Myth #2: Innovating is luck and serendipity.

20 Misconceptions and Realities about Innovation

Myth: Innovating is luck and serendipity.

Reality: Companies can structure, organize and fund innovating as a core capability.  

This is one of 20 misconceptions and realities about innovation revealed in our qualitative survey report entitled, What Veterans of Corporate Innovating Are Saying.

If you would like to receive a copy of this 20 page report, please contact lanny@innovationsthatwork.com or jane@innovationsthatwork.com. We look forward to hearing from you soon.


© 2013 Vincent & Associates, Ltd. 

Myth #1: Corporate innovating requires freedom from constraint.

20 misconceptions and realities about innovation

Myth: Corporate innovating requires freedom from constraint.

Reality: The more profound innovations occur because barriers and constraints are overcome.  

This is one of 20 misconceptions and realities about innovation revealed in our survey report entitled, What Veterans of Corporate Innovating Are Saying.


In May, Vincent & Associates, Ltd. conducted a qualitative survey of about 50 veteran innovators to find out what is really going on underneath all the hype about innovation.

Unlike other opinion surveys, this one went deep by tapping the experienced wisdom of seasoned veterans, each of whom remains engaged in corporate innovating efforts. The experience of each respondent on average was close to two decades.

The survey revealed in general:

• Innovators not having enough time for innovating efforts because of their "day job,"

• Managers lowering the threshold of what qualifies as an innovation,

• Leaders reacting to uncertainties by avoiding risk, and

• All complaining about the poverty of insight amidst a flood of data.

Despite significant contextual differences from company to company, the survey found common issues hindering corporate innovating: persistent interruptions, ad hoc orientations to innovating, role ambiguities, and system versus innovating system imbalances.

Three broad recommendations are offered:

• Count what matters, not what is measurable.

• Be "choiceful" rather than reactive by first creating options, so you have choices.

• Neither integrate nor isolate innovating efforts. Instead invite everyone to seek improvements and, in the process, a few will emerge who actually innovate.

If you would like to receive a copy of this 20 page report, please contact lanny@innovationsthatwork.com or jane@innovationsthatwork.com. We look forward to hearing from you soon.


© 2013 Vincent & Associates, Ltd. 

Little Red Riding Could: A Tale of Intrapreneurship By Paula Rosch

Once upon a time…in the midst of a big company, there was a small office occupied by a young woman. She had an uncanny ability to understand the needs of consumers and turn those insights into successful product ideas. That, and her predilection for peddling her red bike to work, brought her the nickname of Little Red Riding Could. Others thought of her as “one of those creative people.” One day, her CEO said to her, “Our business is very ill and needs help. Why don’t you pick one of those product ideas of yours and take it to market?  Be very careful, though. It’s competitive out there. Don’t talk to anyone and stick to the corporate path as you work and never leave it. That way there will be no risk.”
 
Little Red Riding Could embraced her new project and started to make a to-do list. “Don’t worry”, she told the CEO, “I’ll take my idea all the way to market and never stop.” The young woman had good intentions, but soon after starting she picked up a popular magazine and saw an article with a title that seemed to be related to her project. She stuck a green Post-it® sticker to the title page so she could easily find it later, but then another article caught her eye; putting her to-do list aside, she sat down to read and didn’t finish until the journal’s pages were heavy with idea-laden Post-it® notes.

Suddenly, Little Red Riding Could remembered the task she had set out to do, but she was intrigued by something she had read, and she took a new direction. Instead of hurrying ahead with her plan, she decided to run a few errands around town to look for some materials she knew the company would not have at hand. Needing a jolt after all her activity, she stopped at a coffee shop, had a latte, and looked through her purchases. The lyrics of a song playing over the sound system provided a key to how her product might come together, and she hurried back to her workshop to construct a sample.

She took her work to one of her engineer friends. “Bob”, she said, “What if instead of designing the product like we planned, we tried something like this?” showing him the sample and describing its potential as he quickly did some sketches on notepaper.

