Innochat Transcript – 5 August – Fixing an Innovation-averse Corporate Culture
August 5, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · 3 Comments
Another fun time with the excellent moderation of Renee Hopkins – always a pleasure. A great topic which was well turned over by those present, but as with all #innochat topics there is always room for more. Take a look and weigh in.
And next week it looks like we may discuss: cultural problems in an org where ALL is innovative and nothing actually gets done!
Playing with a Full Deck – OnInnovation
July 30, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
Low Tech Tools to Foster High Output Innovation Thinking
One of the questions often asked by those seeking to create a strong innovation culture is, “What are some good tools for engaging people across my organization?” Well the consultant in me would usually hedge his bets and would offer the universal response, “It depends.” But that is as singularly unsatisfying to say as it is to hear, so I mostly take a multiple alternative approach in the hopes of landing close to the targeted need. The first place I usually start is with some of the very lowest of low tech: playing cards, or their trading card equivalent. Why?
For the reason why, see the full post here at the OnInnovation blog – powered by The Henry Ford.
Innovation Herds: Me-too-ism & the dumbness of crowds
July 26, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · 3 Comments
Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ.
- English Proverb
In honor of the recent football (okay, soccer) World Cup—and congratulations to South Africa for pulling off a sterling tournament (Bafana Bafana!) and the Spaniards for their first tournament victory—it seems appropriate to consider the impact of the herd on innovation practices. Not just any herd, though; this is the herd that forms when two opposing packs of 5-year-olds play the glorious game: the herd of Pee Wee Soccer.
Sound and motion with little to show for it
For those of you who don’t have children or have not seen children this age playing soccer, you have missed what certainly is an experience. The rules of soccer seem immaterial. Yes, there is a ball in play. Yes, there are referees and linespeople. Yes, there are goals at each end of the usually shortened field and two equal-numbered teams of players. The basic framework is the same, but the way the game is played is quite…different.
The pervading game objective practiced by both teams is to quite literally “crowd the ball”: where the ball goes, that’s where all players attempt to go, except for those few who become distracted by a parent or sibling on the sideline, or by the color of the sky, or by something bright and shiny, or need to re-enact football hooliganism an so on. You get the picture. What forms is a tight pack around the ball, hiding it from the spectator’s view, and which moves as a herd up and down the field. Occasionally the ball will “escape,” only to be recaptured by one of the team members who, in their inability to run and dribble the ball simultaneously, will stall until the rest of the members from both teams re-form the herd.
No one here but us sheeple
The greatest difficulty is that men do not think enough of themselves, do not consider what it is that they are sacrificing when they follow in a herd, or when they cater for their establishment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What of this herd? And what does it have to say about the impact of the herd mentality on innovation? A short explanation can be found here.
Given our complex worlds with their voluminous sensory inputs, we are wired to adopt a series of mental shortcuts (termed heuristics) that enable us to process only the amount of data necessary, in as short a time as possible, to meet our immediate needs. Think of heuristics as experience-based models that help in problem-solving and discovery. They drive much of our daily behavior without us even recognizing it. The reason they are effective is that they relieve us from treating every circumstance as critically important, offering relief from having to think too hard. Is it really necessary to calculate the optimum parking space at the mall, taking into consideration timing, prevailing weather, shopping patterns, etc.? No? Right—open space, here I come!
By employing heuristics, we create a series of short cuts that enable us to focus on more complex issues, more holistically and systemically, as the need arises. Heuristics, however, reinforce situational thinking and action. In recent studies conducted at the University of Leeds in Great Britain, researchers discovered that it takes a minority of just 5 percent to influence a crowd’s direction—and that the other 95 percent follow without realizing it. If we hearken back to the heady days of the dot-com book in the early 2000s, we can see this pattern in the practices of developers, who threw together “me-too” websites; institutional investors, who threw money at anything with a website; and stock market investors, who piled their money into every “sure thing” they heard about from their hairdresser, dog walker, or cab driver. And that herd behavior ended well, didn’t it?
