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Innovation Gone Wild

Published date: July 4, 2011 в 3:00 am

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AOL succumbed to the myth that creating an eclectic workspace makes employees suddenly more innovative.  The headline from USA Today reads: “It’s engineers gone wild at AOL: Quirky office space inspires app innovation.” 

Quirky?

“The space you work in is a reflection of the kind of company you are,” says Brad Garlinghouse, AOL’s president of the Application and Commerce Group.  “You get innovation,” he insists, from “working in a space that’s very open and doesn’t have offices…where people can work together and play together.”  Further, the company believes letting workers draw on the walls helps creativity.

AOL is in more trouble than I thought.  Simply putting people in a different workspace is not going to make them more creative.  A room full of beanbag chairs, Frisbees, and white boards does not change the cognitive pattern of how people generate ideas.  It may indeed hamper innovation.  For example, employees treat other’s ideas differently depending on where the ideas come from.  An idea from a peer rival is seen as “tainted,” whereas the exact same idea coming from an outside source is seen as “tempting.”  In essence, employees subvert great ideas from peers so peers do not get ahead.  Lumping people together in quirky innovation rooms triggers that phenomena as it signals the battle-of-the-brains has begun.

True, office design can indeed have a positive overall effect on employees’ work.  For example, a well-designed office can improve productivity, communication, and morale.  These are certainly beneficial for creativity.  But these are beneficial for every business process.  It is innovation, though, not productivity or otherwise, that is singled out and associated with quirky rooms.  This misguided hype gives innovation a bad name.

Instead of spending millions on 225,000 square feet of “innovation rooms,” AOL should invest in building something much more important: skills and competencies in the use of innovation tools and techniques.  With the right innovation training and practice, employees can innovate anywhere in any space.

The writing is on the wall for AOL.  Quarterly earnings were a mere $4.7 million versus $34.7 million a year ago.  It’ll take a lot more than quirky office space to cover that shortfall.

The LAB: Innovating Pharmaceuticals with S.I.T. (June 2011)

Published date: June 27, 2011 в 2:00 am

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 PharmaBrand Summit 2011 kicks off in Montreux, Switzerland this week.  It will bring together senior executives and brand marketers from Europe’s largest pharmaceutical organizations.  This year’s theme is: “The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” 

That is certainly an appropriate theme for many industries including pharmaceuticals.  These companies are in transition as many aspects of their business models are changing.  Of particular concern is the shrinking product pipeline.  The days of the billion-dollar blockbuster drugs seem to be gone.  So how will they create a new pipeline beyond traditional approaches and research methods?

Yoni Stern and Amnon Levav of S.I.T.  describe a unique approach using their innovation method to create new pharmaceuticals1.  The method is based on five patterns inherent in the majority of innovative products and services.  These patterns are like the DNA of products that can be extracted and applied systematically to create new products, including pharmaceuticals.  For this month’s LAB, here are two examples of their approach.

1.  Task Unification:  This technique takes one of the product’s components (or some object in the product’s immediate vicinity) and gives it an additional task without losing its original one.  Imagine you wanted to improve breast cancer testing.  One of the components in the vicinity of the problem is fatty acids.  Tumor cells accumulate fatty acids much more than noncancerous cells do.  To take advantage of this, a new drug product is conceived by chemically linking paclitaxel, a widely used anticancer agent, to DHA, a natural fatty acid present in breast milk.  The fatty acid is given the additional “job” of delivering the cancer fighting agent.  This approach delivers a more therapeutic concentration in tumor cells for longer periods of time than would be possible without the fatty acid. As often happens when using the task unification pattern, the same factor that was formerly assisting the cancer to proliferate is now contributing to its destruction.

2.  Division:  The Division technique works by dividing a product in one of three ways: physical, functional, or preserving (where each part preserves the characteristics of the whole).  Rochester, N.Y.-based Vaccinex developed a technology based on this technique.  They separated immunoglobulin heavy-chain genes from light-chain genes during the drug discovery process.  As the recombinant vector particles replicate, the chains are assembled into membrane antibody receptors. The antigen is then added to the culture and binds to the matching antibody receptors of a particular cell. The cell is selected, and the recombinant vector is extracted. This division approach of separating heavy chains from light chains allows researchers to rearrange them to produce new combinations.

