Innovation - Personal Development - Part 3

What can we do as individuals to improve our innovation skills? The question here is what is it that make some people special? Is it an innovation gene that they have or some skill that they build? Of course, there's always going to be geniuses that walk among us but the question is can we increase our discovery skill-set and minimize the gap? The answer is yes. In this post I am going to talk about a few skill-sets that help individuals in improving their innovational ability.

Studies have shown there are five skills that one can work on to improve one's innovational ability. These skills can be improved through regular practice and exercise. So lets go through these five skill-sets and see what they are:

Association

Association is the ability to make a connection between items that are not visibly correlated. To do so one needs to have a set of tools in one's toolbox. It is almost like Lego blocks. To do so the first thing is to fanatically collect and document your ideas. There are a number of inventors and entrepreneurs in recent and distant history that have done this. The lesson learned is to keep your ideas organized and documented; you never know how your brain is going to wire them.

Challenge the Status Quo

People that are innovative do not accept the status of "that is how we do thing here. Instead, they are looking for better, more effective solutions that in some cases even create totally new products or ways of doing things. In most of the cases, however, it's just an evolution of existing products with improved functionality, design or performance.  Practice to observe and question solutions, think about weaknesses and how can they be improved. Human society is evolving only by constantly challenging and improving the present.  

Curiosity 
I do not know if you have ever practice 5Why's, but it is amazing what you learn by asking and digging slowly into the problem. With every step, the problem is peeled like an onion (learned that from the Shrek movie :). There is a great example in the book Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

Networking
This is very simple. Use your network not to sell your ideas but as a sounding board. Test your ideas by talking to your friends, partners and family members. Make sure that you capture feedback and that you seriously consider that same feedback. Different views on the problem, or solutions can move you in the right direction.

Experimentation
Interestingly enough there are two different types of experimentation. One that is physical that is usually done in labs. And the other one that is abstract and done in the inventors' mind. A great example of a lab experimenter is Edison, who had over 10,000 attempts before he created the light bulb. On the other hand, Nicola Tesla, an inventor from the same era, built his prototypes in his mind before actually starting the task of construction.

If you are serious about improving your innovation skill-set, make sure to set time aside and start practicing these tips. Till next time. Cheers.

Innovation - Build your innovation culture - Part 2

I'm back with my thoughts on innovation. In this article I will cover the innovation framework and some of the techniques that can be applied in order to establish and improve Innovational culture in your organization.

The most innovative companies follow the 3P framework. This framework is base on People, Process and Philosopy (reference to The Innovator's DNA by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. Christenson).

3P's

People
First of all, People are the ones who innovate. It is necessary that the senior management team lives and breaths innovation. They need to truly believe in it, promote it through organization and excel at discovery. The organization needs to monitor and maintain an adequate proportion high discovery skilled people at every level vs. delivery skilled people.

Process
Second, the organization needs to have a process in place in order to repeat success and to learn from its mistakes. This process needs to include the following phases: collection, selection, goal setup, approval and monetization. One simple and effective processes is "The i5 Process".

The I5 Innovation Process

 Each phase of the process starts with an 'I', thus the name. For more information please check "Innovation in a Box".  The Process and tools are here not to create innovation but to help the organization with it. It definitely helps if these tools are of interactive nature; for example, utilizing an intranet for improving the accessibility and usability of the process, which eventually effects the adaption rate.

Philosophy
Companies that encourage innovation have the following four pillars as a foundation of their innovation culture:

Innovation Culture

1. Innovation is everyone's job
2. Disruptive innovation is part of the company's innovation portfolio
3. Deploy lots of small, properly organized innovation project teams
4. Take smart risks in the pursuit of innovation.

From my perspective, the first and foremost important step in building an innovation driven company is to build the Innovation Culture. This is achieved through a strong visionary management team, with a process and structure in place, where investment is done on building the required skill set and with an attitude that failure and experimentation are viable options.

Here are some techniques that can help in building a more innovative culture:

Idea Management Process

Knowledge sharing across the organization
I do not even need to highlight how important is to share knowledge and information across your team members. Some techniques are well-known such as corporate intranet, billboards, and informational monitors across the office. The whole point of doing this is to benefit of the collective innovation capacity. 

Thus, in order to inspire an innovational culture you need to build a culture that explores the ideas that are on the market right now, collect them as study and inspiring material, share them among team mates and encourage an environment where those ideas are discussed.

Idea Collection and Management
In order to action knowledge sharing it is obvious that we need to have an infrastructure in place for idea collection, taxonomization and management. This enables us to have a system that allows us to use our collection as research material and reference material for future needs. A simple mechanisms to achieve this is by using excel spreadsheets. A more sophisticated way is to use a well-structured database and search engine. Go for a simpler solution as the first step.

