Посты с тэгом: innovation

Introducing: Innovate! Inside the Box

Published date: October 31, 2013 в 3:00 am

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Authors Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg announced the launch of a new app that supports the innovation/creativity system outlined in their groundbreaking work: Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results (Simon & Schuster, 2013).
Innovate! Inside the Box enables users of Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) to employ the method more productively. The new app places SIT’s five innovation techniques – Subtraction, Division, Task Unification, Multiplication and Attribute Dependency – at the user’s fingertips to quickly generate creative ideas and new-to-the-world innovations. In addition, users can document their projects as they build their pipeline of ideas and inventions.
“Creativity is about what people do to make the world a better place,” said co-author Boyd. “Innovate! Inside the Box lets people use creativity techniques in a seamless and organized way.”
Co-author Goldenberg concurs: “Systematic Inventive Thinking is rooted in research that inventive solutions share a set of common patterns. This app coalesces the process of using patterns to innovate and supports the use of proven tools to invent systematically.”
“In short,” said Boyd, “Innovate! Inside the Box packs all the power of our book into an easy-to-use app. Everyone can create and innovate, using these tools and this process.”
To use the app, users select a product or service they want to innovate. They type in the components and attributes of that product or service. Innovate! Inside the Box then creates hypothetical configurations based on each of the five techniques. Users take these configurations and try to imagine new benefits or problems addressed. If they discover a new idea, they enter a description of it in the app that they can share via email or social media.
Innovate! Inside the Box is the first app of its kind to facilitate a systematic innovation method. It is priced at $8.99 and is available for iPad2 and iPad3.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results (Simon & Schuster, 2013) provides corporate executives, engineers, marketing professionals, organizational leaders, and creative people of all types with a practical, working guide to begin innovating in everyday life. You no longer need to wait for a crisis to consider creative solutions. You don’t have to wait for inspiration, for the muse to descend, or otherwise depend on some sort of unusual spark of brilliance to create something. By following Boyd and Goldenberg’s inside-the-box method, you can create new and exciting things – or conceive new and exciting ideas – on demand.
To encourage readers to begin using the method right away, the authors present scores of examples where these techniques have been used across a wide range of industries, products, services, and activities. Many are real-life cases from Goldenberg’s international consulting and training company, also called Systematic Inventive Thinking.
Boyd and Goldenberg write: “Our goal for this book is to make the inside-the box approach accessible to anyone in any field and in any part of life, personal or professional. Together we hope to show you how to work inside the box to use your brain in a different way, and produce innovations that you would never have imagined otherwise. And here’s the almost magical thing about inside-the-box thinking: the more you learn about the method, the more you will start to see how it can be applied to solve tough problems and create all sorts of breakthroughs in the world around you. You’ll find your eyes open to a whole new world of innovation.”
Simon & Schuster; Publication Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 9781451659252
E-book: 9781451659306
Price: $28.50
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To learn more, visit http: http://www.InsidetheBoxInnovation.com
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Innovation and Design Thinking: Week One Final Thoughts

Published date: October 14, 2013 в 3:00 am

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The terms innovation and design thinking are used so often in so many different contexts, often interchanged, and sometimes misused. What do they really mean? More importantly, how do they relate to each other?

SpiralThese questions set the stage for “Innovation and Design Thinking,” the first Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) offered by the University of Cincinnati and the largest course ever taught since it was founded in 1819. Nearly two thousand students from around the world are participating.
The truth is, from our experience, there is no consensus on a definition of innovation or design thinking.  Jim Tappel and I have had many conversations about it with a variety of people through the years. Finding agreement has been elusive.  Perhaps these terms are so broad that seeking a definition is like seeking a definition of leadership. There are many, many ways to approach it.
Consider just a few of the comments from participants in this week’s Discussion Board:
•    From Francis Milbower:

“In my mind, I see innovation as a solution to some sort of need, such as a customerneed, market need, performance improvement, etc. Design thinking is then thesystematic tools or process used in order to make that innovation come to life.Innovation can occur but some sort of design thinking is required in order for thatinnovation to prove to be successful.”