By now, Little Red Riding Could was deep within the world of her own creativity, and unknowingly under the scrutiny of some hidden and very unfriendly eyes. As she left Bob’s office, the swish of someone behind her made her shiver a little. She was afraid she had strayed too far from her assignment and hurried away to get back on track.

She headed down the hall but was startled by an authoritative, gruff voice: “Where are you going with that sample?” It was a high level manager in the corporation. “I’m taking it to market,” she told him. “Our business is ill and this will help it get better.”

Well, the manager didn’t like the looks of the new idea. It looked different. It looked complicated. It didn’t look like anything they had done before. He didn’t want it to go any further, so he stalled for time. “Why don’t you put together a presentation to the department? I know everyone will want to hear about your new product idea. Let’s have the meeting tomorrow at 2:00 p.m.”

Feeling happy that the manager was supporting her product idea, Little Red Riding Could launched into preparing a compelling presentation. Meanwhile, the manager rushed back to his office and had his administrative assistant set up an 1 o'clock meeting to forewarn his own managers: “I don’t want to spend any money or time on this idea,” he told them.

When Little Red Riding Could showed up for the meeting with her data and her prototypes, the manager and his deputies were there. Their narrow eyes and suspicious demeanor made them all seem a little wolfish, not like the idea benefactor she had met in the hall the day earlier.

"I've called this group together to discuss your idea," said the manager, and opened the discussion up to the group.

"I don't think we will make enough money on this idea" said the financial manager. "My" said Red, "what a big profit you need!"

"I don't think we can advertise this idea," said the marketing manager. "My," said Red, "what a big audience you need!"

"I don't think we can make this idea work," said the research manager. "My," said Red, "what a big machine you need!"

They argued and protested against Red and her idea until they had gobbled up all of her confidence. The CEO, passing by the meeting room, noticed the loud protests coming through the closed door. She decided to intervene, and when she saw the manager and his cronies ganging up on Red's idea, she said "I have been watching you discourage new ideas for some time now, and I am not happy about it." She gave him the ax.

Little Red Riding Could went on to bring another product to market. The consumers were happy and the company regained its health. Feeling proud and yet lucky that she had skirted another potential disaster, Red told herself, "Never again will I stray from the path and go off on tangents to find new ideas...at least, not until next time."

© 2013 Paula Rosch, The Paula Rosch Group. All Rights Reserved.

Paula Rosch is a discovery-to-invention innovator with hands-on technology, marketing, and product development expertise. Paula is the inventor on nearly 100 patents, uncovering original insights about human behavior through her ScoutPathTM process and translating them into commercialized brands and products with great consumer appeal and staying power. You can contact her at paula@paularosch.com.

This article by Paula Rosch originally appeared in Vincent & Associates, Ltd. newsletter Innovating Perspectives in July 2013. For other issues of our newsletter, please go to www.innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.  

 

Parenting Children and Innovations

The challenges, joys and dynamics of raising children provide an interesting metaphor for managing innovation.

A couple of months ago we received a letter from Carol Chase, the principal of our daughter’s school. The entire letter was devoted to some sound advice this principal had received from her mother about raising children. She gave it a fresh title: “Five Strategies for Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World,” but the wisdom in it was aged to perfection. Here are the five strategies:

1.     Say “No”: “When your child, whether four or fourteen, is demanding something more…your child needs you. Your child needs you to say “no.” Children of all ages need clearly defined boundaries, limits and expectations in order to develop self-reliance and personal responsibility.” Could a more pertinent principle be spoken for nascent innovations? Like children these innovation efforts to hear “no” so as to focus and concentrate their energies where development is needed. Without the “no’s,” innovations lose focus and discipline and can easily squander resources.

