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Editor’s note: This excerpt is reproduced with permission from Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., publishers of Strategy & Leadership magazine.

When CEOs recognize the need for adding new value to their organizations and commit to the creation of new internal capabilities for growth, they are ready for strategy innovation and the exploration of their company’s strategic frontier. Innovative new business opportunities found on the strategic frontier can provide them with the entrepreneurial growth they need. Apple, with their iPod technology, discovered an innovative new business on their frontier of portable music. Progressive Insurance used strategy innovation when they started sending their claims adjusters in mobile offices to accident scenes and watched their business quadruple in size. These new businesses did not require decades of dedicated R&D expenditures to develop, just an understanding of customer needs on their strategic frontier and the willingness to create a new business model to address those needs.

The essence of such strategy innovation is the creation of new value for customers, which in turn creates new value and non-incremental growth opportunities for the corporation. Strategy innovation can take the form of new products and services, as in the classic examples of Federal Express, Starbucks, and Canon personal copiers. Or it can be the reconfiguration of traditional business models, the way Amazon, IKEA, and Walmart grew their businesses.

The capacity for strategy innovation is within the capabilities of any organization. It does not require a resident genius or a wild-eyed creative maverick. It is not something that needs to be farmed out to expensive strategy consulting firms. Great new business opportunities can be created by willing middle managers working together in a creative environment, focused on the future and supported by top management. Exploring strategic frontiers can be done with an ad hoc team or an on-going department, but it all begins with the commitment of the CEO to create a new future.

Between vision and products – strategic frontiers

Not many companies have a corporate vision that clearly communicates a future goal or end-state that can effectively drive new business creation beyond the current business model. So most CEOs drive their commitment to growth by informing the new product development, marketing, or R&D departments that the goal is the creation of “innovative” new products. However, if these functions are given free rein to pursue innovative products without any strategic guidance, the products they develop are unlikely to fit in with the strategic direction of the company.

But outside the current business model of each company is a space that CEOs can use to provide future strategic direction for their companies — a “strategic frontier” where the new growth potential for the organization is likely to be found.

A strategic frontier might be a new market. For example, John Deere made farm tractors, so for them, entering the homeowners’ market for lawn mowers was a strategic frontier. A strategic frontier can be a new technology, which is why so many companies are currently pursuing future opportunities in genomics, nanotechnology, or smart materials. A strategic frontier can also be a new business model, such as franchising, strategic partnerships, or mass customization.

Rethinking the future

As a first step, the CEO should commit to the identification and exploration of the company’s strategic frontiers. By defining a company’s strategic frontier, the CEO and the senior management team clearly communicate their commitment to finding a corporate business model that can be distinctly different. This “difference from today” provides the power of strategic frontiers. It holds the promise of non-incremental growth and opportunities that help motivate and drive the organization forward. And it threatens laggards with the prospect of being left behind.

The identification of a strategic frontier gives a company an opportunity to reconsider what business it wants to be in. Often, this will broaden the definition of the company business; soft drink companies become beverage companies, game companies become entertainment companies, and railroad companies become transportation companies. Other times, a strategic frontier will tend to focus a business. For example, a specialty products company shifted its emphasis from selling primarily through retail stores to a focus on Internet sales. Once the company’s definition of itself changes, new opportunities become more visible.

Most organizations resist discontinuous change, but in our experience, people support change that they help to create. Naming a strategic frontier changes the experience of change within a company because it invites the managers to participate in renewal. Asking them to help explore the new frontier gives them a greater sense of control over the company’s destiny. They can help to mold and shape the new business opportunities that exist on the frontier. Therefore, the eventual implementation of the frontier opportunity will flow much more smoothly and rapidly when managers help design it.

Finally, strategic frontiers can improve corporate focus and efficiency. With a corporate-wide, central focus on a specific strategic frontier, the entire organization can align its operations and spend organizational resources efficiently on programs with a clear strategic intent.

Creativity and strategic frontiers

The pursuit of strategy innovation requires a different working environment and set of tools than a strategy of incremental improvement. Where quantitative analysis is usually the driving force in incremental strategic decisions, creativity is the driving force in strategy innovation. It is creativity that discovers a new way to deliver the value that customers want. Creativity is required to design a business model that will change the basis of competition in an industry (and also turn a profit). It even takes creativity just to determine how to explore a new strategic frontier — who to talk to and what questions to ask.

Identifying strategic frontiers

In presenting the concept of strategic frontiers to a gathering of 30 CEOs, we first invited each to speculate and write down what an attractive frontier for their business might be. Most were able to identify several different strategic frontiers that could help grow their businesses in very meaningful ways.

However, when the best strategic frontier for a company is not obvious, the CEO can select a team and initiate a project to identify frontier options. The team should first explore all areas of future growth potential in, and adjacent to, their industry, creating a long list of potential options. Identifying a breadth of strategic frontier options is more important than a depth of information in any one option. A team that is cross-functional, cross-hierarchical, and demographically diverse will provide the breadth of knowledge needed in the strategic frontier identification process.

Sources of strategic frontiers

Where does this new team find options for strategic frontiers for their company? We recommend a mix of both internal and external sources.

