Innovation Slush Funds
Nortel, the fiber optics giant, allocates pools of money (or "innovation slush funds") at different organizational levels for any idea a manager thinks has great potential, but doesn't want to be accountable for the bottom-line result. Very cool.
A client of mine, at Michelin, does a similar thing. He is authorized to distribute as much as $10,000 to aspiring innovators who have done their homework and are able to convince him that their high potential projects need a bit funding to get untracked. Also very cool.
What I like about this approach is that it sidesteps the bureaucratic hokey pokey, run-it-up-the-flagpole, command and control, funky chicken shuffle that all too often scuttles powerful new ideas in need of a timely infusion of capital to get them rolling.
Of course, these "innovation slush fund" scenarios require some trust and clearly defined evaluation criteria to keep things on the up and up -- but that is simply done. No Six Sigma required. It's such a simple thing to do and can radically reduce the time it takes for breakthrough ideas and aspiring innovators to make magic happen in your organization.
In what ways can YOU establish some kind of innovation slush fund this month? And if you have already done so, click "comments" below and let us know how it's working out.
And remember, as one wise pundit put it, "It's not the money that starts the idea, it's the idea that starts the money."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:30 PM | Comments (1)
August 28, 2008Managers Need to Become Innovation Coaches
The root of the word "manager" comes from the same root as the words "manipulate" and "maneuver", meaning to "adapt or change something to suit one's purpose".
Although these words may carry a pejorative meaning for some of us, there is nothing inherently wrong with them. Indeed, into each life a little manipulation and maneuvering must fall. For example, if the door to your office gets stuck, a handyman might need to manipulate it to get it working again. If there is a log jam at the elevator, you might decide to maneuver around the crowd and take the stairs. No problem there.
However, there is another kind of manipulation and maneuvering that is a problem -- when managers use their position to bend subordinates to their will. While short-term gains may result, in the end the heart is taken out of people. Your staff may become good soldiers, but they will lose something far more important in the process -- their ability to think for themselves. General George Patton said it best, "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."
Unfortunately, ingenuity in many corporations has gone the way of the hula-hoop. "Intellectual capital" is the name of the game these days -- and it is the enlightened manager's duty to learn how to play. Only those companies will succeed whose people are empowered to think for themselves and respond creatively to the myriad of changes going on all around them.
Simply put, managers must make the shift from manipulators to manifesters. They must learn how to coach their people into increasingly higher states of creative thinking and creative doing. They must realize that the root of their organization's problem is not the economy, not cycle time, not strategy or outsourcing, but their own inability to tap into the power of their workforce's innate creativity.
Where does this empowerment start? First, by recognizing what power is: "the ability to do or act". And second, by realizing that power is intimately connected to ideas. Clearly, one's ability to "do or act" depends on there being something worth doing or acting upon. What is an idea? Where does it come from? And how can a manager increase the chances of a good one showing up?
Most managers, unfortunately, perceive new ideas as problems -- especially if the ideas are not their own. Bottom line, they don't pay enough attention to the ideas of the people around them. They say they want to innovate. They say they want "their people" to do something different. But they do precious little to support their subordinates in their efforts to do so. They foist their ideas on others and can't figure out why things aren't happening faster.
That's not how change happens. If people are only acting out somebody else's ideas, it's only a matter of time before they feel discounted, disempowered and... well...just plain dissed. People are more than hired hands; they are hired minds and hearts, as well.
Let's start with the basics.
Everything you see around you began as an idea. The computer. The stapler. The paperclip, the microchip and the chocolate chip. All of these began as an idea within someone's fevered imagination. The originators of these ideas were on fire. Did they have to be "managed?" No way. In fact, if they had a manager, he or she would have done well to get out of the way.
If you want to empower people, honor their ideas. Give them room to challenge the status quo. Give them room to move -- and, by extension, move mountains. Why? Because people identify most with their ideas. "I think therefore, I am" is their motto. People feel good when they're encouraged to originate and develop ideas. It gives their work meaning, makes it their own, and intrinsically motivates.
Who has the power in an organization? The people who are allowed to think for themselves and then act on their ideas! Who doesn't have power? The people who have to continually check-in with others.
Think about it. The arrival of a new idea is typically accompanied by a wonderful feeling of upliftment and excitement -- even intoxication. It's inspiring to have a new idea, to intuit a new way of getting the job done. Not only does this new idea have the potential to bring value to the company, it temporarily frees the idea originator from their normal habits of thinking. A sixth sense takes over, releasing the individual from the gravity of status quo thinking.
In this mindset, the idea originator is transported to a more expansive realm of possibility. All bets are off. The sky's the limit. All assumptions are seen for what they are -- limited beliefs with a history, but no future.
If you are a manager, you want people in this state of mind. It is not a problem. It is not the shirking of responsibility. It is not a waste of time. On the contrary, it's the first indicator that you are establishing a company culture that is conducive to innovation.
