Innovation & Memory – Recollection plays havoc with our innovation efforts
May 28, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
- Samuel Johnson
The news is shocking, but true. Memories are fictitious! And it seems the more we call on them the more likely they are to bend and shift over time. Most of us have snapshot memories – those memories formed by extraordinary events. For some it might be their wedding day, or birth of a child, or a hole-in-one while playing golf. Unfortunately, for most of us, the most commonly shared snapshot memories are usually formed by catastrophe and disasters widely reported in the media. 
As clear and detailed as these memories seem to us, as we reflect on them and share them with others psychologists find they are surprisingly inaccurate. Our inaccurate recall influences how we respond when facing similar circumstances; which means our memories can be quite detrimental to our ability to effectively innovate.
Hand me my rose-colored glasses
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.
- Albert Einstein
When bringing new products to market the stories of success told within an organization often fail to capture the impediments to success along the way. Our tendency is to believe that the decision making processes in organizations are robust and analytical enough to prevent biases. We gather data from a variety of sources and build our product portfolios based on “the facts”. However, even if someone has sought and assessed the alternatives for investment in a neutral manner, they may still remember data selectively to reinforce their expectations. This effect is called selective recall, confirmatory memory or access-biased memory.
There are conflicting psychological theories about selective recall. Schema theory predicts that information matching prior expectations will be more easily stored and recalled. Some alternative approaches say that surprising information stands out more and so is more memorable. Predictions from both these theories have been confirmed in different experimental contexts, with no theory winning outright. What is more interesting is the influence our remembering of past success holds over our current choices.
In remembering our previous successes Karim Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, has established a theory stating that the very act of remembering can change our memories. This theory runs counter to the established perspective that once a memory is formed it remains largely intact. Even more challenging is his statement that our most vivid memories are actually prone to the most change over time. He believes that it may be impossible for humans or any other animal to bring a memory to mind without altering it in some way. Like an old magnetic audio tape (remember those?!), the more times it is replayed the more degraded the sound becomes, our recollections are “rewritten” back to memory in a different part of the brain and somewhat altered by the way our recollection was triggered.
When we remember the successful delivery of a new product or service to market, we may be miss-remembering the circumstances around that release. Our memories, influencing our present choices about innovation opportunities selected for funding and development, may actually be leading us astray. How we fondly remember our past success may reinforce our positive attention towards products or services we think are similar our past successes. This blinds us to present risks and may jeopardize our intended outcomes.
Refusing to make the mistakes of the past
Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.
- Frederick Nietzsche
This unwittingly biased view of the world cuts both ways. Where our remembered successes might trigger us to attempt to repeat them, by neglecting the hazards we had to overcome, our remembered failures might steer us away from what might conceivably be future successes. Hindsight bias comes into play and each recall of our failed efforts not only reinforces their impact, and our desire to avoid repeating them, it serves as the basis for predicting future failure. In addition, when we set aside our memories as they are re-written back into our synapses the new research suggested that they are changed. That change is often an amplification of the extent of the remembered failed attempt.
The pattern of confirmation bias is our tendency to prefer information that confirms our preconceived notions of how circumstances might play out, regardless of whether they are true. It may sometimes be used to encapsulate the following three cognitive biases by which people can reinforce their existing attitudes toward their innovation efforts: by selectively collecting new evidence that highlights or exaggerates the risk involved with a new endeavor, by interpreting evidence in a way that is biased towards finding hazards in the attempt, or by selectively recalling information from memory about our past failures and applying that to the present situation.
Where sometimes our memories influence us to see the world as full of possibilities, they can also hinder our ability to take the appropriate risks that are necessary for all innovation. Our fear failure, influenced by our remembered failure can prove just as detrimental to our mistaken memories of success.
Memories are additional data – treat them as such
We cannot change our memories, but we can change their meaning and the power they have over us.
- David Seamands
If the process of creating memories and remembering is so fallible, how can we minimize its impact?
One method is to be clear about the data being used to influence decision making. Make your thinking visible so that inherent biases may be called to account. When conducting an assessment of alternatives, be sure to seek counsel that is external to the decision making team especially if that team is long-term and has a wealth of shared experience. To avoid the undue influence of memory biases seek people who have different perspectives and experience. That experience will be rooted in different memories and may help mitigate over-reliance on our personal and collected recollection of what we think may have occurred.
Another method for combating our fallible memories is to directly address the amount of risk involved in the innovations we choose to pursue; our memories provide context for the risks we perceive in the present. We can address that risk by using short interval delivery strategies. This approach creates milestones that are much closer together (rather than months, usually weeks, or even days in high risk scenarios) and the scope of work being completed is usually more contained. This enables us to keep our focus on the present performance of our innovation efforts
As a practice in innovation, rather than relying on our memories to influence our choices, perhaps it is best to focus on making new memories. What do you think? How do your memories influence how you innovate?
