The Fuzzy Front End of New Product Development

Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. As one of the prolific inventors of all time, Edison undoubtedly knew what he was talking about. However, I don’t believe he ever indicated which comes first, the inspiration or the perspiration.

Generally it is assumed that inspiration precedes the sweaty work of invention. But recently my appreciation has grown for the perspiration that precedes inspiration, the labor that yields the powerful one-percent of which Edison spoke. The old adage “chance favors the prepared mind” speaks of the same truth.

Many companies are chronically dissatisfied with meager returns from their innovation efforts. This dissatisfaction may stem partly from an impatient and premature rush to generate new ideas. Managers with responsibility for new products or other innovation initiatives are under pressure to show progress for their efforts. In their rush to results, they can jump too quickly into the creative phase looking to the idea generation process as the way to get inspired. But without spending appropriate time and energy to discover, examine and understand the entrepreneurial opportunity, the corresponding innovation is undernourished.  And this malnutrition results in weak, uninspired ideas, not to mention a lot of sweat.

When the generation of ideas substitutes itself for the discovery and understanding of an entrepreneurial opportunity, then creativity is easily misdirected. Insight-less idea generation has left many innovation efforts stuffed with activity but starved for substance. What inspiration we can muster is focused on opportunities that are often too small or offer insufficient promise to compete for resources from corporate initiatives. 

Business planning and idea generation are absolutely necessary in new business, category or product development efforts. However, they often do not yield the kind of inspiration that direct observation and discovery can when done explicitly and purposefully. This discovery phase has been called “the fuzzy front end” of new product development.

A central task of the fuzzy front end is to get in front of the trends before everyone else; in other words, to discover underlying changes in behavior that reveal new trends before they are generally recognized.  Devoting appropriate time and attention to the fuzzy front end of innovation efforts before jumping into the planning and idea generation phases, can help managers make better decisions regarding which new opportunities to pursue.

The fuzzy front end—the perspiration that precedes the inspiration—is more about discovery than planning, more about observing changes in human behavior than analyzing market behavior, and more about creatively anticipating trends than analyzing existing trends, product categories or competitive behavior.

The fuzzy front end demands a willingness by managers to be lost for a while. The nature of the work in this phase is entrepreneurial and unfolding rather than managerial and administrative. Many managers spend insufficient time, patience and effort in the fuzzy front end of innovation.

Lack of attention to fuzzy front end is not surprising given the discomfort of uncertainty often felt during this phase. But doing the fuzzy front end of an innovation effort well and patiently can help address the chronic dissatisfaction companies have with the new product process.  In the end, an inspired, entrepreneurial observation may be even more valuable to a company than a creative idea.

For example, in the 1970s, research consultants were looking for new business opportunities for the Kimberly-Clark Corporation. In their search they uncovered two seemingly unrelated facts. Once had to do with the demographic trend heralding a burgeoning older population. The other fact came from the medical community—a significant percentage of people over the age of 65 years experience incontinence. These two facts were then related and coupled with a new non-woven technology called Coform, which was invented by a Kimberly-Clark engineer. This combination led not only to a new product, Dependsä, but also gave birth to a new market, product category and a very successful new business.

A large part of the entrepreneurial challenge for established companies is to find an idea that is big enough to warrant the investment despite the risk and to divert resources from other priorities, yet related enough to corporate interests that it makes sense to pursue. It is not simply a question of fit. It is a question of fit and the size of the opportunity.

The dual challenge of the fuzzy front end is to both discover what is new and find the vocation of your organization.

Almost a decade ago, Peter Drucker made a similar point in his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship.  He said, “There is actually no empirical evidence at all for the belief that persistence pays off in pursuing the brilliant idea. Bright ideas are the riskiest and least successful source of innovative opportunities. The casualty rate is enormous. Most successful innovations are far more prosaic. They exploit change. And thus the discipline of innovation is a diagnostic discipline: a systematic examination of the areas of change that typically offers entrepreneurial opportunities. 

So where do you look for inspiration? The perspiration that precedes inspiration requires both an outward and inward search. Many have made the mistake of doing only one or the other, not both. The dual challenge of the fuzzy front end is to discover what is new and find the vocation for your organization.

