IdeaFlow

Innovation Of A Tradition

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:34:52 -0600

I know we’ve just emerged from the haze of the holidays, but this fun bit of innovation information is worth sharing.

Each year, the American Floral Industry Association conducts a nationwide search for the best-decorated Christmas tree. Photographs of decorated trees from across the US country are sent to Dallas to be judged on their creative use of product and trends, originality, and ease of re-creation.

Beth Simon, one of my colleagues here at Decision Analyst, has served as a judge for the past two years. She and her fellow judges presented the top three winners of this year’s competition with their awards yesterday evening.

Here’s a look at some of the more interesting winners from the last couple of years' competitions:

Lights N' Such submitted a tree with lights on the inside, and leather and fringe on the outside.

Morris County Farms inverted a tree and decorated it with seaweed, shells, blown glass sea creatures. Why an inverted tree? More room for presents underneath!

By pairing Styrofoam with interior lights, Kebbie Hollingsworth Floral Designs created the illusion of snow and ice.

Ambiance Today used yarn, foil, mohair, unusual colors, and whimsical shape to symbolize the child-like joy of the season.

Mention "Blue Bell Ice Cream" to anyone who has lived in Texas, and a look of sheer ecstasy will cross their face! Blue Bell Creameries submitted a tree covered with ornaments made from ice cream containers.

So, how much of this will we see in stores next season? Money says my kids are going to lobby for the inverted tree!

We Hear Them, But Do We Know What They're Saying?

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:43:05 -0600

Voice of the customer/consumer… I think I was first exposed to the term in the early ‘90s when TQM was the bandwagon of choice. Businesses large and small were worshipping at the altar of the consumer, the customer was king, and no one made a decision without first consulting a customer advisory panel. (I recall attending a planning session once where a sales colleague showed up in her old high school cheerleading outfit – complete with a megaphone labeled “VOC” hanging around her neck – and firmly announced, “I am the voice of the customer, and you should listen to me!”)

Companies launched countless strategies and initiatives designed to develop new products, improve quality, and enhance customer service – all based on what they believed customers and consumers were telling them. And most of those efforts failed or were discontinued because they fell far short of expectations. Over time, VOC went the way of most bandwagons, and people would roll their eyes at the very mention of the term. Not because the concept was invalid, but because it had been so poorly applied.

Well, VOC is back again, and possibly stronger than ever. And what I see is reminiscent of the past: organizations exerting great efforts to conduct focus groups and quantitative research to elicit input and guidance from its customers and consumers, and then not quite understanding how to use it once they have it.

Personally, I’ve found it useful to stop thinking about VOC and start thinking about MOC – Mind of the Customer/Consumer. It’s not enough for me to hear and see the words that customers use; I need to understand the myriad of drivers that underlie those words – emotions, rationale, motivators, fears, etc.

Here are some simple things I’ve found helpful to me in terms of trying to understand MOC and tapping into it as a source of innovation. I’d be interested in hearing what others are doing as well:

- Listening with more than the ear. What customers/consumers say is important, yet equally important are the things they offer that are not words – images, sounds, gestures, objects all have stories to tell, and they play a key role in better understanding MOC. If this sounds like Qualitative Research 101, it is! But it’s something that is seldom practiced successfully because it takes time and effort.

- Blur the lines. I’m finding there are times it’s helpful to use idea generation techniques when I’m conducting customer/consumer research, and vice versa. Introducing tools such as SCAMPER or mind mapping into a discussion can help consumers be more introspective and expressive. Also, I’ve begun to kick off innovation projects with traditional qualitative research as a way of identifying what I call “Innovation Springboards” – themes or areas of opportunity around which to ideate. It’s a great way of creating the parameters in which to do idea generation.

- Use of word association. Memetic analysis is my new favorite tool! It helps unveil how customers/consumers feel about brands, companies, products, etc. through the use of word associations and the analysis of the relationships between those associations. I’ll share more about memetic analysis in a later posting.

- Look at what they’re doing. I’ve taken what Clayton Christensen advocates to heart – it’s much more informative to examine what customers/consumers are trying to accomplish rather than simply listen to what they’re saying. Actions speak louder than words when it comes to understanding MOC.

- Pause and wonder, “Why?” Again, this seems simple, but when I continue to peel back the layers there’s almost always a discovery that can serve as a platform for great innovation and strategy.

So what do you think? Is MOC different from VOC? And how do you go about knowing what customers/consumers are saying?