Drug discovery How do you begin using the SIT method in a clinical environment?  Start by listing the components of a current drug or diagnostic used in a disease of interest.  Also list the surrounding clinical structures and components in the vicinity.  For example, a company that develops products to treat dermatological diseases such as acne might begin with a list of the current product’s ingredients: benzoyl peroxide, alcohol, glycerin, etc., as well its immediate environment (e.g., the acne): sebum, Propionibacterium acnes, porphyrins, hair, and skin.  Next, apply one of the SIT thinking tool such Task Unification and look for non-obvious combinations of tasks and components to create hypothetical drug “solutions.”  Work backwards from these solutions to identify any real or potential benefits that it might deliver in the clinical care or drug discovery process.

1Stern, Yoni, and Amnon Levav. “The DNA of Ideas”. BIO-IT WORLD April 2005: 56-57.

Marketing Innovation: Red Tape and The Inversion Tool

Published date: June 20, 2011 в 3:00 am

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"Red tape" is defined as the collection or sequence of forms and procedures required to gain bureaucratic approval for something, especially when oppressively complex and time-consuming.  That's how Southwest Airlines describes other airlines' frequent flyer programs versus its new Rapid Rewards program which has none of the traditional limitations like blackouts and point expiration.  In a series of highly innovative commercials, Southwest demonstrates not one but two of the eight advertising tools described by Professor Jacob Goldenberg in "Cracking the Ad Code."  These ads are flawlessly executed, funny, and memorable. 

Take a look:

The first pattern is the Inversion Tool.  It conveys what would happen if you didn’t have the product…in an extreme way.  It shows the benefits “lost”  by not using the product.  It is best used when the brand and its central benefits are well understood by the viewer. It is particularly useful when you want to emphasize a secondary benefit as Southwest has done by emphasizing their less restrictive loyalty program.  To use the Inversion Tool, start with the components of the brand promise.  Take each one away one at a time and envision in what ways the consumer would be affected…in an extreme way…if it did not have this aspect of the promise.

As Goldeberg notes, an important tactic of Inversion is to show unlimited generosity, understanding, and empathy for the poor consumer who does not use your product.  The idea is to convey your product as having great understanding for your dilemma and generously suggesting assistance.  The Southwest commercials do this perfectly by showing their employees rescuing travelers from being all wrapped (literally) in the competitor's red tape.

The second pattern is the Metaphor Tool.  It takes a well-recognized and accepted cultural symbol and manipulates it to connect to the product, brand, or message.  The trick is to do it in a clever way.  The process is called fusion, and there are three versions:  Metaphor fused to Product/Brand, Metaphor fused to Message, and Metaphor fused to both the Product/Brand and Message.  In this example, the huge red tape ball represents the bureaucracy of other airlines' frequent flyer programs.  The commercial fuses the red tape metaphor against the competition's weak spot. 

Brilliant!

Innovation Resolution

Published date: June 13, 2011 в 3:00 am

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“The level of abstraction determines a group’s ability to move between strategies and tactics.  Too high, and the group becomes lost in the detail; too low, and the group is unable to effectively navigate.”

Stuart Morgan
Director of Industrial Design
Johnson & Johnson

My friend and former J&J colleague, Stuart Morgan, is one of those rare people who can flex between the highest level of abstraction and the smallest details of any particular problem.  He is a whiz, and it is hard to keep up with him.  For innovators and innovation managers, this is a skill worth developing and adding to your company’s innovation competency model.  Here’s why.

To be most successful at applying an innovation method, a team needs to determine the right level of granularity over the problem.  Selecting different levels of innovation resolution will yield completely different innovative opportunities.  Changing the resolution could yield interesting new adjacent market spaces.  The level you target will also affect how you use an innovation method like S.I.T..

