Stefan Lindegaard has written an interesting piece in Business Week arguing that most CEOs just don’t understand what innovation needs and entails.  As evidence he quotes research by the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C., which interviewed 247 executives and managers who supervised at least 500 people and had more than 15 years of management experience.  When asked what they were doing to promote innovation in their organizations, the most popular strategy, adopting “overt innovation processes,” was named by only 25%. Only 17% said they were undertaking “talent/talent development,” the second most often mentioned answer, and 13% said they had rewards/recognition programs to support innovation.

The author contends that these responses show that chief executives are doing surprisingly little to build innovation cultures in their companies. He gives the following reasons why CEOs and other C-level officers often don’t support innovation, even though the business climate of our time demands it:

1.  The demand for short-term gains nearly always wins the day. Top executives at public companies are under enormous pressure to produce strong financial results each and every quarter. This is the area where they are rewarded for producing results, and their job security increasingly depends on it.

2.   They missed out on innovation education. Many of today’s top executives got their business education before innovation was a significant part of the curriculum at many MBA programs. They could compensate for this with experience, but many also missed on-the-job training, because innovation training usually happens from the top down, not vice versa. They were trained to be problem solvers, not innovators. Innovation education didn’t really take root until the early-to-mid-1990s, when thought leaders such as Clayton Christensen, Gary Hamel, C.K. Prahalad, and others emerged.

3.  Top executives are risk-averse. Innovation, especially open innovation, is scary on many levels. People who make it to the top because of their knowledge of existing businesses aren’t that interested in considering a new business model or going after an amazing yet high-risk breakthrough when that may undermine their own expertise. And who wants to risk having a major innovation effort fail on their watch?  People who truly understand innovation embrace failure as an inherent part of innovation. They realize that big lessons that lead to success often come from the biggest failures. An attitude that doesn’t allow for failure is contrary to an innovation culture, yet that’s the kind of attitude that too many company leaders possess.

4.   They don’t see why a networking culture is important for open innovation. In a world of open innovation, you need to be an expert at networking and building relationships. This holds true at the corporate level as well as the personal level. So I ask leaders and managers: Where is the strategy, commitment, and structure that you need to create a networking culture? Many of them have not bothered to give this important subject any thought.

5.   Top executives are too far away from the action. It is easy to preach innovation when you do not have to make it happen.  The problem is that top executives reward middle managers for getting stuff done and executing flawlessly. This can be counterintuitive to innovating. But top executives are often too far away from the action to understand how this compensation structure makes it harder for innovation leaders to succeed. Most leaders are more wedded to rewarding the core business rather than pursuing something new and untested.

Paul Sloane

• Give yourself a time limit. Write for ten minutes say, and then stop.
• Keep your hand moving until the time is up.  Do not pause to stare into space or to read what you’ve written. Write quickly but not in a hurry.
• Pay no attention to grammar, spelling, punctuation, neatness, or style. Nobody else needs to read what you produce here. The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.
• If you get off the topic or run out of ideas, keep writing anyway. If necessary, write nonsense or whatever comes into your head, or simply scribble anything to keep the hand moving.
• If you feel bored or uncomfortable as you’re writing, ask yourself what’s bothering you and write about that.
• When the time is up, look over what you’ve written, and mark passages that contain ideas or phrases that might be worth keeping or elaborating on in a subsequent free-writing session.  

The idea is that the process overcomes apathy, fear, hesitation and other blocks to creation and action.  Once you have reached your time limit, read over what you have written and circle any points of interest.  You can use these as starting points for action, for brainstorming or for further freewriting.  Although this is designed as an individual activity it can be done in groups with people sharing the key points after an agreed time.  Once again the most important thing is that everyone keeps writing.

