1. Brand your innovation process.

Our partners have proved that giving your innovation process a catchy name and logo is much more than a gimmick. It makes an abstract process or idea immediately tangible.  It communicates seriousness and commitment.  It makes it easier for innovation to become a part of your organization’s language and culture.  It provides a platform for getting people on-board and PR-ing successes.  And, it becomes an expression of pride and responsibility.  Well worth the effort.

2. Take ownership of the process.

Innovation Achievements

Some of our partners describe their innovation process as their personal “baby”. Parenting is indeed an apt metaphor. Labor pains, crawling, teething, sleepless nights, tantrums giving way to jubilation, creativity, wonder and a tremendous feeling of accomplishment.  Sure, family and friends (aka external consultants) can offer essential support and guidance. But, remember your innovation “baby” is ultimately part of your organization’s DNA and, success comes with time, patience and love. As they say, raising an innovation program isn’t easy but it’s one of the best jobs around.

3. Have fun! Innovation, like marathon running, demands Herculean effort, buckets of stamina, sweat and the occasional strained muscle (usually the brain). But it should also be exhilarating, compulsive and fun. If it’s not, something’s wrong and needs to be changed.

4. Return on innovation.

Profit, increased productivity, new products, and more motivated staff.  Talking to our partners, we realize their innovation initiatives yield a diverse range of positive contributions to their organization. Some are easy to measure, like a more efficient internal process, some are dramatic like a breakthrough product launch, and some are subtle and cumulative, and seen in the way that teams think and work with each other. An innovation initiative in full flight has the potential to add enormous amounts: constantly checking return on the innovation investment and communicating successes will keep the cheques flowing.

5. Buzz.

We know that innovation creates a buzz. But it’s not trivial to keep the buzz going, so pro-active internal communication is critical to keep the buzz alive. Our clients have invested a lot of time, money, resources to internal communications, producing professional-looking internal advertisements for the entire innovation program; innovation coach awards, internal newsletters, events and lots more. AND they still think they could do better.

6. A common language for innovation. When the Lord wanted to punish those involved in the ill-conceived Babel building project, He enrolled them all on Berlitz courses.  We, make a big point about giving everyone in the organization a common lexicon for innovation.  And we hear the impact when our partners tell us how colleagues from different business units can get together to work on an innovation project and immediately have a shared set of terms and concepts (“existing situation”, “closed worlds” “limit rather than diluting an idea”, “attributes and values”, “thema and rhema”, “fixedness” etc) to help them.  A multitude of perspectives enriched by a common language, making innovation a natural part of the organization’s daily culture.

7. Managing innovation. Innovation doesn’t just happen.  If it is to become a self-sustaining activity across the organization, it needs stewardship, planning and hands-on management. Our successful partners follow a “top-down/bottom-up” approach which means senior management and staff-wide participation are both essential in their different ways. Furthermore, they invest in creating and developing managers with special roles, responsibilities and report structure, who play a specialist role in making innovation happen.

Budweiser, Heineken, Bud Light, Stella Artois and others are all communicating the message that someone is making an absurdly exaggerated effort to get hold of their beer. Or variations on this theme such as: the effort to be able to enjoy the beverage in its pristine situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aO3TO5L0bM

Commonly it’s an effort made from the point of view of the consumer, but sometimes it’s from the company, telling us about the lengths it goes to allow its customers to experience their product in the most favorable conditions, or the sacrifices made to preserve the secret formula.

In a recent campaign from the UK cider brand Strongbow, the basic pattern is given a neat twist, and plays on the idea of being ‘deserving’ enough to drink the product. Pie stuffers, window-cleaners and gas fitters have earned it through their sacrifice, and banker…well, as the ads tell us, what have they done to deserve it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZSFlkA1NM&feature=relmfu

In a world of fierce originality and brand competition, it is a curious phenomenon that a whole category tends to follow the same basic advertising approach. Why? Is it the lack of a unique selling point/message? And could this happen in other categories? For instance, could it be that all cellular companies will communicate the same message? Or should they make an effort to come up with a distinctive message?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3tywFm95Sg

The session’s going well. Comfortably seated on leather seats, your team has efficiently dissected the product, juggled concepts, whisked the financials up and down in a cocktail shaker and set fire to the business plan. You’re off to a good start. As their leader, you summarize the teams’ exciting new ideas.  One colleague suggests amusing puns, another submits a carefully handwritten list. This could get tricky. There’s potential for disagreement in the ranks, with lots of sensitive

egos jostling for priority. You don’t want to offend anyone but you also want the right result. You need Tonglen.

