Innovation in Practice

The LAB: Innovating a Credit Card with S.I.T. (June 2009)

Credit card companies must innovate to overcome the financial and public relations consequences of recent government legislation.  The Credit Card Reform Act of 2009 is a "bill to protect consumers, and especially young consumers, from skyrocketing credit card debt, unfair credit card practices, and deceptive credit offers."   These changes go into effect in 2010, and they will undoubtedly reduce the financial performance of card issuers.

The concept of using a card for purchases was described in 1887 by Edward Bellamy in his utopian novel Looking Backward.  Bellamy used the term credit card eleven times in this novel.  The credit card has become a ubiquitous symbol of consumerism since then.  Many credit card innovations have emerged, some useful and others wacky.  Recent innovations include: paperless statement; online statements; custom logos to display your affiliations with colleges, companies, and other groups;  a magnetic strip to read information more efficiently and securely.

The key for credit card companies is to reduce their reliance on price (in the form of interest rates, penalties, and fees) and increase their pipeline of innovative services for which consumers will be willing to pay.  That is the focus of this month's LAB.

Are YOU an Innovator?

Do you consider yourself an innovator?  I asked this to a group of participants at a recent PDMA workshop, and the results surprised me.  Only about half of the participants raised their hand.  Many of those had that hesitant look of self-doubt on their face. 

It's a difficult question.  How do you really know if you are an innovator?  Is it based on the number of patents you hold?  Is it a function of your job title?  Is it based on your creative endeavors like music or art?

Take this self-assessment to find out.  Place a check mark beside the statement you believe is more true.  (Click here for a printable version and for scoring instructions.)

The LAB: Innovating a Surgical Mask with Task Unification (May 2009)

Crisis creates opportunity.  That certainly has been the case for surgical mask makers and retailers as people scramble to buy them to protect against the H1N1 swine flu virus.  Companies and governments are ordering masks by the case load.  The surgical mask has become the number four selling item in women's apparel at Amazon.com, moving ahead of another strapped item - the bra.  The rush to protect against the virus extends beyond surgical masks as people seek any form of protection.  Soon we will be tracking the pandemic on our iPhones.

Surgical masks have been around since 1860.  Since then, lots of innovation has occurred.  One of my favorites is shown here - a clear mask so that doctors and nurses can see each others' face to improve communications. The fashionable surgical mask idea has been around for a very long time, but it is back with a vengeance.

There is debate about the value of surgical masks in the operating room.  Experts question whether they protect people from viruses like swine flu.  At best, masks seem capable of short term protection from large particle droplets transmitted at close contact.  Masks prevent transmission both to and from the wearer.

Given the questionable efficacy of surgical masks, this would seem a ripe opportunity for PROBLEM-TO-SOLUTION innovation using a methods such as TRIZ and Goldfire.  For this LAB, I will use Systematic Inventive Thinking (SOLUTION-TO-PROBLEM innovation) to see if there are novel ideas to extend the value of the surgical mask and perhaps address some of the unmet needs as well.  For this exercise, I am using a 3M 8210 respirator version that is N95 rated.  We start by listing the components:

Design the Future of Mobile Communications

It's time to put innovation into practice.

LG Mobile Phones, the fastest growing mobile phone brand in North America, is partnering with crowdSPRING, an online marketplace for creative services, to announce a new competition to define the future of personal mobile communication.  U.S. residents age 18 and over can have a chance to design their vision of the next revolutionary LG mobile phone and compete for more than $80,000 in awards.  See http://www.crowdspring.com/LG for details on how to submit your ideas.

Here is how submissions will be judged:

The LAB: Innovating a Garage Door Opener (March 2009)

Teaching people how to innovate is rewarding.  It empowers them.  It unlocks their minds to believe that innovation can happen "on command."   People realize there is no excuse for not having enough ideas or being innovative once they have been trained.

This month's LAB features the output of one of my students, Michael Sanders, in my class, "Applied Marketing Innovation."  For the final exam, students were assigned a product at random.  They had three hours to apply all five templates in the Systematic Inventive Thinking method to come up with true new-to-the-world innovations.  They were graded on how correctly they applied each template as well as the novelty of their inventions.  Michael's assignment:  Garage Door Opener.  Here is what he did.

