Innovation

Fixedness

Published date: August 18, 2022 в 1:36 pm

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”

Marshall McLuhan

The most challenging aspect about innovating is rooted in a concept called fixedness. Fixedness is the inability to realize that something known to have a particular use may also be used to perform other functions. When one is faced with a new problem, fixedness blocks one’s ability to use old tools in novel ways. Psychologist Karl Duncker coined the term functional fixedness for describing the difficulties in visual perception and problem solving that arise when one element of a whole situation has a (fixed) function which has to be changed for making the correct perception or for finding solutions. In his famous “candle problem” the situation was defined by the objects: a box of candles, a box of thumb-tacks and a book of matches. The task was to fix the candles on the wall without any additional elements. The difficulty of this problem arises from the functional fixedness of the candle box. It is a container in the problem situation but must be used as a shelf in the solution situation.

Roni Horiwitz of S.I.T. puts it this way: “It’s almost impossible for the human brain to produce a really fresh and unique thought. Every thought, opinion or idea is somehow connected to previous concepts stored in the brain.” Because of this, we are often unable to see the solution to a problem although it stares us in the face. We are too connected to what we knew previously. We not only can’t let it go, but we try very hard to anchor around it to explain what is going on.

Fixedness is insidious. It affects how we think about and see virtually every part of our lives. At work, we have fixedness about our products and services, out customers and competitors, and our future opportunities. The most damaging form of fixedness is when we are stuck on our current business model. We cannot see past what is working today. We stop challenging our assumptions. We continue to believe what was once true is still true. In the end, it is this perpetual blind spot that is most dangerous to our innovation potential.

Customers have fixedness, too. Customers have a limited view of the future, they have well-entrenched notions of how the world works, and they suffer from the same blind spot we do. Yet we continue to seek the “Voice of the Customer” as though a divine intervention will break through this fixedness so they can offer new ideas.

Fortunately, there is a way to address it. The way to break fixedness is to use structured innovation tools and principles that make you see problems and opportunities in new ways. Remember the classic Will Rogers quote:

“It’s not what you don’t know that will get you. It’s what you know that ain’t so.”

Or was it Mark Twain?

Innovation vs. Leadership

Published date: August 11, 2022 в 1:32 pm

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

Which is easier to learn: innovation or leadership? That is one of my favorite questions to ask during keynotes and workshops, especially to groups of accomplished leaders. What amazes me is the answer I get back: overwhelmingly, groups of executives say that leadership is easier to learn than innovation.

I could not disagree more. I’ve experienced some of the best leadership training in the world starting with the U.S. Air Force Academy and all the way through to Johnson & Johnson’s many leadership training programs. These programs were complex, psychologically-based, and multi-dimensional. Leadership training is big business. The demand is high, and the task is tall. Executives flood to these programs to learn new insights and nuances of this highly people-based activity. It is tough to learn leadership.

I learned innovation in a matter of minutes. The process is clear, rules-based, and rigorous. Anyone can do it. When facilitated appropriately, you cannot NOT innovate. The process forces original, novel, and highly creative ideas to come out of your head.

So why do executives feel that leadership is easier to learn than innovation? My sense is that many have not been exposed to a bona fide innovation method. These executives want organic innovation more than anything to drive growth. Yet many are missing a simple insight what it takes…to invest themselves in learning innovation. Once executives feel what it’s like to innovate on demand, they get it. They start thinking about execution, scalability, culture aspects, resources needs, measurement, accountability, strategy, alignment….all the traditional things leaders think about…to move an initiative forward.

GE is perhaps the best example of a company that invests in innovation as much as it does leadership with its Imagination at Work program. For GE, the question of which is easier to train…innovation or leadership…is moot. They avoid the “leadership bias,” and they invest appropriately in core innovation skills to drive growth.

Can you make me be more creative

Published date: August 3, 2022 в 11:46 pm

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation

Katie Konrath has the right idea when she tackles this question, “Can you make me be more creative?”

Yesterday, I was talking with a couple friends when one asked two of my favorite questions. “What happens when someone can’t think of any ideas? You can’t force them to be more creative, right?” I rubbed my hands together, thrilled at the challenge that was coming. Actually, I can.

Her approach is to combine ideas and concepts that seem pretty silly at first, but then she mentally forces these constructs to have some sort of value or purpose. This, in essence, is a systematic approach to innovating that can be trained and repeated.

