Innovating To Win

Brainstorming Innovation – The Wisdom of the Cloud

Brainstorming continues to be a common method to try and shake out the cobwebs and draw out new ideas from teams.  In practice however, the outcome of brainstorming often falls short of expectations as team get stymied by a stalled creative front.  Psychological inertia, hidden agenda, lack of insight can all contribute to these non-productive innovation weather patterns.  To understand how people can influence the brainstorming outcome, let’s look to the wisdom of the cloud.

There are a number of different types of clouds, each with its own make up and effect on the weather.  So too are there difference classes of participants in a brainstorming exercise.  Can you recognize the similarities?

Cumulus clouds are puffy and cheerful.  These clouds are willing participants in the brainstorming exercise, but rarely contribute any significant ideas.  They tend to revel in the exercise and cheer on other cumulus clouds by seeing the shapes of imagined novelty in what are in reality the same old concepts.

Cirrus clouds are high and wispy.  They often bring some very high-level ideas to the table.  But, the ideas are generally not deep and may lack good alignment with the overall business objectives.  It can be a challenge to distinguish between the cirrus idea that could have value if it were only further developed and the concept which is going to simply drain valuable resources to explore and kill because it is not a good fit.

Fog.  Need we say more.  We can all recognize the team member who just doesn’t seem to have a clue.

Cumulonimbus clouds have presence.  They are large and have great substance.  But they can also bring great destruction as they unleash their energy.  These people often harbor hidden agenda.  The tornado of energy is released not so much to advance the cause, but to tear down the ideas of other in an attempt to perpetuate their own views and goals.

Nimbostratus are the clouds that yield steady rain.  It is sometimes uncomfortable to want in the rain, but as any farmer will tell you, you need water to grow crops.  The reason these peoples’ ideas often feel uncomfortable is that these concepts are grounded—they are novel enough to simulate that instinct to resist change, but grounded in enough reality to seem achievable.  These are often the most productive member of the brainstorming team.

If we want to stimulate more innovation rain, how can we do this?  Seed the clouds with knowledge.

Brainstorming doesn’t create new ideas.  It simply helps people tap into what they have forgotten they know.  The more relevant knowledge they have access to, the more ease with which they can access that knowledge in a useful way, the more likely they are to make the connections that produce that moment of creative synthesis.

Connecting innovation workers to the right knowledge at the right time is a key aspect of how you can increase the innovation productivity of your organization in brainstorming and other innovation activities as well.

The Gulf Oil Spill – A Lesson in Failure to Innovate

It’s horrifying to think that it has been almost 70 days since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20th and little substantive progress has been achieved in stemming the ecological disaster of Brobdingnagian proportion.  Crude oil continues to spew forth from the broken underwater pipe.  Gooey masses of toxic sludge wash up on our shores.  The flora and fauna that comprise the fragile ecosystem are helpless as they are buried in oil.

Surely, a unique catastrophe such as this which poses challenges unlike any which have been seen before requires fresh thinking, inventive approaches, novel solutions—in a word: innovation.  Yet, where is the innovation?

People are viscerally angry at the Obama administration for its handling of the crisis.  Some people defend the President saying, “He really couldn’t do anything.”  The problem is that Obama could do something.  He could have used the power of the Office to drive the innovation climate needed to produce better outcomes.

The handling of Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an object lesson in ways to fail at driving innovation in time of need.  Here are some of the key takeaways that we can learn from.

Failing to recognize the problem
In the initial days after the explosion, it was clear that this was going to be a serious situation.  Yet, both BP and the Whitehouse downplayed the severity of the spill publishing estimates of the volume of oil leakage far below what the Coast Guard was estimating.  No immediate action was seen from the Administration either to hasten stoppage of the leak or to mitigate the threats to the environment.  In short, heads were firmly planted in the sand as no one publicly acknowledged the scope of what was happening.

Turning a blind eye to the situation and looking through rose tinted glasses are all too common in business.  Consider the failure of Sony to recognize the threats mp3 technology posed to the Walkman.  How many minicomputer companies vanished because they did not fully appreciate the technological and market trends of the 1980s?  You must always be looking for what looms just over the horizon.  As Andy Grove put it, “Only the paranoid survive.”