Innovation Adjacencies

Finding adjacent market spaces is an attractive way to grow.  Adjacent markets are not too far away from your core business in terms of channels, technology, price point, brand, etc.  Adjacent means: lying near, neighboring, having a common border, touchable.  Although chasing adjacencies can be distracting, it is a much easier to sell internally.  Adjacencies seem more achievable than far out, ethereal white space opportunities.

Adjacent markets are even more appealing when you apply a systematic innovation method to it.  Giving yourself the gift of novelty in a new market space right next to your own seems like the best of both worlds.  The trick is finding the right adjacencies.

The starting point for thinking about adjacencies is to ask yourself, "Adjacent to what?"  It is much harder to find adjacent spaces when you don't have a clear understanding of your existing spaces.  For this, I recommend a framework called The Big Picture developed by Professor Christie Nordhielm at The University of Michigan.  The Big Picture outlines four quadrants that, when properly constructed, completely define any market category.  Here is a visual of those quadrants.

The LAB: Monetizing Twitter with Attribute Dependency (February 2009)

Venture capitalists could increase the value of their investments by applying a corporate innovation method to those investments.  Take Twitter for example.  It just received its third round of funding - $35 million.  Yet it has no revenue, no business model...just the promise of such.  It is the perfect time to innovate. 

I decided to take the challenge to create new concepts for the Twitter platform that have the potential to earn money.  Others are chasing this, too, including the Twitter management team.  It reminds me of the early days of Amazon when many (including me) wondered if the company would turn a profit.  The difference between Twitter and Amazon is an important one.  Amazon started with a business model in mind.  From there, it had to achieve economies of scale.  Twitter started with none.  Economies of scale do not matter until it can define a viable business model.

Let's see how innovation can help.

I used the Attribute Dependency template of Systematic Inventive Thinking, a method of innovation that works like no other I have found.  Attribute Dependency (or AD for short) differs from the other templates in that it uses attributes (variables) of the situation rather than components.  It is a powerful tool and more challenging than the others in some respects.  It yields amazing results.  You start with an attribute list, then construct a 2 x 2 matrix of these, pairing each against the others.  Each cell represents a potential dependency (or potential break in an existing dependency) that forms a Virtual Product.  Using Function Follows Form, we work backwards and envision a potential benefit or problem that this hypothetical solution solves.  Innovation!

Wikinnovation!

Visit the Applied Marketing Innovation Wiki to see a collection of inventions across a wide array of product categories as well as information about innovation consultants.  The information is from students at The University of Cincinnati taking the graduate course, Applied Marketing Innovation.  Here is what you will find:

The LAB: Innovating The Kindle with Task Unification (January 2009)

As we await the arrival of Amazon's Kindle 2.0, it is a perfect time to begin innovating their next generation device.  Anytime is a good time to innovate, but it is especially meaningful to innovate just as you launch your latest innovation.  It tells the world you are serious about creating a sustainable pipeline of new growth opportunities.

This month's LAB uses the Task Unification tool of Systematic Inventive Thinking to create new concepts for the Kindle.  The definition of Task Unification is: assigning an additional job to an existing resource.  The general idea is to break the current product down into components and then systematically give each component a new task or activity.  This creates an abstract "pre-inventive" form that we then take and discover potential benefits, target markets, and adaptations that would make the innovation very useful and unique.  This is what I call "Solution-To-Problem" innovation.

My goal is to come up with innovations that are not obvious or mere incremental changes in functionality of the current device.  If that is all we wanted, we could look at the iPhone or other electronic gizmo for ideas.  I don't own a Kindle (yet), so I will work from the Kindle User's Guide to make my component list. 

1. Screen Display
2. Control Buttons
3. Keyboard
4. Cursor bar
5. Select Wheel
6. Dictionary
7. Speaker
8. Wireless
9. Storage
10. Battery
11. Search (Software)
12. Music Player

As I try to do in all LAB sessions, I created the following innovations in about an hour:

1.  SCREEN:  Kindle makes reading easier.  It tracks how fast you read and adjusts the scrolling speed to a comfortable level.  The screen resolution adjusts to your eyeglass prescription to optimize readability (brightness, contrast, text size).

2.  SOFTWARE: Kindle helps you become a better reader.  It keeps track of how much you read, the level of difficulty, when you read, at what intervals, and at what speed.  It becomes a "reading trainer" by suggesting ways to improve your speed and comprehension based on your patterns.

3.  STORAGE:  Kindle is a book management system.  It keeps a complete inventory of all books you own or have access to, digital and physical.  It relates the material you are reading now in a newspaper article or blog to books that you own so that you are aware of the connection.  It flags you to view material in books you own as it may be relevant to what you are reading now.  It connects context.