Wise crowds and the benefit of discomfort
The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
- Archibald MacLeish
Unless we take steps to separate ourselves from the crowd and seek to break our ingrained patterns of thinking, we will continue to be drawn to the herd. In James Surowiecki’s bestseller The Wisdom of the Crowds, he noted that there are highly functional types of groups that possess not a herd mentality, but an inherent wisdom. From his perspective, if four basic conditions are met, a crowd’s “collective intelligence” will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts. Surowiecki says that wisdom will prevail even if members of the crowd don’t know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. “Wise crowds” need 1) diversity of opinion; 2) independence of members from one another; 3) decentralization; and 4) a good method for aggregating opinions. In short, effective groups need guidelines (like heuristics), but ones that are focused on differentiation and not similarity. “Me-too” has to be retired so that “What if” might prevail.
Unfortunately, when wisdom meets the herd, the prevailing outcome is the dumbness of the crowds.
To reach beyond the herd, organizations must embrace difference and the discomfort that comes from not adopting the first, or easiest, answer to a presenting challenge. Clay Shirky, a professor in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, described in his book Here Comes Everybody the benefits of groups breaking out of the herd mentality and moving toward “collaborative production”:
Collaborative production, where people have to coordinate with one another to get anything done, is considerably harder than simple sharing, but the results can be more profound. New tools allow large groups to collaborate, by taking advantage of nonfinancial motivations and by allowing for wildly differing levels of coordination.
Shirky, pp. 109
Over time, even the Pee Wee Soccer team learns how to play the game. Each player discovers his or her own strengths, and a good coach will recognize those differences and create something greater than a mob out of them. Their efforts become grounded in collaborative production. In our organizations, innovation processes that support our thinking and don’t provide ready answers give us the opportunity to develop solutions that reach beyond the herd. We can choose to stretch past the simple and explore the complex so that our solutions are new and not “me-too.”
We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.
- General George S. Patton
Being in a herd is actually a matter of choice, one that must be made consciously in order for a range of alternatives to be revealed. In a competitive marketplace, would you rather be in the herd, where the view rarely changes, or out front? I thought so.
Innovation Failure & Ownership: What happens when we own our successes and abdicate our failures
July 23, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · 1 Comment
It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way.
- Aristotle
Innovation is a high-stakes endeavor. Much may be risked on the hoped-for chance of reward. The success or failure of a single innovation may win or lose reputations and careers. In some organizations, the retribution for failure may be swift and harsh, while the rewards for success may be just as fickle. An innovation approach that drives toward internal winners and losers in an organization is not built for long-term success. The trouble with that binary perspective—one in which innovation is a zero sum game—is that it negates the true value of the innovation process. That value resides in the opportunity to rapidly learn and adapt.
Learning as a means of advancing an organization’s strategic intent is nothing new. Peter Senge captured an incredibly useful model for the “learning organization” in his book The Fifth Discipline. He proposed that learning organizations are those in which members continually expand their capacity to create new solutions and obtain the results they desire. Senge saw that by expanding patterns of thinking, where people were able to see the systems in which they were operating from a holistic perspective, organizations could set their collective aspirations free. This required that organizations focus not on individuals but on the larger range of interactions within the organization and between affiliated organizations.
Which sounds like an easy prospect, but is in practice quite difficult. Without care and attention, the learning organization runs hard into the Darwinian determinism of the present-day competitive organization—the kind where only the successful survive and the less than successful are afforded “opportunities for personal growth outside the organization.”
Where has the love gone?
If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.
- Quentin Crisp
Given that we have been exploring cognitive biases, mental models, and the social psychology influences on innovation, it’s fitting that we should leave this subject area with a look at the impacts of success and failure on both individual behavior and organization performance. Organizations, with their competitive pay structures and performance measures, make membership and participation a high-risk game. Those who know how to play the game, sometimes in spite of their relative productivity and output, succeed, while those who struggle to position themselves strategically, or who perceive that “playing” is beneath them, are left wondering “what happened?” as they observe less-deserving peers receive recognition, rewards, and advancement.
What we observe in these circumstances are the results of “adaptive bias.” Adaptive bias is the notion that the human brain has evolved to reason adaptively, rather than truthfully or even rationally, as a mechanism to reduce the overall cost of cognitive errors (misunderstandings derived from faulty perception.) Consider it a higher level of self-preservation. As with many biases, it addresses uncertainty by driving the subject (or subjects) to more concrete action.