The outward search can be as simple and mundane as simply getting out, wandering around and making observations, especially of people who are experimenting with new ways of living and working.  More formal activities can include various scanning activities, listening to customers in roundtables, “unfocused” focus groups, and structured or unstructured interviews, conducting expert panels with technologists and leading industry analysts. The goal is to identify the early indicators of significant change. A good way to do this is to make your own observations.

The inward search should be driven by an attempt to understand the underlying causes of expected events, results and discrepancies between what is and what ought to be in the context of the current business.  Surprise results, even when they are successes, should be closely watched. They may be the early warning signs of major change.

The fuzzy front end should be approached with a balance of curiosity, open-mindedness and humility.  And though it may not be very comfortable to put ourselves in the middle of ambiguity, it can bring us closer to an entrepreneurial opportunity your competition does not see. As the French writer and philosopher Voltaire noted, “Doubt may be an uncomfortable state, but certainly is a ridiculous one.” 

 

Potential Sources for Innovation

The following are symptoms of change worthy of our attention as they are likely to signal underlying opportunity for innovation. These sources are listed in descending order of predictability and reliability; yet those sources later in the list represent higher rewards for those who do succeed.

1.     Unexpected events and results.

2.     Incongruities

3.     Process needs

4.     Structural changes in industry or market

5.     Demographic changes

6.     Changes in values, attitudes and perceptions

7.     Arrival of new knowledge

 8.     The “bright” idea

  Sources from Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles by Peter F. Drucker

 

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in October 1995. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Strategic Patenting

Most people think of patenting after something has been “invented.” Increasingly, many corporations are patenting before the invention has been demonstrated physically (but after it has been conceived).

Lee Murrah, a patent attorney with a passion for innovation at Meritor Automotive, has come up with a “Window on Patent Values.” Murrah's window offers a clarifying perspective on the underlying motivations for patenting inventions. His window also describes the different types of invention workshops we have organized and facilitated over the past five years. 

Instead of waiting for the moment of invention before applying for a patent (i.e., “retrospective,” or patenting after the fact), many corporations are patenting the results of “thought experiments” (i.e., “prospective,” or patenting before the fact). While many regard “prospective” patents as merely “paper patents,” increasingly these prospective patents are commanding respect from rather large corporations.

Many view the value of patents as relevant only to technology that falls within the scope of their current business. However, as companies like Texas Instruments are demonstrating, owning intellectual property in areas outside your current scope of business may provide you with not only a healthy source of income from fees, but also leverage with competitors, suppliers and even customers.  

What value a patent retains for the holder depends upon where it shows up in the Patent Window. Retrospective patents most often prevent copying and are written that way. However, retrospective patents can also be created and used to gain leverage with other players in the industry, even where there is much prior art. Someone may, for example, patent a better way to implement another's invention, thereby gaining some bargaining power with the “original” patent holder. Prospective patents, on the other hand, can either preserve the envisioned future, or they can “prospect” options that attract other inventions, investment and ultimately, by means of technology, influence end-user behavior.

What are your patents worth?  It all depends upon what your are trying to accomplish with them. But whatever your reasons, conceptual inventions (that you patent) may be a cost effective way to strengthen your portfolio and preserve your options.

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in March 1999. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 460-1313.

Aimed Invention

Like a golfer's swing, the invention process is a highly complex “movement” that ironically resists any direct attempts of the mind to control it. It responds as much to an intuitive feel for the art as it does to a cognitive analysis. And just as every golfer longs for that elusive repeatable swing, so every company would relish a greater degree of predictability to the invention process.

If only we could simply point our engineers in the right direction, let them have at it, and be guaranteed that we will get something that we can use, either in pre-commercial or commercial development. However, like most golfers' swings, there are variations due to stiff muscles, course conditions, how the ball is sitting on the turf, wind direction, humidity, etc. And the combination of all these factors determines whether the moment of contact between club and ball produces the intended result, or something else.

For several years now we have been organizing and facilitating invention workshops with a growing number of clients.  Increasingly, many of these companies have realized not only that they may have some “Rembrandts in the Attic” in the form of under-exploited patents, but that they have potential future Picasso’s in their engineering and scientific communities. Furthermore, many of these companies are taking steps to do what can be done to increase the probability—though not guaranteed—that their aimed, collaborative invention efforts will produce useable and even intended results.

