Jef Staes:" If I am talking about red monkeys  as a confronting idea, which is really creativity  , it starts at the edge of the forest.  And the creators who live....with one leg in the own organisation and one leg in the other organisation, they find the best ideas.  Now these creators, they have to find the people who love the ideas and these are the pioneers.  The pioneers and the creators are a success-team, they all gain by making the idea better.  So, what happens is... you really have organic growth of the idea...now, if you do this then the idea becomes stronger, you even can introduce examples. 

Now, you need these examples, you need these working examples because maybe the creators and the pioneers are 10% of your organisation...but you need to convince the majority of your organisation.   And the majority of your organisation are the followers.  There's nothing wrong with followers, you need followers, but followers  need to see what it is, how it works and how it's going to help them, if they don't see it, they don't follow.  So it's the team of the creators and the pioneers who will make sure that it becomes so good that the followers will follow.  And once you have the creators, the pioneers and the followers, then the last group the settlers, who normally don't want to follow, they will be overwhelmed by this force, by this innovative force.  Because you have creativity and you have entrepreneurship and they have to give in. 

So always if you think in an organisation about innovation, always start at the edge.  Now suppose you don't do this, then you have a problem...Suppose you don't have creators, pioneers and followers but you drop the red monkey in the middle of the forest...it will be killed.  And normally it will be killed because it's still an idea, it hasn't proved itself, there are still errors in it, so it's a sitting duck, the red monkey is a sitting duck for the settlers.  Because they can say: "who tells that it will work, it won't work, it will have too much errors, we don't  see the advantages...", so they will win it...so the red monkey will be killed."