Entries Tagged 'innovation' ↓

Einstein said that all great original ideas at first appear absurd.  This is why it is so easy to dismiss radical suggestions when they surface.  We point out that they are absurd and so miss great opportunities.  How would you react if an unorthodox business idea was presented to you and you could immediately see problems with it?   Imagine that you are the boss in each of these situations:

1.  Spectacles manufacturer in the 1960s

Employee: I think we should investigate a new idea I have heard about called contact lenses.

Boss: How does it work?

Employee: We make prescription lenses that people attach to their eyeballs so that they can see well without spectacles.

Boss: You mean I stick a piece of glass onto my eyeball?

Employee: It could be glass or plastic.

Boss: That is ridiculous.  What if it slipped behind the eye?  What if it damaged the eye?  We could be sued for millions.  No-one is going to want something so dangerous and inconvenient.  Spectacles are safe, cheap and popular.  Let’s focus on doing what we know.

2.  Radio manufacturer in the 1980s

Employee: I read about this guy Trevor Bayliss who has invented a clockwork radio.  It is an interesting idea – do you think we should look at this?

Boss: Don’t be silly.  I heard about this too.  It will never catch on.

Employee: Really?

Boss: Sure.  Let me give you three reasons.  First radios need electricity and the easiest way to get that is through the mains or batteries – that is what consumers and the trade want.  Secondly the radio will have to be really big to contain the winding mechanism.  Third, the radio will suddenly stop in the middle of a programme waiting to be wound up – how annoying will that be?  Customers want convenience – not the bother of stopping to wind up a radio every 10 minutes.

Employee: I guess you are right.

3.  Website entrepreneur in 2000s

Programmer: I have this idea for a new social media site.

Boss: Great.  How does it work?

Programmer: People can make short broadcasts of up to 140 characters.

Boss: 140 characters!  Why restrict them?  Can they add pictures, music and videos?

Programmer: No – it is just a box for 140 characters of text.

Boss: Don’t be silly.  Facebook and Myspace already offer far more than that.  We need something more exciting than a text box.  How about we copy Facebook and add more features?

See how easy it is?  Every day in every organisation bosses are rejecting interesting ideas because the ideas look silly.  How can you overcome this problem?  You train people to ask questions rather than be judgmental.  When somebody comes to you with a bizarre idea do not find fault with it; instead ask questions.  How could we make it work?  What are the benefits for customers if this happened?  Is there a better way to do this?

If you want innovation in your organisation then you must encourage people at all levels to welcome, entertain and explore crazy ideas – they are the ones that can lead to breakthroughs.

Paul Sloane is an author and speaker on leadership, innovation and lateral thinking. His most recent book is The Innovative Leader. He helps organizations improve innovation, creativity and leadership. He is the founder of Destination Innovation. He has written 15 books of lateral thinking puzzles and hosts the lateral puzzles forum.Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/PaulSloane.

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Many of the rules that apply in businesses were set years ago and have endured by force of habit. A good example is the QWERTY keyboard, which is in use on all desktop computers. The original QWERTY layout of keys on the typewriter keyboard was designed in the 1870s to slow down the speed of typing because fast operators were causing typewriter keys to jam together. By putting the most commonly used letters e, a, i, o away from the index fingers of the hands, speed was reduced and jams were avoided. Those mechanical jams are long gone but we are stuck with a rule for a keyboard layout that is outdated and inappropriate. How many of the rules in your organisation are QWERTY standards – set up for circumstances that no longer apply today?

If you can find a way to rewrite the rules of the game so that it suits you rather than your competitors then you can gain a remarkable advantage. In the late 1970s the Swiss watch industry was suffering from fierce competition from the Japanese. Major brands like Omega, Longines and Tissot were in serious trouble. Nicholas Hayek took dramatic action. He merged two of the largest Swiss watch manufacturers ASUAG and SSIH to form a new company, Swatch. It took a radically different approach to watch design, creating a low-cost, high-tech, artistic, and emotional watch. Within five years the new company was the largest watch-maker in the world. Swatch rewrote the rules of the watch industry. Swiss watches had competed against mass produced brands by focussing on tradition and quality but Swatch changed the parameters by making watches that were fun, fashionable, and collectable.

Every business operates in an environment of written and unwritten rules. Many of these boundaries and restrictions are self-imposed and accepted without questioning. Often it is the newcomer to an industry who can ask the question, ‘What would happen if we broke the rules?’

This is what Richard Branson did when he launched Virgin Atlantic to take on the might of British Airways, American Airlines and Pan Am. They all played by the same rules; first class passengers enjoyed the best service, business passengers received adequate service and economy passengers got very few frills. Branson eliminated first class and instead gave first class service to business passengers. He introduced innovations such as free drinks for economy passengers, videos in headrests and limousine service to the airport.