This is not to say, of course, that you have to fund every idea that comes your way. On some level, ideas are a dime a dozen -- and only a handful of them are ever going to amount to much. But if you treat all ideas as if they are worthless, you will never find the priceless ones. Creativity, you see, is often a numbers game. Einstein had plenty of bogus theories. Mozart wrote some crap. But they continued being prolific. And it was precisely this self-generating spirit of creation, which enabled them to access the good stuff.
You, as a manager, want to increase the number of new ideas being pitched to you. It's that simple. You want to create an environment where new ideas are popping all the time. If you do, old problems and ineffective ways of doing things will begin dissolving. This is the hallmark of an empowered organization -- a place where everyone is encouraged and empowered to think creatively. Within this kind of environment managers become coaches, not gatekeepers.
"Coaching", of course, has been widely written about and there are many fine books on the subject. What hasn't been written about very much is how to become an "innovation coach" -- how to create the kind of environment that elicits the hidden genius of the people around you. It's one thing to tell people "you want their ideas", it's quite another to create the kind of environment that makes this rhetoric real.
Creativity cannot be legislated. It cannot be sustained by mission statements and pep talks. What needs to happen is you, as a manager, need to change the way you relate to people. Each encounter you have with another in the workplace needs to quicken the likelihood that their unexpressed ideas will get a fair hearing -- enabling a far greater percentage of them to eventually take root.
How does a manager do this?
First off, by expressing a lot of positive regard. Get interested! Pay attention! Be present to the moment! This is not so much a technique as it is a state of mind. Simply put, if your head is always filled with your own thoughts and ideas, there won't be any room left to entertain the thoughts and ideas of others. It's a law of physics. Two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time.
Here's an example: Let's say someone comes up to you in the middle of the day and says something like, "I have this great idea for a new product that will generate over $200 million for our company."
The first thing you need to do is realize the opportunity you have. An idea is about to be shared, one that may herald a breakthrough or, at the very least, solve a problem, capitalize on an opportunity, or make your life easier. Your willingness to sit up and take notice needs to be just as strong as if a customer were to call and complain. If possible, drop what you're doing, focus all of your attention on the idea generator, take a deep breath, and begin a series of questions that demonstrate your interest. If you cannot drop what you are doing, schedule some time -- as soon as possible -- for the idea originator to pitch you.
And whether the pitch is now or later, your response -- in the form of exploratory questions -- needs to be as genuine as possible. Consider some of the following openers:
* "That sounds interesting. Can you tell me more?"
* "What excites you the most about this idea?"
* "What is the essence of your idea - the core principle?"
* "How do you imagine your idea will benefit others?"
* "In what ways does your idea fit with our strategic vision?"
* "What information do you still need?"
* "Who are your likely collaborators?"
* "Is there anything similar to your idea on the market?
* "What support do you need from me?"
* "What is your next step?"
Basically, you want the idea originator to talk about their idea as much as possible in this moment of truth. An idea needs to first take form in order to take root, and one of the best ways of doing this is to encourage the idea originator to talk about it -- even if their idea is not yet fully developed. The telling of the idea, in fact, is not unlike someone telling you their dream. The telling helps the dreamer flesh out the details of what they imagined and the subsequent hearing of it firmly installs it in their memory -- and yours -- so the idea does not fade quite as quickly.
Most of us, however, are so wrapped up in our own ideas that we rarely take the time to listen to others. Your subordinates know this and, consequently, rarely share their ideas with you. But it doesn't have to be this way. And it won't necessarily require a lot of time on your part. Some time, yes. But not as much as you might think.
Bottom line, the time it takes you to listen to the ideas of others is not only worth it -- the success of your enterprise depends on it. Choose not to listen and you will end up frantically spending a lot more time down the road asking people for their ideas about how to save your business from imminent collapse. By that time, however, it will be too late. Your workforce will have already tuned you out.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:14 AM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2008Getting Down to the Business of Creativity
Here's a terrific article on creativity, based on the work of three Harvard researchers/professors.
One of the things I especially love about the article is that it confirms the approach Idea Champions has taken since 1986.
According to Teresa Amabile's research, "inner work life" is one of the biggest determinants of creative output. In other words, a positive mood is a pre-condition for creativity in the workplace. If you are attempting to establish a sustainable culture of innovation in your organization, you (and everyone else) would be well-served to do everything humanly possible to positively impact the mood (i.e. tone, feeling, atmosphere, vibe, spirit) of the environment in which you work.
And that begins, of course, with the individual.
When you treat people with respect, acknowledgment, and genuine positive reinforcement, you significantly increase the odds of creativity -- and by extension, innovation -- flourishing in your organization.
Common sense? For sure. But common sense, it seems, is all too uncommon in most organizations. In our rush to produce, get an edge, and accomplish, we forget the most important thing...
And that is the quality of our interactions with others.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:35 AM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2008Brainstorm or Braindrizzle?
Allow me to make a wild guess here and postulate that you have participated in more than a few brainstorm sessions in your life. Yes?
