No Ordinary Bull

The Aesthetics of Innovating: Sixth Sense of Innovators

2012-02-20T12:39:00.000-08:00

When I was in the innovation management group at Kimberly-Clark in the early 1980s we
asked then CEO Darwin Smith how he would judge ideas worthy of further investment. He told us there are only two things we need to worry about: “shoemaker stick to your last” and “make it snappy.” As to the first, much has been written about core business and core competencies and adjacencies to the core. Of the second, much less has been written or said, partly because what one person may regard as “snappy,” another person may not.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” It is difficult to deny the fact that what one person sees as plain or common, another might see as beautiful and fresh. Subjectivity in assessing the potential of an idea, particularly a new idea, is probably inescapable. At the very least, when it comes to assigning potential value to an embryonic innovation—ultimately one that will require some investment of the innovating company’s limited resources—who the assigner or beholder is matters a great deal.

When asked how he and his peers decide what ideas to pursue further, one of our more experienced innovators says it depends in part on how “cute” it is. He defined cute as the idea or invention’s ability to speak for itself, in terms of its relevance to customer need and the core business. The less explanation the idea needs, the more its “cute” quotient. While his explanation made sense, it did not avoid the subjectivity problem. To which he quickly reassured me that it wasn’t his perception of cuteness alone that made the difference. Rather, it was a shared sense of “cuteness,” shared with the CEO and corporate development officer, and, eventually, others.

That there is an aesthetic factor at play in how ideas are judged, along with all the other analytics, is likely inescapable. And while subjectivity is frequently regarded as something to minimize or escape, there may be another, more subtle point worth considering. This subjectivity may be something to welcome instead of something to avoid.

An aesthetic sensibility is something often not associated with engineers and technologists engaged in the more mundane trenches of innovation efforts. However, I am increasingly persuaded that experienced and more successful innovators have a deep sense for the aesthetics of the innovation they are developing. Shape, symmetry, simplicity, elegance in the way the problem is solved or solution is delivered or the need met or profit increased, all weigh heavily for the innovator. Perhaps subjectivity—or at least an aesthetic sensitivity—should be embraced rather than avoided or sacrificed to the dogma of analysis and data.

While I am not against sound analysis of valid data, I am suggesting that we might want to pay even more attention to our individual and shared sense of what is cute or beautiful in the innovation as a necessary compliment to all the data that we can amass, anecdotal and otherwise, when we assess whether a particular innovation deserves more or not.

We all know that a lot of frogs have to be kissed before a prince or princess appears. But how can innovators differentiate between frogs and royalty, without relying on their aesthetic sense? Furthermore, what is this sixth sense? If the innovator beholds beauty in the nascent innovation, what does the innovator perceive, if not the intersection of function, fit and form?

The Irish poet John Keats finished one of his poems with the phase “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Perhaps that’s all the innovator needs to know in the sincere and evidence-based belief that the customer will recognize it too.

______________

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in September 2006. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Learning from Experience

2012-02-07T12:34:00.000-08:00

Most of us regard the economy as generally negative, at least compared to the more robust economic conditions prior to September 2008. Yet this “new normal” may be what my mother called a “character building” experience, at least as far as innovating is concerned.

Many companies are increasingly responding to the new realities they face as an invitation to rethink what they thought they knew about their business. Many seem to be more willing to reexamine some of their underlying assumptions, which in more robust conditions left little motivation for questioning. With pain and loss there is the promise of new gains in the offing, if we are willing to learn.

Edgar Schein, a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, reminds us that the first hurdle of learning is to unlearn what we thought we knew for sure. Unlearning is especially challenging for companies with successful track records. Karl Deutsch, a social and political scientist, once said “those in power don’t have to learn,” which sounds close to what another sage said 2,000 years earlier: “the meek shall inherit the earth.” This strength-emerging-from-weakness narrative so often ignored by the media, can be seen today in the unfinished Arab Spring, the “Occupy” movement, the re-balancing of global economic power, and even in the emergent nature of innovations themselves.

As a student of innovation for over 30 years, I have been reexamining many of my own underlying assumptions about innovating. I am struck with how much I don’t know, really, as I reexamine what I thought I knew. The result is a new found humility regarding the nature and character of innovating itself.

Innovating is similar to parenting in many respects. For example, there has been no one authoritative canon on parenting, which has survived more than one generation. What happened to Dr. Spock and all his wisdom? Did he become irrelevant, trumped by books like What to Expect When You’re Expecting and the latest findings from developmental, neurological and psychosocial research? The same is true for innovating. Like parenting, innovating is inextricably entangled with the particularities and embodiments of each individual invention. Generalizations about innovating are frequently made, but quickly evaporated in the wake of market conditions, competitive dynamics, technological constraints, and organizational preferences.

While many of us want to believe that innovating can be codified into a repeatable and sustainable process, our experience suggests otherwise. Innovations, innovating and innovators seem to defy formulaic generalizations. They are persistently original and they are consistently “emergent,” to use a term from complexity theory. Parents experience a similar set of challenges.

Lately many of our core clientele—product developers and R&D-based innovators—seem more willing to move forward in the “new normal,” despite not having all the answers. Powerlessness (not to be confused with helplessness) is now being more freely admitted by both big and small enterprises alike. Veteran firms and early stage start-ups, while more circumspect about their innovation opportunities, seem even more willing to consider first what is going on before rushing into a plan of action. This newly found humility bodes well for improving the prospects of innovating. Why? A willingness to stay open, to learn, and to adapt are summed up in humility. Staying open, learning and adapting are also the healthy precursors to successful innovating.

People who analyze external conditions seemed to be using words like “uncertainty,” “volatility,” “insecurity,” and “complexity” more frequently in their descriptions. I’m not sure whether things have actually gotten more complex. Perhaps we are just more aware of the complexity that has always been there. Whether it's increased in reality or not, many seem to be more aware of how partial and incomplete our knowledge really is.

A feeling of uncertainty, volatility, or complexity can evoke anxiety in us. It can also catalyze us to discover opportunities amid the threats. Whether we approach it with an anxious defensiveness or an animating hope, the month of January implicitly asks us each year: what have we learned? January—named for Janus, the forward- and backward-looking Roman god of transitions—finds us simultaneously looking back on what we learned and forward to the opportunity for applying and testing what was learned.

Each January for the past 20 years we have reflected back on what the previous year has brought us. Most of those reflections have consisted of a list of lessons learned. This year, there is but one item on the list about innovating: and it is parenting. We hope this does not reflect a flattening of our learning curve as much as it does our appreciation for the importance of the one lesson we learned about innovating, which we want to bring to your attention.

In a nutshell, the lesson is this: powerlessness may be a silent, early partner to innovators. To some extent all innovating efforts are built upon a foundation of learning, especially when the learning is from direct experience of something ventured without a guarantee of success. The point at which we try something that may not work, whether we succeed or fail, this is the point wherein we act our way into a new way of thinking, which is the essential foundation of successful innovating.

Ingredients of established power—whether status, reputation, or market share—tend toward defensive reaction more than adaptive response. The powerless, in some ways, are actually freer and more motivated to learn than the powerful. However, it would be erroneous to conclude that the small and less powerful have an advantage when it comes to innovating—whether disruptively or incrementally. The Economist’s Schumpeter Column (12/17/11) reexamined a common assumption: that disruptive innovating favors the small and fast over the big and powerful. Like a parent, the innovator’s passion and care for the product may be a more important factor than the relative size of the innovating enterprise.

