Monthly Archives: January 2011
Companies should avoid the temptation to brand their innovation program. While it seems like a great way to bring excitement and focus to innovation, branding these programs does just the opposite. Employees become cynical, they wait it out, and they go right back to doing what they were doing before. I liken this advice to that from Edwards Deming on quality. His 14 Key Principles are legendary in the quality movement worldwide. Principle Number 10 says: “Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.” In other words, don’t cheer people on to do something they already do or, worse, don’t know how to do. For example, don’t …
I had the opportunity to interview Brett Clay, author of “Selling Change” recently. Here is text of the interview: 1. Why is innovation so important for organizations? In today’s era of global suppliers and Internet-empowered buyers, companies’ products are under constant pricing pressure. As margins become squeezed, companies must innovate to improve efficiencies and develop higher value products and services. 2. When it comes to selling change, what is the biggest challenge that you see organizations facing? Often, the biggest challenge in organizations is their performance review systems. In the attempt to create objective review systems, rewards and punishments are determined by the achievement of specific, measurable management objectives. Employees measure their every activity by the degree of alignment with the metric. At first glance it would seem this is the desired result. But, optimizing the business for a specific metric often conflicts with the broader context of growing a … Continue reading
I’ve spent the past week combing thru almost 200 responses to the RFI on improving university commercialization issued last spring by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Technology transfer stakeholders (university administrators, faculty inventors, businesses, non-profits, foundations and private individuals) wrote a variety of recommendations, ranging from cranky one page cover letters to comprehensive and thoughtful recommendations. (I’ll post more later when I get thru all of them). It’s good stuff. Not surprisingly, recommendations are strongly tied to the stakeholder’s role. In my own response to the RFI, I point out that stakeholders seem to be talking past one another from distinct, unconnected silos: inventors offer one set of complaints and recommendations for improvement. Industry people another. University administrators yet offer another and so on. “Constructive discourse is made difficult by a …
Creative ideas do not suddenly appear in people’s minds for no apparent reason. Rather, they are the result of trying to solve a specific problem or to achieve a particular goal. Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity were not sudden inspirations. Rather they were the result of a huge amount of mental problem solving trying to close a discrepancy between the laws of physics and the laws of electromagnetism as they were understood at the time. Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison and other creative geniuses have always worked in the same way. They do not wait for creative ideas to strike them. Rather they focus on trying to solve a clearly stated, at least in their minds, problem. This approach has been formalized as Creative Problem Solving (CPS). CPS is a simple process that involves breaking down a problem to understand it, generating ideas to solve the problem and … Continue reading
IBM recently published a remarkable worldwide study based on direct interviews with nearly 1,500 CEOs, general managers and senior leaders from the public and private sectors. Titled “Capitalizing on Complexity,” the study looked at the insightful ways competent leaders generate success in a stunningly interdependent and interconnected world. The study came up with four primary findings: Complexity in perpetual evolution hallmarks the global environment. Creativity tops out as the single most important quality of effective leadership. Customer engagement ranks as essential for co-creating product and service lines. Simplicity clinches ideal end-user interactions via effortless interfaces and functionality. The report describes creative leaders in words that could easily define innovation leaders and corporate entrepreneurs as well: “Standouts practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organizations. Creative leaders expect to make deeper business model changes to realize their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas, and keep … Continue reading
The magazine Nature features an unusual lead article about the parallels between the recent financial near catastrophic failure and the spread of diseases in natural eco-systems. This is no joke or provocation: not only is Nature a serious scientific publication but the article is written by Andrew Haldane, executive director of financial stability at the Bank of England, and Robert May, a theoretical ecologist at Oxford University and former chief scientist of the UK government. Both the method and the conclusions offer at least two insightful lessons for the innovation practitioner. The first one, focusing on the method, is well known, but worth emphasizing one more time: innovation does not happen right at the heart of a domain – be it in science, art or finance – but at its edges. It is by taking the risk to confront one’s viewpoint or expertise with that of others in adjacent …
