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Report 103
Your newsletter on applied creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in
business – delivered to your e-mail box on the first and third Tuesday
of every month.
Tuesday, 20 June 2006
Issue 84
Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your fortnightly newsletter
on creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.
As always, if you have news about creativity, imagination, ideas, or innovation
please feel free to forward it to me for potential inclusion in Report103. Your
comments and feedback are also always welcome. E-mail me at jeffreyb@jpb.com.
Information on unsubscribing, archives, reprinting articles, etc can be found
at the end of this newsletter.
CONTINUOUS INNOVATION CHALLENGES
Imagine you are an employee in a firm where management has decided to promote
innovation across the enterprise. One day, your boss comes to your desk and
says: “I want 10 innovative ideas by lunch time tomorrow, please.”
Even for a creative person like yourself, that would not be an easy task. Not
only is it difficult to come up with idea when there is no challenge to focus
on, but also, in any corporate setting, you will most likely be worried about
what kind of ideas your boss really wants, what hidden agenda might she have
and what could be the consequences of proposing ideas which are not of the sort
your boss wants.
Compare the above situation to one where your boss stops by your desk and says,
“In what ways could we improve the quality of our customer service? Give
me 10 ideas by lunch time tomorrow, please.” By giving you a clearly defined
innovation challenge, your boss has helped you focus your thinking on a specific
problem. This gives your mind various strategies to use in order to come up
with ideas, for example...
1) You might review known problems with your customer service and generate
ideas about how those problems might be solved.
2) You might think about good customer service experiences you have had with
other organisations and generate ideas about implementing such services in your
firm.
3) You might think about bad customer service experiences you have had with
other organisations, what elements were missing to make those experiences bad
and generate ideas that would avoid such problems.
4) You might think about technology and generate ideas on how it could be applied
to your customer service.
5) And so on...
Meanwhile, other good things are happening in your mind. The fact that your
boss has confided in you by asking you to respond to a specific work related
challenge demonstrates confidence in your mental prowess, trust in your abilities
and empowerment. And, ironically, the further down the corporate hierarchy you
are, the stronger these feelings will be.
Your boss has not only made it easy for you to have innovative ideas that help
the firm, but she has also made you feel a little better about yourself as an
employee.
Better still, your boss has focused your creativity on a specific business
problem that affects your organisation now, thus making more efficient use of
your creative thinking skills. As a result, your ideas are more likely to be
implemented than would be the case with random ideas. This benefits both the
organisation, in terms of innovation, and you, in terms of motivation.
Innovation challenges should not be used exclusively at the start of the innovation
process – as a lot of innovation managers mistakenly assume. Rather, innovation
challenges should be used throughout the innovation process, from beginning
to end.
Let us return to the example above where you were asked for customer service
ideas. One of your ideas might be: “we could install in our product a
diagnostic chip to monitor our product's performance. When a customer has problems,
she could connect it to a USB port on her computer. The chip could connect via
the Internet to our customer support system which could analyse the problem
making it easy for us to respond to customer complaints correctly.
Your boss could respond with. “That would be very expensive to implement.
I am sure we could never convince management to accept a solution with such
a high production cost. Also, I believe that such a system would be too complicated
for non-technical users who comprise more than half of our customer base. Let's
look for other ideas” Such feedback would be fatal to a new and fragile
idea with tremendous potential.
On the other hand, your boss could reply, “That's an excellent idea.
I really like the idea of automatic diagnostics. But, I have two concerns. Firstly,
a diagnostic chip could be prohibitively expensive. In what ways might we offer
such a solution while keeping costs to two dollars per unit?
“I am also concerned that non-technical users might have trouble connecting
their product to their computer and accessing the Internet. In what ways might
we ensure that using the Internet diagnostics system is easy, even for completely
non-technical people?”
Rather than killing the idea, your boss has challenged you to improve your
idea. As a result, a good idea with drawbacks can be evolved into a better idea
without drawbacks. At the same time, you feel good about your creative thinking
skills, which is highly motivating. And that ensures you continue to be creative
on your organisation's behalf.
