Innovation in Practice

The LAB: Multiplication (August 2008)

The Multiplication tool is one of the five powerful thinking tools taught to me by the folks at Systematic Inventive Thinking. I like this tool because it is simple and yields great results.  Even children can learn it. 

Multiplication works by taking a component of the product, service, strategy, etc, and then making one or several copies of it.  But the copy must be changed in some way from the original component.  The original component is still intact, unchanged.  Now using Function Follows Form, we work backwards to take this hypothetical solution and find a problem that it solves.

One of our blog readers, Jim Doherty of the Grabbit Tool Company, agreed to let me use their main product, the EZ Grabbit Tarp Holder, for this month's LAB.  I bought a set at Ace Hardware last night, and used the Multiplication tool just now to create some new product ideas.  Here is a demonstration of the EZ Grabbit:

We start Multiplication by making a list of the components:

1. Sleeve
2. Dogbone
3. Chord
4. Grip
5. Lock

Make a copy or several copies of each component, one at a time, and change something about it.  What would be the benefit or potential use of the product with this new, changed component?  Here are some ideas:

1. Two sleeves, but the second sleeve is attached, back-to-back, to the original sleeve.  This would allow a second tarp to be attached to another one (with its own dogbone).  There could be three or perhaps even four sleeves, arranged in quadrant style (with the openings facing out), so multiple tarps could be attached.  The copied sleeve could be longer than the original, allowing different tarp configurations.
2. Multiple dogbones, but each is optimized for different types of material (tarp, plastic, terry cloth, cotton, denim, etc) to prevent damage, improve grip, etc.
3. Multiple chords, each coming out of the same dogbone with its own hole, to allow different attachment points.
4. Two grips, the second one attaches to the first one to allow it to be hung from a hook.
5. Two locking mechanisms, the second one used to attach to the fabric temporarily so it does not get lost or slide around during placement.

Once we have raw ideas like these, it's a good idea to get early customer feedback and perhaps build some working prototypes to let customers envision using the new product.  The ideas above are incremental innovations to the product's original category, so it can be valuable to get customer feedback about potential uses of the new embodiments outside the category to find breakthrough ideas as well.

Innovation Allocation

Who leads innovation in your company: marketing or R&D?  It's a trick question, of course.  But it's a useful question for Fortune 100 companies to consider.  Has your company made a conscious choice of how it "allocates" this leadership role?

Allocating innovation to one group over the other will yield a different business result.  The approaches to innovation by marketing are dramatically different than approaches to innovation by R&D, so the outputs will be dramatically different.  The question becomes: which group will outperform the other?   Technical-driven innovation or marketing-driven innovation?

But there is another layer of complexity.  Allocating innovation resources to one group over the other will also yield a different kind of innovation.  Market-driven innovation speaks to what is salable.  Technology-driven innovation speaks to what is technically possible.  Which group delivers the type of innovation that is best suited to the company's growth strategy?  Now the decision of who leads innovation becomes even stickier.

This question is a bit like deciding how to allocate your money in an investment portfolio. Which allocation of funds will give you the total return and the type of return (tax advantaged, etc) that you need?  The tempting answer here is to assert innovation leadership should be shared between the two.  Diversify your innovation allocation just as you would diversify your personal investment allocation.  I'm not so sure.  Here's why.

For a company that knows exactly what its customers need, then it's just a matter of developing it. A technically-led innovation approach makes the most sense. L'Oreal, for example, does virtually no market research with its customers.  It gathers no "Voice of the Customer."  Yet it knows exactly what customers need because.....L'Oreal tells them!  In that case, innovation is led by the technical team to deliver the beauty compounds and formulas that will thrill their customers. The innovation approach here is described as "Problem-to-Solution.  Engineers lead this because they excel at solution matching.

