Nov 27, 2015 | Innovation
2 truly powerful innovation words.
Harnessing the power of “re-imagination” can turbo-charge your innovation efforts.
“What if……..”
I was reminded of the power of these two words a few weeks ago when a workshop participant used them while in a breakout group discussing a problem.
He simply asked ‘What if” and the conversation took off.
Having run many innovation sessions, there almost always comes a time when I ask this question:
“What if…………….”
These two words offer an opportunity to re-imagine the situation with licence to go beyond the barrier and imagine the benefits that would accrue from the solution, without worrying about the detail of the solution.
I once asked a group considering the marketing of financial products “what if you could have 30 minutes with Warren Buffet, what would you ask him”?
The resulting conversation led to several initiatives that proved worthy of detailed examination and in once case subsequent successful launch.
Consider the biggest problem facing you right now, and ask yourself “What if I could solve the X problem………”
How powerful is that?
Try it for yourself on something facing you, a problem, a fear, whatever is truly bothering you right now.
“…………………………………………………………………”
See, it works!
Jun 15, 2015 | Change, Innovation, Small business
Wheels still on?
There are lots of reasons, I have heard them all, and even used a couple myself, but blaming the retailers, engineers, competitors, lack of advertising, or the weather misses the essential truth.
The process is flawed.
We know the constraints of the retailers, they set the rules and suppliers have to live with them. We cannot control the competition, although mostly they are pretty predictable, and resources for advertising are never enough. Our engineers and designers are ours, so we can get the best out of them, if we are good enough, and we cannot predict the weather, let along control it.
The thing we do control, but rarely leverage well is the innovation management processes most of us use.
If 9/10 products fail, surely there must be something wrong with the logic and processes that allowed them to progress through the system to launch, consuming precious resources as they go.
They get spat out, launched, fail, and we blame everything but the stray dog around the corner, and our NPD&C process.
Silly really.
Why are the processes flawed?
There are standard operating procedures taught with minor variations almost everywhere, they are logical, sequential, and like economics assume knowledge and insight. Nothing like the real world really.
Following is a list of the failure-drivers I have seen over the years.
The ideas are narrow. Ask yourself where most ideas that get into the system come from.
- Customers. In many industries, solving a customer problem is a great source of ideas, but in FMCG, customers or as we should call them, buyers, have little idea beyond ways to save a few bob, or copy something else that is doing OK, but they have the shelf space to rent, so we bend over.
- Consumers. We spend millions asking consumers what they want, then trying to interpret the answers in some coherent way, when the truth is as it always was, consumers do not know what they do not know. Henry Fords quip that had he asked his customers what they wanted, they would have answered a faster horse, still holds.
- The bosses wife. Always a good source of ideas, mostly crap, but carrying considerable weight in the system.
- Your sales force. There can be the gem hidden amongst the dross, but usually they are responding to what their customers (read buyers) tell them, what the opposition has done to pinch a shelf facing, or just looking for reasons they are behind budget. Good sales people are usually pretty focussed on the things that make a difference now, not next year or next decade, so at best they may come up with a useful range extension.
The business case. I am in favor of rigorous planning and being held accountable for results, but when you think about it, our ability to tell the future is pretty limited to non-existent, but we persist with executing on a business plan because it is, well, the plan. Every business case I have ever seen has two common features:
- A positive forecast of outcomes. Profits, market share, volumes, whatever it is, the forecast is for great things.
- Detailed cost analysis. This includes the costs to manufacture, buy shelf space, promotional programs, advertising, research, and all the rest. Again, all if we are honest with ourselves, factors we can only really take a best guess at. The only thing we know for sure is that the forecasts will be wrong.
We believe our own bullshit. Because we have spent all that time, effort, and money creating a business case, we then use them to prioritise the options on the basis of the best returns.
We fail at articulating the product. Every successful product I have seen has some essential component that both makes it different to anything else around, and in the process adds value to sufficient lives for there to be an incremental source of new demand. If all we do is cut the existing cake differently, the only winner is the retailer. Somehow we need to make the cake bigger, find that new and elusive consumer demand.