Paul Sloane

The top 25 countries with their ICI scores are:

1.  Sweden      82.2

2.  Finland     77.8

3.  United States   77.5

4.  Switzerland   77.0

5.  Netherlands    76.6

6.  Singapore   76.5

7.  Canada    74.8

8.  United Kingdom   74.6

9.  Norway    73.5

10.  New Zealand   73.4

11.  Luxembourg    73.3

11.  Denmark   73.3

13.  Taiwan    72.9

14.  Iceland    72.6

15.  Japan    72.1

16.  Hong Kong    71.3

17.  Australia   71.2

18.  Ireland    70.5

19.  Korea    70.0

20.  Germany   68.8

21.  Israel    68.2

22.  Belgium  67.6

23.  Austria    66.7

24.  France    65.4

25.  Estonia   62.7

 And the bottom three are:

129.  Haiti    28.7

130.  Chad    25.6

131.  Afghanistan   24.0

It is notable that China does not do well – it comes in at number 65 with a score of 49.5.

The Executive Summary contains many interesting insights.

Paul Sloane

Spectacles manufacturer in the 1960s

Employee: I think we should investigate a new idea I have heard about called contact lenses.

Boss: How does it work?

Employee: We make prescription lenses that people attach to their eyeballs so that they can see well without spectacles.

Boss: You mean I stick a piece of glass onto my eyeball?

Employee: It could be glass or plastic.

Boss: That is ridiculous. What if it slipped behind the eye? What if it damaged the eye? We could be sued for millions. No-one is going to want something so dangerous and inconvenient. Spectacles are safe, cheap and popular. Let’s focus on doing what we know.

Radio manufacturer in the 1980s

Employee: I read about this guy Trevor Bayliss who has invented a clockwork radio. It is an interesting idea – do you think we should look at this?

Boss: Don’t be silly. I heard about this too. It will never catch on.

Employee: Really?

Boss: Sure. Let me give you three reasons. First radios need electricity and the easiest way to get that is through the mains or batteries – that is what consumers and the trade want. Secondly the radio will have to be really big to contain the winding mechanism. Third, the radio will suddenly stop in the middle of a programme waiting to be wound up – how annoying will that be? Customers want convenience – not the bother of stopping to wind up a radio every 10 minutes.

Employee: I guess you are right.

Website entrepreneur in 2000s

Programmer: I have this idea for a new social media site.

Boss: Great. How does it work?

Programmer: People can make short broadcasts of up to 140 characters.

Boss: 140 characters! Why restrict them? Can they add pictures, music and videos?

Programmer: No – it is just a box for 140 characters of text.

Boss: Don’t be silly. Facebook and Myspace already offer far more than that. We need something more exciting than a text box. How about we copy Facebook and add more features?

See how easy it is? Every day in every organisation bosses are rejecting interesting ideas because the ideas look silly. How can you overcome this problem? You train people to ask questions rather than be judgmental. When somebody comes to you with a bizarre idea do not find fault with it; instead ask questions. How could we make it work? What are the benefits for customers if this happened? Is there a better way to do this?

If you want innovation in your organisation then you must encourage people at all levels to welcome, entertain and explore crazy ideas – they are the ones that can lead to breakthroughs.

Paul Sloane

Alistair Darling (photo by the Sun)

In December the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, announced that he would make cuts of £600m in funding for higher education, research and science by 2012.  Shortly afterwards the Science and Technology Facilities council announced a range of cuts in experimental programmes.  The number of students funded to take PhD degrees is expected to fall by 25%.  It is remarkable that these announcements have not generated national concern because they strike at our national ability to innovate.  On Dec 16^th over 100 leading scientists and academics published a letter criticising the cuts and pointing out that research is essential to scientific discovery and innovation.

Currently interest for postgraduate education is very high but funding is being slashed.  At a national level it is recognised that our dependence on financial services should be reduced.  A good way to do this is to encourage the growth of high-tech start-ups.  There is considerable evidence from the OECD among others that people educated to doctoral level are ‘key players in innovation.’  We clearly need to cut public spending in order to rein in our enormous debts but even so the country needs to increase not reduce spending on science, research and postgraduate studies as these are shown to fuel the technology start-ups that will give us future economic growth and employment.

Paul Sloane

Break the Rules is a workshop method that I use to challenge the fundamental assumptions of your business.  It can be used to illustrate the number and level of restrictions on how you work.  It can also be the basis for new ideas.

