Be Who You Are!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2010Real Innovation in Health Care
If your organization is interested in raising the bar for innovation and maximizing the creativity of its workforce, you might be interested in the following comment we just received from AtlantiCare's President of Health Care Services, Don Parker...
"AtlantiCare was searching for guides who could help us infuse our organization with creative genius. What we found in Idea Champions was the 'Lewis and Clark' of innovation. Over the past two years of our work with them, we have blazed trails in a number of new areas, including:
1. The seating of a system-wide Innovation Council charged with the responsibility of stimulating and guiding the application of innovation principles throughout our organization.
2. The selection and training of Creativity Champions deployed throughout our organization to assist in new process design, redesign, and remediation of performance problems.
3. The creation of a new, innovative program for random and focused idea submission. (All ideas are responded to, referred to the appropriate process owners, and rewarded when and implemented).
4. Management training and deployment strategies on innovation for more than 350 middle managers.
5. Innovation processes, practices, and knowledge embedded throughout our 5,200 employee workforce.
No organization, especially those in Health Care, can expect to thrive -- let along survive -- without drawing on all of the collective talent and ideas of their workforce. 
Idea Champions helps us discover and apply those talents and ideas in a highly productive and practical system. With their guidance, we expect to continue to blaze new trails as we meet the challenges of Health Care Reform."
NOTE: AtlantiCare is one of America's five recipients of the 2009 Baldrige Award. They were recently acknowledged for this accomplishment by President Obama.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:01 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2010The Third Eye of the Brainstorm
Nowhere in the human psyche is the conflict between the need for independence and the need for support more pronounced than in the creative act, especially the very specific act of generating new ideas in a group -- an activity that has come to be known as brainstorming.
Historically, most people have believed that ideas come to them like bolts from the blue, flashes of inspiration that descend from the
beyond -- a dimension free of the laws of Earth.
Even the modern dictionary speaks of ideas as "transcendent entities." The implication of this way of thinking is that people need to be highly attuned in order to attract new ideas -- becoming a kind of channel through which ideas flow.
The importance of other people, in this approach, is almost non-existent.
Thus the desire for many creative types to seek solitude, moon howling, and any number of artificial stimulants -- whatever it takes to increase their chances of tapping into the exoteric source of brilliance.
But there is another way to get ideas -- a way that does not require solitude, long walks, opium, or surprise visitations from the muse. Quite the contrary.
This approach requires people -- committed people who come together with a focused intention to collectively tap into the unknown, unseen, and untried.
For want of a better word, let's call this activity "brainstorming" -- the creative act by which exciting new ideas are generated through the catalytic action of one mind upon another.
Or, to put it more simply, two heads are better than one.
Unfortunately, the word "brainstorming" has become totally abused in our culture. Like the phrase "Web 2.0," it is applied to anything and everything until it means absolutely nothing.
Meeting with friends to talk about a business deal? "We're brainstorming."
Tossing a few ideas around over cappuccino? "Um... brainstorming."
Kicking around a concept for a screenplay? "Brainstorming, dude."
Not really.
What most people call brainstorming these days is usually just a veiled attempt to impress others with their particular brand of "genius," a caffeinated opportunity to trot out pet ideas, foist opinions, or play out a lifelong ambition to dominate a group.
Brainmisting? Maybe. Braindrizzling? Sure. But not brainstorming. Uh-uh. No way.
Real brainstorming is different. Very different.
High Velocity Brainstorming
Conducting Genius
More on the topic
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2010Create an Innovation Portfolio
One of the biggest obstacles to innovation in most organizations is the addiction to short-term results.
Hustling, speed, and fire fighting rule the day -- resulting in the kind of over-caffeinated efforts that make everyone cranky.
Focusing on your next quarter, of course, is a necessary part of business. But not to the exclusion of the long-term.
Someone's got to focus on projects that won't see the light of day for tree years... or five .... or ten.
If you are serious about innovation, you will need to develop an Innovation Portfolio, one that includes short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals.
Innovation doesn't happen quickly. It takes time.
If you plant an apple seed today, you're not going to get an apple harvest tomorrow... or next week... or next year. Pulling on the seedling or yelling at the tree to deliver apples faster isn't going to work.
Here's an exercise to create your Innovation Portfolio:
1. Define what you mean by "short-term," "mid-term," and "long-term."
2. Make three columns, headed by each of the phrases above
3. Jot down projects that fit into these three "time horizons."
4. Present this list to your team and get their feedback.
5. Tweak the list as needed.
And now for a related joke...
So there are these three yogis meditating in a cave. They've been there ten years -- in silence the entire time.
One day, in the tenth year of their retreat, an albino mountain lion makes his way to the mouth of the cave and lets out an earth-shattering roar.
Five years pass.
The first yogi says "WOW!"
Another five years pass.
The second yogi, says, "Yeah, I know what you mean."
Five more years pass.
"HEY! If you guys don't shut up," says the third yogi, "I'm moving to another cave."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:37 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2010The Rise of the Innovation Ninjas
Every once in a while I come across a quote or excerpt from an article that I want to immediately post on the windshield of every client of mine. It cuts to the chase and lucidly states what I've been trying to say, in various Neanderthalic ways, all these many years.
Take Einstein for example: "Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted counts." Bingo! Bullseye! What a perfect way of explaining to a left-brained addicted world that metrics and analysis is not the only game in town.
And then there's Gary Hamel. He takes a bit more time than Albert to make his point, but hey, it's all relative isn't it? Check this out from the man behind one of my favorite business books of all time:
"Today, innovation is the buzzword du jour in virtually every company, but how many CEOs have put every employee through an intensive training program aimed at boosting the innovation skills of the rank and file? Sure companies have electronic suggestion boxes, slush funds for new ideas, elaborate pipeline management tools, and innovation awards -- but in the absence of a cadre of extensively trained and highly skilled innovators, much of the investment in these innovation enablers will simply be wasted."
"Imagine that you coaxed a keen, but woefully inexperienced golfer onto the first tee at Pebble Beach. After arming the tyro with the latest titanium driver, you challenge him to split the fairway with a monster drive. You promise the neophyte a $100 bonus every time he hits a long bomb that stays out of the rough, and another $100 for every hole where he manages to break par.
But what you don't do is this: You don't give him any instruction -- no books, no tips from Golf Digest, no Dave Pelz and Butch Harmon, no video feedback, and no time off to perfect his swing on the practice range. Given this scenario, how many 200-yard drives is our beginner likely to land in the fairway?
How long is he likely to stay avidly devoted to the task at hand? And what kind of return are you likely to get on the $2,000 you spent on a bag full of high tech clubs and the 450 bucks you shelled out for a tee time? The answers are: Not many, not long, and not much. And no one who knows anything about golf would ever set up such a half-assed contest.
"That's why I'm dumbfounded by the fact that so few executives have invested in the innovation skills of their frontline employees. The least charitable explanation for this mind-boggling oversight: senior managers subscribe to a sort of innovation apartheid.
They believe that a few blessed souls are genetically equipped to be creative, while everyone else is a dullard, unable to come up with anything more exciting than spiritless suggestions for Six Sigma improvements.
A more charitable reading: CEOs and corporate HR leaders simply don't know how to turn on the innovation genes that are found in every human being.
"Obviously, you can't teach someone to be an innovator unless you know where game-changing ideas come from. In other words, you need a theory of innovation -- like Ben Hogan's theory of the golf swing.
This is why, a few years back, I and several colleagues analyzed more than a hundred cases of business innovation. Our goal: to understand why some individuals, at certain points in time, are able to see opportunities that are invisible to everyone else. Here, in a pistachio-sized shell, is what we learned:
Successful innovators have ways of seeing the world that throw new opportunities into sharp relief. They have developed, usually by accident, a set of perceptual "lenses" that allow them to pierce the fog of "what is" in order to see the promise of "what could be." How? By paying close attention to four things that usually go unnoticed:"
1. Unchallenged orthodoxies -- the widely held industry beliefs that blind incumbents to new opportunities.
2. Under-leveraged competencies -- the "invisible" assets and competencies, locked up in moribund businesses, that can be repurposed as new growth platforms.
3. Under-appreciated trends -- the nascent discontinunities that can be harnessed to reinvigorate old business models and create new ones."
4. Unarticulated needs -- the frustrations and inconveniences that customers take for granted, and industry stalwarts have thus far failed to address."
Thanks Gary!
Clearly, what's needed these days are organizations full of Innovation Ninjas. Skillful, agile, perceptive, courageous, and highly trained individuals who know how to find their way through the seeming obstacles in the way in order to get a result.
These obstacles might be "internal" -- as in the outdated assumptions, paradigms, and habits of people with three letter acronyms after their name. OR the obstacles might be "external" -- as in an organization's funkadelic infrastructure, protocols, and processes.
But whatever the obstacles encountered (not counted!), our nimble ninjas of necessity manage to find their way to the goal. Imagine if you had hundreds of these people working in your company. Imagine you had thousands.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:57 AM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2010Innovation from the Inside Out
These days, almost all of my clients are talking about the need to establish a culture of innovation.
Some, I'm happy to report, are actually doing something about it. Hallelujah! They are taking bold steps forward to turn theory into action.
The challenge for them is the same as it's always been -- and that is, to find a simple, authentic way to address the challenge from the inside out -- to water the root of the tree, not just the branches.
Guess what? Systems are not sufficient to guarantee change. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Systems die. Instinct remains."
This is not to say that organizations should ignore systems and structures in their effort to establish a culture of innovation. They shouldn't.
But systems and structures all too often become the Holy Grail -- much in the same way that Six Sigma has become the Holy Grail.
Unfortunately, when the addiction to systems and structures rules the day, an organization's quest for a culture of innovation degenerates into nothing much more than a cult of innovation.
Organizations do not innovate. People innovate. Inspired people. Fascinated people. Creative people. Committed people. That's where innovation begins. On the inside.
The organization's role -- just like the individual manager's role -- is to get out of the way. And while this "getting out of the way" will undoubtedly include the effort to formulate supportive systems, processes, and protocols, it is important to remember that systems, processes, and protocols are never the answer.
They are the context, not the content.
They are the husk, not kernel.
They are the menu, not the meal.
Ultimately, organizations are faced with the same challenge that religions are faced with. Religious leaders may speak passionately about the virtues their congregation needs to be living by, but sermons only name the challenge and remind people to experience something -- they don't necessarily change behavior.
Change comes from within the heart and mind of each individual. It cannot be legislated or evangelized into reality.
What's needed in organizations who aspire to a culture of innovation, is an inner change. People need to experience something within themselves that will spark and sustain their effort to innovate -- and when they experience this "something," they will be self-sustaining.
They will think about their projects in the shower, in their car, and in their dreams. They will need very little "management" from the outside. Inside out will rule the day -- not outside in. Intrinsic motivation will flourish.
People will innovate not because they are told to, but because they want to. Open Space Technology is a good metaphor for this. When people are inspired, share a common, compelling goal and have the time and space to collaborate, the results become self-organizing.
You can create all the reward systems you want. You can reinvent your workspace until you're blue in the face. You can license the latest and greatest idea management tool, but unless each person in your organization OWNS the need to innovate and finds a way to tap into their own INNATE BRILLIANCE, all you'll end up with is a mixed bag of systems, processes, and protocols -- the husk, not the kernel -- the innovation flotsam and jetsam that the next administration or next CEO or next key stakeholder will mock, reject or change at the drop of a hat if the ROI doesn't show up in the next 20 minutes.
You want culture change? You want a culture of innovation?
Great. Then find a way to help each and every person in your organization come from the inside out. Deeply consider how you can awaken, nurture, and develop the primal need all people have to create something extraordinary.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:58 AM | Comments (7)
December 25, 2009One More Difference Between Men and Women
Since the beginning of time, pundits, psychologists, and philosophers have been waxing poetic about the differences between men and women.
Many well-researched theories and observations have been postulated -- everything from variations of XY chromosomes to moon cycles to shopping habits.
Though I am not a pundit, psychologist, or philosopher, I would like to take this moment to propose yet another difference between the sexes -- something I've been noticing for years, but never completely understood until this morning's opening of Christmas presents:
1. Men and women wrap presents completely differently.
Presents wrapped by women look really good. The edges are square. The tape is in all the right places. There are no unnecessary wrinkles, crunched up paper, or rips. The presents women wrap could easily be photographed for a catalog or Good Housekeeping centerfold.
Presents wrapped by men are usually a joke. Asymmetrical. Random. Pitifully sophomoric. Like an old pair of sweat pants stuffed into a drawer a little too quickly before the dinner guests arrive.
2. Men and women open presents completely differently.
Women look for the seams and the tape and use their tapered fingers in mysteriously delicate ways so the wrapping can be flawlessly removed, flattened, folded, and used again in the future.
Men are huns. They rip. They tear. They plunder the paper as if it was a small village needing to be taken over immediately.
The remains of the wrapping, no matter how beautifully conceived by the giver, ends up in a balled-up heap of chaos on the floor -- unusable for anything but kindling or throwing at other males across the room.
NEXT WEEK: Nail care
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:19 PM | Comments (1)
December 23, 2009PricewaterClaus
"Necessity," it is said, "is the mother of invention."
It is.
But it is also the father, aunt, uncle, grandmother, cousin, and in-laws. Indeed, for most of us, unless there is a proverbial fire under our proverbial butt, we remain victims of the status quo. Objects at rest. Bumps on a log.
Allow me to be more specific.
The year was 1998. Although the U.S economy was in good shape, my business was flabby. The pipeline was clogged. The marketing plan was a mess. And our cash flow wasn't...
Semi-fearless leader that I was, I bought some muffins and called a meeting. It took us all of 20 minutes to realize we had three choices if we wanted to stay in business: cut costs, find new clients, or reinvigorate old clients.
Cutting costs wasn't an option. Costs were already cut. Finding new clients sounded good, but it also sounded like a lot of work. Reinvigorating old relationships, on the other hand, had a nice ring to it.
We decided to focus on local clients -- companies no more than two hours away. Singapore was out. New York City was in.
Being in the creativity business, we knew we'd have to walk the talk. Besides, Christmas was only two weeks away.
And so we decided to practice one of our own techniques and look at our challenge through the eyes of another, in this case -- Santa Claus. "How would he approach a major cash flow crunch?" we asked ourselves. "What would Santa do?"
The answer -- in an on-Dasher-on-Prancer-on-Vixen sort of way -- was obvious. Santa would take to the road. He'd visit people! He'd give out gifts!
The costume rentals cost us $300. I was Santa. Elizabeth was Mrs. Claus. Val was Rudolf. And Tiffany was the Chief Elf.
Our plan was simple.
We'd drive to Manhattan and pay surprise visits to three of our high flying ex-clients: MTV Networks, Met Life, and Pricewaterhouse. Once past security, we'd give away presents (that included our marketing materials) and get recipients to promise not to open them until Christmas morning.
Fast forward three hours...
There we are, the four of us in full Christmas regalia, standing in the tastefully appointed and very marble lobby of Pricewaterhouse. Behind the imposing front desk sat three large security guards, none of them named Prancer.
"I'd... er... uh... like to speak to Donna Chandler," I said, trying my best to channel my inner Santa.
Clearly, the security guard was not in the holiday spirit. His belly did not shake like a bowl full of jelly.
"And who shall I say wants to see Ms. Chandler?" the guard replied with a scowl.
I said nothing, hoping my long white beard and general joviality would be enough to grant us access.
It wasn't.
"Don't you recognize me, my friend?" I exclaimed. "It's me, Santa!"
"I'll need your real name, sir," the guard replied.
"My real name? It's Santa. Santa... Claus."
He shook his head and said something under his breath to the equally oversized security guard sitting next to him. Scroogily, he paged his way through a company directory and dialed the phone.
"Hello," I heard him say. "This is lobby security. There's a guy here to see you. He's dressed up liked Santa Claus and won't give me his name."
Other people came and went. Other people were given name badges. Other people walked merrily to the bank of elevators.
The four of us just stood there.
And then, quite unceremoniously, the large security guard with no visions of sugar plums dancing in his head called us forward.
"OK, Santa," he grumbled. "You and your little buddies can go up."
Yahoo!
The moment we got off the elevator, on the 27th floor, everyone flooded out of their offices. Everyone wanted to see us. These weren't auditors at a Big Six accounting firm. These weren't MBAs or tax geeks. These were big kids in business clothes.
Three very cheerful women led us to their office. Boldly, they sat me down in an overpriced executive chair and, one by one, sat in my lap.
"Have you been good little girls," I said on cue.
"Oh YES, Santa!" they giggled.
"And what do you good little girls want for Christmas?" I asked.
"Better cash flow, Santa. Promotions. Vacations. And a cappuccino machine in the lounge."
I reached into my bag and pulled out a beautifully wrapped gift for each of them.
"Will you promise Santa not to open your presents until Christmas morning?" I said.
"Oh yes, Santa!" they exclaimed.