A company in the refrigerator space such as GE or Whirlpool needs a different approach.  Breakthrough innovation is more likely to be found in the "Solution-to-Problem" mode, best driven by the commercial marketers who excel at problem matching. The marketer needs to use an approach that relieves them of their preconceived notions about what customers want. They seek to avoid "fixedness" around their current product so they can solution spot more freely.  Only then will they be able to envision new concepts of home refrigeration that never would have emerged with a technical approach. 

The best companies maximize their innovation investment return by consciously allocating leadership to either marketing or to R&D.  In the end, innovation is best driven with a team approach but with clear role accountability and direction depending on market conditions and corporate strategy.    

Ideation vs. Prioritization

Ideation or prioritization?  Imagine you had a choice of being really good at one, but not the other.  You could be a master at creating ideas, or you could excel at selecting winning ideas, but not both.  Which would you choose? 

Two things intrigue me about this trade-off.  First, companies spend too much time and energy prioritizing ideas and not enough on creating ideas.  Second, the innovation space seems to demand a completely different set of tools and techniques for selecting ideas than the tools and techniques used for making other business decisions.  In reality, there is no difference.  The tools used to make everyday business decisions should be the same ones used to prioritize ideas. 

I face this issue a lot when speaking about innovation.  "How do you select the best idea to pursue?  How do you know which idea is going to be the next blockbuster?  What is the secret to spotting great ideas?"   I just spoke to an outstanding group of MBA candidates at the Columbia Business School.   One of the students wanted to know my views on this.  It is as though I have a special eye or an innovation Magic Eightball for picking winners.  If you can unlock my formula, you will find the path to riches.  Not even close.

 

In my view, prioritization of ideas is not an innovation issue, and it does not belong in the discussion at all.  The problem of which idea to pursue from among a list of choices is a subject well covered by the behavioral decision sciences.  An amazing body of research exists in this field.  Researchers have described highly effective methods of choice that circumvent the inherent weaknesses of humans in making decisions.  The choices we make in the innovation space are no different.  The choice of which innovation to pursue should be approached the same way one decides on what clothes to wear or what person to marry:  1. consider the criteria that are important, 2. weight those criteria, 3. score each candidate on those criteria, 4. add up the results, and 5. let the chips fall where they are. The highest rated idea is the one you should pursue.  It's that simple.

 

But innovation choices get special privileges over other choices.  We seem to require methods of choice that deserve royal treatment over other methods of choice.  A cottage industry within a cottage  industry has evolved to create a sense of uniqueness when in fact no uniqueness exists.  A wide variety of special tools have emerged to select and manage ideas.  The good news about many of these tools is that they have the right science built into them.  Here is a sample (from Innovation Tools - thanks, Chuck!)

•  Accolade Idea Management •  Ameli •  BrainBank •  BrightIdea.com •  Cognistreamer Innovation Manager •  EGIP Idea-Modul •  Engage ThoughtWare •  Idea Management System •  Idea Reservoir •  IdeaBox •  IdeaCenter (Akiva) •  IdeasTracker •  IdeaValue •  Imaginatik •  Ingenuity Bank •  Insight Results •  Jenni Enterprise Idea Management •  OVO Innovation •  Prism Idea Management •  Target Idea Management for mySAP

Executives obsess over  finding the right method to select ideas when they should be more focused on how to generate ideas.  The zeal over prioritization puts a drag on the core issues surrounding innovation such as how to innovate and how to make it routine and part of the culture.   Why do executives sweat more over selecting ideas than generating?  My sense is they feel more accountable when choosing an idea than when generating the idea.  Generating an idea doesn't carry with it any risk or obligation to spend.  Choosing an idea does both.  If companies want executives to put more priority on generating ideas, they will need to change this.

 

It is time to strip out this issue entirely from the innovation discussion.  Don't mix the two.  Put the emphasis on a method to generate many great ideas and not on the method to choose the right one. For that, use the well-established science.  Just as Fortune 100 companies use the well established methods to innovate, we should use well established methods to prioritize innovations.