•    From Bernardo Szulanski:

“In my perspective innovation provides value and actually deliver a solution to aproblem, and Design Thinking is a discipline and a methodical way to identifyproblems and analyse the capabilities to create innovation.”

•    From Ashley Moran:

“In my mind, design thinking comes into the process – using tools like the spiralmodel – in order to keep the team on track toward achieving the innovation goal(i.e., solving customer problems). Design thinking is to clearly and thoroughlydefine the problem, think inside the box to postulate ideas to fix the problem andthen see those ideas come to fruition – all while keeping the target audience inmind.”

•    From Paul Reader:

“In discussions around a perceived problem it can often be the case where someonesays “That’s not the problem!” Asking the question “Why is it not the problem?” canelicit either: a solution to that part or perception A. of the problem; B. a more refined definition; and/or C. a discovery of dependence/independence between attributes of the problem. By doing this the focus remains ‘inside the box’, even if we don’t normally think of it that way when we are doing it.”

•    From John Bowen:

“How I am understanding this is that Design Thinking can’t happen withoutInnovation. First you have the Innovation that then leads you to the DesignThinking but the Innovation piece means very little without the Design Thinking.Innovation is the problem being solved with an idea and Design Thinking takes it astep further by thinking about how this idea would be put into action.”

You’ll find even more evidence of this debate when you watch the “Voice of the Practitioner” video in Week One. These five seasoned pro’s have their own unique take on it depending on their experiences and what is working for them in their organizations. (Hint!)
We advise the following. Don’t worry too much about nailing down precise, universal definitions of these terms. We encourage you to use this course as a way to provoke new insight and understanding about the world of innovation and design. Then, use those insights to craft a meaning that is right for the type of company you work for and the culture that exists there. The structure of your innovation and design thinking programs should follow the strategy of your company, not the other way around. In other words, you get to choose what innovation and design thinking mean!
By now, you should have noticed the peer-to-peer interaction in the Discussion Board. Learning is a social phenomena, and we are encouraged how participants are helping each other and debating issues between each other, not with us. As faculty, our job in this course is to provoke you to think in new ways, not to give you definite answers. We see ourselves as equal participants in the Discussion Board along with everyone else. Trust us: you will learn more from the wisdom of this highly experienced and diverse group of MOOC participants. Just look at where our participants come from – 55 countries!
MOOC Usage Map 10-13-10
In closing, we want to thank you for joining us on this pilot program. We hope to learn as much as you, and we want you to know how much we appreciate your engagement and passion for this topic.

Massive Open Online Course: Innovation and Design Thinking

Published date: September 30, 2013 в 3:00 am

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The University of Cincinnati’s first Massive Open Online Course begins next week, October 7th. The course is free and open to all.

You should take this course because 1. you can do it even while you are traveling, and 2. ALL the content is optional. Just surf the content that is most important for your needs.

The course will help you master the tools necessary to generate new ideas and quickly transform those concepts into a viable pipeline of new products and services. Participants will learn the highly effective method of idea generation called Systematic Inventive Thinking used by many global firms across a wide variety of industries. They will also learn a suite of design thinking tools to take new concepts and put “life” into them. Generating ideas is not enough. Design thinking takes new ideas and sculpts them into market-winning products and services. Participants will learn the mechanics of each S.I.T. tool, and practice the use of each on a real product or service. Additionally, they will learn from a panel of seasoned practitioners and experts in the fields of innovation, new product development, and venture start-up.

The course is taught by two industry-practitioners-turned-academics. Drew Boyd is a 30 year industry veteran. He spent seventeen years at Johnson and Johnson in marketing, mergers & acquisitions and international development. He is co-author of Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results. Jim Tappel has over 25 years in industry in the engineering and design. This unique perspective from the commercial/marketing side (Drew) and the engineering/design side (Jim) creates a complete picture of what companies need to do to drive innovation and promote organic growth. Both are now full time faculty members at the University of Cincinnati.