The legendary golf teacher, Harvey Pennick, had this sage advice for golfers: “Take dead aim.” Pennick’s advice may be just as applicable to a company’s invention efforts. How companies are "taking dead aim" can vary, but many of their methods involve bringing together three different perspectives—past, future and peripheral vision—when aiming their invention efforts.

Looking at what has happened in the past and how it has led up to where we are now can be useful in giving us a sense of perspective, not only on prior art, but also on where things might be headed in terms of both market and technology development.

Several years ago we were facilitating an invention workshop with a small group of engineers who verbally and non-verbally were saying "There is (or will be) nothing new in this area.” “What can be invented already has been invented” (to quote a previous patent commissioner!). Then, quite by accident, we ask them to create a chronology of the eras of prior art in this domain. These engineers took very little time to agree on the eras, both by duration and name. And when they had finished reconstructing a technological chronology of the various eras, we asked them simply “what's might you call the next era, the one we are headed for right now”? The response was surprising. Not only did they all agree on the next era, each engineer became re-engaged and highly motivated in the technical challenge; and we had one of our more productive invention workshops. 

Looking to the future and identifying the emerging technology and market trends is not as difficult as it might at first appear. This can be done with varying degrees of thoroughness. However, we have been continually surprised at how quickly the major factors shaping a different tomorrow can be identified and agreed upon. Those factors about which there remains significant debate can lead to productive research. But where there is agreement reveals where additional patentable inventions are needed to fill out the company's portfolio.

Making assumptions about the future explicit is but one way of surfacing where the “white space” may be. Scenarios are another tool not only to raise awareness of how tomorrow will likely be different than today, but to help a company prepare for these differences.

Competitive analysis, patent mapping and other analytical tools and techniques can all help provide a company with the peripheral vision necessary to understand its current and likely future competitive context. We frequently ask select groups of business leaders to articulate what they believe to be true about the future. In doing so collaboratively with their fellow business leaders, productive differences of opinion quickly surface in a non-threatening way (who among us has a crystal ball on the future?), such that the group can work with and through these differences before attempting to formulate a strategy.

Debating different beliefs and assumptions about what the future holds can be a much more productive exercise in which to engage leadership. It tends to focus the debate on where markets or technology is headed and minimizes the blurring affect that political agendas can have on peripheral vision. This is but another way to efficiently identify where the “white spaces” of opportunity might be—prime targets for aimed invention efforts.

Just as a golfer shouldn't swing the club so hard or fast as to lose his or her balance, so preparation for an aimed invention process should attempt to stay “balanced” with the right mix of perspectives and expertise from within the company, with a proper upright posture to ensure the movement is natural and free flowing. Just remember Pennick's sound wisdom for both golfers and inventors: “take dead aim.”

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in June 2001. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 460-1313.

Authentic Collaboration

Innovations will increasingly occur at the “seams.” This is especially true for innovations required by the so-called “grand challenges” of society (e.g., global warming, terrorism, incurable diseases, etc.) and even the grand challenges of our commercial enterprises (e.g., sustainable packaging, hydrogen vs. carbon based technology, etc.).  I suspect it has some truth to the not-as-grand innovation challenges of companies as well.

We have been hearing this prediction from many different quarters. Most recently we heard it from David Kelley (of the design firm IDEO and now at Stanford University); but David added an interesting implication. If more needed innovations will arise from the spaces “in-between” traditional disciplines or classical functions, we will need not only deep expertise—“deep” in knowledge within the respective function or discipline; but we will also need experts who can quickly establish, build and maintain what we would like to call “authentic collaboration.”

Kelley referred to this “T-shaped” capability in those who have technical depth (the vertical part) and an ability to connect with others outside their immediate expertise (the horizontal part). We have observed this ourselves repeatedly, especially in our collaborative invention practice.

The evidence is all around us. Procter & Gamble is changing the way it thinks about research and development. For P&G, it is no longer simply R&D; it is now C&D (connect and develop), by which they mean not only good lateral thinking abilities, but also experience and competence in networking with others, inside and outside the company. Henry Chesbrough’s Open Innovation is a manifesto for authentic collaboration, drawing heavily from the experiences (good and bad) of Xerox PARC. The open source movement, so instrumental in the development of the Linux operating system—the first legitimate rival to Microsoft’s de facto monopoly, is another example.

