Can We Innovate Ourselves Out This Recession - Really?

We have plenty problems to solve. There is no debate about that. Lots of opportunities to innovate and cause breakthroughs.

Whether the problems are personal ones like finding or keeping a job, paying bills and staying sane as the economy goes south; or organizational ones like doing more with less just to stay competitive or even survive; or national ones like how do we maintain jobs and create new ones and turn the economy around - we have no shortage of problems to solve.

What we do have is a shortage of robust ways to stimulate, unleash, and harness the creativity and innovative thinking that is part of every human beings nature.

Creativity that leads to innovative solutions that are breakthroughs should not be a once in a while, accidental phenomenon, or an activity reserves for special people or special occasions. It needs to be a day-in-day-out discipline like flossing and brushing our teeth.

What we have also learned in the last few years that "leaders", "experts" and "policy-makers" are not as smart as we have implicitly given them credit for. All their forecasting and predicting what is going to happen, if it is about growth and development, has not worked out as they so confidently said it would. The economy is in recession and major financial institutions are loosing money at a rate that is beyond comprehension.

When we shift gears from reacting to circumstances, to working for a commitment we are passionate about, we are brilliant, we are turned on, we are innovative in a way that surprises us, and we do produce desired results. For all their failures in running their businesses, some leaders have made huge fortunes for themselves - maybe that was their only real commitment in the first place. In that they have been innovative and hugely successful.

So we need to put a stake in the ground for our own commitments and say, "this is the problem I am going to solve, and this is the when it will be solved". It sounds counter-intuitive when the circumstances look so bleak and morale and resources are scare.

Counter-intuitive or not, that's the place to start!

Tricking Airport Biometrics

If we are tempted to doubt the capacity of human beings to be inventive and creative, what about this for outside the box thinking and risk taking from The Aviation Nation

"Japanese media are today reporting that a South Korean woman entered Nippon last April passing through the biometric immigration screening despite her previous deportation records.

Her trick: She went through the screening by placing her index fingers over a fingerprint reader after putting a special tape on the fingers. The woman claims she received the tape and a fake passport from a “broker” back in South Korea where she was deported to in July 2007 after working in Japan as a bar hostess.

Following the US, Japan began the biometric immigration screening in November 2007 as part of an antiterrorism measure.  All foreigners aged 16 and up have to undergo fingerprinting and photographing at airports nationwide to see if their data match those of deported or wanted foreigners and terrorists

This is the first time that such an incident was reported.

Physics Outside the Box

A friend recently sent me the following question that appeared in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen. A wonderful example of innovation and breakthrough:

"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."

 One enterprising student replied:

"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building.

"This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed, on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case.

The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to orally provide an answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with he basic principles of physics.

For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use.

On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:

"One, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H =3D 1/2gt squared (height equals half times gravity time squared). But bad luck on the barometer.

"Two, if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper.

"Three, if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force (T = 3D 2 pi sq. root of lover g).

"Four, if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easy to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up.

"Five, if you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper, compare it with standard air pressure on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building.

"Six, since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'I will give you this nice new barometer if you will tell me the height of this skyscraper.'"

The arbiter re-graded the student with an 'A.' The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel Prize for Physics

Robots Doing Surgery!

One of the tests for whether an idea or possibility can be considered an innovation and a breakthrough is to reflect back, before the innovation and breakthrough is a fact and remember the reaction on first hearing about it.

Innovator: "I have an idea! What about we design a robot to do surgery?"
Audience: "That's a crazy idea! Are you being serious?"
Innovator: "Absolutely, Let me explain..."
Audience: "Doing surgery on humans? Are you serious? That will never fly because..."

After the fact, we discover all the ideas supporters, even co-inventors.

Well, The Chicago Sun Times has just such an "after the fact" story, Robots with Scalpels a Better way to do Surgery.

From the article:

"Robotic surgery, no longer something out of a sci-fi novel, has become an increasingly popular way to do minimally invasive operations.

Surgeons at more than two dozen Illinois hospitals, including the University of Chicago Medical Center and Advocate Christ Medical Center, use the "da Vinci" robot to operate on the prostate, heart and other organs while sitting yards away from the operating table. About 85,000 robot-assisted surgeries were performed nationwide last year... read on

One of the hallmarks in innovative thinkers, of people who have a track record of producing breakthroughs, is their capacity to speak ideas that are ahead of their peers, or their industry, with an unwavering commitment to their idea even as experts regale them with all the reasons it wont work, "it's not possible", and all its variants down the seemingly endless litany of yeabuts.

To borrow from one of Apple's (a great example of innovators) ads, Here's to the Crazy Ones. Before the fact, some ideas we now take for granted, did seem crazy. Some of my favorites - GPS navigation on my iPhone; Google search and retrieve information about just about everything in seconds; Skype video calls; Google Earth;... the list is huge. Add your own favorites.

On Creating a culture of innovation and idea generation

Creating a culture in which innovation thrives and ideas are constantly being generated and translated into specific measurable desired results is critical for the ongoing growth and vitality of an enterprise. Every enterprise needs a ready flow of ideas to resolve problems, to create new products and services, to shorten cycle times, to reduce waste, to improve operational efficiencies and generally to stay healthy and competitive.