4.  CONTROL BUTTONS:  Kindle controls other things in your home.  It becomes a universal remote to control room lights, stereo, and TV.

5.  WIRELESS:  Kindle is a social tool.  It connects you with others who have a Kindle.  It alerts them on what you are reading at that moment in Twitter-like fashion.  It connects members of a book club who are all reading the same book, and it allows members to bookmark and comment on parts of the book, all shared wirelessly or perhaps via Instant Messaging.  Kindle sends what you are reading to your Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, or blog so that others can see what you are reading...now.

6.  SPEAKER:  Kindle translates words and speech.  It has Text-to-Speech function so you can highlight a written passage and then hear it spoken in words over the speaker.

7.  WIRELESS:  Kindle enhances your imagination.  It integrates Google Maps with what you are reading so that you can visually see the location that is being discussed or described.

I can't wait for Kindle...3.0!

Mapping the Innovation Gap

Once you have a systematic and routine way to innovate, you are confronted with a new problem - how to decide how much innovation is enough.  For many, this is an odd question.  If innovation is essential for survival and growth, most people would want all the innovation they can get.  But that is oversimplifying.  Too much innovation can overload the system, confuse the organization, and lead to ideation fatigue.  So how much is enough?

Here is a useful analysis that can tell you how many ideas are needed to reach your specific growth targets called "Mapping the Innovation Gap."  The steps are:

1. Determine your revenue goals in each year over a specific time horizon.  Base this on your firm's strategic planning time horizon (usually 3 to 10 years depending on the industry).  Use the actual revenue targets from your company's business plan. 
2. Break these annual revenue targets down over a mix of products, new and existing, in each year.  Some firms call this a revenue cascade or revenue waterfall.  It shows for each year how much of the revenue comes from existing products and how much comes from new products.
3. Estimate your Innovation Yield (number of new ideas needed to produce one new product).  This varies by industry and by company depending on factors such as level of investment, core competencies, and access to technology.  Various think tanks and consultancies have estimates such as the curve pictured above.
4. Estimate your typical idea-to-launch Lead Time (how much time it takes to develop and launch a product once it is conceived).  As with the Innovation Yield, this will vary.  Take a look at past product development experience and determine an average time (in years).
5. Plot the number of new ideas needed in each year to produce the necessary new products in subsequent years.  Take the number of new products needed in a specific year and divide it by the Innovation Yield.  Then plot this number back in time by the amount of Lead Time to develop ideas.

What you end up with is the number of new ideas that need to be generated each year to have a realistic chance of achieving future revenue growth targets.  It can be a sobering number depending on how aggressive your targets are.  With this number, a general manager can then task the team to "schedule" innovation, and then hold them accountable for generating the necessary number of ideas. 

The bottom line:  to grow, companies need a systematic innovation method, and it needs to be applied systematically.

Download "Mapping the Innovation Gap" here.

The LAB: Innovating a Refrigerator with the Division Template (December 2008)

A corporate innovation method should be robust enough to produce incremental as well as disruptive ideas.  One of my favorite templates in the S.I.T. method is called Division because it does just that.  The Division template takes a product or service, divides it or its components, and rearranges them to form a new product or service.  It is a particularly useful template to help people see their product or service in completely new ways.  It helps people get unstuck from the "fixed" frame that we all have naturally about our products or services.

My favorite example of Division happened during an innovation training session.  One of the participants was a bit cynical about the method and using patterns to innovate anything.  To help him overcome this, I let him select any product or service that he was convinced could not be innovated further.  He chose the refrigerator, a concept that has been with us since 1000 BC.  What follows is how we used Division in this spontaneous exercise to change his mind. 

Teaching Your Children to Innovate

Parents teach their children many things: morals, etiquette, religion, sports, cleanliness, walking, cooking, riding a bicycle, reading, writing, math, discipline, safety, driving a car...the list goes on and on.  What if you could give your child the  life-long ability to innovate?  What a gift indeed.  This issue surfaced after a string of emails with one of our blog readers who wants her child to learn innovation (thanks, Trish!).  Can children learn a corporate innovation method at such an early age? 

