Innovation

Innovating with nothing but water around you

Published date: April 28, 2023 в 2:48 pm

Category: Innovation,Innovation Facilitation

I love movies and I love innovation. But even I was shocked when I learned that someone who shares my feelings was willing to pay USD 85,000 for a unique volleyball that appeared on the big screen.

A few weeks ago, Wilson, an off-white leather ball which is best known for co-starring alongside Tom Hanks in “Cast Away” was sold for that sum.

In the film, FedEx trouble shooter Chuck Noland, played by Hanks, is forced by extreme conditions to survive on a deserted island for 4 years, relying only on the limited resources found around him.

Wilson, in the movie context, is not just a ball. Chuck needs to find a solution to his solitude, sense of aloneness. Almost accidently, he “creates” a companion out of a simple blood-stained volleyball, by adding a face to it. This seemingly casual action changed the ball’s essence.

Wilson the volleyball from “Cast Away”

Source:

Why is this scene relevant for us? And what can we learn from it? I will use this Hollywood story to explain two principles of innovation that you can implement in your business, even if you are not completely surrounded by water.

How do we usually innovate?

All around us we can spot and specify needs and problems. We can usually identify and articulate our pains: What do we lack? What action do we want to perform, or do we wish to be performed? Then, we tend to look for a tool, a product or a person that best suits our needs.

What if there is not even one object around that supports these needs? In such cases we may try to build or invent one.

We usually move from a perceived function to the object that can perform it. We practice this standard way of thinking not only in our private lives, but also as a part of organizational and business routines. We define “A job to be done” and look for the right tool to do the job!

The term “Form Follows Function”, which encapsulates this way of thinking, was coined by the architect Louis Sullivan at the end of the 19th century. Sullivan was known as the “Father of Modernism”, influencing generations of architects and designers. He referred to the fact that a building or an object should primarily relate to its intended function or purpose, even at the expense of its aesthetics…

A deserted island is actually a Closed World

But survivors on lost islands do not experience regular conditions. You can ask Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the most famous fictional castaway who spent 28 years on a remote tropical island. Your resources are scarce, and you must make the best of what can be found in your immediate surroundings, your Closed World. This is the first principle of innovation to be learned from this story.

In the 2000 drama film Cast Away, Chuck Noland is on his way to Malaysia when his cargo plane gets caught in a violent storm and crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Noland is the only survivor of the crash, and he washes up on an uninhabited island.

In his new home Noland finds his standard way of thinking useless. He carefully examines the objects around him – the content of some FedEx packages washed up on the shore – only to find out that their original function is no longer needed. After all, what good can skating shoes bring when you’re the only resident of your wild sandy hot kingdom?

Think differently, embrace your constraints

If you find yourself on such a deserted island, the first things you will probably look for are food, water, and shelter. Chuck Noland did just that, utilizing everything he could lay his hands on.

He began improvising. Not only did he find new functions for the objects he found on the island, but these new functions seem much more innovative than what he originally imagined.

For us it comes as no surprise since we believe in SIT that Constraints Foster Creativity. Nothing like a remote island to illustrate constraints. Noland learned this second principle of innovation quickly.

Got some dry branches? Great! Rubbing them can help start a fire. That’s easy.

How about the skating shoes blades? Looks like the perfect knife.

Some video cassettes that seemed of no value were the source of a strong rope, weaved from the tape inside them.

The plastic walls of portable toilets? They were turned into a sail and a shield for the raft Noland built.

And Wilson!

At first glance, the volleyball seemed redundant and was thrown aside. Only later a latent need was discovered. Noland, desperate to talk to someone, personified the volleyball, making him his closest friend. He drew a face on the bloodstained ball, enabling it to become much more than a sport appliance for years to come.

This innovative way of thinking might sound strange or even childish, but that is just the point. Most people use the standard way of innovating that I described before; Nevertheless, I would like to suggest a different approach: start with the form of the object, then look for new functionalities it may support.

This phenomenon was discovered by a group of psychologists led by Ronald Finke, and it spurred a new thinking approach.

In SIT terms, this is called Function Follows Form or FFF for short. This counterintuitive yet powerful process allows us to discover new benefits that we might miss by following our usual path of thinking.

We like improvising, creating new ideas out of imagined situations or objects, so why wait until we find ourselves on an island?

Come back next week to see how you can recognize outcomes of the FFF framework in surprising places.