This was made clear in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steven Jobs, which brings forth Jobs’ own lifelong effort to sculpt value at the intersection of engineering and the humanities. The position Jobs seemed to place himself was where design, marketing and engineering met—in the product. Like Bob Lutz’s impassioned plea (Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business) to find leaders who are passionate about the product, Jobs was clearly passionate about the products and services in which he was engaged, from personal computers to music, from animation to mobile devices.

Powerlessness enables innovators to rely more on their ability to listen and observe than on what they think they already know. Powerlessness leaves innovators more reliant upon their empathy and identification with the end-user than dependent upon the false and short-lived confidence from doing what they already know will work, which leads to imitation, not innovation.

Innovations emerge from passionate people who invest themselves in learning experiences that lead to new ways of thinking. Learning is the capital in which we all need to invest even more of our selves and our resources.

Thanks to so many of you who continue to invite us contribute to your experience-based learning investments.

Some highlights of 2011 for Vincent & Associates, Ltd. include:

•    The completion of Lanny’s book Prisoners of Hope: How Engineers (and Others)
      Get Lift for Innovating (Westbow Press, December 2011).

•    Client assignments that took us around the U.S. and to five continents.

•    Engagements with Malaysia’s Innovation Initiative “IP-Driven R&D.”

•    Our recent move to San Francisco, near the Cliff House on Ocean Beach. Our new address is
      Vincent & Associates, Ltd., 534 48th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94121.

______________

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in January 2012. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Highlights of Lessons Learned

2012-01-30T13:08:00.000-08:00

Innovations require parenting, more than managing.

Perhaps the biggest “aha” of last year was one that left us mumbling to ourselves, “Why didn't I see this before?”

Though our letterhead says “innovation management”—largely a legacy from 20 years ago when I was a part of the Innovation Management group at Kimberly-Clark Corporation, I have become convinced that parenting is a better word than managing when it comes to innovations. While effective parenting involves good management skills and efforts, parenting captures the essential developmental character of innovation and innovating. Just as every child is unique, so every innovation is unique. What works in parenting one child might not for their brother or sister. However, principles of parenting learned with one child can certainly help parents with the next child. So too, with innovators and their innovations. And just as “it takes a village to raise a child,” so too, it takes a whole host of participants, particularly in informal and implicit networks that straddle the formal organizational boundaries of our companies, to successfully develop and commercialize an innovation.

After being a student of innovation management, particularly in established companies, for almost 25 years, we were struck with the power and appropriateness of the word “parenting.”

Play may be what is missing in our innovation efforts.

Our fascination with, and early applications of, the work of Dr. Stuart Brown, has led us to believe that the early entrepreneurial roots of most successful companies were significantly influenced by a healthy dose of play—whether the playfulness of an original inventor, or the playfulness of a subsequent entrepreneur, or both. What so easily gets lost when a company 'grows up' and becomes responsible for consistent performance to its shareholders, is that early entrepreneurial vocation that was infused with play. [As Dr. Brown reminds us, the opposite of play is not work, nor performance; it is depression: emotional and financial.] Even though play has a public-relations problem in our productivity-driven business culture, this past year has brought be to a growing belief that play may be just what is chronically missing in our innovation efforts.

Lester and Piori (in their book, Innovation, the Missing Dimension) allude to this when they suggest that what companies are not doing enough of is setting up protected spaces within which to learn, experiment and discover what their competition has not yet discovered. Might we not call these playgrounds within which our nascent innovations can themselves play? Clif Bar & Company calls these playgrounds “discovery channels,” and is starting to take seriously the power and importance of play in their innovation efforts.

Collaboration may be as important as competition for our innovation efforts.

If you haven't read it yet, Henry Chesbrough's Open Innovation should be near or at the top of your reading list. Not only does it explode the myth of our “funnel model” for innovation management, it reminds us all of the tyranny of the core business revenue model. What Chesbrough articulated so well, it what we have been seeing in so many of our clients. Collaboration with other companies is no longer an option. It is a necessity, even though many of us don't think we know how to do it very well, given competitive and proprietary interests and habits.
______________

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in January 2006. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Parenting Innovations: Some Fundamentals

2012-01-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

Legendary amateur golfer Bobby Jones reputedly said if your average score is over 90, you are probably not practicing the fundamentals enough. If your average score is under 80, you are probably neglecting your family, work or both! The lessons learned last year were many and varied, and took us back to the importance and value of practicing the fundamentals of innovation and its management.

Last year we learned that innovations require parenting more than simply managing; that collaboration may be as important to innovation as competition; and that sufficient play is necessary for healthy development—for innovation and innovator alike.

These lessons were no less valid this year. But as we reflect upon what turned out to be a very full and busy year, we are reminded how crucial the fundamentals still are. Any workable set of fundamentals needs to be short as well as basic to qualify as fundamentals, without oversimplifying. In golf, a common list of fundamentals is alignment, balance and posture. In the challenges of parenting innovation we offer this short list: context, causal connections and adaptation.

Context: Any innovation by definition is both new and valuable, and as our associate Jim O’Shaughnessy reminds us: “all value is contextual.” For example, water in the Phoenix, Arizona, is valued differently than water in Traverse City, Michigan. In both locations it is H2O, but because the contexts are so different, water is more precious in Phoenix than Traverse City. The same can be said for novelty. Novelty is also contextual. “Newness,” as observed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is defined socially. What is “wow” new for one group may be considered old hat by another. For example, the iPod was made from well known technologies—old hat to some, but new and “wow” to others, especially in context of iTunes and 99¢ songs.

If innovation is so innately contextual, then shouldn’t we be paying close attention to the context as well as the text—the conditions and situation that provide the sitz en Lieben (or situation in life) within which the innovation has meaning and value, as well as the innovation itself?

Peter Drucker recognized this truth about context in his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship where he boldly named seven sources of innovation and listed them in order of reliability. The most predictable ones rely on contextual understanding. This more than a coincidence. Drucker’s top two sources are (1) surprise failure or unexpected success and (2) incongruities between the way things are and the way things should be.

Using context plays out even in addressing the classic “hand-off” challenge as well. Much of the tacit (i.e., contextual) knowledge required for a successful hand-off of an innovation from development to launch resides with operating personnel—those currently involved in making the operating portions of the core business successful. When a transfer or hand-off is ready to happen, some of these people need to be refocused for varying periods of time.

Some companies develop and use a template that enables a phase in/out of these people so as to forecast the temporary shift of their focus and responsibilities and minimize the negative impact on the core operations. One of the most penetrating assignments this year engaged us to help a client to develop just such a template. Geoffrey Moore, in his book Dealing with Darwin, points out that these people—the ones with appropriate contextual knowledge—can and should be counter-rotated within organizations for more sustainable innovation streams.

Causal connections: Innovations emerge and develop because of the connections between seemingly unrelated people, ideas and know-how. When innovators see and understand the causality behind the connection, innovations can be born.

One of these causal connections is the people-to-people connection. Relationships are at the heart of any entrepreneurial activity. The misleading caricature of the lone entrepreneur stems in part from the Horatio Alger stories of success and individualism. But if you look more closely, you will see a relationship, most often between two people, sometimes three, from which significant enterprises were born.

