Innovation and how to make it happen is the highest priority item on any company agenda—and if it isn’t it should be.
Just how do you make innovation flourish?
Collaboration ranks high on the list of required actions; as Saul Kaplan, founder and Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory, says, “It is humans and the organizations we live in that are both stubbornly resistant to experimentation and change.”
“What if” drives innovation according to Jeff Dyer, a professor at Brigham Young University, who started out thinking that creativity and innovation were hard-wired, but decided after six years of research that they aren’t, “One key characteristic among the visionaries? The tendency to ask questions — a lot of them — and to challenge the status quo — plenty.”
Bruce Nussbaum, who writes about design and innovation for Business Week, talks about Diego Rodriquez, who writes Metacool blog, and has developed his own set of 17 Innovation Principles; he illustrates number 12, cultivating innovation instead of managing it, using a conversation with Porsche’s head of design Michael Mauer, “One of my major goals is to give the team freedom in order to have a maximum of creativity,” to which Rodriquez says, “This feels very much to me like a “cultivation mindset”. … He is a curator, a director, a cultivator. As you can see from the stunning new Porsche 918 Spyder pictured above, his approach speaks for itself.”
Next, Scott Anthony, Managing Director of Innosight Ventures, talks about what stops innovation. “You can almost always find compelling ideas and well-developed plans. … The hard part is in the doing, in taking the requisite steps to translate an idea that looks great on paper into profits.”
Now two looks at innovation in action at opposite ends of the spectrum.
According to Dan’l Lewin, corporate vice president of strategic and emerging business development at Microsoft, “Innovation is overused as a word.We are at the juncture of where… it’s time to be thinking about how to accelerate, and accelerate using technology as an enabler not an automater.” This approach seems to involve investing in startups where innovation flourishes and buy the results.
Then there is true innovation, the kind based on real-world experience and need as exemplified by Michael Wielgat, a Chicago Fire Dept. lieutenant with 22 years of experience. He invented the “Hero Pipe” to help firefighters battle high-floor blazes. He’s been working on it since 2005, bootstrapping the effort. “Homeland Security has invited Wielgat to apply for a grant to continue development of his invention. He could use the money. He’s tried to get funding before from other sources, but has been turned down, he says, because they supported only fire departments or nonprofit organizations.”
I’m not sure whether it’s amusing or ironic (or both) but breakout companies all seem to be focused on culture. And when they are successful, no matter the business, they are immediately in high demand to tell others how they do it—think Tony Hsieh and Zappos.
Last Saturday I told you about Nick Sarillo, whose two pizza restaurants in Chicago do $7 million a year with 20% turnover vs. the casual dining industry average of 200%. As a result of the Inc magazine profile he is keynote speaker at the Pizza Executive Summit this summer. I’m sure he’ll be in demand other places. I love the title—“Culture 2.0: Branding your company’s way of life;” think about it.
Along with being a culture fanatic I also believe that anyone can lead given the opportunity, challenge and a supportive culture in which the messenger is never killed.
An NYT interview with Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive of Zynga offers insight into his approach of making all his people CEOs.
“I’d turn people into C.E.O.’s. One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said, “By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.” And that way, everyone knows whose C.E.O. of what and they know whom to ask instead of me. And it was really effective. People liked it. And there was nowhere to hide.”
Stories from CEOs of their most life-changing day in their careers. Sometimes the result was promotion to the upper reaches of business, and sometimes a steep fall from grace.
TED has become a phenomenon and it’s on now. Plan to spend some time listening to an eclectic group of creative thinkers.
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.
The annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
In a final tip of the hat to Valentine’s Day tomorrow, check out substitutes for Viagra that taste great.
First, Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs testified in front of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a group established by Congress to determine the causes of the Wall Street debacle. During his testimony, Blankfein “…likened aspects of the financial crisis to a “hurricane” and similar acts of God…”
And here I thought ‘acts of God’ referred to uncontrollable natural phenomenon as opposed to the outcome of greed-driven risk.
Who knew?
This next item made me ill. Over the years I’ve seen many statements from the far right that dripped ignorance, hate and bigotry, pronouncements often made by Pat Robertson, and the Haitian earthquake is no exception.
Robertson says the Haitian people brought it on themselves by making a pact with the devil [in 1791].
Even if I were religious I wouldn’t believe that God killed 100,000+ in retaliation for an unprovable act that happened 220 years ago.
It’s not the first time Robertson has blamed a natural disaster or tragedy on a group of people he dislikes. He blamed Hurricane Katrina on abortion supporters and blamed the 9/11 attack on gays and feminists.
I’d say that Blankfein and Robertson ought to get together—except that it sounds like they already have.
Image credit: pedroCarvalho on flickr and CBN on YouTube
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