovative mindset required to succeed in a rapidly changing world.

And have a little orchid in your food or drink today. If you didn’t know, vanilla is from an orchid.

😊