The search for strategic frontier options begins inside the company. Listed below are some internal sources to explore:

Management interviews – Talk to senior managers about their perspectives on growth potential for the company. What are the trends that they see taking place? What is their experience with the strengths of the company that could be leveraged in new ways?

Company vision – If your company has a vision that describes its ultimate success, then it may be useful in suggesting potential strategic frontiers that will lead there.

Corporate drawing boards – Ask around to find new or future projects currently on the drawing boards. R&D, Product Development, or Marketing may have early stage projects that could form the basis of a new strategic frontier.

Intranet survey – Employees may have good ideas to contribute. Those who work with customers, vendors, or suppliers are in a position to see changes, trends, and opportunities at very early stages. Create a website to collect these frontier suggestions.

The richest sources of strategic frontier opportunities exist outside the company. The team must spend time off-campus exploring the following external sources:

Trends search – Trends signify changes in dynamic markets and changes create opportunities. The early detection of a significant trend could make an ideal strategic frontier. Team members should immerse themselves in external data sources of trends – publications, Internet, and research companies.

Technology search – We live in a world where advances in technologies are constantly driving new market opportunities. Learning of the new technologies after they are commercialized is too late. The team should spend time exploring laboratories to learn what will be the next “leading edge” developments in materials, sciences, and electronics.

Business model search – Entrepreneurs and proactive corporate leaders are constantly experimenting with new business model components to help them meet customer needs in a better way. Search business publications and corporate profiles to learn what these innovative companies are doing. It could suggest a strategic frontier for your company to consider.

Outside experts – Consult people who make a living by studying or researching markets. Their different perspectives and in-depth views could suggest new strategic frontiers.

Exploring strategic frontiers

Many experienced managers assume they know what it takes to be successful in a new strategic frontier. They make judgments about its potential before even exploring it, usually by viewing the frontier from their perspective of past experiences or through commonly held “conventional wisdom.” However, such conventional wisdom tends to yield incremental thinking and incremental results, whether it is in current businesses or on a strategic frontier.

Strategy innovation requires creative wisdom, not conventional wisdom. Southwest Airlines used creative wisdom to develop a different business model from the rest of the industry, one that gained the majority of the profits in the industry over the past few years. Once a strategic frontier has been identified, exploring it with an open mind will yield insights for creative wisdom and strategy innovation.

To explore your strategic frontier, first establish a corporate team. Think of this team as your corporate reconnaissance team that you are sending on an exploratory adventure.

This team of eight to twelve members, usually middle-level to upper-level managers, can be either an ad hoc/part- time team or permanent/full-time team. It must be cross-functional and diverse, representing all of the major functional areas of the company. The most effective team members for this assignment are those who are open-minded, curious, and eager to collaborate with other team members. Their working environment during the frontier exploration should be creative, future-oriented, and marketplace- focused.

Most of the work of this team takes place outside the organization. The catalysts for innovative ideas come from new perspectives, new information, and new operating models — all of which must be found outside the company. It is our experience that adopting an external perspective can be a significant challenge for many teams when the current corporate paradigm and working assumptions are very strong and ingrained. We refer to this ingrained thinking as “corporate gravity.” It can be a force so strong that team members cannot overcome it to explore new ways of thinking about customers, products, markets, and business models. In addition to getting outside perspectives, another way to overcome the force of corporate gravity is to populate the frontier team with people who are relatively new to the company (especially managers from other industries) or even include several people who are not employees.

The goal of this frontier team is to identify a portfolio of innovative new business opportunities that exist on the strategic frontier. The opportunities will include both shorter-term and longer-term opportunities, smaller opportunities and larger ones, as well as lower-risk opportunities and riskier ones. The opportunities will be in conceptual form with no quantitative information provided at this point. It will be the responsibility of another, more qualified group with quantitative skills (strategic planners, business development) to develop a detailed business plan and determine its profitability and attractiveness to the company.

Discovering value on the strategic frontier

Nearly all strategic frontier teams hope that customers will tell them what products they always wanted to have or that marketplace experts will define the winning products for the future. However, most customers are not able to articulate what innovative products will meet their needs and many market experts focus only on larger trends, not specific products.

The focus of the frontier team must be the pursuit and understanding of value. In order to be able to define innovative new business opportunities, the frontier team must understand what has value on the strategic frontier. What is it that customers or potential customers really value? What technologies are emerging that can deliver new value?

What are the market conditions that can create value? How will the definition or perception of value change over time? What forces or factors could have an unexpected impact on value on this frontier?

A STRATEGIC FRONTIERS SUCCESS STORY: 20 YEARS LATER
In the early 1990s, the large-format printer division of HP moved from San Diego to Barcelona, Spain. Rather than laying off those left behind, HP leadership challenged them to identify a growth opportunity. A diverse team identified a small but growing frontier in the establishment of “home offices” where commuters were spending more time telecommuting to work. An exploration of that frontier found that these new home offices would need printers, but not the bulky ones found in most offices. The HP San Diego group responded with the development of the first multi-functional printer designed uniquely for the home office.

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Allen Couture, General manager of Texas Operations, Space and Airborne Systems, Raytheon Co.
Dennis Crosby, Senior Account Director, Sabre Airline Solutions
Katherine Knowles-Marchione, Global Vice President of Customer Engagement and Customer Success, Teradata Corp.