The key to becoming extremely effective at innovation is to learn all the tools and templates that help create an initial, undefined construct, or what innovation researchers call “the pre-inventive form.” This ability to apply a template, then find a useful purpose for the for what comes out of that template is what allows one to innovate on demand. Templates “make” people innovate.

Katie’s also recognizes the value of involving many people in the use of innovation templates. Innovation is a team sport. Diverse, cross-functional teams using a facilitated process can overcome the inherent challenges people face when when innovating.

Innovation is a Skill, Not a Gift

Published date: July 28, 2022 в 12:39 pm

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation,Methodology,Strategy

Companies want innovation more than anything as a way to drive true organic growth. Yet leaders often feel frustrated in their ability to bring successful innovation to their organizations. When I speak to executives, I hear this frustration, and I hear a list of reasons or excuses why innovation is so difficult. That list includes: lack of resources, lack of time, company culture, and lack of process of innovation. Many executives feel innovation is unpredictable and therefore too risky to invest in, even if they had the resources.

Innovation does not have to be unpredictable. A method called Systematic Inventive Thinking is a set of tools used in a facilitated environment to generate predictable, progressive ideas. This innovation process uses templates to help regulate individual thinking and channel the ideation process in a structured way that overcomes the randomness of brainstorming. Briefly, the method works by taking a product, concept, situation, service, process, or other construct, and breaking it into its component parts or attributes. The templates manipulate the components or variables to create new to the world constructs that the inventor of less than find a valuable use. This notion of taking the solution and finding a problem that can solve is called function follows form, and it is at the heart of the systematic inventive thinking method. This method of innovation can be used across a wide range of business issues. For example, it can be used to create new products, new services, or new processes. It can also be used to create new strategy including both corporate and marketing strategy. It can be used to create new organizational designs. You can also be used to create new marketing communications or launch tactics.

Innovation should be viewed as a skill, not as a gift reserved only for special or uniquely-talented people. Innovation can be learned as with any other business skill such as finance, process excellence, or leadership. By embracing a method like systematic inventive thinking, companies have a clear pathway to bring innovation to their firms to drive growth.

Ideating by Breaking Silos: 6 Common Bugs and their Fixes

Published date: July 13, 2022 в 4:11 pm

Written by: Amnon Levav

Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy

Companies are all too aware of “silos” and the difficulty of sharing and collaborating among departments or units. They therefore embark on joint ideation exercises, that often end with disappointingly meager results. Why?

1. Sharing starts in meeting

An effective encounter of teams, be they warring tribes or (more difficult still) adjacent units in a corporation, requires meticulous preparation. Just throwing together people from different cultures doesn’t bring out the best in them. Minimum preparation includes defining what they would like to achieve in the meeting and what they are willing to contribute to its success, and (as detailed in #4 below) a sincere mapping of potential conflicts of interest.

2. Inter-unit meetings often start with mutual presentations of achievements

But listeners can usually put into practice very little of what they hear, due to limits to one’s capacity to absorb when passively listening, especially when the subject matter is, by definition here, not yours.

Facilitated properly, the session should consist of alternating presentations and interactive exercises. Presentations should be broken up into chunks, each followed by questions from the audience and the facilitator. Listeners should be encouraged to both interact with the presenter and take notes for use later when ideating.

3. Incentives and motivations to collaborate are not analyzed and aligned

Yes, we are all in this together, yes, we all know “it’s important to collaborate”, but what are the actual incentives to do so? Most chances are that if you present something of use to another of the participating units: a) they may end up doing better than your unit, b) they may use up even more of your time later, coming back with questions and additional requests, c) your boss will be unhappy with both (a) and (b).

While planning the silo-busting session ask yourself (and answer): apart from overall benefits for the organization as a whole, how can these specific units and participants be incentivized to share and collaborate? Can you keep score of “assists”? Celebrate those who share most? Formalize the accounting of knowledge-transfer between units?

4. Hidden agenda stays… hidden

I’ve often been asked to facilitate an encounter of two teams called upon to collaborate, in which all are aware that success for team A would entail damage to team B and/or vice-versa. Example: a successful product launch of A would cannibalize and therefore decrease sales of a B product. Common practice in these cases is to avoid conflict, going through “creativity exercises” pretending that no conflict exists. We recommend the opposite approach: put the elephant on the table at the outset and discuss potential ways of overcoming, or at least moderating risks to one of the parties or both.