Finally, on a different note… thank you very much to Renee Hopkins Callahan who very generously has transferred IdeaFlow to my care. I had the good fortune and honor of working with Renee for more than five years, and she truly is an amazing individual and a great friend.

Gwen Smith Ishmael
SVP Insights & Innovation
Decision Analyst, Inc.

Farewell from Renee -- but check out the new IdeaFlow blogroll!

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 12:35:45 -0600

It's been very quiet on this blog for a long time, because I'm transitioning into a new job and a new blog.

I've said sad farewells to my colleagues at Decision Analyst, and joined Sentient Services, a start-up knowledge studio in Austin, Texas. That has meant getting used to doing things differently and doing different kinds of work. It's been fun!

A couple of last-minute notes for long-time IdeaFlow readers: I've updated the blogroll on the IdeaFlow home page, which now has a very robust list of the best innovation and creativity blogs around. When I started IdeaFlow in 2002, there were not many blogs on these subjects. Now there are dozens, some focused on very niche areas of the subject. All those on the blogroll are thought-provoking and worth checking out.

Gwen Ishmael, Decision Analyst's Senior Vice President, Insights and Innovation, will be blogging here at IdeaFlow as she has time. You can find me posting on marketing, innovation, and virtual worlds at Awareness Is Everything, a brand-new blog.

Thanks for sticking with IdeaFlow, especially those who've been reading this blog since 2002. Good-bye!

Supernova 2007 blog conversation: It's all about innovation and value

Mon, 14 May 2007 21:56:22 -0600

IdeaFlow readers may find of interest a blog conversation I've joined leading up to the June 20-22 Supernova conference in San Francisco.

Of particular interest: A great post by Irving Wladawsky-Berger on what he calls the "grand challenges" of the future:

"All these Grand Challenge problems share a few key characteristics. They are very, very difficult, requiring heroic breakthroughs from groups in multiple disciplines working closely together around the world. They must have a significant scientific, economic and/or social impact. But, perhaps most important, they must capture our imaginations, so we become enthralled by the possibilities and find within ourselves something that lets us achieve the near impossible."

The challenges: "applying technology to human-based organizations of all kinds - thus transforming the very nature of enterprises, economies, and work itself"; information-based healthcare; learning in the knowledge-based age; the search for clean, plentiful energy; and the "Long War."

These are the kind of challenges that could potentially be addressed by the evolution of what Supernova organizer Kevin Werbach calls in this post the New Network:

"If the starting point is a broadband Internet, with massive aggregation and services platforms like Google, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!, and a host mechanisms for linking data in powerful ways, what appears now that couldn’t take hold before? The New Network is broader than [fill-in-the-blank] 2.0, because it’s less about comparisons with the past, and more about describing the future. Developments like virtual worlds, social networks, federated digital identity systems, search engine marketing, microblogging, zombie botnets, conversational marketing, and data centers in shipping containers don’t have clear antecedents, nor are they just about user control and open standards."

Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum cancelled!!!

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:11:13 -0600

Unfortunately, technical difficulties reared their ugly heads, and the Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum isn't going to happen today. It will be rescheduled. Many apologies from the organizer, Jeff De Cagna, and from me as well. I was looking forward to it. I will post the rescheduled time/date as soon as I know it.

Join us at the first-ever Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum, Thursday, April 26

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:29:57 -0600

Tomorrow I am participating in the first-ever Innovation Bloggers Virtual Forum, a discussion on the current state of innovation thinking and practice, as well as the emerging trends that will shape the future of innovation. I will be part of a roundtable panel of people considered (by some, anyway!) to be the Web’s top innovation bloggers.

The event was conceived and is being put on by the fabulous Jeff DeCagna who blogs at Principled Innovation. He promises to at least try to podcast it, but if you are interested, you should dial in.

If you have time and are curious, feel free to dial in. And feel free to send this information to anyone you would like.

Here is the lineup with links to all the blogs. Conference number information is below that.