The Not-So-Fuzzy Front End

Published date: April 20, 2023 в 11:24 am

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation,Strategy,Sustainable Innovation

A best practice at Fortune 100 companies is to see the front end of the pipeline not as fuzzy, but as crystal clear. A systematic approach to innovation using an effective process can take away the mystery of the front end and create a sustainable growth engine.

What is the “fuzzy front end” and why has this notion become so popular? Calling the front end “fuzzy” perpetuates the myths of innovation. “Fuzziness” is the term coined to suggest that innovation has lots of risk, is not systematic, and is more of a “eureka” moment. One can schedule work, but you cannot schedule invention.

This is simply not true. You can schedule innovation. A company like GE, for example, that is seeking 8% growth on a base of $207billion in sales, needs $17 billion in new revenue a year from innovation to achieve that. GE will not tolerate fuzziness at its front end of innovation.

For some, fuzziness is more about how to select projects from among the ideas generated at the front end. There are many tools available to help managers select the most appropriate projects. The best of those use some form of weighted linear model.

My advice: Create an innovation schedule. Hold people accountable for generating new business opportunities. Sharpen the focus, and reward teams that bring forward an exciting portfolio of current and future growth opportunities. Accepting fuzziness in the front end is accepting slow growth.

Tempting Innovation

Published date: April 13, 2023 в 9:21 am

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation,Strategy

Jeffrey Phillips makes a nice distinction between the various ways to adopt ideas of others outside your organization. In his post, The sincerest form of flattery:

If you are copying ideas in your industry, you’re a follower
If you adopt ideas from other industries and apply them in new ways in your industry, you’re an innovator
If you package your capabilities and dramatically change another market, your a disrupter

What about adoption of ideas of others inside your organization? Innovators face a particularly challenging issue getting colleagues to accept their ideas. Tanya Menon from the Ohio State University describes the paradox of an external idea being viewed as “tempting” while the exact same idea, coming from an internal source, is considered “tainted.”

In a business era that celebrates anything creative, novel, or that demonstrates leadership, “borrowing” or “copying” knowledge from internal colleagues is often not a career-enhancing strategy. Employees may rightly fear that acknowledging the superiority of an internal rival’s ideas would display deference and undermine their own status.

By contrast, the act of incorporating ideas from outside firms is not seen as merely copying, but rather as vigilance, benchmarking, and stealing the thunder of a competitor. An external threat inflames fears about group survival, but does not elicit direct and personal threats to one’s competence or organizational status. As a result, learning from an outside competitor can be much less psychologically painful than learning from a colleague who is a direct rival for promotions and other rewards.

Companies such as Procter & Gamble have perfected getting ideas from outside the organization. Their Connect + Develop program is considered a best practice in external collaboration. What companies struggle with is how to overcome the internal acceptance of peer ideas. One way to approach it is with Team Innovation.

The Story of Dogs and Pigeons

Published date: March 23, 2023 в 11:57 am

Written by: Erez Tsalik

Category: Innovation

It seems that everybody is preoccupied, to a certain extent, with the newly available AI open platforms. This, made me think of two very different animals: Dogs and pigeons.

Suffa, Michal, Quinta, and Dula were the dogs that accompanied my life. They were all rescued dogs, and each was very different in personality and relationships with us, the humans around them.

It amazes me that we can bond with our pets so well, characterize them and form an understanding of their ‘personality’. From an evolution point of view, I find it interesting to see the transition of their relationships with mankind.

Dogs have been around humans since prehistoric times and were one of the earliest animals to be domesticated. It is believed that early humans began to breed and tame wild dogs as early as 15,000 years ago, making them among the first domesticated animals. These early dogs were probably used for hunting, guarding and to help with various tasks such as herding animals. Over the centuries, dogs have been bred for different traits and characteristics, leading to the wide variety of breeds we know today. In modern times, the need use of dogs for hunting, guarding, herding and similar tasks has declined. Intuitively, you would expect to see less and less dogs around… However, it seems like dogs ‘re-positioned’ themselves as the most beloved companion animal, and continue to bring joy and comfort to humans around the world. In their new lives as pets, most dogs live better, longer and happier. They are mainly kept as pets and are even used in various forms of therapy. With more and more families joining the economic middle class, the population of dogs as pets is growing too.

From wild wolves to domesticated pets, the bond between humans and dogs has grown strong over time and will probably continue to do so for many years to come.

Pigeons have a long and fascinating history with humans. Wild rock doves, the ancestors of all domesticated pigeons, were the first bird species to be domesticated by humans. By the 1800s, pigeons were being used by humans for mail delivery in various countries. This was made possible due to their homing instincts and ability to fly long distances, which made them ideal for such a role. As technology evolved and more efficient methods of communication were invented, the need for pigeons as mail carriers diminished.