What are the hotspots a leader has to consider when tasked with executing an innovation mandate?

Dennis Crosby: Can the organization assimilate? Does the team have the right set of skills to execute? Is there sufficient support from other areas of the organization? Can the vision be clearly articulated and understood? What is the current culture, and what are the barriers to execution?

Allen Couture: You cannot assume that you have buy-in across the leadership team. The CEO may be on board, but you don’t always know which executives are supportive or silently opposed to innovation. They didn’t get to that level without some skills in political astuteness. Innovation carries a stereotype of being expensive, risky, and complicated. So be up front and honest about your expectations and address their concerns to reduce the risk of losing support too early in the process.

Katherine Knowles-Marchione: You need to make sure whatever you’re doing from an innovation perspective involves not only R&D, which traditionally is the tech piece, but that you’re also focused on customers, interacting with customers, that you’ve got the best employees on board, and that you’re looking at how the innovation affects the brand. You can be as innovative as you want, but until your customers are experiencing it and using it and telling you they like it or interacting with you and giving you ideas to make it better— you’re not innovative until your customers agree that you are.

Do you fight against corporate gravity — the tendency of enterprises to pull back, which can keep innovation from taking flight?

Crosby: By gaining the support and sponsorship of C-team members for the initiative, and by adopting and enforcing a “no turning back” policy.

Couture: Be very selective of your team.Their courage and ability to focus on the promise while avoiding the typical corporate rackets and vicious circles will be critical for success. Also, stay in constant contact with your key stakeholders to maintain support and understanding of what they are concerned with in the process. Invite them into your meetings, reviews, and offsite activities.

Knowles-Marchione: We have less of a tendency to pull back at Teradata, because we’re so singularly focused. We also don’t take anything for granted and we’re not afraid to reinvent ourselves. One example is how we went from proprietary hardware and software to open source. We saw trends in the marketplace, and we were not afraid to take advantage of those trends. It all came back to the question: Will this allow us to perform better for our customers? Will it improve their cost and performance? If the answer is yes, then we’re going to do it.

Another way we fight against corporate gravity is by being a pretty flat organization. There aren’t a lot of layers.

How do you get your team to embrace the innovation mandate, so they carry forth the vision as their own?

Crosby: By empowering the team. Encourage them to make their ideas known — and then validate their ideas. Celebrate the successes, and learn from mistakes.

Couture: Define a noble cause; provide the picture of “what a win looks like.” If you have the right players, you will not need to motivate their ownership all the time. It is important as a leader to provide the inspiration for their work and honest coaching during the process. I have been most successful at implementing complicated innovative ideas by facilitating the conversation and exchange of views, supporting their ideas, and not mandating the steps to get there. Never assume the outcome; it’s a shortsighted trait for a leader.

Knowles-Marchione: You have to communicate: This is where we are today, this is where we want to take the brand, and these are the technological changes and innovation that’s needed to become better and more enlightened with our brand. You have to be able to show employees a vision; no one can work toward a goal without it. The second thing is, you have to pick the right employees. Always pick those who are passionate and who want to really make a difference.

In the context of innovation, how do you manage up?

Crosby: By providing clear and concise messaging to executives on strategy, next steps, and key milestones, as well as progress achieved thus far. Also, by soliciting their feedback.

Couture: I try to establish and communicate expectations and results regularly, then follow up with an opportunity for them to be enrolled in the process. If executives are directly involved with an action, it will help the momentum and morale of your whole team. It sends the message of corporate importance and credibility to your project.

Utilize the network of your C-suite for support, but be prepared to perform on the promise. Strong results will lend to an easier task of managing up; everyone wants to be on a winning team.

Knowles-Marchione: If you communicate the vision for the company and the brand initiative and how you’re going to change it—that, along with a singular focus, makes managing up a lot easier. It’s also important that innovation expands beyond the traditional R&D and goes throughout the organization. You have to be able to innovate with marketing and sales groups, too. The more entrenched the vision becomes, the more you communicate about how you’re trying to evolve a transitioning brand, the better employees understand all of that, the easier it is to manage up.

How do you sustain a culture of innovation? What works?

Crosby: For me it is about gaining consensus through collaboration and getting the team to buy in to the vision. Also, establishing key milestones are important; when milestones are met, the team is invigorated by the progress it has achieved. Always continue to solicit ideas, validate, and then incorporate when possible. Implore a “take it to the next level” mindset.

Couture: Keep your core goals simple, innovation does not have to equal science project and difficult to maintain. And share the vision across all functions, not just your technical teams. At the end of the day, it will be people outside engineering development who deliver on a repeatable product that adds value to your customers and keeps your economic engine running.

Knowles-Marchione: You have to make sure you are following trends in the marketplace, you have to be focused, and you must be communicating with your customers. At Teradata, we have customer committees, made up of traditional business folks, and advisory committees, made up primarily of people from the IT world.

What are some of the most surprising outcomes you’ve experienced as a result of innovation execution?

Crosby: Seeing “naysayers” becoming supporters. Seeing the project or initiative “grow legs” and take on a life of its own (in a good way). Experiencing genuine excitement and participation from C-team members.