Innovation Perception – the joys and disappointments of expectations
May 19, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.
- C.W. Leadbetter
The best phrase to capture the spirit of innovation is not, “Eureka!” as some would have us believe. That is more appropriate for the instant of invention. Rather the most fitting phrase for innovation is, “that’s interesting…” 
This fits because it is through the discovery of the unexpected while we work toward solutions addressing our most wicked problems that we begin to tease out the most robust ideas. The willful focus on meeting our expectations is the next cognitive bias that we must address as we seek to build a culture that supports innovation. We are prisoners to perception when we must strive to be open to the possibility of surprise.
Punished for trying
Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.
- Camille Pissarro
Perceptions are often erroneous. Yet, we base much of our decision making on our perceptions of circumstances. Those perceptions are driven by our expectations. The errors of our perception may be systematically related to interpersonal expectations (what we want from each other or anticipate from each other), our in-the-moment motives (our expectation of need fulfillment), value patterns (what we expect to attract us, repel us, what we prize or disregard), and our personal defense mechanisms (our emotional defenses triggered by our previous experiences brought to bear on current circumstances by our present expectations.) With all this going on, all the time, how the heck do we even get out of bed in the morning?
We psych ourselves up to it. This is a true challenge especially when we expect to be punished for our failures.
In a recent Q&A session conducted by the good folks at 800-CEO-READ, Mark Frauenfelder the Editor in Chief of Make Magazine talked about how the current education system is designed to prevent discovery through failure. His approach is to throw oneself directly into the path of failure, as often as possible in order to be “effective.” Frauenfelder sees that the inability to make mistakes is tied directly to the expectation of poor marks unless perfection is attained…
Students are afraid to make mistakes in class because errors result in bad grades. Striving for a “perfect score” takes your mind off the real goal, which is to learn and to be effective. In organizations we are afraid to make mistakes because a mistake is a convenient way for others assign blame. A fear-based workplace discourages risk-taking and experimentation. The worst mistake is to punish people for making mistakes in the pursuit of doing something in better way.
In innovation, if we tie our efforts only to an expectation of success, then our efforts will become smaller over time. Each attempt will have less at stake. We will risk less, because the anticipated blame associated with any failure is too much to bear. And who likes to be punished for trying?
Say…what’s a mountain goat doing way up here in a cloud bank?
People only see what they are prepared to see.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our perception can also make it difficult to see the circumstances around us. There is a classic Gary Larson cartoon drawn from the perspective of looking over the shoulders of two pilots out the cockpit window. The caption reads: “Say…what’s a mountain goat doing way up here in a cloud bank?” Funny and frightening. But this is also emblematic of how our expectations can cause us to miss large perceptional indicators. Our minds are unable to wrap themselves around such a disconnection between what we expected to see and what we actually see.
Rather than seeing that something is different to what we expect, we develop a blind spot to it. This perception bias has been identified for many years. One of the earliest examples was in research conducted by Seymour Smith, an advertising researcher from the 1960’s who saw that people were screening in and out what they were seeing and hearing based on what their expectations were. He noted that,
“They do so because of their attitudes, beliefs, usage preferences and habits, conditioning, etc.” People who like, buy, or are considering buying a brand are more likely to notice advertising than are those who are neutral toward the brand. (Source)
More recently this research was bolstered by the work of doctoral student Alison Jing Xu and her research partner Robert Wyer of the University of Illinois, College of Business. Their research focused on the examination of the power of puffery. Scott Berinato brought this to light in his recent post at Harvard Business Review, The Power and Perils of Puffery, in which he described their experiments in assessing the influence of the perception of their subjects in relation to subjects about which they were familiar or not. As cliché as it might seem, they structured their questions for men around beer and for women they focused on a personal care product, a cleansing gel.
In both situations where the subjects felt they were familiar with a particular product, they were less likely to be influenced by puffery in support of that product. Unsubstantiated claims were a turn-off. But when they were unfamiliar, they were more accepting of the unverifiable claims. It seems expectation, derived from past knowledge and experience, determined what was acceptable or not. When there were greater unknowns, puffery won the day.
How is this reflected in innovation?
Innovation is the attempt to create a new solution where none are known. It seems that when we are faced with the unknown we are more inclined to rely on our unquestioned perceptions, which rest on our expectations, rather than seek to push and explore to seek a deeper understanding. Unquestioned perception is an impediment to innovation because it limits possibilities.