Perhaps Oscar Wilde assessed the situation correctly when he offered that, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you place the blame.” For regardless of the effort expended, if you cannot align yourself with success in a highly competitive environment, you will not receive personal recognition. For some, an organization with this kind of scorekeeping causes them to go to extraordinary lengths to claim ownership of successful endeavors while distancing themselves from failures.
Captain of your own destiny or cruise director on the Ship of Fools?
A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.
- Elmer G. Letterman
For our organizations to be more successfully innovative, it is necessary to elevate the competition from the individual play level to the market performance level. If competitive performance systems remain intact inside organizations, then the scramble to claim ownership for innovations will continue. The net effect of that jockeying for position is short-term, escalating, divisive conflict (as opposed to generative conflict) and a long-term erosion of organization trust. Not only are these both an impediment to innovation, they are hazardous to an organization’s health and viability.
An organization that gears itself for driving and supporting competitive internal systems will nullify the collaboration necessary for large-scale and system-wide innovation by fostering another bias in the member population. Known as the “self-serving bias,” its presence means that individuals perceive themselves as responsible for desirable outcomes but not responsible for undesirable outcomes. However, the act of failure avoidance denies us the opportunity to learn, and in attempting to position our failure as someone else’s, we perhaps doom ourselves to repeating it.
A global high-technology company, which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty, would be considered highly successful by most measures. It is big, powerful, and has played a significant role in creating and moving markets. Unfortunately, today that company is beginning to reap the rewards of the competitive culture it has sown. In this organization, ideas must “fight for survival” and only those people who can passionately, loudly, and often angrily argue their case prevail. Those who fail are derided, while those who appear to succeed move into management roles, only to perpetuate this pattern.
The resulting organization is one that is driven by fear and conflict, moving from market misstep to market misstep with little to signal that it can recapture its earlier flair for innovation and success.
The leadership of many an organization falls into this pattern of internal competition without questioning its role in the success of their organization. They repeat what they have observed, learned, and actively supported in their past roles—because if it worked in the past, it must surely work in the present. Their inability to question the value of internal competition results not in a learning organization but one that survives by paying lip-service to collaboration and cooperation, while leaving carnage in its wake as the assignment of blame continues apace.
Failure in innovation is not to be avoided, it is to be embraced.
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
What we actually need to practice is the art of failure ownership. Unlike the pain of an internally competitive landscape, the process of failure ownership requires that an organization support intellectual curiosity and an inquiry into the nature of how systems operate and interrelate. Innovation thrives on the ever-engaging quest for discovery that often meets with failure along the way. But failure is not an end-point, it is merely a way station. We need to enthusiastically own failures to the extent that we can unpack them, observe their genesis, and understand their triggers. With that learning in hand, we can then advance our innovation intent further by “failing forward fast.”
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 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
Teaching a Person to Fish – Learning and Development for Innovation
March 30, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
Why learning how to innovate is as important as the act itself
Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can – there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.
- Sarah Caldwell
It’s like any muscle – you have to use it or lose it
Give a person a fish and they will eat for a day. Teach a person to fish and they will eat for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb
Learning is physical. At its most basic level, learning is the process of changing the structure and actions of neurons so they retain information in long-term memory in both the temporal and parietal lobes of the cortex. Increasingly, neuroscience will play a larger role in our understanding of the process of learning.
This doesn’t mean to say that there is still not a wealth of information to be gleaned from cognitive psychology, behavioral psychology, and social psychology as they relate to the way in which people learn. Neuroscience will simply afford us another window into the way our minds work. And what will we do with that knowledge?
What both the behavioral observation of learning and the physical understanding of learning agree on is that for learning to be lasting it must be practiced. In fact, the best learners not only practice, they study – hard. Malcolm Gladwell proposes that for true excellence to emerge the magic number of hours required to dedicated practice and ever-increased proficiency is 10,000. Less than that and the learning may be substantial but will not result in elevated performance. The same can be said of innovation. Unpracticed innovators make fewer cognitive leaps, fewer bold choices, have fewer insights and their innovations are poorer for it.