Nanotechnology may be itself an “interdisciplinary discipline”—a perspective and science that due to both size and geometrically induced functionality—cuts collaborative channels across multiple and varied disciplines, forging new conduits between need streams and innovation streams. If we were to look at any of our client’s various innovation efforts over the past several years, it would be safe to say that the “in-between” space played a significant role.

If skills in authentic collaboration are going to be increasingly critical for innovation efforts in the “seams,” what are the essential elements of authentic collaboration?  We would appreciate hearing your views. In the meantime, here is a start at what makes for authentic collaboration, whether within the boundaries of a company or across its borders:

• Sufficient over-lap: As a practical matter, there need to be a sufficient over-lap of interest, motivation, experience and/or even expertise for authentic collaboration to occur. Without at least some degree of over-lap, collaborations are difficult to sustain for long enough to get results. Furthermore, while diversity of expertise is a necessary characteristic of the mix of expertise assembled for any sustained or ad-hoc innovation effort, it is possible to have too much diversity, making it difficult for participants to conduct anything more than transactional kinds of interactions—far from collaboration.

• Trusted sharing: As our body’s vascular system distributes oxygen through the blood stream—critical the health of the body’s subsystems and organs, so the often tacit, two-way exchange of intelligence, experience, ideas, knowledge and skills—the “oxygen” of our innovation efforts—is distributed and flows in direct proportion to the trust between players in the network, community of practice or organization. When trust is lacking, the “veins” constrict, slowing down the free exchange of ideas, knowledge and intelligence, and starving our innovations efforts of their essential oxygen.

• Empathy: When actual or potential partners are so absorbed in their own needs and objectives that they have little room or patience left for understanding and accommodating the interests of the other, collaborations will become transactional, at best. And while transactional relationships can be quite useful and productive, the demands of innovation efforts—especially innovations “in-between”—require relationships with more depth, commitment and longevity. Authentic collaboration requires give and take. All take or all give is typically short lived. Innovation efforts are more about influence than control, and there typically place a premium on relationship skills more than transactional skills. 

Authentic collaboration (some born out of so-called ‘creative collisions’), may undoubtedly have other additional elements, some viewed as essential. However, the most productive collaborations—at least those related to innovation efforts—occur in the context of a “community of practice.” These networks of practitioners get established, built and maintained largely on the authentic collaboration that occurs within them.

The Institute for Research on Learning coined the phrase “community of practice” several years ago when it discovered that real learning occurs in a social context—in essence, “in community.” Furthermore, practical learning, upon which successful innovations efforts are so heavily dependent, is learning that derives from one practitioner working with another, engaged in solving a problem together. Hence, “community of practice.” 

It is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify, measure or place a value on the communities of practices that exist (and form and reform) within our companies, and even those that cross the borders of our companies. However, as the social capital that is so essential to sustaining a stream of innovations, communities of practices, and the authentic collaboration they are built with, may be the hidden treasure few of our enterprises can do without.  

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We have been exploring and charting these innovation networks, communities of practices, and collaborations with subscribers to the Innovation Practitioners Network. For more information, please call us at (415) 387-1270 or visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com.

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in September 2004. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.

Innovation's Dew Points

When moisture in the air reaches a certain temperature and density, dew forms. Mist becomes water. Gas becomes liquid. Then, when water reaches a certain temperature and is still for long enough, ice crystals form. Water becomes ice; liquid transforms itself into a solid. 

Phase changes still hold magic and mystery, despite all the explanations of physics, perhaps because of them.

Innovations themselves also seem to go through phase changes. An innovation moves from the early, more gaseous state of words, concepts and sketches, to a more liquid state of experiments and actions, simulations and observations, to a more solid state of what one of our clients calls a stable product. Managing through these phase changes takes a tremendous about of energy—not to mention, patience—waiting for (and possibly encouraging) the right combination of external conditions and 'internal' readiness to develop. 

The physicists among you will know better whether phase changes in the physical world actually take more energy than do developments within the same state leading up to a phase change. You are also likely to know more about the mystery and magic of these phase changes in the natural world. However, unlike the science and predictability of phase changes with known materials, the timings of phase changes with innovations are difficult, if not impossible, to predict. Some can surprise us by how quickly they show up. Others never seem to happen at all. 