Divide into teams of 6 to 8 people.  Each team must list as many rules as they can think of that apply in the organization.  They should spend say 30 minutes capturing as many rules as possible – both obvious explicit rules and the unwritten, implicit rules – ‘the way we do things around here.’   What do you always do?  What do you never do?  What rules apply to hiring, to firing, to people, to finance, to approvals, to customers, to competitors etc.  Typically groups find anywhere from 60 to 100 rules. When you have a long list of rules you then deliberately challenge each of them in turn. For each rule you ask the question – ‘Can we break this rule for the benefit of the business?’  You can use the broken rules as springboards for new ideas.

Say for example you were looking for ways to improve the productivity of a telemarketing department.  Here are some of the rules that you might list as applying to the business today:

1. We use the telephone
2. We call between 9 a.m. and 12 and 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.
3. We are always polite and professional.
4. We use a script which has been carefully developed to deliver the right messages.
5. We reward our agents for the number of leads they generate.
6. We follow-up each appointment with a confirmation letter and information pack.

 Now we break the rules:

1. We will use other methods of contacting people than the telephone
2. We will contact people outside normal business hours e.g. early in the morning, at lunch time or in the evening.
3. We will be rude and unprofessional.
4. We will let our agents say whatever they want.
5. We will fine our agents for every lead they get.
6. We will not send out a confirmation by post.

How can any of these ideas help us to make the department more effective?  Items 1 to 3 might suggest that we find creative ways to approach our target prospects as they arrive at or leave work.  The telemarketing team could dress up as clowns and approach commuters getting off trains with humorous and outrageous messages which solicit responses.  Item 4. might prompt us to think of ways in which we could make our message more interesting and less mechanical.  The idea of fines might prompt us to emphasize to potential customers the costs and penalties from not responding.  Finally item 6 might lead to the ideas of confirming appointments through a special website or hand-delivering to customers a package containing an attractive wall calendar with the date and time of our appointment highlighted.

When I facilitate this exercise in my workshops I often find that teams decide that they can break some 40% to 50% of the rules beneficially.  They are surprised at how many self-imposed limits are holding them back.

Paul Sloane

Photo by Bernie Condon

A better approach is to take a little time to generate a long list of possible ideas and then evaluate them in order to select one or more to try.  Our first idea is often the most obvious, the most straightforward response.  It is rarely the best response.  As we mull over the problem and force more and more possible solutions we generate less conventional, less routine, less automatic choices – we come up with the creative, the radical and the better options. 

When men first wanted to fly the most obvious way to do it was to copy birds by beating two large wings against the air.  This was tried and failed many times.  But people kept on trying it.  In the year that the Wright brothers first flew the US Congress voted to stop funding heavier-than-air flying experiments because they were such an obvious waste of time and money. The aerofoil wing section, which gives lift when driven forward, was a very different and much better option than flapping wings.

When you find yourself tempted to rush into a quick answer, force yourself to pause for a moment.  Would it be better to get the opinions of others?  Should you run a short brainstorm meeting?  Should you ponder the issue yourself for a while?  Could you write down several different approaches rather than just one?  Some problems demand an immediate response but many do not; they favour a more considered approach.  The first idea you come up with may be great, but the chances are that the tenth, twentieth or fortieth will be much better.

Paul Sloane

There are details here.

The dates are

London    Feb 25 and Sept 16

Midlands   June 17

These workshops are open to non-members of the British Quality Foundation.  Places are limited so please book early.

Paul Sloane

1. Copy someone else’s idea.  One of the best ways to innovate is to pinch an idea that works elsewhere and apply it in your business.  Henry Ford saw the production line working in a meat packing plant and then applied to the automobile industry thereby dramatically reducing assembly times and costs.

2. Ask customers.  If you simply ask your customers how you could improve your product or service they will give you plenty of ideas for incremental innovations.  Typically they will ask for new features or that you make your product cheaper, faster, easier to use, available in different styles and colours etc.  Listen to these requests carefully and choose the ones that will really pay back.