The wisdom of Tonglen began with Geshe Chekawa, an 11th century Tibetan monk. Legend has it that he stumbled upon a book in his teacher’s room, open at the following lines: “Give all profit and gain to others, take all loss and defeat upon yourself.” Struck by these words, Geshe Chekawa devoted his life to developing the practice of Tonglen, which roughly translates as ‘giving with receiving’. This counter-intuitive concept attempts an ego-reversing process, focusing devotees on compassion; the aim is to literally exchange yourself for others, to both give and receive at once.

Imagine your colleagues as Tonglen monks. Dressed in orange robes, sitting cross-legged on the boardroom carpet, they breathe in, consciously inhaling and dissolving each others’ negative thoughts. As they exhale, the room fills with joy and compassion, a release of creative energy. Slip the suit back on and maintain your peaceful breathing. Now stand by the whiteboard, intently listening to your teammates. At the same time, beneath the surface, you radiate love and encouragement, diffusing tensions and setting everyone at ease with your confident composure.

What’s changed?  Not that much. You simply learnt a new word. If everyone in your team knew the word Tonglen, would that make a difference? Well, perhaps. Because once a new word has been introduced, it can shape an entire culture.

Another good word is Chutzpah, which roughly means initiative, risk-taking, guts. Example: a psychopathic young man kills his parents in cold blood. Hauled up before the judge, he pleads for leniency on the grounds that he’s an orphan. Or take the beggar you gave a two shekel coin; he hands it back, demanding a five shekel minimum. That’s Chutzpah.

If someone cuts you up on the motorway in Israel, or pushes ahead in the line with a cunning excuse ready on his lips, you may think he’s rude, but you might also admire his Chutzpah. He’s taking a chance, giving as good as he gets. He’s got spirit.

Not all Tibetans practice Tonglen, not all Israelis are Chutzpahnik. Still, wherever these words are widely understood, they deeply influence behaviour.

There’s bound to be plenty of Chutzpah in your team innovation session. Finally that guy in Accounts has a chance to tell his incredibly funny jokes, and the normally quiet lady turns out to have a thousand radical plans. That’s great. We want our teams to give their best. But giving is not enough. For Innovation to really work, for us to all stay friends, we must foster a culture of confidence, acceptance and equality among our peers. In order for them to give, we must be ready to receive.

Innovation is an enduring process, not a day off for inventive thinking. Lasting change comes when we leave the session a strong and supportive team. Consider, what word best describes your team? Chutpzah, or Tonglen? Choose carefully. The right word can transform a culture, creating the environment you need to bring about the visions on the whiteboard.

Creative people seem to be able to generate and evaluate ideas on the fly. They often describe a surge of thoughts that are developed and filtered almost as soon as they are generated. This brief process allows them to come up with ideas that are not only original and interesting, but also feasible and realistic. Colleagues, friends, and “innocent bystanders” may look at this with the same admiration that is usually reserved to virtuosic musicians, circus acrobats and masters of martial arts.

Speed aside; there are obviously substantial differences between martial arts and creative idea generation. The difference I want us to focus on, however, may not be the first one that comes to mind. As wonderful as the ability of the martial arts master seems, we know that there is a way to become one. It may be a long and challenging way – demanding a certain amount of talent and a great deal of dedication & persistence – but it is there, ready to be embarked upon for whoever chooses and dares to take it.

