What Allison Kraus and Robert Plant taught me about Innovation

The Library

Queenstown library is a small library in a central suburb of Singapore. It was my children’s and my Sunday afternoon refuge as quite often we needed to escape from the sweltering heat and humidity of the tropical city.

The aircon in the library was exceptionally well functioning. Not to say, it was cold in the building. Epicurus, the cafe in the library elevated our visits always to a well appreciated event for 3 of us. The black leather sofas on the second floor invited for a disguised afternoon nap while pretending to read a book.

Innovation and me

It was the time when my kids were around 6 and 9 years old and when I was on track to ramp up my knowledge about innovation. The topic fascinated me.

I was the boss of a manufacturing facility and dreamt about turning our factory into a hotbed of creativity and innovation. I strongly believe that employees must be given time and freedom to improve and innovate. Only then joy and passion can creep into the workforce.

For myself, I wanted to crack the nut about how to create a culture for innovation. Day by day I got more passionate about innovation and how to create the environment for it.

Finding Books

In the library I had to guess and narrow down the few bookshelf sections, where I most probably would find some books related to innovation. I browsed title by title, bending down my body and twisted my neck to read the text on the backs of the books. This was at times painful especially when the books were on the lower shelves, closed to the floor.

It took an effort to find some promising titles in the vicinity of innovation. Usually I went back from the shelves with a bounty of 3 or 4 books to our black leather sofa where my kids were carried away by reading Geronimo Stilton books.

Bluegrass Girl and Rock Star Great

On one of those Sunday afternoons I found myself reading a book with a story about Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. No this was not a book about music, this was a book about innovation.

The story caught my interest just because I did not expect the name, Robert Plant, pop up in a book about innovation.

Robert Plant was the fantastic frontman and lead singer of the world-famous Hard Rock band Led Zeppelin. Even my son 40 years younger than me would know and like Led Zeppelin. LZ has been one of the super rock bands of the 80s. But what a surprise, how did Robert Plant make it into a book about innovation. Unexpected.

Contrary, I never heard about Alison Kraus, she was an unknown to me. But that lasted just a few hours. The same evening I searched Spotify up and down for the unlikely pair. I finally found and listened to “Raising Sand” the result of Alison’s and Robert’s uncommon music venture.

Raising Sand (2007) is a collaborative album by rock singer Robert Plant and bluegrass-country singer Alison Krauss. It was released in October 2007 by Rounder Records. Raising Sand won Album of the Year at the 2008 Americana Music Honors & Awards and at the 2009 Grammy Awards. [Wikipedia]

Youtube stores a lot of wonderful Alison Krauss solo videos together with her band Union Station. I fell in love with her, more than with Robert.

It just did not get into my mind why the great famous old Hard Rock guy would fuse with the not-so-famous young Appalachian Bluegrass girl.

Well she was famous of course, it is just that I did not know anything about Bluegrass and American Country and Western Music.

Bluegrass

Bluegrass music developed in the 1940s in the United States Appalachian region. The name very likely is from the band Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. Bluegrass is traditionally played on acoustic stringed instruments. It has its roots in traditional English, Scottish, and Irish ballads and dance tunes and in traditional African-American blues and jazz.[Wikipedia]

Fusion Innovation

No point to talk about Hard Rock. It is just loud! With Robert Plant, Hard Rock got some melodious elements and sounds though. But both together as a duo, they sounded neither Bluegrass nor Hard Rock.

Their voices were fusing and syncing to an all-new voice. That joint new voice was innovation in its purest form.

Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services.[Wikipedia]

Almost immediately my mind ran wild. The idea was a classic approach to innovation. Just mix and connect the not-so-obvious together, create an unlikely pair and let us see what is going to develop out of such a connection.

At first sight, such experiments look difficult, almost prone to fail. It needs the right people for such fine adventures. They must be inspired and willing to adopt. They must as well be daring enough to lose and fail.

The energetic Led Zeppelin frontman had to hold back to not dominate the soft-voiced Alison. Alison herself feared to be overruled and dominated by the Super Rocker. But they synchronised and amalgamated well from day one.

Something new was born.

Could I apply this concept to my manufacturing facility? Would my colleagues have the inspiration for such experiments? Would they be daring enough to lose and fail?

I could not wait for Monday morning going to work and to enlighten my colleagues about what I had in mind.

I guess Alison and Robert will never get to know the impact they had on our manufacturing plant.

It is a pity, I can’t recall the title of the book.

There were, I believe, around 12 stories about how innovation happened by creating unlikely pairings, which at first sight would not fit together.

Wonder if any of the readers by chance came across the book. I would be wonderful if after all the years (my children are 18 and 21 now) I could read the remaining 11 stories.

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