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, 4 March 2008
Issue 123

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.

Information on unsubscribing, archives, reprinting articles, etc can be found at the end of this newsletter.

10 RULES FOR CREATIVE TEAMS

More and more organisations like yours are putting together teams to take charge of innovative projects. This is a good thing. Under the right circumstances, a team can be significantly more creative than any individual team member and is often better able to push creative ideas through the implementation process so that they may become innovations.

Here are ten quick rules for ensuring your teams are effective creative teams.

1. Diversity

If you wanted to come up with some creative dessert ideas, you wouldn't fill up a creative team with a dozen chocolate cake experts, would you? You would bring in experts in cakes, ice cream, candy, cookies, bread and probably some expert eaters as well. Likewise, when you want a creative team to work on new marketing ideas, don't limit its population to marketing people. Bring in people from different divisions. A greater diversity of team members provides a wider range of experience, skills and thinking patterns and that results in a higher level of creativity.

2. Reward the Team, not the Individual

If you offer the entire team a reward for its creative ideas, they are motivated work together as a team to devise and develop creative ideas – and win rewards. When you reward individuals within the team for their creative ideas, they are motivated to act selfishly in order to win rewards. At best, that would probably include hiding information from fellow team members. At worst it might include stealing ideas and deception. Almost certainly, it will result in bad feelings when people see team-mates rewarded while they are not.

3. Teams Are not Forever

Over time, team members learn to understand each other. They “share common language and a common set of unspoken understandings”, which psychologists call “tacit knowledge” (Group Genius, p 51, by Keith Sawyer). This tacit knowledge facilitates easy communication flow and -- provided the right impetus is there -- makes it easy to be creative. Likewise, the team develops an identity and hence pride in their performance.

After about two years or so, however, team members get to know each other too well. And with over-familiarisation comes predictability and possibly even boredom. Thus, it is good to give teams time to jell, but bad to keep them together for too long. Ideally, you should mix and match team members every 18-24 months.

4. Establish Processes for Inter-Team Communication

Teams can learn from each other. Someone outside the team may see something in a problem that team members fail to see, simply because they are too close to the issue at hand. Alternatively, team A may look at an innovation challenge from a different perspective than team B and so be able to suggest alternative paths of problem solving. Hence, it is important to bring teams together and encourage inter-team communication. Nevertheless, it is also critical to ensure that teams do not get bogged down in inter-team meetings or report writing that detracts from creative problem solving. That said, I recommend periodic grand brainstorming meetings where teams summarise their work and other teams can provide suggestions.

5. Encourage Good Humoured Rivalry

Many managers pit teams together in highly competitive situations hoping to motivate team members to push themselves harder. I am not sure that is a good thing. Excess stress has been shown not to be conducive to creativity – and heavy competition often results in heavy stress. On the other hand, good humour competition or even rivalry between teams adds a competitive edge with minimal stress. Moreover, friendly rivalry can make things more fun. And fun is almost always conducive to creativity.

6. Train Team Leaders in the Basics of Group Creativity

In order to ensure teams extract the maximum creative potential from their teams, it is important that team leaders understand the basics of group creativity. This should include an understanding of creative problem solving methodology, motivating team members to be creative, keeping criticism in check (until the appropriate time), idea generation methods, and evaluation methods. A highly critical team leader can destroy a large team's creative potential very quickly. On the other hand, a motivating team leader can push people to think more creatively than ever.

(If you want someone who can help train your teams in the basics of group creativity – contact me or your closest partner firm see http://www.jpb.com/contact/index.php)

7. Solve Relationship Problems Quickly

If two team members have problems with each other, the team leader or a senior manager (particularly if the team leader is part of the problem) needs to solve the conflict quickly. In-group fighting between two or more members can destroy group dynamics, cause team members to take sides and eat up time that should be devoted to creativity and innovation. If worse comes to worst, move one of the conflictees to another team.

8. Break Down Hierarchies (as much as you can)

Hierarchies can cause problems in teams – particularly in hierarchical or bureaucratic organisations. Team members will always look to their superiors for approval and this tends to result in generating ideas to please superiors rather than generating ideas that are truly creative. There are two alternatives. You can either build teams of people who are at similar levels within the hierarchy, or you can establish basic team rules to discourage playing to the hierarchy. Better still, do both!

9. Provide Team Resources

Conference rooms with beanbag chairs, toys, lots of paper, pens and the like are far more inspirational than the usual bland table and chairs. Lego, building blocks and other toys can be used for creating models of material products as well as of processes and methods. As a result, they can be used for visual brainstorming – which can be far more effective than spoken brainstorming (see http://www.jpb.com/creative/visual_brainstorming.php). Even a small library of books, journals and other literature is highly useful.

10. Results Oriented Rather than Method Oriented

Teams should be given goals to pursue and be allowed to establish their own paths to achieve those goals. Moreover, they should be encouraged to get away from the office and explore external creative stimuli. Spending a couple of hours in an art gallery, brainstorming in a science museum or going for a group walk in the woods can all help clear minds and inspire thinking. Very little corporate creativity blossoms in cubicles or stuffy conference rooms.

