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Innovation is a nascent discipline and, as such, very few of its “truths” and tenets have had the opportunity to mature and to brave the test of time. Less diplomatically, one can say that much of what is said about innovation is not worth the flip-chart paper it is written on. Strangely enough, even though the topic is so new, some common views have already attained the status of myths, which makes it a bit difficult to unseat them and thus avoid some of the damage that these beliefs cause in organizations.

This third installment of our series from the Behind the Scenes of Corporate Innovation meetup, co-hosted with 3M, focuses on some of these corporate myths. Why? Because becoming aware of their existence and their effect is an important first step in ridding oneself of their effect.

The myths are divided into buckets, each placed under the relevant element from our 7 Elements Model.

Skills

Myth #1: Artists are creative. Engineers, accountants and bureaucrats are not.

Alternative: Look around you – most innovations you will see were invented and designed by engineers.

It is commonly assumed that some of us have the innovation gift while others simply don’t, rendering them incapable of innovating.

This is incorrect and, in addition to academic research, we have 23 years of experience in the field to prove it. The truth is that skills and processes that lead to innovation can be taught. Everyone can significantly improve their skills, regardless of their baseline.

Governance

Myth #2: Innovation cannot be measured

Alternative: ROI – Return on Innovation, absolutely must be measured, otherwise no serious innovation effort will be sustained in the organization.

To many, innovation is amorphous and mysterious and thus can be difficult to measure and monitor. There is even a fear that measurement itself can stifle innovation. This is true, but only if the wrong indicators are used at the wrong time. That’s why it’s important to clearly define what the organization means by innovation. Once there is a clear definition, it is possible and crucial to measure your ROI, although the way to do it is not always straightforward.

Outcomes

Myth #3: Innovation is mostly about creating products or services.

Alternative: Innovation can and should be applied to every aspect of your business.

We advocate an innovation mindset, not merely to create new products and services, but to “innovate in what you do”. If applied in a structured way, using appropriate tools, any task or process can be innovated on, to improve results and achieve goals.

Resources

Myth #4: Top Management’s only job is to launch the innovation program, and budget it.

Alternative: Without ongoing management commitment, the effort cannot be sustained

Top management very often makes a brave decision to launch an ambitious, company-wide innovation effort, and even budgets it generously. But, very quickly, responsibility is relegated to lower ranks in the corporate hierarchy, and management impatiently adopts the role of demanding quick and tangible results. Instead of supporting the effort for the long haul, management becomes impatient to either celebrate prematurely or move on to the next “management-flavor-of-the-month”.

Processes

Myth #5: Brainstorming is the best way to come up with new ideas.

Alternative: It has been proven time and again that BS is not effective in generating truly novel ideas.

Brainstorming has many advantages but, as research and corporate experiences have shown time and again, creating novelty is not one of them. By placing constraints on your thinking and using a structured approach, you can consistently achieve success.

Behaviors

Myth #6: Innovation and creativity are always fun.

Alternative: Dabbling in innovation, as enrichment or mental exercises can be lots of fun, but true innovation, in the sense of challenging your deep assumptions and firmly set ways of working, mostly involves hard work and requires discipline. There is much in the process that one can enjoy, but true change of beliefs and habits cannot be all fun and games. That is why very often a facilitated team effort is required to achieve impactful innovation.

Communication

Myth #7: Those who oppose innovation programs are wrong. They are simply “resisting”.

Alternative: Very often, those who “resist innovation” have an important point to make.

Resistance to innovation often emerges from the “wrong” motivations: fear of change, turf wars, oversized egos, etc. But, this opposition doesn’t always need to be “overcome”, rather, it is often very useful to listen carefully since those who oppose change often do so for valid and solid reasons. Resistance can also be a sign of the strong potential for novelty, pointing at valuable dig-sites.

These are only several of the common myths and traps that organizations deal with and fall into when embarking on innovation journeys. Talk to us, and we’ll be happy to hear/read your thoughts, and also to acknowledge – when relevant – that we ourselves are as vulnerable as anyone else to being wrong(:

With this post, we finalize the “Behind the Scenes” MeetUp series but continue to share and learn.