And then, with a shake of some strategically placed jingle bells, we were off.
On Dasher! On Rudolf! On Cash Flow!
Out of the office, we turned right at the fire drill sign, went down 27 floors to the tastefully appointed lobby and skipped out the door to our next former client, spreading Christmas cheer and marketing materials, ho ho hoping like children the night before Christmas, dreaming of clients dreaming of first quarter results and calling us the first day back on the job after the holidays...
Guess what? They did.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
1. What can you do differently this week to get a huge result?
2. What boundary is it time to cross?
3. Who else is willing to join forces with you to take a risk?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:19 AM | Comments (0)
December 22, 2009Two Wolves
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.
"One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
"The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:28 PM | Comments (1)
December 18, 2009A Sign of the Times
I've been doing some fascinating research lately on the origins of common objects in our lives -- things we see daily, but often take for granted.
Like the Stop Sign, for example.
Most people think the Stop Sign was created to regulate traffic. Not true.
According to Dr. Ellison Burke of the Global Institute for Cross-Cultural Studies, the origin of the Stop Sign has nothing to do with traffic -- and dates back several thousand years.
Historical references to the Stop Sign have been noted in more than 27 civilizations, most notably Babylonia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Crete, Rome, and the Han Dynasty.
According to social scientists, each of these civilizations experienced one or more periods of rapid growth now referred to in the literature as "Societal Acceleration Syndrome" -- the way in which daily transactions speed up in proportion to a civilization's escalating Gross National Product.
In other words, speed has become one of the most statistically predicable indicators of a civilization's development and, as I will get to later in this posting, eventual decline.
My research doesn't end here, however.
In each of the above-mentioned civilizations, there have always been a small, but vocal, group of citizens who -- concerned about the quickening pace of daily life -- have warned about this phenomenon.
Indeed, a joint longitudinal study conducted by the American Archeological Institute and the Asian Society for World Growth, has revealed that this "small, but highly committed group of citizens" has made repeated efforts to diffuse their respective society's "escalating addiction to velocity."
In Sumeria, for example, a fringe group of philosophers and poets routinely posted "Styopsian" signs at strategic intersections throughout the country -- not to stop traffic, but to stop unnecessary "mind movement."
Their effort resonated with the citizenry and eventually led to the widespread appearance of what modern day sociologists now refer to as "stop signs" -- in urban centers, small villages, cattle crossings, universities, and even cornfields.
One of the most curious facts I've unearthed in my research is this: For the past 2,000 years, Stop Signs, regardless of the country of origin, have always been octagonal.
Apparently, each side of this iconic 8-sided, cross-cultural symbol of hoped-for stillness, has been imbued with a secret teaching of great import:
1. Slow down
2. Pay attention
3. Look around
4. Pause
5. Look within
6. Breathe deeply
7. Appreciate
8. Move consciously
And so... the next time you see a Stop Sign, you may want to remember that you are in the act of receiving a very ancient message -- one that preceded Starbucks, Twitter, YouTube, MTV, and email by thousands of years.
Next week... the YIELD SIGN.
ED NOTE: It has recently come to my attention that some readers of this blog have questioned my research methods and the veracity of my findings. A quick Google search of "Dr. Ellison Burke" and the "Global Institute for Cross-Cultural Studies," they claim, reveals not a single link. Frankly, I am baffled by their assertions and have assigned five of my brightest research assistants to get to the bottom of this immediately. In the meantime, you may want to contemplate the semi-ancient words of modern day social scientists, Simon and Garfunkel:
"Slow down, you're moving too fast. Ya gotta make the morning last..."
PS: Here's what helps me slow down, pay attention, look around, pause, look within, breathe deeply, appreciate, and move consciously.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:12 AM | Comments (1)
December 10, 2009PRODIGY
Mozart was composing and performing for royalty at 4. Ethan Bortnick, from Hollywood, Florida, is not far behind. Yes, practice makes perfect, but then there are those who are prodigies.
And how about this 11 year old?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)
December 03, 2009Frequently Asked Questions
OK.
Confession time.
I've never liked FAQs.
They always seemed so predictable.
So boring.
So customer-servicey.
That's why I wrote this.
Makes FAQs more fun to read.
(Don't bail out too soon.
It builds).
Well, I guess you'll be the judge of that, eh?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:15 AM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2009The Good Thing About Bad Ideas
One of the inevitable things you will hear at a brainstorming session is "there are no bad ideas." Well, guess what? There are plenty of bad ideas. Nazism, for instance. Arena football. Bow ties.
What well-meaning "keep hope alive" brainstorming aficionados really mean is this: Even bad ideas can lead to good ideas if the idea originators are committed enough to extract the meaning from the "bad."
Do you think that War and Peace was written in one sitting? No way. There were plenty of earlier drafts that were horrid, but eventually led to the final outcome.
The key for aspiring innovators? To find the value in what seems to be a "bad idea" and then use that extracted value as a catalyst for further exploration. The following technique, excerpted from Awake at the Wheel, shows you how...
HOW IT WORKS:
1. Bring a challenge, question, or problem to mind.
2. Conjure up a really bad idea in response to it.
3. Tell another person about your bad idea.
4. The other person thinks of something redeemable about your bad idea -- and tells you what it is.
5. Using this redeemable essence as a catalyst, the two of you brainstorm new possibilities.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:59 AM | Comments (4)
November 11, 2009Here Come the 15-Year Olds!
Tom Peters once said that unless 20% of a company's workforce was under the age of 20, they didn't have a chance.
I totally agree -- especially now that my kids, Jesse and Mimi, are 15 & 12.
Their creativity and resourcefulness blow my mind. See the image above? Photoshopped by Jesse, my son. If you have a photo or illustration that needs to be tweaked, repaired, refined, improved, or manipulated in any way, he's your guy. Forget about outsourcing to a 30-year old from Mumbai. How about a 15-year old from Woodstock? Faster, cheaper, and cooler.
Contact Jesse today: yumyum@hvc.rr.com.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2009Twitter Gets It
Stop beating your head against the wall trying to conjure up great, new products and services. Get your customers into the act!
Take a tip from Twitter, who has found a number of ways to access -- and execute -- their users' cool ideas.
Explains Twitter co-founder and CEO, Evan Williams, "Most companies or services on the Web start with wrong assumptions about what they are and what they're for. Twitter struck an interesting balance of flexibility and malleability that allowed users to invent uses for it that weren't anticipated."
Complete NY Time article here. (Thanks to Tim Moore for the link).
Want to help your customers generate great ideas? Give them this.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2009Rapping Southwest Airlines Flight Dude
Hallelujah! Finally an airline gets it right! I am definitely flying Southwest sometime soon. (What can YOUR business do to spice up it's communication -- delivering an old message in a new way?)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:52 AM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2009Let Your Boss Have the First Say
A sales rep, a clerk, and their manager are on the way to lunch when they find an antique oil lamp on the side of the road. They rub the lamp and a Genie appears.
"Thank you for releasing me!" exclaims the Genie. "In return for your kindness, I will grant each you a wish."
"Me first! Me first!" says the clerk. "I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the world."
Poof! The clerk is gone.
"Me next! Me next!" shouts the sales rep. "I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of Pina Coladas, and the love of my life."
Poof! The sales rep is gone.
"OK, your turn," says the Genie to the manager.
"Hmmm..." replies the manager. "I want those two back in the office right after lunch."
Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2009Clean Machine
With this blog posting, Idea Champions is pleased to announce a totally new, high tech, environmentally friendly, productivity-enhancing service.
Based on the surprising results of a survey we conducted with 3,500 people who attended our innovation workshops and keynotes in 2009 we have come to understand that an astounding 87% of all laptop owners never clean their screen.
Our product development team has been working hard to bring this new product to market and now it is done -- a unique, low carbon footprint, screen-cleaning service -- very much in tune with our inside out approach to innovation.
No sprays. No static-free cloth. No muss. No fuss. And absolutely FREE to all the the faithful readers of this blog. Enjoy!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:47 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2009Adapt Like an Iguana
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." - Charles Darwin
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2009Our Secret Sauce Revealed
Most people think that creativity is a mystical state available only to the chosen few -- a state (unlike New Jersey) that has to be induced, conjured, and maintained.
The effort, they imagine, takes a lot of time and hard work. And since they usually don't have the time and don't like hard work, they reason that higher states of creativity are just not in the cards for them.
And so it isn't.
But creativity isn't a mystical state. It's a natural state -- a human birthright. The people in your organization, in fact, are already creative. The only thing is: their natural creativity is being obscured by their own habits of mind and a variety of bothersome organizational constraints.
Their challenge is the same one as seeing the "hidden" arrow in the FedEx logo (look between the "E" and the "X").
The arrow has always been there, but most people never notice it.
Try this experiment: Walk into a dark room from a well-lit place. Upon entering, you will not be able to see very much. Indeed, if someone asks you what's in the room, you will either say "nothing" or "I don't know."
But if you linger in the room, your eyes will adjust to the available light. You'll begin seeing the edges of things -- and then the things themselves. Or at least some of the things.
"Creativity" is similar to the stuff in that room. It's already there. People just need dynamic opportunities to linger long enough in a realm they are not familiar with in order to experience it.
This, quite simply, is the work of Idea Champions.
We help people see what they already have, but don't know how to access.
And yes, we provide flashlights.
Bottom line, we help people make meaningful adjustments of vision, insight, and perception so they can acknowledge, embrace, and apply their innate ability to be more creative on the job.
How do we do this? The same way a gardener grows vegetables.
Our sessions cultivate individual and organizational "soil" -- increasing the fertility of the environment, thereby increasing the odds of innovation flourishing.
Our methods are based on time-honored principles of human development. It is the confluence of these methods, skillfully applied and adapted to a variety of audiences that ensure results for our clients.
Please understand this: no magic pill will liberate innovation in an individual or an organization. There is no blueprint, no template, no "one size fits all."
But there are principles, guidelines, methods, techniques, and practices that, if wisely applied, can dramatically increase the odds of innovation flourishing.
What follows is a brief summary of our approach -- how we get a yield:
1.Know Thy Customer:
Long before we ever get into a room with participants, we do our due diligence -- learning about WHO we are serving, WHAT they expect, and HOW our time with them will be the most significant.
Sometimes this effort takes the form of phone interviews. Or online polls. Or studying key documents our clients send us in order to understand their current reality, industry, business challenges, organizational constraints, and hoped for outcomes.
2. Customization:
Based on our assessment of our client's needs, we put together a game plan to get the job done. Towards this end, we draw on more than 100 "innovation-sparking" modules we've been developing since 1986.
3. Co-Creation:
Early in the design process, we invite our clients to give us feedback about our approach/agenda. Their feedback stirs the creative soup and provides us with input we need to transform a good session design into a great one.
4.Spacing In:
We make a great deal of effort to ensure that the space in which our sessions take place are as ideal as possible. Form may follow function, but function also follows form.
When participants walk into an Idea Champions session, they begin "mind shifting" even before the session officially begins. It is both our belief and experience that culture/environment is a huge X factor for creativity and innovation.
5. Drive Fear Out of the Workplace:
Peter Drucker, America's sage management consultant, was a big proponent of removing fear from the workplace. So are we. Towards that end, each Idea Champions session begins with a norm-setting process that makes it easy for participants to establish a dynamic culture of innovation for the day.
6. Mindset:
Here's the bottom line: Organizations don't innovate, people do. But not just any "people." No. People who are energized, curious, confident, fascinated, creative, focused, adaptive, collaborative, and committed.
People who emerge from our sessions are significantly more in touch with the "innovation qualities" than when tey began. They've shifted. Their minds have changed. They see opportunities when, previously, all they saw were problems and constraints.
They let go of perfectionism, control, old paradigms, and habitual ways of thinking. In their place? Open-mindedness, listening, creative idea generation, breakthrough thinking, full engagement, and the kind of authentic commitment that drives meaningful change.
7.Balancing Polarities:
Human beings, by nature, are dualistic, (i.e. "us" vs. "them," "short-term" vs. "long-term," "incremental" vs. "breakthrough," "left brain" vs. "right brain".)
The contradictions that show up in a corporate environment (or workshop) can either be innovation depleters or innovation catalysts. It all depends how these seeming conflicting territories are navigated. Idea Champions is committed to whole-brain thinking -- not just right brain or left brain thinking.
Our work with organizations, in a wide variety of industries since 1986, has shown us again and again that one of the pre-conditions for innovation is a company's ability to strike the balance between these seeming polarities.
Each workshop we lead and each consulting engagement we commit to is guided by our understanding of how to help our clients find the healthy balance between the above-noted polarities.
8. Expert Facilitation: "A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile when someone contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind," wrote St. Exupery.
This, quite simply, is what Idea Champions does. But we do far more than just contemplate. We also architect and build.
Since 1986, we've been facilitating innovation-sparking engagements for an extraordinarily diverse group of organizations. Bottom line, we are a flock of modern day alchemists. We have mastered the art and science of turning lead (or leaders) into gold. And we can train your people to do the same thing we do.
9. Experiential Challenges: "What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand."
So said the great Chinese sage, Confucius. This 14-word quote describes the essence of Idea Champions work. Simply put, we get people off their "ifs, ands or buts," and into the experience of what's possible. 
While we value theory, research, models, data, best practices, business cases, and most of the other flora and fauna of business life, we have come to understand that the challenge of sparking insight, breakthrough, and behavior change, is best accomplished by doing -- not talking.
That's why all of our sessions include experiential challenges (AKA "action learning") that provide participants with visible ways of seeing innovation in action -- what supports it and what obscures it.
NOTE: Our five year consulting and training contract with AT&T, after their divestiture, began by us teaching their Director of Training and Development how to juggle in five minutes -- and then help him translate his breakthrough into ways he could radically grow his business.
10. Emergent Design: Awakening the creativity of an organization's workforce is not a follow-the-dots exercise.
Although all of our interventions begin with carefully crafted project plans and agendas, our facilitators are fluent in the art and science of making the kind of real-time adjustments, refinements, and improvisations that are the difference between a good session and a great session.
Facilitators who attempt to imitate our approach find it difficult to succeed without first learning how to master the art of emergent design. The good news is that it can be learned -- and this is just one of the things we teach in our Train the Trainer programs.
11. Edutainment: Idea Champions sessions are a hybrid of two elements: education and entertainment. We know that if participants are enjoying themselves the chances them learning (and applying the learning on-the-job) increase exponentially.
That's why we make all of our sessions a hybrid of education and entertainment. Participants do not get tired. They do not get bored. They do not sneak long looks at their Blackberries.
And the reason they don't? Because they are having a great time -- and it is this "great time" that makes it infinitely easier for the "education" to happen.
12. Full Engagement: Idea Champions sessions are highly participatory. Our facilitators are skilled at teasing out the brilliance of participants, regardless of their social style, job title, or astrological sign. 
But perhaps more importantly, our facilitators know how to help participants tease out each others' brilliance. Eventually, everyone gets into the act. The shy people take center stage and the power players take a back seat. Bottom line, the collective wisdom in the room gets a much-needed chance to be accessed and expressed.
And it is this real-time experience that jump starts a similar response in the workplace soon after.
13. Convergence: Idea Champions is successful because what we do works. And one of the reasons WHY it works is because our sessions help participants translate ideas into action.
Ideas are powerful, but they are still only the fuzzy front end of the innovation process. Ultimately, they need to turn into results. Creativity needs to be commercialized. Our workshops, trainings, and consulting interventions help our clients do exactly that.
14. Tools, Techniques, and Takeaways: Ideas Champions closes the gap between rhetoric and reality. We don't just talk about innovation or teach about it -- we spark the experience of it. And we do that in very practical ways.
One way is by teaching our clients how to use specific, mind-opening techniques to access their innate creativity. Another way is by providing our clients with a variety of innovation-sparking tools, processes and materials they can use on the job.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2009The Passion to Innovate
Innovation is a big fat generic concept in most corporations -- like life on other planets or ending the war in Iraq.
Unless the individuals within a given organization have a genuine sense of urgency, personal ownership, and an authentic passion for innovation, nothing much will happen.
Innovation begins within the mind of each person. Corporate initiatives that fail to awaken the basic human instinct to innovate are doomed, no matter how many pep talks, tote bags, or t-shirts proliferate.
For me, as an innovation consultant, it is clear that the short amount of time I have with my clients needs to be devoted to awakening the passion to innovate.
Tools, techniques, theory, data, models, bibliographies, business cases, best practices, and the fabulous muffins served on breaks are all fine, but it is the passion to innovate that is the real driver of success.
No passion, no innovation. Plain and simple.
Unfortunately, most organizations squash passion. This is why start-ups have a much easier time innovating than Fortune 500 companies. And that's why savvy Fortune 500 companies recreate the feeling of start-uppiness whenever they can.
The best thing any consultant can do when working with an organization is to hold up a mirror and ask their clients what they see.
Are they modeling what it means to be innovative? Or are they asking other people to do what they themselves have not done?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:17 AM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2009What You Can Learn from Mimi
This is my daughter, Mimi.