Hewlett-Packard started with Bill and Dave, even before they had their first product in mind. Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Even in renewals of great companies like Disney’s Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. Nothing happens except out of relationships. This is not only true for the entrepreneurial origins of companies. It is true for the later intrapreneurial efforts as well, as in relationships between mavericks or champions and their sponsors and mentors (or “midwives”).

Causal connections are not limited to the interpersonal. They occur as mental connections that well-prepared minds, conducting both actual and thought experiments together, can create to form new knowledge, find new applications of old knowledge and both invent and discover.

We see inventors making connections all the time in the innovation workshops we facilitate. However, it is the causal connections that make the biggest contribution. What differentiates the causal connection from the ordinary connection is the knowledge—often science-based knowledge—of the connection-makers. Often what looks like serendipity results from these causal connections, reflecting Louis Pasteur’s observation that chance favors the prepared mind.

Adaptation: When a word makes it to Madison Avenue, you and I know that it is probably time to become a bit wary about how it is being used. This has certainly happened, disappointingly, with the word “innovation.” Sometimes it is difficult to know how it is being used. Sometimes the word is just plain abused—a reminder that our language itself is constantly morphing—mutations producing variety, some of which are selected (hopefully naturally), before being retained and hopefully contributing to something we could call evolutionary progress.

So as the word “innovation” is starting to morph with all the twists and turns of the media and PR campaigns, adaptation may be a more trustworthy substitute, at least for the time being. From Clif Bar’s Gary Erickson to the former chairman of Toyota, the mantra of act, pay attention to what happens, and then adapt, seems to sum up what is at the heart of innovation.

While we may have left off a fundamental or two (and we welcome your thoughts on the fundamentals), this might be a place to start—to get aligned with the “needed” new, stay in balance and use our posture to sustain those innovations that work®.
____________________

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in January 2007. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

An Old Saw on Innovation

2012-01-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

Here is a story about a hard working but inexperienced do-it-yourself-er working on a home improvement project. It may be a parable for our corporate innovation efforts?

Oneday, this DIY guy went to the local hardware store to buy a saw for a tree-cuttingproject. The hardware store clerk showed him various makes and models beforefinally presenting him the premier chainsaw. “This one will cut four cords aday, guaranteed.” This was enough to convince this hard worker to buy it andtake it home, full of hope and expectation.

Thenext day the proud owner of the new chainsaw ate a hearty breakfast beforetackling his trees. He worked very hard until late in the afternoon, thenhe took a break and measured how many cordshe had cut. To his great disappointment he found that he had only cut one cord.He thought maybe there was something wrong with the saw.

Thefollowing day, determined to achieve the four cord guarantee, he got up earlierand worked later; and when he had finished for the day, he found that he hadonly cut two cords of wood, still a full two cords shy of what the clerk hadpromised him. So the third day, he got up even earlier and worked non-stop allday until it was too dark to see. But still, when he measured his output forthe day he had cut only three cords.

Nowhe was certain there was something wrong with the saw. The next day, hetookit back to the hardware store, put it down on the counter in front of the sameclerk who had sold it to him and complained, “There is something wrong withthis chain saw. I worked from early morning to late at night and all I couldget was three cords! You guaranteed me four.”

Theclerk carefully examined the chainsaw. The blades looked sharp. The chain slidthrough the bar effortlessly. He checked for oil. Everything seemed to be inorder. “Well,” the clerk said, “let's go outside and start her up.” The twowent outside and after just one pull of the starter cord the chainsaw startedwith a roar. The diligent do-it-yourself-er jumped back startled and exclaimed,“What's that noise?”

• • •

Arewe using our skills and knowledge in the best way we can? This is a perennialquestion that follows stewards of innovation management systems. Are we fullyusing the competencies that we have, or are we cutting wood the old fashionway, even with a chainsaw in our hands?

Answeringthis question in the context of operational routines—where the skills,knowledge and experience resident in our organization are already aligned withfairly well defined tasks—is one thing.

Answering this question in the context of innovationefforts, where neither the context is known nor are routines established, isanother thing altogether.

How we define a person's skills, knowledge and experienceis determined in part by the times and places wherein they have applied thoseskills and knowledge in the past. Dorothy Leonard was getting at thisinnovation management dilemma when she observed how core competencies canbecome core rigidities when specialization becomes captive to what is relevantonly to established routines.

Applyingthe skills, knowledge and experience developed in one operational context tothe emergent realities of an innovation context requires a healthy dose ofadaptation and improvisation. It is this willingness, confidence, and faith toimprovise and be flexible that ends up being the more precious resource. Andthis is a resource that may be more responsiveto invitation, experimentation, and playfulness (innovation efforts) than toconservation, preservation, and control (operations).

Askingthe best and brightest in our organizations to take what they are good at andadapt and improvise may indeed be the best way to avoid cutting the wood ofopportunities the old fashion way and innovate our way into the future, insteadof simply survive. This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in August 2008. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

20 years of innovations that work

2012-01-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

For the past 20 years, we have facilitated hundreds of collaborative invention workshops and dozens of opportunity foresight cycles and market discovery efforts for companies in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia in a variety of industry sectors. Increasingly we are being invited to coach innovators and their executive sponsors. And lately, we are being asked to provide subject matter expertise where the topic is innovating in the context of successful companies.

We count the results of our work in the relationships we have with our clients, some of which stretch even beyond our 20 years in business. As in previous years, 80% of our business comes from clients with whom we have worked for over five years.

In all these engagements we have especially enjoyed our close and ongoing associations with so many innovation practitioners, who we see as fellow students of innovation learning what the crucibles of innovating can teach us. These associations have lead not only to the publication of the book, The Maverick Way: Profiting from the Power of the Corporate Misfit in 2000, and the article Innovation Midwives in Research-Technology Management in January 2005, but also built a robust body of knowledge on how to manage and parent innovations in corporations. We now find ourselves disseminating this know-how to groups of senior technologists in our client companies who are well positioned to have a catalyzing effect on others within their organizations.

Over the past five years we have witnessed a flood of books and articles on innovation and innovation management, not to mention the entrance of many consulting firms and business school sub-specialty programs focused on innovation. The flood tide has not ebbed, even amidst this Great Recession. Like a persistent flood, the shallow low-lying areas that used to be visible get washed out. What now appear as broader channels for innovating, actually end up being even more treacherous to those first-time innovators who navigate its challenges. Many of the charted shoals have become covered over with thin layers of processes and techniques. Many innovators have unfortunately run aground, while others have been left high and dry.

As a result, we thought the occasion of this new year presents a chance to remind many of you what we believe are some enduring principles and practices for managing innovation. These lessons have stood the test of time for innovators, their sponsors and managers.

Content precedes process, just as form follows function.

You would think this would go without saying, but there is a torrent of process techniques being pitched that many mistakenly substitute for clear, coherent direction. Many executives say, “we need more innovation,” yet few do their homework to confidently direct their innovators to where innovations are needed and why. When leaders do this homework, their innovator networks respond vigorously and quickly, and, most importantly, in the right territories.

Nothing happens except out of relationships.