I've taught children how to innovate, and it is one of the most rewarding feelings you can have.  I taught 6th, 7th, and 8th graders the method called Systematic Inventive Thinking.  I was surprised and a bit unnerved how well they did.  After teaching the five templates of innovation (over a five weekly sessions), each child completed a "final exam" by innovating a new-to-the-world product using one of the templates in just 30 minutes!  I was amazed.  The PowerPoint slides I used for this training are in the READING section of the blog if you wish to download them.

Here are some pointers for teaching your children to innovate:

1.  Equate innovation to other skills-based activities.  Innovating takes skill just like sports or dancing.  Don't let your children think innovation is some special, innate talent that only certain people have.  This creates an artificial barrier, one that I see too often in the corporate environment, and it prevents people from trying to be innovative.  Innovating is a skill, and it can be learned by anyone, even those who are not creative in the traditional sense.

2.  De-emphasize patents.  For some reason, kids are fascinated with patents.  They tend to see patents as the ultimate reward of innovation.  Patents do not equate to successful innovation; rather, they equate to getting legal status regarding an invention.  If a child invents something that has already been invented, this is a success.  In fact, it is a huge success because it shows an ability to create novel ideas that have a track record of success.  Be sure to reward your child if they invent something that exists.  Send the message: if you can invent something that is already shown to be successful, you can definitely be the first to invent something new and useful.

3.  Apply innovation across a wide variety of situations.  It is not just for inventing new products.  Teach you children to apply innovation methods to things like writing a poem, doing school work, or getting dressed in the morning.  Have them invent a new way to clean their room or play with a toy.  Help them equate innovation with creating novelty in the everyday things.  Make innovation a routine way to tackle new situations.

4.  Distinguish between innovation skills and problem solving skills.  Both are useful, but are often confused as the same.  They are related, but different.  Help them see problem solving as what to use when the problem is very well defined and must be solved.  Help them see innovating as the set of tools to use when new approaches are needed for an existing task.  Example:  Innovate a new way to clean their room, but problem-solve when they want to avoid having to do it.

5.  Teach "ambidextrous" innovation.  Help them understand the two directions of innovation: Problem-to-Solution and Solution-to-Problem.  Example: if the kitchen toaster burns the bread every morning, and they see a novel way to fix it, that is Problem-to-Solution.  Other the other hand, if they imagine the toaster is like a TV that is "on demand," then make the connection that this would help mom get toast ready precisely when everything else is ready, that is Solution-to-Problem innovation.   

6.  Set an example.  Parents struggle teaching children anything unless the parents demonstrate those skills themselves.  Whether it is table manners, proper grammar, or how to treat other people, parents must "walk the talk."  Innovation is no different.  Let children see how you and others, especially other children, use innovation methods to do cool things, fun things, important things.

(Pictured are two future innovators, Emerson and Margo, from Cincinnati, Ohio)

The LAB: Innovating a Fishing Pole with Multiplication (November 2008)

Can you innovate a mature product?  Consider the fishing pole which dates back to the ancient Egyptians - it certainly qualifies as a mature product. This month's LAB will innovate it by using the systematic innovation method called Multiplication.

Fishing is the largest sporting activity in the U.S. with 40 million participants, far more than golf or tennis combined, the next two on the list.  Recreational fishing generates more than $125 billion in economic output and more than one million American jobs. If sport fishing were a corporation, it would rank above Bank of America or IBM on the Fortune 100 list of largest American companies.  The pathway to growth for any large, mature industry is: innovation!

We start by listing the components of the product.  We then make a copy (or copies) of each component, one at a time.  The new copies must be different in some way from the original component.  We then use Function Follows Form and work backwards to envision what the "pre-inventive form" could be used for.  We innovate by taking something that doesn't make sense at first, then find a legitimate purpose for it.  Here is what I came up with (about an hour's worth of work):

Patent's (Value) Pending

The Front End of Innovation blog reports 70% of respondents to their recent survey believe eliminating business method patents will hurt innovation and its practices.  The premise is that innovators and entrepreneurs are less likely to innovate if they know they cannot get patent protection.  The result surprises me, and it makes me wonder what the other 30% were thinking.

The issue stems from whether an inventor can patent an abstract process, something that involves nothing more than thoughts.  The courts are saying no.  A recent ruling on a business method patent by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said that it was not tied to a machine or apparatus, nor did it transform a particular article into a different state or thing.  It did meet the standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court for patentability.  Many industries that are not "machine-based" like software makers, Internet companies, and investment houses, are concerned.