If the idea does not work out, perhaps because costs cannot be brought down
to a reasonable level, the idea need not be killed completely. Rather your boss
might say, “it's clear that we cannot bring costs down to a reasonable
level. But we like the idea of automating the diagnostic process. In what other
ways might we do this?”
As employees become used to being given regular innovation challenges from
management, they will soon get into the habit of challenging themselves and
their colleagues when they run into problems or have to accomplish tasks. Instead
of saying to herself, “our invoicing process is so complex it drives me
– and our customers - crazy!”, an accountant might say, “In
what ways might I make our invoicing process less confusing?”
This is important. Most people's worst critics are themselves. For every idea
squelched by a manager, any employee has probably squelched dozens herself.
Particularly in companies which do not promote innovation or challenge employees
creatively.
Of course not all employee ideas are the result of challenges. Moreover, as
a company gives employees more and more challenges, the company also pushes
employees to think more creatively and solve problems more creatively. As a
result, employees will actually generate more spontaneous ideas which do not
respond to a particular challenge or problem, but which are worth evaluation
and often implementation.
And when employees present such spontaneous ideas, the best thing management
can do is to challenge them: “that's a fantastic idea for a new product
and it would be relatively easy to manufacture it using our existing resources.
But it is not an obvious fit with our current line-up. In what ways might we
integrate your product idea with our existing line of products?”
In summary, by giving employees continuous challenges, managers do some very
good things for the innovativeness of their firms. They...
1. Focus innovative thinking on key business issues.
2. Help employees think more creatively.
3. Motivate employees to be more innovative
4. Develop promising ideas rather than kill them.
5. Teach employees to challenge themselves.
6. Continuously improve their companies.
For more information on framing creative challenges, read “The care and
framing of strategic innovation challenges by Dr. Arthur Van Gundy” (PDF
document, 537kb: http://www.jpb.com/creative/VanGundyFrameInnov.pdf).
If you want to implement the Continuous Innovation Challenges approach in your
firm, the first big challenge you have to ask yourself is “In what ways
might we encourage our managers to understand and use Continuous Innovation
Challenges with their teams?” This is not an easy task. Managers have
often been trained to use critical thinking in business. Hence they need to
be taught to look not only for weaknesses, but also for opportunities. And they
need to learn to turn those weaknesses into challenges for improvement.
We can help your firm implement the Continuous Innovation Challenges approach
to innovation by providing a half day or full day interactive workshop for your
management team. This workshop is designed to help them understand the importance
of using continuous innovation challenges, how to frame innovation challenges,
when to use innovation challenges and more. Call (+32 2 305 6591) or e-mail
me to arrange a Continuous Innovation Challenges workshop for your management
team.
TAKE AN IDEAS TOUR OF YOUR WORKPLACE
The longer you work in an organisation, the more familiar you become with it
and the harder it can be to see opportunities to innovate. That's why it can
be a good idea to take the occasional ideas tour of your workplace.
An ideas tour is a simple yet powerful exercise. Put together a small team
of diverse people, give them all notebooks and take a tour of your firm. Look
at every division, every room, every process and every activity. At every stop,
pose an innovation challenge (see above article) to the tourers, such as “in
what ways might we improve the process in this room?”. In the web development
team's space, for example, you might ask: “In what ways could we generate
more business from our web site?” or “In what ways could we reduce
costs using our on-line tools?” In the warehouse, you might ask: “In
what ways could we reduce the amount of time products sit in the warehouse?”
and so on.
Share ideas and challenge each other to improve your ideas. Note of your ideas
in the notebooks.
At the end of the ideas tour, draw a map of your firm and append to the appropriate
areas the ideas you generated there. Look at the overall idea map and determine
how ideas might be combined and integrated to work better. As you might have
guessed, the best way to do this is to challenge yourself: “How might
we integrate your logistics idea with my accounting idea?”
The result should be a map of your firm complete with innovative ideas about
improving processes. In many cases, you will find that there is a running theme
that connects the ideas and facilitates their implementation.
While an idea tour is most effective with a small group, who can challenge
each other to improve their ideas, it is also possible and effective to take
an ideas tour on your own.