The law of the land has to be obeyed but most business rules are there to be broken. Anita Roddick, founder of the retail chain The Body Shop, succeeded by deliberately doing the opposite of what the industry experts did. She saw that most pharmacies were stuffy places that sold toiletries, perfumes and medicinal creams in expensive packaging and pretty bottles. She did the opposite by packaging the goods in Body Shop stores in cheap, plastic bottles with plain labels. It saved cost and it made a statement that the contents of the packages were what mattered. The Body Shop was seen as natural, spiritual, and in tune with an environmentally-conscious consumer.

Picasso broke the rules on what a face should look like and Gaudi broke the rules on what a building should look like. To achieve radical innovation you have to challenge all the assumptions that govern how things should look in your environment. Business is not like sport with well-defined rules and referees. It is more like art. It is rife with opportunity for the lateral thinker who can create new ways to provide the goods and services that customers want.

Paul Sloane is an author and speaker on leadership, innovation and lateral thinking. His most recent book is The Innovative Leader. He helps organizations improve innovation, creativity and leadership. He is the founder of Destination Innovation. He has written 15 books of lateral thinking puzzles and hosts the lateral puzzles forum.

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Leaders have more power than they realize. They can patiently create a climate of creativity or they can crush it in a series of subtle comments and gestures. Their actions send powerful signals. Their responses to suggestions and ideas are deciphered by staff as encouragement or rejection. If you want to crush creativity in your organization and eliminate all the unnecessary bother of innovation then here are ten steps that are guaranteed to succeed.

1. Criticize

When you hear a new idea criticize it. Show how smart you are by pointing out some of the weaknesses and flaws which will hold it back. The more experienced you are, the easier it is to find fault with other people’s ideas. Decca Records turned down the Beatles, IBM rejected the photocopying idea which launched Xerox, DEC turned down the spreadsheet and various major publishers turned down the first Harry Potter novel. The same thing is happening in most organizations today. New ideas tend to be partly-formed so it is easy to reject them as ‘bad’. They diverge from the narrow focus that we have for the business so we discard them. Furthermore, every time somebody comes to you with an idea which you criticize, it discourages the person from wasting your time with more suggestions. It sends a message that new ideas are not welcome and that anyone who volunteers them is risking criticism or ridicule. This is a sure fire way to crush the creative spirit in your staff.

2. Ban brainstorms

Treat brainstorming as old-fashioned and passé. All that brainstorms do is throw up lots of new ideas that then have to be rejected. If your organization is not holding frequent brainstorm sessions to find creative solutions then you are not wasting time on new ideas. Instead you are sending a message to staff that their input is not required. If people insist on brainstorm meetings then make them long, rambling and unfocused with lots of criticism of radical ideas.

3. Hoard problems

The CEO and senior team should shoulder the responsibility for solving all the company’s major problems. Strategic issues are too complicated and high-level for the ordinary staff. After all, if people at the grass-roots knew the strategic challenges the organization faces then they would feel insecure and threatened. Don’t involve staff in serious issues, don’t tell them the big picture and above all don’t challenge them to come up with solutions.

4. Focus on efficiency not innovation

Focus solely on making the current business model work better. If we concentrate on making the current system work better then we will not waste time on looking for different systems. The current business model is the one that you helped develop and it is obviously the best one for the business. After all, if the makers of horse drawn carriages had improved quality they could have stopped automobiles taking their markets. The same principle applied with makers of slide rules, LP records, typewriters and gas lights.

5. Overwork

Establish a culture of long hours and hard work. Encourage the belief that hard work alone will solve the problem. We do not need to find a different way of solving a problem – rather we must just work harder at the old way of doing things. Make sure that the working day has no time for learning, fun, lateral thinking, wild ideas or testing of new initiatives.

6. Adhere to the plan

Plan in great detail and then do not deviate from the plan regardless of circumstances. ‘We cannot try that idea because it is not in the plan and we have no budget for it.’ Keep to the vision that was in the plan and ignore fads like market changes and customer fashions – they will pass.

7. Punish mistakes

If someone tries an entrepreneurial idea that fails then blame and retribution must follow. Reward success and punish failure. That way we will reinforce the existing way of doing things and discourage dangerous experiments.

8. Don’t look outside

We understand our business better than outsiders. After all we have been working in it for years. Other industries are fundamentally different and just because something works there does not mean it will work here. Consultants are generally over-priced and tell you things you could have figured out anyway. We need to find the solutions inside the business by working harder.

9. Promote people like you from within

Promoting from within is a good sign. It helps retain people and they can see a reward for loyalty and hard work. It means we don’t get polluted with heretical ideas from outside. Also if the CEO promotes people like him then he can achieve consistency and succession. It is best to find managers who agree with the CEO and praise him for his acumen and foresight.

10. Don’t waste money on training

Talent cannot be taught. It is it a rare thing possessed by a handful of gifted individuals. So why waste money trying to turn ducks into swans? Hire our kind of people and let them learn our system. Work them hard, keep them focused on our business model and do not allow them to fool around with crazy experiments. Workshops, budgets and time allocated to creativity and innovation are all wasteful extravagances. We know what we need to succeed so let’s just get on with it.