Creating a culture that fosters idea generation and implementation starts with the acknowledgment of the importance of ideas and by the recognition that everyone is a natural ‘idea generator’ - which probably means abandoning the myth that, creativity is a special gift and few have it, and I'm not one of the few.

Paradoxically, though every senior executive will say that creating ideas is critical, most organizations have many policies, rules and procedures that do the very opposite. The unintended consequence of much of the culture is to stop, block and thwart the generation and development of ideas.

After declaring an intention to create a culture that fosters ideas and encourages their implementation, some structures, practices, rules and disciplines are needed to provide support. The clearer the objectives of the enterprise are communicated, the easier it is for people to see what is stopping or thwarting those intentions. It is important that leaders declare the results they want – what by when. It is also important that some of the desired results be infeasible given past performance, can't be done given current thinking making square fit into round as an example - from the movie Apollo 13 - that is the driver for breakthroughs.

1. A particular culture needs to be in place for employees to respond appropriately and powerfully to demands for infeasible results.
   
2. A culture in which: infeasible future results are recast simply as problems to be solved
3. One that understand the importance of running experiment, and understand the distinction been careless in executing what we know how to do, and failed experiments - with low tolerance for the former and high tolerance for the latter
4. One that not only understand the importance of experimentation nurtures running experiments
   
5. One that values and uses failures and breakdowns as in invitation to invent, generate, discover and create.
   
6. In a culture of innovation everyone knows the importance having milestone – a specific result to be produced by when. One (of many) essential practice is flagging milestones that are in danger or that have been missed, formulating them as problems to be solved and using problem solving tools to invent solutions.
   
7. It is also important that everything that is typically characterized as a problem, complaint or issue is also treated as a problem to be solved.

Having demands for infeasible results makes it easy to see where innovation is needed, where new solutions are needed to fill a ‘missing’, that if left unfilled, the intentions of the enterprise will not be realized.

One model we recommend is forming Ideas Clubs throughout the organization and the organization's network of external relationships - customers, users, suppliers, alliance partners, anyone who can contribute

A network of Ideas Clubs should include the following:

• Local clubs: within a work team, community of practice or function
• Cross functional clubs: within a “project” team all the relevant functions of the organization
• Enterprise-wide clubs: includes representatives from the whole organization to generate ideas that impact the whole organization
• External clubs: to include members from any enterprise, field of expertise or part of the world that can contribute to the problem to be solved
  

The Idea Clubs have particular practices and disciplines inside which they operate. The basic organizing principle is, find a solution quickly and implement it with the minimum delay.

Does IDEO know a thing or two about innovation?

Well? Does IDEO know a thing or two about innovation? Given the innovation they have been responsible for and the reputation they have earned as a consequence, I think it is safe to say yes.

So it is worthwhile to read The Ten Faces of Innovation by IDEO's Thomas Kelley and Jonathan Littman which Fast Company reviewed some time ago. But don't settle for the review - read the book.

For other useful reads see Books.

Harvesting Ideas

My day-to-day work is helping organizations reinvent themselves, or said another way, rethink the way they do things, so as to more innovatively satisfy all their stakeholders, and so profitably grow.

One practice we encourage is harvesting ideas. Many organizations have no established processes and practices to unleash the idea generating capacity of employees, customers, suppliers, alliance partners, in fact everyone they interact with. Which means a huge potential source of ideas, innovation and breakthroughs is going untapped. That is a waste as companies like P&G have demonstrated with their 360 Degree Innovation.

My colleagues and I have the view that an idea without some process or structure to turn the idea into action and outcome is useless. Worse than that, sharing ideas gives the impression that something is happening/will happen - and mostly nothing does. This lack of action around ideas pretty soon stifles any enthusiasm for idea generation, as we frequently hear, "what's the point they never listen, nothing ever happens".

Another idea stifler that is prevalent in most organizations is to have the person who generates the idea be given the responsibility for implementing it. If that person is already overwhelmed, the last thing they need, or want, is one more task or project to add to their to-do list. So, guess what, in that culture it is not smart to offer up many ideas - it just means more work.

So we have devised several ways to help organizations unleash ideas, filter them, and turn as many as possible into actions and desired outcomes. The best ways to do this we have discovered is to coach organizations in creating a home grown solution. It will be part structure, part practices, and part cultural; and wholly owned. Some things do need to be in place for a solution to work:

1. First you need a commitment from the senior leadership to unleash ideas from every and any source - so as to forward some vision, mission or intention
2. This commitment needs to be widely know and its importance clearly understood
   
3. You need an institutionalized set of processes, practices and behaviors to support and reward idea generation and implementation - as robust as credit collection for example
   
4. You need to remove institutionalized barriers to idea generation - they are in every organization, and most prevalent in organization where there are few ideas being implemented, or where idea generation is the preserve of a designated few
5. And remember idea generation is natural, easy, fun, and enlivening. it is the easiest way to build relationship, a sense of ownership and belonging.