For me, the more appropriate question is:  WHO will cut back on innovation because of a loss of patent protection?  My observation is that it depends which side of the patent "fence" you currently sitting on:  1. you have patent protection now; 2. you are about to lose patent protection;  or 3. you are blocked by someone else's patent.  The lure of getting a patent can spur companies on to innovate.  However, once earned, patents seem to dull the senses. Companies rest on their laurels, satisfied with the revenues earned on current, patent-protected products.  It is the threat of LOSING the protection that motivates people to innovate.  Finally, if you are being blocked by someone else's patent, my sense is that companies are especially motivated to innovate.  They have no choice.

Keith Sawyer blogged about this over at Creativity and Innovation.  He reports on a recent paper by James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer who conclude, “in most industries today, patents may actually discourage investment in innovation.”    

Most patents are granted in industries that demonstrate little innovation.  Through the 19th century, most inventions were not even patented (only 11% of British inventions displayed at the 1851 World’s Fair, for example).  A study of important innovations at the 1851 and 1876 world’s fairs found that countries with patent systems weren’t any more innovative than countries without.  Following changes in IP law, what happens historically?  Japan increased patent scope in 1988, and this has not resulted in greater innovation nor in increased R&D spending (beyond what would have been expected without that change).  The U.S. changed its treatment of software inventions in the 1990s, but this did not result in an increase in patents by software firms.  (Instead, patents went up in companies known for “stockpiling large arsenals of patents to use as bargaining chips”.)  Surveys of companies find that most inventions are not patented; instead, companies rely on trade secrets and on their first-to-market advantage, or on complementary products and services.

Bronwyn Hall surveyed the issue in a paper titled, "Business Method Patents, Innovation, and Policy" (May 4, 2003).  She concludes: 

"Broad evidence that the patent system encourages innovation always and everywhere is hard to come by. The patent system does encourage publication rather than secrecy; it is probably good at providing incentives for innovations with high development cost that are fairly easily imitated and for which a patent can be clearly defined (e.g., pharmaceuticals). When innovations are incremental and when many different innovations must be combined to make a useful product, it is less obvious that benefits of the patent system outweigh the costs. Business methods are more likely to fall into the second class than the first."

For me, patents do not affect one's ability to innovate given the success of innovation methods.  Rather, patents affect one's motivation to innovate...both positively and negatively.  For long term success, companies should place more emphasis on innovating than protecting.

The LAB: Innovating a Recruiting Process with Subtraction (October 2008)

Do systematic methods of innovation work on services and processes?  This may be the most common question from corporate executives who want to learn innovation methods.  This month's LAB will focus on a familiar corporate process: employee recruiting.  The tool we'll use is Subtraction.  

To use Subtraction, we make a list of the components. With a process or service, the components are simply the steps to deliver the process or service. We remove a step one at a time to create the Virtual Product/Process.  Working backwards with Function Follows Form, we innovate what the potential value or benefits would be without the component.  What would the new process do?  Who would use it?  Why would they use it?  What benefits emerge?

Here is a recruiting process map of a well-known software company:

   

Here are four Virtual Products I created with Subtraction.  For each, I offer potential innovations and the benefits they might deliver:

1.  REMOVE INTERVIEWS:  The recruiting process would not allow interviews of candidates.  Benefit: hiring managers now have to rely on less subjective data such resumes and references.  They would have to rely on objective data such as job testing or personality testing.  Another benefit is candidates are shielded from interviewers who are less gifted at selling the benefits of working at the company.  They would have to rely on standard information provided by HR, thus avoiding negative or misleading information about the company.

2.  REMOVE JOB POSTINGS:  The recruiting process would have NO jobs posted anywhere even though many openings might exist.  Benefit:  There would be more job applicants because they could not self-screen or self-eliminate from not seeing jobs that fit them.  The company's message would be "open door": if you need a job, apply.  We'll find one that fits you.  This also might encourage hiring managers to be more creative about the people they consider for a job, perhaps seeking certain personality types or cognitive skills over experience.  Another benefit is the company avoids contingency recruiters who take job postings without the company's approval and try to fill them for a commission.  

3.  REMOVE SCHEDULE AND PLAN INTERVIEW:  The candidates have to find a way to get an interview without the benefit of the company's HR department setting it up for them.  Benefit:  This is more efficient as it cuts out the "middle man."  Another benefit is it becomes a way to test how assertive and personable the candidate is setting up their own interviews.  It helps them establish a rapport with the hiring manager before the interview takes place.