It seems, as with so many other cognitive biases forewarned is forearmed. If we know we are predisposed to perceptional bias that is half the battle. Our awareness of that bias is a signal to dig a little deeper, question a little harder, and fail a little more a little more often. After all innovation is not about any single eureka moment, it’s about the next interesting discovery just beyond the horizon.
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is – infinite.
- William Blake
Innovation Framing – the challenge of blinkered thinking
May 10, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · 1 Comment
Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds – habits and novelty.
- Jean de la Bruyere
The life of the mind has such a significant bearing on the ability to innovate. We know that a fruitful mind is fundamental to the applied creativity and invention of innovation. Our time and attention are studiously focused on the creative spark, the genesis of new ideas, and the process of ideation. In this effort the mind can be stubborn, unwilling or simply distracted. 
Recently we explored the power of anchoring and the ways it can prevent us from abandoning an idea that is past its prime, or how it might prevent us from seeing the value in a different perspective, or the usefulness of another’s fresh take. Unfortunately that is only one of many ways in which our minds can prevent us from being truly, madly, deeply…innovative.
It’s my hilltop and everything looks fine from here
We don’t see the world the way it is. We see the world the way we are.
- Anaïs Nin
We think we are broad-minded and open to new ideas; actually, we look where we’re told and think in circles. Now, I’m not saying that we are all sheeple. But a little deluded about our good selves? Absolutely. There is a whole world of marketing that is based on self delusion.
Consider the concept of “green washing” – essentially the habit of nefarious companies painting a thin film of environmental friendliness on their products in order to appeal to our better natures. Oh, and sell more of their stuff. It’s objectionable. It’s dishonest. And it works a treat.
Why?
Well, many of us like to think of ourselves as being good stewards of the environment, as long as it doesn’t require too much effort. Those who recycle everything, have taken to growing their own food bio-dynamically in their backyards and have forsaken their cars for other communal or less aggressively carbon-footprint-enlarging forms of travel are among the minority. A vocal group, yes, but small. The keen but passive majority wants being “green” to be easy.
Willing and eager companies meet that need by framing their products in ways we immediately relate to. They use terms like, ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘energy efficient’ and use colors that evoke Spring days and clean lines. The contents of the packages are not so different as their ‘bad’ alternatives but because of the way these products are framed for us, we buy them. Often that purchase is at a premium. Because “it’s good for the environment” and we want to do good.
When it comes to how we see the world, we are the heroes of our own stories. We consider ourselves immune to marketing and yet statistically we fall prey to the same well-positioned point-of-sale display in the supermarket as the next person. We like to think we are open minded, but as was illustrated in the movie “Crash” we have deep-seated biases and prejudices that flash to the surface without us realizing it.
You really want to see the world the way it is? Really?
Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided.
- Charles Curtis
We don’t want to see the world the way it is. In fact we have a whole series of techniques, cognitive biases, which we have developed to help us not see the world the way it is. They are there to help us cope. To help us sort through the nearly infinite number of sensory inputs we experience each day so that we can make meaning of our surroundings. Framing is simply one other dominant device in the bias tool kit.
If anchoring locks us into a particular perspective, preventing us from seeing something differently, framing has an opposite effect. Framing is a set of personal filters, emotional, psychological, and intellectual constructs that we use to gather, sort, organize and analyze information about the world around us. Frames are our mental blinkers. The shades that focus us on what we think we really want to be thinking about. Framing influences the background context of our choices, often as simply as in the way in which a question is worded.
Framing enables us to act with ‘pseudocertainty’. It eliminates or lessens doubt as a way of short-cutting our need for analysis. The old saw originated by Mark Twain, that there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics”, is another representation of the way in which framing occurs as it reveals the persuasive power of numbers. A key issue with framing is that it may be acted upon us, via marketing or through a desire to influence, or we may frame issues ourselves through our beliefs, education, ethics, etc.
How does framing influence innovation?
As a process of short-cutting our need to analyze or explore a situation or issue more deeply, especially our understanding of the immediate context, framing blinds us to possibilities and options. We simply don’t ‘see’ alternatives because of the influence of framing. We look where we’re pointed or only where our blinkered perspective will allow.
A classic example of this is from the work of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and his partner Amos Tversky. (We’re big fans of Kahneman and Tversky at Primed Associates!) They offered a group of research subjects two scenarios, both with essentially the same data but framed differently. In it, the subjects were asked to make a choice between two alternatives. Due to the way the scenario framing changed, the majority of subjects flipped their choices. Same data, simply re-framed meant a very different result.
I am committed to my strategic focus on…Oh look! Kittens!