Is there a similar way for the wannabe ideation master? Can we offer such a person a step-wise process that would lead to the cognitive Kong-Fu-like abilities of the creative people we started with? The answer is a bitter-sweet YES & NO …

When we contemplate the light speed cognitive processes that take place in the mind of the ideation master it is hard not to be dismayed. How can we hope to analyze these processes, formalize them, and presume to teach and train others to do the same? Each of these steps seems daunting. A useful analogy and a possible approach can be found with one of the most interesting martial arts, namely – Tai Chi.

There is a lot to say about the unique and esthetic art of Tai Chi, but what arguably is most interesting about it is the fact that much of the training is done in “slow motion.” If you recall a person, or a group of people, practicing martial arts at a pace that reminded you of running under water – what you saw was Tai Chi. Now, I’m not a martial arts masters (regretfully, if I may say so), but the point of this ‘slow motion’ mode is very simple – it allows you to pay much attention to every little detail about each movement. Thus, when you do have to perform it in ‘regular speed’ you will do it in the ultimate way (maybe that is why the meaning of the name “Tai Chi” is “Supreme Ultimate Fist”). Since I have never learned Tai Chi I cannot testify to the validity of this approach, but you must admit that, at least in theory, it makes perfect sense.

Now, how do you Tai Chi ideation? How can you break down the cognitive surge that happens spontaneously in the mind of selected individuals, and practice THAT is slow motion? The bad news is that we don’t know exactly what happens in those selected minds. But the good news is that SIT (Systematic Inventive Thinking) provides a Tai-Chi-like ideation process that actually works.

Taking a closer look at the name of the methodology it’s easy to identify one word that seems out of place: “Systematic”. Using the adjective “Systematic” to describe a methodology for innovation is almost as strange as using the word “Slow” to describe a martial arts practice. However, the former is just as logical as the latter. The systematic approach facilitates the breakdown of the intuitive and amorphous process that takes place in the mind of the ideation master into distinct and well defined phases. It is the systematic nature of SIT that allows ‘regular’ people to come up with innovative, sometimes breakthrough ideas that might otherwise be reserved to ideation masters. It is the systematic steps of the methodology that allow us to develop ideas that are not only novel but also actionable. And it is the systematic process that allows us to really think together as a group.

SIT might not earn you a ‘black belt’ in ideation. It will, however, open up a road that will allow you to get to the result you need. That road may not be as wonderful as that of a Kong-Fu master, flying in mid air, punching 3 opponents at the same time – but it does not need to be. Given the illusive nature of creative idea generation it is wonderful that such a road even exists, and can be embarked upon by whatever organization or individual that chooses to.

Amit Mayer is a Senior SIT Facilitator, and a creative & didactic manager at Medidactic Ltd.

Amit and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to talk to help you innovate.

Click here to contact us

“This statement is false” is a perfect example of a paradoxical statement.  It is counter-intuitive to consider the above statement as true and false at the same time, but that is exactly what it is. 
This use of this type of counter-intuitive rhetoric or logic can be an excellent way of gaining valuable perspective on our complex reality.  In other words, paradoxical logic can be an excellent spark with regards to innovation and performance.  

    One practical application of paradoxical logic can be found in the relationship between the legendary taoist principle of “wei wu wei” and sports.  Taoism is an ancient Chinese philosophy that often makes use of paradoxical logic to offer insight and a deep understanding of the world around us.  The concept of “wei wu wei” is inherently paradoxical.  It literally means “doing non-doing” or “action without action”.  At this point you might be asking yourself “How in any way is this going to be practical?”.  Well, even though it sounds downright illogical, wei wu wei has concrete applications in the real world.  It simply cannot be written off as some philosophical mind game.
    

Let’s take basketball as our specific example.  In the game of basketball there are many different moves that you can practice and do during the game.  You can spin, hop step, crossover, pass, shoot, etc…  Although during the pressure and speed of an actual game you don’t have time to think about every move that you will perform.  The game simply moves to fast.  If one thinks about every move before it is performed he will be accused of over-thinking or being hesitant.  A truly great basketball player will not think about every move before he does it, he will effortlessly just perform the moves at the exact right time.  These great basketball players are embodying the concept of “wei wu wei”.  They are simply reacting and flowing with the world and situation around them.  When a player is really at one with the tao and realizing “wei wu wei”, it is usually described as him being “in the zone“.  This “zone” is an almost unconscious state of supreme performance that is only achieved when the player is truly not thinking and is effortlessly reacting.  In other words, he is mastering the concept of “doing non-doing”. 