She is 12 years old
and very flexible.
I'm guessing your business
is more than 12.
I'm also guessing
your business
is not as flexible
as my daughter
(even if it's less than 12).
Ah, flexibility --
nature's way of saying
"Loosen up, adapt, relax."
What can YOU do, today,
to be more flexible,
more adaptive,
more able to stretch?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:39 AM | Comments (0)
September 17, 2009Innovation as a Happy Accident
A little known fact about innovation is that many breakthroughs have not been the result of genius, but "happy accidents" -- those surprise moments when an answer revealed itself for no particular reason.
The discovery of penicillin, for example, was the result of Alexander Fleming noting the formation of mold on the side of petri dish left uncleaned overnight.
Vulcanized Rubber was discovered in 1839 when Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped a lump of the polymer substance he was experimenting with onto his wife's cook stove.
More recently, 3M's post-it was also the result of an accident in the lab.
Breakthroughs aren't always about invention, but the intervention required, by the aspiring innovator, to notice something new, unexpected, and intriguing.
WHAT TO DO:
1. Think about a recent project, pilot, or business of yours that did not turn out the way you expected.
2. Ask yourself if any of the unexpected results offer you a clue or insight about how you might proceed differently.
3. Instead of interpreting your results as "failure," consider the fact that the results are simply nature's way of getting you to see something new -- something that merits further exploration.
Excerpted from Awake at the Wheel: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an Uphill World
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)
The Power of Intrinsic Motivation/>
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:11 AM | Comments (1)
September 14, 2009Teenage Manifesto from My Son
We interrupt this blog to bring you the most recent manifesto from my 15-year old son. If you have a teenager (or will), the following epistle will be worth the 3 minutes it will take to read.
"There are a couple of main rules for parents to live by in order to have a happy teenage child:
Let them live, but not unsafely.
Trust them. Keep in contact, but let them contact you, not the other way around.
Accept mistakes, but the second time around give them something so they regret it.
In your generation, staying out until midnight wasn't exactly the cool thing to do, but for some reason it is now. Once your kid has a cell phone, let them stay places late as long as they call you when you ask them to. How late completely depends on their age.
Raise them so they know that lying is wrong, so they can talk to you about sex, drugs and alcohol without feeling the need to hold things back.
Let them have parties, and don't insist on being in the house. Just say that whatever is broken when you get back, or whatever is not cleaned up they will have to pay for or have consequences for.
They can choose their own friends, only if they can control them when at your house or in public.
Let your teens express themselves. If that means wearing chains and listening to heavy metal, so be it. If it means painting their own room and writing poetry you don't understand, that's also fine.
One random tip: when they start listening to music you don't like, soundproof their room. It's no fun having to turn down the volume. The best way to listen to music is when you can feel it in your ribcage.
Talk to them, but don't force them to talk back.
Don't introduce them to caffeine, they'll discover it in time.
Buy them one amazing present every one or two years because even though you both know love isn't shown through exchanging possessions, it feels great to get something you know your parents had to put aside money for, and they did it for you.
Don't force your religion or political beliefs on them."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:39 PM | Comments (1)
September 01, 2009IMPROVE YOUR INNOVATION ODDS: How to Win the Idea Lottery
As the story goes... in 1939, a Russian immigrant owned the rights to distribute vodka in the U.S. His efforts bombed. Americans weren't attracted to a colorless, odorless alcohol.
Depressed, he sold the rights to Heublein, an alcohol distribution company, who asked themselves: "What can we combine with Vodka to give it a distinctive color and a taste?" In time, they came up with tomato juice and, voila, the Bloody Mary was born, boosting sales through the roof.
What most of us think of as "innovation" is really just the elegant combination of two (or more) pre-existing elements resulting in the creation of a new, value-added product or service.
What is roller blading but the synthesis of ice skating and roller skating?
What is MTV but the synthesis of music and television? When Johannes Gutenberg was asked how he arrived at the invention of the printing press, he confessed it was as simple as seeing a connection between two existing products: the wine press and the coin punch.
If you are committed to coming up with a BREAKTHROUGH IDEA, start looking for new connections between the stuff that's all around you.
WHAT TO DO:
1. Create a 5x5 grid on a piece of paper.
2. In 15 of the squares, write down the key elements of your current challenge (i.e. a person, place, task, etc).
3. In the remaining 10 squares, write random nouns.
4. Combine words in two or more squares. Then see if the relationship between those words spark any new ideas.
5. Continue the process with other 2 or 3-word combinations.
Excerpted from Awake at the Wheel: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an uphill world).
If you want to play the virtual idea lottery, click here.
If you want to buy the Idea Lottery guidebook (hard copy or downloadable pdf version) click here.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:39 PM | Comments (0)
A Dozen Red Roses!
Today, in a sudden fit of love and appreciation, I bought a dozen roses and brought them home to my wife.
Usually, when I think of buying roses, I go through a predictable sequence of events. First, I surrender to a wonderful feeling of expansiveness that takes me over. Then I get curious and smell the flowers. Then I ask the shopkeeper how long she thinks the roses will last.
Then I ask the per stem price, do the math, and reach the pitifully male conclusion that $46.95 is way too much too spend on something that won't last out the week and is probably less expensive somewhere else and it's obviously indulgent of me to be buying so many roses when I've got two kids to put through college in a few years and besides, beauty is within.
All of this, of course, is my inner Woody Allen taking the low road in response to what is obviously a Johnny Depp moment.
So I dig deep and bring the roses home -- my entire living room taking shape around them.
I then become very aware that there are definitely not enough flowers in the room. In a curious way, the recent appearance of roses has made the rest of the room seem barren. Tabletops and shelves that only minutes ago were doing just fine, are now utterly flowerless.
So I do the only thing a man can do when faced with such a paradox -- I return to the flower shop.
But the shop is closed. Closed? Impossible! I need flowers!
So I get back in my car and speed my way to the other flower shop in town.
It, too, is closed -- or, should I say, closing. The owner is shutting the door and giving me the "too-bad-you-didn't-get-here a few-minutes-ago" look.
But I will not be denied. And he knows it.
"What do you want?" he asks.
"Cut flowers," I reply.
He signals me to enter and I buy way more flowers than makes sense. A ridiculous amount.
Let's put it this way: if I was in the federal witness protection program, my sudden flower buying behavior would have put my government handlers in a tizzy.
Fast forward ten minutes to my wife in our kitchen.
She is looking at me as if I am totally insane -- me, the guy who, only days ago was making an airtight case for a more modest household budget.
Here's my philosophy:
Flowers first. Business second. If money is tight, buy more flowers. The more flowers you buy, the more money will appear. And if not in this lifetime, then the next (or maybe the one after that).
OK. There you go -- my not very financially sound, flower-centric view of the universe. You, my friend, are a witness. If I forget, please remind me.
OK. Stop reading this blog. Go out and get some flowers, already.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:50 AM | Comments (0)
July 30, 2009At the Threshold
A few years ago I found myself standing in my closet, madly searching for clean clothes in a last minute attempt to pack before yet another business trip, when I noticed my 4-year old son standing at the entrance.
In one hand, he held a small blue wand, in the other -- a plastic bottle of soapy water.
"Dada," he said, looking up at me, his eyes wide open, "do you have time to catch my bubbles?"
Time? It stopped. And so did I. At that moment, it suddenly made no difference whether or not I caught my plane -- I could barely catch my breath. The only thing that existed was him and that soulful look of longing in his eyes.
For the next ten minutes, all we did was play -- him blowing bubbles and laughing. Me catching and laughing, too.
His need was completely satisfied. His need for connection. His need for love. His need for knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that absolutely everything was perfect just the way it was.
He is almost 15 now. His bubbles are digital. But his need is still the same. And so is mine -- and yours, I would venture to say.
Scratch the surface of our differences, remove the cultural masks, and all of us -- regardless of age, religion, politics, gender, or astrological sign -- are seeking the same thing.
![IMG_1123[1].jpg](http://www.ideachampions.com/heart/IMG_1123%5B1%5D.jpg)
And this "thing" is a feeling -- a feeling of contentment, a feeling of peace, a feeling of deep freedom, fearlessness, and joy.
Spiritual practitioners have been attempting to name this feeling for centuries, but ultimately it doesn't matter what it's called.
This sweetness is the place all journeys end. My son's took him across the living room to the threshold of a closet. Yours will take you other places.
But no matter where it takes you, one thing is for sure -- what's moving you has moved millions of others since the beginning of time. Yours is an ancient quest. Primal. Tidal. Pure. As basic as breath itself.
For the moment, let's call this driving force "thirst" -- the innate quest each of us has for meaning, love, and fulfillment. Why poets wait beneath a moon for words. What dancers feel before they leap. Why birds fly halfway around the world to the place where they were born.
This thirst is not the same thing as "desire." Desire is wanting what you don't have. Thirst is wanting want you do.
Desire assumes the emptiness you feel can be filled by getting -- as if the world was a giant puzzle and all you needed were the pieces. Thirst assumes nothing. It's all about being -- not getting or having.
The good news? You don't have to go to the Himalayas to find what you're looking for. You can start today, wherever you are. The pilgrimage you need to take is actually quite short -- merely the distance between your head and your heart. That's the so-called path.
Your guide on this journey? Thirst. All you need to do is feel it. And if you don't, then at least want to feel it. And if you still don't, then at least want to want to feel it.
Pretty simple, huh?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
July 29, 2009REAL ROI: Return on Imagination
If you are looking for a simple way to build a business case for innovation in your organization, take a look at the slide show below. While YOU may be a committed champion of change, there may be others who still wonder about the value of making the effort. This show is for them. (And you...)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:26 AM | Comments (1)
July 20, 2009Capturing the Wisdom of the Elders
What do Clint Eastwood, Madeline Albright, Willie Nelson, Alan Alda, Desmond Tutu, Jane Goodall, Ravi Shankar, Edward Kennedy, Andrew Wyeth, Frank Gehry and a host of other creative movers and shakers have in common beside fame?
Wisdom!
Click here to see what they've learned in their long and very diverse lives... and get a glimpse of the fabulous Wisdom Project produced by Andrew Zuckerman.
If you work in a large organization and are looking for a simple way to capture the wisdom of your senior people before they move on, here's a clue how to do it.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:26 AM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2009Yoo Hoo! Customer Service! Wake Up!
Mahatma Gandhi knew how to get the word out. Mother Teresa, too. Now, along comes Dave, a guitar player who wouldn't take NO for an answer after United Airlines blew him off after breaking his guitar. Dave didn't just write a complaint letter, he posted a YouTube video that has now been viewed more than 2 million times. Customer service take note! Every customer is a possible Dave.
Thanks to Val Vadeboncouer for the heads up!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2009100 Simple, Low-Cost, Soulful Ways to Be More Creative on the Job
Have you ever noticed America's strange fascination with lists? Cruise any supermarket magazine rack and you will invariably notice some version of the following:
"5 Ways to Find Your Soul Mate"
"10 Ways to Profit from the Recession"
"50 Ways to Retire Before 40"
"The 100 Best Companies to Work For"
For years I ignored this phenomenon. Then I mocked it. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Perfect sense.
Lists simplify.
Lists cut to the chase.
Lists help people make sense of the world.
And so, in honor of America's love of lists, here is my time-tested, easy-to-read, highly compelling, list of 100 Ways to Be More Creative on the Job.
1. Find the most creative people at work and ask for their ideas.
2. Brainstorm daily with a co-worker.
3. Tape record your ideas on your commute to and from work.
4. Present your biggest challenge to a child.
5. Take your team off-site for a day.
6. Listen more carefully to your inner muse.
7. Play music in your office.
8. Go for a daily brainstorming walk.
9. Ask someone to collaborate with you on your favorite project.
10. Exercise during your lunch break.
11. Turn on a radio at random times and listen for a "message."
12. Invite your customers and vendors to brainstorming sessions.
13. Think of five other ways to define your challenge.
14. Assign a "fun fairy" to each of your meetings.
15. Reward yourself, in specific ways, for small successes.
16. Introduce odd catalysts into your daily routine.
17. Get out of the office more regularly
18. Play with fun toys in your office whenever you get stuck.
19. Take more naps.
20. Take the train, instead of driving to work.
21. Work in cafes.
22. Transform your assumptions into "How can I?" questions.
23. Write down as many ideas as you can think of in five minutes
24. Redesign your office.
25. Take regular daydreaming breaks.
26. Dissolve turf boundaries.
27. Initiate cross-functional brainstorming sessions.
28. Arrive earlier to the office than anyone else.
29. Turn a conference room into an upbeat "think tank" room.
30. Read odd books -- having nothing to do with your work.
31. Block off time on your calendar for creative thinking.
32. Take a shower in the middle of the day.
33. Keep an idea notebook at your desk or in your briefcase.
34. Decorate your office with inspiring quotes and images.
35. Create a headline of the future and the story behind it.
36. Choose to be more creative.
37. Recall a time in your life when you were very creative. Feel it.
38. Wander around a bookstore while thinking about a challenge.
39. Trust your instincts more.
40. Immerse yourself in your most exciting project.
41. Open a magazine and free associate off of a word or image.
42. Write down your ideas when you first wake up in the morning.
43. Ask yourself what the simplest solution is.
44. Get fast feedback from people you trust.
45. Conduct more experiments.
45. Ask yourself what the market wants or needs.
46. Ask "What's the worst thing that could happen if I fail?"
47. Pilot your idea, even if it's not completely ready.
48. Work "in the cracks" -- small bursts of creative energy.
49. Incubate (sleep on it).
50. Test existing boundaries -- and then test them again.
51. Schedule time with the smartest people at work.
52. Visit your customers more frequently.
53. Benchmark your competitors -- then adapt their successes.
54. Enroll your boss or peers in your most fascinating project.
55. Imagine you already know the answer. What would it be?
56. Create ground rules with your team that foster new thinking.
57. Ask stupid questions. Then ask some more.
58. Challenge everything you do.
59. Give yourself a deadline -- and stick to it
60. Look for three alternatives to every solution you originate.
61. Write your ideas in a notebook and review them regularly.
62. Make connections between seemingly disconnected things.
63. Use creative thinking techniques.
64. Play with the Free the Genie cards.
65 Use similes and metaphors when describing your ideas.
66. Have more fun. Be sillier than usual.
67. Ask "How can I accomplish my goal in half the time?"
68. Take a break when you are stuck on a problem.
69. Think how your biggest hero might approach your challenge.
70. Declare Friday afternoons a "no-email zone."
71. Ask five people how they would improve your idea.
72. Create a wall of images that inspires you.
73. Do more of what already helps you be creative off the job.
74. Laugh more, worry less.
75. Remember your dreams -- then write them down.
76. Ask impossible questions.
77. Eliminate all unnecessary bureaucracy and admin tasks.
78. Create a compelling vision of what you want to accomplish.
79. Work on hottest project every day, even if only 5 minutes.
80. Do whatever is necessary to create a sense of urgency.
81. Go for a walk anytime you're stuck.
82. Meditate or do relaxation exercises.
83. Take more breaks.
84. Go out for lunch with your team more often.
85. Eat lunch with a different person each day.
86. Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
87. Invite an outside facilitator to lead a brainstorming session.
88. Take more risks outside of the office (i.e. surf, ski, box etc.)
89. Ask for help when you need it.
90. Know that it is possible to make a difference.
91. Find a mentor.
92. Acknowledge all your successes at the end of each day.
93. Create an "idea piggy bank" and make deposits daily.
94. Have shorter meetings.
95. Try the techniques in Awake at the Wheel
96. Don't listen to or watch the news for 24 hours.
97. Make drawings of your ideas.
98. Bring your project or challenge to mind before going to bed.
99. Divide your idea into component parts. Then rethink each part.
100. Post this list near your desk and read it daily.
NOTE: If your favorite way to be more creative on the job is not included on the above list, you may want to enter Idea Champions' First Annual 100 Ways to Be More Creative on the Job contest by clicking on the comment link below.
Prizes will be awarded in the following FIVE categories:
1. Most Intriguing Suggestion
2. Funniest
3. Most Likely to Start a Revolution
4. Wished We Thought of It First
5. Biggest Bang for the Buck
KIND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO: Anne Howe, David Beath, Jim Aubele, Gary Kvistad, Howard Moody, Farrell Reynolds, Hector Cruz Rosa, Jill Peckinpaugh, and Marcy Turkington for their wonderful suggestions.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:16 AM | Comments (5)
June 14, 200926 Reasons Why Most Brainstorming Sessions Fail (and what to do about it)
Whenever I ask Idea Champions clients to tell me about the quality of brainstorming sessions in their company, they usually roll their eyes and grumble. Bottom line, most brainstorming sessions don't work. Not because brainstorming, as a process, doesn't work -- but because it's usually done poorly.