The white knight syndrome and the myth of the lone entrepreneur persist, but they belie the facts. If you look closely at companies with historically high rates of innovation, you will find not a lone individual but a vibrant, enduring relationship. Bill Hewlett and David Packard. Walt and Roy Disney. Paul Allen and Bill Gates. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. It seems extrinsic compensation, reward and recognition practices are hard pressed to compete with the undeniable reality that the human relationship is the intrinsic heart of the innovation engine. Think of the music that jazz musicians make when they get together to jam. Innovations at first are not marches but melodies.

Success is the enemy of innovation.

Innovating is disruptive by definition, especially to the incumbent who is inclined to defend his position. Companies that underestimate the resistance to innovation within their own organizations tend to be chronically disappointed with the returns on their innovation investments. Without sufficient and appropriate insulation, innovation efforts will remain unnecessarily vulnerable to “sibling rivalry” from existing and cash generating operations in the core business.

“Innovation is learning applied to creating value.”

This was how Al Ward (an expert in Toyota’s development system) defined innovation. Innovating is a risky, no-guarantee kind of activity. There is a better than 50-50 chance the innovation-in-development will not prove to be a commercial success. However, if knowledge is created in the process—knowledge that can and will be used in the next iteration—success can be viewed as a succession of adaptations, rather than a one-time embodiment. An older expression may be “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Providing value to the end user trumps newness if you are looking for competitive differentiation, particularly when the vision of the innovation’s value allows us the patience for growth and sustains our efforts over multiple tries.

Play is the tuition for adaptability.

The science of play teaches us that our species' ability to adapt and evolve is a direct result of the confidence we learn and gain in earlier play experiences. Innovation begins at the boundaries between order and chaos. Without order nothing can exist. Without chaos nothing can evolve. The ability of an organization to convert the “noise” at these boundaries into meaningful “signals”—even into innovations—derives from its freedom and ability to play. Simulations, thought and field experiments, scenario planning and messing around in the lab all contribute to the innovation’s survival and success.

When our organizations become too lean, they can become too mean not only in temperament, but also in average performance. When asked about innovation at Apple, Steve Jobs replied, “We don’t talk about innovation. We just talk about making insanely great products.” By definition, innovations are not average, nor even close to the mean.

Certainly other principles and practices of innovation may be of equal importance, depending upon the particular competitive, technological or organizational conditions that confront the innovator. A few of these principles include:

•     Paying attention to subtle surprises in the market or the development lab;

•     Getting your innovation into the market with sufficient alertness to catch the serendipity;

•     Giving yourself permission to fail so that real learning can occur; and

•     Managing like a loving parent, neither too permissive nor dogmatic about early performance.

Instead of people looking for a formula for how-to do innovation, we need more innovators, sponsors and leaders who believe in the inspirations that can come from necessity. After all, as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in January 2010. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Some key lessons we have learned

2012-01-03T10:24:00.000-08:00

By Jane Gannon, Associate

The occasion of our 20th anniversary offered us a chance to review our past annual reports and their record of the lessons we have learned with you over the years. Client assignments have been our primary instructors throughout the past two decades, and these experiences confirm that innovating is demanding and not for the faint of heart.

We thought we would share some of the key lessons we have learned as a result of our collaborations with you:

•    Success is the enemy of innovation.

•    Knowledge-creation sustains innovation systems. “Innovation is learning applied to creating value.”

•    An innovation develops best in the field, even more than in the lab.

•    Even within companies serious about innovation, persistent and pesky allergies to “the new” remain.

•    Nothing happens except out of relationships. Trust is the currency of relationships.

•    Play is the tuition required to grow adaptive capability.

•    Successful entrepreneurial action is as much about having the courage to do the most with what you have as it is about being more creative than the next guy.

•    Managing interpersonal relationships (soft systems) can often be the hardest part of managing for innovation.

•    A company’s inventive intellectual capital can be aimed to prospectively invent in areas that both exploit the expertise of a company and address anticipated paths of development.

•    Combining insights discovered from external investigations with insights from internal lessons learned can be a powerful approach for transforming intelligence into innovation.

•    Story-making and storytelling are essential to perceiving both threats and opportunities on the horizon.

•    Content precedes process, just as form follows function. Innovating is a process driven by the innovator's clarity and conviction in an entrepreneurial opportunity.

•     Pay attention to subtle surprises in the market, the development lab, and in the market of your existing products or your competitors products. These are often the most reliable signposts and sources of where to innovate next.

•    Leaving room for experimentation in your strategic plan acknowledges the potential in the unanticipated and reflects an appropriate humility regarding the inescapable uncertainties of the future.

•    Role definition, clarification and improvisation can reduce chaos that comes with change-induced uncertainty.

•    Success in overcoming the not-invented-here syndrome comes in part from innovators ability to step back and share both the credit and the authorship.

•     Give yourself permission to fail so that real learning can occur.

•     Manage like a (tough) loving parent, neither too permissive nor dogmatic about early performance.

•     Instead of people looking for a formula for how-to do innovation, we need innovators who are inspired by necessity.

After all, as the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in July 2010. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

That's Just the Half of It!

2011-12-27T12:52:00.000-08:00

What you know is only half of innovating. The other half is the new knowledge you can and must create.

After years of helping others generate ideas, I am now humbly aware that idea generation is less likely innovation’s critical path, despite what many assume. Ideas—particularly ones that deserve serious attention—are more likely outcomes, not the input, driving successful innovations. Peter Drucker alluded to this over 25 years ago when he declared in Innovation and Entrepreneurship that the bright idea is the least reliable source of innovation.

Innovation’s more likely critical path is knowledge-creation—what most of us call learning. Strong ideas come from knowledge-creation. Weak ones eventually reveal some form of knowledge omission or commission, especially about what is valuable to the customer. When R&D-based innovations break through an otherwise “me-too” crowd of look-alike products, it is not because someone made a lucky guess. It is because some new learning occurred, some new observation was made, some knowledge was created, and correspondingly, something new and valuable was conceived.

What most see in successful innovation are outcomes. However, the paths leading up to these outcomes are filled with:

•     experience and experiments (physical, virtual, mathematical) that create data,

•    interpretations of data that create information, and

•     applications of the information, successful or not, that create understanding of what works and what doesn't, and why...and that, in turn, develops knowledge.

These knowledge-creation paths twist and turn and cycle back, far from the mythical straight line hindsight suggests—more like a “Slinky” than a taught string.

R&D organizations are filled with knowledgeable experts—those who understand not only what works, but why. However, it is not simply what experts know that creates value. It’s what experts do with what they know that leads to value creation—the critical path for innovating.

The irony of the expert’s knowledge is that it can be the very thing that blocks learning, especially about the customers’ value ecosystem. It has often been said, “all value is derived from context.” If true, then to create new knowledge the expert must interpret the context (the ecosystem) in which the customer lives. That is where new value emerges and where innovation is nourished.

Identifying where gaps are in our knowledge, especially of what’s meaningful and valuable to customers, may be where the critical path begins for the knowledge creators in R&D. Selecting and describing gaps in our knowledge may be one of the more reliable ways of targeting where we should focus our efforts. Successful innovations always seem to emerge from that kind of knowledge-creation.

What you know is only half of it.

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in September 2011. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Reducing “Waste” from Innovating

2011-12-20T10:27:00.000-08:00

“We already know we need to keep innovating. What we don’t know is how to do it more cost effectively.”

A client and colleague said this in a recent phone conversation. He had just returned from giving some bad news to an outside patent counsel regarding the need to curtail their services. It was one of many similar conversations he has had in the past several months. Absorbing reactions was getting to be a real drag. His remark–understandable given the economic “reset” most are experiencing–caught my ear.

