As an experiment I thought I’d blog my next trip and make an offer of meeting. If you are interested in having a chat about innovation in your context, let me know. I have some meetings already arranged, but lets see what happens. Please mail me directly rather than adding comments (now *at* rogerdennis.com)
Putting a personality to the name : video of Bruce Nussbaum
There’s a great little two minute video featuring Bruce Nussbaum (of BusinessWeek innovation blog fame) and his experience in setting up an “innovation gym.” If anything else it’s a great reflection of – an insight into – the person behind the writing (he comes across as quite amusing). One thing that surprised me was that he is wearing a tie. I’d always assumed that the ‘head and shoulders’ shot on his blog was one of those ‘file shots’…
This does however go someway to soundly disproving my theory that to find the interesting people at a conference, avoid those that wear ties….
Problems with predictions
During a bunch of meetings earlier in the week, I was asked some questions about some of the insights which came out of the Shell Technology Futures programme we ran at Innovaro over the last eighteen months. More specifically, people wanted to know how the work helps to get a better understanding of possible futures.
Then last night, I came across a quote which summed this up quite elegantly. It’s from a draft of a book from Bob Johansen at the IFTF:
Foresight is a particularly good way to stimulate insights. While prediction is impossible, provocation is easy. Insights arise from differences: different ideas, different angles, and different moods. If insights were obvious, everyone would be having them. What new development might be created—given the external future forces that are at play? This is a search for “Aha’s!” It is a search for insights, a search for coherence in the midst of confusion.
One of the outputs from the Technology Futures programme this year was a presentation which went under the working title of “Ah-ha’s and Insights.” It was key comments, quotes and insights into some of the discussions which happened at the workshops in Bangalore and London. It is designed as an entry point into the complexity of some of the material – namely a book – which also came out of the programme.
Rather than endless words, it’s a series of striking images with very minimal text – and it works well to stimulate further thinking in different directions.
Less is always more.
(The original quote above is from Boing Boing (of all places) via a very circuitous route…)
How paradigms form – NYT article
During a conversation with Denis Dutton (of the always good Arts and Letters Daily) he pointed me to a fascinating article about the formation of the current paradigm that surrounds popular thinking on diets and heart disease. There’s a great extract which gets to the heart of the matter (excuse the pun – which you’ll understand if you read the article) :
We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.
If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.
Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better.
So what does this lead to?
The informational cascade morphed into what the economist Timur Kuran calls a reputational cascade, in which it becomes a career risk for dissidents to question the popular wisdom.
What “popular wisdom” will you question today?
Economist special report on innovation
Fresh off the virtual presses is a special report on innovation from The Economist. My colleague – and founder of Innovaro – Tim Jones was interviewed for the section and shares an insight on innovation in the mobile industry in Africa.
At the moment the whole report is available as a free download here. First glance looks damn interesting, with a plethora of bloggable insights… (stay tuned)
“Intellectual prototyping”
Bruce Nussbaum has a great quote on his blog which – in the field of innovation – resonated strongly with me.
“Blogging is intellectual prototyping.” Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
Gary Hamel on management innovation
The HBR is publishing excerpts from Gary Hamels latest book. It’s an interesting read, especially when he starts discussing management innovation.
Not all types of innovation are created equal. When focused on big, chunky problems, management innovation possesses a unique capacity to create difficult-to-duplicate advantages. Why? Become some heresies are more heretical than others. You, for example, would probably find it easier to adjust your fashion preferences than to transpose your religious beliefs. Similarly, most executives find it easier to acknowledge the merits of a disruptive business model than to abandon the core tenets of their bedrock management beliefs.
This discussion leads naturally to how you break paradigms. In my experience across a number of sectors this is extremely hard to do. As Gary points out, it’s akin to challenging religious beliefs. However once you do change a management system, the results can be very powerful – a conversation with Ricardo Semler would be proof of that.
You can’t tell people to change a paradigm, especially when they are not even aware that they are stuck on one. If you take the view that most people in senior management are intelligent and capable of learning, then you have to lead them on a path of discovery. First hand exposure to new business models, discussions with people outside their sector and experiential learning are all methods that I’ve found very effective. It’s possible to kick start the thinking in a three day event (just don’t call it an ‘off-site’), and then support it over a longer period. Once you see the changes starting, it’s extremely rewarding (on many fronts).
The new symbol of innovation – the daffodil bulb
Over at Endless Innovation Dominic points out that GE, “the very company that gave birth to the light bulb is scaling back its light bulb business,” as energy efficient bulbs take over.
Dominic points out that as a symbol of innovation, the light bulb is completely overused, and I thoroughly agree. He poses the question – if GE is killing the lightbulb what is the new symbol of innovation?
Here’s my suggestion – the Daffodial.
Now those of you who aren’t thinking – “Damn – that’s brilliant!” , are probably saying “What the hell??”
It’s quite simple really – there’s so many parallels between innovation and daffodials :
- Daffodials are bulb flowers that get planted in the ground with a lot of energy and fuss, and then forgotten about for a while.
- Because they’re planted underground, people can quite happily walk over them until something starts to appear.
- Some of them die off when they are still deep in the ground, but nobody worries too much – it’s part of the process.
- When they flower, people smile.
- Flowering daffodials attract crowds.
- When they do flower, they look fantastic, and people gather around to make sounds which generally include the letters “a” and “h”. As in “Aaahh, don’t they look great.”
- Some people try and pick some of the flowers to take with them hoping that they will have a little of the magic. They forget about the months the plant spent underground.
- Daffodials come from bulbs, bulbs were the old symbol of innovation and so….well…you get the idea.
- Daffodial flowers look great. Almost as good as the margin created when an innovative product disrupts a market.
- And last but not least, too much manure will kill the daffodial.
Inspiration in unexpected places
From an article in the FT (admittedly a while ago, but I’m playing catchup) comes this great little quote about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival:
Holidaying executives, hoping to recharge amid all this artistic experimentation, might not expect to pick up ideas to take back to work with them in September. But perhaps they shouldn’t switch off their business brains altogether. As William Taylor and Polly La Barre pointed out last year in their entertaining book, Mavericks at Work: “The Fringe is more than performance art. It is a colourful symbol of the performance of open-source innovation.”
Humility
Slightly off topic, but worth noting an article in the recent issue of Technology Review. It’s an extract from the autobiography of James Watson.
Never be the brightest person in a room
Getting out of intellectual ruts more often than not requires unexpected intellectual jousts. Nothing can replace the company of others who have the background to catch errors in your reasoning or provide facts that may either prove or disprove your argument of the moment. And the sharper those around you, the sharper you will become. It’s contrary to human, and especially to human male, nature, but being the top dog in the pack can work against greater accomplishments.