Most organizations, no matter the sector, drift into familiar grooves. Decisions get easier when everyone agrees. Risks feel safer when the outcomes are predictable. But comfort has a dark side: stagnation, especially dangerous in moments that demand reinvention.
Innovation rarely dies from a lack of talent or imagination. It dies because systems are built to protect the status quo. The irony? The ideas that truly change the game usually start right where the logic breaks.
That’s where provocation comes in.
In the 1970s, creativity theorist Edward de Bono coined the term “PO” (Provocative Operation). The move was simple: throw an illogical or outrageous idea into the mix. Not to adopt it, but to shake loose what’s stuck. PO isn’t about brainstorming in straight lines; it’s about kicking the train off the tracks to see where else it might go.
Try these on for size:
- What if we banned our most popular event for a year?
- What if our audience were only newcomers who didn’t speak the local language?
- What if we never opened our building — but still had to deliver value?
These aren’t strategies; they’re catalysts. Their power is in revealing hidden assumptions, spotlighting blind spots, and opening fresh conceptual ground.
In cultural and mission-driven work, where tradition, reputation, and fear of failure can filter every decision, PO can be a release valve. It doesn’t seek consensus; it seeks curiosity. It sparks the mental friction good ideas need.
Provocation is not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It’s a reframing tool. It forces a different set of questions — not “What should we do?” but “What haven’t we dared to imagine?”
Cognitively, it disrupts functional fixedness, our bias toward seeing familiar things in familiar ways. Pairing mismatched ideas primes the brain for breakthrough insight.
But for PO to work, the culture has to make room for it:
- Build meetings where challenging the brief is the brief
- Rotate roles or invite unexpected voices into the room
- Separate idea generation from idea evaluation
- Let a few ideas run “too far” before pulling them back
The most inventive teams normalize structured subversion. IDEO runs “wrong idea” sprints. Pixar dissects flops without blame. Netflix’s culture memo allows people to try what might not work — with accountability.
These aren’t environments built on a lone genius. They’re built on permission. Permission to think otherwise.
Right now, as organizations across the creative sector wrestle with questions of relevance, audience, and sustainability, the tools of creative disobedience matter more than ever. A good provocation won’t hand you the answer — but it will mark the edge of your current logic.
And that’s often exactly where the next big idea is hiding.