Risk taking - experimentation 

In order to have a culture of innovation one needs to be free to experiment and fail. Learn from past experiences but do not repeat the same mistake. By saying this I mean: all results need to be recorded and lessons need to be learned from past failures. Only by having the freedom to fail one will be free to perform experiments, but do not repeat failures. 

Embrace a culture of questioning

Promote an environment where every question is treated with same importance and respect. Only if one asks questions, one will be able to make the change - innovation. The best innovators are people who constantly are asking questions and at the same time look for solutions. They do not accept the status quo as a viable state.

In my next blog entry I will be talking about how to learn and grow an individual discovery skill. 

Till next time...

Innovation - Do we need it - Part 1

For a long time I have been contemplating writing a series of articles related to innovation. Let's consider this article to be the first one. I want to talk about the importance of innovation inside the organization. Yes, it sounds obvious that we need innovation but not so, how much or who should do it and so on. Let me start with some examples from recent history:

1. PALM – The company that created the first hand held device. But, unfortunately, failed to continue innovating by adding mobile phone capabilities to it, or enabling real time synchronization and so on. When Intel completed the development of the radio chip set, they offered to PALM to use it; unfortunately, the company refused it. They do not exist anymore.

2. RIM – Yes, they jumped at the opportunity of using a new Intel chip set and created the first Blackberry. Unfortunately, they did not see the importance of being able to have a full internet connectivity with a great user experience. Its web browser was useless for many years and they did not do anything about it. Yes, Apple recognized the opportunity and came up with the iPhone. The rest is history.

I can go on and on with examples including Apple Computer Corp. at the time when Steve Jobs was not with them. Eventually, every company that stopped innovating suffered big time.

In last decade of my life I have been working in the marketing/interactive agency sector. This sector is used to a business model that requires customers to finance any work that agencies do. Nothing wrong with this except...

The problem with this approach is that you, as an agency, are not a forward thinker visionary that will drive customer business. Where is that value that will make your client love you, respect you and eventually keep you in the business?

Clients expect from you to be innovative and to help them drive their business. And to do so you need to invest in your people, projects and relationship with clients.  

Same as we expect from our employees to invest in their professional building, our clients expect from us to invest in our own and their business. They want to hear we are forward thinking and see our ideas in realization. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we are going to build products and solutions for free. 

One way you can address this is by creating prototypes and allow clients to get a feeling for the final solution. This on one side, does not require a large investment; and on the other, it opens incremental business opportunities by organically growing the account. 

In my next article, I will continue with some thoughts on how can you implement innovation inside your organization. 

Startup Pitfalls

For the last fifteen years I have been involved in differentcapacity with startups. In one case I was the founder; in other cases I was a co-founder,advisor or just an executive manager. I learned valuable lessons through these engagements that I want to share with you.

Let's start:

1. Roles and Responsibilities

Usually startups are created by a few partners with equal vote. Thus, when they have to make a decision, they vote on the issue. This is a quite democraticapproach and it is OK when there are big company decisions to be made, but whenthey are operational decision, then it is not quite a good approach. Everypartner, at the same time, should have a specific role and responsibility insidethe organisation in order to be able to make decisions according tothat.  I have seen organizations where operational decisions were madecollectively and there was no one at the end to take responsibility. It iskind of paralysis approach.

2. Accountability

This is still related to the same topic of rolesand responsibility but also accountability and expertise. If you are the founder and CEO of the organisation, it doesn't mean that you are expert inall the domains (technology, strategy, business or creative). Yes, youare perhaps expert in one of these areas and please stick to it. Donot intend to make decisions in the area that you do not haveexpertise. Leave your ego on the side for your own good.

3. Minimum viable product

In the early stage of startup, it is important no to go with grandiose ambitions in building your product. Simply, you do not know how yourproduct is going to be accepted and which features will your potential users like to use. The best approach is to start small and then to grow step by step, and measure each step in order to find out if that is what users want.

6. Clear Vision

In order for your people to deliver best results everyone in yourorganization needs to share the same vision of the company that you as a CEOsets. There can not be confusion in your team as it will result in wasted energy.

7. 10 seconds elevator pitch (clear vision)

In order to have a clear vision for the company, you need to beable to explain your solution and value in just 10 seconds. As it is calledelevator pitch, it needs to be clear to anyone without background of yourcompany and what you are doing. If you fail in this, you definitely are failingin having clarity for your team which is a big problem.

Agree or disagree with my observations? Please shareyour thoughts with me.

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses  Eric Ries $14.32

The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company  Steve Blank $23.50