Innovators Guide

Project Voyeurism

It's very motivating to look around and see how much else is getting done.

Behance: Tip: 10 Realizations For Productivity & Making Ideas Happen.

5. A degree of voyeurism and transparency keeps us engaged.
Twitter and other online “activity feeds” prove that the future of communication is passive as well as active. Being able to tune in and search everything that happens around you is more valuable than getting emails or holding “status posting” meetings.

Making Innovation Central

Not everyone is equally comfortable with innovation, but everyone should be thinking about it more or less. Everyone needs to be willing to give it a whack now and then.

WSJ and MIT Sloan Management Review for the Business Insight Journal Report: Software Firm Is Open for Innovation, 2008-Jul-7, by Josh Hyatt: 

Martin Myklos, MySQL chief, interviewed:

BUSINESS INSIGHT: Is there any way to organize a company for innovation? Build it into the structure of a business?

MR. MICKOS: We don't have an innovation team or group. Innovation is so central to us that everybody does it. Our innovations are not meeting-centric. We prefer trial and error, getting scrutiny and commentary from everyone.

BUSINESS INSIGHT: Does innovation always have to be informal? Is that the only way it can happen?

MR. MICKOS: I think so. I think that innovation happens in encounters when you encounter other people and also when you step over some boundary and you combine ideas that haven't been combined before. The original innovation moment always has the aspect of being chaotic.

BUSINESS INSIGHT: Couldn't a potential competitor use your code as a starting point to get into the business -- and crush you?

MR. MICKOS: Even if someone studied us in tiny detail, I don't think they could really match us. We've shown them our code, and nobody has been able to measure up against what we have.

BUSINESS INSIGHT: Why is that?

MR. MICKOS: Even if I showed you my DNA, you wouldn't know how to become me.

Where to Find the Will

Generally, the leader has to paint a picture of the burning platform, and make it real for his or her followers. That's more than talking about. You have to integrate the knowledge into your actions. Act like the platform is burning us all.

Principled Innovation: The will to innovate. 2008-Jun-25, by Jeff De Cagna

When you get down to brass tacks, making innovation happen is entirely a matter of personal and organizational will.  It’s that simple, and that hard.

A Mind for Growing Business

A friend of mine has a small but well established company with about 30 employees, but she hasn't been able to grow her company over the last 5 years. I've usually ascribed the problem to her being a micro-manager, but I know the problem is really more complex than that. This article for a special report in the Wall Street Journal brings up a bunch of limiting attitudes which can get in the way of growth. The authors identified the "mind for growing business" as the 'pragmatic idealist'--combining characteristics which are usually seen as mutually exclusive.

What strikes me is that I do have this mindset. I do trust people, want to learn from them, and keep scanning the environment for opportunities. I think my problem is too many small bets....

The Wall Street Journal: In Search of Growth Leaders, 2008-Jul-7, by Sean D. Carr, Jeanne M. Liedtka, Robert Rosen and Robert E. Wiltbank (subscription required)

Pragmatic Idealists
In assembling teams, growth leaders learned to combine two seemingly opposing forces: holding people ruthlessly accountable for results, and engaging their passion to build something great together. Their overall approach was to be tough but fair. But they were adamant about acquiring staff with only the needed skill sets. Team effectiveness often depended on moving people quickly into positions that optimized their strengths, and removing people who did not fit or who lacked the necessary capabilities. Groups pursuing new ventures were seen as no place for rookies. As one leader commented, growth initiatives should be about testing markets, not people. Yet despite this hard-nosed attitude, employees who worked for such managers invariably described them in terms such as "caring," "motivating" and "inspiring." Managers in our study were also pragmatic in dealing with corporate bureaucracy: They didn't fight the organization; they saved their energy to fight in the marketplace.

What a Breath of Fresh Air

Used to be, one could do a search on "innovation" and get something interesting. These days it's likely to be dreck.

Doors of Perception: Innovating our way to oblivion. 2008-Jun-16, by John Thackara

Out-of-control buzzwords are like locusts: you can swat handfuls of them down with a bat, but more will come to take their place.

I've been swatting away for ages in this blog at all things Conceptual, Cultural, Clustered and (especially) Creative. But now we're suffering a massive counter-attack by the word Innovation - 137 million uses of which are known to Google alone.

A good proportion of these mentions probably belong to the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in the UK. Nesta's mission is to "make innovation flourish," and one way it does this is by using the world innovation in every second or third sentence of the emails it sends me.

Now Nesta is staffed by smart and well-connected people, and most of my clients think innovation is the very elixir of life itself - so I probably shouldn't say this. But I have to, because it's important:

INNOVATION IS NOT GOOD IN ITSELF - IN FACT, MORE INNOVATION DOES HARM, THAN DOES GOOD.

Building My Own Innovation Network

I was very distressed to realize I have nothing to talk about today. I buzzed over to a couple of good innovation blogs and read about how other people are working together. As usual, I'm working by myself. My partner in Active Canines is coming over later today but I don't know what we're going to do.

It's becoming clear that unless I get a working group together, no work will get done. Yet, I still have at lot of challenges with time and transportation. I guess I'll just have to keep swimming.

Something to Look Forward To

Jay Cross, one of the pioneers of web-based education, believes the nature of education has changed, as does Clay Christiansen, and his next book on Informal Learning will be an Un-Book. Alas, the web site is open yet, but you can see a movie about his plans.

Internet Time Blog: 10, 2008-Jun-7, by Jay Cross

Today I completed the first release of my un-book. It’s a modern-day Whole Earth Catalog which provides access to tools for improving individual and organizational performance. The un-book’s content changes day to day; the hard copy portion is printed on demand. The printed pages are the tip of a heap of resources on the web. A parallel community provides the opportunity to suggest improvements and additions, and to network with other subscribers. The un-book will always be in beta, forever an unfolding experiment. I expect to release the un-book within ten days.

Risk versus Uncertainty

While the risks will sort themselves out in predictable ways, the "unknown unknowns" will always throw a lot of surprises into the outcomes. Uncertainty grows as we move into unknown territory--where innovations occur.

WSJ.com: Inherently Risky Business, 2008-Jun-16, by L. Gordon Crovitz

In this Information Age, when we take pride in knowing, parsing and spreading risk, how can we not have the information? The explanation is the much-overlooked difference between risk and uncertainty. Unlike risk, financial uncertainty is not about probabilities so much as the animal spirits that move markets in ways even Federal Reserve governors cannot explain, much less control.

Big Failure and Big Ideas

Everyone should hear or read the J. K. Rowling commencement address to this year's Harvard graduating class. All the way through.

When I talk about failure, I'm usually talking about little failures. Rowling experienced a "big failure," allowing her to say "rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." She goes on to say that such failure allows you to strip away everything superfluous in life and focus on what matters.

She also talks about the importance of imagining ourselves into other people's situations. The better we can do that, the bigger the difference we can make. There's something to keep in mind whenever you're trying to innovate.

Harvard Magazine J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement, 2008-Jun

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

What Does an Idea Look Like?

Lightning bolts, LED lights, and brains have been suggested.

Creative Think: Death Notice of a Creative Metaphor, 2008-Jun-2, by Roger von Oech

We were reviewing cover mock-ups for one of my upcoming projects. One of them had a light bulb — symbolizing a "new idea."

I told her: "We can't use the light bulb for two reasons. First, it's a very, very, very old metaphor for a new idea. And second, the environmentalists are going to vilify the incandescent light bulb in coming years."

So long, trusty innovation metaphor. You served well! But it's time to find something new.

Question: What are your suggestions for the new creativity metaphor?