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
- Max Planck
Framing is a psychological version of the Heisenberg Principle in action. In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states “by precise inequalities that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot simultaneously be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known.” For the lay person – when you focus and look at one aspect of a situation, other aspects become less clear. Framing positions us to understand one perspective which lessens the impact, influence or even visibility of another alternative. We get blinkered.
We need to fight being framed. (Or stop taking our own framing at face value.)
In innovation, it is necessary to see things we haven’t seen before. To combat the influence of framing, to expand the range of possibilities, it is necessary to call it out. Questioning assumptions is one way of addressing the undue influence of framing. Another way is to literally take the opposite position on data. If we reverse our position previously unseen options might be revealed. As our perspective greatly determines what we see, changing that perspective means we see things anew. Finally, we can often build our way out of how we are framed by exploring new approaches through design thinking and prototyping. A prototype is a great tool for helping us reframe our view of a challenge.
What’s your perspective? How blinkered are you?
Innovation Anchors – How unwitting fixation blocks delivering new ideas to market
April 30, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
What people want isn’t always what they really want.
- Andrew Ellis
Using focus is a powerful technique for getting things done. It narrows our efforts and gives us a specific target to meet. A dancer, who has been asked to spin in place uses a technique called 
“spotting” to provide a stabilizing point of focus. Spotting has several benefits: it keeps a dancer oriented and aware of the movement, direction, and location of their body in space; it can prevent disorientation caused by lack of visual focus; it increases the overall speed of the rotational spin; it can make the spin appear faster than it is; and it also aids in reducing the dizziness associated with spinning. All of which are excellent goals that serve a purpose during particular sections of a dance that require that motion.
Using spotting to anchor yourself at other times while dancing may not be appropriate.
Find a spot then [re]turn to it
The challenge with focus is that once established it can be hard to break off, even when it might be best to turn our attention elsewhere. We have become anchored to an idea, such as, sticking with a new product in the marketplace when all indications are that it will not be successful. Or, always using the same criteria for selecting services to be developed even though market conditions and customer expectations have changed.
For those who seek to innovate this pattern of anchoring is deadly. For the oft-quoted but rarely ascribed comment bears truth of the matter, “if we always do what we have always done, we will always get what we always got.”
Falling in love with your own idea
Often during decision making, people anchor, overly relying on a particular piece of information or a specific value. This anchor then influences the way they account for other variables in the situation, regardless of any specific relationship between them. Usually once the anchor is set there is a bias toward that value. And each of us is prone to this pattern.
In organizations where ideas battle it out for supremacy, we can find ourselves furiously defending our position when the alternative may be better. We have fallen so in love with our own idea that we cannot see the power of another and perhaps we cannot see the power it holds over us.
One recent example of a whole industry becoming anchored (in the belief that the good times would continue to roll) was the financial services industry with regard to credit default swaps. Much has been written on the subject, such as the great post at Psychology Today is by Eric Jaffe. A great line boils down the entire sorry episode quite neatly, “…that our bubble wasn’t just one of bad investing, it was a bubble of bad thinking.” Rouler less bon temps, indeed.
The process of becoming anchored is not hard work either. We fall into anchoring with relative ease. It is one of our shortcuts for managing the large amounts of data with which we have to contend everyday. And once we anchor on a specific data point it is very difficult to change as Dan Ariely describes in his instant classic, Predictably Irrational. Early on in his book Dan describes an experiment with some students in which he asked them to take the last two digits of their social security number and write them beside a list of objects he provided on a sheet of paper. The objects were wine, chocolate, etc. Nothing of special significance. He then asked the students if they would pay more or less than that number (as expressed as whole dollars) and to indicate that on the paper. Finally he asked them to write down what they would be willing to pay for reach object.
We simply keep coming home
The end result of the Ariely experiment was that those who’s social security end numbers were 0-19 offered the lowest price points while those with social security end numbers from 80-99 offered the highest. And everyone in between offered graduating prices! When asked if their social security end numbers had any influence on the prices they offered everyone said absolutely not. Yet those very numbers anchored each group of students as surely as if they had been classified as such from the outset.
The students couldn’t help themselves because they didn’t even know what had occurred.
But even if they had known about the concept of anchoring another classic aspect of this behavior is that even if we do change our perspective and re-orient ourselves we fall back into an anchored state. We switch one anchor for another. Essentially clinging to our need for a mental shortcut.
Fighting the good fight
I am like a book, with pages that have stuck together for want of use: my mind needs unpacking and the truths stored within must be turned over from time to time, to be ready when occasion demands.
- Seneca
For those focused on innovation, willfully introducing changes into existing stable systems, anchoring is one of many behaviors that needs to be addressed. Because at its heart an anchor is a habit we have created for ourselves. Either through repetition or proximity we have placed ourselves under its influence.