2.     Hold, Hug and Talk: “When your child is having a meltdown, your child needs you to give him or her a quiet space in which to calm down. Then it is essential to problem-solve with your child.  This is the beginning of teaching your child self-discipline.  It is best to start with a hold and a hug, and then begin the talk for problem-solving.” MOMs (or mentors of mavericks) are an often ignored but necessary role frequently missing in established companies seeking to innovate. Without a competent and present MOM (not to be confused with a sponsor, who is also necessary), innovations don’t receive the insulation from the “adult” (and performance metrics-oriented) world of the established revenue stream. MOMs and innovation midwives enable this “holding, hugging and talking” that allows for a set-based concurrent engineering” so effectively used by Toyota’s knowledge-based product development philosophy (see Michael N. Kennedy’s book, Product Development for the Lean Enterprise).

3.     Teach Money: “Living in a society that is consumer rich in material goods requires that children learn financial responsibility at an early age,” says Chase about raising children.  Hasn’t a similar point been  made about managing innovation by Clayton Christiansen when he admonishes us to be “patient for growth, but impatient for profit.”? (See his book, The Innovator’s Solution.) As a friend of mine recently said, reflecting on teaching his own kids about money: “When you have earned it, you treat it differently.”

4.     Teach Manners: “Your child needs you to teach social responsibility [which] begins by learning respectful communication, behavior, participation and contribution within the first community unit for a child—the family.”  In our 2003 five-company study of innovation practices, we found one of the major tasks in which “innovation midwives” or MOMs need to be diligent is in “honoring the core.”  If managers of established revenue streams feel in any way a competitive threat (for resources) coming from within the organization, they will consciously—and often unconsciously—work against the innovation.

5.     Live Your Values: “Your child needs you to teach core values. The clearer you are about your core values, the more solid the base for your child. This requires ongoing introspection on the part of the parent and an outgoing manifestation of living the values. Children are watching their parents always. They will do what they see parents do, not what parents say.”  If the established business is oriented to the purpose of serving the needs of its customers—even needs customers may not yet recognize—then it will not only talk the talk of innovation, but also will walk the walk.

Our innovation efforts not only need effective parenting, they also need effective parents—mavericks, project managers, technology gatekeepers, MOMs and “midwives.” Would we not be more successful at our innovation efforts if we took the time, effort, care and love children require of their parents?

This article by Lanny Vincent originally appeared in Innovating Perspectives in May 2004. For other issues of our newsletter, please go to www.innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.  

© 2013 Vincent & Associates, Ltd. 

Is "Craft" missing from your Innovating?

Several years ago I visited the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio (it has since moved to Alexandria, Virginia). The building in Akron was unconventionally designed so visitors began their tour on the top floor, not on the first floor. Starting at the top and winding my way down, the novel layout ushered me through a historical journey of inventing in the United States. My tour ended where the names and pictures of the inventor inductees were hung with appropriate respect on the ground floor level.   

Some of the top floor exhibits chronicled the early days of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Several panels described what the USPTO used to require of aspiring inventors and patent recipients in its earliest years. Requirements included written descriptions, claims and drawings, of course, but also a working model. 

In those early days, prolific inventors were often paired with anonymous partners, nameless craftsman who built working models of their inventor's inventions. These mechanical contraptions demonstrated that the inventor's conception could be "reduced to practice." After a while, the USPTO became increasingly challenged to find space to store these models. Finally, after the catastrophic fire of 1836, the USPTO abandoned its requirement for a working model. I have often wondered what may have been lost when the USPTO dropped this requirement.

Without the requirement for a working model, the guild of artisan model makers disappeared. Prior to the 1836 fire, approximately 10,000 patents had been issued. Now there are some 50,000,000 issued patents. In hindsight, it was probably necessary for the USPTO to abandon the requirement for a working model; however, in doing so, the model maker became obsolete. 

My visit to the National Inventors Hall of Fame left me wondering whether a craft orientation is missing from our modern innovating efforts. My hypothesis is that in our current economic environment wherein so much attention is given to invention-less intrapreneurship and innovation, corporate innovating might remain disabled due in part to the persistent omission of craft in the innovating process. Does craft still have something essential to contribute to innovating?