And allow me to make yet another wild guess and state that many of these sessions left you feeling underwhelmed, over-caffeinated, disappointed, disengaged, and doubtful that much of ANYTHING was ever going to happen as a result of your participation. Yes, again? I thought so.
There's a ton of reasons why most brainstorming sessions under-deliver, but the main reason -- the Mount Olympus of reasons (drum roll, please....) is the brainstorm facilitator.
Armed with a short list of ground rules, a flipchart marker or two, and a muffin, most brainstorm facilitators miss the mark completely.
The reason has less to do with their process, tools, and techniques than it does with their inability or lack of willingness to adapt. In an all-too-professional attempt to be one-pointed, they end up being one-dimensional, missing out on a host of in-the-moment opportunities to spark the ever-mutating, collective genius of the group.
If only our well-intentioned brainstorm facilitators could abide by the words of Walt Whitman, when he confessed that he "contained multitudes."
Translation? If you or anyone you know is going to lead a disparate group of time-crunched, opinionated, multi-tracking, high bandwidth people through a process of originating and developing breakthrough ideas, DON'T BE A ONE TRICK PONY! Be a multitude -- or, at the very least, be multi-faceted. Let it rip. Hang ten. Pull out the stops. Use your right brain and your left. Let all the cats out of the proverbial bag -- and by so doing, exponentially increase your chances of sparking brainpower, brilliance, and beyond-the-obvious ideas.
OK. Enough bloggy pep talk. Let's get down to business.
Take a few minutes now to rate yourself, on a scale of 1-10, for how skillful you think you are at embodying the following personas of a brainstorm facilitator, all of which you will need to call on at just the right time if you expect to play your role to the max. Then tune into your biggest strength and ask yourself how you can amplify that quality. Then identify your biggest weakness and figure out how you can improve in that arena.
While it may seem counter-intuitive, a well-facilitated creative thinking session is less about WHAT than it is about HOW and WHO.
1.CONDUCTOR
A skilled brainstorm facilitator knows how to orchestrate powerfully creative output from a seemingly dissonant group of people. In the conductor mode, the facilitator includes everyone, evokes even the subtlest contributions from the least experienced participant, and demonstrates their commitment to the whole by offering timely feedback to anyone who "gets lost in their own song."
2.ALCHEMIST
A good brainstorm facilitator is able to transmute lead into gold -- or in modern terms -- knows how to help people "get the lead out." This talent requires an element of wizardry -- the ability to see without looking, feel without touching, and intuitively know that within each brainstormer lives a hidden genius just waiting to get out.
3.DANCER
Light on their feet, brainstorm facilitators move gracefully through the process of sparking new ideas. Able to go from the cha-cha to the polka to the whirling dervish spinning of a brainstorm group on fire, savvy facilitators take bold steps when necessary, even when there is no visible ground underfoot. "The path is made by walking on it," is their motto.
4. MAD SCIENTIST
Skillful brainstorm facilitators are bold experimenters, often taking on the crazed (but grandfatherly) look of an Einstein in heat. While respecting the realm of logic and the rational (the ground upon which most scientists build their homes), the enlightened facilitator is willing to throw it all out the window in the hope of triggering a "happy accident" or a quantum leap of thought. Indeed, it is often these discontinuous non-linear moments that produce the kind of breakthroughs that logic can only describe, never elicit itself.
5.DIAMOND CUTTER
Fully recognizing the precious gem of the human imagination (as well as the delicacy required to set it free), the high octave brainstorm facilitator is a craftsman (or craftswoman) par excellence -- focused, precise, and dedicated. Able to get to the heart of the matter in a single stroke without leaving anything or anyone damaged in the process.
6. ACTOR
Brainstorm facilitators are "on stage" whether they like it or not. All eyes are upon them, as well as all the potential critical reviews humanly possible. More often than not, the facilitator's "audience" will only be moved to act (perchance to dream) if they believe the facilitator is completely into his or her role. If the audience does not suspend this kind of disbelief, the play will close early and everyone will be praying for a fire drill or wishing they were back home eating a grilled cheese sandwich.
7.ENVIRONMENTALIST
Brainstorm facilitators are the original recyclers. In their relentless pursuit of possibility, they look for value in places other people see as useless. To the facilitator in full mojo mode, "bad ideas" aren't always bad, only curious indicators that something of untapped value is lurking nearby.
8. OFFICER OF THE LAW
One of the brainstorm facilitator's most important jobs is to enforce "law and order" once the group gets roaring down the open highway of the imagination. This is a fine art -- for in this territory speeding is encouraged, as is running red lights, jaywalking, and occasionally breaking and entering. Just as thieves have their code of honor, however, so too should brainstormers. Indeed, it is the facilitator's task to keep this code intact -- a task made infinitely easier by the ritual declaration of ground rules at the start of a session.