To tackle the effects of anchoring you have to call it out. Unless we do highly rational people will make decisions based on the highly illogical. Past experience, ill-considered under present circumstances. According to social psychologist Tom Pyszczynski, “when our livelihoods are threatened we lock into our current mindsets, ignore open discussion, and view those with opposing ideas not as different but as enemies.” When we seek to innovate, to explore new concepts we need to give ourselves the permission to leave old mindsets behind. This takes practice.
One excellent way to practice is the use of design thinking. Design thinking provides a structured way to explore new ideas to pressing challenges in a manner that is low-threat, yet high yield enough to push the envelope. An excellent recent explanation of design thinking as a model and practice comes in IDEO President and CEO Tim Brown’s book, Change By Design. Full disclosure: I now a reseller of a business simulation based on the design thinking approach developed by IDEO and ExperiencePoint. More on that later.
So, when you stop spinning are you dizzy or ready to weigh anchor to focus on the next new thing?
Innovation Psychology – Innovation is a hostage to what we think and feel
April 27, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand… Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.
- Anton Chekhov
Why explore the impact of psychology on innovation?
Organization psychology examines the relations between the individual and the tasks he or she is posed, between the individual and the surrounding social context in which he or she find themselves, and between the individual and the formal organizational structure. The practice of innovation, the creation and invention of new products, services, business models is very much at the heart of organizations seeking to increase their long-term success. The psychology of organizations plays a primary role in the effectiveness innovation practices and outcomes.
Also, when we consider a psychological framework for innovation it is also vital to include a broader understanding of social psychology. Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by others; regardless of whether or not that presence is actual, imagined, or implied. This influence is especially important when we factor in the influences on innovation of open source models which reach beyond the formal boundaries of organizations.
In order to create a wider understanding of the psychology underpinning innovation in the next few weeks and months regular posts will focus on those aspects of psychology that hold sway in the practice of innovation (whether we choose to acknowledge them or not.) Topics will include anchoring, heuristics, and biases, as well as cognition, group dynamics and resilience. The intent is to unlock their power and influence and improve their management in the development of robust innovation cultures.
For an innovation culture to be successfully created and fostered over time, it is a necessity to have a better sense of how people interact and engage. So let’s explore…
The Benefits of Perspiration in Innovation – Recap from the 99% Conference April 15
April 15, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · 5 Comments
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
- Thomas Edison
For those of you for whom the 99% Conference is not familiar it is an exploration of the work of delivering on the promise of creativity. “The goal of the 99% Conference is to shift the focus from idea generation to idea execution, providing road-tested insights on how to make your ideas happen.” The notion is to not provide a space for more ideas to be created but to create the opportunity for those ideas to see the light of day by executing against their promise and delivering them. To that end, today’s sessions at the 99% Conference were a great blend of insights from the fields of culture, business, design, social action and technology. All that, and presents, too! (Note: full day recap = longer post)
Jointly hosted by Behance and Cool Hunting, and their respective Founder / CEO’s Scott Belsky and Josh Rubin, this conference is like catnip to designers and creatives alike. (Side note: as the only visible person wielding a Dell in this very, very Mac-centric universe, it was very interesting how little play technology received.) The conference itself has been run incredibly professionally (which is fantastic considering that this is only the second year it has been run.) From the attendee materials, to the integration with the conference space (The Times Center on 41st), the 99% conference is a very well-designed experience.
To kick things off Eve Blossom, the Founder / CEO of Lulan Artisans, gave an impassioned presentation on her awakening as a social entrepreneur as a result of her response to witnessing the impact sex trade first-hand. She has created a network of designers and weavers who, as artisans, practice their centuries-old techniques while being paid sustainable wages, growing their local economies, and embracing low environmental-impact bheaviors. Her recommendation when faced with the execution of your idea was to recognize that: “It’s bigger than you think. It’s not what you think.” Being open to the possible beyond your initial idea was something that came up in later presentations, too.