The approach of IDEO, the design shop headquartered in Palo Alto, takes the concept of the learner even further and describes “T-shaped” people. These are learners who have not only gone deep into an understanding of a particular field of interest (the perpendicular stroke in the “T”), they have also developed a broad awareness and understanding of many subjects (the horizontal stroke in the “T”). A consistent attention to both types of learning increases the utility of these people in the design and innovation domain. Perhaps the Gladwell number needs to be an equation, i.e., 10,000 x 1000 x n? Where “n” is the number of separate domains of learning pursued?
Think differently for different results
Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.
- Chinese Proverb
Innovation fosters new thinking, including the way we learn to think. The way we create the promoters (activities or environmental factors) that support learning is a key component to improving learning and development outcomes. Did you know that there are five key promoters to consider? They are:
1. Innate learning programs (the things we just know, you know?) (Gallistel, 2002)
2. Repetition of information. (Repetition of information – get it?!) (Squire and Kandel, 2000)
3. Excitement at the time of learning (Woo Hoo!) (Cahill & Gorski, 2003; LeDoux, 2002)
4. Eating carbohydrates at time of learning (A personal favorite) (Korol, 2002)
5. 8-9 hours of sleep after learning (To sleep perchance to dream) (Kuriyama, Stickgold, & Walker, 2004)
Very few learning programs actually consciously accommodate one or two of these promoters, let alone all five. Is it any wonder that the process of learning may seem draining and even futile at times? To maximize the learning and development outcomes change the nature of the learning environment, change the perspectives of the participants, and change the delivery mechanism. All can be achieved in simple ways. Use a rapid prototyping method – what can you change in under an hour for less than $100 (or less than $10)?
When considering learning and development focused on innovation practices the inclusion of elements that actually promote learning might be worthwhile, might it not? Take two innate learning programs for example; the first allows us to rapidly associate words and labels to objects within situations, and a second enables us to compute social status and insults to social status. If we acknowledge and fold into our learning and development activities these innate learning programs we can structure experiences that capitalize on them. Improvisational activities, like improv theatre games, could help us unlock the influence resident within these learning programs so that the experience fosters increased innovative behaviors (resilience, risk-taking, generosity, etc.)
Letting go and leaving justification behind
Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.
- Benjamin Franklin
Lessons learned are not necessarily procedural or systemic, they are predominately behavioral and social. One of the key learned behaviors is that with success comes praise and possibly adulation. Well, the process of innovation actually requires that we be less-than-successful at times. Yes, we sometimes have the glorious opportunity to fail (perhaps not the first time, bust certainly more publicly than we would like.)
There are two essential behaviors to learn and develop in order to “make it” as an innovator. The first is the ability to let go of an idea. The concept of ownership within corporate organizational life is one that people learn early. The people with the best ideas not only “win” they also receive the reward of advancement. That may mean access to things previously unavailable, i.e., the offer of increased responsibility, or even greater compensation, perks and benefits.
A successful innovator needs to understand that her idea may actually find greater success when used by another or in conjunction with another person’s idea. They also need to understand that while their idea might be a great idea, if there is no passion for it among the people who need to capitalize on it and bring it to market then it is as good as dead and useless to all. Letting go is an essential learning that is counter to so much we have learned in order to survive in organizations. But letting go is not the hardest lesson to learn for many.
Perhaps a more damnable habit to break is that of justification.
Justification is the hard-earned ability to defend your position in the face of withering opposition. It brooks no alternate view, nor does it easily accommodate modifications to its core or demarcated essential truth. The power of justification is that it makes ideas unassailable (especially when carried out by a master or mistress of the art.) The only problem with justification is that as a practice it allows no room for the new, the additive, or the tangential. Justification creates cul-de-sacs in which innovation goes to die.
Learning how to combat holding onto an idea too tightly and justifying an idea to the point of lunacy are essential practices. Which leads us to the role of exactly that in innovation – practicing what we have learned.
Practice makes permanent – practice with feedback makes perfect
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
- Douglas Adams
Most have heard of that old aphorism, “practice makes perfect.” My experience, and the firm word of a former business associate, Tom Doyle, is that practice does not make perfect, “practice makes permanent; only practice with feedback makes perfect.”