Paul Sloane is an author and speaker on leadership, innovation and lateral thinking. His most recent book is The Innovative Leader. He helps organizations improve innovation, creativity and leadership. He is the founder of Destination Innovation. He has written 15 books of lateral thinking puzzles and hosts the lateral puzzles forum.

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Let me give you what might seem a strange piece of advice – be lucky. Sometimes you have good luck and sometimes you have bad luck. But do you have a choice? Can you make your own luck? Dr. Richard Wiseman has studied why some people are lucky and others are not. He advises that there are four main traits that lucky people have that help them to be ‘lucky’.

1. They create, notice, and act upon chance opportunities that come up.
2. They make good decisions using their intuition as well as their logic.
3. They have positive expectations about the future.
4. They don’t let bad luck get them down; they find a way to turn it into good fortune.

There are more details in his book, The Luck Factor.

By changing your attitudes, behaviours and actions you can change your luck. If you see obstacles as opportunities rather than difficulties then you can turn them to your advantage. If you notice unusual things and think laterally you can see novel openings. This is particularly true in the contexts of creativity and innovation.

• Sir Alexander Fleming noticed that a growth of mold in a petri dish resisted bacteria. He investigated this and discovered penicillin.
• Clarence Birdseye noticed that people in Canada kept fish fresh by packing them in ice. He developed this idea and created frozen food industry.
• Percy Spencer noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket melted when he stood in front of a magnetron. He used this insight to help develop the microwave oven.
• Hiram Maxim found two problems when he went shooting. There was a powerful recoil after each shot which hurt his shoulder and he then had to go to the trouble of reloading. He wondered whether he could use one problem to solve the other. He invented the Maxim machine gun which used the energy from the recoil force to eject each spent cartridge and insert the next one.

Each of these people was doubtless called lucky by some contemporaries. But their ‘luck’ was the product of observation, insight and action.

Many people blame bad luck for their failures – especially on ventures where they invested considerable time and effort. People with positive outlooks recognise that each obstacle is a step along the way and that there is much that can be learned from setbacks. They learn lessons from reverses and they seek out fresh opportunities. They are always optimistic and receptive to ideas. They see opportunities in situations where others give up. They make their own good luck.

When the great golfer, Gary Player, was asked why he was so lucky he replied, ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get.’ So the lessons are clear. There is a way to be lucky. It involves a positive attitude, hard work, observation, preparedness, action and a willingness to see every setback as a learning opportunity and a step towards success.

Paul Sloane is an author and speaker on leadership, innovation and lateral thinking. His most recent book is The Innovative Leader. He helps organizations improve innovation, creativity and leadership. He is the founder of Destination Innovation. He has written 15 books of lateral thinking puzzles and hosts the lateral puzzles forum.

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Most people and most organisations operate in a comfortable rut that limits their possibilities, their thinking and their achievements. If you want a more interesting life then you have to take some risks. If you want to be more adventurous in your thinking then you should be more adventurous in your activities. Deliberately push yourself out of your routine. Try things that you do not normally try. Do things that you have never done before. Do things that scare you.

Here are some ideas for pushing yourself out of your personal rut.

• Take salsa dancing lessons
• Try a new sport.
• Drive a different route to work every day for a month.
• Learn to knit.
• Read some special interest magazines that you have never read before.
• Perform in a karaoke bar.
• Go to an art gallery.
• Go on a flower arranging course.
• Learn a foreign language.
• Join an amateur dramatic society and act a minor part in a play.
• Help in a charity shop.
• Become a prison visitor.
• Talk to somebody new every day. Listen to them carefully.

The same philosophy applies to your business. We tend to hide behind old mottos like:

• Stick to the knitting.
• Focus on your strengths.
• Don’t try to be all things to all men.

These can be excuses for staying within our corporate comfort zone. It is by trying new activities that we gain new experiences and skills. If we keep doing the same things we learn very little.

Nokia was originally a small Finnish wood pulp company; it has diversified many times. It has tried all sorts of different things. At one time Nokia made rubber boots. Now it is are one of the world’s leading providers of mobile phones and is admired as a leader in innovation.

Virgin group started as a record label. Richard Branson has led countless diversifications. Many experiments have failed but they have established businesses in areas such as trains, airlines, books, cola, etc.

If we as individuals need a good push to get us out of our comfort zones then unwieldy organisations need a mighty shove. It takes guts and determination to try new business initiatives in areas outside our core competence. This is what Lou Gerstner did when he turned around IBM. Gerstner was brought in as CEO to halt the slide as the giant corporation lumbered towards irrelevance and oblivion. He took many deliberate and highly symbolic steps to change the company’s culture and to turn it away from a dependence on products to become a leader in computer services.

If you want to succeed at a personal or organisational level then you need to continually challenge yourself. Keep trying something new.

Paul Sloane is an author and speaker on leadership, innovation and lateral thinking. His most recent book is The Innovative Leader. He helps organizations improve innovation, creativity and leadership. He is the founder of Destination Innovation. He has written 15 books of lateral thinking puzzles and hosts the lateral puzzles forum.

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