Just what are the costs, hidden and otherwise, of innovating? Certainly there is cash. Perhaps more “costly,” however, are the time and attention of our more experienced innovators and inventors. These costs are felt even more acutely with fierce internal competition for the time and attention of these veterans.

Innovating costs, of course, must be weighed against risks of not innovating. Opportunity costs. Most innovation portfolios are designed to hedge against opportunity costs through some form of diversification. Given the risks associated with innovating, the conventional wisdom goes, if several options are kept open, risk can be spread across multiple, simultaneous efforts.

There are implicit costs associated with spreading risk, however. When too few innovators are chasing too many opportunities, delays, interruptions, divided attention and diffused effort is the result. Innovating waste. These two words don’t normally appear so close together (not to be confused with innovations from waste, which is a well-mapped territory.)

Most conversations about innovation and its management concern themselves with effectiveness. Few address reducing waste, partly because waste from innovating may be more difficult to pinpoint. Identification and elimination of waste can and should be a part of the conversation about innovating.

Without a coherent diagnosis of innovating waste, managers are left with little alternative but to treat symptoms rather than causes. And if Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi (The Knowledge Creating Company, Oxford, 1995) are correct–it is not merely what a company knows which creates wealth, but its ability to create new knowledge where it matters most–then relearning and reinvention may be the most costly form of innovating waste.

In operations and production environments what flows are standard units. In an assembly process, specified parts go in, and what comes out are multiples of a standard, assembled product. In a continuous process, specified ingredients or raw materials go in, and predictable material in an expected form comes out. It is appropriate to seek and possible to approximate, a repeatable process. This is the world where scale matters.

In innovating environments, however, what flows is not standard, nor fixed. What flows also develops, morphs and grows. When we fill our pipelines (or funnels) so full, we do not leave room for development, morphing or growth. We defeat the very thing we are trying to achieve, largely because we are hedging our bets and spreading our risk. This is the world where scope matters and repeatable process may be a misguided quest.

Scope requires making difficult choices. Healthy choosing requires having viable options to choose from. Keeping options open may mean no choice has been made. Perhaps there is dissatisfaction with the option sets being presented. Perhaps there is insufficient clarity about where innovations are needed in the ecosystem, and why. Perhaps keeping options fresh is better than keeping them open.

Innovation Trustee

One way to reduce the cost and waste so often associated with innovating–real and perceived–is to have a mechanism that regularly creates better sets of options. This will improve the quality of the choices made. However, when these mechanisms on the front end start, stop and then start up again, delays, relearning and reinvention are the result.

Generating (or percolating) option sets is necessary, but not sufficient. Someone (or a few) must make a selection when a set is presented. You can hedge bets and spread risk. But as we all know, hedges and spreads don’t solve, resolve, or eliminate risk. Someone still has to make a selection. Waste is generated when we are not clear who the trustee is, when there are too many of them, and when the trustee lacks a clear understanding of the context (i.e., future ecosystem emerging).

One diagnostic principle of systems theory and systems engineering–that a system has a purpose that governs it–invites us to ask what and who is governing the company’s innovating system.

While there is often plenty of attention being paid to the management of innovating, often there is an absence of governance. Perhaps the innovating governors (sponsors) might take on the responsibility not only of selecting what to work on next, but also reducing the waste that comes from attempts to reduce risk.

Instead of filling development pipelines with many options, a less wasteful approach might be to see to it that options are continually generated and continually pruned. Keeping track of what is being learned–the knowledge created–is likely a key lever in avoiding innovating waste to begin with.
________________

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in November 2011. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Measuring Process or Making Progress?

2011-12-13T16:02:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make. An uneasy feeling rises up in me whenever I am in or near discussions to define measurements for use during the innovating process.

Measuring innovation after the fact (e.g., the classic X% of revenues or profit coming from products that the company was not making three years earlier, etc.) is certainly more reasonable than trying to measure innovating while you’re in the middle of it. Time-to-market, time-to-positive cash flow, or to time-to-break even, get close. But even these metrics are more hindsight than “now-sight.”

When you are in the midst of innovating—whether discovering a consumer pain, charting the topography surrounding a customer’s unmet need, inventing solutions, reducing a solution to practice, or iterating with inevitable adjustments—it is very difficult to find any objective metric that enables sponsors, managers or innovators themselves to avoid using their intuitive judgment.

It turns out, I am not alone in this uneasy feeling. One of my clients devoted considerable effort in developing just such a metric system for monitoring their in-process innovation portfolio. After several years, their enthusiasm for its usefulness has faded.

The need to monitor and measure is there for sure. But the ability to fill the need may be out of reach. Outputs can be measured. Inputs can certainly be measured as well. However, what may be impossible to measure is the “throughput” of content which is by definition “developing.” This content is forming and reforming into a prototypical instantiation, the ultimate value and success of which can only be determined when it enters the market. The more generative or creative the process, perhaps, the more difficult it is to measure and therefore manage—at least for those who ascribe to the management mantra of “you can only manage what you can measure.”

What happens in our desire to manage during the innovating process is that we measure what we can (the number of ideas, the nodes in our discovery networks, etc.). But just because something can be measured doesn’t mean that the resulting measure is important or useful. As Albert Einstein said, “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; and everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.”

This difficulty reflects some misplaced expectations that we can actually manage innovation in a fashion similar to the way we manage operating or production systems—systems that have produced data and left tracks that can be measured. Innovation systems are different in that what they produce—innovations—have produced little if any data that can be tracked until they have entered the market. And there is much about innovating that happens before that entrance.

At a recent gathering of veteran innovators in Denver in October, one of the participants, Andrew Zander, a veteran director of engineering of many instrument innovation efforts, said something simple, but very profound. My paraphrase, with apologies to Andy if I got it wrong, is as follows:

“We shouldn’t confuse process with progress when it comes to innovating. We can’t measure process (in any meaningful way), which may not be that important to measure in the end anyway. What is important, however, is to make progress, which we will not be able to determine until, at various points in time, we stop and assess what we have learned, determine where we are, and clarify what our next steps should be. When we compare these points, then we can determine whether we are making progress or not. Only when we have determined whether progress is being made or not, are we really in any position to make decisions.”

Perhaps the key point for innovators, sponsors and innovation midwives is to let go of our quixotic quests for innovation metrics and get down to the business of making and assessing progress, not process. Then we will know better what decisions we need to make; and then, of course, we need to make them.

For measuring during the innovating process, perhaps Italian physicist Enrico Fermi said it best: “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.”

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in November 2010. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Earning Follows Learning

2011-12-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

Just recently I heard several conversations suggesting a potentially troubling misperception about innovating and learning. One senior executive at a major manufacturer said to a subordinate about an innovation effort underway, “We pay you for what you know, not for what you can learn.” Another executive said, “We don’t train people anymore. We hire those with the know-how and expect them to bring it to work everyday.” A third executive, a veteran software architect, was bemoaning several incidences of places on product development road maps where it says “acquire” the sub-system, ignoring the fact that acquisition does not eliminate integration, something for which learning is required.

In these three snapshots, each from a different context, the intent of the company’s senior leadership may have been to emphasize urgency and speed of execution. However, the way the messages were expressed reveals a troubling perception: that productive work derives more from what is already known than from the ability to learn. Just the opposite is closer to the truth.

