BQF Innovation

There is an interesting post on some research on Brainstorming here on the Innovation Tools site.  Josh Hyatt of the Sloan Management Review discusses some research by Karan Girotra, a professor at INSEAD, and Christian Terwiesh and Karl T. Ulrich, both professors at the University of Pennsylvania.

Two types of groups generated ideas. One followed a traditional model, assembling a group - in this case, students studying product design - and having them come up with appropriate product ideas for dorm rooms. They worked solely in a group. The other group took a hybrid approach: Those students worked on ideas by themselves before coming together to share their thinking.

Which technique yielded the best ideas?  Strictly speaking, the traditional brainstorming groups came up with the very best ideas. They also came up with the very worst ones. In other words, their results’ quality varied much more than did the hybrid group’s results. The hybrid group produced more ideas that were, on average, of higher quality.  But, as Girotra notes, “when it comes to innovation, the extremes are what matter - not the norm and not the average.”  So, if both groups work for the same amount of time, the traditional brainstorming team “significantly outperforms” the hybrid group when it comes to producing the best ideas, according to the authors.

This finding contradicts most existing literature on the subject, which tends to conclude that while working in teams is more satisfying, working alone generates the most effective ideas.  But “what we found makes sense, since the most successful creative firms do mostly use team processes for brainstorming,” Terwiesch says. “We just brought some new thinking to the subject.”

Full article on Innovation Tools.

Paul Sloane

One of the methods I teach on my Ideas Workshops is SCAMPER.  It is a productive and versatile technique for examining a product or service from differing angles and for generating plenty of strongly innovative ideas.  SCAMPER is an acronym and you ask the following types of question when you use this tool:

• SUBSTITUTE - What elements of this product or service can we substitute?
• COMBINE - How can we combine this with other products or services?
• ADAPT - What can we alter or adapt it?
• MAXIMISE OR MINIMISE - How can we greatly enlarge or greatly reduce any component?
• PUT TO OTHER USE - What completely different use can we have for our product?
• ELIMINATE - What elements of the product or service can be eliminated?
• REARRANGE OR REVERSE - How can we rearrange the product or reverse the process?

Now I have found a site which enhances the tool and offers a range of supplementary resources.  Luciano Passuello has posted a blog on SCAMPER together with a SCAMPER random question generator and a SCAMPER mindmap.  If you want to use this tool in your next brainstorm meeting then these resources are highly recommended.

Paul Sloane

Customers can be an important source of innovative ideas.  Many companies conduct conventional customer surveys and focus groups.  These are useful channels of feedback but in terms of original ideas they are often disappointing.  Customers are good at demanding incremental improvements in products, lower prices and better service but they are notoriously poor at predicting significant new products or innovations to meet their needs.  Before the fax machine was invented who would have predicted he needed it?  Which wearer of spectacles in the 1950s would have said that he wanted a lens to put on his eyeball or laser surgery to reshape his eye?  You can expect customers to tell you that they want more of what you offer and they want it better, faster and cheaper.  But do not count on them to tell you about different ways to meet their needs.

A more lateral approach to gain insights from customers is to study in detail how they use your type of product or service and to observe what practical problems they have.

Fluke Corporation of Seattle is noted for innovative hand-held measurement products.  They sent teams of observers to watch maintenance engineers in chemical plants.  They discovered that the engineers had to carry a variety of different instruments to calibrate different temperature and pressure gauges.  They also noticed that after taking the calibration measurement the engineer would write the readings on a clipboard and then transcribe them into a computer.  The process was time-consuming and prone to errors.  Fluke therefore designed a new product that used flexible software to allow it to calibrate any gauge in the chemical plant.  It also recorded the results, which could be directly downloaded to the engineer’s computer.  The resulting product was the Fluke Document Process Calibrator, which became a great success.

Haier is a leading Chinese manufacturer of white goods such as freezers and cookers.  Its engineers in rural China were surprised to find that people were using Haier washing machines to wash the vegetables they had grown in their gardens.  Turning this unexpected use into a new application, the Haier development team came up with a new wash cycle designed specifically for vegetables.  On another occasion a sharp-eyed engineer saw that a student had placed a plank between two Haier fridges to form a makeshift desk.  The company responded by designing a fridge with a fold-out desktop - ideal for small rooms that need an extra table or desk top.

Asking customers for feedback is good but observing them can be much better.  If you want to gain a march on the competition and design the products and services of the future watch your customers carefully.  Look for the areas of unexpected use, the headaches and problems that want to be solved or the unusual combinations of needs or uses.  They can give you the insights you need to generate successful innovations in products, services and processes.