What follows are the 26 most common reasons why -- and after that, a list of what you can do differently to turn things around:
1. Poor facilitation
2. Wrong (or poorly articulated) topic
3. Unmotivated participants
4. Insufficient diversity of participants
5. Inadequate orientation
6. No transition from "business as usual"
7. Lack of clear ground rules
8. Sterile meeting space
9. Hidden (or competing) agendas
10. Lack of robust participation
11. Insufficient listening
12. Habitual idea killing behavior
13. Attachment to old ("pet") ideas
14. Discomfort with ambiguity
15. Hyper-seriousness (not enough fun)
16. Endless interruptions
17. PDA addiction (Crackberries)
18. Impatience (premature adoption of the first "right idea")
19. Group think
20. Hierarchy and/or competing sub-groups
21. Imbalance of divergent and convergent thinking
22. No tools and techniques to spark the imagination
23. Inelegant ways of capturing new ideas
24. No time for personal reflection
25. Pre-mature evaluation
26. No follow-up plan
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO TURN THINGS AROUND?
1. Find, train (or hire) a skillful facilitator
2. Make sure you're focusing on the right challenge.
3. Invite people who really care about the topic.
4. Invite people with diverse points of view.
5. Spend time clarifying the "current reality".
6. Start with a fun icebreaker to help change mindset.
7. Ask participants to establish clear meeting ground rules.
8. Design (or find) a more inspiring meeting space.
9. Establish alignment re: session goals.
10. Find ways to engage the least verbal participants.
11. Establish "deep listening" as a ground rule. Model it.
12. Invite participants to name classic idea killing statements.
13. Elicit the group's pet ideas in the first 30 minutes.
14. Explain how ambiguity is part of the ideation process.
15. Tell stories, play music, invite humor.
16. Go offsite. Put a "meeting in progress" sign on the door.
17. Collect all PDAs/cell phones. Establish "no email" ground rule.
18. Go for a quantity of ideas. Let go of perfectionism.
19. Encourage individuality, risk taking, and wild ideas.
20. Ask people to leave their titles at the door.
21. Start with divergent thinking. End with convergent thinking.
22. Use tools and techniques to spark original thinking.
23. Enroll scribes, use post-its, have an idea capture process.
24. Create time for individuals to reflect on new ideas.
25. Explain that evaluation will happen at the end of the session.
26. Identify and enroll "champions". Explain the follow up process.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:45 AM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2009You're Right!
There is a scene from Fiddler on the Roof that has taught me more about life than most holy books I've read.
In it, two men are heatedly arguing over the age of a horse. When they see Tevye, the town milkman/sage, walking by, they begin passionately pleading their case.
"Tevye!" blurts the first, "I've been cheated! Last month a bought a horse from this sorry excuse for a man. He told me the horse was six, but it was 12!"
Tevye listens carefully, strokes his beard, nods his head, and smiles. "You're right!" he says.
"What!" screams the second. "No way! Not true! The horse I sold him was six years old and I have the papers to prove it!"
Again, Tevye listens, strokes his beard, nods his head, and smiles. "You're right!" he says.
A third man, who'd been watching the argument from the beginning, boldly steps forward.
"Tevye... with all due respect for your great insight and wisdom, how can he be right" (pointing the the first) "and he be right" (pointing to the second).
Tevye listens, strokes his beard, nods his head, and smiles. "You're right!
Then he starts dancing like a madman.
Next time you think you're right... remember Tevye.
Business and innovation are FULL of paradox, contradiction, and seeming dissonance. See if you can dance your way through them without making anyone wrong. You'll enjoy the process more AND fabulous new things will manifest as a result. To life!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:44 AM | Comments (2)
May 20, 2009The Art of Seeing the Invisible
See that FedEx logo to your left? What do you notice? Letters? Colors? Height? Width? Probably. But if that's all you see, you are missing something -- something essential.
Take another look. Do you see an arrow? No? Look again. More specifically, look at the space between the "E" and the "x". The white space. See it? Cool, huh?
Such is life... and the creative process.
There's so much IN it, staring us right in the face, but we often miss it. We look, but don't see. We listen, but don't hear. We touch, but don't feel.
For creative people, the "white arrow" is often a moment that shows up quite unexpectedly. It's not "on the radar." It's hidden from view. It's not immediately apparent. And often that is where the BREAKTHROUGHS reside.
But if we quiet down and really begin to SEE, we notice stuff that didn't seem to be there before. That's where the fun begins.
Is there a way to increase one's ability to see the invisible? Yes, there is... and here are a few ways to begin:
1. Pay attention to your dreams. Write them down.
2. Honor serendipity and synchronicity
3. Listen to the feedback of others
4. Spend time with people from diverse backgrounds
5. Trust your instincts
6. Talk to your customers more
7. Ask impossible questions
8. Notice patterns and trends
9. Sneak up on your project (work in the cracks)
10. Let go of doubt and the internal censor
11. Work in a different environment than you usually do
12. Ask friends to tell you what your blind spots are
13. Initiate a "job swap" day
14. Take a break
15. Look at your challenge through the eyes of someone else
16. Share your ahas and insights with co-workers
17. Get faster feedback from customers
18. Take your team on a fascinating field trip
19. Ask your kids for the answer
20. Invite "unusual suspects" to your brainstorming sessions
By the way, every time I see a FedEx truck or envelope these days, I stop and ask myself "What am I not seeing?" about the project I am most actively working on. It only takes 30 seconds, but often reveals very useful insights.
Here's to the revelation of your white arrow!
PS: If you know of other ways to go beyond the obvious and increase the odds of seeing the invisible, feel free to leave a comment.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:06 AM | Comments (1)
May 09, 2009STICKY IDEA: Post-It Entertainment
If you can spell "innovation," you've probably heard the story about the origins of the post-it note -- how it was an accident in one of 3M's labs and how Art Frye and others saw a market for something that didn't quite stick all that well.
Relax. I'm not going to tell that story again.
What I AM going to do is call your attention to the next creative use of the omnipresent post-it -- a use you are unlikely to have considered yet: the post-it as pure entertainment.
When you're done viewing the 3:19 video, take a few minutes to conjure up some non-traditional uses of your company's best (or worst) selling product. If you don't work for a company, think of some new uses for whatever product or service you are offering the world these days.
As one wise pundit put it, "Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought."
(Thanks to my very creative, 14-year old son, Jesse, for turning me on to this video).
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2009Are 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.
But then...
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)
April 23, 2009Time to Innovate?
During the past few years I've noticed a curious paradox heading its ugly rear among business leaders tooting the horn for innovation.
On one hand they want the rank and file to step up to the plate and own the effort to innovate. On the other hand, they are unwilling to grant the people they are exhorting any more TIME to innovate.
Somehow, magically, they expect aspiring innovators to not only generate game-changing ideas in their spare time, but do all the research, data collection, business case building, piloting, project management, idea development, testing, report generation, and troubleshooting in between their other assignments.
Tooth fairy alert!
This is not the way it happens, folks!
Not only is this approach unreasonable, it's unfair, unbalanced, and unworkable. You cannot shoehorn game-changing innovation projects into the already overcommitted schedules of your overworked workforce.
If you do, it won't be innovation you'll get, only half-finished projects and a whole lot of cranky people complaining to you in between meetings.
Aspiring innovators don't need pep talks. They need TIME. Time to think. And time to dream. Time to collaborate. And time to plan. Time to pilot. And time to test. Time to tinker. And time to tinker again.
That's why Google and 3M give its workforce 20% of their time to work on projects not immediately connected to its core business. That's why W.L. Gore gives its workforce a half day a week to follow their fascinations. That's why Corel instituted it's virtual garage program.
"Dig where the oil is," Edward deBono once said.
Indeed! And where is the oil? Right beneath the feet of each and every employee who is fascinated by the work they do, aligned with their company's mission, and given enough time to make magic happen.
Need proof? 50% of Google's newly launched features were birthed during this so-called "free time" -- midwived by engineers, programmers, and other assorted wizards happily following their muse.
The fear? If you give people "freedom" they'll end up playing video games and taking 3-hour lunches. Alas, when fear takes over, folks, (the same fear Peter Drucker asked us all many years ago to remove from the workplace), vision is supplanted by supervision and all his micromanaging cousins.
Time to innovate is not time wasted. It is time invested. Freedom does not necessarily lead to anarchy. It can lead to breakthrough just as easily.
Remember, organizations do not innovate. People do. And people need time to innovate. Time = freedom. Freedom to choose. Freedom to explore. Freedom to express. And yes, even freedom to "fail."
If you've hired the right people, communicated a compelling vision, and established the kind of culture that brings out the best in a human being, you are 80% there.
Now all you need to do is find a way to give your people the time they need to innovate -- or at least MORE time than they have now.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2009Happiness in the Workplace
Managers, in most organizations, are expected to be efficient, effective, organized, focused, strategic, forward-thinking, and committed.
They are not expected to be HAPPY.
Happiness, as a "management attribute" is usually way down the list -- something reserved for the weekends, stock splits, or Christmas parties.
But recent research on this subject flips this kind of thinking on it's ear.
In today's highly stressed workplace, the time has never been as ripe for managers to radiate genuine happiness.
More about this here.
PS: There is a definite correlation between happiness and creativity. We'll explore that topic in our next posting. (Are you happy to hear that?)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:25 AM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2009Brainstorm 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)
March 15, 2009GOOGLE UPDATE: Hire smart people and ask them for your objectives
Just found this interesting update, at Bill's Blog, on innovation at Google (via Google Alerts, of course). If you're looking for some best practices to adapt (and are willing to go beyond business as usual), this one's for you. Here's what I mean:
"Seems like many things at Google, are voted on, or managed by peer reviews. An example are their quarterly objectives and key results. They are done bottoms up with very little top down input. Google's approach is to hire the smartest people they can and then ask them what they should be doing."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:24 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2009Create Something Before People Know They Need It!
Here's a juicy definition of innovation from the almost omnipresent Guy Kawasaki. (Excerpted from a recent interview by Diann Daniel of CIO.com)
"Innovation is creating something before people know they need it. The process involves building upon the work of others -- i.e. "copying," grinding it out, and deleting what doesn't work to jump to the next curve. Innovation isn't a lightning bolt of inspiration in the middle of a muse. More often than not, it's a process of grinding, cogitating, and doubting. There truly is no shortcut to innovation. Over the course of a career, you come up with dozens, if not hundreds of ideas, and reject most, try some, and you are lucky if a handful succeed."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:23 AM | Comments (3)
February 25, 2009The 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 (1)
February 19, 2009Taking a Flying Leap
Sometimes, the act of creating something new feels like jumping off a cliff, doesn't it? The ground beneath your feet completely disappears. All the familiar reference points are gone and you need a ton of courage to proceed. And so... in the spirit of "a moving picture is worth a thousand words," check this out, oh aspiring innovators...
wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.
PS: How does this relate to your life? It does, but only YOU know. If you make any connections, let us know. Happy leaping!
(Thanks to Tim "Wingsuit" Moore for the link.)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:00 PM | Comments (1)
February 16, 2009Streaming Visual Inspiration
Little Jolts of Wow Dept.:
Lunarr's Elements is another clever new community service for the programmable Web, existing to share "inspirational images and quotes (elements)." 
It's basically an on-demand slide show of photos or graphics that people find especially moving, with social media style customization. You can actively share faves and your own uploads with registered "friends," or just view streams of images from the larger community.
It's very, purposefully, simple in appearance: against a black background, with a minimum of buttons or other elements, one picture appears. It'll stay there until you click Explore to see another, or on I Like It, (broad)Cast It or Create. At right, free membership will let you add pictures, and to view publishers you follow and viewers watching you. Seven buttons, that's it, to do the simple job it has come into this world to offer.
In Mashable, Jennifer Van Grove's take was, "Elements feels like a cross between Flickr's interestingness, Twitter's follow features and Tumblr's content submission, with a focus on sharing inspirational content." - "Elements: A Flickr, Twitter and Tumblr Hybrid?" (2/8/09)
Similar to a Flickr slideshow, say, from a search on "inspiration"?
Behind the presentation level of the Elements site, their company site is fairly disorganized, perhaps because they've based it on a blog and those type of entries are so inherently slippery. So I had to go looking for the declaration of their raison d'etre; but the following, which seems ready to serve as a basic statement of purpose, can be seen if you counter-intuitively click "Products" in the nav bar:
"We've brought the cultural concept of 'ichi-go ichi-e' into LUNARR elements. It means 'one chance, one meeting,' and is traditionally at the center of a Japanese tea ceremony. It's the idea that you must treat your interaction with others as if it is the last time you will see them. With elements, we invite you to come take part in 'ichi-go ichi-e.'No one's taken credit for this other blog post on Lunarr's company site (Toru Takasuka and Hideshi Hamaguchi are listed as management), but it gives some elegant examples of the essential role inspiration plays in a productive life."The elements will gradually become customized for what you might find inspirational based on your actions, those you follow or those who follow you, the elements others cast in your direction and more. We also welcome you to become a catalyst of inspiration by uploading your own elements or clipping them from the web."
"Preserved Innovation"
December 19th, 2008What image caught Peter Tchaikovsky's eye while he was writing The Nutcracker ballet? .. . What conversation stirred John Logie Baird to create the first mechanical television?
What if instead of just seeing their finished product, I could see their entire thought process from inspiration to production? I imagine taking a look at the first images that inspired them to think in a new direction... The doodles and diagrams that came from their hands when that first wave of excitement flew over them as they realized that they could change the rhythm of the world.
Neat. But ultimately, isn't this just a cute implementation of "Web 2.0" social media with photo sharing? Basically pretty much the same thing as that slide show in Flickr or Picasa, or from a desktop Web widget? A one-trick pony?
Well, yes; as we saw, you can go to Flickr, type "inspiration" into the search bar, then look for the subtle "slideshow" link to the right of the top picture... and sit back. Elements, which clearly doesn't claim to be any more than one arrow in your quiver, adds the weaving social media in more directly, and a certain charm derived from the beautiful presentation and the sense of drama it creates.
But the fact that this picture-show site is centered on providing inspiration, the element that energizes and enables us in the most practical way, is what makes this more than just another cool site.
= = =
Have to give the nod to VentureBeat.com's writeup, "Lunarr's Elements is a Twitter-like image-sharing tool to stoke the imagination" by Dean Takahashi, February 8th, 2009.
Posted by Bill Ross at 04:18 PM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2009Find Your Creative Tribe on Facebook
Yo! Back in the day, whenever I wanted to hang out with other "creative types" I had to do weird stuff like pound my chest or send smoke signals at midnight. No more!
Now there's Facebook Groups. Or more specifically, my new Create, Innovate, Get Out of the Cave! group -- a place for aspiring innovators to gather round the cyberspatial fire and stoke the flames of creation.
Hey, don't be a neanderthal! You're not in this alone!
Dig it. I struggled to invent the wheel thousands of years before the Mesopotamians (who got all the credit). I had, like, one friend, Ugh, to help me through the process. But YOU have thousands! And they're all starting to meet here.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:31 AM | Comments (0)
January 13, 2009Rethinking Failure
Tried anything recently that didn't quite work out? Congratulations! You're on your way to a breakthrough.
Bottom line, there is no innovation without "failure." If your perception of failure is "something to avoid," you can kiss innovation goodbye. Failure comes with the territory. If the word puts you in a foul mood, use another one -- like "experiment," for example.
"The way to succeed is to double your failure rate."
-- Thomas Watson, Founder of IBM
"Do not fear mistakes. There are none." -- Miles Davis
"99 percent of success is built on failure." -- Charles Kettering
"I have not failed once. I've just found 10,000 ways that didn't work." -- Thomas Edison
"An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots." -- Charles Kettering
"Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself." -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
-- Robert F. Kennedy
"Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it." -- Horace
"When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to laugh at ourselves." -- Katherine Mansfield
"Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently."
-- Henry Ford
"No matter how well you perform, there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy." -- Sir Laurence Olivier
"If your life is free of failures, you're not taking enough risks."
-- H. Jackson Brown
"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try." -- Beverly Sills
"I failed my way to success." -- Thomas Edison
"Act as if it were impossible to fail." -- Dorothea Brande
"Failure is success if we learn from it." -- Malcolm Forbes
"You can only be as good as you dare to be bad."
-- John Barrymore
"The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success." -- Paramahansa Yogananda
"Failure doesn't mean that you're a failure ... it just means you haven't succeeded yet." -- Robert Schuller
"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Failure is nature's plan to prepare you for great responsibilities."
-- Napoleon Hill
"You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down."-- Mary Pickford
"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." -- Winston Churchill
"We are not retreating -- we are advancing in another direction."
-- Douglas MacArthur
"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." -- Thomas A. Edison
"Fall seven times, stand up eight." -- Japanese Proverb
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -- Confucius
"Stumbling is not falling." -- Portuguese Proverb
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:45 AM | Comments (2)
November 24, 2008Can America Invent Its Way Back?