We fail to brief designers. This follows the previous failure, we stumble at articulating the product specs against which the technologists, engineers and creatives have to execute. If we do not know, how can they? Besides, they are usually brought in too late in the design process, they respond to the performance specs marketing tells them the market wants, instead of being a proactive part of designing the specs. This usually ensures that few operational or technology innovations get a guernsey.
Momentum. Once a project starts to move along, it builds momentum, garners support in all sorts of places, and becomes a “project” to be completed, rather than an expression of new consumer demand.
The net result of all the above is that the biggest risk is at the end, when the sunk cost in resources and ego play against anything other than a gung ho launch.
So what is the solution to all this waste, apart from just getting better at fortune telling?
Take some lessons for the “lean” movement, the operational implementation of the scientific method.
Iterate in small steps, get a few consumers involved early in a hands on way to see of if your value proposition is sound, do a series of small experiments testing hypotheses, and be prepared to be wrong, and alter the approach. Deploy genuine cross functional teams from both inside and outside the organisation, engage in constructive “devils advocate” thinking, and most important of all, have a strategy for the business that drives the new product development process to contribute to the strategic outcomes, not just the forecast sales and financial ones.
None of this is easy, but that is why there is so much upside, the corporate clones cannot see the opportunities. It is also why increasingly, small and medium business has an advantage over the corporate behemoths that dominate the landscape. They are able to take quick decisions based in instinct, experience, discontinuities that emerge, and an intimacy with customers large businesses can only dream about.
Call me when I can help.
May 15, 2015 | Branding, Customers, Innovation, Marketing
innovation comes from dot joining
Before 3M came out with the now ubiquitous little yellow pad of semi stuck sheets, nobody realised they needed them.
There was no clamour for sticky note papers to use as messages, place-holders, and the thousand other uses we have found for them, no market research pointed at the opportunity.
Someone connected the unconnected dots.
The story goes that there was a failed glue experiment in the 3M lab archives. One of the product lines of 3M is glue, sticky stuff used as a joining agent with uses from the home to building sites and industrial applications. Researcher Spencer Silver was seeking a super strong adhesive, the line of experiments was deemed a failure, it was not glue, it did not stick, although it seemed to be re-useable, the stickiness was not strong. It was however, long lived. One of 3M’s employees who was also the member of a local church congregation choir, frustrated that his placeholders kept dropping out of his hymn book made the connection, and a product was born.
Point is the research had been done, there was a solution in the archives in search of a problem.
The challenging task for innovators and marketers is to put ourselves in the position where we can connect the solution with the problem.
That does not happen in the office, it happens where there are conversations happening, often random conversations, between people with vaguely connected networks and ideas.
The science of networking indicates we get more from those we know vaguely than from our very close peers.
Why?
Because those close to us are typically the same as us, similar views, experiences and attitudes, exposed to the same sorts of stimuli, that is why they are close to us.
The revelations, the connection of the unconnected dots usually comes from left field those who we know, but not well, who circulate in different groups to us, have different knowledge, networks and interests to us.
Go talk to them, network, engage, step out of your comfort zone, and with time, curiosity, and yes, lady luck does play a role, you might find your Post-it-note. You will almost certainly not find it if the only place you look is inside your own patch.
Apr 7, 2015 | Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Innovation and context
The first axis of innovation is the product. French born and educated artist, mathematician, philosopher, free thinker Marcel Duchamp who took American citizenship in 1915 submitted a piece to the prestigious Exhibition of independent artists in New York in 1917.
The piece was initially rejected by the exhibition organisers, but later lauded as a turning point in art, from the ‘retinal’ meant to be just seen to something meant to be more philosophical.
It was a piece titled “Fountain” and was in fact a porcelain urinal, the first if its kind.
My point is that the first urinal publicly displayed can be created and installed by an “artist” and Duchamp was a genuine artist in the widest sense of the word.
However, the second installation of a porcelain urinal, because it is not an original idea, is done by a plumber.
The second axis is context. Duchamp’s urinal would not have been so famous, such an artistic turning point (I still have trouble with the whole idea) had the photograph that started it all not been by a renowned photographer, taken in his studio, and lauded by the intellectual press at the time as ground-breaking. Had Duchamp just installed his urinal in the public loo down the road, it would probably not have been any more than a fancy pisser, unnoticed in the chaos of life.
