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, 15 September 2009
Issue 156

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.

DISTANCE CREATIVITY

If you are looking to boost your creativity, you will find a lot of tips out there (including my own slightly flippant “10 Steps to Boost Your Creativity” at http://www.jpb.com/creative/creative.php which first went on-line in 1996 and has been reproduced in numerous books, magazines, web pages and PowerPoint slides since). But few of those tips are based on any empirical evidence. Indeed, evidence tends to show your level of creativity is largely the result of how your brain is wired (see for instance the 19 September 2006 issue of Report 103: http://www.jpb.com/report103/archive.php?issue_no=20060919) and so cannot be significantly changed.

However, recent research by Lile Jia , Edward R. Hirta and Samuel C. Karpena at Indiana University has shown that there is a very simple and scientifically proven method to boost your creative thinking skills temporarily. You simply need to distance yourself from the problem – even if only in the mind.

The team observed that according to the construal level theory of psychological distance, thoughts which we do not see as being part of the here and now are considered psychologically distant. Moreover, we tend to see such psychologically distant things as being more abstract; while thoughts related to the here and know we perceive as being more concrete.

Lile and the team theorised that the abstract thinking of distant thoughts would be beneficial to creative thinking. To test this, they devised two experiments.

The Experiments

In the first experiment, participants, who were students at Indiana University, were simply asked to list as many modes of transportation as they could think of. However, some of the students were told the task was developed by a team at the university itself, while others were told the task was developed by University of Indiana students in Greece. As theory predicted, the latter group generated not only more ideas than the former group. But their ideas were also more diverse.

The second test involved a series of insight problems, including this one. “A prisoner was attempting to escape from a tower. He found a rope in his cell that was half as long enough to permit him to reach the ground safely. He divided the rope in half, tied the two parts together, and escaped. How could he have done this?”

Participants, again university students, were divided into three groups. One was told that the problems were developed either in California (about 3000 km distant). Another group was informed the problems were developed locally. The third group, a control group, was given no information about the location.

Again, their theory was confirmed. The group that believed that the problems were developed far away solved more of them than the control group or the group that believed the problems were developed locally.

Incidentally, if you have not worked out the sample insight problem, the solution is that the prisoner unravelled the rope down the middle and tied the two strands together to make a thinner but longer rope.

Interesting Implications

This method, of distancing yourself from problems in order to be more creative, has some interesting implications for personal creativity as well as organisational innovation. When trying to solve personal problems creatively, you are almost certainly viewing those problems as psychologically close problems. Distancing yourself from them should result in more and a wider range of creative ideas, particularly if you follow creative best practices such as trying to generate multiple solutions, reserving judgement until many solutions have been noted and aiming for outlandish thinking.

You might distance yourself from a personal problem by imagining that a similar person in a far away place is trying to solve a similar problem; or by imagining you are in another place while the problem continues to exist in the same place.

Implications for Organisational Innovation

Meanwhile, if you are responsible for innovation in an organisation, this is very useful intelligence. Most business innovation starts with creative problem solving associated with the business itself: how could we improve our product? How might we market more effectively? In what ways might we better communicate our corporate image? And so on.

All of these examples start with nearby problems. Simply be reframing the challenges in order to make them more distant, you can expect more suggestions in terms of quantity and creativity. And that leads to a higher level of innovation.

Making business challenges distant can take a variety of formats. One of the best is probably simply to format the challenge in terms of a fictional competitor in a distant location. Ask participants in your ideation initiative (such as an ideas campaign or brainstorm) to imagine a competitor in England or America or Switzerland or wherever. Moreover, you should give that competitor a name, such as Acme Widgets Inc, to make it seem more real. Then launch innovation challenges like “how could Acme improve their widgets?”, “How might Acme market their widgets to small businesses more effectively?” “In what ways might Acme better communicate their corporate image?” and so on.

Such an approach is not difficult and it is scientifically proven! So give it a go!!