3. Observe customers.  Do not just ask them, watch them.  Try to see how customers use your products.  Do they use them in new ways?  This was what Levi Strauss saw when they found that customers ripped the jeans – so they brought a line of pre-ripped jeans. Heinz noticed that people stored their sauce jars upside down so they designed an upside down bottle.

4. Use difficulties and complaints.  If customers have difficulties with any aspect of using your product or if they register complaints then you have a strong starting point for innovations.  Make your product easier to use, eliminate the current inconveniences and introduce improvements that overcome the complaints.

5. Combine.  Combine your product with something else to make something new.  It works at all levels.  Think of a suitcase with wheels, or a mobile phone with a camera or a flight with a massage.

6. Eliminate.  What could you take out of your product or service to make it better?  Dell eliminated the computer store, Amazon eliminated the bookstore, the Sony Walkman eliminated speakers and record functions.

7. Ask your staff.  Challenge the people who work in the business to find new and better ways to do things and new and better ways to please customers.  They are close to the action and can see opportunities for innovation.  Often they just need encouragement to bring forward great ideas.

8. Plan.  Include targets for new products and services in your business plan.  Put it onto the balanced scorecard.  Write innovation into everyone’s objectives.  Measure it and it will happen.

9. Run brainstorms.  Have regular brainstorm meetings where you generate a large quantity of new product ideas.  Use diverse groups from different areas of the business and include a provocative outsider e.g. a customer or supplier.

10. Examine patents.  Check through patents that apply in your field.  Are there some that you could license?  Are some expiring so that you can now use that method?  Is there a different way of achieving the essential idea in a patent?

11. Collaborate.  Work with another company who can take you to places you can’t go.  Choose a partner with a similar philosophy but different skills.  That is what Mercedes did with Swatch when they came up with the Smart car.

12. Minimize or Maximize.  Take something that is standard in the industry and minimise or maximise it.  Ryanair minimized price and customer service.  Starbucks maximised price and customer experience.  It is better to be different than to be better.

13. Run a contest.  Ask members of the public to suggest great new product ideas.  Offer a prize.  Give people a clear focussed goal and they will surprise you with novel ideas.  Good for innovation and PR.

14. Ask – What if?  Do some lateral thinking by asking what if…..? Challenge every boundary and assumption that applies in your field.  You and your group will come up with amazing ideas once the normal constraints are lifted.

15. Watch the competition.  Do not slavishly follow the competition but watch them intelligently.  The small guys are often the most innovative so see if you can adapt or license one of their ideas – or even buy the company!

16. Outsource.  Subcontract your new product development challenge to a design company, a University, a start-up or a crowdsourcing site like Innocentive or Ninesigma.

17. Use Open Innovation.  Big consumer products companies like Proctor and Gamble or Reckitt Benckiser encourage developers to bring novel products to them.  They are flexible on IP protection and give a clear focus on what they are looking for.  A large proportion of their new products now start life outside the company.

18. Adapt a Product to a New Use.  Find an entirely different application for an existing product.  De Beers produced industrial diamonds but found a new use for diamonds when they introduced the concept of engagement rings.  It opened up a large new market for them.

19. Try Triz.  Triz is a systematic method for solving problems.  It can be applied in many fields but is particularly useful in engineering and product design.  Triz gives you a toolbox of methods to solve contradictions e.g. how can we make this product run faster but with less power?

20. Go Back in Time.  Look back at methods and services that were used in your sector years ago but have now fallen out of use.  Can you bring one back in a new updated form?  It has been said that Speed Dating is really a relaunch of a Victorian dance format where ladies had cards marked with appointments.

21. Use Social Networks.  Follow trends and ask questions on groups like Twitter or Facebook.  Ask what people want to see in future products or what the big new idea will be.  Many early adopters are active on social network groups and will happily respond with suggestions.

The ways to innovate are legion.  Try some approaches that are new to you in order to boost your innovation capability.

Paul Sloane

You lose sorrow and gain peace

You try something new every day

You remain healthy

You apply continuous improvement to all aspects of your life and business

You enjoy every moment

Paul Sloane