Here is an example.  Suppose you designed and manufactured commercial aircraft.  The natural starting point would be to innovate an airplane.  At this level of resolution, our initial component list might be:

  1. cockpit
  2. fuselage
  3. wings
  4. fuel tanks
  5. rudder
  6. elevator
  7. landing gear
  8. etc…

Academic Focus: Drexel University’s MS in Creativity and Innovation

Published date: June 5, 2011 в 3:00 am

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Drexel University has launched a new Master of Science in Creativity and Innovation.  The 45 credit graduate program provides a strong foundation in creativity and innovation. There degree requires 33 credits of core courses and 12 credits of electives. From their website:

The Online Master’s in Creativity and Innovation is designed to develop student’s abilities to recognize problematic situations within various settings (e.g., corporate, educational, military, etc.), and generate a sufficient number of plausible, creative and innovative solutions to address them. Students will acquire the skills to conduct a methodical analysis of these creative solutions and devise and implement the best possible solution to problematic situations.
Upon successful completion of the Master’s in Creativity and Innovation program, students will:

  • Identify their own creative strengths and areas they wish to strengthen.
  • Generate a sufficient number of plausible and creative solutions to identified problems.
  • Select and implement the best possible solution to a given problematic situation, following methodical analysis of a menu of creative solutions.
  • Provide a translation of the latest research in creativity and innovation to academic and corporate settings.
  • Participate in research where emerging creativity scholars come together on site or virtually for sharing of ideas, for collaborating, and for seeking and receiving help in literature review, methodology, and grant writing.
  • Enable their worksite to develop in-house expertise to foster creative environments and identify creative problem solvers within their workforce.

What is most impressive about this program is the diversity of courses around the core theme of creativity and innovation.  Topics range from the essentials such as innovation skills to more advanced areas of creativity research and leadership.  My favorite course, if I could take only one, would be the History of Creativity: Pre-1500 to Present.  Anyone in the innovation space should take the time to read and learn the classic literature around creativity to fully understand where we are today.  Here is that course description:

Trends and interactions of creativity and innovation are examined from pre-1500 to present. Emphasis is placed on understanding how the notion of creativity has evolved overtime and its influence on modern workplace and educational environments.

Here is the full offering of courses:

  • Foundations in Creativity
  • Tools & Techniques in Creativity
  • Creativity in the Workplace
  • Creativity & Change Leadership
  • Research & Assess Creativity
  • Global Perspective on Creativity
  • History of Creativity: Pre-1500 to Present
  • Current trends in Creativity and Innovation
  • Problem Solving & Creativity

The program concludes with a two-course capstone program where students demonstrate achievement in their concentration and develop a creative portfolio.

The LAB: Innovating the Treadmill with S.I.T. (May 2011)

Published date: May 30, 2011 в 3:00 am

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 In 1817, Sir William Cubitt innovated the treadmill as a method of reforming prison convicts who got out of line.  Today, that “torture” continues.  According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, fifty million Americans use a treadmill.  Sales of treadmills are $1 billion annually of the total $4 billion fitness equipment industry.  For this month’s LAB, we will use the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., to create new-to-the-world concepts for the ubiquitous treadmill.

S.I.T. works by taking one of five patterns (subtraction, task unification, division, multiplication, and attribute dependency) and applying it to an existing product or service.  This morphs it into a “virtual product,” which is an abstract, ambiguous notion with no clear purpose.  We then work backwards (Function Follows Form) to find new and useful benefits or markets for the virtual product.

Here are four innovations created by students at the University of Cincinnati as part of the innovation tools course.  They articulated these ideas in a dream catalog, a hypothetical, futuristic catalog that merges marketing insight with innovative design.  You can download it here.

Treadmill 1.  Extreme Runner:  The Extreme Runner provides the ultimate workout for the  athlete or experienced runner who loves a challenge. This special treadmill can provide an intense and unique training session or it can be used for extreme competitions.

  • Alternating Elevation Width Belt- instead of the tread staying the same width throughout the course of a workout, this treadmill challenges the walker or runner by correlating the width of the tread to the height of the treadmill. By starting out wide when flat, then getting smaller when the user decides to elevate the machine, this treadmill gives the feel of a rock climb or mountain hike in a matter of minutes.
  • SIT Tools Used: Attribute Dependency – creating a dependency between the width of the belt and the elevation of the machine; the belt speed and the price of the machine; and the time on the track and the position of the runner on the machine.

