Oliver, thanks!
In other words, the litmus test for me is: what
happens when the socially
and politically weakest person in the organisation has an
idea?
If we speak of a "product" idea, we have two groups of people - those who
can implement the idea, and those who would need to convince others to do
it. They use fundamentally different, scarcely overlapping skill-sets. An
engineer might go via the "hackathon + demo" route, implementing something
simple and showing it to gain traction. A non-engineer would start with the
social aspect first - talking to others if the idea is worth pursuing, how
hard is it to do, and eventually - convincing others to allocate their
time/resources to do it. Sometimes an engineer may go the social route
instead, but it would be very hard for a non-engineer to engage in
development. Lastly, the "designer" group has an amazing skill-set to
visually present their full vision rather than the demo, thus often having
easier time of conveying their thoughts.
In a sense, the barrier of entry for the person in the "weakest position"
would not be as high for the "doer" as for the "inspirer". So I think
the
real challenge is how do we capture and evaluate those ideas from the
second group? Also, no matter how hard we try, it would be either very
hard, or very expensive (and not just financially) to force the
implementers to do an idea they do not believe in. So in a sense, doers
need to be persuaded first and foremost.
As with any explanation, a picture == 1000 words, so we could promote "idea
visualizers" - designers who are easily approachable and could help to draw
up a few sketches of the idea.