How do you find Innovation? Can you find innovation blind-folded or using the same lens? Can you even look for Innovation? Or it just happens.
Innovation is coupled in some ways to imagination where every time you see something, you open your eyes to endless possibilities. Literally. According to Chuck Palus and David Horth, authors of The Leader's Edge: Six Creative Competencies for Navigating Complex Challenges, you need to “see with new eyes” in order to find innovation. We had discussed earlier on how leadership can drive innovation inside your business. We naturally fall into a habit of looking at things around us with the same eyes, analyzing it with the same logic and creating the same perceptions. It is easy to get used to this routine. Most managers act the same way. According to the authors, most managers “act on what they expect to see”, take shortcuts, do not spend enough time analyzing information and making a sound judgment. It’s as if the managers are walking around blind-folded since they have already created built-in perceptions of what they see.
Selected references:
Leading eBook on Creativity and Innovation in Business
Creativity and Innovation Best Practices
Creativity and Innovation Case Studies
The Innovation Index
Top 50 innovative companies in the world
Why is this so? We are after all living in the world of action. People get rewarded to get things done fast. And managers are no different. According to the authors, managers spend ninety percent of their time solving the problem, and only ten percent thinking about it. There is too much focus on getting the problem resolved quickly and moving on to the next problem. Perhaps this happens because of the sheer pace of work, multiple competing projects, approaching deadlines, and focus on quarterly results. The result: the problems are half-solved or worse yet, wrongly solved. The authors assert that "Complex problems — even really wicked ones — often begin to crack and shift when you spend more of your time looking at the problem."
What does all this have to do with Innovation?
Palus and Horth believe that Innovation happens when you begin slowing down (what did you say?), and when you put the brakes on the way you normally see and perceive, analyze and understand.
Here are the Six Ways to Find Innovation:
Stand in different places
Switch roles. This is the only way to learn and understand what is out there or in there. If you are the manager, become an employee. If you are in Sales, become a customer. If you are the product manager, become the product or the user. Try to adapt the mindset of who you want to do business with. Change your perspective. This bit of role playing will allow you to find new innovative ways to look at the same problem, and find a solution that you never thought existed before.
Use the lenses of other domains
Are you selling high tech gear? Well what if your buyer was shopping for groceries? How would you sell to that buyer? Are you looking to create that next big innovation in chemistry? What if you were to use this innovation in sports? Learn about something other than your domain knowledge. Try to apply this knowledge to your problem. Say you are trying to market an application to the CEO of a company, and are not able to determine the appropriate message, the punch line. What if a Kid were to buy your product? How would you explain to the Kid? The key is to use a different lens outside your domain and arrive at a solution. If you don’t know how to use a different lens, find someone in the company who can. Or create a group to do this.
Ask powerful questions
Questions are not just for the devil’s advocate and to create doubts. There is no such thing as a silly question. Question everything about what you are trying to accomplish. Start with why, what, how, when, what if, so what, where and so on. Ask broader or narrower Questions. Ask the question of a metaphor. Ask opposite questions and inside-out Questions. Ask precedence and consequence Questions. Ask ridiculous questions, and don’t forget to ask the “Real” question. Ask about object rules and action rules (Shank). Question the merits and even ask how you can make the innovation worse or fail. The more questions you ask and the more answers you try to find, the more innovative ways you would come across in trying to find a way to create a new product or solve a problem.
Foster new knowledge
New knowledge not only comes from your own domain, but when you are out there doing something else. Go attend a trade show of an unrelated business. This will open up your mind to how businesses are creating products for other markets. You may find an application of this in your market. Spend a week with your customer. Understand the problems your customer faces on a day to day basis; not just for your product, but everywhere else. Gain new insights on how your customer does their business with their customers. Check out what your key competitor is doing outside their place of business, what they are doing to promote and market their products. Do Offsites with your creative teams, and focus on learning something totally unrelated to what you are doing. Use the Offsites to create some group thought. The creative team should spend time in new places to gain new viewpoints, and which in turn will generate new ideas.
Create a visual verbal journal
A picture says a thousand words. A journal to put down your thoughts visually will allow you to think about your ideas from various angles, and create clarity of thought. Wherever possible, doodle. Do drawings of processes, tasks, relationships. Connect the dots or let them flow from one to another. Create a habit to write down key ideas, however unrelated, and try to associate these with real world scenarios. Create more pictures (don’t worry about whether they are pieces of art). Imagine the customer you are trying to sell visually. What would be they thinking out loud or saying out loud? Write short catchy phrases describing their actions and thoughts. At times you may be going on different tangents from your visual thoughts, but it is possible that one of the new tangents holds that all important idea to generate new innovation. And at times, the visuals may create even further complexity. Perhaps it is best to let go of that visual, and start a new one. Wherever possible, try to associate visuals with concise thoughts or ideas.
Change the pace of attention
How do you lead groups to find and create innovation? The key is to slow them down and try to get the group to focus on a few key ideas initially. Try to brainstorm on these ideas using creativity techniques such as free association, locksmiths, SCAMPER, or Question Breakdown. Ask the group to bring their own ideas, however silly they may appear on the surface, and evaluate each idea and brainstorm. Give rankings to each idea by having everyone vote. If the group is pressed for time, and is moving fast through the thought process, make it a practice of slowing them down. Ask more questions. Try to change the topic to have the group momentarily think of something else. Bring them back. Try to rephrase what you are trying to do. What you are trying is create is that moment of intuition or magic moment wherein group members can come up with an idea that everyone says “wow, let us explore that.” Use group forums or N-Gates to channel the group creativity into a new idea or innovation.
Are you ready to find innovation inside your business? Remember to slow things down, view the world with a set of new eyes, follow the six steps above, and unblock creativity and innovation within your organization.
If you enjoyed reading this Creativity best practice, I recommend the complete list of Creativity Innovation Best Practices.
Selected references:
Leading eBook on Creativity and Innovation in Business
Creativity and Innovation Best Practices
Creativity and Innovation Case Studies
The Innovation Index
Top 50 innovative companies in the world
References:
CCL – Center for Creative Leadership. CCL e-Newsletter, October 2006: Needed: A New Way to See.
Leading Creatively: Acting Sensibly and Meaningfully in a Complex World by Charles J. Palus and David M. Horth (CCL & Jossey-Bass, August 2001).