More Blog Entries Coming Soon
I have been working ’round the clock to finish my Personality Poker manuscript. It goes to the publisher Feb 1. After that, I will be back and blogging in full force…
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R.I.P. Robert B. Parker
Today I learned that one of my favorite authors, Robert B. Parker, passed away.
He is probably best know for his “Spenser” books. These fast-paced crime stories are based in Boston (my hometown) and were the inspiration for the ’80s TV show, “Spenser: For Hire.” I read every book and loved them all.
He is also the author of the Jesse Stone books which were made into several made-for-TV movies starring Tom Selleck. And he wrote Appaloosa which was turned into a major motion picture featuring Ed Harris.
You can read a tribute to him in the Wall Street Journal.
Bob, you will be missed!
The picture is of me with Robert Parker at his home in 2008. He and his wife Joan hosted a lovely dinner party there for me and 20 of my friends. It will be a night I always remember.
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Three Innovation Distinctions (Part 2): Process Not Events
In the first part of this series, I wrote why you should focus on challenges, not ideas. You should read that article before proceeding. [for your convenience, all three articles have been packaged into one pdf file]
In this second entry, I will focus on “Process, not Events.”
I first shared these three distinctions with a bunch of speakers and authors. In the speaking industry, conferences/conventions are the primary model for professional development. That is, a bunch of people get together for a few days. The days are comprised of presenters on the stage who share their “wisdom” with attendees. When the event is over, the learning ends. And for most individuals, progress ends.
People who attend these events leave with a laundry list of ideas. Most people never implement any of the ideas. They just sit on the shelf in a binder.
This, in a nutshell, is what happens in the innovation programs of many businesses. They hold ad hoc brainstorming sessions. Or maybe they run a campaign using a crowdsourcing tool. They develop new ideas. If they are lucky, those ideas do get implemented. But quite often, the event ends and progress ends. Regardless, innovation does not happen again until someone has another stroke of inspiration and decides to hold another event.
Innovation in most organizations is episodic. It is unpredictable. And it is certainly not repeatable.
But what if you had a systematic way for ensuring that innovation continued long after the event? What if you didn’t need to wait for divine intervention for your next big idea to sprout? What if you could make innovation repeatable? To do this, you want to move from “innovation as an event” to “innovation as a process.”
Back to the authors and speakers…what if, instead of just events, there was a process that helped people see their ideas through to fruition? What if everyone came to the event with some challenges? The process could involve regular mentoring or an online community. There could be measures in place to help monitor progress. The point is, there is a process to help ensure progress.
In the business world, we have the opportunity to take this process-driven innovation concept a bit further.
For this “event to process” transition to be successful, the first step is to start treating innovation like you would treat any other part of the business. For example, your organization’s finance department has skilled experts, measures, supporting technology (e.g., Oracle or SAP), processes (e.g., processes for closing the books at year end), an owner (the CFO), and a strategy.
The innovation “process” requires all of these elements, and more, including skilled innovation experts (e.g., an innovation center of excellence aka innovation master blackbelts), innovation measures (e.g., return on investment for each idea), innovation management technologies (e.g., InnoCentive’s @Work solution), an innovation process, an innovation “czar” (aka advocate, Chief Innovation Officer, VP Innovation), and a clearly articulated innovation strategy (what you expect to achieve with your innovation program).
I call this level either “innovation as a process” or more accurately, “innovation as a discrete capability.” You can read more about this in my “Innovation Philosophy” page.
With these fundamentals in place, you can begin to make innovation a repeatable and predictable process whereby creativity is encouraged throughout the organization and the best ideas are implemented.
It’s worth noting that after successfully moving through the process level of innovation, the highest level of innovation is embedded innovation (aka embedded capability or environment). With both the event- and process-driven levels, innovation tends to be reactionary and discrete. It is somewhat separate from the business. With embedded innovation, people not only innovate to deal with “problems/challenges” that are presented to them, but in everything they do. They continuously, even radically, improve their products, processes and organization.