A recent article in BusinessWeek by Michael Mandel asks this highly relevant question, noting that while the U.S. has spent almost $5 trillion on research and development and on higher education, "employment in most technologically advanced industries has stagnated or even fallen."
Mandel's focus is on the new field of "innovation economics," which studies what forms of funding drive successful innovation.
Collecting new data on American R&D initiatives is also part of this movement, to understand what's working and what's not, with the desired end result of making effective proposals.
"Will 2009 be the year of innovation economics?"Economists and business leaders across the political spectrum are slowly coming to an agreement: Innovation is the best, and maybe only, way the U.S. can get out of its economic hole. New products, services, and ways of doing business can create enough growth to enable Americans to prosper over the long run.
"In January, the National Science Foundation (NSF) will launch an annual survey of 40,000 companies asking how much they spend on R&D in the U.S. and overseas, broken out by type of business and country. "'For the first time, we'll have a clear picture of what kind of research companies are doing globally and what benefits they are getting from their spending,' says Lynda Carlson of the NSF."Multifactor productivity -- a category that includes technological change and other improvements in business processes -- accounted for 45% of productivity gains between 1987 and 2007. 'Ninety five percent of economists agree that innovation is the most important thing for long-run growth,' says MIT economist Daron Acemoglu.
"Economists are also suggesting how to use new tools to boost innovation.
"They're studying when prizes for technological advances make sense. They're proposing ways state and local governments can best encourage innovation-based economic development. And they're exploring how to make optimal use of the billions of dollars' worth of research conducted in government-funded national labs."
Not addressed in the article is the irony of the National Science Foundation's acronym, which is also used by the banking world as the abbreviation for "Not Sufficient Funds."
Let's hope the science foundation fares better with their economics.
===
"Can America Invent Its Way Back?"
"'Innovation economics' shows how smart ideas can turn into jobs and growth -- and keep the U.S. competitive."
by Michael Mandel
September 22, 2008 issue
1958 Erector Set ad uploaded
to Flickr by Maproom Systems
Posted by Bill Ross at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2008Forget About the Box, Get Out of the Cave!
See the caveman to your left? That's Og. He's the protagonist of my new book, Awake at the Wheel: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an uphill world). The word "protagonist" is not in Og's vocabulary. Even I don't use the word "protagonist" all that much -- though I have used it three times in this paragraph.
Hmmm... That's pretty odd.
Then again, the experience of inventing the wheel was pretty odd, too. Which is what Og did. 24,000 years ago. Long before Game Boy, i-Pod, or Starbucks. And yes, long before the Mesopotamians -- the people who usually get all the credit for the wheel -- some 20,300 years after my main man, Og.
(Hey, when was the last time you used the word "Mesopotamian?" That's another word not in Og's vocabulary.)
Actually, Og didn't need a big vocabulary. He had something else going for him: Neanderthalic genius. Stone age brilliance. Originality. Og, you see, was the first innovator. Intrinsically motivated, he was. Fascinated. Inspired. Mojo-driven. And while he was not without imperfections, he needed no attaboys, cash awards, or stock options to follow his muse.
Back in Og's time, when men were men, and stones were stones, even the idea of an idea was unthinkable. And yet... somehow, he had one -- an IDEA, that is -- and not just your dime a dozen variety. Nope. A GREAT idea, a BIG idea, or what I like to call an "out of the cave" idea: The wheel.
Ah... but I go on too long. If Og were here, he'd be frowning by now, shrugging his stooped shoulders, wondering in his delightfully pre-verbal way what other new ideas and discoveries awaited his wonderfully hairy touch.
Want to order the book now? (Og gets 10% of every sale). Go ahead. Help him put bear meat on the table.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:37 AM | Comments (1)
November 05, 2008Baking the Change and Innovation Cake
Last night, my 11-year old daughter, Mimi, and her good friend, Zoe, stayed up late to watch the election results. After Obama was declared the winner, they baked a cake in his honor and, in the morning, frosted it.
As they left the house this morning, Mimi stopped, cake in hand, and shouted out Obama's name at the top of her lungs. Something deep within her rose to the surface and begged to be expressed. Which, being 11 and free of the politically correct constraints that rule the lives of too many adults, she accomplished with great flair.
That same intrinsic motivation that moved Mimi and Zoe to bake their cake, needs to be alive and well in your company if you are truly serious about raising the bar for innovation and change. Mimi and Zoe didn't need to be TOLD to bake the cake. They wanted to. Even more than that, they HAD to.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: In what ways can you create the kind of culture in your organization that will encourage everyone to bake their cake for change and innovation?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2008"It's No Time to Forget About Innovation"
Writing in the New York Times, Janet Rae-Dupree reminds us that even or especially in times "of corporate belt-tightening," companies reduce their efforts to strengthen innovation at their own risk.
She quotes Jon Fisher, a business professor, serial entrepreneur, and author of "Strategic Entrepreneurism," saying, "'Innovation has to be embedded in the daily operation, in the entire work force.' Addressing companies whose aim is to be bought by a major player in their vertical, he explains, 'A large acquirer's interest in a start-up or smaller company is binary in nature: They either want you or they don't, based on the innovation you have to offer.'
"In fact, hard times can be the source of innovative inspiration, says Chris Shipley, a technology analyst and executive producer of the DEMO conferences, where new ideas make their debuts. 'Some of the best products and services come out of some of the worst times,' she says. In the recession of the early 1990s, 'tiny Palm Computing managed to revitalize the entire industry in a matter of months.'"
Also on the encouraging side: as I write this, Rae-Dupree's article is number six on the most-emailed in the Business section.
"It's No Time to Forget About Innovation" - NYT, 11/1/08.
(Illustration: The White Rabbit, by John Tenniel (1820-1914), from the original "Alice In Wonderland.")
Posted by Bill Ross at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2008TV or Not TV
The 2 minute video below is the first in a series of Idea Champions' public service announcements -- our small attempt at giving back to society. Feel free to forward the link to any TV-watching family members or neighbors of yours who may be technologically challenged re: the immiment shift from analog to digital...
Thanks to the amazing Cary Bayer for the link.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2008It's Never Too Late to Be Creative
Grandma Moses started painting at 64. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim museum at 91. Mary Baker Eddy began the Christian Science Monitor at 87. My wife, Evelyne Pouget, began painting at 40 -- and with absolutely no formal training.
One day she just sat down at the easel and began doing portraits and landscapes. Yes, she had been a graphic designer before then. And yes, she was always considered "artistic." But she had never done an oil painting until she turned 40.
The roots of all this? One day Evelyne mentioned to me that her teacher, Baba Muktananda, used to call her "The Painter." I found this quite intriguing and asked her if she had ever painted. When she said "no," I noted that his calling her "The Painter" may have been a clue about a hidden talent of hers -- and that she might want to explore it.
The first portrait Evelyne did (I will post it here later) was a mind blower -- one of those jaw-dropping Mozart/prodigy moments. Without a single lesson, she had created a likeness of her teacher that stunned both of us.
The painting above is a recent one of Evelyne's, -- one of 27 that will be featured at her upcoming opening at the Back Stage Productions Art Gallery in Kingston, New York.
The opening party is Saturday, November 1, 5:00 -- 9:00 pm. Please come if you can. You can preview her paintings here. The work of Scott Cronin, another late artistic bloomer (he started at 50), will also be featured.
The question for you?
What hidden talent of yours is aching to be released? What creative pursuit do YOU want to manifest, but have been too shy or doubtful to let rip? Now's the time! Take your next step. Have more faith in yourself and the power of creation.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:39 AM | Comments (2)
October 13, 200814 Year Old Running for President!
There are 25 days left before the Presidential election. Things are heating up, big time. You may have already decided who to cast your vote for. But before you go to the polls, I think it's worth two minutes of your time to view this video.
It was put together (adapted) by my 14-year old son, Jesse, who has decided to run for President. He knows he's not old enough to run for the highest office in the land, but he's going for it, anyway. More power to him!
And guess what? A grass roots movement has sprung up in the past few weeks to support his bold efforts to lead this country. Take a look.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2008An Ocean of Possibilities Awaits You
WC Fields was always an exceptionally gifted performer. But some of his most unforgettable performances took place off-camera.
Like most actors in the start of their career, Fields found himself a little short of cash. A problem? Not for him. The non-traditional Mr. Fields simply created a "Blue Ocean" job for himself in Atlantic City, one summer, as a professional drowner.
Here's how it worked:
Several times a day, Fields would swim out to sea, pretend to be drowning, and then be "rescued" by one of his accomplices, the lifeguard. Invariably, a large crowd would gather on the beach as the no longer struggling actor was "resuscitated." Once it was clear that this poor fellow was going to live, the suddenly relieved crowd would turn to Field's third accomplice, the hot dog vendor, (who just happened to be standing nearby) and treat themselves to an "I'm-so-glad-he's-alive" snack. At the end of each water-logged day, Fields would split the take with his buddies -- the lifeguard and the hot dog vendor.
Brilliant!
Now, I'm not suggesting that you do anything to deceive your customers. Not at all. But what I AM suggesting is that you take a fresh look at what you might do differently to get an extraordinary result. Is there a risk you need to take? An experiment you need to try? A non-traditional collaboration to enter into?
If your product, service, or venture is drowning, what can you do to resuscitate it?
My company, Idea Champions, once got a sizable contract from AT&T by teaching the Director of Training and Development how to juggle in five minutes -- something he'd been trying to learn for 25 years.
That's what I'm talking about: a new approach, a different twist, a non-traditional angle that will spark a positive response from your target market.
The alternative? In the famous words of Anonymous, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."
And so... if you have an example of an extraordinary result you've gotten by doing something different, simply click "comments" below and tell us about it. We will mail a Free the Genie deck to the person who, in the spirit of the great WC Fields, catches our attention with the most compelling anecdote.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2008The Top Seven High Tech Excuses
One way to measure just how omnipresent technology has become in our lives these days is to notice the number of times our EXCUSES include a techno-bent.
In days gone by, breaking a commitment had far more of a human aspect to it, as in "The babysitter was late" or... "I got caught in traffic" or... "The dog ate my homework."
No more. These days, high tech excuses rule -- simple, and often untrue, ways of saving face (and maybe your job.) Here's some of the most common ones:
1. "The server's down."
2. "You're breaking up."
3. "Your email ended up in my spam folder."
4. "I'm out of range."
5. "My laptop crashed."
6. "I can't find my Blackberry."
7. "I forgot to recharge my battery."
I know I'm forgetting some. What? The first three people who send me a reasonable excuse get a free copy of my new book (unless I can think of a really good high tech excuse not to mail it.)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:36 PM | Comments (9)
September 06, 2008Doing the Seeming Impossible
OK. Here's a wake up call for all of us who think our life or work challenges are impossible. Click below to see what this chap accomplished, then ask yourself whether or not what YOU'RE trying to accomplish (i.e. invent a new product, grow your business, make a new transition, establish a culture of innovation, forgive someone etc.) is really so difficult to pull off.
For more inspiration, click on the link below the YouTube video.
MORE INSPIRATION TO GO BEYOND THE "IMPOSSIBLE"
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." - Goethe
"There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start. - Charles Baudelaire
"What is now proved was once only imagined." - William Blake
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Genius is infinite painstaking." - Michelangelo
"A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind." - Antoine Saint-Exupery
"Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission." - Peter Drucker
"No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered." - Winston Churchill
"If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney
"I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." - Henry Ford
And here's an intro to my new book about a neanderthal who also accomplished the seeming impossible. Go for it!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:35 AM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2008How to Increase Your Odds of Getting a Big AHA!
What is it that allows some people to get creative breakthroughs while others get only creative breakdowns -- alternately blaming themselves, society, their company, and their increasingly suspect astrological configurations?
Is it true that people who experience breakthroughs are "gifted"? Or are there other factors at work -- factors that we (the people) have more control over than we might think?
While nobody can deny that some people seem to be blessed with "creative leanings" (i.e. Mozart at 4), research has shown that anyone can increase their chances of coming up with new and original ideas -- even have the much sought after AHA! experience -- that is, IF they immerse themselves in the little understood process of creation.
Time and again, the literature bears this out: great creative breakthroughs usually happen only after intense periods of intention, immersion, struggle -- even madness.
It is sustained and focused effort towards a specific goal -- not luck, wishing, or caffeine -- that ultimately prepares the ground for creative insight.
This kind of effort does not always generate immediate results and sometimes leads people to conclude that it's just not in the cards for them.
Alas, they forget during their inevitable encounters with doubt, that the BIG AHA! is never far away and can happen at any time, any place, under any condition.
Let's take a look at some classic examples:
RENE DESCARTES
Recognized as the "father of modern science," Rene Descartes offers a very interesting footnote to the history of creative breakthrough.
An exceptionally gifted student in 17th century France, young Rene dropped out of school at the age of 17 upon realizing that the only thing he had learned was that he was completely ignorant. Law school proved no better, nor did a brief stint in the military, or an aborted career as a gambler.
Frustrated with the choices available to him, Descartes decided to retire at the ripe old age of 20. While his parents, teachers, and friends pleaded with him to change his mind, young Rene was adamant, and for the next two years did little else but stay in bed, read, think, dream, and write.
Curiously, one night in the second year of his retreat, Descartes had a dream in which the essence of what we now know as the "scientific method" was revealed to him.
In time, his discovery was shared with the scientific community and Western science had a new hero. Ah, the paradox of it all!
While scientists far and wide heralded Descartes for his contribution to Western, rational science, no one (in their right mind) would acknowledge that the root of Descartes' discovery (and indeed, the root of what most scientists today base their knowledge on) came to him in a dream - a non-rational, non-linear, altered state of consciousness in the mind of a dropout!
Descartes story is not at all uncommon.
The truth, the breakthrough, the AHA! came to him only after years of intense, conscious effort. Like ripe fruit, the answer made its appearance at the right time -- a time when he wasn't trying, but had let himself be receptive to the promptings of his own subconscious mind.
ELIAS HOWE
Elias Howe had struggled for years in his attempt to invent a lock stitch sewing machine. His early designs, though inspired, were flawed. Indeed, the needle he designed had a hole in the middle of the shank, which simply didn't work.
Then, one night, depressed at how slowly things were going, Howe dreamed he was captured by a bunch of savages who took him prisoner before the King.
"Elias Howe," screamed the monarch, "I command you upon the pain of death to finish this machine at once!"
Try as he might, Howe still could not find the solution. The King, making good on his word, immediately ordered his troops to take Howe to the place of "execution" (dream pun intended).
As Howe was being led away, he looked up and noticed that the spears the savages were carrying had eye-shaped holes near the top! Voila!
In a flash, Howe awoke, jumped out of bed, and spent the rest of the night whittling a model of the new, improved needle -- the design breakthrough that quickly brought his experiments to a successful conclusion.
RICHARD WAGNER
At the age of 40, Richard Wagner was going through a serious mid-life crisis. His artistic career was stalled, his marriage was falling apart, and his finances were in shambles. Desperate, he decided to travel, hoping to find some inspiration. Traveling, however, only tired him.
Then, one morning, just at the moment when he finally gave up on his frantic effort to invoke his muse, Wagner heard a musical theme in a dream -- one that was about to change his life and the history of music.
Explained Wagner, "After a night spent in fever and sleeplessness, I forced myself to take a long walk through the country. It looked dreary and desolate. Upon my return, I lay down on a hard couch. Sleep would not come, but I sank into a kind of somnambulance, in which I suddenly felt as though I were sinking in swiftly flowing water. The rushing noise formed itself into a musical sound, the chord of E flat major, whence developed melodic passages of increasing motion. I awoke in sudden terror, recognizing that the orchestral prelude to Das Rheingold, which must have lain long latent within me, had at last been revealed to me. I decided to return to Zurich at once and begin the composition of my great poem."
MOZART
A prodigy? Yes. Gifted? Yes. Unusually receptive? Yes. But also tuned in to the state of mind that preceded great creative breakthroughs.
Explained Mozart, "When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer -- say traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them. Those pleasures that please me, I retain in memory, and am accustomed... to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it....agreeably to the rules of counterpoint, and to t he peculiarities of the various instruments. All this fires my soul, and provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them.....all at once. What a delight I cannot tell! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream...."
RUDYARD KIPLING
Many people who experience supernormal moments of great creativity report a willingness to let themselves be open to the non-logical, non-linear, and unexplainable promptings of an inner voice.
Maybe you call it a "hunch" or "intuition," but whatever you call it, know that paying attention to it is often the key to manifesting your vision or idea. Rudyard Kipling, the English writer, was very much in touch with this faculty.
"Most men," wrote Kipling, "keep their personal Daemon (guardian spirit) under an alias which varies with their literary or scientific attainments. Mine came to me early when I sat bewildered among other notions. 'Take me and no other,' it said. I obeyed and was rewarded. After that, I learned to lean upon him and recognize the sign of his approach. If ever I held back anything of myself (even though I had to throw it out afterwards), I paid for it by missing what I knew the tale lacked.....I took good care to walk delicately, lest my Daemon should withdraw. I know that he did not, because when my books were finished they said so themselves with almost the water-hammer click of a tap turned off........'Note here.' When your Daemon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait, and obey...."