Morning Forum Roundtable (10 am CST)
Mark Brady, Fouroboros
Renee Hopkins Callahan, IdeaFlow
Dave Pollard, How to Save the World
Jim Todhunter, Innovating to Win

Afternoon Forum Roundtable (1 pm CST)
Dominic Basulto, Endless Innovation
Sanjay Dalal, Creativity And Innovation Driving Business
Mark McGuinness, Wishful Thinking
Joyce Wycoff, Heads Up! on Organizational Innovation

Dial-in information:

In the US call 1-605-475-8500 (long distance costs apply)

Enter Conference Room Number 5877560

Jack’s Notebook: A Business Novel of ‘Deliberate Creativity’

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 21:00:16 -0600

Jack’s Notebook author Gregg Fraley is the type of person who would ask a Starbucks barista – one he didn’t know – “What is your dream?” When he started researching Jack’s Notebook, he did just that. And, he said in a recent interview, “Not a single person said ‘Oh, I really want to be a waiter’ – they’d say ‘I’d like to start a business,’ or ‘I’d like to be involved in this industry.’

Jack’s Notebook, according to Fraley, is intended for people like that Starbucks barista – people who are starting a business or are new to business world. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have business relevance – Jack’s Notebook would resonate with anyone who needs to deal with change in their lives or their business (which is to say pretty much anyone). Fraley’s examples: Anybody who’s thinking about a career change; anybody who wants to do a better job of problem solving in their business.

Jack’s Notebook is a novel, a business fable inspired formatically by the works of Patrick Lenicioni and Eliyahu Goldratt. Said Fraley, “Narrative brings an emotional component, and when there’s an emotional component, people learn better. Stories are a very human way to learn. People see themselves in the characters…they think, oh, it could happen to me – or thank God that hasn’t happened to me!”

Jack’s Notebook is an elegant balance of imagination and analysis. The imagination reaches out and takes hold of the reader, while the accompanying analysis, which could bog down the story, instead feeds the reader’s curiosity about what the power that this CPS creative problem solving process seems to have. The analysis also could be somewhat comforting for readers who are more likely to be analytical than imaginative.

“It’s the natural tendency of people who are raised in the ‘one right answer’ to focus on analysis,” said Fraley. “We are not trained to be more imaginative. We don’t practice it. We might do art every other Friday if it’s raining – arts and music are all being left behind in favor of other things.

“But you need both imagination and analysis. Business people end up in those jobs because they are great at analysis. But, it’s like Dr. Spock and Captain Kirk – it wasn’t Spock who was the genius with great ideas, it was usually Kirk. You can’t analyze your way to a great idea – you can only see the path in retrospect. I would hope people would spend time developing their imaginative side to complement their analytical side.”

Jack’s Notebook is notable also for presenting the CPS process in a concrete and easy-to-grasp way. A meta-model for thinking and problem-solving that’s been around for about 50 years, CPS has always been considered something that you don’t pick up immediately. It’s complex and requires practice and the very melding of imagination and analytics that Fraley talks about. While there are many consultants offering CPS training and variations thereof, CPS training is most commonly taught at the CPSI conferences put on by the Creative Education Foundation. There, the basic “Springboard” training is usually at least three days long. (Disclaimer: I went through Springboard training at CPSI four years ago, and my company offers a training workshop based on a variation of CPS.)

Fraley, who has led Springboard training at CPSI for many years (though he was not my class leader), sees Jack’s Notebook as similar to Springboard because the characters in Jack’s Notebook go over and through the CPS process many times in solving problems that are critical to their lives. This is much the way Springboard works – small groups go over and over CPS in many iterations solving real-world problems that come out of the group. “Springboard is effective because it’s an emotional experience,” said Fraley.

Some reviewers have commented that in Jack’s Notebook, Fraley deviates from CPS for the sake of the more fast-moving narrative in the last third or so of the book. Not so, says he – the specific CPS model that he relies on is a fairly recent one modeled by Gerard Puccio of the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Buffalo State. “In Creative Leadership, Puccio classifies the steps in the CPS process in a slightly different way,” said Fraley. “He adds a diagnostic step.”

This diagnostic step involves determining exactly which part of the CPS process (Identifying the Challenge, Idea Generation, or Solution Development) you need to be in to handle the specific problem you are dealing with. Fraley’s version of the diagnostic step is what he calls in Jack’s Notebook a “Challenge Triage.” As the plot progresses and Jack becomes more fluent in CPS, he shows a corresponding fluidity with the Challenge Triage (which, like all the CPS principles Jack learns to use, is fully explained in the CPS Quick Reference Guide at the end of the book).