The next in the line-up was Fred Wilson, the Founder / Managing Partner of Union Square Ventures. His focus was on how to create the most appropriate framework as you begin to execute your ideas and take them to market. His topic was, 10 Ways to Be Your Own Boss, during which he covered everything from husband and wife partnerships (DailyLit founders, Susan and Albert Danzinger) to the Tour Bus model (Hype FM’s Anthony Volodkin). The classic, much-tweeted, line from Fred was a comment posted to one of his sites by Nassim Taleb: “The three most harmful addictions in the world are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”
Stefan Sagmeister, master-designer-prankster, delivered a presentation that was very close to his recent TED presentation. Which was okay, but when so many conferences are live-streamed and/or edited and posted for HD review almost immediately, it makes it hard not to feel a little deflated (as Tina Roth Eisenberg alluded to). In all fairness to Mr. Sagmeister, he was not feeling well (a little feverish, he said) and his work does warrant an additional look as it is exceptional
When Jack Dorsey, Founder / Chairman (seems to be a lot of Founders today) of Twitter presented he immediately struck a nerve for me. His early fascination with maps, especially the way in which his desire to overlay live data of activities on a map could give you a better understanding of how a massively integrated system like a city works, gave me the most compelling insight into why Twitter works for me. Additionally it was great to hear his acknowledgment of the power of Twitter users in changing the Twitter experience. Users generated the Hashtag, the use of RT and the @ symbol. His principals for execution were also clear and pointed: Draw (to get the idea out of your head), Luck (being able to recognize a situation that allows build-out of an idea), and Iterate (know your idea must evolve, but also know when to stop it’s evolution so you can move onto the next idea’s execution.) Mr. Dorsey also shared images from the ideation of his latest venture Square.
Jonah B. from HTC rapidly presented the design approach behind the new HTC Incredible phone and landed the execution model they used which was design from the inside out. The phone – she is very pretty.
In one of the most interesting presentations for me, based on the focus of re-envisioning a public space (which leads me to think of re-envisioning cities…but that’s for another post), was delivered by Leslie Koch the President of the Governor’s Island Preservation and Education Corporation. Her past experience in the corporate world was on display as she shared her 5 lessons she has learned in order to execute effectively:
1. Listen and ask the right questions
2. Understand the customer, product and market
3. Develop a strategy and stick to it (but make sure your mother can understand it!)
4. Think big. Act small.
5. Marketing is all.
My favorite line from Ms. Koch came in relation to number 5, to paraphrase: You need to market, but you may not be able to call it that. It’s outreach to some (in the government arena), or cultivation (in the non-profit world), but really it’s all just marketing (business). And you need it too close the credibility gap between what you want to achieve and what you achieve in the short term on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis.
As the creator of the 99% Conference and newly minted author, it was great to see Scott Belsky present his vision for tackling the perspiration part of bringing ideas to life. He labeled the problem we face as “The Project Plateau” that time when the energy for implementing an idea dissipates and our progress with it. His new book (mine’s signed!) is Making Ideas Happen and covers key practices such as:
- Generate ideas in moderation
- Act without conviction to keep momentum and rapidly refine ideas (e.g., don’t fall in love with your ideas)
- Encourage fighting within your team (conflict creates opportunity
- Seek competition (it boosts accountability and strengthens the defensibility of your approach)
- Reduce bulky projects to discrete, actionable units (increments of time, milestones and tasks)
Overall, Mr. Belsky’s response is to develop an approach to, “have an idea find a way to survive the project plateau.”
The master storyteller, Jay O’Callahan, captivated the attendees with his imagined dialogue between Neil Armstrong and a failing Navy Admiral in a nursing home. In the story, part of a larger work Mr. Callahan was asked to create for NASA, Neil Armstrong recounts the landing on the Moon. In the telling, Mr. O’Callhan highlighted that stories are dramatic because stories are people, places and a bit of trouble, and that by telling stories people can imagine themselves into the situation. A great lesson for creating stories, but also for execution was that there needs to be Listeners (someone who is a part of yet listening to the story), Appreciations (the way in which a positive aspect of the story is highlighted as “they can be gold”) and Suggestions (on how to improve the story when the story is strong enough to take it.)
The armchair panel discussion between wife and husband partners in Antenna Design New York, Inc., Sigi Moeslinger and Masamichi Udagawa and Scott Belsky and Josh Rubin offered up many gems on the role of effective partnership in enabling execution…
Partnership should be based on need – the need to find complementary traits and match up with them in another. – Masamichi Udagawa
Do a trial project together to test the viability of a working partnership – Sigi Moeslinger
Successful partnerships must yield both a result and the enjoyment of working together – Masamichi Udagawa
Be willing to share the ownership of an idea that comes from the partnership. – Udagawa & Moeslinger
It was obvious that with the give and take in their dialogue that Mr. Udagawa and Ms. Moeslinger’s partnership seems to be a profitable one for them.
As the Executive Director of the Hawthorne Valley Association, Martin Ping wove a tale of the ways in which all aspects of the association in the valley come together to support a self-nourishing system. For Mr. Ping, the work of execution is never-ending. Based on holistic and biodynamic methods everything from farming, to the market garden, dairy, organic bakery, grocery store and school are part of an interdependent system. And it all comes down to an inner picture of what might be and what needs to be. “Everything we know and everything we do started with an inner picture.”