4.  REMOVE HIRING:  (You were just WAITING for that one!)  The recruiting process has all the traditional steps except the final one - hiring.  Benefit:  This allows a company to keep a pulse on the available talent pool  without the cost incurred from adding staff (a lot of companies actually do this). Another benefit is it reduces time, money, and the effort involved in negotiating salary, benefits, etc.  Also, it helps the company test its recruiting process to determine the effectiveness and accuracy of its interviewers and techniques.  The problem, of course, is how do we actually get the candidate on board?  This is where the REPLACEMENT function comes in handy in using this tool.  We can replace the function but not with the original component.  So what would replace hiring (in the traditional sense)?  Perhaps contracting.  Perhaps a third party does the hiring.  Or perhaps the candidates have to follow a process and guidelines to hire themselves on board.  Self-hiring?  That's novel.

Lazy Innovation

Katie Konrath at getFreshMinds.com tackles a common mistake in innovation - packing new features into existing products as a way to innovate - a problem I call "feature creep."  Her main point: people pack products to the brim with features to be more innovative.  Many believe this is the only way to innovate.  Katie believes feature packing is a lazy way to innovate.

Why does this happen?  The major culprit is too much reliance and emphasis on the traditional PROBLEM-TO-SOLUTION approach to innovation.  We spot a problem in an existing product, service, or situation, and then we "solution seek" a way to fix it.  We usually end up adding additional features to the existing product, service, or situation. 

Here's an example.  A friend of mine occasionally needs to push his large, heavy entertainment center away from the wall to make changes to the connections.  He had a clever idea over coffee yesterday: what if you created a space under the wall unit so you could deploy retractable wheels (much like an aircraft lowers and raises its landing gear)?  This solution certainly solve his problem...at higher cost and more complexity. 

This is the traditional view of innovation.  What fuels this view is an over-reliance on voice-of-the-customer as a source of innovation insights.  It is the belief that if we can understand what customers want, we can solve their problems with innovative solutions.  The problem?  Customers don't always know what they want.

Here is an example.  When my wife picked up her new IPhone, she spent the first twenty minutes pressing all the buttons.  She seemed irritated - she was looking for the Help Function.  I told her the IPhone did not have a Help Function.  In amazement, she said, "Finally...a product that really understands my needs!"  Now imagine if Apple's market research department had called our house seeking Voice-of-the-Customer data about what it would take to build the most awesome cell phone on the planet.  My wife would have said, "Easy.  It must have the most awesome Help Function on the planet."  The Point:  Customers only know what they know.

In competitive markets, we face even more pressure to add features to keep up with competition or leap over them.  Worse than feature-creep, I call it "feature wars," the ongoing battle to win customers with ever more new things added to their product.  The problem is that over-featured products begin to outstrip the true needs of the customer.  They find it too hard to continue using and keeping up with the product.  They find themselves having to take out the user manual or find support groups to answer basic questions.  How many of you reset the time on your VCR or DVD player...without looking up how?

Innovation methods that emphasize the SOLUTION-TO-PROBLEM approach avoid feature creep and lead to elegant and more useful innovations.  These methods take an existing starting point (product, service, strategy, organization, person, etc), and manipulate it to create something very odd and seemingly useless.  This "pre-inventive form" is then matched against potential problems that it might solve or benefits that it might unlock.  My belief, based on observation, is that people can match more problems to solutions than they can match solutions to an observed problem.

There is a good type of Lazy Innovation.  George Neil from Adobe Consulting contests that laziness, usually considered a bad behavior, is a virtue that can identify opportunities for innovation in user-experience design.  He believes the "search for laziness" can create short-cuts to finding the opportunities for innovation.  Ethnography uncovers lazy "solutions" people take when doing a task.  The key is to match those solutions to the benefits and problems they address.  Robert Passarella tells a great story about this phenomena in the context of how stock exchanges innovated the way they clear stock trades more efficiently - the story of The Killarney Rose Pub.

Katie Konrath continues to be one of my favorite bloggers in the innovation space because she is the "real deal."  She is classically trained in creativity and innovation.  She knows HOW to innovate, she takes a customer-centric approach, and she sees the big picture on what organizations need to do to start innovating.  No laziness in Katie.

TiVoing Dead People

George Orwell died January 21, 1950 at the age of 46.  He is considered one of the great all-time fiction writers with works like Animal House and Nineteen Eighty Four.  What if he were alive today?  What would he say, and what would he write about?  What if he blogged?  What would the conversation be within the blogosphere? 