AUGUST KEKULE
It is not only writers and composers that have creative breakthroughs. Molecular scientists do, too.
Notes the Flemish scientist, Kekule, "One fine evening I was returning by the last bus through the deserted streets of the metropolis, which are at other times so full of life. I fell into a reverie, and lo! the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. Whenever those diminutive beings had appeared to me before, they had always been in motion, but I had never been able to discern the nature of their motion. Now, however, I saw how frequently, how smaller atoms united to form a pair; how a larger one embraced two smaller ones; how still larger ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller, while the whole kept whirring in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger ones formed a chain....I spent part of the night putting on paper at least a sketch of these dream forms."
Then, years later, the big illumination: "I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated visions of this kind, could now distinguish larger structures....long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together; all twining and twisting and snakelike motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes! As if by a flash of lightening I awoke. Let us learn to dream, gentlemen."
Kekule had made a most remarkable discovery -- that benzene is a cyclic or ring structure and the carbon chain at the molecular core of the compound does indeed form a chain that "swallows its own tail".
TCHAIKOVSKY
OK, all you aspiring creators, how about a tip from the man who composed the Nutcracker Suite?
"Generally, the germ of a future composition comes suddenly and unexpectedly...It takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches and leaves, and finally blossoms....I forget everything and behave like a mad man. Everything within me starts pulsing and quivering. Hardly have I begun the sketch, before one thought follows another. In the midst of this magic process, it frequently happens that some external interruption awakes me from my somnabulistic state....Dreadful indeed are such interruptions....They break the thread of the inspiration."
To learn more about how to get breakthrough ideas, click here.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:08 PM | Comments (1)
August 30, 2008Innovation 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 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)
Big 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)
July 18, 2008The First Annual Last Words Contest
"I wish I had drunk more champagne."
With these last words, John Maynard Keynes, the famous British economist, passed into the Great Beyond. Way to go Johnny!
Conrad Hilton, grandfather of Paris and founder of one of the world's most acclaimed hotel empires, left us with a slightly different message. "Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub."
Thank you, Conrad. I will do my best to remember that.
What about you? What do you imagine your last words will be? Or better yet, what would you like them to be? Oh sure, you may have lots of emails to answer, spreadsheets to read, and meetings to attend... but it's never too soon to get your legacy in gear.
Setting a clear intention is not only important for business, it's also important for LIFE.
Got it? Good! Now share it with the rest of us. When four or more submissions are received I'll post them here for everyone to read.
And soon thereafter, Idea Champions' esteemed panel of imperfect judges will bestow one lucky reader of this blog with the FIRST ANNUAL LAST WORDS prize (a copy of the book from whence these quotes were quoted). Should be interesting.
If you need some inspiration to get you going, click below to see what Mata Hari, P.T. Barnum, Oscar Wilde and a host of others had to say just before they left their mortal coil...
"I am in a duel to the death with this wallpaper. One of us has to go." - Oscar Wilde
"Why not? After all, it belongs to Him." - Charlie Chaplin
"How were the circus receipts in Madison Square Garden?" - P.T. Barnum
"Death is nothing, nor life either, for that matter. To die, to sleep, to pass into nothingness, what does it matter? Everything is an illusion." - Mata Hari
"I've had a hellava lot of fun and have enjoyed every minute of it." - Erroll Flynn
"That was the best ice cream soda I ever tasted." - Lou Costello
"Die, I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him." - John Barrymore
"Don't pull down the blinds. I feel fine. I want the sunlight to greet me." - Rudolf Valentino
"More light!" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"That was a great game of golf, fellers." - Bing Crosby
"God, don't let me die. I have so much to do." - Huey Long
"I shall hear in heaven!" - Ludwig Van Beethoven
"I have just had 18 whiskeys in a row. I do believe that is a record." - Dylan Thomas
"Go on. Get out! Last words are for fools that haven't said enough!" - Karl Marx
"Wait a second." - Madame de Pompadour
"Don't let it end this way. Tell them I said something." - Pancho Villa
OK. Your turn...
Excepted from Famous Last Words by Ray Robinson (Workman Publishing, 2003)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:57 PM | Comments (1)
July 11, 2008The 30 Second Summer Blog for People on the Go
78% of all people who log onto the Idea Champions website spend less than 30 seconds there. It's probably the same for this blog. Short and sweet is the name of the game these days.
And so... for the rest of the summer, all our blog postings will take you less than 30 seconds to read. The one you're reading now has taken you about 23 seconds so far. Which means I have another 7 seconds or so to say something meaningful.
To be continued...
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:42 PM | Comments (1)
June 30, 2008I Am Moving to a Blog Cabin in the Woods
I see the future.
Everyone will have a blog. Every blogger's pet will have a blog. Every blog will have a blog. Every blog's blog will have a blog. No one will be reading any of these blogs because everyone will be too busy writing blogs. Bloggers will occasionally visit other blogs, but only for the purpose of leaving comments that will direct readers back to their own blog. Letter writing will become popular once again, gaining a new lease on life after the internet crashes repeatedly because of the profusion of blogs and youtube videos created by 5-year olds, holographic spammers, and terrorist groups.
Why all the blogging?
Because people want to connect. And WHY do people want to connect? Because there is a fundamental need inside each and every one of us to feel connected.
"Connected to WHAT?" is the question.
Most business leaders are likely to say something like "the marketplace," or "our customers" or "company values," but the real answer is far more fundamental -- your self.
Remember that? The part of you that doesn't have a title, a strategic plan, or a Blackberry to keep it all together? That's where innovation begins. And even more importantly, that's where the real experience of life begins.
Bottom line, for each of us to feel truly connected, we first need to connect with ourselves. Then, and only then, does it make sense to connect with others.
Otherwise, all our efforts to connect will be fundamentally flawed -- tinged with the slightly neurotic need for approval and completion -- neither of which are really necessary once we master the fine art of tapping into who we really are in the first place.
Sort of like putting the isness back in business.
And speaking of the future -- high rises are out. Blog cabins are in.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:32 PM | Comments (1)
June 29, 2008More On Where and When You Get Your Best Ideas
A big thanks to Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools for his June 26th posting on our just-released poll results re: "Where and When People Get Their Best Ideas?"
Chuck notes the top ten catalysts:
1. When you're inspired
2. Brainstorming with others
3. When you're immersed in a project
4. When you're happy
5. Collaborating with a partner
6. Daydreaming
7. Analyzing a problem
8. Driving
9. Commuting to and from work
10. Reading books in your field
And here are the bottom ten:
70. Swimming
71. Brushing your teeth
72. Drinking anything with alcohol
73. Playing a sport
74. When you're sad
75. Mowing the lawn
76. Shaving
77. Procrastinating
78. In a bar
79. Having sex
80. Smoking tobacco
(If you're looking for a fun way to spark some great ideas, click here.)
Or here.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:14 AM | Comments (1)
June 27, 2008HEAR AND NOW: Small Business Big Ideas Show: 6/29/08
If you're looking for some inspiration and insight to help you grow your business and radically increase your ability to manifest BIG IDEAS, tune into the Small Business Big Ideas Show out of Toronto this Sunday, 7/29, at 9:00 am (www.ckdo.ca).
The delightfully open-minded Lissa Bergin-Boles will be interviewing me from 9:02 -- 9:15 am. We'll explore the fabulous world of creative thinking and what it takes to foster a culture of innovation within yourself and your business.
We'll also be talking about how my new book, Awake at the Wheel: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an uphill world), can help you turn your top-of-the-line ideas into bottom-line results.
If you want to call in and ask me a question, the number is 888-511-2436. Hope to hear you then.
PS: If you're interested in the results of Idea Champions' recently released "Where and When Do People Get Their Best Ideas?" poll, click here.)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
June 10, 2008Getting All Googley
Interesting summary of Google CEO's speech to the Economic Club of Washington this Monday.
Among other things, Schmidt talked about his company's attempts to innovate, including allowing engineers to use 20 percent of their time to work on projects of their own choosing. Schmidt acknowledged that trusting the workforce to follow their fascination has resulted in many successes for the enterprise. "Part of Google's success is creating more luck," he said.
Success also needs a positive environment and encouragement for employees to be more creative and innovative, Schmidt said.
"It is possible to build a culture around innovation, it is possible to build a culture around leadership, and it is possible to build a culture around optimism," added the googley Mr. Schmidt
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2008The Top 16 Reasons Why Human Beings Love Lists
This just in.
The three most popular postings on this blog, of the 116 we've written since July -- the ones most frequently cited by other blogs and websites -- have one thing in common:
They are all lists.
100 Simple Ways to Be More Creative on the Job
The Top 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating
26 Reasons Why Most Brainstorming Sessions Don't Work
While I acknowledge that these three postings are engaging, entertaining, and useful, I don't think they are that much more engaging, entertaining, and useful than the rest of the stuff on our blog to warrant as much attention as they've been getting.
Something else is afoot.
And that, I believe, is the medium through which the content of these postings have been communicated: Lists.
What's up with lists? Why so popular? Why does every men's and women's magazine plaster their covers with them? Why do blogs?
After some major noodling on the topic and a few consultations with the Master of the Tradition, I am very pleased to report my recent findings to you. Here we go...
THE TOP 16 REASONS WHY HUMAN BEINGS LOVE LISTS
1.We are all victims of information overload. Lists help us make sense of the world.
2. Lists simplify.
3. Lists promise instant knowledge.
4. Lists make it seem as if the list maker knows something that list readers don't.
5. Lists appeal to an ever expanding population of ADD sufferers.
6. Lists provide choices.
7. Lists are made of soundbytes. Soundbytes 'R Us.
8. Lists appeal to the left brain need for order and linearity.
9. Lists are familiar. We grew up making them: laundry lists, grocery lists, and Christmas lists.
10. Lists can be updated, added to, or subtracted from easily.
11. Lists give us an instant opportunity to disagree.
12. Lists, with their declarative headlines, make list readers feel like they are just about to get a crash course on a topic of great significance.
13. Lists, when forwarded to friends or clients, position the list forwarder as a knowledgeable resource.
14. Lists include items that are numbered -- and most readers assume that an item that's numbered must be more true than an item that's merely bulleted.
15. Lists can be printed quickly, folded up, and put into one's pocket -- as opposed to New Yorker articles, the collected works of Henry Miller, or Sunday's New York Times.
16. Lists are great ways for list makers, especially in the hyperlinked blogosphere, to plug their own businesses and books, not to mention the businesses and books of their friends, chiropractors, and college roommates.
PS: If we've omitted any TOP REASONS why human beings love lists, leave us a comment. When we get ten or more, we'll post what our readers have sent us. As a list, of course.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:04 PM | Comments (1)
June 01, 2008AWAKE AT THE WHEEL: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an uphill world)
Ta da! After seven years, 22 rejections, multiple rewrites, 2 agents, and a whole lot of looking at myself in the mirror, here it is: the publication of my new book, AWAKE AT THE WHEEL: Getting Your Great Ideas Rolling (in an Uphill World). Part fable, part creative thinking toolbox, the book is a wake up call for all aspiring innovators -- a simple way to help people "get out of the cave" and manifest BIG ideas in a world not always ready for the new and the different.
If you have an inspired idea that is lingering in your mind and needs a fresh jolt to see the light of day, this book is for you.
To order from Amazon, click here.
Tim Gallwey: "A superb catalyst for anyone with the urge to bring their best ideas into reality."
Donna Fenn: "Og may have invented the wheel, but Mitch Ditkoff has created a GPS for the innovation process. Awake at the Wheel is a witty and inspiring roadmap for the journey from ideas to invention."
Jay Conrad Levinson: "Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. The time has come for this book and Mitchell Lewis Ditkoff has put it into words. He has done a masterful job."
Jack Mitchell: "Go ahead and 'hug' your employees by giving them Awake at the Wheel and creating a company culture that fosters, develops, and celebrates the best of their ideas."
Joyce Wycoff: "A highly accessible alchemist's stone for aspiring innovators."
Melinda McLaughlin: Awake at the Wheel illuminates! It's the perfect book for those of us who have felt the excitement of the 'aha' moment only to experience the frustration that comes when no one sees the brilliant lightbulb above our head. Mitch Ditkoff takes us on an engaging journey that re-imagines how to turn an idea into great success and makes it suddenly seem easy.?
Chuck Frey: "Entertaining and inspiring."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:05 AM | Comments (0)
May 05, 2008Synchronicity, Cavemen, Beer, and the Invention of the Wheel
I've always been fascinated by the concept of "synchronicity" -- the phenomenon of things happening at the same time for no apparent reason. Some people think of this as mere "coincidence" -- the chronological equivalent of a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters and eventually coming up with a good book. Others see more esoteric forces at work. Carl Jung, for example.
No matter what your point of view, I still think it's pretty cool that there's been an explosion of caveman ads (and tv shows) in recent months -- just in time to set the scene for the appearance of my new book. Bud Lite, Geico, and Fedex have all gotten into the act. I'd like to tip my hat to all these fine organizations for getting cavemen into the consciousness of the book buying public in time for the May release of Awake at the Wheel.
Take a look at the most recent example: Bud Lite's superbowl ad.
Of course, all my philosophizing about synchronicity, Carl Jung, beer, and thousands of monkeys could simply be the work of a modern day Neanderthal -- me -- an over-caffeinated biped with a highly mortgaged home in Woodstock, New York, instead of a cave on the plains.
But who cares? The book is still good -- a great way to get out of the cave and radically increase your chances of manifesting your most inspired ideas.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2008If You Want a Breakthrough, Take a Break
True innovators rarely follow the straight and narrow path. Not only do they march to a different drummer, they're often not even on the same playing field as most people.
Take Seymour Cray, for example, the legendary designer of high-speed computers.
According to John Rollwagen, ex-chairman of Cray research, Seymour Cray used to divide his time between building the next generation super computer and digging an underground tunnel below his Chippewa Falls house.
Cray's explanation of his tunnel digging behavior is consistent with the stories of many other creatives -- inner-directed, boundary-pushing people who understand the need to go off-line whenever they get stuck.
Bottom line, whenever they find themselves struggling with a thorny problem, they walk away from it for a while.
They know, from years of practical experience, that more (i.e. obsession, analysis, effort) is often less (i.e ideas, solutions, results).
Explained Cray, "I work for three hours and then get stumped. So I quit and go to work in the tunnel. It takes me an hour or so to dig four inches and put in the boards. You see, I'm up in the Wisconsin woods, and there are elves in the woods. So when they see me leave, they come back into my office and solve all the problems I'm having. Then I go up (to my lab) and work some more."
Explained Rollwagen, "The real work happens when Seymour is in the tunnel."
Many thanks to Chuck Frey for linking to our 100 Simple Ways to Be More Creative on the Job list on his excellent InnovationTools blog.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2008The Sweat that Eureka demands
Serious about doing something innovative? Be prepared to spend many long, focused hours working on it (and working and working and reworking...)
"We want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance," Janet Rae-Dupree writes in the New York Times. But, "Innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time."The article also quotes Jim Marggraff, creator of an interactive world globe called the Odyssey Atlasphere, and the LeapPad reading platform for children, among others. "The 'aha' moments grow out of hours of thought and study," he says. "If you look at my innovations, there's a common theme. I take something familiar, intuitive and ubiquitous, and recast it in a manner that will redefine its use to drive profound change.""'The most useful way to think of epiphany is as an occasional bonus of working on tough problems,' explains Scott Berkun in his 2007 book, The Myths of Innovation. 'The goal isn't the magic moment: it's the end result of a useful innovation.'"
Of course, which famous inventor explained this to us early in the 20th century? Who else but Thomas Edison. A bit of quick research gives us his famous quote in an expanded context:
(From a 1929 press conference, quoted by James D. Newton in Uncommon Friends; Newton knew Edison personally.)
"None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration."
In an interview in Harpers magazine, February 1890 (stay tuned here at Heart Of Innovation as we present the latest, greatest breakthroughs! ; ) , Edison explained his method:
"I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. ... I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory."
====
"Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work" (NYT, 2/3/08)
Related, here:
"Innovation: It's About Time!"
Posted by Bill Ross at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2008The Big Game
Last night I watched the NY Giants beat the Green Bay Packers 23-20 in an NFL championship football game. I watched it with eight friends. As always, we had a fantastic time -- an experience that our wives (no matter how wonderful they may be) have never been able to truly fathom. Our viewing behavior, to them, is a merely a parody of the American male: two-dimensional, woefully predictable, and absurd.
That assessment, however, was not my experience last night. No way. On the contrary, my experience was noble, ecstatic, tribal, and divine. Beyond the pretzels, popcorn, chips, and beer something else was happening.