In what was perhaps the fastest and most boisterous presentation, Franz Johansson the Founder /CEO of The Medici Group, talked about the catalyst for new ideas coming from the intersection between disciplines. His book on the subject, The Medici Effect, is a fantastic read. When it came to execution, his approach was to ask yourself the question: “What is the smallest executable step you can take to go where you want to go?” And then when you have defined the response – do it. Then ask the same and do it again. By taking smaller leaps of faith you can test your thinking as you go. Your original idea may only serve as the catalyst for your long-term success and the two may be quite different.
In the last presentation of the day, John Maeda the President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) extolled the virtues of awkwardness in creativity. As a creative himself, Mr Maeda found that becoming a leader (reluctantly) under the direction of a soon to be departing Nicholas Negroponte at MIT, was an awkward process of discovering how a leader creates. One of his colleagues note that, “all artists yearn to struggle, when they struggle they know they’re alive and you lose that when you lead,” as a way of explaining why a student would say she was feeling guilty (she had struggled to fit in but was no longer struggling.) For Mr. Maeda, execution will increasingly rely on the leadership of creatives because they (we) are at the forefront of being okay with ambiguity. It was a great insight which I hope will be willingly embraced by participants.
Finally, I would be remiss in not highlighting two great contributions from the team at Cool Hunting. First, was that the often tedious but all-important job of hosting and emceeing the conference fell to Josh Rubin who did a great job in keeping things moving. Second, Cool Hunting produced a series of videos that were featured throughout the day including snapshots of the work of Hastens, a hand-crafted bed manufacturer in Sweden, Jamie Oliver, the chef who is challenging us all to feed our school children and ourselves better, and the Mast Brothers (master chocolate craftsmen) from Brooklyn (thanks for the chocolate guys!) The videos were great snapshots and were a nice sidebar to the featured speakers.
All in all, a great day out. Much to digest. Much to put into practice. And loads to share with clients
A Better Yardstick / A Better Meter Rule – Measuring Innovation Performance
April 6, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
Just because you can measure it doesn’t mean you should
Any measurement must take into account the position of the observer. There is no such thing as measurement absolute, there is only measurement relative.
- Jeneatte Winterson
One of the great challenges for those focused on improving their organization’s innovation culture is the desire, at the end of the day, to be able to point to something and say, “that’s better than it was before.” That desire, to measure our performance against an agreed upon set of measures, is not a bad thing. The way that need is acted out in the organization is where it comes undone. This is most problematic when the push is to measure in purely financial terms.
The drive to see some kind of return on innovation investment has a strong pull. In a time when every penny, cent, fen, or kopek is being counted with scrupulous accuracy, the notion of not counting the programmatic contribution of innovation in monetary terms seems ludicrous. Unfortunately, if you were going to spend money on a program that offered fast return on your investment, spending on changing your innovation culture would not be the wisest investment. Investing on your innovation culture is a long-term play, as they say. Yet, it should be a focus for investment and it should be measured.
The key initial measures to watch for when building an improved innovation culture are:
Overall we are talking about a process that reduces cycle time.
In fact, the Boston Consulting Group’s 2009 Annual Innovation Report highlighted the fact that cycle time, specifically “time to market,” was one of the most “chronically underutilized metrics” in their survey of companies. Which they also saw as being highly ironic given that many companies identified a lack of speed as their greatest weakness.
I’ll know it when I see it
Our scientific age demands that we provide definitions, measurements, and statistics in order to be taken seriously. Yet most of the important things in life cannot be precisely defined or measured. Can we define or measure love, beauty, friendship, or decency, for example?
- Dennis Prager
Cycle time reduction is a great first measure because it can be applied across all aspects of the innovation processes at play in your organization. From decision-making, to selection of team members, applying the measure of cycle time reduction sharpens the way all innovation is approached. It has a distillation effect. In helping you to focus on speeding up the process of concentrating the right resources on the most beneficial projects, cycle time reduction also demands attention on quality, too.
Poor quality actually results in a systemic drag later in your innovation process. That initial poor quality may also have a knock-on effect, causing an escalation of poor quality further down the line as corners are cut in order to meet the initial cycle time reduction. By managing all cycle times and aligning them with quality practices your organization becomes more robust and resilient. The outcome is not only better performance but faster performance which can be seen across the whole organization.
I can count it but I can’t count on it
The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.