In order to become better at the art and substance of innovation it is necessary to work on it. In working on this skill set it is also critical to receive feedback and coaching. The application of observational assessment and associated feedback to an innovator enables them to see their mental models reflected in the words of others as well as the way a life time of habits influences how they not only see the world, but seek to change it in the present.
Having a subject matter expert observe and provide feedback, even if they are not a practiced innovator, may be of great benefit to those seeking to innovate. The critical eye is an essential ingredient in improvement. To borrow another Gladwell-popularized concept, that of the maven – a trusted specialist or subject matter expert connected to other like-minded practitioners across a community – it is a given that mavens make the best mentors. Their deep expertise, and the authority with which they can observe, mean that the feedback that they provide can not only provide clear opportunities for growth but may also provide ways to create a step-change in our approach to innovation and the challenges at hand.
After all, while it has been said that those who can – do, and that those who cannot – teach, it is preferable to think on Seneca:
While we teach, we learn.
Knowledge Management – the Engine for Innovation
March 20, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
In advocating for innovation it seems as though “innovation happens” is the mindset carried by many mistaken adherents to the cause. You just have to trust it and it will come, they say (or not). This is the equivalent of saying “magic happens” when faced with a “Mechanical Turk”. Data goes in one end, magic happens, and a desired output comes out the other end. I’m sorry – innovation is not based in gold-pooping unicorns, nor is it something that should be left to the whims of inevitability or caprice. Innovation needs to be specifically and studiously fed a fuel of knowledge in order to succeed. And if knowledge is the fuel, then knowledge management is the engine that drives innovation.
It’s not what you know, it’s what you do with what you know
Of central importance is the changing nature of competitive advantage – not based on market position, size and power as in times past, but on the incorporation of knowledge into all of an organization’s activities.
- Leif Edvinsson Swedish Intellectual Capital Guru
When Peter Senge defined The Fifth Discipline (as opposed to The Fifth Element) in 1994, one of the tenets of embracing the concept of becoming a “learning organization” was the use of effective knowledge management. Knowledge management in his model was a way to accelerate the performance of the organization so that it might better think holistically and systemically, and thereby design better solutions to its challenges faster. It required that organizations not only attract and retain bright people, but that they harness the thinking of those bright people in such a way that their efforts could be captured and populated across the organization.
The issue with knowledge in organizations is not that it isn’t available; the problem is that knowledge is not readily available at the time and point of need. As this dilemma relates to innovation, it is an even bigger issue. Innovation places huge knowledge demands on organizations. To be truly effective it must reach across all knowledge sources both internal to the organization and increasingly, thanks to open innovation practices, external to it. Knowledge must be easily and freely available for recombinant thinking approaches and to be applied directly to pressing challenges. Unfortunately, many knowledge management solutions sacrifice ease and access to the twin overlords or taxonomy and ownership.
Permission-based knowledge management systems, the ones that sequester information into functional groups with associated administrative and rights management restrictions, do not foster and promote the kind of knowledge transfer for which the learning organization calls. They kill it. Is there a place for intellectual property protection and management? Absolutely. But knowledge management need to head towards greater freedom to be of better value for innovation.
Groups filled with big brains and bright ideas applied to thorny issues equals…
Imagination is more important than knowledge
- Albert Einstein
What is the promise of knowledge management? For one thing it enables organizations to leverage their tacit knowledge more broadly among their members. By applying knowledge management to key data sources, and capturing the experience of organization members in an explicit and coordinated manner, the opportunities to decrease the innovation cycle time are correspondingly increased.
To better coordinate knowledge management, via systems and processes not only technologies, user-led innovation communities may be created. Innovation communities when people within an organization who work together explore and create new approaches and then implement them. They are usually a subset of communities of practice or information communities (both of which are commonly tied to functional expertise.) Communities of practice are communities or networks of individuals and/or organizations that coalesce around an information commons, usually a body of knowledge that is open to all on equal terms. The Project Management Institute is one such community of practice.
Knowledge management will never work until corporations realize it’s not about how you capture knowledge but how you create and leverage it.
- Etienne Wenger
From communities of practice, innovation communities may form to directly apply their shared knowledge in new and interesting ways. As the costs of diffusing knowledge are getting steadily lower, as computing and communication bandwidth expand, the geographic dispersion and cultural diversity of these groups may increase, too. This makes the notion of having the big brains all in the same room for innovation to occur (e.g., the Manhattan Project) is no longer a necessity. But as a proponent of both knowledge management and face-to-face communication (and relationship-building) I see a place for them both to continue to coexist.