Over time, some of these domesticated birds returned to a wild state, beginning a new chapter in the history of the pigeon, and trying, not always successfully, to adapt and prosper. Many cities have seen a decline in wild pigeon populations due to the development of urban areas and the introduction of new predators. In cities that still have large population of pigeon, they are perceived as a nuisance, and are often referred to as rats-with-wings.

As our work and career landscapes continue to evolve, there are trades and occupations that have been forced to pivot or re-invent themselves in order to stay relevant. For example, taxi drivers have had to become ride-share operators, travel agents have had to become internet-based booking websites, retail clerks have had to become e-commerce delivery specialists, tour guides have had to become virtual tour operators, and assembly line workers have had to become automation engineers. Each of these professions has seen a significant shift in their roles and the progress of their jobs due to the changing technological landscape. Despite these changes, each of the examples still demonstrate how the workforce must stay flexible and adaptive in order to move forward with their careers.

There is a lot that can be, and should be done by us, to ensure that we will design our future work changes to be more like dogs and less like pigeons.

This article was co-authored with https://writesonic.com/

Innovation Under the Threat of a Recession?

Published date: March 9, 2023 в 4:11 pm

Written by: Yoni Stern

Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy

Cutting budgets of new projects, whether they are under the bucket of “innovation” or not is commonplace in times of economic uncertainty. This phenomenon is quite logical, especially for those classified as “innovation”. Innovation’s ultimate goal, after all, is to spur growth. In a period when growth is pretty much out of the question, investment in innovation seems capricious. Companies need to become more insular, stop the bleeding, cut the “luxuries” they have become accustomed to in times of plenty, and weather the storm. Not to mention the shareholders breathing down the Board’s neck to show some sort of profit margin.

The problem, however, is that these companies are overlooking two essential aspects of innovation. Firstly, while the output of innovation should always be value-add (usually equivalent to “growth”), innovation should never be applied to issues that are not strategic to the company at that time. This is one of the ways that many companies inadvertently marginalize innovation: they imply that while the current projects circulating in the company are there to keep margins steady, these extra projects are for growth. “Innovation projects” are then perceived as nice-to-have additions to one’s everyday work (unless you happen to be the unfortunate one who received the extra work brought on by these projects. Then they are not-so-nice-to-have). Thereby, management separates innovation from the core activities of the company and only innovates when the company has excess resources to invest. Or – even worse – when they panic due to a need to react to a bold competitor move or other market threat.

But this is not where innovation efforts should be placed. Innovation should be applied to tough projects and processes that are already occurring in the organization. It should be used to improve them – to make them more efficient, more effective, or to leverage them for growth. Innovation should not be invasive, it should be a tool for getting the most out of what is already happening or what you already have. It has become somewhat of a slogan for us in recent years: “Don’t do innovation; innovate in what you do”.

I doubt that “thinking and acting differently to achieve your goals” becomes irrelevant in times of a recession. Perhaps the opposite is true?

Interestingly, for those bold enough to resource traditionally-defined innovation efforts, the research shows that this is the time for even more substantial ROI.

Professor Jacob Goldenberg of Columbia University Graduate School of Business pointed out to me that research shows that times of recession are when true change happens in the marketplace. When the market is strong, the large companies and small companies typically both grow by gaining more customers – but at a rate proportional to their current market share. When the market is small is when there is an opportunity to convert just a small group of customers from the competitor’s offering, thereby having a greater effect on market share and the balance of power post-recession. Those smaller companies who had wisely increased their expenditures during a downturn, taking an aggressive approach, are those who were able to come out of the recession market leaders. This implies that market leaders must take a similar approach simply to ward off their competition and retain their position in the future.

So, is a recession the right time to invest in innovation? Common wisdom says no. Then again, innovation isn’t about doing what’s common.

Innovation Follows Strategy

Published date: March 2, 2023 в 12:42 pm

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy

Innovation that is done in the context of business strategy tends to be more focused, efficient, and business-model relevant. Innovation should not be viewed as a way to take the organization off its strategic track and in new directions. Rather, innovation should be applied in a way that makes the current strategic track more successful and profitable…true growth.