9.SERVANT
Some brainstorm facilitators, intoxicated by the group energy and their own newly stimulated imagination, use their position as a way to foist their ideas on others -- or worse, manipulate the group into their way of thinking. Oops! Ouch! Aargh! Brainstorm facilitating is a service, not a personal platform. It is supposed to be a selfless act that enables others to arrive at their own solutions -- no matter how different they may be from the facilitator's.
10. STAND-UP COMIC
Humor is one of the brainstorm facilitator's most important tools. It dissolves boundaries, activates the right brain, helps participants get unstuck, and shifts perspective just enough to help everyone open their eyes to new ways of seeing. Trained facilitators are always on the lookout for humorous responses. They know that humor often signals some of the most promising ideas, and that giggles, guffaws, and laughable side-talk frequently indicate a rich vein of possibility to explore. Humor also makes the facilitator much more "likable" which makes the group they are facilitating more amenable to their direction. Ever wonder why the words "Aha!" and "Ha-Ha" are so similar?
Interested in learning how to facilitate breakthrough brainstorming sessions? Click here.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:11 AM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2008Charlie Mingus on Creativity
"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, is creativity."
-Charlie Mingus
PS: My 11-year old daughter, Mimi, sent me this picture today and told me to post it on my blog because it reminded her of my book about a cool caveman who was the first person to get the idea for the wheel.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:16 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2008Are You an Idea Addict?
There are lots of things in this world that people get addicted to: alcohol, nicotine, heroin, sex, and Blackberries just to name a few. But perhaps the biggest addiction, one that often flies in under the radar, is the addiction to OUR OWN IDEAS.
Here's how it works: We think something up. We feel a buzz. We embrace the idea. We think about it some more. We tweak it, we name it, we pitch it, and POOF, the addiction begins.
At first, like most habits, it's subtle, harmless, a seemingly casual pursuit with a thousand positive side effects: increased energy, renewed focus, a feeling of well-being, a heightened sense of awareness.
Like wow, man.
First we have the idea. But then the idea has us.
We think about it in the shower. We think about it in the car. We think about it when we don't want to think about it. We even dream about it. Soon we want EVERYONE to know about our idea. We want them to feel the buzz. We want them to nod in agreement. We want them to recognize just how pure our fixation is.
If this is where it ended, it wouldn't be that big a deal. If this is where it ended, I wouldn't be calling it an addiction. Maybe I'd be calling it an "inspiration," or a "commitment" or a "visitation from the Muse." But it doesn't end here. It goes on and on and on and on -- and often, to our own detriment.
If you have a business, of course, you WANT to conjure up cool ideas that turn you on. That's a good thing. But if you cling to ideas just because they're YOURS, or just because they are FAMILIAR, or just because you've invested major amounts of TIME in them, then it's definitely time to rethink where you're coming from.
It may even be time to get help.
The story behind the creation of the iPhone is a good example of what I'm talking about. Steve Jobs and his Apple team had to face the music and back off their own addiction to what they had created in order to create something even greater. Here's what Steve had to say about the matter...
"There always seems to come a moment (when what you're doing) is not quite working. Take the iPhone. We had a different enclosure design for the iPhone until way too close to the introduction to ever change it. And I came in one morning, and I said 'I just don't love this. I can't convince myself to fall in love with this. And this is the most important product we've ever done.'
"So we pushed the reset button. We went through all the zillions of models we made and ideas we'd had... It was hell because we had to go to the team and say, 'All the work you've done for the last year, we're going to have to throw it away and start over, and we're going to have to work twice as hard now because we don't have enough time.'
"And you know what everybody said, 'Sign us up.'
That happens more than you think because this is not just engineering and science. There is art, too. Sometimes when you're in the middle of one of these crises, you're not sure you're going to make it to the other end. But we've always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder."
Fortune Magazine (p. 72), March 17, 2008
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:20 PM | Comments (1)
August 14, 2008The Top 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating
NOTE: The following has been our most popular blog entry since we started Heart of Innovation 13 months ago. We feature it here for those of you who may have missed it. MD
Since 1986, I've been working with a wide variety of organizations who have acknowledged their need to innovate -- enough, at least, to invite Idea Champions in to help them on their way.
It's been a fascinating ride.
Along the way, I've noticed that a lot of people who work in corporations are ruled by a host of "reasons" why innovation can't happen.
Many of these reasons, I realize, are based on years of in-the-trenches experience. My clients are not hallucinating, merely reporting how difficult it's been for them along the way.
I guess you could call these people realists.
I understand their point of view, but it is precisely this point of view that's the problem.
Innovation, as I've said before, is an inside job. It begins with the individual. Organizations don't innovate. People do. And if people are ruled by past experiences, old assumptions, and limiting concepts of what's possible, nothing much will ever change.
And so, as a public service, it is my pleasure to present to you the Top 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating -- excuses I continue hearing again and again out there on the front lines of corporate America.
Please remember, dear reader, that there may be a kernel of truth in each of these reasons. Indeed, what sometimes may seem like an excuse may simply be a clear assessment of current reality.