Dick Brandon once said that, “documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is still better than nothing.” In a sense, knowledge management exists in a similar vein. Some, no matter how rudimentary, can be helpful in the development of innovation. The challenge is to “wire up” knowledge so that it is readily available to inform innovation practices, such as, design thinking, ethnographic study, and prototyping. That process is often best addressed at the human interface level.
The innovation wisdom of individuals, crowds, communities, countries
Knowledge without wisdom is a load of books on the back of an ass.
- Japanese proverb
The purpose of knowledge management is to help an organization marshal and management it’s knowledge for the best gain. Knowing who to connect and what to connect them to is a part of the wiring up previously mentioned. It takes a clear understanding of the social network at play in an organization to understand who those people might be that can most benefit from both access and connection. It takes a form of organizational wisdom that many organization’s lack.
In a previous post I discussed a variety of impacts that may be felt through an over-reliance on the formal power resident in the organization chart. Knowledge management cannot fall prey to the turf battles that organization charts so often represent. Instead it must be liberated so that the cross-pollination often necessary for the greatest innovations might occur. Because even if you manage your knowledge carefully – you organize it, structure and store it, within an inch of perfection – if people aren’t using it to help make your organization more effective, efficient, and successful, what’s the point. A better filing system is not the heart of creativity. But knowing and using what you know?
There’s genius lurking in those files. It is just waiting for the right people to use it.
There’s no such thing as knowledge management; there are only knowledgeable people. Information only becomes knowledge in the hands of someone who knows what to do with it.
- Peter Drucker
Resources for Innovation – The Power of Constraints
February 28, 2010 by Andrew (Drew) · Leave a Comment
The wise stewardship of resources is the task of any organization. How those resources are deployed for maximum gain is the key responsibility of organizational leadership. The only problem with this concept is what happens when wise stewardship comes up hard against the necessary risking of resources for the material benefit of innovation? Unfortunately, in the present “economic unpleasantness” as a dear friend keeps calling the train wreck that is this great recession, stewardship of resources has digressed to hoarding of resources. Save for one notable exception – human resources.
We don’t have the energy to exploit…anything
The greatest tragedy in America is not the destruction of our natural resources, though that tragedy is great. The truly great tragedy is the destruction of our human resources by our failure to fully utilize our abilities, which means that most men and women go to their graves with their music still in them.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
The crisis in our economy is shedding harsh light on the absence of any true understanding of how to overcome the organizational need to protect the bottom-line while also leveraging the most creative asset any organization can access, its people. Instead, jobs have been cut in record numbers. The unemployment rate, not just in the USA but in many Western economies, is approaching record highs. All the while the usual levers are being pulled. Reductions in capacity. Reductions in expenditure. Reductions in our expectations for a more positive future. And this means that a pervasive, innovation averse, risk-avoiding mindset is prevailing in most quarters. It’s simply all, too, hard.
As an aside, it is fascinating that one of the major beneficiaries of the economic downturn is global climate change. Apparently the idling of the voraciousness of the economic engines which has been burning so hot last decade has been a significant boon to the limitation of the emission of greenhouse gases. Thank you for small mercies, I guess. That problem set is still not solved but we seem to have bought some additional time in which to avoid doing anything meaningful. It’s too complex. And hard.
What happens when people stop, well, everything? A cascade occurs, and not a good one. It certainly doesn’t mean resources become instantly abundant and available. No, we can thank the remarkable export of the Toyota Production System (as Lean initiatives) across many manufacturing sectors for the fantastic ability to only produce to demand. This latest cascade means everything becomes scarce. There is no excess. Nothing with which an innovator may play, or test, or prototype. Just like a faucet being turned off. The flow of goods, services, and money has slowed to a trickle or even stopped altogether.
All we are left with, all that we have available to us, are the people who comprise our organizations. And what have we done to them? Nothing save lower their expectations or show them the door.
Serve more than one purpose
The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one’s opportunities and make the most of one’s resources.