Yet the tendency is to view this approach as incrementalism and not disruptive enough in the Christensen sense. Some would say that starting with your current situation is not bold and is risk adverse. “We’re not thinking outside the box” is the usual incantation at this point. Instead, there is a preference to chasing “white space” and “open source” innovation as a source of growth. Some executives prefer the lure of white space and opportunity spotting, and they readily acknowledge that it is “low yield by design.” The Scarcity Principle tends to make these opportunities seem more valuable than they really are. White space chasers position themselves as fighting the heroic fight. Resources come pouring in.

The best Fortune 100 companies pursue high yield, organic innovation efforts… not “low-yield-by-design” efforts. High yield innovation comes from tying innovation directly to the strategic marketing context of the firm. Ideas generated this way help the organization stretch its model in a way that is achievable and internally-sellable.

How do you tie innovation to strategy? Professor Christie Nordhielm from Georgetown University has developed what I consider the best single contribution to marketing thought since the 4P’s. Her Big Picture framework of the marketing management process provides the context for innovating across the entire business model. Applying systematic innovation tools to each aspect of her Big Picture model can yield amazing insights at both the strategic and tactical levels of the business. It is the intersection of these two ideas…Big Picture Strategy and Systematic Inventive Thinking…that will yield consistent, profitable results. Innovation follows strategy…not the other way around.

Innovation Muscle

Published date: February 23, 2023 в 12:56 pm

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation,Methodology,Organizational Innovation

The best Fortune 100 companies see innovation as an ongoing capability, not a one time event. These companies work hard to build muscle around this capability so they can deploy it when they need it, where they need it, tackling their hardest problems. Companies do this to keep up with the ever changing landscape both inside and outside the firm.
What does it mean to build innovation muscle? I think of it as the number of people trained, the frequency of using an innovation method, and the percentage of internal departments that have an innovation capability. Call it an Innovation Muscle Index:

N (number of trained employees) x F (number of formal ideation events per year using a method) x P (percent of company departments with at least one employee trained in an effective innovation method)

IMI = N x F x P

Building innovation muscle is not much different than building body muscle. Let’s turn to an authority, http://www.muscleprogram.com/, and see how to build body muscle. Here is an exact quote taken from that website. Then I have overlaid my interpretation of it from an innovation point-of-view in parenthesis and in bold font.

“You need to decide what kind of (innovation) muscle form you’re looking to achieve. Drawing on examples nearly everyone is familiar with, you need to decide if you want to look like Arnold (GE) Schwarzenegger (bigger bulk) or Bruce (Apple) Lee (lean and toned). This decision will help you determine which kinds of exercises you do and how you do them.

Now, with all of that out of the way, let’s look at some things you can do to build your (innovation) muscles!
If you don’t already, start getting your body (company) used to working out. Start running (innovating) every day, not jogging (brainstorming) or walking (copying others), to help get your blood (growth) moving and your (innovation) muscles primed for building. You’re not running a race so you don’t need to be a speed demon. Instead, maintain a comfortable and steady pace, taking long and powerful strides (initiatives).
If you want to have the lean, Bruce (Apple) Lee appearance, you need to work with lighter weights and have a higher number of repetitions (innovation workshops) in each set. By doing this, you are toning and shaping your (innovation) muscles into longer and thinner forms. If you want the Arnold (GE) look, you need to work heavier weights (more departments using innovation) and do fewer repetitions. By doing this, you are toning and shaping your (innovation) muscles into short and thicker forms.
Ensure that you have a regular plan, focusing on specific (innovation) muscle groups, and stick to it. Don’t try to work every (innovation) muscle in your body every day of the week. At best, this will lead to burnout (budget crunch) and at worst it will lead to injury (downsizing). Your (innovation) muscles will be getting worked hard, so they need to have time to recuperate.
However, you should rotate your plan every month. For example, let’s say that you are working on your chest, shoulders and biceps (new products) on Monday; your abdomen, forearms and upper back (new services) on Wednesday; and your lower back and legs (new strategies) on Friday. Every four weeks, rotate one day so that you’ll be working on your lower back and legs on Monday; your chest, shoulders and biceps on Wednesday; and your abdomen, forearms and upper back on Friday. The following month, rotate one more day.
This will allow each of your (innovation) muscle groups to take advantage of the fact that you probably workout differently on each of those days. If you simply stick with the exact same schedule forever, then you’ll find yourself quickly running into what are known as “plateaus,” where you just can’t seem to build that (innovation) muscle group past a certain point. With a rotation schedule, you will avoid this problem by giving each (innovation) muscle group the benefit of your natural changing body (company) rhythm.
If you keep these general guidelines in mind and consistently work at your plan with passion and intensity, your body (company) will be more toned (competitive) and shaped (growing) than you ever imagined it could be. While it won’t happen overnight, it probably won’t take as long as you’re afraid it will.”