Current reality, however, is only one form of reality. And just because it's current doesn't mean it's the way it will always be. Or should be.
Real innovators challenge excuses. Real innovators challenge the status quo. They do not concede to current reality. They find a way over, around or through whatever obstacle is in their way -- whether that obstacle is a lack of funding or the assumption that there is a lack of funding.
As you read through the list, take note of the excuses YOU find yourself making. Also take note of the excuses you hear others making.
At the end of the list, I offer you a simple technique to free yourself from the tyranny of these innovation-averse excuses.
Give it a shot.
1. I don't have the time.
2. I can't get the funding.
3. My boss will never go for it.
4. Were not in the kind of business likely to innovate.
5. We won't be able to get it past legal.
6. I've got too much on my plate.
7. I'll be punished if I fail.
8. I'm just not not the creative type.
9. I'm already juggling way too many projects.
10. I'm too new around here.
11. I'm not good at presenting my ideas.
12. No one, besides me, really cares about innovation.
13. There's too much bureaucracy here to get anything done.
14. Our customers aren't asking for it.
15. We're a risk averse culture. Always will be.
16. We don't have an innovation process.
17. We don't have a culture of innovation.
18. They don't pay me enough to take on this kind of project.
19. My boss will get all the credit.
20. My career path will be jeopardized if this doesn't fly.
21. I've already got enough headaches.
22. I'm no good at office politics.
23. My home life will suffer.
24. I'm not disciplined enough.
25. It's an idea too far ahead of its time.
26. I won't be able to get enough resources.
27. I don't have enough information.
28. Someone will steal my idea.
29. It will take too long to get results.
30. We're in a down economy.
31. It will die in committee.
32. I'll be laughed out of town.
33. I won't be able to get the ear of senior leadership.
34. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
35. The concept is too disruptive.
36. I won't be able to get enough support.
37. I don't tolerate ambiguity all that well.
38. I'm not in a creative profession.
39. Now is not a good time to start a new project.
40. I don't have the right personality to build a team.
41. Our company is going through too many changes right now.
42. They won't give me any more time to work on the project.
43. If I succeed, too much will be expected of me.
44. Nothing ever changes around here.
45. Things are changing so fast, my head is spinning.
46. Whatever success I achieve will be undone by somebody else.
47. I don't have enough clout to get things done.
48. It's just not worth the effort.
49. I'm getting close to retirement.
50. My other projects will suffer.
51. Been there, done that.
52. I don't want another thing to think about.
53. I won't have any time left for my family.
54. A more nimble competitor will beat us to the punch.
55. Teamwork is a joke around here.
56. I've never done anything like this before.
57. I won't be rewarded if the project succeeds.
58. We're not measured for innovation.
59. I don't have the right credentials.
60. We need more data.
61. It's not my job.
62. It will hard sustaining the motivation required.
63. I've tried before and failed.
64. I'm not smart enough to pull this off.
65. I don't want to go to any more meetings.
66. It will take way too long to get up to speed.
67. Our Stage Gate process will sabotage any hope of success.
68. I'm not skillful at building business cases.
69. Summer's coming.
70. The marketplace is too volatile.
71. This is a luxury we can't afford at this time.
72. I think we're about to be acquired.
73. I'm trying to simplify my life, not complicate it.
74. The dog ate my homework.
75. Help! I'm a prisoner in a Chinese fortune cookie factory
76. My company just wants to squeeze more blood from the stone.
77. My company isn't committed to innovation.
78. I don't have the patience.
79. I'm not sure how to begin.
80. I'm too left-brained for this sort of thing.
81. I won't be able to get the funding required.
82. I'm getting too old for this.
83. We're too competitive, in-house. Collaboration is a rarity.
84. Spring is coming.
85. I'm hypoglycemic.
86. That's Senior Leadership's job
87. I'm thinking of quitting.
88. Market conditions just aren't right.
89. We need to focus on the short term for a while.
90. Innovation, schminnovation.
91. What we really need are some cost cutting initiatives.
92. Six Sigma will take care of everything.
93. Mercury is in retrograde.
94. IT won't go for it.
95. Maybe next year.
96. That's my boss's job.
97. That's R&D's job.
98. I would if I could, but I can't, so I won't.
99. First, we need to benchmark the competition.
100.It's against my religion.
THE TECHNIQUE I PROMISED YOU
1. Make a list of your three most bothersome excuses.
2. Turn each excuse into a powerful question, starting with the words "How can I?" or "How can we?" (For example, if your excuse is "That's R&D's job," you might ask "How can I make innovation my job?" or "How can I help my team take more responsibility for innovating?"
3. Brainstorm each question -- alone and with your team.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:53 AM | Comments (4)
August 13, 2008The Jar
A college professor stood before his philosophy class at the start of a new semester. Silently, he picked up a very large jar and filled it with golf balls. Then he asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly, pebbles settling into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students again responded with a resounding "yes."