Couture: I have been involved in breakthrough projects that have been able to exceed on their very complex and difficult promises. We have shattered what was expected—by simply taking a stand for what we can be counted on for, and working together toward a common goal. We didn’t realize our ideas were not supposed to work and defied what was normal; we were too focused on what was possible to notice.

Knowles-Marchione: We have some of the most innovative customers in the world. They are constantly pushing us. We’re helping them with their competitive advantage, so that just makes sense. They’re dealing with consumers who are becoming increasingly demanding—and smart. Consumers are now interacting with brands through social media, web channels, call centers, and branches or stores, and they’re expecting that no matter the channel, they want their interaction to be consistent. They want you to recognize them immediately, and respond to their concerns. Companies want to manage these close relationships as quickly and effectively as possible.

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Engineers have long known that emphasizing with an end user means a better product. Design thinking 2.0 elevates that approach into an organized activity, a mix of rationality and creativity. It gained notoriety as architects and urban planners studied human behavior to tackle issues like suburban flight.

The business world took note. Consider what happened when Doug Dietz enrolled in Stanford University’s d.school.

As a designer of MRI and CT machines for GE Healthcare, the program’s applied methods of visualization, prototyping, and emphasizing encouraged him to think less about the machine and more about the plight of its youngest patients, often so frightened that sedation was required about 80 percent of the time.

Instead of being slid into an ominous machine in a sterile hospital room, Dietz redesigned the entire MRI experience so that children enter an adventure, from a pirate ship to a camping trip, tent included. The result? A dramatic drop in sedation rates. Happier patients, caregivers, and families.

Once thought of as a nebulous, murky approach to solving a problem, business leaders have embraced design thinking as a creative way to innovate services and products. Relieved that a needle-less vaccine exists? Just breezed through airport security? That’s design thinking on the job.

Today, enterprise leaders are realizing an even more tantalizing payoff: A 2003 study by the Danish Design Center showed that increasing design-related employee training boosted a company’s revenue an average of 40 percent more than those not using design thinking. “Historically, design thinking has been about products,” explains Jeremy Utley, director of executive education at the d.school. “But increasingly we are seeing people use it not only to design services and experiences, but to design [business] strategies. We are not just saying, ‘do we have the right answer?’ but we’re saying, ‘are we asking the right questions?’ Increasingly, we are seeing people move up the food chain into much more strategic territory.”

OPERATIONS AND COST ROI

Organizations are also discovering how design thinking can streamline distribution and increase customer loyalty, among other strategic priorities. Kaiser Permanente increased the quality of patient care by re-examining how nurses manage shift changes, and Kraft has used it to reinvent its supply chain management.

“Now, you have gigantic organizations trying to determine not only how to create breakthroughs with design thinking, but how to design their organization using design thinking,” Utley says. “They are looking at things like, how are our teams configured? How do we celebrate successes and acknowledge failure? It’s a whole new DNA.”

RE-THINKING DESIGN THINKING

As more organizations either adopt design thinking or debate whether a process on creativity might do more harm than good, what’s not disputed is the risk of complacency.

“Organizations usually resist change,” Utley says. “But they need to know that there are startups that are hell-bent on running them out of business. Not for making their product extinct, but for making the need for their organization non- existent. Most of the organizations we work with realize that they are on their way out unless they do something fundamentally different.” And for many, that means re- imagining the process of how decisions are made, how innovation occurs and how the principles of design thinking apply specifically to them. For each, the answer may be different, but the questions are key to discovering a viable solution.

“It’s a fool’s errand to try and go against the culture; you have to find the elements of your business culture that support this kind of working/ thinking mindset. It’s about finding where you have momentum and leaning into that momentum.”

REPLICATING DESIGN THINKING
The d.school at Stanford uses a six- step methodology to help organizations and leaders replicate design thinking in any setting:
UNDERSTAND. Research the problem’s background.
OBSERVE. Watch how the affected stakeholders interact and react to a situation.
DEFINE. Combine insight with a needs-focused approach to create suggestions.
IDEATE. Participants must suspend judgment and brainstorm ideas. From the silly to the savvy, no idea is off limits during this phase; a single session may generate hundreds of ideas.
PROTOTYPE. Convey ideas quickly with a sketch, flow chart, or physical model.
TEST. Modify solutions based upon user reaction and experimentation.

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Two $100 million breakthroughs that almost didn’t happen

K-Y grew into a $100 million + brand for Johnson & Johnson after we launched a product formerly killed during the innovation process. Bio-inspired housecleaning products inspired the Bausch + Lomb’s BioTrue line, one of the brand’s successful launches.

A bold decree and internal enrollment

When Bausch + Lomb was becoming too internally focused with product development, we decreed that 40% of innovation would come from outside our company; we forced the organization to use outside experts and researchers who didn’t work for the company. Employees were leery of our mandate.“They first thought we did not believe in them or thought they couldn’t pull it off. We told them, ‘Think about how much more we could pull off with the support of other organizations.’ ” Ultimately, they embraced it.

Project strategy innovation

K-Y was a big transformation. It started with a product “in the closet” and connecting it to a new position for the brand. Placing K-Y in a new space, “intimate health,” and launching products into mainstream mass channels, K-Y is now a $100 million + brand and growing.