Innovation Sighting: Street Art Without the Paint

Published date: May 23, 2011 в 3:00 am

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Here is a nice example of the Subtraction tool of the corporate innovation method, S.I.T..  Imagine painting a picture without the paint. From PSFK:

From metal to billboards, Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto aka Vhils is regarded for his work across a variety of mediums. However, his “Scratching the Surface” style (which we first noticed here) is particularly remarkable. Using decrepit city walls as his canvas, the artist carved faces from the concrete, unmasking the beauty inherent to even the most neglected spaces.

To use Subtraction, start by listing the components of the situation, product, service, process, etc.  (The method works with just about anything that can be conceptualized into components).  In this case, the innovator (artist) would create a list like this:

  1. canvas
  2. paint
  3. pallet
  4. brush
  5. subject
  6. model

Alexandre-Farto-aka-Vhils-Wall-Mural-575x430-525x392 The next step is to subtract a component, preferably something that seems to be essential to the original item.  In this case, removing the paint creates our “virtual product” – an abstract, ambiguous configuration that results from applying one of the five S.I.T. patterns.  Then we imagine the benefits, potential customers, and needs addressed by the virtual product.

The Subtraction tool is a great starting point for innovation sessions because it helps confront the fixedness we all have about the world around us.  A painting without paint certainly fits that description.

To extend the idea, try using the other patterns.  For example, Task Unification assigns an additional job to an existing resource.  To use Task Unification, list both the internal and external components within the Closed World (an imaginary space and time around the situation).  Then select a component randomly and give it a “job” related to your paining.  In the works by Vihils, for example, we might take a component of the building and use it as a part of the facial features.  Or, we might give people on the street the additional “job” of adding details to the picture.

To use Attribute Dependency, we imagine creating a correlation between internal attributes of the painting with external attributes of the environment around the painting.  Simply said, as one thing changes, another thing changes.  For example, when it rains, imagine how the Vihils painting might change.  Perhaps it changes color, or shape, or theme.  Perhaps the change is related to moisture such as wet tears flowing from the subject’s eyes.  It is these additional innovations, especially ones that draw from the Closed World, that create that extra element of surprise – “Gee, I never would have thought of that!”

 

Proto Labs Launches Cool Idea! Award to Support Tomorrow’s Innovators

Published date: May 16, 2011 в 3:00 am

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Proto Labs, the world’s fastest manufacturer of CNC machined and injection-molded parts, has announced the launch of its Cool Idea! award, a new program designed to give product designers the opportunity to bring innovative products to life. Each year, Proto Labs will provide $100,000 total worth of prototyping and short-run production services to award recipients.

“We’re extremely excited to launch the Cool Idea! award because we know there’s a single Cool Idea at the foundation of every innovation that changes our lives for the better,” said Brad Cleveland, CEO of Proto Labs. “In fact, the success of our company is due to a cool idea that made quick-turn injection molded prototypes a reality. We’re eager to propel the cycle forward by supporting the next generation of innovators who may otherwise lack the resources to get their ideas to market.”

Targeting Your Innovation Efforts

Published date: May 9, 2011 в 3:00 am

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Companies get better results from innovation by targeting initiatives at the right places.  Given limited time, money, and human resources, here are six areas to focus on:

1. Your Value Drivers:  What activities across your business model create the most value?  Is it operational or commercial?  Who is involved and what departments make it happen?  Use a corporate innovation method like S.I.T. to reinvent the value driver as well as the resources that deliver it.

Procter & Gamble innovated an intelligent screening system that scanned coffee beans imported from any part of the world and selected the right proportions of each to create the desired taste.  This created a huge operational advantage in producing a distinctive product within a commoditized industry.

2. Your Core Competency:  What skill sets create strategic assets?  Strategic assets are those that deliver a sustainable competitive advantage.  By re-inventing these skills and how they are sourced and maintained, companies sustain their advantage.

AkzoNobel, a maker of specialty paint, has a unique ability to color match to near perfection thanks to their skills in chemistry and spectroscopy.  Applying innovation methods to the color matching process would uncover new skills or complementary skills to fortify its strategic advantage.  

3.  Your Potential Acquisitions:  Growth through acquisition is expensive and risky.  Acquisition stifles innovation and distracts management as it focuses on integration.  The answer is to use innovation methods ahead of the deal-making to clarify and enhance valuation.

