A Challenge to Find Challenges

Most organizations focus their energies on ideas, suggestions, and opinions.

But for innovation to be efficient and focused, you need to ask better questions.

What do you do when you don’t even know what questions to ask?

Run a challenge to find challenges.

That’s what InnoCentive is doing with the support of the Economist and Qualcomm.

Their latest challenge: ”Is there an urgent problem in your local community that you think can be solved in 2012?  Submit a compelling photo or video taken on a mobile device that captures a solvable problem or need. Help make the world a better place in 2012.”

Those of you who have followed by writings will know that I am not a big fan of “idea platforms.”  In fact, in my new book there is a tip called, “Asking for Ideas is a Bad Idea.”

Why?

Most companies spend a lot of time gathering ideas.  They ask customers, vendors, employees, and crowds: “What do you think we should do?”  The reality is, everyone has an opinion or suggestion: “Increase the amount of foam in the lattes we sell.”  Sometimes the idea is a solution: “We could do xyz to get more customers in our stores.”  From my experience, the ideas you gather do not provide real insights.

But if you have an idea platform, it can still be incredibly useful.

But instead of looking for opinions, suggestions or even solutions, use your crowds to help you ask better questions. Get people to think of that real opportunities.  If you are in the retail business, a good submission might be: “Our shopping malls do not attract enough children – in particular those in elementary school.  What can we do to get these kids to drag their parents to our mall?”  This is not a solution but rather a challenge.  If this opportunity is deemed valuable, then you can then use your challenge platform to source solutions.

Use idea platforms to find better questions.  This provides a wide range of opportunities that you might not currently see?

Then, when you have good questions, you can use your challenge platforms to find solutions that can be implemented.

P.S. You can learn more about Economist challenge on the InnoCentive website.

Best Practices Are Stupid on ABC News…and more

My new book, Best Practices Are Stupid, has been all over the news lately.  Here’s just a small sample…

Interview on ABC News (click video above)

Review on Fortune.com - “Why your company (probably) can’t innovate”

Best Practices Are Stupid on the USA Today reading list

Best Practices Are Stupid on the CIO Magazine reading list

Interview on CBS Interactive’s BNET (click video above)

Ask the Wrong Question, Waste a Lot of Money

Innovation is accelerated when you “ask the right question, the right way, of the right people.”

It may seem obvious, but if you ask the wrong question, you may be led down a futile path.

An example of this comes from Colgate-Palmolive (shared at a recent open innovation conference).

While asking customers what they wanted in their dental care products, one thing they consistently heard was that consumers wanted a mouthwash without alcohol.

This led C-P to explore various alternatives that were alcohol-free yet had the same level of effectiveness.  Needless to say, this was a daunting task the required a large investment of time and money.

However, when they stepped back and really understood what customers wanted, they discovered that consumers only wanted a mouthwash that did not burn.  Alcohol was not this issue.

Creating an effective, non-burning mouthwash with alcohol proved to be a much easier endeavor.

Where are you attempting to solve the wrong problem, and as a result are needless wasting time and money?

How I Used Crowdsourcing The Wrong Way And What You Can Learn From It

We often hear the expression “Wisdom of crowds.” And if you have read my articles, it will be apparent that I am an ardent fan of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing makes the argument that the aggregation of information produced by groups, result in decisions that are often better than those that are made by a single individual. However, to get better results, it is critical to use the right crowds in the right way.

I decided to use crowdsourcing to help develop the title for my book that is being released next month. To better enable the group conversation, I first developed a large number of potential titles that I felt may be appropriate.

To provide some context, the book contains 40 counterintuitive and controversial strategies for making innovation a repeatable process in any organization.

One of the tips is titled “Hire People You Don’t Like.” Due to its seemingly counterintuitive perspective, the publisher thought this might make a good title. To test out their theory, they mocked up a cover design that was as provocative as the title itself (see the graphic). In large letters, they showcased the obvious viewpoint of “Fire People You Don’t Like,” but then crossed out the term “fire” and replaced it with the more surprising word-twist “hire.”

