Посты с тэгом: innovation patterns

Innovation and Humor

Published date: December 20, 2010 в 3:00 am

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A church needed a new bell ringer.  When a man with no arms applied for the job, the doubting priest asked, “Can you ring the bell?”  The applicant climbed the bell tower, took a running start, and plowed his face into the bell producing a beautiful tone.  He suddenly slipped, fell to the ground, and died.  The crowd of onlookers asked the priest, “Do you know this man?”  The priest replied, “No. But his face rings a bell.”

If you are like most people, you laugh at jokes at their very end, not the beginning.  Why?  Because jokes make sense only in hindsight after we hear the proverbial “punch line.”  We have no context to start laughing at the start of the joke.  But once we hear the final line, our mind works its way backwards to make sense of it.  We laugh.

So it is with innovation.  An abstract concept remains abstract until our mind works backwards to make sense of it.  Only then do we see the value.  Edward de Bono describes this phenomena in his new book, Think! Before It’s Too Late.  As de Bono puts it, “All creative ideas will be logical in hindsight.”

For the innovation practitioner, this ability to automate our thinking and “see value in hindsight” is a crucial skill, one that can be trained and learned by anyone.  It can be strengthened and perfected with practice.  Once we develop an inate ability to see value in hindsight, the practitioner needs to develop a way to  create the abstractions.  That is where the use of innovation patterns comes in.  Five simple patterns – subtraction, task unification, division, multiplication, and attribute dependency – guide us to create abstract concepts.  They help us innovate systematically, on demand.

What is unique about these patterns is that they have emerged from products already deemed innovative.  They do not rely on random generators.  They do not rely on special cognitive abilities of individuals.  They do not rely on unique insights gained from customers.  The patterns act like a cognitive prosthetic that creates the abstractions for you.  All you need to do then is “see the value in hindsight” just as you do with a good joke.

The church continued searching for a bell ringer.  Another man applied – the twin brother of the man who died.  The priest asked, “Can you ring the bell?”  The applicant climbed the bell tower as his brother had done and ran straight at the bell.  He suddenly slipped, fell to the ground and died, almost in the same spot.  Stunned onlookers asked the priest, “Do you know THIS man?” 
“No, but he’s a dead ringer for his brother.”

 

Academic Focus: The Jerusalem Business School

Published date: March 29, 2010 в 2:00 am

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What sets innovative products and services apart from others?  Common sense would suggest they have unique and unusual characteristics that make them very different than all the rest.  Furthermore, if you wanted to study innovative products and services to learn the hidden secrets they hold, you would try to identify those different and original attributes.  But just the opposite is true.  A very high percentage of successful new products launched each year follow the same set of patterns.  Innovative products are more similar than different from each other.  If you can identify these patterns and overlay them onto your products and services, you should be able to innovate in a predictable, templated way.  THAT is the essence of the corporate innovation method, S.I.T..

This month’s Academic Focus recognizes the work of Dr. Jacob Goldenberg who identified and described these patterns in his book, Creativity in Product Innovation.  Here is Jacob’s biography from the JBS website:

Yanko “Jacob Goldenberg is a professor of Marketing at the School of Business Administration at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the head of the Marketing department. He is a visiting professor at the Columbia Business School. Prof. Goldenberg received his Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in a joint program of the School of Business Administration and Racach Institute of Physics. His research focuses on creativity, new product development, diffusion of innovation, complexity in market dynamics and social networks effects.
Prof. Goldenberg has published in leading journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Marketing Science, Nature Physics and Science. In addition, he is the author of two books (one published one in press) by Cambridge University Press. His scientific work had been covered by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, BBC news Harold Tribune.”
Aside from his research in innovation and creativity, Jacob teaches courses in systematic innovation at Columbia and JBS.  He freely shares his Syllabus and teaching material for academics who want to bring this competency to their institutions.
For innovation practitioners, I recommend the following publications by Jacob and his collaborators:

  •  Goldenberg’ Jacob, Roni Horowitz, Amnon Levav and David Mazursky, (2003), Finding the sweet spot of innovation, Harvard Business Review  March p 120-29.
  • Jacob Goldenberg, Sangman Han, Donald R. Lehmann and Jae Weon Hong (2009), The Role of Hubs in the Adoption Processes, Journal of Marketing Vol. 73 (March 2009), 1–13.
  • Goldenberg, Jacob, Barak Libai, Sarit Moldovan and Eitan Muller (2007)  The NPV of Bad News , International Journal of Research in Marketing, 24, pp.186-200.

Jacob and his colleagues have extended the idea of systematic innovation to the world of advertising in their newest book, Cracking the Ad Code.  I have just ordered it, and I look forward to reviewing it and using its methods on this blog.

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