People collaborate to innovate. But what about the other way around? Could a structured innovation approach be used to bring people closer together? In other words, collaboration becomes the endpoint and innovation becomes the means to that end?
Collaboration is where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals. Collaboration is seen as an essential element of change and group effectiveness. People collaborate for a variety of reasons, including:
Here is an example of the Multiplication Template, one of five in the corporate innovation method called S.I.T.. It is from the Taylor Guitars, one of the leading companies in the category and one of the most innovative. The Multiplication Template makes copies of components but changes the copies in some way from the original. Taylor has multiplied the pickguard of their electric guitar series, but changed the configuration with different styles of magnetic pickups (the part that translates the sound from the strings). It is a clever idea because guitar owners can re-configure their guitar for different playing situations. It helps Taylor Guitar extend their product reach into the aftermarket for guitar parts and maintain a more loyal following of customers.
Business schools and companies need to create more internships dedicated to innovation. Most MBA internships continue to focus on traditional core functions like marketing, finance, and strategy. A few schools have innovation internships, but they focus on the technical and design points-of-view. The mainstream, non-technical B-School programs are missing an opportunity.
Innovation internships are a great way to infuse an organization with innovation process and techniques. The best internships allow the intern to
learn from the company and the company to learn from the
intern. The key success factors are: Selection, Sponsorship, and Structure.
Selection means picking the right student for the internship as well as picking the right company. Not all students or companies are suitable for this type of program. The intern needs to have advanced innovation training. This should include both innovation method training as well as organizational aspects of innovation. The sponsoring company needs to have a commitment to innovation and see it as a competency worth developing.
Sponsorship of the intern is essential. Without resources, focus, networking, and guidance from an engaged sponsor, the intern will flounder. Sponsors need to work closely with business school faculty to make sure the program is set up correctly, and that the intern is brought on board smoothly and effectively. Good sponsors keep projects on track.
Structuring the internship around the needs of the business as well as the needs of the intern is the final piece of the puzzle. Interns need to tackle relevant and difficult innovation problems within the business if they are to learn from the experience and create value for the company.
Here is an outstanding example of how to structure an innovation internship and select candidates for the position, from Sears:
“We put the ‘NO’ in innovation!” The good people at Post Cereal have a new twist on innovation…NOT innovating as a statement of the product’s ubiquity and staying power. “Some things just weren’t meant to be innovated.”
How could I resist? It was just too tempting to use systematic innovation on this simple product, especially in light of the perception that it should not be innovated. Though the ad campaign is a spoof, I wonder just how much the people at Post really believe this. What if shredded wheat could be innovated to create new growth potential for this 116 year old product?
Henry Perky invented shredded wheat cereal in 1893. The wheat is first cooked in water until its moisture content reaches about 50%. It is then tempered, allowing moisture to diffuse evenly into the grain. The grain then passes through a set of rollers with grooves in one side, yielding a web of shredded wheat strands. Many webs are stacked together, and this moist stack of strands is crimped at regular intervals to produce individual pieces of cereal with the strands attached at each end. These then go into an oven, where they are baked until their moisture content is reduced to 5%.
I’ll use all five templates of the Systematic Inventive Thinking method to see what new opportunities we can uncover.
Placing advertisements on objects such as billboards and taxis is nothing new. But here is a new twist using task unification. It is one of five templates in the corporate innovation method called S.I.T. Task Unification assigns an additional “job” to an existing resource. Here is an example as reported in USA Today:
Here is an opportunity to learn innovation from the same people who taught me. The course is called Innovation Suite 2009, and will be held July 27-29, 2009 in Rochester, Minnesota. For registration and more detailed information, please go to www.sitsite.com/2009innovationsuite.
Here are some excerpts about the course from the registration site:
Innovation Suite 2009 will help you successfully apply innovation to three critical levels in your company: individual, team, and organization-wide. Each day of this 3-day course focuses primarily on one level. We will take you step-by-step from the basic tools and principles of the SIT method through hands-on team innovation and company-wide sustainable processes.