In the late 1990s, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi’s observed that it’s not what a company knows that creates wealth, but its ability to create new knowledge, which was introduced in their book The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. Shortly after, Al Ward—one of the more insightful commentators on Toyota’s Development System—defined innovation itself as “learning applied to creating value.” Then Arie de Geus, completing his 38 year career in Royal Dutch/Shell’s celebrated scenario planning group, coined the phrase “the learning organization,” where he said learning capability is the primary differentiating factor in a company’s longevity in his book, The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment (1997). One of the more serious “learning disabilities” companies suffer from is learning what learning itself is and how basic it is for effective innovating.

Having facilitated a variety of brainstorming sessions for more that 30 years, I am convinced of the direct correlation between the quality of the ideas flowing and the presence of learning going on, at the same time. When there is learning going on among the people generating the ideas, the ideas are more original, fresh and interesting to those generating them. When there is scant learning going on among those generating ideas, the ideas are more conventional. While the quantity and quality of ideas typically receive the most attention in brainstorming exercises, the flow of learning going on among and between the diverse and relevant experts may be as, if not more, important. This tends to be one of the dissatisfying aspects of internet-mediated idea generation exchanges: the ideas are flowing, but interactive learning is missing.

Not all learning is of the same type.

Learning by searching (enabled by Google, Wikipedia and networking) is likely a necessary first step not only to determine what has been thought of or tried already, but also to discover who the experts are and what they are saying. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by connecting.

Another type is called learning by expressing. When one expresses what has impressed, the learning that occurs is similar to what is learned when we are put in a position to teach. Writing as a form of expression is a healthy and rigorous discipline that forces learning. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by articulating.

There is also learning by doing–gaining first hand knowledge through direct experience, as in lab or field experiments. Learning by doing requires both time and a safe, insulated space to gain this kind of experience, given that learning is greater from mistakes made and corrected than successes enjoyed. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by embodying or reducing something to practice.

Then there is learning by collaborative problem solving. Learning in this manner with diverse and relevant experts is an effective and efficient way of reflecting on experience and exploring possibilities that would not otherwise be imagined. Thinking things through—in what Einstein referred to as thought experiments—is an especially productive form of learning by problem solving. Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to this as knowledge-creation that happens by empathizing.

Innovating requires the presence and mix of all four types of learning. The first lends itself to exchanges of information and knowledge and is enabled by a network social architecture for connecting to others. The other three types of learning happen where face-to-face dialogue occurs. Thinking out loud together breeds understanding. The Institute for Research on Learning taught us that learning occurs in community (not to be confused with networks). In these kinds of “learning spaces”—what Nonaka calls “ba” or a trusted, safe space between diverse experts—trust and collaboration can build sufficiently to carry the creative tension required for original and inventive thinking.

Learning to learn may be the secret so often missed by those who are quick to pursue a clever idea or too easily seduced by a seemingly bright idea—something that Peter Drucker referred to as the least reliable source of innovation. When the four types of learning are present and balanced, the quality of ideas flowing in and through our innovating efforts can improve significantly.

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in March 2011. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

The Collecting Habit and Innovation and The Inventor's "Junk Pile"

2011-11-29T14:18:00.000-08:00

“We'll know it when we see it.” That is what is often heard in response to questions about how concepts will ultimately be judged.

Yet “I’ll know it when I see it” is maddeningly subjective, especially for less experienced innovators. Some will attempt to eliminate or reduce this subjectivity as much as possible. Experienced innovators, on the other hand, have learned to not only accept it, but also to anticipate it.

Recently I had the privilege of talking shop with Don Toht, veteran designer and head of research and development at RC2, a leading producer and marketer of high quality innovative collectibles and toys targeted to adult collectors and children. We were comparing the similarities of playing and collecting (e.g., collection being a more “adult” kind of play). Don revealed an interviewing strategy he has cultivated over the years to assess the interviewee’s proclivities for creative work. Don asks the prospective designer to tell him about his or her collection (Don’s collection, by the way, is robots!). How one answers this question, Don suggests, has been a fairly reliable indicator not only of someone’s passionate interests, but of their creative potential as well.

Don’s strategy has the resonance of sound, practical wisdom. The principle behind it—using collecting as an indicator or window into someone’s interest and passion, not to mention a view into their creative skills—has been gnawing at me every since. When Dick Cheverton and I were working with Bill Wilson on the book, The Maverick Way, we thought there might be some significance to collecting. Bill had a passion for collecting that included rocks and gems, tools, miniature tin soldiers, and even life-sized tractors, not to mention his collection of people. A frequent caricature of the inventor pictures him with a junk pile nearby. “Almost all scientists start out as collectors,” says Elaine Hoagland, executive director of the Association of Systematic Collections. “Collecting teaches us to observe similarities and differences. In fact, children are the best at observing because they don’t have preconceived notions“(from Acquiring Minds by Lisa R. Price).

While there may not be a causal relationship between collecting and discovery, a hypothesis I would offer is that the two may be strongly correlated. In other words, collecting can increase the probability of significant discovery or as Voltaire said, “chance favors the prepared mind.”

Of all the idea generating sessions I have facilitated, I find the most productive ones (those efforts which produced something that made it into the marketplace) have been populated by people who had both mentally gained some distance from the core business and had immersed themselves in a new context or frame of reference. As a result, we typically counsel clients to not be too quick to jump to idea generation activities, until the core team has done its market discovery homework or has deep knowledge of the invention domain(s).

Collecting—prior to any formal idea generation—may be what those of us prone to confuse action with motion need to consider more often. Some form of collecting—whether artifacts, hypotheses, opinions, facts and/or observations—can help “prepare the mind” to increase the probability that serendipity will occur. Collecting can facilitate the immersion into a new frame of reference so necessary for the discovery of some new and proprietary insight, perspective, benefit or truth. The collection itself may even develop an aesthetic sensitivity on the part of the collector to enable the ability to recognize a truly elegant and fitting idea from one that is simply new.

Larry Pillote, a master and veteran innovator at Sealed Air Corporation, uses the term “cute” with investing sponsors to describe innovations that meet or exceed their explicit and implicit criteria. I suspect that the ability to recognize and differentiate ‘cute’ from less attractive candidates may have something to do with a life long habit of curiosity, collecting and connecting that experienced innovators like Pillote and Toht so ably demonstrate.

The Inventor's "Junk Pile"

By Lee Murrah

Johnny once told me that every inventor needs a well-stocked junk pile. He said it as if it were a requirement and not merely a strong recommendation. Before he gave up his workshop at age 80 and moved to an apartment, Johnny had an outstanding junk pile to go with the 55 or so patents he had accumulated in his career as an engineer.

Johnny’s junk pile was out behind the shop, under a scrub tree with unkempt grass growing all around and a dead briar from last summer curling up through a rusted roll of barbed wire salvaged from a long forgotten Texas Hill Country fence. The junk pile had a little of everything—an automobile axle here, some used water pipe there, some angle iron to the side, and a piece of corrugated steel protecting a few rusty pieces of re-bar, some with small chunks of concrete still attached. Several pieces of scrap steel with odd-shaped cutouts leaned on parts of an old windmill.