The professor then produced two beers from under the table and poured them into the jar, filling the empty spaces between the sand. The students laughed.
"Now," said the professor. "I want you to understand that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things -- your family, health, friends, and feeling of well-being. If everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full."
"The pebbles are the other things that matter -- your job, your house, your accomplishments etc. The sand is everything else -- the small stuff."
"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there's no room left for the golf balls or pebbles. The same holds true for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you'll never have room for the things that are really important to you."
"Pay attention to the things that are essential to your happiness. Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Take your spouse out to dinner. Smell the flowers. Enjoy the beauty of existence. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first -- the things that really matter. The rest is just sand."
One of the students then raised her hand and asked what the beer represented. The professor smiled, "I'm glad you asked."
"The beer shows you that, no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of beers with a friend."
PS: If you're interested in raising the bar for innovation in your company, figure out what the "golf balls" are. Give your people time to focus on the important things. Be mindful of not filling up their jars with sand (i.e unnecessary meetings, paperwork, admin trivia etc.)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2008Big Problem or Right Problem? The Egg Freckles Saga.
Have you ever spent hours trying to solve a problem only to find you've been working on the wrong problem? Try doing it for five years. That's what Apple Computer engineers did with the Newton handheld computer over a decade ago.
From 1993-1998, Apple made a valiant effort to break open a market for portable handheld pen computers. Unfortunately, they spent most of that time working on a problem that didn't really exist for consumers. And as they labored at it, their intended market was stolen by Palm Computing's PalmPilot.
What follows is a tale about a fatal assumption -- an obsession with a Big Problem that led to one of Silicon Valley's great product misfires.
Consider the moral first.
Solving a Big problem doesn't mean you're solving the Right problem.
Apple's team chose to tackle the biggest challenge in pen computing: high-level handwriting recognition. Newton would be the first portable computer people could write on directly using their natural hand. From anyone's scrawl, the computer would extract the standard ASCII characters computers need to work with. This posed a massive challenge in pattern recognition. Since every user's handwriting is different, the Newton would need to learn the particular way its user wrote each letter and number. IF it got all the letters in, say, the word "thing" right, Newton would compare that string of letters to words in its 10,000 word native memory. IF the word "thing" was stored there, Newton would find a match and "know" the word.
The Newton team was determined to build the world's most sophisticated pattern learning pen computer. But why were they doing it? And for who? Here they made one fatal assumption about their potential buyer, an assumption that would seal the Newton's fate.
The assumption went something like this:
"Users want to do things the way they've always done them. The user shouldn't have to learn anything new to adapt to a machine. A smart machine can and should adapt to the user (in this case, learn the user's handwriting)."
This assumption became a frame and the frame became a mindset. Without ever turning back to question their customer premise, Newton's team labored to build a noble, mind-blowing machine that could recognize the diverse scrawls of any and every human on Earth. But was this the Right Problem to solve?
When the Newton Message Pad debuted in 1993, its handwriting recognition fell way short of the mark, and a public drubbing ensued. The Doonesbury comic strip showed a character writing a six-word sentence on a Newton-like hand-held. The unit coughed up "Egg freckles?" Then The Simpsons piled on. The world laughed.
All through 1993, the Newton was skewered in the press. In October of that year, Apple CEO John Sculley left with freckled egg on his face. Humiliated, the Newton team redoubled their efforts to solve their core problem: getting Newton to learn better.
At the heart of Newton's learning challenge was the "second-stroke problem." Each time a user's pen lifted off the tablet and set back down, Newton's brain detected a pause and became uncertain. "What did that pause mean? Is this next stroke part of the current letter, or a new letter or word?" As it turns out, many alphabet characters need multiple strokes, leaving plenty of room for uncertainty. Capital "T" and "X" involve two strokes. "H" needs three. Add user hesitancy and writing quirks, and you have a thorny problem. And that's just English. Try Cyrillic or Japanese ideograms.
Because Newton's recognition engine was unsure so often, it routinely threw a list of possible words at the user. This was both inconvenient and embarrasing. Who wants their computer to say, "I'm confused. Take time out, scan these words and select the right one"? Worse, if you wanted Newton to learn a word outside its native 10,000 word database, you had to train it. You first had to write it your way, then type it letter by letter using an on-screen keyboard. All that to tell Newton, "This is what 'Hoboken' looks like when I write it."
The upshot? To "save" users from having to adapt their writing habits to machines, the Newton subjected ordinary people to drawn out and repetitive clarification and training routines; a tacit admission that Newton wasn't doing its core job cleanly.
None of this was lost on Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm Pilot, who was carrying around a wooden block as a pretend pocket PDA and using a whittled down chopstick as a pen to imagine his interface.
Hawkins never lost sight of what consumers would want most in a pen computer: fast writing and true mobility - something they could fit in their shirt-pocket. He cut to the chase and questioned Apple's core assumption:"Why must the computer learn everything? Why can't users adapt? Why build a sophisticated learning machine at all? Let's get the job done. People learn faster than computers, so why can't people help the machine? People could easily get the hang of a new single-stroke alphabet. Hmm. One stroke per character and presto! No more second-stroke problem."