What to expect?

• A soon-to-come additional MeetUp in Minnesota. We are discussing potential topics with our colleagues and will update accordingly.
• A new series based on our ‘learnings’ from our New York city meetup, co-hosted with Kaltura, on Digital Transformation & Innovation.

Part two of our series on the insights, content, and learnings gathered before & during our Behind the Scenes of Corporate Innovation meetup, co-hosted with our friends at 3M, focuses on SIT’s 7 Elements Model for Organizational Innovation. This model was briefly introduced at the MeetUp as a framework to address the main challenges voiced by our corporate colleagues.

We would like to take advantage of this platform to share some of the basics of this straightforward yet powerful model with you. In a nutshell, the model allows organizations to analyze their innovation activity or, as it is referred to in our model, take their Innovation Pulse, and plan a focused and customized innovation strategy based on their analysis.

The model was created as an output of 24 years of experience, working with over 1400 companies, identifying patterns and efficient processes that led to useful strategies. Over time, we formulated a set of tools that can transform an organization into an innovative organization that continuously innovates and maintains its competitive advantage.

Working with the 7 Elements Model brings three significant results:

1)     Assesses your current situation in respect to innovation (“the Innovation Pulse”)

2)     Defines your goals and objectives

3)     Draws an initial Road Map for achieving these objectives

How does it work?

The first step is to assess and chart, on a diagram, the organization’s current efforts according to 7 distinct—yet extremely interconnected—innovation elements (please refer to diagrams below for both a description of each of the elements and a sample assessment).

7 Elements Descriptions

Example of ‘Innovation Pulse diagram’

Desired State & Mapping the Gap

This output allows you to view a clear picture of current innovation activity in the organization and areas that require improvement, thus allowing you to build a second, complementary diagram, an ideal model of your desired state in terms of innovation (see picture below).

Defining Your Course of Action

The two diagrams can then be compared to identify the gaps and determine priorities. This allows you to determine a course of action to close the gaps to achieve the desired state. SIT can assist in this task, working in one or several of the following modalities:

a)     Training

b)     Facilitation

c)     Consulting

d)  Outsourcing

This process gradually engages all parts of the organization by creating networks involving continuous learning, challenging assumptions, and systematic monitoring of results.

The valuable task of transforming into an innovative organization is, without a doubt, a demanding journey, yet one that can be made to be simpler, clearer, and well managed using SIT’s experience as expressed in the 7 Elements Model.

About two weeks ago, we shared a post about our Minneapolis Meetup, co-hosted with 3M: Behind the Scenes of Corporate Innovation.  Since we believe the content, insights, and learnings from this meetup are valuable, we will use the next three weeks to present some of this information to you:

• Today we will share the 4 most critical innovation challenges, as expressed by our 40+ participants;
• Next week, we will share with you our new 7 Elements Model with which you can analyze your organization’s innovation pulse and plan your innovation strategy;
• In our third installment, you can read about some common myths and traps, and how to avoid falling victim to them while establishing a culture and practice of innovation.

Back to the meetup: prior to attending, participants were asked to list their three most critical innovation-related corporate challenges. In brief, there were 24 respondents, who identified 67 challenges, many of them later confirmed by the rest of the attendees.

SIT’s facilitation team analyzed these responses and detected four main buckets, which are arranged below according to frequency of appearance in participants’ responses. Quotes from the survey are also given to further demonstrate and highlight the relevance of these themes.

4 Critical Innovation-Related Challenges

1. How do we de-risk our innovation efforts

seems to us that although many companies have officially adopted an LSU process, they find it difficult to wean themselves off the habits of testing and seeking a high level of certitude for each specific innovation before launch.

“Lack of external leverage; too many options to choose from makes it even more difficult.”

2. How do we change our company’s culture/mindset?

The most common task these days goes way beyond launching a product, or even an entire product line. Key words are “culture”, “change” and “transformation”. The desire is to find ways to influence the entire organization, change strategies and business models.