5. A-priori blinders

Imagine an organization in which business unit A targets, say, women (or the elderly) and BU B targets men (or youth). A (commendable) silo-breaking approach leads management to throw together a mixed team of A and B, so they can invent by learning from each other. But participants will tend to listen with their professional blinders on, and therefore, even if fully motivated to collaborate, they will find it difficult to imagine how a feature designed for the other team’s women can inspire novelty for their men, or how an insight about teenagers can spark an innovation for the over-80’s. This phenomenon will limit not only the listeners, but also the presenters who will tend to limit themselves to what they a priori consider to be relevant to the other team.

The solution is to engage the team – from the outset – in some preliminary exercises of fixedness-breaking, opening their consciousness to their current limitations, whet their appetites with examples of crossover ideas that have been successful, and then, throughout the sharing presentations, challenge them to force-fit some of what they hear to their reality, even if the exercise initially feels contrived and useless. It never is.

6.

Sharing processes typically end when the silo-breaking session ends. But these exercises, even in when most productive, are only the initial step. If participants run out from the session only to shut themselves back into their respective silos, the chances of translating budding insights into development projects are slim.

The optimal solution to this phenomenon is to build into the plan, from the outset, mechanisms for continuing collaboration efforts beyond the initial attempt. This is easy to agree upon in principle, but is very rarely implemented in practice, for a variety of reasons, mostly related to the incentives of the players involved. The BUs will return from an offsite, especially if it lasts several days and/or requires travel, to find their desks and calendars even more cluttered than when they left, and most chances are that initial ideas that were sparked by sharing with colleagues from other silos will be low on their de facto priorities. Meanwhile, the corporate organizers of the multi-unit event will have spent considerable amounts of time and energy on preparing and running it and will now either lick their corporate wounds or hopefully bask in the glory of their successful event for a brief moment as they dive back to their regular responsibilities. No one, therefore, including all those who absolutely promised to do so once the event has ended, will have the time or disposition to follow up properly. Unless it has been firmly embedded into the program from the start.

Conducting a poorly planned or badly executed silo-breaking session is usually worse than not holding one in the first place. And the difference, as is often the case, is in the details. Remember:

Preparations
Interactive
Incentives
Conflicts
Agendas
Follow up

Enjoy!

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: What Are the Sources of Your Confidence?

Published date: July 6, 2022 в 4:48 pm

Written by: Robyn Taragin

Category: Innovation

Do we talk enough about imposter syndrome?

I remember the first time I facilitated a live innovation session in front of clients. I had been at my company for quite a few years by then, and had been wing-man in dozens of such sessions. I had been rigorously trained for this. I was dressed for the part. On paper I was ready, but I was shaking in my boots. The session was going well overall, when suddenly one of the participants steered the conversation towards more loaded areas. Like a deer caught in the headlights, it was a sink or swim moment for me. Since running for the hills wasn’t an option (sadly), I had no choice but to keep plunging forward, thinking that at any moment they will read me like a deck of cards. (Afterwards, when the session ended successfully and my breathing resumed to normal, I certainly felt like kicking myself for all the drama I worked myself up over nothing.)

Classic imposter syndrome anyone? Imposter Syndrome is when a person doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments, and has a constant fear of being exposed as a fraud. A person believes that they’ve succeeded by luck, not because of their talents or qualifications, and that one day – everyone will know that they don’t really have what it takes. It’s hard for them to internalize and own their successes. While any person in any field can experience this, I find that in innovation it’s worse since there’s already added skepticism to begin with.

According to the HBR, Imposter Syndrome disproportionately affects high-achieving people, who find it difficult to accept their accomplishments. At first it was believed to be more common in women, but further research has shown that it affects men and women equally. So if you’ve ever felt that you’re not good enough at work, you’re certainly in good company.

Basically we’re dealing with a psychological state, where it’s in the person’s mind. In general, people have a fear of failure hanging over their heads, so coupling that with imposter syndrome is enough to squash anyone’s self-confidence. And the question that begs is, how can we overcome so that we’re not debilitated by it? Yes, it is plausible that there was an element of luck somewhere in the process in which you’ve been chosen for the role you fill. But more likely it was your qualifications, and now you need to remind yourself of what they are. These are what we call The Sources of My Confidence. Here are five buckets that you can dip into, to help you answer the negative voices in your head (adapt as needed):