Johnny could slide open the back doors to his shop, and there was the junk pile only a few steps from his cutting torch and welding machine. Johnny could build anything from that junk pile. Had he decided to build a nuclear reactor to power his home, a visitor no doubt would soon have seen a glow arising from his shop. The reactor would without doubt have incorporated a differential from 1964 Coupe de Ville scavenged from his junk pile.

Johnny had always had an affinity for junk piles. When he was a teenager, he found dozens of wrecked Ford Model Ts at the local dump. From this jumble of car parts, he assembled a dozen or so operating vehicles. He left them parked on a hill on the family farm when he went off to World War II as an artillery officer. When he returned, he found to his chagrin that his father had donated them as scrap for the war effort.

War, of course, is another junk pile story—war creates the ultimate junk pile. Life was better in Johnny’s company because of those things he made from salvaged parts found, or “liberated”, along the war torn European roads. After he found a DC motor and rigged it up as a generator to a gasoline engine, he regularly lighted two tents—his, and the commanding officer’s.

Johnny’s ability to work with junk led to one of the most amazing war stories I ever heard. Just after landing his artillery battery on the Italian mainland, he faced a swarm of charging panzers. When Johnny’s men attempted to load their howitzers to return fire, they found that the shell cases had been bent in the rough Mediterranean crossing and would not fit into the gun’s breech. Facing annihilation, Johnny grabbed an axe and told his men to stand back. He used the flat face of the axe to drive the shells into the howitzer. He knew that if his blows were flat the axe would not strike the shell’s firing pin. One errant blow and Johnny was a goner! But it worked! Johnny’s men copied his desperate method, and they drove off the panzers!

Johnny’s wife, Wy, is an artist—a painter. Seemingly, their philosophies could not be more different. To Johnny it doesn’t matter what it looks like so long as it works. To Wy it doesn’t matter whether it works so long as it looks good. But look a little deeper though, and you will see that Johnny is an artist too—his brush is a cutting torch and his canvas is out there behind the shop in the junk pile.

Johnny’s junk pile was a magnificent thing. When most people look at a junk pile, they see an ugly tangle of rusty things with sharp edges to cut fingers, heavy things to smash toes, and maybe even a rattlesnake under that disordered pile of galvanized water pipe. When Johnny looked at his junk pile, though, he saw free parts for his projects. But he saw more—possibilities. Johnny’s junk pile was not just junk—it was also inspiration—an amalgam of ideas and the means to carry them out.

Creating—whether the medium is Wy’s paint and canvas or Johnny’s steel and welding rod—is about “seeing” differently. Johnny could “see” things that others could not—just as Wy saw beauty when she painted her Hill Country landscapes. Johnny has a God-given talent for seeing, but he used his junk pile to even better focus his mind’s eye.

A junk pile is a collection of disparate parts and pieces, but it is more than that. It is a catalog of seemingly unrelated ideas embodied in shapes, structures, and mechanisms that can be harvested, modified, and re-used. Those that are fans of the "Junk Yard Wars," which appears on The Learning Channel, watch as participants race around junk yards looking for parts and mechanisms to use in building their contraptions. As often as not they fail to find what they are looking for. Instead they find something else that works as well or that may inspire them to design and even better junkyard marvel.

A junk pile not only provides ideas, it suggests new ones by placing unrelated ideas in unusual and random juxtaposition. In the real world a windmill gear would never be located next to an automobile steering shaft; and a home water heater would not lie atop a Chevy V-8 engine. This collision of ideas that occurs only in corroded piles of scrap spurs creativity.

Creativity in one sense is bringing disparate ideas together in new, random ways and contexts that suggest new functionality. Recall that Samuel Colt got the idea for his famous revolver by watching a ship’s paddle wheel. Nikola Tesla was inspired to invent the AC motor by watching the sun arc cross the sky while sitting in a Bucharest park. By requiring that his junk pile be well stocked, Johnny increased the number of ideas and potential random combinations.

To most observers a junk pile is an end, a graveyard for formerly useful things. But Johnny knew that under the rust and beneath the weeds were concepts waiting to be reborn. All a junk pile really needs is a Johnny to explore the possibilities.

The author, Lee Murrah, retired a few years ago as chief intellectual property counsel at ArvinMeritor. He wrote this article about his friend, John D. Bennett, who is over 80 years old and lives in Walls Falls, Texas. He is retired from Sunoco.

These articles were originally published in Innovating Perspectives in June 2003. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

The Free Range: A Well-Spring for Corporate Renewal

2011-11-22T10:31:00.000-08:00

By Jane Gannon

While much of the territory once referred to as “free range” has long since been purchased, plowed or otherwise domesticated, another free range may be coming into view. This free range is about intellectual more than geographic territories. It is where ideas mix with theories, facts and the creative, inventive spirit. It is the place where new trends are born and old proclivities are transformed. It is a place where the boundaries that are crossed are more perceptual than geographic or political. It is a vast and rich territory that surrounds most every corporation, yet it remains unexplored and often ignored by many.

Few have experienced the potential that resides in these spaces. Fewer still have actually spent their careers mining this place for the seeds of innovation and corporate renewal.

In mid-October, a group of veteran free range riders convened for a Mavericks Workshop in Tiburon, California. Experiences from multiple crossings of the invisible but distinct boundaries that exist between corporate “pastures” and the corporate free range were shared. Of great interest to this group was the role and contributions of the maverick in corporate innovation and renewal.

Dick Cheverton, a top editor at the Orange County Register, who is writing the soon-to-be published book, The Maverick Way, kicked off the workshop by describing mavericks as those who straddle both the pastures of corporate life and the relatively vast, rule-less, and yet-to-be domesticated free spaces, which are rich with potential for corporate growth and innovation.

By being “unbranded,” the maverick moves freely within an organization, cuts across lines of power, brings people and ideas together, bends the rules and subverts authority. The maverick also moves freely outside the corporation, probing and exploring areas and developing relationships whose relevance to the corporation may not be readily evident, but frequently leads to significant innovations. Mavericks are motivated more by their love of freedom to pursue their interests. Mavericks use the corporation in which they work as a place to pursue this freedom, despite the corporation’s own ambivalence towards them.

While the workshop was titled, “Protecting Mavericks,” it became readily apparent that many of those gathered did not need or want protecting. Many did concede, however, that early in their maverick careers they did have “protectors.”

Bill Wilson, the retired Vice President of Innovation Management at Kimberly-Clark Corporation, who, as a master maverick, is the inspiration for The Maverick Way, suggested that the maverick poses a unique management challenge. By their nature, mavericks operate on the free range, between the confines of corporate boundaries and the wilderness of potential entrepreneurial opportunity. Working with mavericks requires different skills and philosophy.

Wilson defined a maverick as one who:

• thinks and acts in an unpredictable manner that results in innovative ways of living;

• doesn’t take no for an answer;

• doesn’t ask, and doesn’t tell;

• knows the network, the territory and where to go to get help;

• knows that where there is a will there is a way; and

• gets the insight into the product vision.

Leo Shapiro, Chairman of Leo Shapiro & Associates, who is a master trend spotter and analyst, described the various stages a maverick goes through as scapegoat, prophet and trailblazer. Despite being considered out of the mainstream, mavericks are in part defined by the “company they keep,” which is rarely limited to one company, field or area of expertise. Mavericks tend to operate as a member of a group that exists in his or her own mind rather than only as a member of the group of persons who are physically present.