Not Invented Here syndrome
Over a dozen countries have offered assistance in cleaning up the spill.  The Administration has turned all these offers of help away.  Many individuals have stepped forward with ideas about how to stop the leak or protect the coastline.  Yet, these suggestions have been ignored.  This sort of intellectual arrogance abounds in the business world as well.  I can’t count the number times I have heard companies described as having an NIH culture.

Companies must look at their innovation systems and understand how to integrate customers and value chain partners into their R&D processes.  Open innovation is not simply about finding more ideas; it’s about extending the value creation capacity of an organization by leveraging all the resources in its innovation ecosystem.

No leadership
This is the issue that has the public riled.  Throughout the crisis, Obama has not shown any leadership.  Innovation requires leadership, that quality of being able to rally people to step outside of themselves and reach a goal that they would not have been able to achieve on their own.  But, the administration has not chosen to take the lead.  When BP was short on ideas to stop the leak, did Obama reach out to other oil companies to see if they could help or at least help understand the limits of possibility?  No.  Did Obama stand up against political pressure and waive the Jones Act?  No.  At every turn, the Administration has failed to show leadership opting instead to sit back and wait for BP to figure it out.

Lack of leadership is a leading cause for failure to establish sustainable innovation systems in companies.  Many executives will say they want innovation practice to develop from the grass roots of the engineering community.  The reality is that without the nourishment of executive leadership, the grass root are destined to whither in the parched and barren soil of institutional inertia.  Executives must lead from the front to drive the type of cultural change required to establish innovation as a value driving core competence.

All show; no substance
Don’t we all feel better knowing the Administration is going to have a blue ribbon committee explore potential criminal malfeasance at the root of the disaster?  Thank goodness BP executives have been subjected to a good tongue lashing. Huzzah, huzzah!

Right!  Everyone can see through the bread and circus approach to managing the situation.  The political consequences of this promise to be severe.  So too, are the consequences within a company when the commitment to innovation doesn’t extend beyond words and window dressing.  When it comes to a company’s innovation agenda, all employees recognize big hat, no cattle management and are highly unmotivated to pursue innovation on behalf of the company.  If you really want innovation, you must act with conviction and purpose.  You must invest in people and infrastructure to enable the environment for innovation success.

What innovation lessons do you see in the Gulf Oil Spill situation?

Innovation Brewing

Looking at the blog of Invention Machine’s CEO Mark Atkins, I am reminded that June is Innovation Month in New England.  There will be many fun and interesting innovation happenings throughout the region.  One of these is InnoBeer (short for Innovation Beer Summit).  When I organized the first InnoBeer event, I had no idea that it would become so popular.  Yet there have now been InnoBeer events in several locations in both the U.S. and Europe.

Recently, I had the opportunity to learn to make beer.  I joined a group of friends and together we brewed six varieties of beer.  There are innovation lessons to be learned from most things.  Here are some innovation lessons I took away from my beer making debut.

Science
There is science behind making beer.  Understanding what is happening in the process helps you achieve the desired results.  This is true for every domain in which I see people working in the trenches of innovation.  No matter what you are doing, there is a body of knowledge that precedes your efforts.  If you don’t have good access to this knowledge, you are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past and waste a lot of effort reinventing the wheel.  High performance innovation organizations understand the need to knowledge enable their innovation workers by providing them with the best, purposeful knowledge research and delivery systems.

Team
During our little beer making party, we brewed 6 varieties of beer in one evening (90 minute IPA, Summer Ale, Belgian Blonde, Vanilla Honey Porter, Oatmeal Stout, and Scottish Ale).  Getting it all done required teamwork and collaboration.  In business innovation practice this pressure to achieve high-value innovation outcomes with limited resources and time is de rigueur.   To achieve results requires the same type of committed and connected teamwork for innovation workers.  Companies seeking to maximize the effectiveness of their innovation workforce must employ innovation frameworks that connect people to one another when they need based on what they know.

