Посты с тэгом: innovation methods

How and Why You Want to Strip Great Ideas of Their Identity

Published date: April 7, 2016 в 1:53 pm

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You’ve heard that old adage. Don’t judge a book by its cover. The same holds true in creativity. You want to resist the temptation of judging ideas depending on who it came from. Yet, its very difficult for us to do this. Here’s why. If we like the person who generated it, we tend to like their idea. And if we don’t like that person, well, let’s just say we might see a few more flaws than we might have otherwise.
Now you and your colleagues might not even be aware that you’re doing this. And what this means for you in practice is that you have to find a way to strip ideas of their identity.
You can boost the creative out put of your team just by making sure these ideas don’t get thrown out prematurely. Here’s how you do it. When you’re facilitating a session to generate ideas, announce to the group that there’s a new ground rule and the ground rule is simply this, people cannot put a name to any idea. That means that people are, are going to have to stop saying things like, hey that was my idea or hey, let’s go back to that great idea that Michael had earlier.
People will find this hard to do. So, you’re going to have to be firm about the rule. Another good technique is to tell people that whenever they have an idea, they have to write it down on a piece of paper, again, without putting anybody’s name to it. Every so often go around and collect those pieces of paper, and then pass them out randomly to people in the group, and have people take an idea and read it aloud to the rest of the group. That keeps the ideas anonymous.
And finally, another good technique is to have people work in pairs or groups of three. And whenever they share their idea, they do it as coming form the entire group, not just from one team member. And what this does is it makes it more difficult for other people in the group to figure out where that idea came from. It helps them eliminate that natural tendency to have a bias to that idea. Now these techniques might take a little bit more time and may feel a bit awkward, but trust me it’s well worth it.
You’ll boost you’re creative output at work by making sure good ideas don’t get thrown out too quickly.

Graduates, Start Your Innovation Engines: 5 Tips to Being Creative in Any Job

Published date: June 2, 2014 в 3:00 am

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A college diploma is one key to starting your career engine, but learning to be more creative could help turbo-charge it. Just like college coursework, creativity can be learned—you don’t have to be born with these skills. Focusing on them is definitely worthwhile: companies value creativity because it spurs growth and competitiveness. As a recent graduate, you can stand out from the crowd by coming up with great ideas no matter what position you start in.

Having the skill to innovate and be creative on command can make you more attractive to a company and help you land a dream job. To do so, keep these five tips in mind on how you can solve problems and be creative in any job, at any level!

1. Identify the constraints around the problem

What are constraints in the workplace? Job constraints could be limitations on budget, impending deadlines, or other limiting factors that you face during day to day tasks. Think of constraints as the mandatory requirements to doing your job. These things don’t hinder your ability to think creatively – they help it! Constraints keep you “inside the box” and force your brain to work harder and smarter. When approaching a professional problem, try looking for a solution by first identifying constraints to solving the problem (deadlines, budgets and other factors). By imposing these limitations up front, you’re doing yourself a big favor. You filter out the bad ideas from the start, before they take shape. After all, why come with an idea that’s unworkable? It’s better to limit yourself right from the start within a space where the viable ideas exist. This tactic will be sure to impress your boss and co-workers.

2. Imagine you are solving someone else’s problem

Tricking your mind into solving the problem for someone else can improve creative output. Start a meeting by explaining the task or the problem to be solved. Then, tell the group to solve the same problem, but imagine doing it in a different industry or for a different product. This activates the group and expands their thinking before they start working on their actual problem. Just getting people to step away from their daily routine will boost their creative output. Think of it like doing word problems in math class. There could be a common underlying formula to coming up with a solution.

3. Got a large problem to solve? Break it up into smaller parts.

A simple way to change perspective is by breaking problems into simple components. How does this boost your creativity? Many times, just seeing the separate components of an issue will trigger new inventive solutions.  It activates your mind to go in new directions. Think of it as unpacking a full suitcase and laying out all your clothes on the floor, then repacking in a new and better way. To do this with a problem at work, write down a list of each component, whether it’s a product, process, service, or a smaller and more specific problem that you want to tackle.