There you have it: everything you need to know to establish creative teams in your organisation! But if you think I've missed something, let me know. I'll run any good suggestions in a future issue of Report 103.

INNOVATION TRAINS

I believe that the greatest innovation we will see in the airline industry over the next decade will not be in the airline industry. Rather, it will be in the railway business. Indeed, that innovation is already starting.

Today, I can get on a Eurostar train in Brussels and be in London in just two hours. That's a 321 km (199 mile) journey and roughly equal to the journey from New York City to Washington DC – with an English Channel halfway between the two cities. An aeroplane could fly the distance in about an hour. But with airports located outside city centres, longer check-in times and disembarkation times – the train journey is still significantly faster door to door. I can be in Paris on a Thalys train in 1 1/2 hours. Likewise, in Japan a few years ago I travelled from Nagoya to Tokyo (262 km) by train faster than the reverse journey by plane.

Moreover, the trains are more comfortable, less stressful and more inspirational.

So, I was delighted to learn that Guillaume Pepy, the chief executive of SNCF, France's state railway used one of my favourite strategic innovation challenges with his managers. He asked “What might our competitors do to lure customers away from our trains?”

And, surprisingly for a state enterprise – particularly a French state enterprise – the resulting suggestions have turned into some rather innovative ideas in train travel. Better still, those ideas are coming to fruition in upcoming months.

Passengers travelling from Paris to Biarritz, Nice or Marseille in the evening will be able to party the night away with drinks, gambling and dancing on special “iDnight” carriages attached to many trains. Those of us who prefer a book and a glass of wine while travelling at night on high speed trains will be able to take seats in quieter carriages. Those trains, by the way, will be travelling at speeds of up to 300 kmh (190 mph) in remarkable quiet and smoothness. That's roughly the top speed of a Ferrari.

On numerous routes, passengers will be able to choose from “Zen” carriages – which will be quiet – and “Zap” ones which will be buzzing.

And with a small but growing number of privatised train services competing with state train services in Europe, it is very likely the SCNF's innovations will be watched carefully be the competition and hopefully inspire creative thinking on other high – and low – speed train services.

The result will make train travel not only more efficient and cleaner than air travel, but also a lot more fun. Something America's Home Land Security and similar bodies elsewhere are continually striving to remove from air travel.

(Source for information about SCNF and Guillaume Pepy: “Mr High Speed Europe”, The Economist, February 23rd, 2008)

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (IPR) BASICS

Intellectual property rights (IPR) exist to protect your ideas and the implementations of your ideas. Yet, I am continually amazed at how badly these laws are understood, even by people who work with intellectual property. Indeed, over the years, my companies and I have even received the occasional letter claiming breach of IPR on our part and threatening to call in the lawyers. Amusingly, the senders of these letters were so confused about IPR, that their claims were ridiculous. Indeed, in one case the sender eventually eventually agreed to compensate us out of court in order to settle their absurd and confused accusation!

I am hardly an expert on IPR – but I do know a few basics (many years ago I co-authored with Corinna Schulze a European Commission guide to EU legislation on e-commerce for small and medium sized enterprises).

But first a couple of warnings.

Firstly, I am not a legal expert. Always consult a legal expert before taking any action with respect to intellectual property. This article is for informative purposes only.

Secondly, if you feel someone has used your intellectual property without your permission, step one should be a friendly contact explaining why you believe the other party has abused your IPR and request they stop or pay royalties or some such. Nine times out of ten, this will solve the problem. A lot of people steal other people's intellectual property without realising what they are doing. For example, many people copy images from the web and put them on their own web sites, into reports and otherwise use those images without realising they are stealing intellectual property. They often believe that material on the web is available for free distribution. A friendly e-mail will discourage most of them.

If that doesn't work, get advice from a legal professional before sending a letter threatening to take advice from a legal professional. If your threatening letter is inappropriate, makes false accusations (such as if you get your terminology confused) or is addressed to the wrong party you could make your claim inactionable.

That out of the way, here are the three key types of intellectual property.

Copyright

Copyright is a form of protection provided to authors of original work such as written work, musical pieces, artwork, plays, computer code and the like. Basically, as soon as you create such a work, you automatically acquire copyright to that work. Moreover, that copyright is largely recognised internationally.

In the past, it was a legal requirement to append a copyright notice at the end of any work (ie. the copyright symbol, followed by the year and the copyright owner) but that is no longer a legal necessity. Nevertheless, it is advisable to add a copyright notice to your original work in order to remind people that it is indeed yours.

Copyright may be granted to other individuals and organisations. Generally, if you create a work while in the employ of an organisation – for instance if you are a staff writer on a magazine – your contract explicitly states that copyright of all material you produce in the employ of that organisation belongs to your employer. Likewise, if you sell a book to a publisher, you normally grant some or all of your copyright rights to the publisher.