IBM’s acquisition of Netezza for $1.7 billion seems excessive given the commodization of data warehousing.  By applying a corporate innovation method to the target’s core products before the offer would uncover new or hidden sources of deal value.  Pre-deal innovation either makes the deal more valuable or creates intellectual property to leverage against other suitors if the deal falls through.

4.  Your Customer’s Processes:  How does your customer use your product or service?  Observe and map out the detailed steps of what customers do when they use it.  Use innovation methods to re-invent the way consumers seek and derive value.  This will lead to new product concepts that address these new customer behaviors.

Johnson & Johnson’s medical device unit creates detailed heat maps of how surgeons perform complicated procedures.  The maps reveal the amount of time for each step, the product used, the degree of difficulty, and risk to the successful outcome.  Innovation is targeted at the high difficulty/high risk aspects of the procedure where the most value will be created from breakthrough ideas.

5.  Your Brand Reputation:  What are you most known for in the industry and in the minds of your customer?  Is it superior products, great service to your distributors, fabulous advertising, top people?  Use innovation methods on how consumers perceive your brand to strengthen and reinforce brand loyalty.

L’Oreal’s professional products division leads its industry through servicing salons with product support, training, merchandising, and market insights.  The use of structured innovation methods of how salons operate and service their customers would create new insights and product development opportunities.  Innovating where L’Oreal is regarded as the best in the industry would reinforce its leadership status.

6.  Your Strategic Capabilities:  How does your company win in the marketplace?  What is its “source of authority?”  By innovating the way a company competes, it surprises and outmaneuvers the competition.

Barry Jaruzelski and Kevin Dehoff from Booz & Company describe three strategic orientations: Need Seekers, Market Readers, and Technology Drivers.  “The most successful companies are those that focus on a particular, narrow set of common and distinct capabilities that enable them to better execute their chosen strategy.”  These strategic capabilities can be innovated using systematic methods of ideation.

Feature Creep

Published date: May 2, 2011 в 3:00 am

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Companies that struggle with innovation often make up for it by adding features to existing products.  They succumb to “feature creep” – the gradual and continuous addition of features and functions though nothing is truly new.  While it may look improved, the added features make your product more complex, difficult to use, and more costly to produce.  Over time, your core customers abandon you.

Here is an example – the Numi toilet by Kohler.  At $6400, it is promoted as the top-of-the-line toilet with lots of high-tech bells and whistles:

  • Custom bidet: User can control pressure, temperature and angle.
  • Tankless design; dual flush
  • Motion Sensor Lid: After 90 seconds of no movement, the toilet will close.
  • Seat warmer
  • Foot warmer: A vent beneath the bowl blows hot air to warm your feet and the cold tile beneath them.
  • Automatic seat: For male users, a motion sensor is activated by foot and causes the seat to rise and then lower when you’re away.
  • LED lit back panel: Frosted glass is lit in an energy-efficient way.
  • MP3 hook-up: So you never have to be without your music.
  • Remote control: This touch-screen pad lets the user control all of these features from a wireless control.
  • A flat white surface designed for easy cleaning.

Instead of adding features, companies can become more innovative by subtracting features.  Here is an example of the Subtraction template of the S.I.T. innovation method.  Kimberly-Clarke Corporation, a global producer of paper-based products, launched their new Scott Natural Tube-Free toilet paper. Just as the name asserts, the rolls come without the cardboard tubes while still being able to fit on the average toilet paper holder.

From Foxnews.com:

“The idea has been around for quite some time,” said Doug Daniels, brand manger for Scott brand. “The tube doesn’t really serve any consumer purpose. But we’ve had a breakthrough in our technology that’s finally allowed us to do this.”  For now, the process of taking out the tube remains a mystery, as Kimberly-Clarke won’t reveal its ground-breaking technology. Daniels says they’re keeping tight-lipped, since they might use the process for future products. But more importantly, he maintains that no cardboard tube means every single piece of toilet paper will be usable, without those last few sheets getting stuck to the roll.

Kimberly-Clarke estimates that the U.S. alone disposes of 17 billion cardboard tubes from bathroom tissue, equating to 160 million pounds of waste. To put that into perspective, that’s roughly the weight of 250 Boeing 747s and enough tubes to circle the earth’s equator 40 times. Daniels says that this marriage of consumer and ecological advantages will pave the way for the success of the tubeless initiative.”

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