...that innovation, collaboration and creativity are FUN!
...that innovative behavior and creativity is the job of every member of an organization- not just “creative” departments, or marketing, or R&D, etc...
...that it’s important for organizations to be flexible enough to adapt their structure to support the type of work that NEEDS to happen. If organizations only support projects that fit the current work environment, their innovation potential is limited.
...that fear is the great enemy of innovation.
...that innovation takes courage.
...the craft of Improv is a metaphor for collaborative group brainstorming. The basic rule is “accept and add” ie, you MUST say “yes, and...” NOT “yes, but...”
...in an “Abundance Mentality”- Don’t worry about “running out of ideas." Everything around us changes constantly, so there is an ever-changing source of new inspiration. If you are receptive, curious, and behave creatively, you can be confident that you will always be able to create new ideas as needed.
...in not inventing in a vacuum. Get out of the office and explore the world- but do it with fresh eyes. Observe people in their natural context to discover latent needs and intuitive workarounds to unconscious problems. Take this inspiration as a starting point for brainstorming.
...that none of us is as smart as all of us.
...in “warm-ups.” Practicing innovation is like competing in a demanding sport. You wouldn’t sprint a 100 meter dash without stretching and warming up first- you’d get injured if you did! The same goes for brainstorming and collaborative workshops-warm-up first, or your ideas and team members will suffer.
...that the space matters. Spaces need to be designed to encourage and support collaborative activities. It’s not important for the space or furnishings to be expensive or necessarily of “high design”- flexibility, mobility and adaptability are far more important criteria. Spaces need to be open and have the necessary tools, supplies, and technology right at hand. There should be a sense of team pride in any collaborative team space.
...that ideas are cheap-It’s what you do with them that counts. Ideas are everywhere and they are not that valuable anyway. Why? We live in the age of information where everything is accessible and “on tap." So by and large, anybody who is tasked with solving problems has access to most of the same background information and inspiration. Completely different groups given the same background information, the same brainstorm topic and made up of similarly composed participants will most likely come up with very similar set of “top ideas.” It’s what you do with the ideas that counts. So get going on experimenting with and making tangible in a rough and rapid way a few of your favorite ideas AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Your idea will evolve and progress as you try to “make it real”. This is the part of the process where ideas start to have real value.
...everybody wants to embrace INNOVATION. But innovation only happens with risk. And risk produces failure. Therefore embrace FAILURE. The team who never fails, isn’t pushing far or hard enough. The key is to learn from those failures and make them early and often in the process.
...in LOWERING the Innovation hit rate. Business leaders always ask, “How can I increase the rate of success for innovation projects within my organization?” The answer is easy- “Be less innovative!” By asking this question, they are actually stifling innovation (remember the point-“Embrace Failure" listed above?!?). Look at how venture capitalists work- they don’t expect to see 10 proposals for new business ideas and then invest in 8 of them. To decide to fund 8 STRONG ideas, they review literally HUNDREDS of proposals- resulting in ultimately a pretty low “hit rate” but the ones they choose are likely to be much stronger than if they had to choose 8 from only 10. The key here is that it didn’t COST them a lot in terms of resources to review those extra hundreds of proposals. This is similar to the approach we took at Zero20 when inventing and licensing toy and game concepts. With a group of less than ten team members, in a typical year, we:
• Brainstormed thousands of new ideas across dozens of brainstorm topics
• Developed 40-50 of these ideas in varying levels of prototypes/experience models
• Conducted 50-60 pitch meetings to toy companies, showing 5-15 ideas per meeting
• Resulting in between 6 to 10 license agreements
• With about 3 to 8 of these concepts actually making it to the toy shelf
• And only 1 to 2 of these concepts earning the bulk of the new royalties for the year
With these numbers, we were able to continually sustain and grow an inherently risky activity while earning profit margins that exceeded what we could make on consulting work. So the challenge for organizations trying to be more innovative is to find ways to minimize the cost while maximizing the learning from a portfolio of innovation projects. Here are a few tips:
Brainstorm: Brainstorm LOTS of ideas-literally thousands of ideas across multiple sessions with multiple diverse groups of people. Don’t just involve the core team whose responsibility it is to solve the problem- invite others from both inside and outside the organization. These people provide fresh perspective to a problem and are likely to be more creative and have more energy since it’s not “their problem”. Brainstorming and especially facilitating a brainstorming session is a learned skill that requires experience, rules and proper setup to be done effectively. If you are not going to use an experienced facilitator, announce and enforce the rules, and provide the proper setup beforehand-DO NOT CALL IT A BRAINSTORM! You will do more harm than good- people will feel alienated, any ideas generated will be safe and predictable, and you will stifle creativity.
Prototype: Create rough, rapid and ready prototypes. I always say, “When people start talking with their hands, it’s time to put something into their hands!” There is a tendency in organizations to verbally “beat an idea to death.” Since brainstorm ideas are so nascent, they are inherently vulnerable to being destroyed-it’s easy for any moderately intelligent person to poke many holes in a newly formed early idea- the harder behavior to pull off is finding a way to nurture the idea to take it to the next level. So, before spending too much time deliberating the merits and shortcomings of an idea- build it! Prototypes at this level need to be built fast and rough- foamcore, hot melt glue, playdoh, drawings, props for skits, etc... They need to be built by the people on the project (not necessarily the person who came up with the idea) and as soon as possible after the ideas have been chosen from the brainstorm lists. The team will learn a lot from these early prototypes, indeed learning from many failures. The key is that failures are made early and often-hence they are much less expensive than if made late in the process.
Feedback: Use rough prototypes to get early feedback. Take a polished model that looks like it is ready for production and ask a stakeholder to give you feedback on it- they are likely to hold back their true thoughts. Sometimes they are so impressed with the finish that they can’t objectively evaluate the core concept. Sometimes they are so intimidated by it’s professionalism that they wonder, “Who am I to tell these people how to do their business- they obviously have it figured out already.” Take a rough model that looks like it was hand-made in an afternoon and I guarantee you will get lots of honest feedback. People can sense that you are still in the early stages of development and will feel like any feedback they give you will actually be considered. By lowering the bar on finish, you are inviting people in to become contributors and not just judges. The incompleteness of a rough model will also enable people to ask “naïve” questions; these questions can give you insights into issues you may not have thought about yet.
Rinse and repeat! Incorporate the feedback you learned from sharing your prototypes into iterating your prototype- still keeping it rough. Also explore the feedback you generated to inspire new brainstorm topics and hold more brainstorming sessions. Innovation is a non-linear, iterative and messy process so always be open to “moving backward” in the process. You may start out with a strategy that informs your brainstorming/prototyping process, but if you are actually doing it right, you will find that your brainstorming/prototyping efforts will reveal unexpected insights and learnings that will inform your strategy. Revise your strategy as necessary.
...that these beliefs are not absolute and not necessarily set in stone. My thinking on these concepts will evolve as I continue to solve new problems and experience new situations.