Past successes – Think of roles that you’ve filled successfully, projects that you are proud of, sticky situations that you’ve solved, deadlines that have been met, and achievements from working with or leading a team. You’ve done it before – you can do it again!
What you bring on a personal level – You have life and professional experience when approaching a task or interacting with people. You are educated – whether due to a university degree and courses, or “street smarts” and know-how gained from your own curiosity and thirst for knowledge. You have an individualized skillset – quick thinking, problem-solving, sensitivity to others, and eloquent. You know how to talk to people and you’re easy to talk with. You’re likeable.
The organizational umbrella – You have access to your company knowledge base (materials and such). You have people to consult with and throw ideas around with. There are learning opportunities in the company of which you can take advantage.
What you bring as a member of the team – You have the trust of the team/organization in selecting you for this role. You have people to support you and who look to you for support.
The process – You follow tried and true company processes and protocols that lead to success. Here’s a shout out to my fellow Innovation Managers and iCoaches – It can be a super daunting role since innovation requires tolerance to ambiguity and you never know for certain what will come out of a session or a meeting. So remind yourself – you are guiding people through a process that you believe in and that works. You are involving intelligent people, and therefore, even just having a regular discussion in a room will yield results.

Imposter syndrome does have an upside to it. A good friend, who is VP Product of a large startup says that she (and her other successful siblings) suffer from it tremendously. However, instead of having it get them down, they use it to push themselves forward. They find it makes them work harder, learn more in order to prove to themselves and “others” that they can really do it. At the end of the day it’s making them more successful. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

It looks like Seinfeld is an Attribute Dependency pro

Published date: June 29, 2022 в 5:20 pm

Written by: Allon Sasson

Category: Innovation,Methodology

Do you know this feeling, when you learn something new, and you suddenly recognize it around you everywhere?

We recently wrote here about how one can break “Relational Fixedness” using the thinking tool called Attribute Dependency. In the opening of the article, we used the following quote from the episode “The Chinese Restaurant” of the “Seinfeld” series, in which Elaine had a brilliant idea as to re-ordering the queue to the restaurant:

“You know, it’s not fair that people are seated first come – first serve. It should be based on who’s hungriest”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn9EYWG_fOI

Attribute Dependency, as explained, is about modifying existing relations (or dependencies) between the characteristics of a given system, product, or situation.

Soon after publishing this article, I discovered that in “The Old Man” episode, Jerry was using the same thinking tool to suggest a new speed limit guideline for elderly people:

“You know, I think old people should be allowed to drive their age. If you’re eighty, do eighty. If you’re a hundred, go a hundred. I mean, they can’t see where they’re going anyway. Let them have a little fun out there.”

Amazing! This suggestion is very similar to the optical retailer campaign mentioned in the previous article, according to which the number of percentage points of a discount is equal to the customer’s age.

I therefore realized that the writers of “Seinfeld” are aware of the creativity inherent in the Attribute Dependency tool. Their show may be about nothing, but they take it very seriously, so, I figured, there must be something to learn from it.

Although their main goal was the creation of comic situations and not necessarily the development of products or services of economic value and applicability – they perfectly demonstrate the power of the AD tool.

For the sake of research, I decided to binge on a few more episodes (or maybe I was just looking for an excuse to do so). Amazingly, I found quite a few additional examples of Attribute Dependency. Here are some of them.

In “The Pony Remark” episode, Jerry and Elaine arrive at a funeral, where they have a short discussion about the parameter that dictates the duration of the ceremony. Jerry expresses a rather surprising view:

Elaine: How long does a funeral take?
Jerry: Depends on how nice the person was. But you gotta figure, even Oswald took forty-five minutes.

And here is what Elaine suggests in “The Strongbox” episode. While talking to a friend, she states that in the case of executions, the last meal cuisine should depend on the method of execution:

*Glenn**: “You would choose your last meal based on the method of execution? “*

*Elaine**: “Right. If I was getting the chair, I’d go for something hot and spicy. Thai, maybe Mexican. Lethal injection? feels like pasta – painless, don’t want anything too heavy.”*

The creators of “Seinfeld” realize that Attribute Dependency can also be applied by disconnecting or eliminating an existing relation, and not just by creating a new one.

Jerry’s opening monologue of “The Jacket” episode is all about the future of clothing. He envisions that the single characteristic that will determine both the color and the shape of our clothes in the future will be the planet we came from.

I think eventually fashion won’t even exist. It won’t. I think eventually we’ll all be wearing the same thing. ’cause anytime I see a movie or a TV show where there’s people from the future of another planet, they’re all wearing the same thing. Somehow, they’ve decided, “This is going to be our outfit. One-piece silver jumpsuit, V-stripe, and boots.” That’s it. We should come up for an outfit for earth. An earth outfit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceRsfMaQ4r0

The writers of the series even use this thinking tool to make fun of what people perceive as an existing relation between characteristics.

