The Aesthetics of Innovating: Sixth Sense of Innovators

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.    

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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

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.

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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

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.
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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

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®.
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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

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?

 

One day, this DIY guy went to the local hardware store to buy a saw for a tree-cutting project. The hardware store clerk showed him various makes and models before finally presenting him the premier chainsaw. “This one will cut four cords a day, guaranteed.” This was enough to convince this hard worker to buy it and take it home, full of hope and expectation.  The next day the proud owner of the new chainsaw ate a hearty breakfast before tackling his trees. He worked very hard until late in the afternoon, then he took a break and  measured how  many cords he 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.   The following day, determined to achieve the four cord guarantee, he got up earlier and worked later; and when he had finished for the day, he found that he had only cut two cords of wood, still a full two cords shy of what the clerk had promised him. So the third day, he got up even earlier and worked non-stop all day until it was too dark to see. But still, when he measured his output for the day he had cut only three cords.    Now he was certain there was something wrong  with  the  saw.  The next  day,  he took it back to the hardware store, put it down on the counter in front of the same clerk who had sold it to him and complained, “There is something wrong with this chain saw. I worked from early morning to late at night and all I could get was three cords! You guaranteed me four.”  The clerk carefully examined the chainsaw. The blades looked sharp. The chain slid through the bar effortlessly. He checked for oil. Everything seemed to be in order. “Well,” the clerk said, “let's go outside and start her up.” The two went outside and after just one pull of the starter cord the chainsaw started with a roar. The diligent do-it-yourself-er jumped back startled and exclaimed, “What's that noise?”

•    •    •

Are we using our skills and knowledge in the best way we can? This is a perennial question that follows stewards of innovation management systems. Are we fully using the competencies that we have, or are we cutting wood the old fashion way, even with a chainsaw in our hands?  Answering this question in the context of operational routines—where the skills, knowledge and experience resident in our organization are already aligned with fairly well defined tasks—is one thing.

Answering this question in the context of innovation efforts, where neither the context is known nor are routines established, is another thing altogether.    How we define a person's skills, knowledge and experience is determined in part by the times and places wherein they have applied those skills and knowledge in the past. Dorothy Leonard was getting at this innovation management dilemma when she observed how core competencies can become core rigidities when specialization becomes captive to what is relevant only to established routines.     Applying the skills, knowledge and experience developed in one operational context to the emergent realities of an innovation context requires a healthy dose of adaptation and improvisation. It is this willingness, confidence, and faith to improvise and be flexible that ends up being the more precious resource. And this is a resource that may be more responsive to invitation, experimentation, and playfulness (innovation efforts) than to conservation, preservation, and control (operations).    Asking the best and brightest in our organizations to take what they are good at and adapt and improvise may indeed be the best way to avoid cutting the wood of opportunities the old fashion way and innovate our way into the future, instead of 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

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

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.