It was time to get input from the “crowd.” In this case, I turned to my 1,000 Facebook followers to solicit their opinions. I posted the above-mentioned cover along with my list containing a number of other potential titles and requested the feedback of my friends.

Despite the many options submitted for consideration, 95 percent of the people immediately gravitated toward “Hire People You Don’t Like,” quickly dismissing the rest.

In that moment, the title was determined. Or was it?

Upon further review, I noticed that the responding crowd was composed of long-time friends, fellow speakers, a few innovation experts and a broad range of other people.

Although the vast majority selected the “fire/hire” name, it was determined that a title containing those specific words would appeal to human resources professionals who focus on recruiting. The few responding innovation experts duly noted that most companies looking to innovate would likely pass on this title. It would not appeal to my target audience: innovation experts. While provocative, it doesn’t speak to their needs.

Had I asked a more specific and targeted crowd—innovation experts, book industry experts, book marketing experts—I might have gotten a very different answer. And perhaps a more useful one. However, at this point, that was not an option.

So we eliminated “Hire People You Don’t Like” from the list and went back to the crowd. Again, we asked them to vote for the titles that they liked best, but sadly there was little convergence. No one could agree on which title would work.

But based on comments, we started to see an interesting pattern: there was convergence on which titles did NOT work. Therefore, instead of using the crowd to identify the winning title, we used them to help eliminate the duds. They were extremely effective at this.

This allowed us to reduce our long list to a much shorter one that could then be reviewed by a small, yet select team of experts.

In the end, I enlisted the help of two individuals who had a solid understanding of book marketing, innovation and my objectives. Both independently agreed on one of the previously suggested titles: “Best Practices Are Stupid.” This still possessed the controversial edge we were seeking, but seemed to appeal more to my target market. The publisher agreed.

In this scenario, I had initially identified an inappropriate crowd for my needs. Although this particular group’s opinions proved to be less effective in determining the best title, they were in fact quite helpful in eliminating the bad ones. This insight could lead to some very beneficial practices for businesses to consider as many still succumb to crowdsourcing pitfalls similar to what I had experienced.

When companies use internal voting systems, they are, in essence, asking a generic crowd for their opinions. Yes, employees may have some background on the organization, but these individuals often see only small slices of the big picture and may not be best at determining what will be most effective…

Read the rest of this article on the American Express OPEN Forum

Is Lack of Innovation Keeping You Stuck?

I was recently interviewed by Lisa Earle McLeod.  The resulting article has been published in a number of newspapers and online sites, including the Huffington Post.  Here’s the first half of the article…

Do you ever find yourself trapped inside the same issue over and over again?

Maybe it’s because you’re looking at it through the same lens. Whether it’s a business challenge or a personal one, the way we frame problems can limit our ability to solve them.

Innovation expert Steve Shapiro says, “If you are working on an aerospace engineering challenge, and you have a 100 engineers, adding another engineer to make it 101 won’t increase your likelihood of solving the problem. But if you add a biologist, a musician, a nanotechnologist or someone from the movie business, you might find some different solutions.”

The secret, says Shapiro, is to get a different perspective.

Shapiro (www.SteveShapiro.com) tells the story of an engineer who was trying to figure out a better way to plug leaks in the Alaskan pipeline, where it’s sub-zero and repair guys aren’t just down the block.

One day the engineer got a paper cut. As he looked at his finger he realized, my finger has the same problem that a gas pipeline has, but I don’t have to go to a surgeon. The cut heals itself. The question then became, how do I create a self-healing pipeline? He didn’t need a band-aid; he needed a clotting agent.

Innovation is not just about creativity for creativity sake, says Shapiro. And it doesn’t just apply to engineering challenges.

Innovation is about harnessing good ideas that solve very specific problems for a very specific opportunity.

If you want to make innovation a repeatable and predictable process to solve your most pressing challenges, Shapiro (www.SteveShapiro.com) offers three strategies…

Read the rest of this article on The Huffington Post

Next Page »