In “The Note” episode, Jerry grins at the “tell the doctor you know me” recommendation:

“Make sure that you tell him that, you know, you know me.” Why? What’s
the difference? He’s a doctor. What is it, “Oh, you know Bob! Okay, I’ll give
you the real medicine. Everybody else, I’m giving Tic-Tacs.”

Last (but not least funny) example uses some bad language but perfectly illustrates one cognitive advantage of creating a surprising new relationship between two characteristics of a system.

In “The Parking Garage” episode, Jerry humorously suggests replacing the numbers and colors of each floor in the parking garage of shopping malls with names that will allow them to be better remembered:

See, the problem with the mall garage, is that everything looks the same. They try to differentiate it. They put up different colors, different numbers, different letters. What they need to do is name the levels, like, “Your mother’s a whore.” You know what I mean? You would remember that. You would go, “I know. I remember, I’m parked in ‘My father’s an abusive alcoholic.’ I know where I’m parked.”

No doubt, innovating by using Attribute Dependency can be a lot of fun! Feel free to share with us your funny examples of applying this technique – surely some of them will not only be funny, but also valuable and applicable.

And Now, Finally: THE Right Answer

Published date: June 22, 2022 в 5:31 pm

Written by: Amnon Levav

Category: Innovation,Innovation Facilitation

I recently read an interesting article about presentation tips. The author, a “cognitive neuroscientist and chief science officer”, opens her article thus:

Which is the odd one out?

A paragraph later, she writes:

If you think about the mental calculations required to reach the right answer in the above exercise (as you probably discovered, it’s “40”)…

I felt a bit stupid, since I had not “discovered” that the answer was 40. In fact, even after giving it some thought, I’m not sure why it is obvious that “the right answer” is 40.

Before continuing, pause – do you have a good explanation why 40 is the right answer? Do you have another suggestion for a right answer?

Lacking a convincing argument in favor of 40, or any of the other numbers, I jotted down candidates for answers that came to mind:

1) Sixty eight – only one with two “t”s

2) 14 –only one with a “1”; 40 –only one with a “0”; 68 – only one with a “6”; 96 – only one with a “9”

3) 14 – only one not divisible by 4

4) 96 – from 14 to 40 there is a gap of 26, from 40 to 68 the gap is 28, so the next number should be 68+30, therefore 98, but it’s 96, so that’s the odd one out

5) 40 – only round number, only one that has no units, only tens

6) 40 – all other numbers are composed of either only straight lines (1,4) or curves (6,8,9) and only 40 has both linear (1) and curvy (0) numerals.

7) 40 – only one that doesn’t have an “o” when written in Spanish, only one that can be written as a single word in Hebrew

8) 68 – only one that has a factor which is greater than 10 (17)

9) 96 – only one that stays the same when you turn the page on its head

10) 69 – only adjacent pair of numerals (vertical or horizontal) that creates an odd two-digit number

How, then, can one speak of “the right answer” in this case? What kind of minds are we creating in our children (and grownups) when we pose these questions and program them to seek a single “right answer”?

This reminded me of a small puzzle we often use in our workshops.

Which is the odd one out?

1) 15

2) 17

3) 19

An arithmetically correct answer is “15” – the only one which isn’t prime.

Another potential answer is “2”. This is the innovation facilitator’s favorite answer, highlighting the cognitive fixednesses that prevent one from recognizing this possibility. The answer “2” may, to some, feel inferior to “15”, an obviously correct reply. Others prefer “2”, as it requires a shift from the regular/intuitive/standard way of perceiving the problem. But, beware, for this strong preference often leads facilitators to now refer to “2” as “THE answer”. Why? Because just as the math teacher uses the question to check her students’ understanding of prime numbers, so do workshop facilitators want to drive home their anti-fixedness message. Both err in inculcating in their listeners the mindset that questions tend to have one single correct answer. Most don’t.

HOW DARE YOU?

Published date: June 9, 2022 в 4:37 pm

Written by: Amnon Levav

Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

The AUTHORITY to LEAD a TEAM to INNOVATE

7 Questions You Have to Ask

Some 20+ years ago, I was brought in to facilitate an innovation project for the BBC – television. Early into the session, one of the participants, who I had noticed to be seething with anger, finally burst out in response to a comment I made: “That’s not the way you do TV! We’ve been doing the best TV in the world for dozens of years, who are you to tell us we should be doing it differently?”. Good question, I thought to myself. What DOES give me this authority? It got me thinking about the sources of authority that we, and others in the innovation-facilitator role, exercise in sessions and projects we facilitate.

