Roni’s story in his latest post reminded me of what was probably the most dramatic moment in my 15+ years of facilitating innovation. I’ve told this to people a few times (not many, because I am pretty ashamed of my role in the event), and they often don’t believe me, but I swear that this happened exactly as it is told here. 
It was a pro-bono session in a city in the US MidWest, and the objective was to find innovative ways to improve communications and understanding in the local community, which had been stressed to the point of intermittent violence. The organizers had attempted to statistically represent, within the 16 participants, all segments of the local population according to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and what not, and had done an excellent job. It was the heterogeneous-est group you could imagine, all of them good intentioned active citizens.
The first day went well, and on the morning of the second day, we opened with an exercise: the group sat on chairs in a circle, except for one person who stood in the middle. This person was asked by me to mention something he remembered from the first day, then pick another participant, ask them to stand up, and sit in their place, and so on.
Continue reading ‘Blind.’
Posted in Fixednesses and
Insights categories |
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How do you know if the efforts that your organization is investing in innovation are delivering the expected results? And what results were you actually expecting? The question of indicators and metrics is, in my experience, the biggest barrier that companies face when deciding to engage in an innovation effort, as well as one of the major causes of failure in these attempts.
The trouble starts with a reasonable assumption, i.e. that if you want to control a process and assess its results, you need to measure some aspects of it. But in the case of innovation it is not totally obvious what exactly should be measured, nor how.
Opinions differ widely, but all of them can be roughly placed on a scale running between two extreme views that we can call “business-is-business” and “just do it“.
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Continue reading ‘Measures, Metrics, Mess’
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A few weeks ago I spoke to a high level manager in a financial institution. We talked about his (truly) impressive activities in the field of innovation, and then he surprised me somewhat by saying: “In 2009 we plan to freeze innovation activities.”
Since the company is not a client of ours, I wasn’t directly affected by this decision, but still, I was curious to understand what stood behind it. Another victim of “the Situation”, I said to myself, but to my surprise he went on to explain: “We have so many good ideas now that we need to pause with innovation and focus on implementation.”
This approach is, in my eyes, a symptom of one of the biggest and most common misconceptions in the field; that innovation is all about coming up with ideas of what to do (products, services, whatever it is you do). The corollary is, obviously, that once you have these ideas you don’t need to be bothered with innovation any longer, all you need is to “just” implement.
In reality, the situation is nearly the opposite. Continue reading ‘No innovation please, we’re too busy.’
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Last week I attended and spoke at an interesting conference in Stavanger, Norway (www.innotown.com). The last session I
listened to before I left was, for me, the most thought provoking. The session’s title was “Innovation is not what innovators do… it is what customers adopt”, and it was delivered by Michael Schrage, of MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business.
First, I was happy to discover that the catchy title reflected only a small part of the content that Michael chose to share with us, and second, that contrary to what the title might suggest, we were not submitted to yet another “listen to your customers” sermon. To learn about Michael’s ideas, you are invited to his website. But meanwhile, for a very imprecise (non-authorized), partial, quick and subjective list of some points I found insightful and helpful:
Continue reading ‘Insights from Innotown’
Posted in Insights categories |
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Last week I had a conversation with a VP of the local office of an international ad agency in Europe. The topic was, no surprise, “the situation”. We started with some obvious observations such as:
a. Everyone is worried
b. No one knows what will happen
c. Their CEO had just emailed to stop all expenses immediately so they don’t know if they will be allowed to engage in a project
d. Next year all their clients will probably advertise less, so they are afraid that billings will drop and they will have to fire people.
But then we moved on to some other points, some obvious as well and some less (to me, at least) about the opportunities (no cynicism, this time) inherent in the crisis:
Continue reading ‘Innovation and “the situation”’
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A few months ago, we were invited to take part in a conference, near Washington DC, called Greener by Design.
Our theme there – we gave one plenary session and several of what we call “Innovation Flashes” in between the other sessions - was Sustainability & Innovation. When they hear the title, cynics often say “this year’s buzzword and last year’s.”, and I have to admit there is something in this remark. Still, for most companies, both them and their clients do want products to be sustainable, and competition does demand that offerings be more innovative. So in the end, not much choice these days but to aim for both S and I.
But why do we sense that a tension exists between innovation and sustainability?
Continue reading ‘Sustainability & Innovation : a love-hate relationship?’
Posted in Greenovation categories |
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Last week I visited MSR - The Israel Center for Medical Simulation –in the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, and met with Dr. Amitai Ziv who heads it. We talked about innovation and simulation and possibilities for cooperation, and following the meeting, Amitai referred me to a recent interview (published in the McKinsey Quarterly, March 2008) with Delos “Toby” Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, apparently one of the leading and innovative medical institutions in the US.
© iStockphoto.com/Steve Luker
The interview’s title was “Innovation in health care”, and indeed innovation was the central theme. Dr. Cosgrove mentioned three “seismic shifts” (his expression) in health care, on which Cleveland Clinic was taking the lead. What struck me about them was, more than anything, how these three trends, touted as the absolute cutting edge of novelty, were exactly what any grandmother with common sense would probably have recommended. Please judge for yourself:
Continue reading ‘Your grandmother, the innovator, and second-order innovation’
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