What the difference is was the context in which his porcelain urinal was presented.
When you need someone who understand the differences, and how sensitive they are, give me a call, and I will be delighted to help you manage the context such that your pisser has the opportunity to become a piece of art.
Apr 1, 2015 | Communication, Governance, Innovation, Leadership
How do you know
Some pretty smart people say some pretty dumb (with hindsight) things.
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Patent Office has been widely credited with this quote in 1899. He may not have said it, but it was reasonable at the time given the pace of innovation that had occurred for the previous 50 years. It is no sillier than Bill gates saying in 1981 that “640k should be enough for anybody”, or “Man will not fly for fifty years,” Wilbur Wright, 1901.
It is really hard to get a handle on all the stuff you do not know, by definition, you do not know you do not know it.
However, coming to grips with the opportunities that become available when you discover something from an unknown left field is where the gold is.
So how do you begin to see things you do not know you do not know?
This question is not common, but has come up a couple of times ion the last few years when working with clients with deep technical knowledge, but perhaps a narrower than ideal breadth.
In considering the answer, there appears to be few simple strategies to put in place:
- Be constantly and remorselessly curious, and ask questions. Anyone who has had kids knows that for a few years, the most common question they have is “why”. Go Back to your childhood, and ask why all the time.
- Have a diverse group of people around you who will challenge the thinking, preconceptions assumptions and most importantly, the status quo.
- Be prepared to give and receive honest feedback. There are rarely any right answers when you go looking for the unknown, just more questions, and the often unexpected and insightful responses you get from people, use them.
- Make sure others know you do not know, and are seeking answers, not offering solutions.
- Read widely and with great variety. This is now easier than it has ever been, we are overwhelmed with information sources, and the problem is curation and absorption rather than finding stuff out.
We are undoubtedly in a knowledge economy, competitive advantage is in knowledge, so gathering, sharing and leveraging it should be high on every enterprises agenda, from multinationals to the small business around the corner.
Mar 23, 2015 | Collaboration, Innovation, Leadership, Management, Strategy
Plan backwards
All sorts of planning activity is aimed at defining the point where we want to be, then assembling the resources and capabilities to get there.
That is how planning is done, almost always, because by and large, it seems to work, and it keeps the spectator crowd happy.
Libraries have been written that describe all sorts of methods and models that can be used. They can be very useful and thought provoking, providing a framework to help articulate the factors that will impact the business, and the options you have in responding, but they rarely offer an antidote to the malaise affecting the development of really distinctive capabilities, genuinely new products, processes and business models.
The real innovations, the things that change everything seem to come from a different place, “left field” being the most common description.
Most planning ends up being just an extrapolation of the past, despite the well meaning and significant effort to make it something else.
Perhaps a better way is to put yourself in the future place, then work backwards, identifying the steps that need to have been taken to reach the point where in your mind, you are now.
Be specific about the end, articulate it clearly, and then “Plan Backwards” by considering the factors that delivered value for you. I generally call this process ‘Hindsight Planning’.
- What did you do that worked, and conversely, what might you have done that did not work?
- What capabilities did you need to develop?
- What trends drove changes to the industry you were able to leverage?
- Where did the technical innovations you leveraged come from?
- Which markets and customers were successfully addressed?
- What big customer issues were addressed?
- What did the business model(s) you used look like?
- And finally, How were you able to extract value for all these things?
This sort of analysis, if it is to lead to a positive outcome, requires that you recognise and deal with two types of barriers:
Management barriers.
People like consistency and predictability, so when the forecast future looks very like the past, just a bit blurry, they are happy with it, endorse it, and resource it. By contrast, being the harbinger of change that will affect the status quo is no way to get ahead in most organisations. However, it remains a truth that the future never looks the same as the past, no matter how much we would like it to be so.