In many jurisdictions you can register your copyright of a work. Such registration provides stronger proof of your ownership of the work and in some jurisdictions may allow you to demand greater damages in the event someone steals your copyrighted work.

An interesting and informative article on 10 big myths about copyright (US oriented) can be found at http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html.

Trademark

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO: http://www.wipo.int) defines a trademark as “...a distinctive sign which identifies certain goods or services as those produced or provided by a specific person or enterprise.”

In other words, you can trademark the name and logo of your company, your products, your services or anything produced or provided by your organisation or yourself.

Trademarks are national in scope and if you want to protect your brand in multiple countries, you need to register the trademark in multiple countries. A good example of this is the cartoon character “Dennis the Menace”, of which there are two. One was developed by Hank Ketchum in the USA and was first published in 1951. The other was developed by David Law in the UK and also debuted 1951. Both are still popular in their respective countries, but are either not sold, or sold under a different name in the other country. For example, Ketchum's Dennis the Menace is simply called “Dennis” in the UK as Beano comics owns the British trademark for a cartoon character named “Dennis the Menace”.

If you obtain a trademark for a product, that prohibits other parties from selling a similar product with a similar name or a similar logo. Thus, you could not legally create a soft drink called Pepsi-Coca (for instance) or even call it Wombat-Juice if the Wombat-Juice logo was confusingly similar to the Pepsi logo.

However, very different products can have the same name as no one is likely to confuse, for instance, a multinational bank and insurance company named Fortis with a Dutch based wind-turbine manufacturer of the same name. Hence, both companies may own trademarks of the name in the Netherlands.

Trademarks, like copyrights, can be bought and sold.

Patents

A patent, according to the Wikipedia is “a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an invention.” Patent rights and terms vary from country to country.

The US patent office defines a patent as “A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Generally, the term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, in special cases, from the date an earlier related application was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. U.S. patent grants are effective only within the United States, U.S. territories, and U.S. possessions. Under certain circumstances, patent term extensions or adjustments may be available.”

In other words, if you invent something – whether it is a machine, a recipe or (in some cases) a process – you can patent it. This patent indicates that you or your firm owns the intellectual property in the invention and that no other individual or organisation may reproduce this invention without your permission.

Thus, if you create an invention that will change the world, but do not have the wherewithal to manufacture and market it yourself, you can show your invention to bigger businesses who do have the necessary resources and do a deal. Your patent prohibits companies copying your idea without your permission. And if they do, you can normally sue for substantial rewards.

Unfortunately, patents are becoming highly controversial, particularly in America where basic business processes – most famously Amazon.com's one-click purchase – are being patented and patent holders are suing companies that use similar processes, even when these processes are very obvious and not at all innovative.

However, because a business process such as the one-click purchase cannot be patented in most jurisdictions outside the USA, Amazon cannot prohibit companies situated outside America from using the process on their web sites.

The Law and Implementation

One final note. Even though many developing countries such as China, Russia and Thailand have IPR laws, these are seldom policed. The result is that the laws are blatantly ignored. In these countries you can find public markets and established shops selling pirated videos, DVDs, software, branded fashion goods and more. And while technically illegal, the police are seldom enforcing IPR laws. Worse, many pirated organisations are in the hands of powerful mafia-like organisations against which the police are at best powerless and at worst in the pay of.

Even outside developing countries, the web makes it remarkably easy to copy and disseminate copyrighted material. Indeed, content from jpb.com is frequently reprinted by others without permission. This is particularly ironic as we almost always allow others to reprint our material provided credit is given!

JENNI UPGRADE

We have recently upgraded Jenni idea management software service to version 4.0, which includes a number of new features that:

• Make your innovation process more collaborative, particularly with our new IdeaWikis.

• Make it easier to reward your innovators.

• Provide an innovation challenge library.

• Allow you to run idea competitions.

• Facilitate the flow of ideas from evaluated promising ideas in Jenni to implemented ideas using your firm's existing tools and processes.

• And more!

There is also an optional social networking module that provides secure and business related internal social networking services to your employees. Tools include network building, skill-tagging and blogging.

Contact us (http://www.jpb.com/jenni/contact.php) to learn more about Jenni 4.0, the social networking module and our service packages!

THE FACE OF JOHAN SEBASTIAN BACH

Scottish forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson has reconstructed the face of Johann Sebastian Bach, using his skull, the only known painting of him, his habits and modern forensic techniques. The result is impressive.

Of course what Bach looks like is largely irrelevant and has no bearing on the quality of his music which many, including myself, believe to be some of the greatest ever composed. Nevertheless, it is incredible to see the face of a genius and pleasant to note that he looks like an awfully nice chap, the sort with whom one might well enjoy sharing a beer and a joke at the local pub.

You can see the reconstruction and read a little more about it on the Scientific American web site – http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=experts-create-new-image - as well as elsewhere on the web.

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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