At the risk of making a mountain out of a football game, allow me to share a few observations about the experience and, by extension, the experience of millions of men huddled together before the Big Game. In that sacred act of viewing, NOTHING ELSE WAS HAPPENING! Zero. Nada. Zilch. No work. No bills. No back taxes. No car repairs. No war in Iraq. No recession. No primaries. No relationship issues. No cholesterol. No this and no that. Only The Game. Pure immersion it was. Spontaneous expression. Presence. Unbridled emotion. Liberated laughter. And the kind of concentration most yogis would trade their third eye for.
What, you may ask, has any of this to do with innovation -- the supposed topic of this supposed blog? Plenty. The state of mind (no, make that state of being), of last night's BIG GAME watching, pretzel munching men is exactly the state of being required by an individual, team, or organization in order to have even the slightest chance of innovating.
OK. Let's go to the slow motion, video replay of that last sentence: I'm talking focus, friends. I'm talking compelling goal. The experience of community. Uncensored delight. Resilience. Loyalty. Humor. Hope. Perseverance. The entertainment of possibility. And the soulful appreciation of each other.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about the common garden variety trance experience induced by watching TV or a movie. No. I'm talking about the BIG GAME. The "All In" moment. The Full Monte. The No Turning Back. The This Is It. The There's No Tomorrow. And all of it sprinkled with a healthy dose of pepperoni and celebration even before anyone knows the final score.
Yes, I admit, the eight of us didn't deliver anything as a result of watching the BIG GAME -- no output, no product, no proof that we had used our time well. But so what? When you're eating chips and experiencing the Unified Field of Consciousness on the day the Lord rested and time stops as your team huddles in the freezing cold, against all odds, to gather together one more time, focused on the goal and absolutely free of constraint, doubt, and delusion, what is there left to say except:
Giants 23, Packers 20. (And in overtime, yet!)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:30 AM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2008View from a Creative Mind
Although we are by no means a locally-focused company, with consultant/trainers traveling very widely to lead sessions, we are based in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York State, and one similarly local-but-far-reaching event caught my eye which I thought was very much worth sharing.
That would be a nearby exhibition of the work of Saul Steinberg, titled "Illuminations," the artist most famously known for his frequent appearances over six decades in The New Yorker magazine. He was the clever fellow who gave us the much-imitated 1976 cover illustration of how New Yorkers see the world, "The View from 9th Avenue," where a couple of blocks of the city dominate, and the rest of the country occupies a small square of land in the distance.
But so much of his work displayed such a fresh, wonderfully creative mind that, for me, it "illustrates" an essential attitude that successful innovators have. This is the habit of looking to see things newly, as opposed to how we usually see, which is through a haze of existing thought patterns; and, freely associating, to find useful connections between things that were hidden until then.
In the words of the Saul Steinberg Foundation's page on his life and work, "fingerprints become mug shots or landscapes; graph or ledger paper doubles as the facade of an office building; words, numbers, and punctuation marks come to life as messengers of doubt, fear, or exuberance; sheet music lines glide into violin strings, record grooves, the grain of a wood table, and the smile of a cat."
"Saul Steinberg: Illuminations" will be on view through February 24 at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie. (845) 437-5632;
(...which I found in Chronogram magazine.)
(All works © by The Saul Steinberg Foundation)
Posted by Bill Ross at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)
January 02, 2008Give Everything You Have
If you are looking for a breakthrough in 2008 -- whether it's in the realm of innovation, collaboration, business, or personal relationships, allow me to offer you one simple piece of advice: give everything you have. Yup. Go all the way. Let it rip. Put all your chips on the table. Go all in. "A monomaniac on a mission" is how Peter Drucker once put it.
Martha Graham said the same basic thing, but a bit more poetically: "There is a vitality, a life force, that is translated to you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and will be lost."
Yessiree. Now's the time -- the time to translate your life force into action no matter what form it takes. Book to write? Move to make? Idea to manifest? Business to turnaround? Whatever. The key is to go for it. Give it everything you have. And yet, the act of giving everything you have is only HALF the battle. The other half... is HOW you give it.
And so, for all Heart of Innovation readers and any one else who has somehow found their way to this virtual space and time, I offer the following as a gift to you for a life well-lived in 2008. Imbibe it's meaning and you will find yourself succeeding beyond your wildest dreams. Not only will your cash flow, but so will you...
GIVE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE
Give everything you have,
and after you have given,
give what's left.
After you give what's left,
give what remains.
After giving that,
give the feeling of having given.
After giving the feeling
of having given,
give what you get
for having given.
Then give again,
never stopping, always giving.
And should it come to pass that you forget,
forgive yourself immediately.
Then begin again,
giving everything you have,
and after you have given,
give what's left.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)
December 30, 2007Seeing Innovation Clearly
There's an old Indian adage that goes something like this: "When a pickpocket meets a saint, all he sees are pockets." Psychologists summarize this phenomenon in three words: "Motivation affects perception." In other words, if you're hungry when driving through a town, you'll notice the restaurants. If you're running out of gas, you'll notice the gas stations. If your mother is dying, you'll notice the funeral homes.
What is the meaning of this to you?
Simply this: If you are really serious about innovating in 2008, first you will need get clear about your motivation -- what's driving you. The clearer you are, the more your efforts will be free of the hidden agendas, assumptions, and filters that limit your ability to create what you SAY you want to create.
For example, if you think your real motivation is to create a breakthrough product, but what is really driving you is the need for short term profits, you won't have the kind of patience and perseverance required to aacomplish your goal.
Metaphorically speaking, if "innovation" is the "saint" you are seeking, you don't want to be approaching it like a pickpocket.
Next month, in this space, we'll be posting a poll to explore this phenomenon more deeply. We want to find out WHY people want to innovate. To jump start this effort, we invite you NOW to tell us why YOU want to innovate in 2008. What's in it for you? Why bother? What's the payoff?
Is it survival? Is it an attempt to keep pace with the competition? A way to enjoy your job more? A calling? Your strategy to get promoted? Something else? Simply click the "comments" link and let us know.
Which reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke: This guy goes into a psychiatrist's office and, in great distress, confesses that his brother thinks he's a chicken.
"Bring him in," the psychiatrist says.
"I can't," explains Woody.
"Why not," the psychiatrist asks.
"We need the eggs."
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:43 AM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2007ANNOUNCING: The Winners of Our First Annual Blog Contest!
Ta da! It's official! We have a winner! Actually, we have five winners and a bonus sixth -- the first people to respond to our Dec. 17th 30 Second Blog Contest.
And they are, in the exact order they left their "I-am-about-to-win-something-free-on-this-new-blog" comments: Nettie Hartsock, Paul D. Williams, Harmony, Bill Pearce, and James Todhunter.
Congratulations one and all for responding so quickly and winning a free copy of Mitch Ditkoff's Awake at the Wheel: Getting Great Ideas Rolling (in an Uphill World). The book is in the mail.
And a special acknowledgment to Paul Kwiecinski for entering the contest after the polls had closed and after most of our readers thought there was no more chance to win. Paul's tenacity has earned him a free copy of the book. Perseverance furthers.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)
ANNOUNCING: The Winners of Our First Annual Blog Contest!
Ta da! It's official! We have a winner! Actually, we have five winners and a bonus sixth -- the first people to respond to our Dec. 17th 30 Second Blog Contest.
And they are, in the exact order they left their "I-am-about-to-win-something-free-on-this-new-blog" comments: Nettie Hartsock, Paul D. Williams, Harmony, Bill Pearce, and James Todhunter.
Congratulations one and all for responding so quickly and winning a free copy of Mitch Ditkoff's Awake at the Wheel: Getting Great Ideas Rolling (in an Uphill World). The book is in the mail.
And a special acknowledgment to Paul Kwiecinski for entering the contest after the polls had closed and after most of our readers thought there was no more chance to win. Paul's tenacity has earned him a free copy of the book. Perseverance furthers.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)
December 22, 2007Time to Catch the Bubbles
A few years ago I found myself standing in my closet, madly searching for clean clothes in a last minute attempt to pack before yet another business trip, when I noticed my 4-year old son standing in the entrance. In one hand he was holding a small plastic wand. In the other, a plastic bottle of soapy water. "Dada," he said, looking up at me -- his eyes wide open -- "do you have time to catch my bubbles?"
Time? It stopped. And so did I. At that moment it suddenly made no difference whether or not I caught my plane. (I could barely catch my breath.) The only thing that existed was him and that soulful look of longing in his eyes.
For the next ten minutes, all we did was play -- him blowing bubbles and laughing, me catching and laughing, too. His need was completely satisfied. His need for connection. His need for love. His need for knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that absolutely everything was perfect -- just the way it was.
He is 13 now. His bubbles are digital. But his need is still the same -- and so is mine. And so is yours, I would venture to say.
And so dear friends, clients, prospects, bloggers, and fellow earthlings, I wish you the happiest of holidays and a fabulous New Year. If you are busier than you want to be, I wish you stillness. If things are a little too still, I wish you more business. But no matter where you are on the continuum of life, please remember -- as my young son reminded me not that many years ago -- to take some time to catch the bubbles. Be in the moment. Enjoy the gift of life. Be grateful for every single breath, your family, and all the wonderful people who love you.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:50 AM | Comments (1)
December 17, 2007The 30 Second Blog Contest
If you are one of the first five people who leave a comment in response to this blog posting, you win a free copy of Mitch Ditkoff's newly published book on what it takes to manifest bold new ideas, Awake at the Wheel. Thirty seconds of your time is all it will take -- about the time it takes to put your socks on. You see... the Idea Champions team has a little bet going on. We want to find out how many people will actually respond to this invitation.
Alright, enough context. Now's the time. Post your comment already...
Winners will be announced by Dec 31.
(PS: Idea Champions staff and family are excluded from this little contest.)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 07:39 PM | Comments (6)
December 15, 2007Create In-House Start Ups
If your organization is finding it slow going cranking up its innovation machine, take a tip from the world of high tech.
Teradyne, a manufacturer of testing equipment for semiconductor chips, phone networks, and software, has found a way to cut to the chase and go beyond the internal money grubbing game that all too often drives aspiring innovators up the wall or out the door. Simply put, Teradyne funds ersatz start-ups inside the company for its best ideas. The start-ups report not to a boss, but to a Board of Directors. It has venture capital -- not a budget.
Now you're talking -- a simple way to turn "one's job" into "one's work" -- and that is the secret sauce. If you want to spark innovation, you first have to spark the innovators. And one way to do that is to treat them like entrepreneurs, not worker bees. Go beyond the command and control budget game. Give people room enough to match their excitement. Let them create a business, not just work for a business.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:22 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2007Here, Sonny, Catch!
Sitting here watching the World Series (LET'S go RED Sox, bom, bom, bom-bom-bom -- and how about that ca-razy percussion section in the bullpen?), I was struck by the now-common sight of a fielder flipping a foul ball into the stands. It's routine now, of course, but it wasn't always so.
It's one of those things that, once you see it, seems so obviously right. What kid who goes to a big-league game doesn't dream about being able to bring home a real, Major League baseball? And it doesn't matter how old that kid is.
When you compare the money that is spent on putting a team on the field to the Costco-like price of a baseball (I mean, I assume they buy them in bulk), and the public relations value of donating a dozen or so during the course of the game, it's the very definition of a no-brainer.
But I don't remember ever that seeing that when I was growing up watching the game. One day, someone in some ballclub's management saw it happen -- perhaps a ball was tossed by a player who remembered when he was a kid at the park himself -- and said, hey, why don't we do that all the time?
It's a nice example of picking the low-hanging fruit when you're looking for ways to innovate (which simply means, thinking differently to change things for the better), and points up what may be its first principle:
Start by examining what resources you have immediately at hand. You may be amazed at what significant changes you can make with a very small amount of effort.
(We love baseball here at Idea Champions -- check out "Measuring Up," our foremost expert Mr. Vadeboncoeur's earlier post on how the Kansas City Royals have begun to "think outside the radar gun.")
uploaded to Flickr by vinceconnare
Posted by Bill Ross at 11:10 PM | Comments (1)
October 23, 2007Owning Your Own Knowledge
One of the guiding principles of Idea Champions is that any large enough group of people who work in any organization already has the requisite knowledge to deal with the majority of the issues and challenges facing them. There may be issues where they need additional information from outside experts but, in general, they know their business, industry, and market and what they have to do to grow their bottom line.
Why they can't easily access this knowledge on a regular basis and act upon it is another story, however, and why, I imagine, we are in the business we're in.
The issue of not being able to act on the knowledge one already has does not exist because of organizations, of course. It exists because this phenomenon is a major issue for many human beings, and has been, it seems, for as long as there have been human beings. I have a psychologist friend who once confided that when he came across a patient who embraced this syndrome, he recommended other therapists to them as quickly as possible because he found their denial of their own knowledge, and subsequent lack of corrective action, totally exasperating.
Books have been written about the phenomenon of the tragic characters of Shakespeare "disowning knowledge" leading directly to their inevitable demise. Hamlet knows what he needs to know in order to act very early on in that play, but does not, requiring ever greater "burdens of proof" which delay action until it is too late. King Lear knows that he will create a power vacuum if he abdicates his crown that will lead to strife and confusion among his daughters and discord in his kingdom, yet he does so anyway, etc.
Speaking of vacuums... a simple example of this phenomenon occurred to me only recently.
Fourteen years ago, I purchased a fine, expensive vacuum cleaner. This machine cost over a thousand dollars back then and it's been worth every penny, as it is so well made that it probably will outlast me on this planet. During those years, I've often come across a warning in manuals and brochures that if one persisted in dragging the machine around by its hose, or lifting it by same, one would eventually loosen the electronic connections that give signals from the body of the vacuum to its end attachments and it would cease to function properly. The result: $300 to replace the hose and attachments.
Well, after 14 years of dragging the machine around by its hose and lifting it by same, the inevitable has occurred. I need to replace the hose and attachments.
D'OH!
Why didn't I simply use the knowledge I had instead of ignoring it? Well, for the first 14 years everything seemed fine, reminding me of the joke about the guy who wanted to see what it was like to jump off a tall building and thinking to himself during his descent, "so far, so good."
The very same goes for organizations and the people within it.
What knowledge of our organization, its processes, its people, its products and services, our customers, our markets, and our society are we choosing to ignore because, "so far, so good?"
One good way to check this collective syndrome of disowning our own knowledge in organizations is to conduct regular brainstorm sessions that use a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis or Environmental Scan as a starting off point. This tactic forces us to see what's going on in and around our organization, assess the level of threat or opportunity, and to consciously go about doing something about it.
Look around you. Check all your mirrors. Exercise your peripheral vision. What's sneaking up on you in your environment that you hadn't noticed before? What is the market telling you about your products and services? What are your customers telling you every single day in their words and actions, and even more importantly, in what they don't say and don't do? What threats or opportunities right there in front of you have you not taken the time and effort to act upon?
What do you already know to be true that you haven't shared with others or acted upon yourself?
Don't end up in your own self-made tragedy like Hamlet or Lear, or be like that poor guy falling from the skyscraper thinking everything is going to work out just fine, or that dolt in upstate New York staring at a sea of dust bunnies armed only with an expensive vacuum cleaner which no longer works.
Act now on what you know to be true. It's why you're alive.
Posted by Val Vadeboncoeur at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2007Nature and Human Nature
The Mid-Hudson Valley has been home to Idea Champions since we moved up here from Park Slope, Brooklyn in the early 1990's. And we're now entering that red maple and golden oak-hued autumnal season when we can best enjoy that beneficent reality. It's a great time of the year for taking walks, whether for exercise, conversation, or merely to renew the spirit.
When the locals are not enjoying the many bike paths, walking trails, or state parks, they can be seen traipsing along many of our two-lane county roads which are equally plentiful and lovely.
However, on the public thoroughfares, pedestrians, joggers, and bike-riders have to compete with the principal users of roads; cars, trucks and SUVs.
When I'm driving along County Road 32, for example, which takes me to the Idea Champions office, I usually pass at least one pedestrian or bicyclist, if not several. When I can see the road up ahead for a good distance and it's quite safe, I ease my Saab into the left lane as I pass to save the pedestrian or bike-rider the discomfort of having a streamlined ton and a half of metal and glass hurtling past them, just feet away, at 50 miles per hour. It demonstrates common courtesy and makes us all just a little bit safer, so why not? And, being the judgmental sort, I often metaphorically scratch my head at those drivers who choose not to do the same. "Pinheads," I think.
Just recently, I ran across a letter to the editor in our very local paper, The Woodstock Times. I never would have paused to read it had I not noticed the name attached to it: Bar Scott. Bar is an acquaintance and a friend of Idea Champions who lives a few miles from our office. She is a wonderfully accomplished singer/songwriter, besides being a fine example of a fully functioning human being. (You can find out about her and get her latest CDs here, at barscott.com)
In part, her letter read: "After many years of walking here, I want to thank the many drivers who take the extra moment that's needed to steer your car away from me as you drive towards me on the road. It makes a world of difference to me every time you do it. Your kindness means a lot and regularly lifts my spirit as I walk. Thank you."