4. Need a brainstorming session? Work in pairs, not large groups.

Group brainstorming sessions can sometimes be frustrating and unproductive. A simple way to overcome this is to break a large group into smaller teams of two or three people. Working in pairs makes people more focused. You feel accountable to the other person to do your fair share of the thinking. You bounce ideas of each other and you offer suggestions on how to improve the idea. Working in pairs is also more efficient. Five groups of two can generate far more ideas in the same amount of time than one group of ten. Plus, it could be a great way to get to know people in your office.

5. Practice the Golden Rule of Creativity

Creativity is a team sport, and you’ll generate better ideas if you harness the brainpower of others! Colleagues will help you if you help them first. Imagine you find an article online that a colleague of yours would find interesting. Make this small favor even more appreciated by printing the article and highlighting the most relevant parts. Write a small note on the article pointing out how your colleague might use the information. And finally, hand deliver it to your colleague. If more appropriate, try this same method of personalized sharing digitally by highlighting and making an email note, or social media post.
I call this the golden rule of creativity. Practice it and others will do whatever they can to help with your creativity projects.

Copyright 2014 Drew Boyd (This post first appeared in Coke Journey on May 27, 2014)

Corporate Innovation Strategy Template

Published date: September 14, 2009 в 10:21 pm

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I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

Rudyard Kipling (1902)

Here is a simple template to create your company’s innovation strategy:

  • WHAT:
    • Determine what business lines are to be innovated.
    • Determine what products or services within those business lines need innovation.
    • Establish a portfolio model that compares innovation output from one business line to another.
    • Rank order business lines based on the strength of their innovation portfolio pipelines.
  • WHY:
    • Determine how much innovation is needed.  Use a tool like Map-the-Gap.
    • Tie innovation to a strategy framework such as The Big Picture.
    • Focus innovation exercises to link directly to the strategy framework.
    • Use the framework to identify market adjacencies.
  • WHEN:
    • Schedule innovation workshops at the front end of the business cycle to help determine what projects will get funding in the next budget cycle.
    • Schedule innovation workshops after the planning cycle to jump-start new initiatives for the upcoming year.
  • HOW:
    • Choose specific methods of innovation to be used based on efficacy and results.
    • Combine different methods to leverage the strengths of each.
    • Integrate the methods by using the output of one as inputs for the others.
  • WHERE:
    • Set aside space with the specific purpose of conducting innovation workshops.
  • WHO:
    • Form innovation “dream teams” to maximize the success of innovation efforts.
    • Schedule training on how to use innovation methods.
    • Examine the company’s innovation culture to diagnose where it is weak.
    • Establish an innovation competency model.
    • Designate and empower commercial leaders to drive innovation efforts.

Patent’s (Value) Pending

Published date: November 27, 2008 в 11:15 am

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The Front End of Innovation blog reports 70% of respondents to their recent survey believe eliminating business method patents will hurt innovation and its practices.  The premise is that innovators and entrepreneurs are less likely to innovate if they know they cannot get patent protection.  The result surprises me, and it makes me wonder what the other 30% were thinking.

The issue stems from whether an inventor can patent an abstract process, something that involves nothing more than thoughts.  The courts are saying no.  A recent ruling on a business method patent by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said that it was not tied to a machine or apparatus, nor did it transform a particular article into a different state or thing.  It did meet the standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court for patentability.  Many industries that are not “machine-based” like software makers, Internet companies, and investment houses, are concerned.

For me, the more appropriate question is:  WHO will cut back on innovation because of a loss of patent protection?  My observation is that it depends which side of the patent “fence” you currently sitting on:  1. you have patent protection now; 2. you are about to lose patent protection;  or 3. you are blocked by someone else’s patent.  The lure of getting a patent can spur companies on to innovate.  However, once earned, patents seem to dull the senses. Companies rest on their laurels, satisfied with the revenues earned on current, patent-protected products.  It is the threat of LOSING the protection that motivates people to innovate.  Finally, if you are being blocked by someone else’s patent, my sense is that companies are especially motivated to innovate.  They have no choice.

Keith Sawyer blogged about this over at Creativity and Innovation.  He reports on a recent paper by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer who conclude, “in most industries today, patents may actually discourage investment in innovation.”    