 
Paradoxical logic can also have far reaching implications in the world of business and innovation.  By employing this type of logic, companies can adapt to very dynamic, diverse, and uncertain environments and dilemmas.  One particular field where this is especially true is the high-tech sector.  Change in the world of high technology is always coming at a blazing speed.  The companies that can adapt to change and take advantage of the new opportunities that change has to offer will be the ones that ultimately succeed to be leaders in their respective niches. 

If high technology firms rely only on existing models for sparking innovation (especially those that force either/or choices) changes will most likely be minimal and incremental in nature.  Firms that can successfully innovate tend to function by navigating coexisting tensions.  Instead of feeling compelled to solve each and every problem within the organization, truly innovative firms manage tensions by entertaining current tensions and creating new ones to move the company forward.

In turbulent environments individuals must be adept at changing their mental models and assumptions to meet changing conditions.  Radical innovations are usually not in line with the current “strategic focus” of the company.  A breakthrough innovation needs to literally break-through the dominant logic that is prevalent.  In the world of high-technology business, a successful company must have a capacity to challenge orthodoxies, develop foresight, and build processes that continuously regenerate a truly innovative strategy.  By using paradoxical logic in the world of business, one can spark innovation by providing a different interpretation of the same information that is analyzed using formal logic.  When multiple perspectives and paradigms exist with regarding to the same raw data, a more complete, nuanced, and accurate perception of reality is formed.  When reality is digested in such a rich way, innovation will almost certainly follow. 

If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

This well-known phrase becomes very relevant when we talk about the results of an innovation process in a company. I would like to tell you about an SIT - Systematic Inventive Thinking workshop which had great results but failed the implementation test.

In 1996, SIT conducted a project with a company called Vitco Detergents. At the time, Vitco had a small selection of products, including a perfumed laundry detergent. The purpose of the project was to expand their product line. A project of this sort is called in the SIT language NPD - New Product / Promise Development - in which the target is to expand the company’s product offering.

The inventive thinking tool that yielded the most interesting idea was the SIT Subtraction tool.

A quick reminder - Using the Subtraction tool we’ll develop a product idea by removing an important component from our existing product.

The original product was the perfumed laundry detergent and the components removed were the active ingredients (detergents). After applying the Subtraction tool, identifying benefits and markets, putting it through the feasibility test and making adaptations, the team came up with a scented liquid with almost no active ingredient, which could make the products smell nice, but could not be used for doing laundry.

Can you think about a target audience for such a product? (This is an interesting point about developing new products using SIT: You develop the product BEFORE identifying the target audience.)

This product was intended for people who wash their clothes frequently, often not because they were dirty, but only because the clothes did not feel “fresh” after a one-time wearing.

The new product would give a fresh and clean feeling to the wearer without having to wear down the clothes by frequent laundering.

Up to that point, everything seemed to be going great, the product looked good; the chemical engineers said it was possible to produce, and the marketing people already found the target consumer group.

The project seemed like a success in every parameter, but (there’s always a but…) in the same year the project took place, 60% of Vitco’s shares were bought by Unilever.

After the acquisition, Unilever started shifting some of the products they had in their development pipeline into Vitco’s (which had its name changed to Lever following the acquisition) production lines. As a result, the product concept was discarded.

Nevertheless, four years later (in 2000) Proctor & Gamble launched a new product line under the brand of Febreze® which they termed “Clothing Refreshers”, followed by some other companies selling “Laundry Fresheners”. The concept is the same - detergents with substantially less cleaning elements.

From an SIT point of view, the described innovation process was not complete.

Being a result-oriented company, there’s as much significance in the production of the new products as to the innovation process that led to them. Products that are direct results of an innovation process set the path for other innovation processes to come.

When practicing or leading innovation you should ask yourself, “What am I aiming for? Will I settle for proof of concept of the innovation process or will I insist on seeing results?” These questions should help you define the characteristics of the innovation path you are about to take.