Ref: Lile Jia , Edward R. Hirta and Samuel C. Karpena (September 2009) “Lessons from a Faraway land: The effect of spatial distance on creative cognition”, pp 1127-1131 in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology; http://snurl.com/rv3i9

THE MOTOR INDUSTRY: RIPE FOR DISRUPTION

The global car industry has come to a fork in the road. One path will lead to disruptive innovation that will radically alter the car as we know it. It will lead to upheaval in the industry and create many opportunities for innovative firms and creative thinkers. The other path will take the industry on a route of incremental innovation and little change beyond added computerisation and annual style changes that ensure a car more than a few years old looks out of date.

Most governments, you may be surprised to know, are striving to curb the disruptive innovation and minimise change in the auto industry. We will get to that in a moment.

The 100 Year Old Innovation

The basis for this disruptive innovation is, of course, the electric car powered by batteries. Although such cars have been around since the dawn of the motor car over 100 years ago, innovations in the computer industry combined with fears of global warming and increasing fuel costs have made electric cars a more attractive proposition than they have been since the first electric cars were built.

In particular, the invention of the lithium-ion battery, which is used in most lap-tops, mobile telephones and other portable tech gear, has made electric cars all the more viable. These new batteries can take a longer charge and are lighter in weight than nickel-cadmium rechargeable batteries.

Recharge Challenge

The biggest challenge facing electric cars has been that batteries run out of juice. Of course today's cars run out of fuel. But while a petrol or diesel engined car can simply pull into a fuel station and be on its way in a matter of minutes, batteries generally take hours to recharge. Presently there are four options for recharging available to electric car owners and manufacturers:

Use electric cars exclusively for short journeys. During the week, most cars are only used for relatively short journeys including commuting to work and school and running errands. For many people, the 100-200 km limit of today's electric cars is sufficient to meet their daily needs. Nevertheless, most people are simply uncomfortable knowing that if they run out of electricity, they are stuck. And they would still need a petrol/diesel engined car for longer journeys.
Develop technology that allows rapid recharge of batteries. Several teams are working on this. It's the holy grail of electric powered vehicles. But there is nothing available now.
Focus on hybrid cars, like the Toyota Prius, that combine a small petrol engine with a battery engine so that there is always a back-up power supply.
Separate the batteries from the cars. An interesting option is to separate the batteries from the car. If cars used standardised battery packs that could be rapidly removed and replaced, fuel stations could be transformed into battery replacement stations in which drivers could pull in, have their depleted batteries removed and a fully recharged battery package put in. If cars are designed to facilitate this action, battery replacement would be just as quick as refuelling a car at a petrol station.

The Baumgartner Alternative

My thought is to steal a paradigm from the train and tram industry: overhead electrical wires. Just as many trains and almost all trams connect to overhead wires supplying electricity, why not enable cars to do the same? Major roads and city centres could provide overhead wires for cars to connect to in order to provide driving electricity as well as to recharge their batteries. Electricity would be paid for as it is consumed, probably through a metre in the car. On minor back roads, in car parks and on driveways, cars could use their batteries. As soon as they get home or onto a major road, their batteries would be recharged.

By my reckoning, such a solution offers several advantages:

The problem of slow recharging is solved.
A grid supplying electricity for all cars could also collect energy from braking vehicles as well as those going downhill, thus providing efficient energy.
A grid could also send and transmit information, enabling drivers to keep informed of traffic conditions, avoid congestion and more. Optimally, the grid could also monitor traffic and help reduce accidents by preventing cars from getting too close, slowing cars in bad conditions and even stopping electricity supply in areas where there is a major accident.
A grid could use smart payment options in which drivers pay higher sums for driving at peak hours and lower sums for driving at off-peak hours such as night time, when many power stations are generating more electricity than is actually being used.

The Paradigms Are A-Changin'

Irrespective of which option becomes the standard, if electric cars become commonplace, there will be all kinds of changes. Traditional fuel stations will become increasingly less necessary – just as camera film has gone from being available in almost every shop to being a rarity only available in specialist shops.

Moreover, the very design of cars themselves will change. Electric cars do not need gearboxes and many actually have motors in their wheels. With no need for a big bonnet to cover the motor or a transmission tunnel, the basic shape of cars can be changed radically. This will not happen immediately as car manufacturers will want electric cars to look reasonably like existing cars. But it will happen over time.