The course features guest videos by practitioners in the field who are
experts in innovation, design, new product development and venture
startup. They are:

  • Cindy Tripp, formerly the Director of
    Global Design Thinking at Procter & Gamble. Cindy led development of
    P&G’s Design Thinking application for business strategy,
    organizational design, commercial and product innovation to generate
    previously unimagined solutions.
  • Doug Ladd, Chief Marketing Officer, EndoChoice, Inc., one of the fastest growing medical device companies in the world.
  • Sally Kay, Principal, Strategic Product Development. Sally has
    extensive experience in innovation as a practitioner (25 years) and a
    consultant with particular focus on the front end of the innovation
    process. She is active in The Product Development & Management
    Association (PDMA) for the last 25 years. She chairs The Outstanding
    Corporate Innovator Award Program.
  • Dr. Michael Clem, Vice
    President R&D – Medical at Kaleidoscope, a leading innovation and
    design firm. Mike is an innovation leader with a successful track record
    of developing and leading teams to deliver winning solutions. He spent
    over 20 years in technology and R&D programs with Johnson &
    Johnson companies.
  • Elizabeth Edwards, CEO at Metro Innovation and
    author of Startup: The Complete Handbook for Launching a Company for
    Less. She is a venture capital and economic development strategist
    focused on helping cities and regions develop stronger entrepreneurial
    ecosystems.

RegisterParticipants who successfully complete the course and enroll as a new student at the University of Cincinnati will receive graduate credits that can be applied toward either an MBA degree from the Lindner College of Business or a Master of Engineering degree through the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Join us on October 7, 2013 for the start of Innovation and Design Thinking.  Content links will be available approximately one week prior to the course’s start date.  Course will start on October 7 and be completed on November 24.

The Fabulous Five

Published date: January 7, 2013 в 3:00 am

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Five

companies are slugging it out in what may be the most competitive and
unique business battle of all time. It is larger in scale with more at
stake than battles in other industries including transportation, energy,
and finance.

More
remarkable is how different the combatants are from one another.
Instead of similar companies competing (Toyota versus General Motors,
for example), these companies hail from different business bases: an electronics manufacturer, a lifestyle computing company, an
online
retailer, a search engine, and a social network.  In order: Samsung,
Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.  I call them the Fabulous Five.

What
are they fighting for? They are fighting for the right to define what
they are fighting
for. It is a category yet to emerge.  The battle is about who can get
the largest numbers of customers that generate deep
and meaningful insights.  Each company wants a massive following of
human beings using their products
and services in a way that generates monetizable information twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.  Each of the
Fabulous Five has a strong and growing foothold to do exactly that.

What
about traditional powerhouses like Microsoft?  Microsoft fell behind and is trying desperately to catch up with acquisitions
(think $8.5 billion for Skype).  Microsoft will regress into a word
processing, server, and gaming company.  Blackberry?  RIM lost one million
customers in the last three months of 2012.  Motorola? Sony? HP? Yahoo?  They
are watching the battle from the sidelines. PC’s
are becoming irrelevant as the tablet and smartphone takes hold.

That
said, there are some potential challengers to the Fabulous Five.
Twitter, for example, has an impressive subscriber base generating 500
million tweets a day that are being archived
by the US Library of Congress.  Despite the enormity of Twitter, it has
a serious gap.  Twitter (the company) lacks a way to own the insights
being generated.  Twitter is just an advertising portal.  More
concerning is the Fabulous Five can encroach this space fairly easily.
Some already have.

Which of the Fabulous Five will win is not a matter of financial resources.  What matters is their core competencies and their ability to stretch those into other domains.  More important is what each company learns about consumers to stretch further.

Who has the advantage?  Let’s look at sheer size and scope of each.

Google averages
nearly five billion searches per day.  Insights about keywords used to
search the Internet are extremely valuable.  Google learns what it takes
to make websites search engine friendly.  It sells that to companies
who want their websites optimized.  Google’s Droid operating system
gives it presence in smartphones.  Now they seek ways to stretch into
consumer electronics.