SIT’s take: We’ve seen this process evolve in the past 24 years, from attention to a specific local result such as solving a problem or launching a single product, to the demand to generate an entire pipeline and roadmap, all the way to the current situation, in which CEOs and top management either realize the need or are pressured by their boards or stakeholders to lead transformational changes in their organizations. This can often lead to futile high-profile and costly changes-for-the-sake-of-changing, but, if well managed by a committed management team, can truly transform and invigorate a company.

“Focusing on long-term development, not the “right now”.

“Internal cultural shift necessary to transform our business model.”

3. How do we accelerate / acquire speed and agility?

Companies are not only pressured to change, but to change faster. This obviously places additional demands on managers, often accompanied by stress.

SIT’s take: a paradox ensues, whereby managers are expected to lead profound transformations, rather than superficial change, which requires time and patience; but, since the environment changes at an ever-accelerating pace– requiring rapid and immediate adaptations–there is less patience and resources for profound long-term change processes to take place.

“Innovation takes time to hatch. How do we innovate with the fast-paced environment?”

4. How do we listen and get closer to our customers?

After 30+ years of constant effort to get closer to the client, listen to the Voice of the Customer, observe, empathize, research and analyze, companies still feel that true understanding and insights tend to elude them, and therefore are searching for novel approaches.

SIT’s take: although true that innovation is useless unless it addresses a customer need, it is a mistake to believe that true innovation is born just from listening to VoC. We believe that being attuned to your customers is a necessary but not sufficient condition for innovation. Instead, we recommend a combination of: a) breaking the more-of-the-same-VoC mold by engaging with your customers proactively through co-creation exercises; b) using structured innovation methods to come up with initial ideas that are in turn validated with customers.

“Doing adequate research to uncover new problems.”

“Lack of customer interaction for directed innovation.”

To summarize, we found, not surprisingly, a high level of congruence between the most pressing innovation-related issues in a wide variety of organizations and positions. In the next two posts we will relate, respectively, SIT’s approach for dealing with these issues and some common traps and misconceptions when going about it.

SIT’s Approach to Process Efficiency

In other posts, like Busting the Brainstorming Myth and How Effective is DT as an Innovation Methodology?, we have described some of the major faults of the BS method for ideation. Here, we will just briefly mention that BS tends to produce either unexciting ideas that are not new, or exciting ideas that are not viable. This is the point SIT – Systematic Inventive Thinking comes into play. As opposed to BrainStorming, SIT is a structured process calling for disciplined ideation within well-defined constraints. By changing the problem solver’s mindset, this process consistently leads to novel and effective approaches to problems and challenges.

Paradoxically, SIT requires that you focus on existing resources and capabilities (which is why the method is also referred to as “Innovating Inside the Box”), learning to use them in novel ways by breaking your so-called “Mental Fixednesses.” The method is therefore especially apt for constrained environments or systems defined by strict engineering requirements.

Here are some brief case studies that highlight how relatively small shifts in perspective, achieved through a structured process, can lead to substantially increased process efficiency.

HAVI is one of Asia Pacific’s largest logistics companies. At their depots in China, HAVI faced a consistent problem: delivery truck arrival times were frustratingly unpredictable, causing a slew of issues. For example, sometimes multiple trucks would arrive at the same time. And, since Havi had a limited number of truck unloaders, truck drivers spent unnecessary time waiting for their trucks to be unloaded. To avoid this process bottleneck, HAVI needed to find a way to streamline the unloading process.

HAVI considered various solutions, but none were cost-effective. They considered, for example, extending the warehouse to add docking space for extra trucks, but realized this renovation project would be prohibitively expensive and not necessarily tackle the workforce aspect of the problem. They also considered hiring a temporary workforce during busy periods. However, since the busy periods were often unpredictable, it would be impossible to foresee when the workers would be needed.

