It's a new year, early enough that resolutions can still be made, and hope for innovation still blooms eternal! [fool that I am!]
At a time when R&D budgets are contracting, the challenge is to make innovation more instinctive, more inspirational, more energizing and more personal. In short, to make everyone an innovator, and to reposition innovation at the heart of every organization.
But, if I'm honest and sober, I have to confess that over the past year I have had more than several discouraging experiences in trying to convince managers, frequently in very difficult operating situations, that innovation was not only the best possible response to their present problems, but that they, themselves, held the key to starting the innovation process in their organizations. Now, putting together my annual "innovation resolutions" I have specifically kept the image of managerial helplessness firmly in the forefront of my mind. The overriding theme of my resolutions for the coming year is: Innovation as a personal managerial responsibility and one that can be undertaken without the need for investment or permission.
First: Don't forget the innovation resolutions from 2012, they still are worthwhile ambitions:
- More effective conversations: Think of this as conversational engineering and think about how to increase conversational partners, encourage conversations in locations that are conducive to inspiration, and at times when the participants are fresh and energetic. Ideas at rest add no value to anyone, so the objective is to keep those ideas moving, and in directions where value is likely to be added. This means: better conversations!
- New conversational partners: Why not pull a "van Gogh" and invite somebody different into the conversation for even a brief period to get new ideas? Diversity does matter in the search for novel ideas, and it's just not that hard to do.
- Prototype everything: try it, somehow, before you "launch" an idea; and not just the idea, but prototype the business case as well. In fact, we've been using Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur's business model generation app for prototyping the financial implications of good ideas, and it works really well in this role; allowing us to require that not only will good ideas be prototyped in traditional fashion, but insisting that each be accompanied by a prototype business model indicating how financially attractive the proposed idea really is.
Next, a few more new resoultions for the new year:
- Dream big: Outstanding innovators are not modest in their dreams. They dream bigger than do their competitors, and when the inevitable compromises appear, they are less likely to be diminished to being just like everyone else as a result. It was Steve Jobs, after all, who said about the the iPod, that we "try to make it great!" Right from the very start! Innovation is no place for false modesty, or modesty of any kind. It's a place where only by dreaming big can you hope to disrupt the industry incumbents.
- Declare your gig: I am a firm believer in the importance of figuring out what you need to know if you are to move gracefully into the future. All too often, the managers that I work with are in motion, but are not sufficiently thoughtful; they are dancing a sort of managerial Brownian motion, where they are so ready to get started that they don't take the time to figure out which is the best direction in which to move. This is a recipe for disaster. Thoughtfulness should always precede any form of managerial action. In this sixtieth anniversary year of the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule, it is instructive to recall that Sir Francis Crick had once observed of his & Watson's Nobel Prize-winning achievement: "It's true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold." Here's a great example of knowing what you are looking for, and dreaming big, at the same time.
- Start small: Innovation should be a verb, not a noun. We should be innovating habitually, not episodically. Many little bets can lead to bigger achievements than betting it all on one roll of the dice. Of all of IDEO's now famous "rules", the one that resonates the loudest with the audiences that I meet is "fail often to succeed sooner". It not only contradicts everything that most managers respond to in their daily work, but it is the ultimate rationale for the practice of prototyping, once it is accepted as an operating principle.
- Let go: Don't feel as if you have to take on the entire burden of any new idea. The great revolution of "open sourcing" is the recognition that there are more minds "out there" then there are inside of any organization, and those minds are bound to have more and better ideas than we can come up with on our own. Allowing these outsiders in relieves us of the burden of having to take on all of the responsibility for any new idea. In fact, the odds are that the outcome of collaboration will be better, quicker, and likely less expensive than if we insisted on doing it ourselves. Paul Erdős, who is celebrated for publishing more collaborative papers than any other mathematician in history [with 511 different collaborators], is also celebrated for being an itinerant traveler, who was constantly visiting colleagues and opening every conversation with the motto: "My brain is open!" In a field traditionally jealous of competitors, Erdős was the ultimate open-source collaborator, even to the extent of offering prizes for problems that he could not solve himself. Clearly, more minds are more powerful than a few, and more different minds, more powerful that similar minds.
Four simple resolutions for the new year, and the best part is that none of these require sizable investments outside of personal time, none require the mastery of new skills, and none should require "permission" from above.
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Bill Fischer is the co-author (with Andy Boynton & Bill Bole) of The Idea Hunter (Jossey-Bass, 2011), and of the soon to be published [April 8, 2013] Reinventing Giants (with Umberto Lago & Fang Liu), the story of how China's Haier has successfully reinvented its business model, and its corporate culture, at least three times in the last three decades.
Bill Fischer can be followed on Twitter at @bill_fischer