By asking this question I could easily be accused of nostalgic longing for the old days of mechanical engineering. Current technologies choreograph electrons and make photons dance to the scores of software, firmware or middleware. We have come a long way from the Rube Goldberg age of mechanical contraptions that once took up too much space in the USPTO. But I wonder, despite the reality and efficiency of creating working models in 3-D CADs and simulators, have we lost what craft can contribute to innovating efforts?

Consider the meaning of "craft" particularly in the context of innovating. Might this seemingly old-fashion mindset, skill and approach still have something to contribute, especially to the development of "empowering" innovations (as Clayton Christensen calls those innovations that create jobs and new intrinsic value)?  And when we avoid crafting our innovations, might we be missing something essential?

The English word craft derives from the German word kraft, which means "strong" or "force." The word derives from the German adjective kräftiger, suggesting "strong, sturdy, vigorous, powerful, bold." For those familiar with paper chemistry, think Kraft pulping—the product and process invention of Carl Dahl and enabled by G.H. Tomlinson. Kraft pulping converts wood into wood pulp to produce near pure cellulose resulting in paper of superior strength in a relatively inexpensive manner. 

Today "craft" and its cousin "artisan," connote small-scale, made by hand, albeit with great care and skill. In the context of innovating, it suggests a deeply intimate, feedback-rich set of learning interactions between the creator and his or her creation. When a craftsman engages in his craft, tacit knowledge and skill is formed, and this is the very kind of experienced-based knowledge Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi infer as the foundational phenomena of innovating itself (see The Knowledge Creating Company).

Viewed from the point of view of early stage innovating, craft could provide an essential "force" in the formation of an innovation. Viewed from the point of view of large-scale mass production of standardized products, however, craft appears irrelevant or quaint. Innovating with more of a craft mindset, however, may increase the probability that outcomes are more than merely clever, cute or creative. Craft may instill innovation with sufficient care, intrinsic value and substance early, giving it a chance to weather the inevitable watering down that comes in the later stages of market introduction and launch.

We can’t ignore the post-industrialization realities of mass production and mass markets in a globalized economy. Neither can we ignore the fact that large, complex and global corporations are typically dissatisfied with the financial returns from their innovating efforts. Might these corporations be too impatient for growth and not impatient enough for profits? Might a more modest craft orientation of "reducing" the invention (and innovation) to practice actually be the quicker and more trustworthy way to determine if prospective customers recognize sufficient value to convince the CFO that profits can be sustained? 

The innovation economist David Teece did a study in 1986 commissioned by the U.S. Commerce Department. At that time the Department feared the strengthening ebb tide of manufacturing going offshore. Many wondered if this worrisome tide would leave erosions of profit, know-how and intellectual property. Teece persuaded the Commerce Department and many others not to worry. Teece concluded that more profits accrue to those with the complementary business assets (distribution, sales, etc., which take inventions to market) than to those who are only owners of intellectual property. 

While I am in no position to argue with Teece's findings; the logical inference from his conclusions may have added to the notion that companies should invent and innovate only what the company can take to market. Henry Chesbrough, the guru of open innovation, called this the "not-sold-here" mindset. Chesbrough named it one of the primary barriers to technological innovation. To be fair, Teece subsequently explored the notion of "dynamic capabilities"—a company's ability to reconfigure its own complementary business assets—as a sign of its adaptive, innovating potential. But the train had already left the station.

Large companies search for big innovation opportunities often mistakenly assuming they have prescience to discern the big from the little before the little gets big. Yet large opportunities seldom start out large. More often these opportunities start small and grow into large opportunities. This seems to be the case for innovating as well. 

Might innovating efforts that begin with a craft orientation end up being "strong, sturdy, vigorous, powerful and bold" enough to warrant further investment in scalable growth and expansion? Might our impatience for growth (and misplaced patience for profits) be factors keeping us dissatisfied with the puny financial returns from innovating? Might our distain for the craft approach to innovating be causing us to avoid the more potent and substantive "empowering" innovations that create jobs?