A balanced innovation portfolio

There are incremental innovations, which keep the lights on and drive revenue; substantial innovations—bigger plays in a known universe—then transformational innovation, when you’re dealing with total unknowns. Companies often get caught up in choosing between incremental and transformational change. With incremental innovation, you get the short-term revenue you need to grow and sustain growth. But if you’re only focused on that, over time, you become a laggard in the industry.

Market readiness

Re-evaluate products in the innovation cabinet that were killed in the pipeline or are still lingering. I’ve done this at a number of companies; you may find something that was passed over when the company had been taking a short-term view or was more focused on instant wins. Maybe the product could deliver but the market wasn’t ready at the time.

Risk mitigation

If it’s a business concept, speed it to market by doing test-and-learns to mitigate risk. There needs to be a commitment to consistently invest in and push for breakthroughs. Without that, you become a follower.

Fail and learn with velocity

At Bausch + Lomb, we worked on a joint development with a company in a different country. We were developing 24/7, back and forth, together. Even though the product itself was not a success, it taught us how to accelerate from design to implementation at a transformational rate.

Cross-functional teams

We created a process and forums where all the functions could see, hear and contribute to the process. By inclusion, we were able to more rapidly build and optimize. People at all levels need to be engaged to create an innovative culture.

A value proposition

If you can move the needle even a little toward the big idea, it is worth it. It is amazing how many times when we swung for something transformational that we learned something or gained immeasurable value in ways beyond what we even considered, many times without the transformation itself necessarily coming to fruition.

Culture is decisive

You can’t control innovation. Allow risk and creativity back into the culture with tools and processes to support and accelerate innovation.

Two questions that pay off

Why did it fail? Even after a product is killed from the pipeline, put a small group to discover why; there’s a lot you can learn from that. Some of the most successful product launches I’ve been a part of were at one time considered “failed,” including Acuvue Advance, one of the best launches in contact lens history.

What best serves the customer? Vistakon, a division of Johnson & Johnson, started as a test-and- learn to help customers more successfully purchase contact lenses. The result was a world-class customer relationship management system that elevated the brand to a recognized digital leader.

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As the co-founder of Sterling Bank and current CEO of Allegiance Bank, he believes innovation is often the very heart and soul of private companies, many of which are formed

to develop and market innovative new products or services. And, he says, from a board member’s perspective, a company’s failure to value innovation creates a competitive risk.

“If a company moves too slowly to embrace change, it could face pressures that could adversely affect revenue,” Martinez says, pointing to failed bookstore chains as an example. On the other hand, he says, if a new company relies strictly on innovation, it could lose the game by its inability to generate the needed revenue to remain viable, which is what happened with many dot-coms in 2000.

Along with a few tech startups, Martinez also serves on the board of NCI Building Systems Inc. (NYSE: NCS), a Texas-based construction supplies company that generated $1.2 billion in revenue in fiscal 2012. He heads up several financial committees for NCI, including the audit committee.

Board members are charged with bringing discipline to an organization, which is particularly important when companies are led by creative types, Martinez says. These four areas are critical when the board evaluates the risks and rewards of an innovation initiative:

MARKET READINESS IS A MUST

The potential for sales volume is critical, Martinez says. Sometimes, even the most innovative products die because they are before their time, and the market isn’t ready. Entrepreneurs can also fall into a pattern of tinkering things to death.

“Some products are never finished,” Martinez says. “Some people can’t let go—there are always improvements to be made. And the product never gets out to the market.”

That leaves an opening for competitors, Martinez says. He shares a story he heard about the late Houston businessman George Ballas, the inventor of the Weed Eater, who took innovative steps to stay a step ahead of those who might be tempted to steal market share.

The unlikely innovator (Ballas worked as a dance instructor) was inspired by the spinning nylon bristles of a car wash and wondered if something similar could be used to help trim grass and weeds. After early prototypes were successful, Ballas took his product to the market in the early 1970s. By 1976, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Weed Eater was generating $40 million in annual sales. As the story goes, Martinez says, Ballas kept competitors at bay by consistently enhancing the product, and releasing new models only if he had an even newer model already ready to go.

MEASURE THE ‘SELDOM MEASURED’

At Allegiance Bank, which has grown from $32 million to $525 million in total assets since it was formed in 2007, innovation efforts are focused on operations, Martinez says.

“We measure things that are seldom measured, like employee fulfillment and the level of service between departments,” he says. “We established standards for inter- departmental service, cooperation, the optimization of resources, etc.

That’s not something I believe you’d find at most other places.”

As both a CEO and a company director, Martinez says he has found that most board members support innovation.

“Typically what I find are directors who are really cheering the company on,” he says. “It’s a rare minority that tries to put the brakes on things. And, frankly, when people are that risk- adverse, they really don’t belong on the board in the first place.”

* Sterling Bank is owned by Comerica (NYSE: CMA).