The Right Incentive

Using SIT’s thinking tool, Task Unification, which assigns a new and additional task to an existing resource, HAVI came up with a creative idea to improve their warehouse’s process efficiency: truck drivers arriving to the warehouse were offered the option of unloading the trucks themselves. Initially, this idea seemed totally untenable, as the drivers, it was believed, would certainly refuse to take on an additional and arduous task. But, after giving the option some thought, the Problem Solving Team realized that, given the right framework, the drivers would actually be more than happy to comply. With less downtime on the job, additional pay for the extra task, and more control over their schedule, the drivers had everything to gain.

By incentivizing drivers to unload the trucks and paying them for the time they spent unloading, HAVI utilized its existing workforce to solve its problem. Since drivers no longer needed to wait for unloaders, they could unload their trucks immediately, resulting in reduced time and quick turnover. By using SIT’s structured thinking process, HAVI managed to save time and money, while eliminating a problematic bottleneck.

Teva, an Israeli pharmaceutical company, experienced a surge in demand for a specific drug, to which we will refer here as Drug A, when a rival company went bankrupt and could no longer deliver it to market. As new clients approached Teva for Drug A, the company realized that they had an incredible opportunity to grow their business quickly. However, to do so, and ensure retained interest from the new clients, Teva had to double capacity in two weeks’ time. The issue, however, was that the manufacturing line for Drug A was already working at full capacity. While prior attempts to increase capacity had resulted in a 15% production increase, Teva needed a more drastic change.

Drug Cocktail?

In order to double production quickly without significantly changing their process, Teva turned to SIT and its systematic methodology. Using SIT’s Closed World Principle, which states that solutions to a problem can be generated focusing on existing resources, the Problem Solving Team collectively listed all the elements within the production line and its vicinity (the production line’s “Closed World”).

Through a mapping process, the Teva team first identified that the greatest challenge in dramatically increasing production with the current production line (let’s call it PL-A) was one of the stages of the process, Stage 7. At the same time, the team also came to an initially counter-intuitive concept: that they could consider as part of the Closed World, another, adjacent line: PL-B, in which a different drug was being produced.

By analyzing each of these production lines and their processes, the Teva team arrived at a novel idea. It appeared that PL-B had a stage that was very similar to PL-A’s Stage 7 (the bottleneck). But, as opposed to the situation in PL-A, this stage in PL-B was actually working at only half its capacity! The ensuing solution was as simple as it was surprising: the team redesigned the PL-A process so that immediately after Stage 6, half of the ‘material’ on the Production Line was diverted to the neighboring PL-B, taking advantage of PL-B’s excess capacity in the relevant stage. After finishing Stage 7, the material was immediately rediverted back to PL-A to continue the regular Production Line A process to its conclusion (see diagram below). By using the adjacent Production Line’s (PL-B) capacity, Teva was able to double production with a minimal investment. This occurred almost immediately, giving Teva exactly what the company needed to match market demand for its drug.

Complement your Toolbox with a Counter-Intuitive Approach to Productivity and Process Efficiency

Most companies strive to improve process efficiency and enhance productivity. There is always some way to function faster, use fewer resources, or produce less waste. Traditional methods are effective in leading you to do so – but only to a certain extent. These methods usually point out where you need to act but fall short in helping you come up with novel ideas of how to do so. Using specific thinking tools and principles, SIT can do just that, helping you take full advantage of existing resources in surprising and innovative ways, ultimately leading to Productivity Through Innovation

The Innovation Consulting Firm Landscape

firm. Luckily, our good friend, Drew Boyd, created a list of criteria that you can utilize when choosing an innovation consulting firm.  However, due to the richness of the current marketplace and the dynamic approach, some of this list is no longer relevant. While this may be the case, it still includes a lot of useful advice. The below advice and tools will help you make an informed and educated decision when choosing an innovation consulting firm.

I hope the above will help you in finding the right innovation consultancy. Since we are always on the look-out for the right clients to work with, here is a short questionnaire. Please fill in and, if relevant, we can have a short 20-minute chat to see if we can fit each other’s needs. We look forward to hearing from you.