Much to my surprise, George Orwell is blogging...sort of.  The Orwell Prize, Britain’s pre-eminent prize for political writing, is publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog.  Orwell’s domestic and political diaries from August 1938 until October 1942 are being posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were written.  The diaries are exactly as Orwell wrote them.

Why does it matter?  George Orwell has been time-shifted from the past to the present.  It is what the popular digital video recorder, TiVo, does with our favorite TV shows.  It means we can take any dead person’s diaries, writings, or speeches and re-introduce them as blogs.  We can take advantage of a medium that never existed until a few years ago and participate as though that person were alive.  George is dead, but his diaries spark a discussion in this completely new medium in a way that he could not have predicted.  Big Brother is with us again.

Imagine the blog commentary from other famous dead people like Albert Einstein, Jesus, Mother Teresa, or Adam Smith.  What new insight or innovation would emerge with a conversation in the blogosphere stimulated by these peoples’ blog posts?   “TiVoing the Dead” holds the same promise for the not-so-famous.  It means we can generate ideas and insights while living and have them stored for future reading and commentary.  We can be TiVo’d to a later point in time when our ideas will be embraced in a new way.

This revelation makes me wonder about the role of time and its use in innovation.  The variable, time, is used routinely with the Attribute Dependency template.  In the case of time shifting a person's writings, we are "breaking a dependency" rather than creating one.  But I wonder if there is a much broader role for time when innovating.  Is there a way to harness some of the complex aspects of time such as...

• duration
• speed
• stopping
• quantity
• sequence
• direction
• continuity

...as it relates to a product or service.  The approach would be to use these aspects to manipulate a product or service, thus creating a "virtual product/service," then working backwards to see if it solves a problem in a useful way.  I plan to work with this rough idea over the next few months to see where it leads.  Perhaps it could form the basis of a new innovation template.  The test of a new template is its ability to generate, on command, novel ideas that would not have been generated otherwise - just as the other five templates do.

Special thanks to Bryan Melmed, MBA student at Columbia Business School, for telling me about the Orwell blog.

The LAB: Innovating the iPhone with Attribute Dependency (September 2008)

Here are ten innovations for the iPhone that I would love to see.  I created these using the Attribute Dependency tool.  It is the most powerful of the five tools of Systematic Inventive Thinking, but also the most difficult to learn. 

To use Attribute Dependency, we start by making two lists.  The first is a list of internal attributes of the iPhone.  The second is a list of external attributes - those factors that are not under the control of the manufacturer (Apple, in this case), but that vary in the context of how the product or service is used.  Then we create a matrix with the internal and external attributes on one axis, and the internal attributes only on the other axis.  This matrix forces the combinations of internal-to-internal and internal-to-external attributes that we will use to innovate.

That's the hard part.  Now the fun begins.  We take these virtual combinations and envision them in two ways.  If no dependency exists between the attributes, we create one.  If a dependency exists, we break it.  Using Function Follows Form, we envision what the benefit or potential value might be from the new (or broken) dependency between the two attributes.

The matrix that you develop using this tool can become quite large.  To make it easier, you can download the one I used for this exercise and follow along with the innovations below.  I put the number corresponding to each idea in the appropriate cell of the matrix.  Here are the ideas along with the attribute dependencies that led to the idea:

1.  CARRIER-CONTEXT:  Allow users to switch wireless carriers depending on whether phone calls are business or personal.  Pre-select which phone numbers go through which carrier in the iPhone's Contacts.  This makes it easier for people to keep track of phone expenses and allows enterprises to control and monitor costs more accurately.  Same could be done for email addresses.

2.  FUNCTION-CONTEXT:  iPhone apps re-arrange automatically on the desktop depending on the context of use (with friends, family, co-workers, or myself).  For example, with co-workers, the apps become more business related (conferencing, calculator, tools, timer, meeting planning, notes, etc).  Geo-sensing tells the phone who you are with, then changes appropriately.

3.  VOLUME-LOCATION:  The iPhone goes to silent mode automatically depending on where it is (in conference rooms, churches, the boss's office, etc), or switches to a louder mode in places like the car, grocery store, or other noisy environments.

4.  JOB-FUNCTION:  The iPhone is customized with apps depending on job, profession, or job type.  A health care worker, for example, might have an iPhone that is optimized for a hospital setting (updated information about patient location, records, medications, potential cost savings, infection risks, etc).