So that's what Jeff Hawkins did. With his Grafitti language, he simply redesigned the alphabet, turning centuries-old letters and numbers into single-stroke symbols that mostly kept the look of the original characters. Suddenly the computer had only one master rule to follow. "When the pen lifts up, the character is done. When the pen comes down again, it's a new character. Want to end a word? One stroke makes a space." Simple. And while we're at it - since each stroke is a new character, lets not even write along a line. Write letters on top of each other, in the same input space, and let them display as type in another. Presto - a smaller screen.
Hawkin's low-tech solution made Palm Pilot's pen input "good enough." (Apple even licensed Grafitti in 1995 as an input option for the Newton. Some say it kept the Newton alive.) But the real power of Grafitti was size. It shrank the screen, which shrank the box, which created a viable pocket-PDA market.
In March, 1996, when Newtons were selling as digital writing tablets for up to $1000, the first pocket-sized PalmPilots debuted for under $300. A million of them sold in the first 18 months. The Newton team countered with a much improved Newton 1000 and 2000, but by then it was too late. Two years after the PalmPilot was released, Apple cancelled the Newton product line on February 27, 1998. The project had cost the company half a billion dollars.
Hawkins "technology" was a low-tech workaround; it wasn't "handwriting recognition" in the high-level MIT sense. But while PhD's may have felt Grafitti was a cheat, ordinary people, not giving a hang about the technology issues, found PalmPilots handy and useful. While engineers rallied around solving the Big Problem, consumers swarmed to buy the solution to the Right Problem, which started with a chopstick and a block of wood.
By year 2000, Palm owned 70 percent of PDA sales and had sold well over five million units. At the peak of PDA use, white boards everywhere were covered with Grafitti symbols, which many considered faster to write for high-velocity brainstorming.
The Newton team spent five years working on the Big Problem, writing and rewriting untold lines of code to create a learning machine for the existing alphabet. Hawkins spent a few days designing a new alphabet any computer could easily understand.
Despite its truly impressive interface, Newton stumbled at the main task it promised to do - turn writing into standard ASCII characters quickly. And why did Apple paint themselves into this corner? Because they assumed consumers would want their handheld to adapt to their personal way of writing. Instead of biting into Apple's Big Problem, Jeff Hawkins assumed people would adapt. As he once put it, "It takes you weeks or months to learn how to type, so why not spend 15 minutes learning [how to talk to a computer] with a pen?"
The Lessons
In hindsight, Apple's underlying user assumptions made little sense. What makes people's standard routine (handwriting) so sacred? Who said people shouldn't adapt to machines? Who said you had to work with the existing English alphabet? Why make a program strain to recognize every possible variant of every letter and number? Who said your program had to recognize scrawled words by finding them in a limited word database? Engineers set up these problems, not users.
Great minds often get hijacked by their own brillliance and vision. They forget that simple is smart, dumb is basic and low-tech often beats high tech. We can get so obsessed with an elusive quarry and so enamored of our intelligence that we never go back up to the 20,000 foot level and see that we're hacking the wrong problem. The famous monkey trap metaphor is worth repeating here.
If a monkey reaches through a hole for a banana, but the hole is too small for her hand to withdraw with the banana, she's presented with a quandry. "Which do I want? - the banana or my freedom?" All she has to do is let go of the banana in order to be free of the trap. But the monkey doesn't let go of the banana. She sits there determined to extract it, even in the face of being captured.
Big Problems are like monkey traps. If your Solution quest starts feeling "heroic," or your Big Problem is "big" mostly because everyone is trying to solve it (big kudos await if YOU solve it), its likely you're trapped by the epic magnitude of your quest. In that mindset, the simplest options are likley to escape your notice. Check to see if your solving the Right Problem by running your mind through the following four steps:
1. Restore objectivity. Take time off and come back fresh later. Sleep on it.2. Once you're fresh, carefully and slowly go over your assumptions about the people who will use you product or service. Put yourself in their shoes. Separate your needs from theirs. Don't underestimate their intelligence or overestimate the rightness of your point of view. Break down every assumption you have about your prospective buyer and question it.
3. Especially question your assumptions about what your "users" expect. Often they don't know what they want. They rarely see the next development much less have an opinion about it. But they are ready for a surprise, a break in routine, a new challenge. Keep in mind that IF the payoff is strong, humans will learn new tricks. Are student drivers motivated learners? You bet.
4. Review your supposed technical limitations, challenges or goals to see if you can use lower-tech or human-scale solutions. Stretch for new metaphors that can change the problem, shift the frame, reverse figure and ground.
5. Simplify. Simplify again. Keep simplifying.
Whenever you're stuck or breathing hot and heavy about a solution, you're too close to your work. It's time to step out of problem-solving mode and reassess the problem you're trying to solve.