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417,000,000
The number of results for “innovation” in Google

More than 59k
The number of innovation- themed publications listed by Amazon

$550 billion
The amount companies spent on R&D in 2010, a 9.3 percent increase over 2009 when companies scaled back because of recession concerns
— Businessinsider.com

$63 billion
The number of dollars generated by new, immigrant-founded companies in 2012
— The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

34%
The percentage of CIOs who say they’re operating at close to their innovation potential
— CIO Insight

Only 8.5% of executives globally feel “very well prepared” to successfully execute innovation.
— 2013 Insigniam Executive Sentiment Survey

50%
The percentage increase of the average compensation per employee in innovation-intensive sectors between 1990 and 2007 – nearly two and one-half times the national average
— U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic and Statistics Administration

82%
The percentage of employees who say they trust a company more when members of the C-suite use social media
— Emarketer

“My job is to guide Salesforce. I can’t sit in headquarters, but it’s easy to get caught up in the continuum and pretend I’m in touch. Odds are, what we’re using today will be obsolete in a few years. The past is never the future.”
— Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com, from Forbes.com

8,000,000
The number of U.S. jobs new firms created in 2007. Overall, 12 million jobs were added that year.
— The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

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A savvy businessman and engineer, Templeton has spent his entire 32-year career at TI, the past eight as president and CEO. Since taking the helm, he has been steadily reshaping the semiconductor manufacturer, moving it away from other technologies to focus on analog and embedded- processing growth.

Innovating the business model has helped transform the $13.7 billion company, producing sustainable results and strengthening its core businesses.

Dallas-based TI has come a long way since it first began selling tricked-out calculators 45 years ago. Under Templeton and his predecessor, the company has been aggressively buying or selling companies to align with its emphasis on analog and embedded processors. Since 1996, TI has acquired 33 companies and divested at least 18 — from defense to liquid-crystal-display operations — that were not central to this razor focus.

Today, the company’s analog chips are in automobiles, kitchen appliances, air conditioners, notebook computers, and smartphones. They make medical devices like ultrasounds portable and enable intelligent thermostats to adjust to user habits and patterns. They also have vast applications for cloud computing and energy efficiencies not seen before.

The possibilities, Templeton says, seem endless. “Literally every piece of electronic equipment you have at work or home has at least one, if not multiple, analog chips,” he says. “We have a chance to sell something to every customer in the world. The number of companies that can say that are pretty limited.”

Innovative decision-making

Many wonder how an 82-year-old company with 35,000 global employees remains nimble enough to keep reinventing itself. Templeton says the key is to “not be afraid of where you want to go.” His other secret seems to be breaking through hierarchical obstacles to innovation.

Last year the company caught some industry experts off guard when it announced it was shifting its OMAP product line focus away from smartphones and tablets toward a broader consumer market.

“The outside world sees this as an event that occurs in a more granular way,” he says. “Our OMAP 2012 announcement was the last step [in an ongoing plan] to complete that. For us it’s very logical with what we’ve been seeing in the last five to six years, but to the outside world it just looks like a big momentous announcement.”

Templeton acknowledges that it’s a significant shift and impacts a lot of people, but it’s a change that management and employees knew was coming. In 2006-2007, his leadership team began examining what it meant to be an analog and embedded company — and what it didn’t mean.

By early 2008, the company was offering hands-on workshops for a broad section of its employees to show them what the future looked like.

“We wanted to get everybody on board,” he says.

Templeton prefers to manage strategic direction in a nonhierarchal fashion, delivering the message to a broad community of employees using the company’s communication groups. He says repeating the message at least on a quarterly basis through broadcast company meetings or other avenues helps engage employees. It also prevents diluting or distorting the meaning.

“When the message is passed down, it’s potentially altered,” he says. “You don’t know what will come out on the other end. I don’t like to depend on hierarchal communication.”

Templeton is a proponent of involving his entire senior leadership team in the decision-making process. Once they’ve hashed out the issues, they pull in about 35 other division heads to “weigh, debate, and persuade” and make sure everyone is well aligned on the company’s direction. The discussions are always candid and data-driven. Sometimes they result in hard decisions to get into better businesses.

Templeton’s goal through this lateral decision-making process is to align the company’s objectives with what’s good for customers and shareholders.

“They’re one in the same,” he says. “If we’re making decisions that will make the company more valuable, then we have to communicate to (the public) why the decision makes sense in the long term. If the company is not growing and adding more value, then it won’t do well by employees or customers or shareholders.”

Strong communication

Templeton has a reputation as a good communicator inside and outside the walls of TI. Brian Toohey, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Semiconductor Industry Association, where Templeton serves on the board, says the CEO is an “incredible communicator and extraordinary mix of leadership and knowledge” that benefits not only TI, but the entire semiconductor industry.

“He’s the real deal,” Toohey says.

Good communication wasn’t always a TI trademark

The early 1980s were a difficult time under then- chairman Mark Shepherd Jr. and president J. Fred Bucy, who was called abrasive and autocratic. The company posted its first-ever revenue loss of $145 million in 1983 because of the recession and an unexpected slump in demand for its home computer, a market that TI eventually exited.

Some analysts call those the dark days for TI. But things brightened up in 1985, when Jerry Junkins was named president and CEO. Junkins is credited with loosening up the corporate culture and encouraging innovation, while helping reposition the company to better compete in the 1990s.

