Bad Gatekeepers

Rob Cross, Andrew Hardagon, Salvatore Parise, and Robert Thomas have written a good column for the Wall Street Journal on the barriers to innovation at large companies.  Among other things, they argue that bad gatekeepers stifle innovation at many firms.  According to these scholars,

"A second problem arises when a handful of experts dominate a company's information and decision-making networks. Simply put, these are people to whom employees must turn to find the information they need to do their job properly or to get approval for projects.Very often, these gatekeepers hold their esteemed position for good reason -- they have technical expertise or other skills that have served the company well. But they may not be the best judges of new ideas, and their expertise in one area may in fact blind them to innovations in other areas."

How do you avoid this problem?  In my research, I have argued that senior executives need to occasionally circumvent the gatekeepers so as to access unfiltered information about key issues, threats, and opportunities facing the company.  Gatekeepers often serve a useful purpose, but they also impede information flow.  They do not have to have bad intentions to stifle innovation.  It simply may be the case that their own biases and predispositions may cloud their view on new ideas.  Moreover, it may be that they sense a different set of priorities among senior executives, and therefore, choose not to champion particular ideas that have bubbled up from below.   How do you circumvent the gatekeepers?   I would argue that you have to be quite intentional as well as transparent.  You need to find ways to open a direct line of communication with front-line employees, customers, and suppliers... while being transparent so that middle managers do not feel that you are "cutting them out of the loop."

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Saturday Night Live: Great Sketch on Google Glass!

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3D Printing and Rapid Prototyping

This very good USA Today article describes the impact that 3D printing is having on innovation processes.  This new technology has enabled firms to build incredible prototypes, so that they can bring innovations to market faster and more effectively.   I think the technology has great promise, and firms can use it effectively to test out new ideas.

Having said that, I think firms can fall in love with the concept of 3D printing prematurely.   It is expensive to purchase and use this new technology.   On most occasions, firms would benefit from beginning with a very inexpensive, crude prototype.  They need not spend much money at all.  They simply want to begin the discussion about a new idea, and offer folks a chance to touch and feel a product. 

Source: Fast Company

As an example, consider this article in Fast Company about the creation of the Nike FuelBand.  The article describes the first prototypes shown to Nike CEO Mark Parker.  One prototype is shown here.  It's a simple prototype made from a Velcro strap.   It made a huge impression on Parker, and from there, Nike developed a hit new product. 

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Just Assume Your Business Model is Obsolete

Geoff Colvin, the terrific columnist at Fortune, wrote the following this week:

"Innovation" is the hottest word in business, but most of the discussion centers on products and services. The more profound challenge for most companies now is imagining a new business model, a new answer to the fundamental question, How do we make money?  You will face this challenge. For convenience, just assume the following: Your business model doesn't work anymore. That blunt claim won't be far wrong. Even if the model has worked for decades, even if it's working okay right now, odds are that it soon won't be.

I love the advice.  In fact, I would argue that every company should take his recommendation, and simply assume their business model is obsolete.  In other words, chief executives should gather the senior management team and ask them to begin a discussion with that basic assumption.  What would a new business model look like?   Don't wait for revenues to sag or margins to decrease.  Don't wait for new rivals to emerge, or substitutes to disrupt your industry.  Engage in the exercise even if conditions seem quite good for your company at the moment.   Simply going through this process may lead to some valuable insights.  Then make this thought experiment a part of your repertoire... engage in it from time to time with the senior team.   Don't make an annual exercise.  Routinizing it would probably kill its efficacy.  However, when the timing seems right, and the team needs to reflect on some traditional orthodoxies that might be holding the firm back... challenge the team to assume the firm's business model has become obsolete.  

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Peripheral Knowledge & Breakthrough Innovation

My former graduate school classmate, Martine Haas (now a professor at Wharton), has written a new paper exploring how peripheral knowledge might impact breakthrough innovation.  Haas describes peripheral knowledge as information and ideas that may not seem pertinent to a particular task, that are outside of that technical domain.   Haas argues that that peripheral knowledge drives innovation through two mechanisms:  transplantation and perspective shifting. Haas defines transplantation as "the direct transfer of artifacts, technologies or practices from peripheral domains into core domains, with or without some modification."    Perspective shifting means that " expertise or experience in a peripheral domain leads work group members to see a problem in a core domain differently, thus revealing new solutions." 