- Idea averaging. Management absorbs and usually just “averages” or applies committee thinking to a good idea, but at worst, just rejects them for a range of reasons that sound absurd and utterly naive with the benefit of hindsight. Existing businesses are rooted in the networks and frameworks required to make them successful today, and are usually intolerant of new things that involve risk. Usually successful incumbents are well evolved, so are resistant to change, their current way has enabled the current business to be successful, why change? There are many examples of this phenomena, Kodak being a standout, Polaroid another, Cobb & Co another. The current attempts by the taxi industry to resist the encroachment of Uber in my hometown, Sydney, is an example unfolding, and the music industry prosecuting their customers for using their products is an example of one that is just about folded.
- New business models. The successful commercial execution of a real innovation generally requires some new way of delivering the value to customers and extracting value for the suppliers. In short, a new business model. Industry incumbents rarely completely disrupt themselves, by definition, they have too much to lose. Therefore, there needs to be new strategies and supporting business models developed by those outside or on the fringes in some way of an industry. Uber and Apple came from way outside the industries they disrupted, and can you imagine Hilton, or Accor funding that mad idea AirBnB that was gong to crucify their budget tourist dollars?
- The Profit paradox. Profit is counted by looking backwards rather than forward, rewards came after the fact. Forecasting profit, or “fortune telling” is inherently risky, as the only think you know for sure is that you will be wrong, the real question is by how much, but the consequences of getting this brand of fortune telling wrong are significant. However, in the long term, you are only truly profitable if your returns are greater than the cost of capital. If they are equal, you may as well put your money in the bank, because it is safe, less than that and you are long term destroying capital. This simple fact is ignored in almost every profit forecast, statement or review I have ever seen. The conundrum is that to generate a return greater than the cost of capital you must take risks and do stuff differently, some of which will not work out, or only work out in the long term, therefore risking the current profit. It is pretty easy to ramp up the profit made today at the expense of tomorrow, but in this case, tomorrow does actually come.
Creative barriers.
Creative barriers evolve around points of the assembly of ideas, where information, insight, experience, are mixed up to create the otherwise unlikely connections that are the foundation of a creative solution to a problem, situation, or challenge. These are the barriers that most businesses try and get around by the off site strategic planning sessions that rarely seem to be able to deliver the promise of the day. The energy and drive in the workshop room gets absorbed by the day to day of being back in the business. Removal of the barriers is a high priority challenge for management.
The barriers to creativity are many and varied, often overlapping in many places. Following is a ‘brain-dump’ list of the ones I consistently find.
- No commitment from the ‘top’
- It is not OK to be wrong.
- Give up too easily. Edison’s famous quote “Now I know 999 ways that do not work” whilst experimenting to develop the lightbulb resonates still.
- Creativity is hard to quantify, and is therefore often not measured. The old adage what gets measured gets done is right, so creativity is extinguished.
- Lack of resources, time, equipment, money, are all used as excuses for being too willing just to accept the status quo.
- Enterprise culture eliminates risk as far as possible, and creativity is inherently risky and “out there”.
- Rules rule. Particularly in public enterprises, and creativity is not in the rules.
- Challenging orthodoxies, assumptions and the status quo is frowned upon.
- Lack of what I call ‘environmental intelligence’ or an understanding of the macro trends and individual movements in the commercial and strategic environment in which you compete. Seeing trends that impact an enterprise, and their intersections is a rich source of creativity.
- Lack of discipline. Perhaps counter intuitively, creativity includes a range of activities that if subject to some disciplined and focused thinking can deliver great results.
- Not having the right people. Creativity is perhaps the most collaborative of human activities, well, almost. Not having the right people is a commonly owned albatross.
- Everyone can say “no”. Formal layers of approval for ideas act on creativity like a wet blanket on a campfire.
- Creativity is not a required contribution from everyone, it is assumed to be the product only of the young, or the marketing department, of the boss’s wife. Creativity should be everyone’s job!
I could go on, the list is huge, it is a wonder that creativity survives at all given the barriers.
An idea is the outcome of all that has gone before, and the triggers around at any given time, rarely is it the ‘Eureka’ moment. Ray Kurzweil who has a stellar track record in seeing the future in technology believes we need to become comfortable with what he calls “Hybrid thinking” and I can only agree but see that the ideas he articulates have a far greater range than just creativity and innovation in technology.