5.  LOCATION-LINKAGES:  Wi-fi and other linkages (carrier, email client, SMS) change depending on location to optimize for the situation.  For example, wi-fi would turn off for certain networks that are password protected so the phone stays connected to the cellular network.  Saves time from having to switch back and forth manually.

6.  BATTERY LIFE-TIME:  The user can switch to a "battery conservation mode" that will power down features not needed (color screen goes to black and white, wi-fi off, vibration off).  Or, the iPhone does it automatically depending on time of day such as at nighttime.  For travelers who like to keep the phone on all night in their hotel room, this would save time and battery life.

7.  CAPACITY-RANGE:  Enable iPhone to "borrow" the optical disk space of a nearby Mac of PC much like the MacBook Air does.

8.  PHOTO QUALITY-BROWSER TYPE:  This is an odd one, but that is the beauty of this tool - it makes you put together combinations of attributes you would not think of.  In this case, the iPhone would allow you to vary the photo quality to load into different browser types or features. 

9.  MUSIC SOURCE-LOCATION:  The iPhone would recognize when it is in an airplane, restaurant, store, concert, museum, or other venue, and it would pick up the music or broadcast that is streaming just within that venue.  It might include advertising or other useful information relevant to the venue (example: restaurant menu specials, airport flight delays, museum closing time, etc).

10.  FUNCTION-LOCATION:  The iPhone "shopping buddy" would tell you what items on your shopping list to get in a certain order to save the most time.  It would suggest items on sale as substitutes for what's on your list.  It would tell you what checkout line is fastest, and it would know how much you are about to spend.  Perhaps it could link right to PayPal and complete the checkout process for you.

To learn this tool, consider taking a course such as the one being offered next month in Chicago.  I'll be there!

Complementary Innovation

Companies are enamored with chasing "white space opportunities."  White space is the nickname for new, undiscovered growth segments.  It spins the notion that opportunity lies just ahead of us.  Telling colleagues you are working on white space opportunities suggests you are doing really important stuff.  It is the ultimate growth endeavor, the risk worth taking.  White space will save the day. 

I'm not so sure.  I have two problems with white space.  It is neither white, nor a space.

White space has come to mean many things: 

• WhiteSpace (Resource Scheduling), name used since 2002 to denote available time for People or Resources when scheduling time
• White space (visual arts), or negative space, the portions of a page left unmarked
• Whitespace (computer science), characters used to represent white space in text
• Whitespace (programming language), an esoteric programming language whose syntax consists only of spaces, tabs and newlines
• White space (telecommunications), unused radio frequencies in the VHF and UHF bands allocated to television transmission.
• White space (education), term used since 2007 in the Singapore Education System to denote time reserved for teachers' personal reflection and planning.
• White Spaces Coalition, a group of technology companies aiming to deliver broadband Internet access via unused analog television frequencies
• White Space (business), the part of a market or segment that is available to a business or entity for new sales or customers
• White Space (Process improvement and management), the area between the boxes in an organizational map, often an area where no one is responsible.

The common theme seems to be the notion of white space as a void, untapped and unused, free and clear - like powdered snow yet to be skied.  If only we could find it (or get the government to give it to us as Google is seeking)!

Where do companies look for white space?  Jim Todhunter at Innovating to Win has published a survey with some very important insights to this.  Most noteworthy is how low respondents rated Complementary Products, a mere 6.3% as a source for white space opportunities.  Jim's advice:  "Reconsider how to look at the red ocean opportunity spaces to expand your market footprint through complementary offerings.  This could be a great less traveled path to revenue growth."

I agree with Jim, but what is curious to me is why this path is less traveled in the first place.  My sense is that companies overlook these complementary innovations because they are too focused on new opportunity defined as a market space rather than a boundary or frontier.  White space is not a space at all.  It is the fringe of what your are currently doing.  The term - adjacency - seems to be a much better way to define it.  White space is not white either.  Complementary innovations are deeply colored by what we know and have experienced.  There is always an old idea buried in a new one.  This is why tools such as S.I.T. and Goldfire are so effective at innovating at the fringe of the current business model - they leverage what is known.

Fortune 100 companies will find more growth opportunities at the margin of what they are doing than by chasing far-flung, ethereal market voids.  Leveraging at the margin takes advantage of existing core competencies and strategic assets.  It yields innovations that stretch the portfolio and the brand.

Stop chasing white space and look for the brightly colored complementary innovations right next to you.

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.