There are innovations that may require both product and process inventions—like the semiconductor or kraft pulping. Are we avoiding the risk of innovations that require both product and process inventions? Are we deploying our engineering and scientific talent to “sustaining” innovations and “efficiency” innovations (reducing costs of making and distributing) because they are more distributable, scalable and extensible? 

At least one large global company may not have lost its sense of craft when it comes to innovating. Consider Corning. In 2001, in their book, Corning and the Craft of Innovation, authors Margaret Graham and Alex Shuldiner wrote, "What made Corning distinctive was that it not only built the environment for scientific work and collected a solid knowledge base but also continued to draw on and maintain strong craft traditions…avoiding some of the worst excesses of ‘scientific management’."

Scientific management may point us to more easily distributable and scalable innovations. However, it doesn't necessarily mean they should be distributed, scaled or extended. Innovating may be more of collaborative craft, at least in the early stages, than a repeatable process, unless of course, you are satisfied with sustaining and efficiency innovations. 

This article by Lanny Vincent originally appeared in Innovating Perspectives in May 2013. For other issues of our newsletter, please go to www.innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.  

© 2013 Vincent & Associates, Ltd. 

Exercising Patience

In moral matters, patience is a virtue. In innovation, patience is not only a virtue, it’s a necessity—a corporate “muscle” in need of constant exercise. 

Venture capitalists are not the only ones losing their patience these days. Established companies competing for financial capital and talent push harder to show better results, faster. Declining investments in R&D (as a percentage of sales), shorter cycle times, and every increasing “D” in proportion to “R,” are just a few symptoms of this growing corporate impatience. Many companies’ patience muscles may be getting a little weak.

The rewards for patience can be significant. R&D investments can produce returns that surprise even investors. For example, Kimberly-Clark Corporation originally estimated the disposable training pants market to be $250 million. Yet in a few short years after they introduced Pull-Ups®, sales exceeded $450 million for their product alone. While Pull-Ups was introduced to the market in 1989, it was almost ten years after the two product development visionaries—Glen Fleischer and Walt Pearls—patiently listened to mother after mother to help them conceive of this new product. Perhaps the cycle time could have been shorter, but it’s dubious the gestation period for this innovation could have been rushed.

In their impatience to make the number, many companies risk missing out on bigger numbers than can come from moments of discovery that precede invention and innovation—moments that require patience.

From the growing number of market discovery assignments and collaborative invention assignments we do each year, a pattern appears to be emerging—discovery precedes invention and successful innovation. Invention can certainly occur without some preceding discovery. Yet innovations that follow a fresh discovery—be it a surprise result in the lab or a new perspective on the market—seem to carry a quality far superior to and more strategic than their “stand alone” counterparts. If this is true then how can a company build in the regular exercise that the muscle of patience requires?

Strategy can be one way of making patience a regular practice. Cisco takes a minority interest in smaller companies with interesting technology for a time before acquiring them—and their talent.  Policy can be another way of building patience. The board of Marriott International, among others, deliberately refuses to make decisions at the same meeting in which an issue is raised. They wait until the next meeting, just to increase the quality of the decision by adding a little patience. Segregating and dedicating selected resources to an effort is yet another way of exercising patience.

Ezra Pound said, “Glance is the enemy of wisdom.” We are coming to believe that wisdom, and the patience required to develop it, may be the silent partner that sustains a company’s innovation efforts well into its future.

This article by Lanny Vincent originally appeared in Innovating Perspectives in April 2000. For other issues of our newsletter, please go to www.innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.  

© 2013 Vincent & Associates, Ltd. 

Positioned to Receive Signals

An unwritten rule for assembling a working group—especially for inventive or creative problem solving—is to have no more than three levels of the organization’s hierarchy present in the same room at the same time. Sometimes you want only two. When too many levels are in the same place at the same time, asymmetries of power can inhibit dissent and constrain the free expression of divergent thinking—both essential ingredients in collaborative and generative efforts.