Most patents are granted in industries that demonstrate little innovation.  Through the 19th century, most inventions were not even patented (only 11% of British inventions displayed at the 1851 World’s Fair, for example).  A study of important innovations at the 1851 and 1876 world’s fairs found that countries with patent systems weren’t any more innovative than countries without.  Following changes in IP law, what happens historically?  Japan increased patent scope in 1988, and this has not resulted in greater innovation nor in increased R&D spending (beyond what would have been expected without that change).  The U.S. changed its treatment of software inventions in the 1990s, but this did not result in an increase in patents by software firms.  (Instead, patents went up in companies known for “stockpiling large arsenals of patents to use as bargaining chips”.)  Surveys of companies find that most inventions are not patented; instead, companies rely on trade secrets and on their first-to-market advantage, or on complementary products and services.

Bronwyn Hall surveyed the issue in a paper titled, “Business Method Patents, Innovation, and Policy” (May 4, 2003).  She concludes: 

“Broad evidence that the patent system encourages innovation always and everywhere is hard to come by. The patent system does encourage publication rather than secrecy; it is probably good at providing incentives for innovations with high development cost that are fairly easily imitated and for which a patent can be clearly defined (e.g., pharmaceuticals). When innovations are incremental and when many different innovations must be combined to make a useful product, it is less obvious that benefits of the patent system outweigh the costs. Business methods are more likely to fall into the second class than the first.”

For me, patents do not affect one’s ability to innovate given the success of innovation methods.  Rather, patents affect one’s motivation to innovate…both positively and negatively.  For long term success, companies should place more emphasis on innovating than protecting.

The LAB: Innovating a Recruiting Process with Subtraction (October 2008)

Published date: October 31, 2008 в 8:37 am

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Lab_2

Do systematic methods of innovation work on services and processes?  This may be the most common question from corporate executives who want to learn innovation methods.  This month's LAB will focus on a familiar corporate process: employee recruiting.  The tool we'll use is Subtraction.  

To use Subtraction, we make a list of the components. With a process or service, the components are simply the steps to deliver the process or service. We remove a step one at a time to create the Virtual Product/Process.  Working backwards with Function Follows Form, we innovate what the potential value or benefits would be without the component.  What would the new process do?  Who would use it?  Why would they use it?  What benefits emerge?

Here is a recruiting process map of a well-known software company:

   Recruiting

Here are four Virtual Products I created with Subtraction.  For each, I offer potential innovations and the benefits they might deliver:

1.  REMOVE INTERVIEWS:  The recruiting process would not allow interviews of candidates.  Benefit: hiring managers now have to rely on less subjective data such resumes and references.  They would have to rely on objective data such as job testing or personality testing.  Another benefit is candidates are shielded from interviewers who are less gifted at selling the benefits of working at the company.  They would have to rely on standard information provided by HR, thus avoiding negative or misleading information about the company.

2.  REMOVE JOB POSTINGS:  The recruiting process would have NO jobs posted anywhere even though many openings might exist.  Benefit:  There would be more job applicants because they could not self-screen or self-eliminate from not seeing jobs that fit them.  The company's message would be "open door": if you need a job, apply.  We'll find one that fits you.  This also might encourage hiring managers to be more creative about the people they consider for a job, perhaps seeking certain personality types or cognitive skills over experience.  Another benefit is the company avoids contingency recruiters who take job postings without the company's approval and try to fill them for a commission.  

3.  REMOVE SCHEDULE AND PLAN INTERVIEW:  The candidates have to find a way to get an interview without the benefit of the company's HR department setting it up for them.  Benefit:  This is more efficient as it cuts out the "middle man."  Another benefit is it becomes a way to test how assertive and personable the candidate is setting up their own interviews.  It helps them establish a rapport with the hiring manager before the interview takes place.

4.  REMOVE HIRING:  (You were just WAITING for that one!)  The recruiting process has all the traditional steps except the final one – hiring.  Benefit:  This allows a company to keep a pulse on the available talent pool  without the cost incurred from adding staff (a lot of companies actually do this). Another benefit is it reduces time, money, and the effort involved in negotiating salary, benefits, etc.  Also, it helps the company test its recruiting process to determine the effectiveness and accuracy of its interviewers and techniques.  The problem, of course, is how do we actually get the candidate on board?  This is where the REPLACEMENT function comes in handy in using this tool.  We can replace the function but not with the original component.  So what would replace hiring (in the traditional sense)?  Perhaps contracting.  Perhaps a third party does the hiring.  Or perhaps the candidates have to follow a process and guidelines to hire themselves on board.  Self-hiring?  That's novel.

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