Amazon leads the nearly $300 billion online retail space.  It had nearly 8 million unique visitors on one day
(Black Friday).  Amazon learns how people shop, how they compare, and
what they are willing to pay across a wide range of consumer products.
It is stretching itself into the smartphone arena.  Amazon will continue to make bold moves.

Facebook
has over one billion users.  Despite all the criticism about its
privacy policies, Facebook has an enormous advantage in learning how
people socialize, communicate, and visualize their relationships.  But
it lacks a smartphone, entertainment platform, and shopping presence
that others have.

Samsung leads in technology development the way that Apple leads in design.  Samsung is well managed and aggressive.  It has massive resources
to put hundreds of millions of handheld units into any region of the
world.  The question is what they do with it – how much of the
information stream will come from the unit versus the operating system
within that unit.  Samsung knows it needs its own smartphone operating system to compete with Google.

Apple
is the most valuable company on the planet with a fiercely loyal base of
customers across every demographic.  It wins on design, integration,
and service.  More than the other combatants, Apple cuts across a wider
swath of a person’s daily life. Its next strategic move will likely set
the tone for the next wave of battles.  Fierce patent skirmishes with Samsung and others will subside so they can all focus on with the real battle – earning loyalty and staying relevant.

The
common theme for all five is innovation – the ability to stretch
into other domains and create new value systematically.  The choices they make to compete will be topics of future blog posts here.  2013 is
sure to be a milestone for this epic battle.

Rejection Breeds Creativity

Published date: December 10, 2012 в 10:38 am

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New research from Johns Hopkins University suggests that having our ideas rejected tends to boost our creativity output.  Sharon Kim and her colleagues found that when most of us experience rejection, it can actually enhance our creativity, depending on how we respond to it.  The paper, titled “Outside Advantage: Can Social Rejection Fuel Creative Thought?” was recently accepted
for publication by the Journal of Experimental Psychology. It also
received a best-paper award at the Academy of Management (AOM)
conference held this month in Boston.

As reported by Behance:

In the first experiment, participants were given a series of personality questions and told they would be considered for participation in several group exercises in the future. When the participants returned to the laboratory a week later, some of them were asked to complete a few tasks before joining their group (inclusion), others were told that none of the groups had chosen them and they would need to complete their tasks independently (rejection).  When they calculated the results, the researchers found that “rejected” participants significantly outperformed those that were included in a group. Consider the difference between those who respond to rejection by sulking versus those who respond by rolling up their sleeves and thinking “I’ll show them.”

The results were conclusive: rejection breeds creativity, especially for those who consider themselves highly independent. In final a follow-up study, the researchers found the same trend using a different measurement of creativity.

For practitioners, how can this phenomena work to your advantage?  When
managing individuals or teams, the time will come when you have to say
‘no’.  In that moment immediately after rejecting a person’s viewpoint,
you want to let it sink.  Don’t try to minimize the impact by rationalizing the decision or by other means of making the person feel better.  But the key is to assign the rejected person right away to a
new and important task.  Put them on a project where they can prove themselves and
“get even.”  You want to let their creative juices flow.

“While it is never a comfortable experience, the feelings of rejection can actually help us access our more creative selves. Free from the expectations of group norms, we can push the limits of novelty. Moreover, we can enhance that ability by changing the way we respond to rejection. Instead of dwelling too much on the pain of being turned down or turned aside, consider the freedom you now have to explore new possibilities and less mainstream options.”

The LAB: Innovating Social Media Apps with SIT (August 2012)

Published date: August 27, 2012 в 3:00 am

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Marketers have such a wide array of social media apps to choose from that it can be overwhelming.  Tools such as Go2Web20.net can help sort through the maze and narrow down the search to catergories of apps such as mobile, Facebook, gaming, and so on. But to squeeze more out of social apps, the savvy marketer looks for ways to innovate in a way that supports the brand.  For this month’s LAB, let’s apply the innovation method, SIT, to social media apps as a means of brand building.