Fraley said he hopes that Jack’s Notebook will “take CPS to a whole new group of people. If you are a product manager, you’ve heard about this, these methods are not unheard of. The barista at Starbucks hasn’t heard of it. They don’t know that they need a better creative process – they only know that they’re stuck behind the bar....I was awestruck by how powerful CPS could be, but I was already 37 when I found out about it. Wouldn’t it be great to know a method for deliberate creativity when you’re young?”

Models for crowdsourcing -- now, FLIRT

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:53:35 -0600

Sami Viitamaki emailed me this model for crowdsourcing. He calls it the FLIRT model. I like this -- it offers a useful way of viewing many crowdsourcing efforts.

I think what would be fascinating would be some kind of meta-view of crowdsourcing in general. In the main it's not new. And some of the "old" methods have their places, still. And some of the old methods have undergone and will continue to undergo change. For example, marketing research is an "old" method that is scoffed at by many today, but it has its uses even in the crowdsourced world.

And crowdsourcing brokers, as Sami quite rightly calls Innocentive, are serving yet another purpose. I don't think there's any one way that's best for companies to open themselves to customer communities, but discovering all the ways to do this and all the ways Web 2.0 is changing this landscape is immensely helpful.

New Chief Innovation Officer course being offered

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:29:53 -0600

Think you know what a Chief Innovation Officer is supposed to do? The folks at BMG -- Breakthrough Management Group -- do. They are offering a two-day Chief Innovation Officer course at the end of April in Denver. Topics to be covered -- "The Emerging Role of the CIO," "Fostering An Innovative Company Culture," "Establishing A Systematic Innovation Process," and "Accelerating Innovation In Your Organization."

Speakers include some heavy hitters -- David Silverstein of BMG, who is also author of Insourcing Innovation; Robert Tucker of The Innovation Resource, who is also author of Driving Growth Through Innovation, Dr. Phil Samuel of BMG, and Cheryl Perkins, President of Innovation Edge, LLC, and former CIO of Kimberly Clark.

Regular IdeaFlow readers may remember that this post that mentioned David Silverstein when he was quoted in Business Week last year.

Happy New Year!

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 13:44:48 -0600

Yes, I know, New Year's was a couple of months ago, and even the dawn of the Year of the Pig has passed us by. But this is the first time I've posted this year, so I owe you a New Year's greeting!

I should be back with posts several times weekly, focusing on book reviews and author interviews. Not all of these will be reviews of books specifically about innovation and creativity, but in each book I will look for insights that would be helpful for innovators.

I'm also still quite interested in the blooming of customer co-creation and crowdsourcing (or whatever the new buzz term is for this these days). So expect to see more on that in posts to come.

Chuck Frey's new mindmapping software book

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:39:36 -0600

Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools fame, also author of the Mind Mapping Software Weblog and the ebook Power Tips & Strategies for Mind Mapping Software, has a new ebook out on mindmapping software. This one's about choosing mindmapping software, called Mind Mapping Software: How to Select the Perfect Program for Your Needs. I have not read the book, but as someone who has tried to choose mindmapping software in the past, I wouldl welcome a guide as experienced as Chuck to point out the way.

It's up to CMOs to drive customer co-creation (updated with link)

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 11:14:45 -0600

Last summer I got involved in a big discussion at the Corante Innovative Marketing Conference about exactly where the responsibility should lie at companies for involving customers in innovation. Our consensus was in the marketing department. We are not the only ones – a new Forrester report on Customer-Driven Innovation concurs: “CMOs need to use their expertise in connecting with customers to lead the way in building bridges between customers and key parts of the organization.”

Customer-Driven Design and Development was prepared exclusively for the CMO Group at Forrester Research, so if you want the whole report, you’ll have to join the CMO group to buy it – however, you can get a free summary brief at this link.

The report includes six case studies of customer-driven design and development initiatives at various companies, as well as:

--Best practices
--Information on common objections CMOs may run into at their companies and how to overcome these
--Specific advice from 25 experts in this space, including both Gwen Ishmael and myself from Decision Analyst, who were interviewed as sources for the report.
--Information on a variety of tactics such as ethnography. online communities and consumer brainstorming (which is, of course, one of the things we do)
--An overview of 18 different vendors (including us!) who can help CMOs with customer-driven innovation initiatives

I have to offer kudoes to author Cindy Commander on this report. She's presented a wealth of information and some thoughtful analysis, including a Customer-Driven Design Maturity Model. Essentially, this is an illustration of how organization progress in their engagement with customers in the co-creation process, from minimal customer engagement through continuous customer engagement. The four stages start at a company-centric orientation and moving toward a customer-centric orientation:

--Stage 1: Customer-tested design and development
--Stage 2: Customer-involved design and development
--Stage 3: Customer-focused design and development
--Stage 4: Customer-driven design and development

If you looked at your company with just this one analytic in mind, what would you find? How far is your company from Stage 4? How close would your company like to be to Stage 4?