The graceful tone of this letter struck me. Had I, or a similarly unenlightened individual, written on the same subject, it might have gone something like this: "Why is it that some drivers are so frightened of the solid yellow line down the center of the road that they'd rather put the lives of their fellow citizens at risk than risk touching it with the left wheel of their cars? Do they think that their car is going to explode if they do so? Or are they afraid that a Ninja-outfitted SWAT team, guns ablaze, is going to descend from the trees, shoot out their tires and whisk them and their families to a CIA prison in Romania for the rest of their demented, little lives? What IS the matter with you people!?"
You get the idea.
Now, which approach is more likely to achieve the desired outcome; that is, more drivers becoming considerate enough to steer away from pedestrians when they can? Bar's approach, where she praises considerate drivers... or dum-dum's, where he/I castigate those who fail to do what he/I think they should be doing?
Well, the very same goes for the world of organizations. Even in the highly unlikely event that you're 110% correct in your position, if you communicate like the Lord High Executioner you will most likely not only not get your desired outcome, you'll make any situation worse. Conversely, if you always take the time to "catch people doing things well," and praise and reward them, you end up getting more of the same.
This is simple, basic human nature. When dealing with humans, it's always best to take it into consideration before speaking and acting.
Posted by Val Vadeboncoeur at 07:25 PM | Comments (1)
September 01, 2007Where do Great Ideas come from?
Ever notice how many times the biggest, most successful ideas come from closely imitating some principle at work in nature?
I've kept one particular book around for years both because it contained a statement that really rang my chimes, and it's full of beautiful, striking imagery. The book is, "Bridges, a history of the world's most famous and important spans," by Judith Dupre (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 1997).
And its memorable, "Whoomp, (ta-ta, ta,) there it is," declaration:
"Bridges are based on one or more of three basic structures that are derived from forms found in nature: the beam, from a log fallen across a stream, the arch from natural rock formations, and the suspension from a hanging vine."
So there it is, again: a human "invention" that turns out to be fundamentally "derived from forms found in nature."
As you may have some dim Science class memory of, "Four types of forces act on bridges, either singularly or in combination: tension, compression, shear, and torsion." (Push, pull, slide and twist.) I add this to point out that building a bridge is not as easy as falling off a log, even when you are borrowing the design principle of the log.
There's that funny tendency to see things that work as simple and therefore easy to do. But as anyone who's made something look easy will tell you, it takes a long time and a lot of focused effort for it to appear that way. So, naturally, while a brilliant first step is to work from a natural model, the second, third, fourth, etc., steps are to work like hell refining it. But at least this way, you're working on a foundation that's worth building on.
Talk about creative thinking: this is a remarkable book for another reason. Like her elongated companion volume, "Skyscrapers" (only sideways), Ms. Dupre's book is printed in the long and low format of a foot-and-a-half wide by 8" tall, allowing her subjects to be pictured in their fully horizontal glory.
Posted by Bill Ross at 04:49 PM | Comments (2)
August 16, 2007The Science of Innovation
(By Farrell Reynolds)
I look at Innovation as I would any Science; that is, from the angles of Theoretical, Applied and Practical. I feel many corporations do look at Innovation only from the theoretical POV.
That's fine, but it can't end there. If it does, Innovation becomes a "soft" science, nice to have around but not a "must have" part of the operation. These types of activities are usually the first to go when budgets get trimmed, and are never given the gravitas and respect they deserve.
What does it take to have Innovation looked at as an essential part of the operation of a company, as a hard science that can be applied and practiced?
- Make it a requirement. Markets, distribution and supply channels, customer appetites and the competitive landscape are in a state of constant change. To keep in front of this change requires Innovation. "Don't show up without it!"
- Foster it. People don't just gravitate to innovation. Innovation is hard work. We all must be educated and trained in it. Senior executives must put that training and education in their budgets as they do other types of overhead.
- Don't believe for a minute that innovation is like A Field of Dreams. "Build it and they will come" is folly when trying to create an innovative environment. It must be taught, modeled and rewarded.
- Any Innovation plan must be just that, a hard plan. It can't be an "initiative." A plan has to have milestones and expected results.
These results must be measurable and memorialized in writing. The plan must be full of great leaps. It can't be yesterday's plan with tomorrow's date on it. I'm always amazed how frequently that happens, but I'm not surprised. Innovation is scary and it is hard.
- Just as Innovation must have clear expectations and timelines, it must also have clear rewards. And these rewards should be outrageous!
- Using innovation merely to cut costs is picking the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. It's not even that, now that I think of it -- it's tantamount to picking the fruit up off the ground.
A truly robust, energized and productive Innovation program and culture must be about stellar performance, astounding and consistent displays of energy and creativity, attitudes and aptitudes that bring about cascades of revenue and a feeling of lightness and love permeating the entire organization.
In closing, I'm reminded of the cartoon of two buzzards sitting on a bare branch looking out at a bleak setting. One turns to the other and says, "Screw patience. Let's go out and eat something."
======
Author: Farrell Reynolds
Posted by Bill Ross at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2007Measuring Up
I recently ran across an article that got me thinking about how what we measure can change the way we think about what we measure, and how the latest technology which enables us to measure more and more things is not always our friend.
For several decades now, baseball scouts and coaches have used radar guns to measure how hard pitchers throw. In fact, you can always spot a scout at a baseball game because he's the guy in the stands behind the plate with the radar gun pointed at the pitcher and zealously jotting down little nuggets of facts in his notebook like a squirrel gathering acorns.
Not surprisingly, over time, baseball people have come to value pitchers who can throw hard (95 MPH and faster). This seems to make sense at face value; but if we think about it a bit more we have to ask if throwing a baseball faster actually makes one a better pitcher. The answer is - not necessarily.
There are many factors which come into play in making a pitcher effective. Among these factors are:
1) does the pitcher throw the ball exactly where he wants to throw it?,
2) is it easy or difficult for the batter to see the ball coming out of the pitcher's hand?,
3) can the pitcher throw his array of pitches at different speeds, confusing the batter's timing?, and
4) mound presence; that is, can the pitcher deal with adversity, or does he get rattled when things go wrong? (And they always go wrong.)
Those factors are all more important than how hard a pitcher can throw a baseball. But baseball's obsession with pitch speed, catalyzed by their ease at measuring it due to the radar gun, has caused some organizations to lose focus on what they're really trying to gauge; that is, the pitcher's effectiveness -- can he get batters out?
The Kansas City Royals are engaged in an experiment to challenge the assumption that faster is better.
Dayton Moore, the general manager of the Kansas City Royals, has issued an edict banning radar guns from the lower levels of the organization, where young drafted players first go to gain experience and develop their skills. Moore believes that this will eliminate a big distraction for young pitchers who get caught up in throwing hard, in order to be noticed and promoted, and forget about their jobs of learning how to get batters out.
Only time will tell if Moore's hunches are right, but I, and a host of soft-throwing pitchers in the Baseball Hall of Fame like Whitey Ford and Hoyt Wilhelm, are willing to bet that they are.
Let's end this little thought with the contemporary economist Adam Smith, who said...
Some years ago the sociologist and pollster Daniel Yankelovich described a process he called the McNamara fallacy, after the Secretary of Defense who had so carefully quantified the Vietnam War.'The first step,' he said, 'is to measure what can easily be measured. The second is to disregard what can't be measured, or give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily isn't very important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist.'
The philosopher A. N. Whitehead called this tendency, in another form, 'the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.'
-- "Adam Smith" (George G. W. Goodman), Paper Money, New York: Summit Books, 1981, p. 37
So, the question is, are contemporary business and government leaders all too quickly and lazily falling into the trap of McNamara's Fallacy? Are we measuring only that which is easy to measure (and money, for one thing, is easy to measure) and making decisions based merely on those numbers because other important factors, such as long-term effects on quality of life and the environment, are just too difficult to quantify? Should we all be rethinking what we measure and why, just like the Kansas City Royals are? And what are our own industry's "radar gun measurements" that give us easy-to-acquire numbers that gather importance simply because they're easy to get?
Finally,this seems as appropriate an occasion as any to remind you of the immortal words of that Big Guy in the Sky...no, not HIM/HER/IT... but Albert Einstein who, as we all know by now once said: "Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts!"
(Photo from Flickr by chuckles396)
Posted by Val Vadeboncoeur at 02:43 PM | Comments (1)
August 10, 2007How the great Celtics teams won: by Keeping It Simple
For those of you not up on your basketball lore, the (newly reborn, triple-threat) Boston Celtics won something like eleventeen championships under Red Auerbach, as coach then as team-building GM. Auerbach died last year at a still-feisty 89.
Bob Cousy was a central figure in the first six of those titles, teaming up with Bill Russell. Cousy was a 13-time All-Star, named one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players in '96, and the original ball-handling wizard throwing jaw-dropping passes with his x-ray court vision.
In one of his books, he talked about how much Red Auerbach's pragmatic management style contributed to their success.
"Red wasn't worried about X's and O's. He seldom is. His approach is to go to the heart of the problem and try to solve it."Auerbach continued to demonstrate that he knows how to win with the least amount of wasted motion in the most pragmatic way. He could appraise talent, he could motivate players, and he was an excellent bench coach.
"His was a glorified seat-of-the-pants approach. Once he got the players, Red exercised little direction other than gearing some plays to match individual talents.
"With Red it was, what does it take to win? Find the talent, get them in shape, keep them motivated, and don't get fancy. That's basically what we did."
- From Cousy on the Celtic Mystique, by Bob Cousy and Bob Ryan, 1988.
Anything that Auerbach said more than once is a permanent, glorified part of the Celtics Legend, so it's often repeated what he'd say to the players the comparatively few times they came back to the bench in disarray: "Let's keep it simple, fellas."
Posted by Bill Ross at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2007It's Innovation Time at the OK Corel
In an effort to jump start innovation, Corel (the maker of Word Perfect software,) recreates startup environments in-house. When an employee has a bright idea, he/she can apply for a two-week pass along with one or two other people in a virtual garage situation to develop the idea. At the end of the two weeks, if the idea continues to look promising, the employee can apply for another two week pass and so on, as long as the idea keeps looking like a winner.
I like this idea a lot. It keeps innovation in-the-moment. After all, most innovation is driven by passion, fascination, and intrinsic motivation -- not bureaucratic processes. If you (or your company) don't have a way for winning ideas to take root and grow, you can throw "innovation" out the window along with all those other brainstorms of yours that never made it beyond cocktail party chatter.
You may have the best strategic plan this side of Pluto, but unless you have a simple way to honor the sudden appearance of breakthrough thinking, who cares?
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "It's not enough to be busy. Ants are busy. What are we busy about?"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:15 PM | Comments (2)
July 31, 2007Frank Gehry's Designing By Prototype
Columnist Dale Dauten wrote recently about some of the insights on creative thinking gained from observing the revolutionary architect in "The Sketches of Frank Gehry," Director Sydney Pollack's first documentary, new on DVD. "We get to learn how a genius works," he writes.
"Frank Gehry is the architect who did the curving, soaring metal walls of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, as well as Disney Hall in Los Angeles. He is the one who lets us walk into 'out of the box.'Dauten, taking the dare, as it were, starts creatively cross-referencing:"During his early Gehry spent his time hanging out with artists rather than fellow architects.
"He works by taking sheets of heavy paper and making models out of them. Not blocks, not wood or Styrofoam, but paper. When one of the models becomes an idea worth pursuing, it goes through an evolution, a series of models of increasing sophistication."
"If we wanted to apply his style to, say, working on a new sales presentation, we wouldn't use other sales presentations for ideas, we'd use novels or plays, movies, paintings . . . maybe even, I don't know, zoos, or airports. And not just one, but dozens. Some would become rough models, several going at once.""Inside the brain of a genius lies lessons on generating & implementing ideas" by Dale Dauten, 5/6/07
(Gehry's "Dancing Building" in Prague. Uploaded on Flickr by astilly.)
Rapid Prototyping, Dan Bricklin, & "Serious Play"
This reminded me of another recent read on the power of creating with the method of "rapid prototyping," from Dan Bricklin's blog. Bricklin is of course the co-inventor of the electronic spreadsheet, VisiCalc (the original Excel, and the first "killer app" on what were then "personal computers"), among other programming breakthroughs in simplification.
Bricklin was recommending a book by a friend of his, "Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate," by Michael Schrage. (Serious Play -- a mighty concept in its own right.)
Bricklin writes,
"Ever since my father first taught me as a child to prototype things before I built them, simulation has been a major part of my career. He was a printer who learned to mock up brochures and newsletters before printing to make sure his customers knew what they'd get. I applied the technique when creating the spreadsheet, itself a prototyping tool, going through several prototypes before Bob (Frankston) and I built the real thing, learning a lot from each."
The principle here is to work fast and loose in the draft phase, to let the ideas flow. Then it's easier to see what you've got, so you're constructing the end-product from an already evolved version. That's the right time to get real particular about the particulars, not when you're first developing the raw idea.
Posted by Bill Ross at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2007InnovationTools' "Quote of the Week" is from Mitch
In a nice and unexpected coincidence with the kickoff of our blog here, the Quote of the Week in the current InnovationWeek newsletter is from our own Mitch Ditkoff, President and co-founder of Idea Champions. The newsletter is published by the respected InnovationTools.com.
Innovation Quote of the Week"In today's flattened, restructured, downsized organization, your role is much more than getting the best out of people. It's getting the best out of the best part of people - out of their inspired imaginations, their ability to dream, conjure and conceive - and transforming those inspired ideas into the products, services and improvements that will not only keep your business humming, but make the world an even better place for all of us to live."
- Mitch Ditkoff
The quote comes from near the end of an article of Mitch's, "Innovation Coaching, The Manager as Idea Midwife." The article also appears on the InnovationTools site (demonstrating at the very least what a thorough reader their Chuck Frey is).
Posted by Bill Ross at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2007Talking Innovation: 3M's Secret Weapon
When talking (or blogging) about practical innovation in the corporate world, there's no better place to start than 3M, a company whose name has become synonymous with the word. 3M is committed to 30% of its revenues coming from recently introduced new products.
Impressive, indeed, but how do they do it?
Dr. Larry Wendling, VP of 3M's corporate research labs, revealed 3M's "secret weapon," in what he refers to as the "Seven Habits of Highly Innovative Organizations."
The Seven Habits are (paraphrased from Amy Rowell's Innovate Forum article):
1. Totally commit to innovation from top management on down.
2. Actively maintain an innovative culture.
3. Maintain a broad base of technology.
4. Encourage formal and informal networking.
5. Reward employees.
6. Quantify efforts.
7. Tie research to customers.
It all makes perfect sense, of course, starting with Wendling's first habit, the commitment of top management. But the fourth habit, what Wendling calls 3M's "secret weapon," is often overlooked, or even ignored, much of the time in organizations. In Rowell's words: "Talk, talk, talk. Management at 3M has long encouraged networking -- formal and informal -- among its researchers."
I think Wendling calls this 3M's "secret weapon" because so few other companies do this well, or are even aware of its importance. But what could be more important to innovation than encouraging the collaboration and teamwork we know lies behind every innovation since the invention of the wheel?
This is where the "silo" mentality and the "not invented here" syndrome intrudes on an innovation culture. Strict, formal reporting structures, loyalty to business unit before the organization, and the human tendency to only interact with people who already share our own views and experiences, all come into play. Any or all of these can block, or at least slow down, many companies' internal "network of innovation."
I can't tell you how many times I've facilitated a brainstorm session at a major corporation when a proposed idea will get criticized, or even rejected, because the development of the idea would involve another department or business unit! Sometimes the excuse is that there is no protocol for working with the other unit, and one would have to be created. Sometimes there is a poor previous history of collaboration between the two departments, (often involving, unsurprisingly, the two people at the top of each division).
In any case, I can't help but wonder how many great ideas fall between the cracks because executing them falls between the purviews of two different departments. And, unfortunately, it is in space between two major realms of focused business activity where we would expect to find some of the most exciting and profitable innovations!
To its credit, 3M actively encourages employees to talk to each other; across business units and despite formal roles, responsibilities, and organizational charts. If an employee has the kernel of an idea, he (or she) has the permission, indeed, the responsibility, to reach out and find out if it's viable, or if someone else has the missing piece. They're free to ask if others are interested in developing it, no matter where they work in the organization! (You mean you're allowed to DO that? Who knew?)
So, how does YOUR company's culture deal with employee networking? Does it encourage employees reaching out across organizational boundaries to share insights and ideas? Does it ignore this important aspect of innovation? Or is it actually hostile to it, punishing employees who reach out to others in order to get something started?
Here's a relatively cost-free way to improve the culture of innovation of your organization. Take advantage of 3M's experience and success and make employee networking your innovation "secret weapon" as well.
And, yes, you ARE allowed to do that!
Posted by Val Vadeboncoeur at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)