Several years ago one of our clients essentially lost patience with an innovation that appeared to have been "in development" for too long. The new product concept and prototypes represented what many thought was a new category niche, in between two other well-known categories. Partly out of frustration, and partly out of the need to show something for the effort, the lead developer finally declared a ship date—the crystallization point. Such a declaration certainly shifted individuals' priorities. Organizationally, a phase change was underway. However, the product itself remained in the liquid state. It was introduced only to have it withdrawn in less than a year.

Unlike many other companies for whom failure in the market is equated with the last nail in the coffin, this client took the failure as simply a sign that the phase change--the crystallization they had been hoping for, had not occurred. This did not mean that it could not occur. It just hadn't happened yet. They realized that they hadn't quite gotten all the external conditions to line up well enough with the internal factors. They did not know enough about what made for crystallization with this product. 

Eighteen months later, after some reworking of the product and some rewording of the message, the reintroduced version is doing better in the market than the first one. The second time around hasn't been exactly the charm for which they were hoping; however, they haven't given up because of first “failure.” In fact, they remain even more convinced of the opportunity, along with their own need for more patience, understanding and attempts to find what will make for the phase change they need for a stable product. This client knew from experience that phase changes go both ways: that they could return to the previous gaseous state and rethink and rework, knowing that “getting it right the first time” is largely a fantasy when it comes to innovation efforts.

What needs to happen at innovation dew points and innovation crystallization points may be different enough to make the former a poor predictor of the latter. This is one reason why productive experimentation is so essential to both the development and commercialization efforts for innovations. Given that we are dealing with novelty, the 'science' of what we are working with hasn't matured enough to give us certainty as to when and where dew or crystals will form. Hence, Stephan Thomke's counsel (from Experimentation Matters) is worth remembering: experiment early and often, and in the field. The more concrete evidence we can experience first hand at the dew (or are they “do”) points, the more confidence we may gain that our innovation is ripe enough for prime time.  

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) 460-1313.

Nurture and Nature in Parenting Innovations

Twenty-five years ago I was lucky enough to find myself under the tutelage of a veteran innovator. His small group at Kimberly-Clark Corporation was called at the time “Exploratory Projects”—a name befitting the open-endedness of our charter. Shortly after I signed on, the name of the group was changed to Innovation Management. 

The group's reaction to the name change was mixed. Some of us felt vindicated. With a new name like Innovation Management, we now we had corporate legitimacy (instead of being “legitimate crazies,” as some were fond of calling us). Others felt an impending loss. The Innovation Management label threatened to erode the group's anonymity-born freedom to explore the next new profit source for Kimberly-Clark. All of us, however, saw the boldness of the assumption inherent in combining the two words—that innovation could be managed.  

Many believe that it is an oxymoron to put the words “innovation” and “management” together.  Like “jumbo shrimp” or “the lonely crowd,” innovation management brings two worlds together and holds them together in creative tension. Whether understood as an economic noun (an innovation), an entrepreneurial verb (innovating) or as an organizational adjective (innovative), innovation has to do with bringing something new into reality. Management, however, typically has to do with increasing the productivity of what is already in place through planning, organizing, controlling, evaluating and improving. While the two words are not opposites, they do not naturally go together.

Thinking that innovation—a developmental “process” quite unlike more operational processes—can be managed in a similar way as other areas of the corporate enterprise, is a presumption that only the uninitiated make. Most veteran innovators recognize that when it comes to managing the new, we have to stretch the muscles normally associated with the more operational assumptions about acts of management.

Through a stimulating conversation at this April’s Innovation Practitioners Network conference, what became clear is that after all these years of working under the conceptual framework of management, we are now convinced that a better word is parenting.  It is parenting innovation, not managing innovation. This is more than merely a semantic issue. While parenting includes managerial acts, what is involved in parenting in not adequately captured in the notions of management. There is something more and different going on, quite a bit more, actually.

Additionally, an article in the Journal of Business Venturing (February 2005) called “A Tale of Passion: New Insights Into Entrepreneurship from a Parenthood Metaphor” and discussions with Dr. Stuart Brown from the National Institute for Play suggest that intersection of nurture and nature is the source of driving forces shaping the development of any innovation, just as it for the development of a child. This intersection between heredity (technological/market “genes”) and environment (context) provides so much of the stuff that innovators must deal with as they parent the innovation. This intersection may be a new way of understanding the context of the innovator as an innovation parent.