This is not the first time we’ve applied innovation techniques to social media.  In the October 2009 LAB, we demontrated how to apply social apps to a large field organization such as a sales force or delivery fleet.  The key was using the Task Unification Technique, one of five in the SIT method. To use Task
Unification, we take a component of a product, service, system, etc,
and we assign an additional “job” to it. For this month’s LAB, we will apply the same basic approach to brand building.  Imagine you are the brand manager for the billion dollar Febreze® franchise, and you are looking for ways to stretch the brand into eliminating pet odor. Here is how it works.

We start by visiting Go2Web20.net.  I randomly pick an application from this list.  Then I assign the app the additional job of promoting Febreze® for eliminating pet odor.   I create this statement: “XYZ App has the additional ‘job’ of promoting Febreze® for pet odor elimination.” This is our Virtual Product in the SIT method.

The key is to imagine non-obvious applications for creating new, innovative services. You have to literally force yourself to imagine the brand using the inherent aspects of the Web 2.0 application to increase awareness or loyalty.

Here are examples created using Task Unification:

1. Micello:  Micello is the leading provider of comprehensive indoor venue maps for mapping and navigation companies, retailers, hospital groups, mobile carriers and application developers.  To innovate it, we imagine assigning this app the “job” of promoting Febreze® for pet odor elimination.  How would it work?  Suppose the Micello technology is used to create an internal map of your home – each room, each piece of furniture – and it tracks where your pet spends its time.  It uses this information to create an odor “heat map” where Febreze® will be needed the most.  It suggests to the pet owner that Febreze® can tackle the toughest pet odor jobs in the house.  This reinforces the brand promise.

2. Zamzar:  Zamzar converts files to different file types and does it all online without having to download any software.  To innovate this app, we have to understand the essence what the app is trying to accomplish.  Zamzar is a conversion tool – one format changes to another.  So we imagine giving the app the “job” of promoting Febreze®. It seems very odd at first, and that is typical when using this method. Let’s imagine Zamzar is converting one odor type to another.  Perhaps it is converting different types of furniture or carpet to a specific Febreze® product or dosage.  The key to think of it from the consumer’s point of view.  Pretend Zamzar is a smartphone app that let’s them input the type of odor and the fabric that smells to get recommendations on how to remove it.  Again, the app connects the brand to the odor elimination brand promise.

3. Tupalo:   Tupalo lets you discover, review, and share the best local businesses with friends.  There many apps that do this type of function across various domains – restaurants, stores, movies, and so on.  In our example, we could imagine Tupalo lets pet owners share their success stories and recommendations managing pets and pet odors.  Perhaps it is an app that recommends parks, hotels, or other venues that are friendly to pets.  The app associates the Febreze® brand to the “pet friendly” promise.

4. eFamily:  eFamily lets you connect, share and preserve memories in a private, safe and intuitive social network built for families. Your most valuable digital content is preserved in high definition and password protected.  Most pet owners see their pets as members of the family, so this one is almost too obvious.  The trick here is to imagine some non-obvious applications.  The essence of eFamily is privacy.  Perhaps Febreze® sponsors a pet owner version of this app that lets owners of the same breed be part of their own private social network.  Pet owners often take pride in the breed of the pet, so this site would create a sense of prestige and belonginess.  The goal, again, is to connect the brand to positive attributes in the minds of pet owners so they are more likely to see Febreze® as an essential product in managing their pet.

The Five Senses of Innovation

Published date: July 9, 2012 в 3:00 am

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How do you know if someone is truly innovative?  I look for three things.  First, does the person have a cognitive process for generating new ideas? Innovation is a skill, not a gift.  It can trained and learned like any other skill.  So I expect successful innovators to have such training and be able to deploy ideation methods – on demand.

Second, is the person motivated and hopeful about the future?  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.  Research shows that an employee’s sense of hope explains their creative output at work.  Hope predicts creativity.

Third, and perhaps most elusive: do they have the innovation senses to know how their efforts will succeed?  I call these the Five Senses of Innovation.