In this day and age one can easily participate simultaneously in various conversations or activities (i.e talking on the phone while chatting on the web, talking on the phone while having a Skype video call, driving while talking on the phone). Multi-tasking is hard to avoid in a modern, technology-filled world. For those of us who have given in, and who willingly call ourselves “multitaskers”, have we lost something by being willing to multi task? Perhaps there is something we have gained- some sort of upper hand over those who still insist on focusing on one thing at a time.

A recent New York Times article by Matt Richtel entitled “Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price” discusses the impact of technology on the lives of modern-day humans. Technology has created a great deal more distractions than existed before we had the internet at our fingertips, and the desire to always be connected leads people to depend on their multitasking abilities. As Richtel explains, it is commonly believed that “humans can process only a single stream of information at a time”.   However, Stanford researcher Eyal Ophir challenges this concept. He suggests the possibility that through constant multitasking, humans might actually be “rewiring” themselves to be effective while performing multiple tasks.

During an experiment Ophir conducted to test people’s ability to focus on a single thing at a time, participants were categorized in advanced as either “mutlitaskers” or “non-multitaskers” based on their answers to experiment questions. As the Times article relates, those in the “multitasker” category were worse at the task than those classified as “non-multitaskers”. For example, when asked to look at moving rectangles of blue and red, and to focus only on one color so as to determine if that color rectangle had moved positions, the multitaskers scored lower than non-multitaskers.

The flip side of this, researchers say, is that the inability of multitaskers to maintain their focus on one item in front of them means that they are likewise more receptive to new information coming their way. According to the article, “other tests at Stanford, an important center for research in this fast-growing field, showed multitaskers tended to search for new information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work.”

In other words, multitasking might enable us to be alert and attentive to new things in our surroundings. Therefore, when we are exposed to innovative ideas, we are ready and willing to receive them. If that’s the case, then multitaskers should stand proud, and embrace the advantages of a multi-focused life… or should they? In the 1800’s there were no cell phones and there was no internet- two things that today most of us probably can’t imagine living without. But the lack of these technologies meant fewer distractions. Likewise, this offered a better shot at focusing on, for example, one’s children, one’s spouse, or the pretty flowers we pass when walking down the street, but often miss because we are typing away on our (insert choice of electronic device here).

So, in which of these lifestyles can you identify yourself? Are you happy there?

You probably know the little riddle about the dog, the carrot and the rabbit that need to be transported to the other side of the river. The problem is that their owner can take only one of them on each trip across the river (it was a very big carrot! )
When the dog and rabbit are left unattended, the dog devours the rabbit. And when the carrot and the rabbit are left unattended, the rabbit eats the carrot.

How can the rabbit, the dog and the carrot be transferred safely to the bank on the other side of the river?

If you haven’t heard this one, take a few moments to try solving it before you read on.
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The solution is to take the rabbit on the first trip, go back and take the carrot. Then take the rabbit BACK to the original bank, leave it there and take the dog. On the last trip, the rabbit is taken to the other bank and the owner can continue his journey with all three.

People find it difficult to solve this problem because of the fact that the solution involves giving up on something already achieved (the fact that the rabbit is already in the desired location). To solve this problem we need to perform an activity that seems to be counter-productive, i.e. bring the rabbit back to the starting point.

There are many situations in games and in life that require sacrificing what seems to us to be our most important asset. The most brilliant moves in chess are those that a player wins by letting his opponent take his or her queen.

There’s had been a famous soccer team in Israel that hadn’t done very well for a few years although they had the best players in the league. This was costing the owner of the team a lot of money.

Coaches were frequently replaced, but nothing helped until a new coach decided to remove the team’s star from a match  - the best and most expensive player.

The team won! Furthermore, it was their best game of the season. In the following matches the coach did the same thing, and the team won all their matches and had a good chance of winning the championship.

Sometimes what seems to be the most important asset is actually an obstacle. SIT recognizes this and offers the Subtrraction tool in which a list of important objects or system features is made and then removed one by one to see what happens.

In many cases there are surprising results!