10 New Year Resolutions for Innovation Leaders

Published date: December 30, 2022 в 12:00 pm

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation

This blog marks its 10th anniversary this year.
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
and next year’s words await another voice.”

T.S. Eliot

In 2013 (2023), think inside the box and give your staff these precious gifts to drive innovation forward:

1. Give them Hope: Hope is defined as a positive motivational belief in one’s future; the feeling that what is wanted can be had; that events will turn out for the best. Without hope, tasks such as innovating become difficult if not impossible. Researcher Armenio Rego says, “Hope is important for innovation at work because creativity requires challenging the status quo and a willingness to try and possibly fail. It requires some level of internal, sustaining force that pushes individuals to persevere in the face of challenges inherent to creative work.”

2. Give them Voice: Giving your employees a voice in matters boosts their creativity. Research shows that, over time, procedural fairness (giving people the opportunity to express their views) has a positive maintaining effect on creativity whereas stifling their views decreases creativity. Be consistent over time. Don’t let distractions or a crisis cause you to change the rules. Give them a chance to speak about anything related to the innovation challenges you face – focus, methodology, budget allocation, team formation, and so on. Most importantly, let them speak about the nature and value of their own ideas.

3. Give them a chance to Get Even: When managing individuals or teams, the time will come when you have to say ‘no’. In that moment immediately after rejecting a person’s viewpoint, you want to let it sink. Don’t try to minimize the impact by rationalizing the decision or by other means of making the person feel better. Assign the rejected person right away to a new and important task. Put them on a project where they can prove themselves and “get even.” Let their creative juices flow.

4. Give them Accountability: Hold people accountable for what they do to improve innovation activities. It is tempting to judge employee performance and reward them for innovation output. This leads to the unwanted rivalry between employees. Avoid this trap by looking at how managers set up “cockpit indicators” and use those indicators to make changes. Have they created a closed loop feedback process to improve innovation continuously?

5. Give them a Method: For thousands of years, inventors have embedded five simple patterns into their inventions, usually without knowing it. These patterns are the “DNA” of products that can be extracted and applied to any product or service to create new-to-the-world innovations. Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) is an effective, repeatable, and trainable innovation process for organic growth.

6. Give them Constraints: Research in cognitive psychology confirms that creativity is enhanced by constraints, not freedom. By limiting the number of variables under consideration from infinity to a finite number, we amplify our potential to come up with a creative solution. To throw away all constraints would be to destroy the capacity for creative thinking. It may sound counterintuitive, but giving employees too much freedom of thought leads to “idea anarchy” and a poor level of inventiveness.

7. Give them Skills: Innovation is a skill, not a gift. It can be learned by anyone regardless of where they are on the creativity scale. If you want a more innovative company, you must have more innovative employees. Train them in innovation as you would train other skill such as leadership, six sigma, or business ethics.

8. Give them Teams: Innovating takes teamwork. Properly selected teams using a facilitated systematic method will outperform ad hoc teams using divergent, less structured methods such as brainstorming. Create innovation “dream teams” with diverse talent from the commercial, technical, and customer-oriented parts of your business.

9. Give them Strategy: Innovation that is linked to strategy is seen as more realistic and supportable. Innovating is efficient because you avoid creating ideas that are out of scope. Companies get better results from innovation by targeting initiatives at the right places.

10. Give them an Innovation Culture: An innovative corporate culture is one that supports the creation of new ideas and the implementation of those ideas. Leaders need to help employees see innovation in the right light and create support systems to make it stick. As fellow blogger Jeffrey Phillips notes, “A culture that sustains and supports innovation is one that encourages reasonable risk and uncertainty in the goal of larger, more profitable products and services.”

Rebooting Your Innovation Effort

Published date: December 22, 2022 в 5:25 pm

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation,Strategy

Imagine you just completed an innovation program, but things went terribly wrong. So wrong, in fact, that the boss won’t allow anyone to use the term “innovation” in any context. You and your colleagues spent a lot of time, money, and effort only to realize that you did not get what was promised. What do you now? How do you reboot your innovation program?

Here are some tips:

1. Conduct a Post Mortem: Despite the pain, you should thoroughly examine the “dead body” to understand what happened. How did we get here? What stimulated the initiative? What were our assumptions going in? What changed? How did we identify potential consultants to work with? How did we vet them? How did we select one to work with? Did we have the right team in place? Were we using the right method?