If you want an outsider to facilitate an ideas tour in your organisation, give
me a call (+32 2 305 6591) or e-mail
me to make arrangements. A good facilitator can present you and your management
team with inspirational challenges that generate great ideas.
SENDING MANAGERS OVERSEAS
When a company opens a new office in a developing country, such as China, India,
Thailand, Mexico, etc, they usually start by sending a seasoned manager to the
developing country in order to oversee the opening of the new office, hiring
of staff and implementing the company's way of doing business in the new office.
While sending a knowledgeable and experienced manager to the new office is important
in ensuring the new office operates according to the mother company's way of
doing business, many companies take it too far. As a result, they lose out on
a lot of innovative ideas.
American companies, in particular, often assume that the American way is the
only way to do business – even outside of America. Worse, companies opening
offices in developing countries often assume that natives in developing countries
do not have the sophistication to run offices. So they tell local managers what
to do, but do not take the time to listen to those managers.
Fortunately, such attitudes are changing as companies realise that a successful
new office usually requires a marriage of the mother company's culture with
the culture of the location of the new office.
Sadly, precious few companies bring developing country managers and experts
to headquarters in order to learn from those managers. That is a shame, because
those managers and experts can bring many innovative new ideas to the mother
company.
Managers in developing countries often have to overcome obstacles unimaginable
by Western managers. Different laws, corrupt governments, lack of infrastructure
and other issues make doing business in Chiang Mai very different to doing business
in Chicago.
And while Chicago may not present the obstacles Chiang Mai does, developing
country managers' experience overcoming developing country obstacles can be
applied as new business ideas in developed countries.
For example, Mary Kay Cosmetics normally sells their products door-to-door.
However, not long after they set up an office in China, the Chinese government
made door-to-door selling by foreign firms illegal. As a result, the Chinese
manager had to develop an alternative distribution system for her country.
Although America has not made illegal door-to-door selling, top managers at
Mary Kay realised that they had a lot to learn from this Chinese manager. So
they brought her to the USA headquarters in order to oversee the implementation
of a distribution system similar to the one she implemented in China. In other
words, to implement a very innovative idea – at least from the American
business perspective.
The lesson to be learned here is: when you open offices in new countries, do
not just send your local managers overseas to run those new offices. Also bring
foreign managers home to your main office, learn from them and innovate.
YOUR INNOVATION MENTOR
If you have learned a thing or three from Report 103, then why not tap into
my knowledge – and my colleagues' knowledge - to the benefit of your company?
If your firm subscribes to Jenni idea management software service, you and your
colleagues can tap into my knowledge, experience and advice at any time and
without cost. Every implementation of Jenni software service includes our Innovation
Mentor service. This allows you to telephone or e-mail me (and/or my colleagues)
with your questions on using Jenni, running ideas campaigns, idea management
issues, continuous innovation challenges and anything to do with innovation
in your firm – at no additional cost.
Jenni idea management software service is not a software. Rather it is a comprehensive,
turn-key idea management solution designed to get your firm on the road of sustainable
corporate innovation in no time. For more information on Jenni, visit http://www.jpb.com/jenni/.
Better yet, call (+32 2 305 6591) or e-mail
me to find out what Jenni – and I – can do for your firm.
If you are not ready for a full scale idea management solution, but are ready
for an innovation coach who can advise you on innovatising your firm, call or
e-mail me to see what I can do for you.
LATEST IN BUSINESS INNOVATION
If you want to keep up with the latest news in business innovation, I recommend
Chuck Frey's INNOVATIONweek (http://www.innovationtools.com/News/subscribe.asp).
It's the only e-newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on all of the latest innovation
news, research, trends, case histories of leading companies and more. And it's
the perfect complement to Report 103!
Happy thinking!
Jeffrey Baumgartner
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Report 103 is a complimentary weekly electronic newsletter from Bwiti bvba
of Belgium (a jpb.com company: http://www.jpb.com).
Archives and subscription information can be found at http://www.jpb.com/report103/
Report 103 is edited by Jeffrey Baumgartner and is published on the first and
third Tuesday of every month.
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