This excerpt is from the author's book-in-progress, Big Problem or Right Problem? Innovating For Real People.
Copyright © 2007 Tim Moore. All reproduction rights except blog linking are reserved.
Posted by Tim Moore at 02:03 PM | Comments (2)
August 07, 200814 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas
Ta da! My new creative thinking manifesto -- 14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas -- has just been published on ChangeThis.com. How do you say "I'm pumped" in Swahili?
And how do you say, in Croatian, "I'm psyched to be published on the same day as David Meerman Scott and his crew who also just released a changethis!"
If you're interested in sparking innovation -- in yourself or your organization -- my ChangeThis manifesto (available as a beautifully designed downloadable pdf) will help.
If you've never heard of ChangeThis.com, read on to find out where they're coming from and what they do. Good people. Really good.
"Sometimes it seems as though our disagreements -- over everything from politics to business to the designated hitter rule -- are more serious and more divisive than ever before.
People are making emotional, knee-jerk decisions, then standing by them, sometimes fighting to the death to defend their position.
And yet, we're optimists...
People call the team at Change This optimists because we don't believe it has to be this way. We don't believe humans evolved to be so bad at making decisions, so poor at changing our minds, so violent in arguing our point of view. We're well aware of how split our country and our world have become, but we don't think the current state of affairs is built into our very nature.
The problem lies in the media.
In the old days, we had the time and inclination to consider the implications of a decision. Everyone wasn't in quite so much of a hurry. At the same time, most conversations (and most arguments) were local ones, conducted between people who knew each other.
Today, it's very different. Television demands a sound bite. A one hundred word letter to the editor is a long one. Radio has become a jingoistic wasteland, a series of thoughtless mantras, repeated over and over and designed to fit into a typical commute.
To find out more, please download our ChangeThis manifesto."
And if you want to download my new article, click here.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:53 PM | Comments (1)
August 06, 2008CREATIVE THINKING TECHNIQUE: The Daily Muse
In the 21st century, it is no longer considered radical to believe that thought shapes the future. This is something that has been proven again and again in experiment after experiment. And it is precisely for this reason that the media has become such a powerful force in today's world. The media shapes thought.
When we read something in the newspaper, we believe it is true -- and our lives take shape around it.
Well, here is your chance to take back the power of the press. And even more than that, here's your chance to impress your thoughts on the future -- your future -- and by extension, the rest of our futures (so please be coming from the the right place before continuing with the following exercise).
THE DAILY MUSE
1. Fast forward to a time in the future when you want your BIG IDEA to be fully manifested.
2. Imagine you are a reporter from a prestigious newspaper, magazine, blog, or website.
3. Write the story of your success, complete with testimonials, data, and anything else you care to add that will give your article oomph.
4. Read it to a friend or co-worker. Then start jamming...
Excerpted from Awake at the Wheel: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an uphill world)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:17 AM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2008"Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted, counts." (Einstein)
Some things we can measure. Some things we can't. And just because we can measure something doesn't make it more real or significant. Einstein knew this. There was always the "X factor" for him -- mystery, the unknown, the divine, and the impossible to quantify.
That's why he used to conduct "thought experiments" in his lab -- times when he turned away from the blackboard with all those exotic formulas and simply daydreamed -- letting the intuitive side of him take over for a change.
Hmmm... what might YOU be attempting to quantify or measure that would best be left alone? What might you be needing to TRUST that abides outside the boundaries of the rational, logical, analytical, scientific mind?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2008A Truly Stand Up Guy (Kawasaki) Acknowledges This Blog on ALLTOP
This just in!
Heart of Innovation has just been noted on Guy Kawasaki's ALLTOP website as one of the top innovation blogs.
ALLTOP (which we just discovered about seven minutes ago) is a very cool resource for anyone wanting to maximize their blogospheric reading experience. Here's how ALLTOP describes itself:
"We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from 'all the top' sites on the web. We've grouped these collections -- 'aggregations'-- into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, Muslim, celebrity gossip, military, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh.
At each Alltop site, we display the headlines of the latest stories from dozens of sites and blogs.
You can think of an Alltop site as a 'digital magazine rack' of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points -- they are not destinations per se.
The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you're already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn't know existed. In other words, our goal is the 'cessation of Internet stagnation' by providing 'aggregation without aggravation.'"
Thanks, Guy, for putting this together and for acknowledging Heart of Innovation. Blog on, bro!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:08 PM | Comments (1)
INNOVATION SCHMINNOVATION: Give Peace a Chance!Yes, we're all interested in innovation and that's a good thing, but if innovation doesn't lead to something more than increased marketshare, profits, and stuff to consume, we're in big trouble. Here's a very cool, new video by Stuart Hoffman that will lift your spirits and, hopefully, inspire you to think about new ways in which you can focus your innovation efforts on bringing peace to the world. Got any ideas?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:56 AM | Comments (2)