Shapiro views the challenge of mavericks is to tell the corporation what it doesn’t want to hear. Successful mavericks have learned how to do that and not get terminated. As a result, mavericks are prey more often than predators, and have learned to be very aware and quick to react.

The workshop provided a chance for corporate mavericks to meet, share stories and ideas, and network with one another, an opportunity which all of the participants found valuable.

To keep this conversation and network of Mavericks forging ahead on the free range, we are promoting further discussion. Please call us if you would like more information on mavericks, the workshop, the book, or the Maverick Roundtable.

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in November 1998. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Complementary Innovation

2011-11-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

By Jim O'Shaughnessy

Targeted invention efforts complement a company’s organic innovation processes and thus have come to be dubbed “complementary innovation” or “non-organic innovation” to compare or contrast them with the former, more familiar innovation activities. The rationale for these complementary activities is rooted in the practical: no company can possibly afford to address every innovation challenge confronting it through its normal resource allocation process, yet no company can remain fully exposed to the innovation threats imposed by vigorous competition. This gap between necessity and affordability is the niche of complementary innovation.

The technique was born with a specific challenge in mind. In the early 1990s, Advanced Micro Devices was on the horns of a dilemma. It was paying Intel very substantial patent license fees it could ill afford but required the license from Intel as a market enabler. Intel’s portfolio was size dominant and AMD was compelled to true up the balance with cash.

This situation inspired the first targeted invention effort. Over a reasonable period of time AMD was able to complement the patent portfolio realized from its ongoing investments in organic innovation with new additions from this complementary process to achieve its goal of a strategic patent balance with Intel. AMD eventually cross-licensed with Intel at par. The complementary innovation strategy met its intended objective there—bulking up the size and diversity of the AMD portfolio to be found economically equivalent to Intel’s portfolio.

Similarly, at Rockwell we were disadvantaged for years in cross licensing in the field of telecommunications with AT&T and its patent successor, Lucent. We broke the paradigm in a way different from the approach we had previously adopted with AMD but based on certain principles that became evident in our work there.

Targeted invention efforts can contribute considerably to the negotiation calculus and dynamics. This can be exemplified by Rockwell’s negotiations with Lucent, assuredly a dominant party in telecommunications, where we used workshops to build quickly the size of our communications portfolio in comparison to historical organic innovation efforts. This had the added benefit of increasing patent velocity dramatically. In crafting the portfolio, and mindful of the typical lognormal value distribution that comes from historic practices, we determined to add to the portfolio based on a simple but powerful premise: patent things important to others, in this case, Lucent.

We took this aphorism one step further: determine where Lucent was vulnerable and patent into its weaknesses. Patents applied to points of vulnerability or weaknesses have greater blocking potential and can be felt by the other party to have greater relevance to its business. And, because we had a more favorable leverage ratio in the implicated market, the negotiation turned an important corner that favored Rockwell over the then dominant party.

This result did not occur overnight either in crafting the necessary portfolio, negotiating the cross license more favorably to Rockwell, or eventually in realizing the benefits of the investment.

Complementary innovation is often used as a hedge. On the premise that no company can afford all the organic innovation it needs, here targeted invention can populate the portfolio with patents useful later as the company negotiates its entrée to the market otherwise foreclosed by competitor’s patents except perhaps at very high costs. The technique can also be used well in advance of market entry to begin developing a portfolio capable of sheltering the investments to be made as part of the strategic plan.
I have worked with many companies in many countries in many and diverse industries that use these and like practices to target gaps in their portfolios when assessing the capabilities of their patents to secure the desired or necessary objectives. This is a hallmark of complementary actions.

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in March 2008. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Innovation Playgrounds: Keep them close

2011-11-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

While necessity may be the mother of invention, play is quite likely its father. — Editor’s Note

By Stuart Brown, M.D.

Necessity and play are rarely allowed to be seen together, particularly in or corporate innovation efforts. Operating realities tend to foster a necessity-born urgency which has no time for "play", Necessity so easily and frequently couples with fear (e.g., of the competitive threat that is knocking at the door) that inventions never happen. Father play never gets even close enough to mother necessity to even meet, much less…(well you get the point).

This largely self-imposed separation generally means that we have lost the intuitively operative key to new discovery that every freed up kid knows by being alive. An example is in order:

I am looking at a toy truck. My mood is light, and memories flow. I see in my mind’s eye my grandson playing with it as he did yesterday. His glee, vroom-vroom motor noises, enthusiasm, and great spontaneity, bring back to me, via my imagination a joyful state of body-mind.

Then I see and feel myself at age 4 on the floor with my little yellow dump truck. As I reflect happily, I am mentally in 3 time frames simultaneously: I’m in the here-and-now, the scene of yesterday and the past. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, without a break in mood, I know how I will deal effectively with a problem that has been bugging me for some time. I've got a solution, where before I had none.

What’s going on here, and can we bottle it?

A short explanation linked to evidence-based play observations goes like this (while not yet hard science, it is close). Imagine that my brain is being recorded by the latest brain imaging equipment. As the visual image sparked by the toy makes its way through the anatomic paths in my brain nature has designed, the specific pattern of “truck” hits my visual cortex and leaves specific "truck" electroencephalographic blips. This in-the-brain sequence once was thought to be sufficient for the brain to recognize this as a truck. Not so. We all “see” (and hear and feel, etc.) in much more complex and contextually organizing ways than was once physiologic dogma. What we now know is in that short instant of spontaneous brain activity before I “know” it is a truck, a 10-fold automatic feedback system roars into action, energized, guided and lit up in large part by the playful “state” of the moment.

Each neuro-physiologic sequence of the here-and-now sensory signals, coupled with the near instant interactions with the there-and-then stored signals in memory drive this 10-fold feedback system; each piece of this amazing integrated event, a play-directed symphony. Simultaneously, as long as the fun lasts, more and more of the superfluous “uncommitted” neurons that form play-incited and play-related circuits are recruited. Not a bad design, Seems necessary for fun, planning for an unexpected future, and more. The fMRI, SPECT and PET scans confirm that this play-evoked process lights up the brain, particularly the “highest” prefrontal cortical areas like nothing else.

If my state of mind-body had been anxious, fearful, angry, time pressured, sad, hungry, or anything but playful, the integrated problem solving experience that “found me” would very likely have been missed.

In short, I was, at the moments above, in my own private playground. [And by having a good time on the 'playground', I was able to invent a solution (or did it discover me?) that I may not have discovered as easily or at all!

The day before yesterday, my playground was the annual TED meeting in Monterey, with periodic states of play induced by sparkling speakers, action packed presentations, all containing more complex objects of Technology, Entertainment and Design than my grandson’s truck. But the contagious search for novelty, which is part of maintaining a state of play, was in the air, confirming for me the value for adults to gather at their playgrounds.

Wherever you are in your pursuit of excellence, happiness, and preparation for the future, play belongs. It is not trivial, it can be achieved by the most compulsive and driven of us, and its by-products are worth the personal search for it… if, as is common, it has been lost or buried by the demands of the day.

“I don’t go to work, I go to play. If you allow yourself a bit of time to try stuff out before you get serious, before you make plans, before you say “this is the schedule of inventions going forward,” you can get a feeling in your finger tips for what could happen if you do something.” Floris Jansen, GE global research (from an imagination notebook, a gift to TED participants, 2006).

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in March 2006. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.