As there are exceptions to every rule, there are to this one as well. Exceptions include when higher-ups have collegial rapport with their direct reports or when the discernment of faint signals from complex and ambiguous external conditions outweighs the need for command and control directives. Thanks to Greg Blythe, master technology strategist at HP, for bringing our attention to the Cynefin framework’s description of complex versus chaotic conditions (see Wikipedia’s entry on Cynefin—a very useful diagnostic taxonomy for different types of external conditions). Cynefin goes even so far as to suggest that command and control oriented leadership may be appropriate for turbulent and chaotic conditions, but is inappropriate for complex and uncertain conditions. 

Over the past few months I have had the privilege of facilitating several working sessions where both these exceptions were in play. Success was achieved, much to the credit of the ego-strength (i.e., humility) of the participating higher ups, and the guidance of Cynefin. Had we encountered a lack of rapport between organizational levels or had we misdiagnosed the type of external conditions, organizational power would have presented a significant hindrance to these innovating efforts. Why? 

Innovating efforts depend so heavily on reading faint signals—signals that come to and through the bottom, middle and top levels of an organization’s hierarchy.  If the bottom, middle and top are not freed from the signal distortions of power, the ability of the whole organization to respond will be crippled, often leading to a response that makes matters worse.

When market conditions are sufficiently clear and external dynamics are sufficiently known, the delegation and distribution of power is relatively clear and straightforward in corporate governance and management systems. Here a command and control mindset works pretty well. Leaders lead, managers manage, employees follow and governing bodies oversee when operating conditions for corporations are relatively stable. 

However, when external market conditions become more complex and volatile, leading, managing, following and governing require participants in governance and management systems to leave their “fixed” positions and move into the clear so as to read the faint signals, which need to be discerned. Like a basketball team with possession of the ball, players need to leave their set positions and move to free themselves to be open to receive the ball from their teammates and find an open shot.

Disruptions often turn familiar, friendly environments into unfamiliar, unfriendly ones. Whether those disruptions come from another’s innovation, the arrival of a tipping point, a gradual slippage of relevance, or the seemingly spontaneous combustion of a complex soup of factors, the disrupted will likely always outnumber the disruptors.

Disruption can be lessened by a governance, leadership and management system that is able to flex itself from a “command and control” set to a “sense and respond” movement. The heart of this latter posture—actually a “readiness” more than a posture—resides in collaborative dialogues, not in hierarchical reviews.” (See Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Sense and Respond Organizations by Stephan H. Haeckel, and also Michael Kusnic and Daniel Owen’s piece on “Collaborative Decision-Making in Adaptive Enterprises” in Appendix B of Haeckel's book.)

Much of the innovation literature and practice will keep senior executives and board members fixed in their reviewer roles. But when they come out of those fixed roles and find the “opening,” their individual and collective contributions to the company’s innovating system increase significantly.

A company’s innovating system requires a constant balancing and rebalancing between governing, leading and managing. Recent investigations by the Innovation Practitioners Network in applying systems principles to innovating practice suggest too many corporate innovating systems are over-managed and under-led, and quite possibly under-governed.

In the rebalancing, the governance, leadership and management of innovating systems should always leave plenty of room to invite the governors (i.e., innovation council or board members), leaders (i.e., sponsors) and managers (including midwives) to leave their starting positions, at least temporarily, and share with each other what each is perceiving from the complexities and turbulence of the external environment.

Without these collaborative dialogues, undistorted by rank power, knowledge will remain segmented, dots will remain unconnected, innovating will suffer, innovators will be handicapped, and the opposing team will likely find the hoop more often.    



This article by Lanny Vincent originally appeared in Innovating Perspectives in March 2013. For other issues of our newsletter, please go to www.innovationsthatwork.com or call (415) 387-1270.  

© 2013 Vincent & Associates, Ltd.