Haas and her co-author, Wendy Ham, go on to argue that having more one person exploring a peripheral knowledge domain can be helpful, but of course, that takes scarce attention away from the specific task at hand.  In short, it's a balancing act:  How much time should we spend focusing narrowly on the task at hand versus moving outside of that area to explore potentially, but perhaps not very useful, topics? 

One last challenge:  Which peripheral domain will be most useful?  Well that's a tough one.  It's difficult to know in advance.  However, I do think groups can be purposeful about peripheral knowledge accumulation.  At leading design firms, they think carefully about related domains that are worthy of exploration.  They examine industries or products that might be in some way analogous to their current project, and then they explore those areas.   Stepping back at the start of a project to think about potentially useful peripheral knowledge could be a key step in an innovation team's work. 

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Bryant IDEA

Over the past year, I have worked with an incredible group of people to create, plan, and execute Bryant IDEA: Innovation and Design Experience For All - a three day innovation immersion experience for all 746 first-year students.   Students applied design thinking to tackle complex real world problems.  They conducted anthropological research in the community, engaged in brainstorming sessions, and employed rapid prototyping techniques to develop creative solutions to these challenges.   Faculty, staff, upperclassmen students, and alumni mentored these student teams.  It was an exhausting and thrilling experience.  I hope you enjoy this video. 

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Does going public stifle innovation?

Stanford Professor Shai Bernstein has conducted a new study on the rate of innovation at firms who issue an initial public offering.   According to Bernstein, "Using patent-based metrics, I find that the
quality of internal innovation declines following the IPO, and firms experience both an exodus of skilled inventors and a decline in productivity of remaining inventors."    Specifically, he found a "substantial decline of approximately 40 percent in innovation novelty as measured by patent citations."  Note that he didn't find the overall number of patents decreasing for these firms, just the level of breakthrough developments.  Bernstein also finds that post-IPO firms tend to shift toward acquisitions to drive innovation.  In the five years after an initial public offering, roughly 1/3 of the patents tend to come from acquisitions.  Finally, he finds a much smaller (and not statistically significant) decline in innovation novelty at those firms whose CEO also serves as Chairman (as compared to companies who have split the Chairman/CEO positions).  What explains that finding?  Bernstein hypothesizes that the CEO who also serves as Chairman is more "entrenched" and less susceptible to short-term profit pressures from Wall Street.  Therefore, he or she may be able to invest more freely in research and development that may have a low probability of succeeding, but could lead to a breakthrough innovation. 

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Innovate by Looking for Problem Patterns

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David Kelley on 60 Minutes

60 Minutes ran a terrific and emotional feature last night on David Kelley, founder of design firm IDEO.

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Staples: Innovating The Multi-Channel Experience

Staples ranks as the second largest online merchant  behind Amazon.  Now it hopes to expand upon its prior success on-line.  The company hopes to provide an improved multi-channel experience for its customers.  In other words, the firm wants to meet the needs of customers no matter how they shop, while providing a seamless experience across multiple platforms and channels.   To move forward in this regard, the company has opened a new Velocity innovation lab in Cambridge, MA.  Senior Vice President Brian Tilzer explains to Boston.com the purpose of the new lab:

"The vision for this center is to create a place where we can test, learn and iterate as rapidly as possible around new technologies," says Tilzer. As examples, he cited "thinking about how to leverage big data to deliver personalized experiences" and "helping consumers understand what services are available related to a particular product, like a laptop." But there will also be some blue-sky brainstorming, too, to "produce really cool stuff that's meaningful to our customers."

 The lab concept sounds very interesting, particularly when you note the location.  Staples is headquartered in Framingham, MA - in the suburbs about 15 miles west of Boston.  The lab is located in Cambridge, MA - right near where innovative partners have chosen to set up shop, including Endeca, Akamai, and Google.   The location is key to the concept in my view, because Staples understands that the cross-fertilization of ideas skyrockets when you put folks in close proximity to a number of other firms working on related issues and concepts.  It also moves these employees away from the "mother ship" so that they can think more freely, and not be trapped by the conventional wisdom and ingrained processes of the corporate center. 

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Associational Thinking & Creativity

Entreprenuer Kevon Saber has written a good column on creativity for Fast Company.  He focuses on the notion that we should expose our people to ideas from different industries and disciplines to help stimulate creativity.   Saber points that many new ideas come from "associational thinking" - the ability to draw unique connections among seemingly unrelated concepts from different fields.  His column offers some ideas for stimulating associational thinking, drawing on the practices of various innovative companies.   I liked this particular technique quite a bit:

The event website Eventbrite hosts “Brite Camps,” internal training events led by different team members. Held during company hours, team members lead how-to sessions on varied topics from photo editing to options trading to poker. These interactive sessions not only strengthen company culture, they also build dexterity in team members to better conceptualize new ideas. It’s another case of diverse stimuli boosting the creative potential of a team.

While I do love these types of activities, I think that they cannot replace the most important method for stimulating associational thinking - READING.  Individuals can derive tremendous value from making a habit of reading voraciously about what is going on in other industries and disciplines.  We should not trap ourselves by only reading in our own specialized domain. 

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Overcoming Our Rigidity, Opening Our Minds

Ben Weinlick has a terrific article over at The Creativity Post blog.  The post is titled, "Defeating Rigid Habits to Spark Creativity."  He has some good suggestions including:

• Defeat habits by being curious about interesting ideas and interesting people
• Defeat habits by engaging lots of interests and hobbies
• Defeat habits by consciously shaking up routines
• Defeat habits by asking the “dumb questions”
• Defeat habits by hanging out with weird
• Defeat habits by focusing on a problem and then letting go; do something totally different
• Defeat habits by including people in your projects who are from outside your domain
• Defeat habits by developing a culture of serious play.  

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Taking the Bus Together?

Adam Bryant of the New York Times recently interviewed Jarrod Moses, chief executive of the marketing agency United Entertainment Group.   Moses talked about a very unique aspect of his company's culture.  Here's an excerpt:

One of the first things we bought was a tour bus. We use it instead of flying. We take it at least 25 times a year to different meetings throughout the country. There’s an amazing culture that develops on the bus. You learn so much about one another, and you develop this candor and trust that you don’t get in the office. The creative juices just flow, and they flow 24 hours. They could come from a joke; they could come because someone is just overtired. You never know.  The point is that there’s no barrier to entry for the idea. People are wearing T-shirts and shorts. No one is the C.E.O. on the bus. It’s like a band. There’s a magic to it. 

Now I know what many of you are thinking... this silly stuff is for creatives, but not for us.  Well, the point really isn't about whether you should run out and buy a tour bus.  Here's the major lesson from this story:  Environment matters.  When we think about creativity and innovation, we should think about more than just finding highly creative people.  We should think about creating environments where many people can be candid, exhibit creativity, and drive innovation.  Sometimes that means taking people out of their normal work routines.  It means creating a situation where people can engage in divergent thinking and be more candid... where we are diminishing status differences and flattening the hierarchy. 

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How Big Companies Act Like Startups

Soren Kaplan wrote a terrific article recently for Fast Company.   Kaplan explained how some large companies try to act more like startups in an effort to jumpstart innovation.  He outlines four key practices/principles that invigorate innovation:

1. Follow customers home:  In other words, conduct anthropological research.  Go into customer homes and observe them in their natural settings using various products and services.

2.  Tap outside collaborators:  Bring in experts and innovators from outside the firm to bring fresh perspectives, explain their research, and educate folks about how things are done elsewhere.

3.  Stay small:  Don't think in terms of bet-the-company type projects.  Think instead in terms of low cost, rapid experimentation.

4.  Use the best, invent the rest:  Creating a new product or service doesn't mean inventing the entire thing from scratch.  Often, you can combine off-the-shelf components with proprietary innovations to develop a unique new product.

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Do We Grow More Creative As We Age?

The conventional wisdom suggests that we generate fewer breakthrough ideas as we grow older.  An article in Psychology Today challenges that notion.   In the short essay, Dr. Gary Small, Director of the UCLA Center on Aging, offers an interesting perspective.  He says,  "There are neuro-circuitry factors that can favor age in terms of innovation".  Small emphasizes that empathy plays a major role in creativity, and we tend to become more empathetic later in life.   I found that point quite fascinating, given that design thinking stresses the importance of observing users in their natural setting and then empathizing with users - their problems, struggles, and needs.  

In addition, Dr. Small argues that we become better at pattern recognition as we age.  That makes some sense too.  After all, intuition does play a major role in the creative process.  Intuition essentially is the ability to recognize patterns based on deep expertise in a particular domain.  We refine our pattern recognition ability through a breadth and depth of experiences over time.

Having said all that, I have written previously on this blog about research showing that scholarly productivity in many fields does decline with age, though the peak performance differs based on the field of research.   Thus, we want to take this particular article with a bit of grain of salt.   The argument, though, that empathy and pattern recognition improve with age, makes a good deal of sense.  It suggests that innovation teams may want a good balance of young and old members, rather than simply stacking the groups with "the best and brightest young minds." 

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How Amazon Works Backwards

Ian McAllister of Amazon posted this interesting note on Quora about innovation at Amazon:

There is an approach called "working backwards" that is widely used at Amazon. We try to work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it. While working backwards can be applied to any specific product decision, using this approach is especially important when developing new products or features.

For new initiatives a product manager typically starts by writing an internal press release announcing the finished product. The target audience for the press release is the new/updated product's customers, which can be retail customers or internal users of a tool or technology. Internal press releases are centered around the customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions.

If the benefits listed don't sound very interesting or exciting to customers, then perhaps they're not (and shouldn't be built). Instead, the product manager should keep iterating on the press release until they've come up with benefits that actually sound like benefits. Iterating on a press release is a lot less expensive than iterating on the product itself (and quicker!).

I love this approach.  The idea of working backwards has many benefits.  First, it really causes you to sharpen your idea.  You have to be able to communicate it crisply and concisely.  If you can't, then you probably don't have a clear strategy yet.  Second, it puts you in the shoes of the customer reading that press release.  It makes you think about how they will perceive your innovation.  Third, it helps you sharpen your understanding of the target market.  Who precisely is the target?  What do they care about?  Finally, it provides a clear, compelling direction for your team - they will have a strong shared understanding of the vision they are trying to achieve. 

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Did Decentralizing R&D Hurt P&G?

Coleman Lochner at Bloomberg Business Week writes today about the struggles at P&G.  Specifically, Lochner examines the slowdown in product innovation at a firm famous for its breakthroughs in the past.  Lochner displays a chart, posted below, which shows the slowdown in the company's R&D spending over the past few years.














Why the decrease at a firm so well known for innovation?  After all, Lafley made a major push to increase the rate of innovation.  He invested heavily in ethnographic marketing research and the introduction of design thinking methods.   He also embraced open innovation and collaboration with external partners.  Many observers credited these moves with accelerating the pace of innovation at P&G during his tenure.

Lochner offers an interesting explanation for the decrease in R&D spending, given that Lafley did emphasize new product development so much.  He writes,

 "Lafley also decentralized R&D, making business-unit heads responsible for developing new items. R&D chief Brown says that inadvertently slowed innovation by more closely tying research spending to immediate profit concerns. Between 2003 and 2008, the sales of new launches shrank by half. By the time McDonald became CEO in 2009, the number of what the company considered to be big product breakthroughs had fallen to an average of fewer than six per year as unit heads focused on short-term results and smaller inventions, says Brown."

 I found this observation very powerful.  Often, we advocate decentralization in organizations, because we want to empower those closer to the customer.   However, this example demonstrates a key downside of decentralization.   If you couple decentralization with an incentive scheme that may put a bit too much focus on short term profits, then you could get decisions that are harmful in the long run.   The business units may simply feel too much pressure to "make the numbers" and not invest enough for the long run.   Leadership development programs that rotate executives often into new roles also can result in excessive focus on short term results.

One caveat though... Much research shows that R&D spending is not strongly correlated with successful new product development.  It's not just how much you spend; it's how you spend it.  Therefore, before we can jump to conclusions about the chart above, we would need to know more about how P&G is engaging in R&D.  Perhaps the challenges lie in the methods and processes, not just the spending levels. 

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Making Yourself Uncomfortable ... On Purpose?

Fast Company has published an article by Gina Sclafani, Creative Director at Grey New York (an advertising, public relations, and branding agency).  Sclafani describes a policy implemented by her boss, Tor Myhren, at the New York office.  Myhren declared Thursday mornings the "No-Meeting Zone."    Workers should use this time to think creatively, expand their minds, and work on new ideas that are not getting enough attention because of the day-to-day work.  

Sclafani decided to use this time to "learn about something I am not interested in."  She thought that going outside of her comfort zone would enable her to "find meaning and create connections."  She also thought it would be lots of fun.    She learned that moving outside of her comfort zone was not fun at all... in fact, it was painful at times.  As she wrote, "I’m no neurologist but I am now certain that the synapses in your brain like the familiar path. It’s fast and easy. Diverting hurts."  

She also found it rewarding though.  Sclafani discovered that it did help expand her mind and make new connections.  It took some persistence though.  Sometimes it was not fun.  On other occasions, she was too busy to actually devote the three hours on Thursday morning to working on something truly novel and outside of her day-to-day work.   We might all try to follow her example though.  Could we devote a few hours each week (even each month) to going outside our comfort zone, learning or exploring something new?  Could it help us make a creative breakthrough? 

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A Creativity Lesson from John Cleese

Rae Ann Fera has written a column for Fast Company about comedic actor John Cleese and his ideas regarding creativity.  I found the article quite fascinating, particularly Cleese's point about the importance of play.  Cleese tells the story of Sussex University Professor Brian Bates and his study of architects.  Here is what Fera wrote about Bates' conclusions from his research:

The first thing he discovered is that the creative architects knew how to play. They could get immersed in a problem. It was almost childlike, like when a child gets utterly absorbed in a problem. The second thing was that they deferred making decisions as long as they could. This is surprising.
If you have a decision to make, what is the single most important question to ask yourself? I believe it’s ‘when does this decision have to be made’? When most of us have a problem that’s a little bit unresolved, we’re a little bit uncomfortable. We want to resolve it. The creative architects had this tolerance for this discomfort we all feel when we leave things unresolved. Why would those two things be importance? The playfulness is because in that moment of childlike play, you’re much more in touch with your unconscious. The second is that when you defer decisions as long as possible, it’s giving your unconscious the maximum amount of time to come up with something.

 As a research on decision-making, I found this point about deferring decisions quite interesting.   Often you hear people bemoaning the chronic indecision that they observe in their organizations.   Here though, Bates' research shows that sometimes we have to give ourselves time to let thoughts and ideas percolate.  I found it a bit hard to reconcile this advice with one of the key principles from design thinking...which is that we learn and improve very effectively through trial and error.   In other words, take action, experiment, and learn and adapt from that trial.  How does one reconcile that model of innovation with this advice to defer decisions at times?   I think the idea here is that "deferring decisions" doesn't preclude trial and error.  It simply means not setting things in concrete too soon.   It means exploring options and waiting to commit fully to particular path.  Trial and error, in fact, can help sort out those plausible options,and it can be part of the "play" process.  

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Will Non-Experts Fuel Future Disruptive Innovation?

Highly successful entrepreneur and philanthropist Naveen Jain has published an interesting essay on the Forbes website.  Jain argues that non-experts will fuel much of the future disruptive innovations.  He challenges Gladwell's emphasis on experts in his book, Outliers.  Jain explains that the experts won't necessarily be the ones to solve some of the world's most challenging problems. 

Jain offers two main reasons.  First, he explains that experts can often be quite myopic.   Second, Jain argues that information is widely available these days, not restricted to a few experts.   Moreover, technology is moving so quickly that expertise seems to become outdated much sooner than in the past.  Here is an excerpt that describes his thinking:

The human brain, or more specifically the neo-cortex, is designed to recognize patterns and draw conclusions from them. Experts are able to identify such patterns related to a specific problem relevant to their area of knowledge. But because non-experts lack that base of knowledge, they are forced to rely more on their brain’s ability for abstraction, rather than specificity. This abstraction—the ability to take away or remove characteristics from something in order to reduce it to a set of essential characteristics—is what presents an opportunity for creative solutions.

Do you agree with his arguments? 

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