- George Bernard Shaw
In a world of constraints, meting out investments may be a matter of short-term economic survival, but it will not build a foundation for long-term success. To create and improve and innovation culture – a culture that fosters economic expansion and delivers to the top and bottom lines – organizations need to invest in those processes and practices that change behavior. In the post, Working The Processes of Innovation – Learning to Love & Live Failure, we explored the power that comes from building a tolerance for appropriate failure. Recently this was reinforced in Megan McArdle’s piece in Time magazine, In Defense of Failure,
It sounds like a dubious aspiration, but one of the more pressing priorities for America this decade is to preserve our cherished freedom to fail in this country…America allows its citizens room to fail — and if they don’t succeed, to try, try again. Somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of all Americans report that they have considered starting their own business, whereas in Europe that number is only 40%.
Here McArdle talks about the power of this freedom:
McArdle on America\'s Need to Support Failure
How do we measure failure and the power of failure in moving us toward a better, brighter, more abundant future? It should be interesting to note that measuring innovation is also top of mind of one of the world’s most active philanthropists, Bill Gates. His concern is not that we aren’t measuring innovation failure, although he did popularize the concept of “fail forward fast” during his time leading Microsoft, his concern is that most people are failing to measure innovation at all.
When all is said and done – have the right satisfaction measures improved?
Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.
- Winston Churchill
Once again the Boston Consulting Group’s 2009 Annual Innovation Report offers another key insight into the dynamic tension that exists in measuring innovation performance in terms of outcomes. The top measure employed by companies seeking to assess their innovation performance was customer satisfaction but the second highest measure was overall revenue growth. The expense of increasing the former measure would seem to have a direct negative effect on the latter and yet there they are parked beside each other at the top of list of robust measures for innovation performance.
The performance of any innovation truly is measured in the eyes of the customer, be they an internal customer or a market-based customer. Customer satisfaction is the end-of-the-line measure for all innovation. If an innovation cannot drive the performance of that measure then what purpose does it serve? One of the most powerful tools for revealing the impact of an innovation is the Net Promoter® Score (NPS). This concept was first widely made known through the work of Fred Reichheld in his book, The Ultimate Question.
The NPS is both a loyalty metric and a discipline for using customer feedback to directly influence behavior within an organization. One company using NPS to measure its innovation effectiveness is Logitech, the computer peripheral manufacturer, which uses it as the final consumer acceptance testing measure. By using this score Logitech can tweak late-stage products to maximize their effectiveness on release to market. They test. They measure. They tweak. They hold or go to market. It should be noted that the best performing products, with the highest NPS, are also the products with the highest revenue on release.
So, it would seem you can serve one goal with two measures, after all!
There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery.
- Enrico Fermi
What have you discovered as you attempt to measure your innovation?
Presenting at the ODN – Long Island Annual Conference April 8
March 31, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
The ODN Long Island Chapter is hosting its annual conference on April 8, 2010 at the Marriott Residence Inn, Plainview, NY . The focus is on building stronger, better organizations so that they can not only succeed but thrive as we work our way out of the Great Recession. More details here.
My topic is: Manufacturing Magic – The Hard Work of Creating an Innovation Culture
In the phrase, “we need to be more innovative”, lies a universe of misspent time, energy and political capital. As the popular media love affair with the notion of innovation continues, and leaders begin looking for answers to their businesses’ economic health beyond those actions necessary to survive the Great Recession, many organization development professionals are being tasked with making their organizations “more innovative.” Unfortunately, it seems that the concept of innovation has been coupled with that of creativity and unless we deliver something bright, shiny and magical, we’re going to disappoint.
Creating an innovation culture is not easy. As with change initiatives that have come (and gone) before, it is fraught with miss-comprehensions, false starts and dead ends. With the right effort applied to the appropriate leverage points in your organization, you might just be able to deliver the results you and your leadership seek.
This presentation, backed by current research in innovation best practices, will provide a rapid overview of the different entry points to begin creating an innovation culture. It will highlight key concerns, critical decisions, potential problems and the planning necessary to begin the process of making an innovation culture that fits your organization’s needs and wants. It will also address the business value to be obtained in terms that are clear and meaningful. While creating an innovation culture may be costly and hard work, the key question to ask is – what is the business impact and cost of lack of innovation?
Twitter: DrewCM
- If you haven't seen "Exit Through the Gift Shop" I recommend it. Great view of creativity & appropriation. http://ht.ly/2BCzC
- RT @brainpicker: The Mona Lisa Curse – how big money distorted the art world in the past half-century http://is.gd/f1Q0i
- @AndreaMeyer I know - the unbearable cuteness of being. Hope this morning finds you and Dan safe and sound. I worry for you both.
- Don't misbehave in my absence - just going for a walk with a friend. http://is.gd/f1Kyo
- Hey @missamykr Thank you for making me smile with your Money Tree - brilliant! http://is.gd/f1Kuh