To some extent parenting innovations can be systematic in balancing play and discipline to help the innovation grow and develop to its fullest potential. Drucker, Christensen, McGrath, etc., have written about these principles and practices and suggest systematic approaches. However, parenting innovations is not likely to ever become completely routine or systematized. Like children, each innovation is different from the next. 

What may clear to many aspiring innovators is that at various points in the development of an innovation, the innovators (parents) need to be more “playful” in their parenting. Like a child, the innovation has a need to grow and develop, to play. Do we inadvertently deprive our innovations of the developmental benefits of play by prematurely requiring certain levels of performance from them? It's a bit like requiring too much too soon from our children.

Perhaps we need to think more carefully, at least in the early stages of development, about playmates for our innovations (flanking versions of the innovation); playgrounds for our innovations (protected spaces for thought and actual experimentation); and playthings for our innovations (toys with which the innovation can interact).

Please let us know your thoughts about parenting innovations and the importance of play.

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in July 2005. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 460-1313.

Increasing Signal, Decreasing Noise

Signal-to-noise ratio is the electrical engineering concept that describes the strength and clarity of a signal as a function of the signal’s power level divided by the strength of the noise. Noise, or static, can be so great as to mask or corrupt the signal. Measuring the signal-to-noise ratio requires the selection of a representative or reference signal. With these reference signals, average signal-to-noise ratios are measured and normalized with the goal typically being to achieve a cleaner signal by filtering out the noise and thus allowing the signal to stand out better (Wikipedia).

Signal-to-noise ratio is an apt metaphor for what we are trying to do in an innovation project, both early and late in the process. When an innovator is in the early exploratory challenge, the goal is to detect the presence or potential of a new signal where before most found only noise. In the invention challenge, the goal is to clarify just what the reference “signal” (the new value proposition) is, and get it to stand out. In the reduce-to-practice challenge the goal is to consistently produce signal-to-noise ratio profitably enough to attract investors to take the next steps. And in the introduction and integration challenges the innovator must find the right channels to attract customers to the signal without frightening them.

Each innovation likely has its own native and optimal reference signal.  Like a sculptor chisels out the shape he/she envisions in a hunk of marble, so the innovator carves out from the noise of surrounding context a signal that, if successful, resonates greater value and meaning with the end-user than what the user had before.

This is true for all innovators, whether entrepreneur or intrapreneur, although intraprenuers arguably have another layer of noise to deal with—the prevailing business models and organizational culture of the host organization.

An innovation can establish a whole new set of signals in forging new connections and communications between the innovating company and end-user. Innovations not only create new value. They become new signals themselves. In fact, one of the more gratifying experiences of an inventor and/or innovator is to have their innovation accepted and “at home.” When it happens it means that the innovator heard, felt or saw something (directly from the user, indirectly from the context or a combination of both) that others may have missed. Understood this way, the process of innovation—at least in the early stages—is all about increasing the signal-to-noise ratio.

Finding the right new signals often starts out awkwardly. How often we use the phrase “working title” or make up elaborate project names, partly because we don’t quite know what to call the invention at first—a symptom that the innovation is anything but at home yet.  

We see examples of this all the time in invention workshops. When inventors get very intrigued with a line of thinking and/or a particular embodiment, a struggle can instantly arise.  Part of the struggle is a search for the right words to describe what inventors can see in their mind’s eye but lack words to describe.

This is why diagramming what is in the mind is so important and useful; particularly at times when collaborators become, as our associate John Philipp calls it, “inventors-in-heat,” and even whole new words get invented. This is one of the characteristics of novelty that makes the process of innovation so challenging. We not only have to invent the thing itself, but often the new words or phrases to describe it.

 

When popular culture puts an “ing” on the end of brand name we know the innovation has found a permanent home in society. “Podcasting” is a recent example (it’s startling how this one happened so quickly). “Horseless carriage” was the phrase we first used in reference to what we now call the automobile.

When viewed in hindsight, the words all seem to make sense and fall into place. When we are in the midst of the process of innovation, however, it is a little different. In fact, the process of innovation can be viewed as a sense-making process, requiring innovators to discover and isolate a new signal from what others may have considered merely background noise. Metaphorically speaking, innovation is about creating new signals in the process of creating new value.

As innovators, our never-ending task is to increase the strength of the new signal and decrease the noise and interference around it.

This article was originally published in Innovating Perspectives in July 2007. For this and other back issues of our newsletter, please visit our website at innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 460-1313.