2. Take Stock in the Positives: No effort is a total waste no matter how miserable. You should take the time to identify the positives. What did we gain out of the effort? What did we learn? What were we hoping to gain and didn’t? Is that gap still relevant? What did we take away that we can leverage? Did we get anything that can be leveraged in another part of the company?

3. Refresh the Palate: Members of your team paid dearly to be a part of their program. They suffered the opportunity cost of being away from their work. In return, give them a rest. Let them recharge and catch up. People need to flush the bad experience out of their system before considering the next one.

4. Create the Burning Platform: What is happening in your business over the next 12 to 18 months? Is it growing? Contracting? What changes do you anticipate in your competitive position? No industry is completely calm and stable, though some are more turbulent than others. You need to spot an inflection point in your business where technology, regulatory or other forces are looming. Then, you need to sound the alarm, create the burning platform, and gain alignment from your leaders to anticipate the problem with a new innovation initiative.

5. Propose a Pilot Program: Reduce the risk of a new innovation program by testing it first. A short, pilot program that addresses a specific product or service line helps you understand whether a new method is right for your company. Pilot programs help keep your costs in line, and they help you reduce resistance to adopting new methods.

6. Syndicate!: Initiate the next program with the support of other departments. Enroll other divisions to share the risks…and rewards…from the pilot. Ask peers to chip in part of the expense, even if it is a small amount. By “syndicating” support of the pilot program, you broaden the exposure to a successful outcome.

7. Emphasize Skill Building: To stay competitive, companies must include innovation in their competency models. A competency is a persistent pattern of behavior resulting from a cluster of knowledge, skills, abilities, and motivations. Competency models formalize that behavior and make it persistent. Use the pilot program as an opportunity to partner with your Human Resources colleagues to create an innovation competency model.

8. Create Lasting Support Systems: Not only must you reboot the innovation culture at your company, you must also create the support systems to make it stick. Can we continue to use a method without consultants going forward? Are there training aids and tools to help teach others? Can the pilot program be extended to a general training program? What is the retention rate one month out? Six months out? How many people could be trained within your current budget cycle? How do you continue to build innovation muscle?

Will You Help Me?

Published date: November 20, 2022 в 11:33 am

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation

Asking for help may be the most powerful yet underutilized resource available for innovators. Researchers Francis Flynn and Vanessa Bohns found that people grossly underestimate the rate that others are willing to help when asked. As a result, we more often fail to ask for help when the likelihood was very high the other person would have said ‘yes.’ Consider this study they conducted at Columbia University:

“Participants in the study were positioned in the middle of the campus and instructed to approach random strangers for an escort to the university gym, which is located at the edge of campus (the Columbia University gym is subterranean and therefore difficult to find). Before completing the task, participants were asked to estimate how many they would have to approach in order to get one to say “yes.” On average, people estimated they would have to ask 7.2 people to get just one to agree. In fact, they needed to approach just 2.3 strangers, on average. While people presumed that about 6 out of 7 of the individuals they approached would refuse to assist them, the reality was that approximately every other person was willing to agree to their request.

Why are we reluctant to ask for help? The researchers suggest we focus too much on the other person’s cost of saying “yes” (in the form of their time and resources expended to comply with the request) versus their heavier social costs of saying “no.” They also suggest we may be letting a time when someone said “no” weigh too heavily in our memory. The fear of rejection looms large, keeping us from risking another bad experience.”

We also tend to overestimate how harshly others will judge us if we ask for help. We fear asking for help may be seen as a sign of weakness. The other person has power over you in that awkward moment when they can say yes or no to your request. However, taking another view of the situation turns the tables. When we view power and strength as the capacity to influence others to access their resources, help-seeking is not weak, but rather a “powerful act.”

Asking for help has many benefits as the researches point out. First and foremost is you are highly likely to get the help you seek. Second, you are giving the other person a “gift” in the form of an opportunity to feel helpful and valued. Third, you will likely strengthen the relationship with the other person. Finally, you avoid the life-long feeling of regret of not asking help. Research suggests, in the long run, we regret more not asking for help than having a request rejected.

Successful innovation practitioners need help in many forms, including:

• Advice and direction – where are the fertile areas for innovation

• Participation in innovation programs and workshops

• Evaluation of ideas and feedback about results

• Support with both tangible and intangible resources

Need to innovate? Ask for help!

Innovation

IMI = N x F x P

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