The Hidden Cost of Poor Innovation Execution

Published date: February 13, 2012 в 3:00 am

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Executing and launching new products takes financial and human resources.  When poor execution delays a product launch, companies are hit with another cost, one which often goes unnoticed.  Poor execution delays the revenue stream that a new innovation will earn.  Given the time value of money, that financial loss can be staggering. Consider one of the most famous innovative product – the Post-it® Note.

3M scientist, Spencer Silver, invented a note size paper with a weak glue backing. The company saw no market application for it.  One day, Art Fry, another 3M scientist, was singing in the church choir.  Paper bookmarks kept falling out of his hymnal, so he began using the sticky notes instead.  With the weak adhesive, the notes stayed in place, yet lifted off without damaging the pages.  3M began distributing Post-it® Notes in 1980 — ten years after Silver developed the super weak adhesive.  Today, it’s one of the most popular office products available.

What if 3M cut that execution time from 10 years to 5 years?  What is the value of better/faster execution?  Let’s make some simplifying assumptions.  Assume the Post-it® Note franchise turns out $1 billion in annual revenue and nets a profit of $100 million in perpetuity. (3M’s consumer products and office division, which includes Post-it®, posted revenue of $3.47 billion in 2009 according to public financial filings.)  Using a discount rate of 5%, that yields a net present value of $2 billion.  Now what if that cash flow is delayed just five years due to poor execution.  Using the same discount rate of 5%, the new NPV is $1.6 billion, a whopping $400 million in lost cash!

Could 3M have spent money on ways to speed up the launch of the Post-it® Note?  It is certainly plausible.  Investing in market research and other experimentation might have led 3M managers to see the potential of the product sooner.  It certainly would have cost less than the $400 million lost due to slow execution.

Some might argue that execution is more important than creation, but both are necessary to succeed.  Applying systematic methods to create great ideas increases your odds of success.  Great execution is what helps your company realize the full financial value of those inventions.

 

Academic Focus: University of Queensland’s TIMC

Published date: August 1, 2011 в 3:00 am

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The University of Queensland’s Technology and Innovation Management Centre (TIMC) is an international leader in research on technological innovation. The center was established in 1989 as a Centre of Excellence in technology management.  Its goal is to be at the leading edge in research and teaching in technological innovation.

The broad aim of the Centre is to understand and teach the role of innovation in improving business productivity and global competitiveness.  From their website:

“The Centre has two core activities: teaching and research. The TIMC has an active research program. Staff members regularly publish articles in leading international innovation journals, along with a number of books. The Centre also has a number of international research and teaching collaborations, including, most recently, with Imperial College, London, University of Cambridge, Anderson School of Management, UCLA; and the Stockholm School of Economics.

The TIMC also focuses on finding ways to effectively communicate its knowledge to the broader community. The Centre offers post-graduate and undergraduate degree courses, conducts international workshops and seminars, and its staff undertake a variety of consultancies for businesses and government agencies.”

Two of the faculty at TIMC are fellow innovation bloggers, Tim Kastelle and John Steen.  They write The Innovation Leadership Network blog.  From their site:
 

“In this blog we share our ideas about effectively managing the innovation process. We have several core themes that inform the discussions here:”

  • Innovation is fundamentally an evolutionary process. We find it useful to think of innovation as consisting of the generic evolutionary steps of variety (idea generation), selection (choosing the best ideas to execute) and replication (getting our ideas to spread).
  • Networks are the primary organisational form that we need to manage in the innovation process. The fundamental creative act in innovation is connecting – connect ideas to each other, and ideas to people. Consequently, looking at how ideas travel through networks is central to gaining an understanding of how innovation works.
  • The business model is the fundamental tool to use to develop an innovation strategy. Three strategies that are very useful in business model innovation are aggregating, filtering and connecting. In particular, these are three ways to build innovative business models in information-based industries.

Any new academic program considering an innovation curriculum would be wise to embrace these principles.

Thanks, Tim and John, for your contributions.

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