Tools
Making our beer, we have at our disposal the right equipment to make the job easy and efficient: steam controlled boiling vats, wort cooling filters, automatic bottle sanitizers, etc.  Listening to others in our group recount the horror stories of making beer in their kitchens without these tools reminded me of what I see all too often walking into companies that have not begun to deploy state of the art innovation platform technology.  Innovation workers struggle to make sense of problems and find the fit between problem states and solution spaces.  Companies need to invest in providing their workers with the right tools and skills for innovation success.  Sure, you can start a fire rubbing sticks together; but why not give your teams modern torches and set them loose to burn up the competition.

Experience
Having the brew master watching over us made a huge difference.  He was able to tell us in advance what to pay attention to and how to ensure the quality of the final product we were producing.  Preserving, tapping into, and leveraging grey beard knowledge is a huge problem for many companies.  Make sure you have systems in place to harvest and disseminate this knowledge to empower your entire innovation workforce and enable the generational transference of your corporate tribal wisdom.

Immersion
My beer making experience was great.  One of the best aspects of the experience was its immersive nature.  While we were engaged in brewing or bottling, that was the focus of our activity.  There were no interruptions, no need to divert our attention and focus, no co-opting of resources by some other urgency.  Of course, we all have to deal with the realities of the real world when we are working in the trenches of innovation.  But, managers need to find the way to carve out protected time for innovation workers to focus on what’s important, not merely what seems urgent.  You have to willing to invest in your people, giving them the time to master and apply innovation best practices to their innovation tasks.  You will find this is an investment that will pay big dividends by both delivering the benefits of accelerated innovation and product delivery, but also greater per worker productivity.

The next InnoBeer tweetup is schedule for Tuesday, June 15th.  If you are in Boston, stop on by and join in the innovation conversation.  You can get details and sign up (free) here.

Field Notes – April 2010

It’s good to have a bit of time back in the office to catch up on things.  In April, I was travelling for over half of the month; visiting with innovation teams at companies in France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and South Korea kept me away.  Meanwhile, we have some great innovation projects in our pipeline that I’m particularly anxious to dig into.

Yet, visiting with innovation practitioners from around the globe is a terrific way to gain insights and take a pulse on what is going on in the broader world of innovation.  Here are a few of my takeaways from my April travels.

Innovation momentum is growing.
As the global economic climate stabilizes, more and more companies are starting to look beyond the survival mode mentality that took hold in the fall of ’08.  These companies see that they now need to refuel their revenue generation engines with new and differentiated offerings to the market.  New products for existing and new audiences are viewed as key to building market share and driving top line growth.  Companies need innovation now, and they understand with the ever increasing pace of market change, they need continuous innovation.  There is broad consensus that innovation capability is one of the key competencies that will distinguish winners from losers in the years ahead.

Many companies are still just arriving to the innovation party.
The number of companies that have taken a serious look at innovation and taken concrete steps to build innovation as a value driving core competence is still small.  Most companies are just beginning to question whether there is a better way than relying on serendipity for their innovation.  This means that there is a big opportunity for companies to take the high ground and drive their organization forward through innovation while the competition is still trying to figure out which end is up.

Companies are acting on, not just thinking about, innovation deployment.
Those companies that have internalized the importance and high-value of repeatable innovation best practices are not sitting on their hands.  They are seriously pushing awareness, innovation skills development, and IT infrastructure to support their innovation mandates.  These companies also realize that while grassroots acceptance is important, a corporate innovation initiative will never deliver to its potential if it isn’t backed by a top-down mandate tied back to corporate objectives.  Innovation is about change.  Developing a sustainable innovation culture requires a change in the corporate psyche and hence requires serious attention and management focus.

Innovation delivers value to companies that take it seriously.
Innovation takes many forms, but it always creates value.  Everywhere I went, I heard stories of how using repeatable innovation methods had overcome challenges, expedited time to market, and raised the value of key projects within organizations.  At Samsung for example, I was shown a new model of refrigerator.  The manager showing me this refrigerator pointed out a key feature in the product that was blocked by a competitor’s patent.  Using the innovation skills they have mastered over the years, Samsung was able to create an alternative non-infringing design that allowed them to find freedom to operate and with it a fast path to market.

So, what does all this mean to you?  The bottom line is that now is the time to get moving when it comes to getting your innovation engine firing on all cylinders.  The companies that invest in innovation today will emerge as the leaders with new revenue driving products in the future and create new market differentiation.  While those companies that choose to wait on innovation will be left behind as the laggards in the new economy, never regaining the luster they lost in this most recent recession.

Which will you be: leader or laggard?

Finding Sense ( and Dollars) In The White Space

Spring is a time of change and transition, just right for reading a new book on innovation.  “Seizing The White Space” by Mark W. Johnson is the latest volume to come from Innosight, and seems to be right the right thing for spring reading.  It’s a highly readable and very quick to get through if your mind has already made the transition to summer; yet, it is has enough chewy content for those of us who are still want to curl up hearthside with an interesting book.

Johnson puts forth what he calls the four box business model to capture the dynamic tension between three key aspects of the value system underlying a business.  Yes, that’s right – four boxes to capture three key aspects.  These are:

Customer Value Proposition – What is it that customer derives value from when your offering is selected.  Of course, given the Christensen heritage of Innosight it comes as no surprise that Johnson returns to the job to be done jargon to talk about the value proposition.  Personally, I was just happy to see the value-prop called simply and directly what it is.  (Okay, I’m just weary of some authors who feel compelled to try and coin new jargon for what is already a well understood concept.)

Profit Formula – The strategy for monetization of the Customer Value Proposition.

Key Resources and Process – The things, people, and processes that are needed to deliver the Customer Value Proposition.  Johnson separates the concepts of resources and process in his representation.  Hence, the four boxes to represent three key aspects.

While these concepts may seem pretty basic, there are far too many companies that seem to forget that this system, and more importantly, the need to harmonize and balance these elements of the system exist.  Ignoring some of Clayton Christensen’s best advice (be patient on revenues, but impatient about profit) many companies attempting to claim a white space opportunity as their territory burn through loads of capital to try and drive the revenue engine only to dilute the share value so much that no one can hope to extract value from the venture.

Throughout “Seizing The White Space,”  Johnson uses many examples and comparisons of how these various elements interact in both successful and failed business models.  The examples help to bring to life what could otherwise be a very dry and boring domain of study.  You will need to filter some of the discussion through your analysis.  Some of the issues around the cases studies are open to interpretation.

After addressing the questions of when and how to look at business model innovation, Johnson reminds us of how existing demands and practice of a going concern can block the organizations ability to define and implement a new system to attack a white space opportunity.

I enjoyed “Seizing The White Space” and certainly recommend it as a worthwhile read for innovation practitioners or managers responsible for considering, planning for, or executing on new business platform opportunities.

This is the fifth stop on a virtual book tour for “Seizing The White Space.”  Earlier stops on the tour can be visited at:

Working Knowledge – Andrea Meyer’s excellent blog

Blogging Innovation – A multi-author innovation blog maintained by Braden Kelley

Innovate on Purpose – Jeffrey Phillips thoughtful blog on innovation strategy and practice

FastForward Blog – An Enterprise 2.0 blog where Jim McGee review the book 
 
Yet to come on the virtual book tour is Dan Keldsen’s interview with Mark Johnson which will appear on the  Information Architected blog.

Collaboration For Innovation: Why Can’t We All Work Together?

A recent article on ComputerWeekly.com noted that 80% of CIOs are increasing their investments in collaboration tools.  At the same time, many organizations are struggling with restrictions on which tools may be used.

For corporation innovation initiatives, this is an important issue.  Building a strong culture of collaboration is vital to fostering productive innovation.  To help build a healthy, sustainable innovation ecosystem in the enterprise employees must be provided with an environment that equips them with the proper skills, tools, and knowledge resources to improve their effectiveness.  Included in this support must be a practical framework for collaboration around innovation.

Too often, companies tend to build organizational silos that cut workers off from key information and from each other.  This is anathema to innovation.