If you're serious about customer co-creation, this report would be a worthwhile read. Of course, I've already disclosed that we were sources, but even if we weren't, I would at least take a peek at the free brief!

Latest customer co-creation trend -- new ways to reward customers

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 10:23:39 -0600

My favorite trendspotting source, trendwatching.com, reports on what they see as the latest facet in the consumer-generated content trend: Generation C (for content) turns to Generation C (for cash):

If consumers produce the content, if they are the content, and that content brings in money for aggregating brands, then revenue and profit-sharing is going to be one of 2007’s main themes in the online space. It’s not like brands will have a choice: talented consumers are going to be too sought after to remain satisfied with thank you notes. Get ready for an avalanche of revenue sharing deals, reward schemes and sumptuous gifts aimed at luring creative consumers."

Of course this makes perfect sense. We offer incentives to our Imaginators(tm) panelists, and in marketing research offering an incentive for surveys is considered the most ethical and successful way to build and keep a panel from which to recruit respondents.

While you're at the trendwatching.com site, it's worth your while to check out 2007 Trend Report. You can buy it for $500, or the download the .PDF "peek" here.

Vote on 'Six Core Values of Innovation' by Jeff De Cagna

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 08:06:33 -0600

Embracing the Six Core Values of Innovation is a thesis for a ChangeThis manifesto proposed by Principled Innovation blogger Jeff De Cagna. Thesis of the thesis: 'The core values of innovation are: 1) capability, 2) inclusivity, 3) possibility, 4) opportunity, 5) sustainability and 6) responsibility, and they can live within the DNA of any organization of any size or scope." The thesis for this manifesto is up for vote right now on the ChangeThis site. Go here to vote on it before Nov. 2.

Book review: Innovation as magic in 'Follow The Other Hand'

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 22:46:09 -0600

A good metaphor is hard to resist, but a bad one is hard to forgive. We’ve all read those metaphor-based business books before and been burned when the metaphor breaks down after three chapters. So I did not want to like Andy Cohen’s Follow The Other Hand – the “innovation as magic” metaphor seemed just too good to hold up.

Fortunately, the “innovation as magic” metaphor underlying Follow the Other Hand: A Remarkable Fable That Will Energize Your Business, Profits, and Life by Andy Cohen turned out to be of the irresistible sort.

The metaphor comes directly out of Cohen’s experience as a young boy hanging around his magician great-uncle and the uncle’s circle of magician friends. Yet when I spoke with him recently, Cohen recalled that he was uncertain that the “magic as innovation” metaphor would hold up if he tried to apply it in a book.

“I was concerned that people would have to get over the obstacle of negative connotations…[of] magic as something that misrepresents, that shifts.”

He worked on the metaphor for a year before writing the book, and it “kept surprising me along the way….because the metaphor is different and unique in its own way, and I make it pay out.”

The way it pays out is that Cohen equates “follow the other hand” with the not-uncommon innovation advice that one should challenge assumptions. And he offers magic as a concrete way readers can test the value of challenging assumptions.

The irresistible part of the metaphor is the part where he also talks about both magic and innovation as processes that make possible something that is seemingly impossible.

In showing the reader a little of how magic makes possible the seemingly impossible, Cohen lays out a structure for not just doing magic, but figuring out how to do it.

There’s an important distinction there. Think of it as accepting that innovation doesn’t just happen, but is a process. That’s what Cohen is saying about magic -- it doesn’t just happen, it’s a deliberate process. He goes one step further and lays out exactly what that process is:

1. The first thing to do in creating an illusion is to identify an effect that you want to achieve.
2. Next, challenge assumptions – the main assumption being challenged, of course, is that the effect can’t be done. In the process of challenging that assumption, you are forced to look at the possibilities.
3. Then you figure out a method.
4. And then, at the very last, you figure out the performance – that’s the part where it *looks* like magic.

Cohen said his next project involves “exploring a straitjacket routine” which of course leads to an exploration of how we restrain ourselves. Now that I know Andy Cohen knows his way around a metaphor, I can’t wait for that one!