BQF Innovation

We had a successful meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit today in London where the topic was Knowledge Management for Innovation. Professor Michael Kelleher gave a comprehensive explanation of KM. Some of the points he made were:

• The cost of ignorance is high. NASA and the British Nuclear Industry both lost important early knowledge.
• You should align your KPIs to achieve innovation through KM
• Corporate Yellow Pages allow you to find key skills and experiences
• Employees need to be motivated to share expertise so put it into objectives and appraisals
• ‘After-action reviews’ and ‘lessons learnt’ need to be captured
• Organisational story telling is a key part of KM
• To help with innovation we need a searchable corporate memory of past failures as well as successes

Martin Fowkes, who is responsible for KM at Taylor Woodrow then covered what they are doing in this field. When it comes to innovation the Taylor Woodrow motto is - Think, Prove, Do. (Many other companies operate - Think, Analyse, Reject.) They promote innovation through physical innovation notice boards and an innovation buddy system. Before they bid on a new tender they search their knowledge base to look for relevant experiences. They then run workshops to generate innovative approaches.

There was a discussion on related topics. Many participants use Microsoft’s Sharepoint for KM. Blogs and wikis are increasingly important tools.

If you are a member of BQF then Pat Myles can supply copies of the Powerpoint presentations from the day.

Next Meeting will be on July 30th in London with the topic - Competency Traps - presented by Arthur D Little. More details will follow.

Paul Sloane

The UK Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) has recently issued a White Paper on how the government plans to help the UK ‘excel at all types of innovation.’

You can download the press release, the executive summary or the full report (all 98 pages).  The role of the Department is ‘to champion innovation across the board, working with partners across and outside government.’  The Secretary of State, John Denham, has made a number of commitments and proposals in the White Paper.  These include:

• Supporting businesses in tapping into the demands of new markets in the UK by bringing forward five new ‘innovation platforms’ to co-ordinate Government support and funding.
• A new initiative to provide at least 1,000 ‘innovation vouchers’ every year by 2011, helping support and fund small and medium-sized businesses to work with a university, further education college or research organisation of their choice to develop a new product or service;
• Doubling the number of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships between businesses, universities and colleges.
• Piloting of a new Specialisation and Innovation Fund to boost the capacity of further education colleges to unlock workforce talent and to support businesses in raising innovation potential;
• Expanding the network of National Skills Academies with one academy for every major sector of the economy.
• Piloting a new Innovation Index in 2009 to measure UK innovation managed by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).
• Sponsoring new Partnerships for Innovation bringing together venture capital with universities, business and other local partners to jointly develop innovative solutions.
• Establishing an Innovation Research Centre in partnership with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), NESTA and the TSB.
• Boosting the ability of small firms to exploit their intellectual property by training Business Link advisors in IP management by the summer of 2009.
• A new Annual Innovation Review to provide a comprehensive annual assessment of promoting innovation in the public and private sectors. The first of these will be published this autumn.

I met a member of the DIUS who told me that they are looking for feedback on these ideas so please take a look at them in detail and add your comments here or directly to the Department.  I will comment on some of the plans in due course.

Paul Sloane

Do you watch The Apprentice?  Candidates for the position of apprentice to Sir Alan Sugar are set business tasks in teams.  The losing team then has to face trial by ordeal by Sugar and his henchman and henchwoman.  Ultimately, with a great dramatic flourish and an accusatory pointed finger, Sir Alan announces, ‘You’re fired!’  And one more poor soul is sent on his or her way.  It is one of the few programmes about business on TV and the weekly elimination of a candidate makes for great drama.

However in many respects it is a poor guide to business.  One thing about it that bothers me is there has to be a losing team and a losing individual each week.  If one team makes a profit of £200 and the other team makes a loss of £200 then the loss-making team loses - simple as that.  But what if the loss-making team had a really creative idea but poor execution (as often happens the first time you try something)?  What if both teams had creative approaches? 

Innovative leaders do not punish failure.  They applaud honest attempts at new ventures that fail.  They treat each failure as a valuable learning experience.  They do not fire people for being entrepreneurial and launching a business that makes a loss on its first day.

I wrote an article on this subject titled Welcome Failure. 

Very often the best way to test an idea is not to analyze it but to try it. The organization that implements lots of ideas will most likely have many failures but the chances are, it will reap some mighty successes too. By trying numerous initiatives we improve our chances that one of them will be a star. As Tom Kelley of IDEO puts it, ‘Fail often to succeed sooner.’

Deborah Bull is the artistic Director at the Royal Opera House in London. She is keen to encourage small companies of artists to come out with mad ideas and to try them. She says, ‘We need to get away from the idea that everything has to be a hit at the box office and a hit with the critics. If everything we do succeeds, then we are failing, because it means we are not taking enough risks.’

Do you think that Sir Alan Sugar is a good role model as a business leader?  Is he really as brutal as that or is he just playing a part for better TV ratings? 

Paul Sloane 

According to this report from the BBC, coffee chain giant Starbucks is hoping its loyal customers may be able to brew up the bright ideas to help turn around its struggling fortunes. The company recently launched a website offering its US customers the chance to pitch ideas for how the firm can improve its stores and operations. Despite some scepticism from critics, the MyStarbucksIdea.com website has now been flooded with thousands of ideas. These range from free birthday coffees to express tills for quick orders.

The site is mystarbucksidea.com.  You can submit ideas, vote, discuss and see progress on approved ideas.  There is a list of the most popular ideas and the most recent.

How about a similar site for your customers’ ideas?

Paul Sloane

In this entertaining and challenging talk Sir Kenneth Robinson argues that creativity is as important as literacy and that our education system is failing in this regard.  He points out the many ways our schools fail to recognize — much less cultivate — the talents of many brilliant people. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says.  “Children are not frightened to be wrong.  By the time they become adults they have lost that capacity.”