Affects on Business... And Government.

The best known manufacturer of electric cars today is probably Telsa, a company founded by dot-com millionaire (or possibly billionaire) Elon Musk. And, as often happens with disruptive innovation: we can expect many new upstarts to become the leading innovators in the field of electronic motoring.

Of course all the big names in the motor industry are moving towards electrically powered vehicles in one way or another. Toyota has had huge success with their Prius hybrid. Troubled General Motors is about to launch the Chevrolet Volt, their own hybrid alternative. Renault, Nissan, Mitsubishi and many others are also at various stages of developing electric cars. But they are well behind the new upstarts. And there lies the biggest threat to the nascent electric car industry.

As we have seen during the recent economic downturn, governments around the world are reluctant to allow bad things to happen to their car industries. This is not surprising. Not only do the big car manufacturers employ millions of people globally, but they are also supported by a vast parts industry that employs many more people. In many cities around the world, the bulk of jobs are provided by the car industry, their suppliers and the businesses that cater to employees of these businesses. When a major car factory closes down, the job losses are tremendous and the economic consequences can be dismal.

As a result, it is understandable that governments give handouts to the automotive industry in order to keep those factories open. Indeed, many handouts and government supported loans have explicit conditions demanding that car manufacturers keep their factories open and do not lay off workers.

In other words, the traditional car industry is receiving subsidies for not changing! These subsidies may be fine for keeping jobs, but they are deadly for innovation. If the new upstarts, which may eventually employ thousands and even millions of people, but which now employ merely dozens, have to fight against industrial giants with huge government handouts that protect jobs and, indirectly, out-dated paradigms, the innovative newcomers will have a huge fight ahead.

Indeed while governments are talking up the importance of environmental friendliness, they may be killing a major contributor to the cause by propping up the old fuel driven industry and indirectly hampering the development of a more innovative, more environmentally friendly industry that could provide just as many – if not more – jobs in the future.

Innovations in Job Retention

Don't misunderstand me. I appreciate that shutting down a factory that directly and indirectly provides jobs for thousands of people is an economic disaster. But, I also feel that propping up an outdated industry in order to retain those jobs does no favours to anyone.

Instead, governments perhaps need to be more innovative with their employment support. Grants to companies exploring new motoring technology, combined with training that will enable factory workers to be valuable employees in these new companies would not only retain jobs, but ensure that the affected people remain competitive in the workforce. Surely that is a better thing.

Moreover, applying creativity to job support will certainly lead to other, better solutions that encourage industrial competitiveness rather than hamper it.

Exciting Times

Beyond the electric car, fuel cells and other options are being explored. Very likely the cars my children (now 8 and 12) will be driving as adults will be radically different to the cars of today. And, when you consider the extent to which cars are a part of and define our daily life, disruption in the industry will be widely felt. The next few decades will doubtless be fascinating to anyone with an interest in cars.

JENNI IPM – GUARANTEED TO HELP YOU INNOVATE

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Moreover, we are so sure that Jenni will help you reduce costs and increase income, through innovation, that we guarantee it. At any time, if you feel Jenni is not generating value for money, just let us know and we'll cancel your contract with just 30 days' notice. Since you pay for Jenni as you use it-- rather than paying a big up-front fee – this ensures you only need to pay for Jenni while it delivers value to your organisation.

For more information or to arrange a demo of Jenni, just visit http://www.jpb.com/jenni/ – you'll also find our global list of registered sales and service partners there.

ARE YOU AN INNOVATION CONSULTANT?

If you are providing innovation services such as consulting, training or coaching and want to add a great idea management software solution to your portfolio of products and services, contact me and let's talk about how Jenni can help your clients innovate better – and help you gain new clients.

You benefit from our generous commission programme, marketing on the popular www.jpb.com web site (over 150,000 page hits/month) and collaborating with a fantastic global team of innovation, marketing and sales experts (http://www.jpb.com/about/index.php). In addition, by packaging your services with Jenni, you can provide your clients with value added innovation services that help them increase profitability.

It's a fantastic win-win-win scenario for your, your client and jpb.com!

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!

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