“The personality of the CEO quickly permeates the company,” says Dallas business analyst David Johnson, who has followed TI for nearly three decades. “Junkins did an overnight turnaround. This is the group that Templeton came from, the new wave. They had a laser-like focus on [digital signal processors]. That was going to be the great new thing, and they sold all of this great technology. That’s the mold that Templeton came from.”

Junkins died of a heart attack on a business trip in 1996, and Tom Engibous, a 20-year TI veteran, was named CEO. For 15 years Templeton worked with Engibous, who helped make over the company from a broad-based conglomerate to a semiconductor company focused on making chips for the signal-processing markets that have fed the wireless and Internet revolutions.

After years of grooming, Templeton stepped into the president and CEO roles in 2004, and was named board chairman in 2008. His egalitarian style and affinity for change, along with sound business strategy, have made him a leader’s leader.

He keeps his finger on the company’s pulse by traveling across the globe to visit with some of their 90,000 customers. He believes the best way to know what’s going on inside a big company is to spend time outside of it, and he encourages his managers to do the same. He also schedules regular employee roundtables to hear about the issues on his employees’ minds.

Today Templeton says he’s fortunate to work in an industry that has such a great impact on people’s lives. It’s also an industry that’s changing rapidly, but TI’ers (as the employees are called) are engrained in a culture that expects adaptation to economic cycles and technology shifts.

“The idea of innovating and looking forward to new problems to solve for our customers is at the heart of what we do,” he says. “As a result, we’ve got as many leaders that are more afraid of not changing than if we are. That’s wise.”

Because without change, there can be no innovation.

Bold Moves
When it comes to innovation and strategic change, Rich Templeton has learned be afraid to make unexpected moves when they make sense. “We’ve done a pretty good job over the past 15 years, seeing where the world is going and knowing what we’re good at and where we need to move,” he says. “We weren’t afraid to leave businesses that wouldn’t be successful in the future.” MoneyGram CEO Pam Pat- sley has served on TI’s board since 2004 and says she has seen Templeton lead the company through challenging times, basing his decisions many perspectives and a lot of data. When TI acquired National Semiconductor for a whopping $6.5 billion in fall 2011, industry pundits questioned whether it was good move. Templeton called it a “bold, correct move,” given the economy, the opportunity, and his vision for the company. “I don’t think it’s a risk if you look at the cycles,” he says. “Usually most people are cautious at the bottom, and that’s exactly when you should logically be doing the opposite. One of the benefits (at TI) is we have people who have worked together a long time. It’s a very experienced team, and we’ve seen the ups and downs. This organization is not intimidated by ups and downs.”

The post Texas Instruments’ innovation mandate appeared first on Insigniam Quarterly.

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, executives are facing an innovation predicament. Nearly 87% say innovation is very important to their company’s ability to succeed or strengthen their competitive advantage over the next three years. The bad news — only 15% are prepared to execute it.

What we found during the 2013 executive sentiment survey was less uncertainty about revenue and job security and more of an acute disparity around innovation. Even more startling, executives expect to increase revenue, in spite of their spotty track record on delivering successful innovation.

This is very bad news for most companies; they know innovation is critical for success, and they are accountable to increase revenue each quarter, but if they haven’t been able to deliver upon this imperative in the past, they certainly cannot deliver it now. Overall, this tepid response leads us to the heart of the innovation disparity. It begs the question — how do you truly drive sustained innovation in an enterprise if you are only partially prepared?

One executive summed up the innovation disparity this way: “We invite people to share innovative ideas and tips, but we do not provide them with funding and resources to get those ideas to market.”

These sentiments take on deeper significance considering the need for organizations to expand innovation efforts beyond product development and technology and into the entire spectrum of the business, including strategy development, operations, the supply chain, go-to-market processes, and customer service.

Says one executive: “If we do not innovate in areas of operations, we will be consistently bringing up the rear and not leading in our industry.”

People and performance

Innovation was just one aspect of the annual survey. Insigniam polled 214 global leaders on their forward-facing sentiments for business in 2013. The sampling included C-level executives, vice presidents, and directors of Global 1000 companies in multiple industries, most from the United States and Europe. Annual revenue at the surveyed companies ranged from $2 billion or less to more than $50 billion.

We wanted to know — how are leaders prioritizing their responsibilities? Respondents say the “most critical” element in their accountability over the next 18 months is operational excellence in specific areas (29%); people development, performance, and retention (27%); and meeting business targets and growth (26%).

This could be a sign that leaders are looking at the future more strategically. Critical accountability factors in the 2012 survey ranked operational excellence in specific areas at 57%; people performance and retention 30%; and business targets 13%.

During this year’s survey, 16% of the respondents say innovation was most critical. Interestingly, business leaders in Europe, whose economies are in recession, rated innovation as more critical for success in their own accountability (23%) than did the respondents in general.

C-suite executives in Europe and the United States, where the rebound from economic recession has been disappointingly slow, also ranked “meeting business targets and growth” as more important than the total population of respondents did (43% and 50% respectively, versus 26%).

The innovation trade-off

This focus on day-to-day accountabilities and meeting business targets creates a tension between delivering immediate profitability and structuring the type of transformative innovation that may take five, 10, and even 15 to 20 years to fully realize true growth.