Innovation thrives when knowledge flows through the enterprise to the workers that need it.  This knowledge is often not documented, residing in the minds of the workers.  This is why it is essential to enable the connection of people to people based on what they know.  The right collaboration framework can help make this happen.

Conversely, the wrong framework can create frustration as workers feel it is difficult to connect and share knowledge and leverage that knowledge in their work.  Many employees find that tools are not compatible and that it is difficult to capture their collaborative exchanges in a meaningful way that can leveraged.

A good collaboration framework is one that enables employees to connect without the need to leave the context of their innovation work.  The framework should make it easy to integrate the discussion into the innovation process and capture the tacit knowledge of the enterprise for reuse.  It must be simple for workers to engage with one another if you are truly going to unlock the value of the organization’s tribal wisdom.

Innovation Without Representation

As I was pulling out of the Government Center Garage the other night, I noticed an interesting license plate on the car ahead of me.  The Washington, D.C. plate sported the phrase, “Taxation Without Representation.”  This is a phrase that has a great deal of meaning in the United States.  It was an early call to action in revolutionary times, and it is still called upon from time to time to remind us of one of the fundamental values upon which this country was founded.

At first, seeing that license plate made me think of the current political climate we are experiencing, and I couldn’t help but think of the brazen irony of some of our legislators driving around with this declaration affixed to their automobiles.  But, then my thoughts drifted back to the world of innovation and the wisdom this expression holds for innovation practitioner and leaders.

How many times have you heard a colleague complain that management won’t listen to their great idea?  How many times have you seen a product launched that was greeted with a great collective yawn by the targeted customers?  How is that these think headed managers and customers don’t get it?  Or, does the fault lie in the failure of the innovator to listen to will of the people?

Anyone who is an innovation professional must recognize that they serve constituencies too.  The goal of innovation is to deliver value to customers.  More broadly, innovation must deliver value to all constituencies involved in the value creation and delivery chain.  This value must be perceived as significantly greater than the tax we extract from our constituencies.  Yes, that’s right.  By engaging in the pursuit of innovation, we are taxing our constituencies.

For management, the tax come in the form of funding of initiatives, resource costs, assumption of risks, and opportunity cost.  These can be very high hurdles for the innovator to get over.  If you try to run this gauntlet armed only with an idea, you will most like find yourself in a very uncomfortable position as you topple over one of the many hurdles.  Approach management with a full complement of data addressing these concerns and showing the value generation for the company and you are much more likely to find executive sponsorship.

For customers, the tax is the need to change to what they are used to doing.  This need to change is often accompanied by an uplift in price as we try to monetize the value of the innovation.  Needless to say, these taxes can be an impediment to the adoption of innovation.  Yet, there are countless times that I have seen companies forging ahead with new products, services, or business paradigms without really understanding what the people who vote with their pocketbooks need and want.

It’s not hard to see how these examples can be extended to all the groups involved in and with our efforts to innovate.  Setting aside our own belief in the brilliance of our concepts, it is not difficult to understand how we are destined to fail in our attempts to open new possibilities through our innovations if we don’t first understand all the constituencies that we touch along the way.  Understanding these constraints should be among our first tasks in planning for innovation.

To reframe that famous statement of James Otis, innovation without representation is tyranny.

How’s That Hope Thing Workin’ For Ya?

Well, okay… I admit that I’m annoyed.  When Obama was swept into office, the winds of change seemed an unstoppable force, and many likened Obama to JFK.  Now, Obama has distanced himself from JFK by essentially scuttling the programs that are a lingering part of the JFK legacy.  He has decided to discontinue NASA programs around the space shuttle and lunar exploration.
 
So you could say, “So what; do we really care about that stuff?”  Some might even make some good arguments for why these programs should be dropped.  But, here’s why you should care.

The fact is that there is little governments actually do that doesn’t in some way hurt the cause of innovation.  If you don’t believe that statement, just take a look at the evidence of history.  Even when governments try to do the right thing, they usually step on innovation along the way.  Consider what happens when a new safety standard is put in place for consumer protection.  The standard is often adopted from existing industrial practice as promoted by the organization with the best lobbyists.  The net result is that barriers to new competition are erected and the status quo is codified.  When the current administration channels big dollars to solar energy research, they in effect pick the winners and losers of technology and divert private funding away from other innovative energy strategies.

