Innovation; immediate or reliable?

What can I say? Superheroes are powerful and super and heroes, but they are also reliable.

When Ryan Jacoby a business designer at IDEO (http://www.ideo.com) asks the question: Innovation; immediate or reliable? in one of his recent posts at his blog do_matic, I immediately thought about immediate.

But he makes a brilliant case for reliable:

So, if innovation is in part about bringing new things into the world, this is where I come out:

I want reliable people posing provocative questions and processing more immediate inputs.

"Reliable people" are those that have learned to spot patterns through experience and many cycles of learning. Such people exhibit a relentless curiosity that drives them to learn and challenge their patterns frequently. Ultimately, I want such people working close to the questions and looking to be surprised and contradicted by what they find as quickly as possible.

I really like that Ryan has decided to put his thoughts available to us for immediate and reliable access to his mind and expertise.

We all need superheroes and the people at Ideo can lead us to safe and wonderful innovation, that's for sure.