- Marquis de Vauvenargues
Let’s reframe the challenge. What if we take as true that oft-quoted phrase, “our people are our greatest assets”? How does that mindset begin to influence the choices we make about innovating our way out of our current mess?
One creative agency in Toronto, Zulu Alpha Kilo, decided that the best way to advertise itself was to actually take what it does to the streets. They setup a “box” in Dundas Square in the heart of downtown Toronto and on the first really cold day of the season in the city. They placed a team of eight interdisciplinary thinkers into the plywood box where they solicited creative challenges from passers-by – over 117,000 in all some of whom waited over two hours to present their challenges. Twelve hours later not only had the team presented solutions for many problems they had also cracked open the façade of a design agency so the public could see the workings inside. Not a bad piece of self-promotion either to put creativity on display.
Organizations like the agency above that choose to create a meaningful creative bargain with employees seem to be finding their way. Organizations like Google, SAS and 3M, which even in downturns still expect their employees to devote a percentage of their work time to personal projects, also will continue to see the benefit of a similar trust over time. It will be returned in goodwill, enthusiasm and commitment, to say nothing of the possibility of new products and services that might drive top and bottom-line growth. Their people are asked to do more than one thing, they have a “job” to do for sure, but they are also expected to explore and contribute in other ways, too.
While contemplating setting new expectations for our human resources why not also consider setting the expectation that all resources be used in more than one way. Paper being reused for notepads is nothing new, but what about expired materials such as this novel idea from a design student involving expired prophylactics. Yes, the humble condom as haute couture. But the concept of reuse is nothing new. Making it an embedded and expected part of all aspects of production and trade is.
Many technology firms are leading the way. Oracle is continuing to support the work that Sun began even after the acquisition; usually this would be a signal for abandoning “non-additive” projects to the bottom-line. HP has also made reuse a fundamental part of its approach to its business. Now if only “Big Ink” could figure out a way to reclaim the ink on paper destined for recycling! It seems Xerox has a similar idea but has taken a different tact.
These efforts are good first steps but this mindset needs to be seeded as widely as possible. The innovation required to do that may point to a way out of the economic doldrums and toward a vibrant alternative economic reality closer to the cycles presented in William McDonough’s “Cradle to Cradle”. Which doesn’t begin to cover what might be accomplished by repurposing from the private sector to the public sector or from the for-profit to the non-profit.
It’s now how much – it’s how well
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
- Peter Drucker
Many artists relish resource constraints, although they might initially grumble at the limitations. Instead they often apply themselves within limitations to create art that is unique and surprising. Sometimes those constraints aren’t only material; their constraints may be social, cultural or even political. Yet still they find a path to success by not taking the box they are handed at face value. This ability to look beyond what is in hand to what is possible with that resource applies in all cricumstances in which innovation can and must thrive.
The work of Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Kevin Surace the CEO of Serious Materials, is a case in point. He is picking up bankrupt firms that have been strip-mined of all their resources (and their human resources previously carelessly set aside.)He is willing to invest in the R&D and building out production capacity to ensure his company’s long-term health. He is willing to forgo profit to do so, too. He is applying his limited resources, placing bets now, to ensure his economic future. How many other companies are willing to do that today?
Here’s the thing. If we don’t invest time, energy, effort and our resources in innovation now, when we need it most, we are in for a long and painful ride. We need to take the time to innovate. To find the better way. Those who do will be most successful in the long-term. Not because they happen upon a great idea, but because the habit of spending resources on innovation even during down times sets a pattern for revitalization that is necessary for any organization.
Twitter: DrewCM
- Last few days in Australia before returning to the USA. Great trip.
- Greetings from Uluru / Ayers Rock! Where it is raining but the views and surroundings are spectacular. (And the internet access is spotty!)
- Better late than never: #innochat Transcript – 19 August – Innovation Backwards? With thanks to @CASUDI & @Renee_Hopkins http://ht.ly/2tOe3
- For those looking for #innochat transcript this weekend - it is coming - just a little slowly due to the time difference! (mine, that is)
- Thanks for #FF and RTs @innovatorsmix @MeghanMBiro @Jabaldaia @CreativeSage @FHInnovation @Renee_Hopkins @Gwen_Ishmael and #innochat gang