One of the few things that government does that actually helps the march of innovation is provide funding for basic and applied research that private industry isn’t focused on.  This is fundamentally of value to future innovation because a big part of the innovation equation is the application of knowledge to creating high-value solutions to market needs.  But, solutions come from existing knowledge.  Government funded research contributed to the fund of knowledge that is available to innovators.  Every time the boundaries of our human experience and scientific knowledge are extended through programs like the NASA programs which are slated to be killed, our global “box” is expanded, and our potential to solve new problems and find new game-changing innovations is enhanced.

Sure, not every program or endeavor can or should be funded indefinitely.  But, I believe there is still tremendous potential in these specific programs.  The decisions represented in Obama’s 2011 budget are a clear setback for global innovation and should send a shiver down the spine of all of us.

Innovation - Getting It and Getting It Done

As with most things, when it comes to innovation there is a huge difference between getting it and getting it done.  Everyone wants to get it; but the rewards of innovation are only enjoyed by those who get it done.

There is a great confluence of pressures today that are raising both awareness and understanding of need to drive product and service development through innovation.  Executives are talking about innovation more than ever before.  When they talk, they convey an understanding of innovation’s value, and they certainly look ready to act.  But the gulf between words and action is as wide as ever.

Recently, I saw a bit of interview footage in which Martina Navratilova was talking about her dominance of women’s tennis in the ‘80s.  She remarked that the big secret to her success was that she was the only woman player at the time who was putting the level of effort into training that she was doing.  What a powerful statement that is.  One that is also relevant to the business of innovation.

It is not enough to get innovation; you have to get it done.  Whether you are in management or you are an innovation practitioner, you need to be doing the things every day that drive innovation success.  Stop worrying about if you are talking about innovation enough, and focus instead on innovation execution.  How do you know if you are on the road to closing the gap between innovation thought and action?  Here are some simple question to ask yourself about your contribution to making repeatable, high-value innovation a reality for your company.

For practitioners:

• Are you integrating innovation practices into your daily routine?
• Are you using technology to harness internal & external knowledge resources to expand your box?
• Are you collaborating with all constituencies in your innovation environment?
• Are you consistently creating value through your innovation efforts?
• Are you effectively communicating the ROI on innovation to management?

For management:

• Are you actively engaged in supporting and promoting innovation in the enterprise?
• Are you making the needed investments in people and tools to build innovation competence?
• Are you ensuring the alignment of corporate objectives and innovation strategy?
• Recognizing and rewarding innovation contributors?
• Encouraging people to practice innovation techniques in all they do, every day?

If you can answer yes to all these questions, you are on your way.  If not, you need to ask one more vital question: “Why am I not committed to driving corporate value through innovation?”

Close the gulf between desire and outcome.  Turn you innovation dream into action.

Boyd on Linking Strategy and Innovation

I read a nice post on Drew Boyd’s blog, Innovation in Practice, discussion the idea of linking innovation with company strategy.  In it, Drew discusses two models of interaction between company strategy and innovation:

Strategy informs innovation – in this model the company defines a strategy, then innovation efforts are pursued to find way to deliver on and enhance the value of the strategy;

Innovation informs strategy – in this model, innovation activity first generates scads of potential concepts which are subsequently mapped to a strategic evaluation model to select the innovation path that builds the optimal strategy.

Whichever approach you select, it is critical that your corporate strategy and innovation efforts are aligned.  Without alignment, you have no chance of achieving the level of execution required for successful innovation delivery.

However, I would like to highlight a third model: Innovation and Strategy inform each other.  In other words, you are only looking at half of the picture if the dialogue between strategy and innovation is a one way exchange. 

If you are responsible for strategy, you don’t want to lament “Gee, if I’d only known that was an option I would have set that as a strategic goal.”  As an innovation practitioner, you hate saying “Gee, if I had only known that was important, I could have helped achieve that objective.”

Optimal value is achieved through an on-going dialogue between these two drivers of corporate value.