Are hopeful employees more innovative? A new study by Armenio Rego and his colleagues shows how employees’ sense of hope explains their creative output at work. They asked one hundred and twenty five employees to rate their personal sense of hope and happiness while their supervisors rated the employees’ creativity. Based on the correlations, they conclude that hope predicts creativity.
Hope is defined as a positive motivational belief in one’s future; the feeling that what is wanted can be had; that events will turn out for the best. Hoping is an integral part of being human. Without hope, tasks such as innovating become difficult if not impossible. Why bother if there is no hope for a successful future? “Hope is important for innovation at work because creativity requires challenging the status quo and a willingness to try and possibly fail. It requires some level of internal, sustaining force that pushes individuals to persevere in the face of challenges inherent to creative work.”
I have observed this in practice. I once facilitated employees in a division about to be sold to another company. The employees learned about the divestiture during the workshop. Morale was low, and participants were not responsive to systematic innovation techniques. They lacked hope…hope about their future employment and personal achievement. To salvage the workshop, we re-framed it. We told the employees they needed to innovate so that they would be perceived as valuable to their new owners. Innovating would give them an immediate jump-start on becoming competitive in the marketplace, something they struggled with under the current owner. Once hopeful, they kicked innovation into high gear. That workshop was one of the most successful and creative I have ever experienced.
What can leaders do to inspire hope? Darren Webb has outlined a useful model in his paper, “Modes of Hoping.” He identifies five types of hope:
Credit card companies must innovate to overcome the financial and public relations consequences of recent government legislation. The Credit Card Reform Act of 2009 is a “bill to protect consumers, and especially young consumers, from skyrocketing credit card debt, unfair credit card practices, and deceptive credit offers.” These changes go into effect in 2010, and they will undoubtedly reduce the financial performance of card issuers.
The concept of using a card for purchases was described in 1887 by Edward Bellamy in his utopian novel Looking Backward. Bellamy used the term credit card eleven times in this novel. The credit card has become a ubiquitous symbol of consumerism since then. Many credit card innovations have emerged, some useful and others wacky. Recent innovations include: paperless statement; online statements; custom logos to display your affiliations with colleges, companies, and other groups; a magnetic strip to read information more efficiently and securely.
The key for credit card companies is to reduce their reliance on price (in the form of interest rates, penalties, and fees) and increase their pipeline of innovative services for which consumers will be willing to pay. That is the focus of this month’s LAB.
Do you consider yourself an innovator? I asked this to a group of participants at a recent PDMAworkshop, and the results surprised me. Only about half of the participants raised their hand. Many of those had that hesitant look of self-doubt on their face.
It’s a difficult question. How do you really know if you are an innovator? Is it based on the number of patents you hold? Is it a function of your job title? Is it based on your creative endeavors like music or art?
Take this self-assessment to find out. Place a check mark beside the statement you believe is more true. (Click here for a printable version and for scoring instructions.)
Innovation creates dilemmas, and these dilemmas can either help or hinder your innovation effort. Dilemmas arise when we confront natural tensions between two apparent opposite ideas or concepts. In business we face these dilemmas all the time: cost vs. quality, centralization vs. decentralization, stability vs. change, short term results vs. long term competitiveness. Dilemmas are dynamic but inevitable. They don’t go away. They must be managed over time.
The key is to recognize the difference between dilemmas, which are not resolvable, and problems which are resolvable. Problems differ from dilemmas in that they are decidable. We have independent options to address problems usually through some fixed trade-off between options. Problems can be solved, resolved, and decided – once and for all. Natural tensions are not solved or decided. They are ongoing. Professors Josh Klayman and Jackie Gnepp address this in their course, “Implementing Innovation and Change” at the University of Chicago. The course helps students recognize the difference between dilemmas and problems. They learn strategies to help manage and balance these dilemmas over time.
Here are the innovation dilemmas (tensions) I observe in organizations: