Three Sure Ways to Kill Innovation

Slides from the Harbinger presentation at Innovations 2011, a premier event showcasing technology innovations in India, conducted by IIT Bombay Alumni Association.

 

Sometimes stating the negative is a great way of clarifying the positive. Therefore, instead of worrying about how to encourage innovation, let us talk about...

We are going to learn this in three easy steps. Ready? Let's go. Step one is...

Children carry little baggage of pre-conceived notions. They are open, curious, and prone to ask the question "why not?", which incidentally is the key phrase in innovation. Once you stop acting like a child, you have embarked on the path to kill innovation. Now you are ready for step 2, which is...

When Leonardo Da Vinci designed the ornithopter shown here, the materials required for building one were centuries away from being available. He dreamed ahead. When you stop dreaming, you are well on your way to thwart innovation. Now on to step 3...

Innovation is a hero-journey and the biggest devil of self-doubt is within us. Instead of slaying it, be its advocate, join other devil's advocates surrounding you and start doubting the merit of each innovative idea. Find out everything that could go wrong with it. Now, you have effectively killed the idea.

That's it, folks. Follow these these three simple steps...
 

Innovation and marketing together go a long way in building the right company. Innovative entrepreneurship thrives in a company where diversity and customer centricity are key values.

Our best wishes for Innovations 2011 and congratulations to all the innovators.

What's in a Product Name?

Anne Miller, the author of several books on sales and presentations, including Metaphorically Selling, recently published a book titled "Make What you Say Pay! The Language That Opens Minds, Closes Deals and Wows Crowds".

Ms Miller points out that When there is a point to be made, attention to be grabbed, a wish to be remembered, or an audience to persuade, the savviest people in business and in the public eye regularly reach for a metaphor to do the job. Throughout the book, Anne Miller gives numerous examples of metaphors used in business communication.

Are your site and your competitors' sites comprehensive and filled with good information? Great! You all get an “A” for Content, but, guess what? You get a “D” for Distinctiveness. Raise your Distinction quotient with a metaphor and you will spark more interest in your site and gain more business for yourself. 

If you search “presentation technology,” you will find 42,400 entries, but only one called www.yawnbuster.com. YawnBuster brings PowerPoint slides alive with various applications such as audience polls, games, group exercises, and competitions. Yawnbuster gets an audience to think, participate and identify key take-aways quickly and easily – all while having fun. The name of the site is exactly the benefit presenters seek who are afraid they will bore their audiences to death -- a happy match of metaphoric name with what the site actually does for presenters.

(Chapter 6, Stand out from the Competition, Make What You Say Pay!)

What‘s in a name? A raft of associations. Consider what Ivory soap, London Fog, Jaguar, and Cheerios mean to you, says Ms Miller.

The Ten Faces of Innovation

Tom Kelly, the author of The Art of Innovation, has proposed ten personas that innovators could assume in an organization. The personas serve to demystify innovation, and provide a way for aspiring innovators to understand how they could contribute.

The Learning Personas

1. The Anthropologist: Camps out with target users, observes them, understands how they interact with products
2. The Experimenter: Prototypes ideas, thrives on trial-and-error, draws stakeholders in to test prototypes, embraces early failures
   
3. The Cross-Pollinator: Explores other industries and cultures, translates the findings to your business

The Organizing Personas

1. The Hurdler: Outsmarts and overcomes obstacles to innovation, knows which buttons to press
   
2. The Collaborator: Brings selected people together, leads from the middle, helps create multidisciplinary solutions
3. The Director: Gathers talented team and helps spark their creative talents

The Building Personas

1. The Experience Architect: Designs whole customer experiences. Recognizes that value added comes from the quality of experience provided. Sets the stage for positive encounters with your organization thru products, services, digital interactions, spaces or events. See products as journeys to be mapped. Brings products nearer to the customer.
   
2. The Set Designer: Creates right environment for innovation
3. The Caregiver: Anticipates customer needs and delivers customer care beyond expectations
4. The Storyteller: Builds internal morale and external awareness through compelling narratives

In an innovation workshop it is interesting to explain these personas to participants and have them wear a tag displaying the persona they have chosen for themselves for a session. The group then gets down to work on new ideas.

In a recent workshop we tried this, and realized that it is hard to assume a persona and maintain one's viewpoint accordingly for too long. People are just themselves.

Which suggests that people have strong natural inclination towards one or mabe a few of these roles and the whole team will do well to recognize that quickly so everyone can contribute the most in an innovation factory.

Every Wacky Idea is not an Innovation

It is often hard to assess whether a new business idea is truly innovative. To determine if your idea is innovative, here are some questions I suggest you ponder over.

Novelty

• Is anyone doing something similar? Is the difference apparent?

Passion and Belief

• Can you sleep well if you were told this idea will not be implemented?
• What are you willing to risk in pursuit of this idea?

Simplicity and Clarity

• Is this idea very simple to describe to a large number of people?
• If yes, can they find it easy to repeat its essence back to you correctly in their own words?
• When successful, will the idea look obvious in hindsight?

Market

• For whom will this idea create a value, and how much?

Timeliness

• Is there one logical reason why this idea was not a good idea to implement before now?
• What discontinuity or tipping point has arrived in the environment that creates a niche for this idea now?
• What enabling factors have arrived on the scene that make the implementation of this idea possible today?

Strategic Fit

• Is there a way to derive sustainable competitive advantage over others, from this idea ?
• Why will you - or your team - be better at implementing this idea than someone else?
• How does this idea complement your strategic imperatives, or deliver a new one?
• Will you be able to build value for customers using this idea without harming your fit with the ecosystem in which you currently operate?

These are inconvenient questions, and sometimes very hard to answer - such is the lure of your own idea. But I recommend you answer them, and if you are satisfied, you may have an innovative business idea. Let's talk about it.

The Innovator's Dilemma

Why do small companies out-innovate large ones? How is it that some of the best innovations in products, services and business models have come from little known companies? Are they somehow more creative? Are they less afraid to try new things? Are they more adventurous? Do they have little to lose?

Clayton Christensen, in his brilliant book The Innovator's Dilemma has analyzed this phenomenon in great depth. Based on research and analysis, the author demonstrates several insights into the dilemma.

A Recent Story of Innovation

How does an innovation come about?

My blog post titled Where Did YawnBuster Come From? describes the experience of coming up with a innovative new product that takes boredom out of presentations. This post is in my blog on interactive learning.

Innovations can have different origins. This one began with a genuine market need - that of making presentations less boring - and articulated the need in terms of a new product concept waiting to manifest itself.

The concept then morphs into use-cases, which compellingly demonstrate that it addresses the problem effectively, in certain circumstances.

Next, the concept needs an implementation that is realistic and feasible. So the blog post illustrates how we went about verifying this.

Once feasibility is established, we are one step further along. Now the focus is on the context of this new product, its core value proposition, its target market and a messaging that can be captured in a catchy name.

For someone interested in innovation, this post will make good reading from that perspective.

Why this blog?

Since 1990, I have been involved in growing Harbinger Group, a business that I founded. It has been nearly two decades full of action. This blog is an effort to chronicle some of the insights gained, lessons learnt, values upheld and beliefs strengthened.

The main theme of this blog is entrepreneurship. Posts of this blog will draw on innovation, strategy and leadership. More often than not, the lines are blurred, and indeed these additional themes are sometimes inseparable. In such cases, a post may touch upon two or more of these additional themes.

And again, the past is only a prologue. As we enter next cycles of growth, some reflection upon our ways of doing things is in order. Reflection is a great way to learn, and writing encourages reflection. That is another important purpose of this blog.

Happy reading.