I could write much more on this topic. In fact I did. I originally wrote about the three level of innovation in my 2001 book, 24/7 Innovation,” and upgraded the concepts for my “Little Book of BIG Innovation Ideas.”
Look for the third and final installment of this three part series sometime soon.
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I Need Your Help: Personality Poker Book Subtitle
I need your help!
I am in the process of finishing the manuscript for my next book, “Personality Poker.” The book will be published by Penguin’s Portfolio books and is expected in stores September 2010.
We have been working on a subtitle for the book – and I would love your input.
I realize that you don’t know the details of the book. But in general, it is about creating high performing innovation teams through the use of my specially designed poker cards. There are a few key concepts:
- Individuals should “play to their strong suit.” In Personality Poker, the four suits correlate to the four primary innovation styles and the four steps of the innovation process. Therefore, if you understand your innovation style/suit, you can maximize your contributions to your team. [NOTE: "strong suit" is actually a term from bridge and not poker]
- Organizations must “play with a full deck.” That is, companies must have all of the styles (and sub-styles) in order to truly be innovative. Most organizations are out of balance and have too many of just one or two styles. This inhibits innovation.
- “Deal out the work.” Once everyone is clear about their role in the innovation process, you want to divide and conquer. Avoid having everyone do everything. Give people specific tasks and roles.
That’s the 10,000 (maybe 30,000) foot view. You can learn more – and watch a video – on the Personality Poker page.
So, the question is, what is a good subtitle? Here’s a list of some ideas we had…
- “[How to] Play Your Best Hand to Win Big in Business”
- “[How to] Play with a Full Deck to Win Big in Business”
- “[How to] Play to Your Strong Suit to Win Big in Business”
- “[How to] Play with a Full Deck to Create High Performing Teams”
- “[How to] Play to Your Strong Suit to Create High Performing Teams”
- “[How to] Play Your Best Hand to Create High Performing Teams”
Do you like any of these? Note that the “How to” is optional as each subtitle can stand on its own without those words.
Better yet, I would love to get new ideas for a subtitle.
Please leave your suggestion (either a new idea or a vote for an existing idea) as a comment. If we end up using your subtitle, we will send you the Personality Poker system (a $200 value). Plus, when the new book is published, we will send you a signed copy (with an additional deck of the redesigned cards).
Thanks in advance for your help.
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Why Best Practices are (not Always) Stupid
A couple of days ago I wrote an article entitled – “Why Best Practices Are Stupid.” You can read my rationale there; I won’t bother reiterating it here. Besides, there is a video in that post.
But there are situations when best practices are NOT stupid.
Core & Support Capabilities
In an even earlier article I talk about innovation targeting. Again, I won’t repeat what was said there. But in summary, best practices are not a good idea for your “differentiating” capabilities. But they can be quite useful for optimizing your “core” and “support” capabilities. Read the article to learn more.
Cross-Industry Best Practices
Don’t get too excited about best practices that are from within your industry. But certainly “steal with pride” from other industries. You can get some incredible innovations from companies who are not your competition and are from an entirely different industry. Watch my TEDx NASA video (only 6 minutes long) or read the speech transcript for some examples.
The Innovation Process
Here’s a question for you: Should you innovate the innovation process? Here’s my two cents. Although innovation is used primarily for your differentiating capabilities, the innovation process itself is, for most companies, only a core capability. Therefore the answer is “no, you should not innovate the innovation process.” Or in other words, innovation best practices are extremely useful (and not stupid).
For example, if you are an insurance company, you might want to apply innovation to your claims processing. Claims processing might be a differentiator. But innovation is a core capability. Therefore you want to use innovation best practices rather than inventing new approaches for innovating.
The one exception to the rule however, is if you are indeed an innovation company. For example, for companies like InnoCentive, innovation is their differentiator. Using innovation best practices would not be enough. They differentiate themselves in the marketplace via the thought leadership on the innovation topic.
As you can see, although it is fun to say that best practices are stupid, they do in fact serve a useful purpose if used in the right way.
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