First point to clarify was, that I was not there to TELL THEM what to do, but to enable them to discover novel ways of going about their activities, making use of their professional knowledge and skills. But still, what makes one worthy of their trust? When I pooled my colleagues for their answers to what gives them the sense of authority to facilitate an innovation process, I received a wide range of replies, all the way to “my baritone voice” (which, unfortunately, I do not at all share). We noticed that there was a difference between what was PERCEIVED as bestowing authority (voice, looks, title) and what facilitators felt actually gave them real authority. But, since authority describes a relationship between (at least) two parties, what is seen as subjective can play as important a role as what one deems to be objective.

When you are tasked with leading a team to innovate, be they clients or teammates, ask yourself what you are basing your authority on. And when you engage someone else to do the job, ask yourself why you are willing to entrust this challenge in her or his hands. This short list can help you decide.

1) Is it my my job/role to be in front of you?

2) Do I have expert knowledge of innovation processes? Have I been trained in a method for this task?

3) Do I believe it can be done? Am I (reasonably) fearless facing participants and task?

4) Have I done it before, repeatedly? (Experience!);

a. done it in your field, in others;

b. done it with people like you? With others?

5) Am I able, and do I have the patience, to listen to you carefully and respectfully?

6) Do I myself have a certain ability to innovate?

7)Do I CARE? (About you, task, results, their impact?)

No one scores perfectly on all parameters, nor does one need to. My advice:

1) When selecting someone to lead you, test them according to these factors, decide, and once positive – trust them and go for it.

2) When assuming the task – review your sources of authority, strengthen where you can, emphasize those you shine on, don’t pretend where you don’t and make the most of the former while leaning on others to overcome the latter.

Enjoy!

Starting an Innovation Lab

Published date: May 19, 2022 в 4:32 pm

Written by: Amnon Levav

Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

We keep hearing from companies, organizations and even cities of their wish to establish an “Innovation Lab”. But this has become such a catch-all term for so many different activities, that it is often difficult to even start thinking about the task, harder still to design a reasonable plan of action and rare to the point of being exotic to see one that actually delivers on the typically high expectations of its founders. Several useless versions of innovation labs that you may encounter:

A place in which engineers and developers do what they always did, now with a fancy name and increased budget;
A repurposed room in which nothing particularly innovative happens, except for the excuses why not, and maybe the furniture;
A multidisciplinary team of talented associates who are given a chunk of time and the freedom to brainstorm, resulting in a three-phase process: nervous enthusiasm at the outset, followed by frustrating and frustrated attempts to justify the endeavor and, finally, a desperate effort to avoid shame by eking out some semblance of a result that can plausibly be hyped and presented as a successful outcome.

BUT an Innovation Lab is not necessarily a dead end. Here are 4 key topics worth considering as you go about the task:

Objectives. Make sure you are clear as to why your organization wants an IL. What, exactly, would be considered a success? New products? Startups? Or influencing the organization’s culture? Beware the “all the above” answer to this question.
People. Who will run the lab? A dedicated person/team? Or those who participate in its activities? And as to the participants: will they leave their current jobs to join the lab? If so – for a certain period (8 weeks? A year?), or as their new job?
Enablers. Which resources or tools will be provided to the IL team? Throwing people together, giving them free reign of their time and motivating them are important ingredients, but very far from sufficient to achieve results. Asking them to Brainstorm only makes things worse. The effect of colorful poofs is yet to be researched. Which effective tools, then, are you going to supply them with?
Support. An innovation Lab is often the baby project of a President or CEO who has seen the light. Other members of the leadership team will at times lend only grudging support. The crucial question is: how much patience does the organization’s leaders have as they wait to see concrete results? If they don’t, they won’t.

Additional factors will also determine the success of an Innovation Lab: financing, selection criteria for participants, interface with business units and more. The two main take-aways I recommend from this post are: 1) It is very easy to get an IL wrong; but 2) designed and implemented correctly, an IL can greatly contribute to your organization’s innovation efforts.

Innovation

Fixedness

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”

“It’s not what you don’t know that will get you. It’s what you know that ain’t so.”

Innovation vs. Leadership

Can you make me be more creative

Innovation is a Skill, Not a Gift