One respondent discloses why the most profitable innovation — the type that is transformative — is shortchanged. “In the end, the need to generate profitability with new products and services in year one kills many real innovations in an early stage. We are constrained by the amount of non-schedule-driven time available to innovate.”

Or, as one leader elaborates, transformative innovation is at the mercy of corporate culture. “A bureaucracy is like a huge aircraft carrier. You can make fine adjustments now that will slowly turn the shift in the direction you want, but you eat up miles of ocean before you turn. The culture inhibits radical change. We are all not pulling — or pushing — in the same direction.”

Is culture the culprit?

Executives also expressed concern in the Insigniam survey about people and their performance at their companies, and frustration over the amount of time and resources available to them.

Plainly put, “we need to change the way we do business,” one confided. Especially challenging, respondents say, are keeping people motivated and productive, especially after layoffs have reduced team sizes.

Interestingly, however, the C-suite may not share that sentiment. The No. 1 worry by far of the survey’s C-suite occupants were financials (60% of the Europeans) and the economy (37% in the U.S.). European leaders in general also rated people as much less of a worry, with more than 30% of them putting the economy at the top of their lists.

When it comes to elevating the performance of the individuals and groups they lead, executives pointed to “resource and time issues” as their biggest source of frustration (nearly 20%). They also named their organization and its processes (16%), alignment and focus (11%), and accountability and reliability (11%). The top impediment for European C-suite occupants, however, was the way their organizations were aligned and focused; “people engagement” ranked a close second.

Last year when we asked a similar question, frustrations and concerns about people ranked at 38%; operations 29%; strategy 18%; external concerns 15%.

Alternative innovation’ to the rescue

With such challenges ahead, it’s not surprising that more than 33% of the survey respondents circle back to innovation as the most important factor in their organization’s ability to succeed—and strengthen their competitive advantage—over the next year to 36 months.

But wait; the innovation disparity continues to deepen: A whopping 55% say innovation will be very important, while nearly 12% say it will be somewhat important. Many respondents noted the importance of “alternative innovation,” the type of enterprise-wide innovation such as improved processes and marketing and sales solutions referenced earlier in this article.

In recent years innovation—the ability to continuously revolutionize, reinvent themselves, or make positive changes—has become more and more important to companies as competitive pressures have increased.

Many more C-suite executives in the United States (60%) seemed to recognize this, rating the ability to innovate as most important for their companies’ future success, compared to just 25% of their C-suite counterparts in Europe.

Inconsistent track record

These trends were also reflected when the executives were asked to rate the effectiveness and value of their companies’ innovation efforts over the last three years. While most (57%) say such efforts were only somewhat effective, 40% of C-suite leaders in the U.S. said their companies’ efforts had been “very effective.” Only 25% of the Europeans occupying the C-suite gave the same answer. A number of respondents cited inconsistent levels of success with innovation across companies, even though there may be small pockets of successful innovation in specific departments.

Drilling down deeper into their preparedness levels, the executives said their main strengths in innovating were in mandates from their top leaders to encourage and act on innovation—73% rated that “pillar of innovation” very strong or somewhat strong—and in their culture enabling innovative thinking and action (56%). Forty-nine percent cited their dedicated infrastructure and resources needed for innovation, while 35% named a creative process at their companies dedicated solely to nurturing innovation. These results show that while innovation is acknowledged by senior leadership, managing such innovation often remains problematic given time and profitability pressures.

Creating a mandate

What does all of this mean for business prospects in three to five years? Without direct and intentional intervention and funding, it is predictable that many organizations may end up with a shortfall of new opportunities, leading to continued “borrowing” from the funds for the future in order to deliver on the short term. Eventually, this innovation “Ponzi” scheme can have significant ramifications for the overall health of our enterprises. Leaders need to create a mandate, fund innovation infrastructure, create a process for creativity, and build a supportive culture. As one survey participant expounded: “Good leadership can make the difference to ensure people and teams focus on the same priorities and in the same direction. Unfortunately, we have (like many organizations) more career managers than leaders and entrepreneurs.”

More about the survey
In terms of annual revenue, nearly 45% of the leaders responding represented companies bringing in $2 billion or less. Nineteen percent had revenue ranging between $2 billion and $5 billion, while more than 13% had $5 billion to $10 billion in revenue. Five percent had $10 billion to $15 billion in revenue; 7% had $15 billion to $20 billion; 5% had $20 billion to $50 billion; and nearly 6% had more than $50 billion in annual revenue. Respondents were from the North and Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.

The post The 2013 Insigniam Executive Sentiment survey appeared first on Insigniam Quarterly.

Over the last decade, companies once known as highly creative industry leaders have waded into the waters of poor performance or irrelevance, some slipping away entirely. Among these are Kmart, Kodak, Digital Equipment to name a few and narrowly escaping, possibly, JC Penney and HP.

So, what is the difference? Creativity as a shared attribute across leadership teams is a critical missing ingredient. If you don’t value or foster creativity as a C-suite executive, the warning signs of irrelevance can develop slowly. You risk leaving a legacy of unintentional outcomes — a stalled balance sheet, battered egos, disenchanted customers, late- to-market products and eroding brand equity.

Understanding creative leadership

To better understand how creativity can drive growth and profit, it must be understood first. Creative leadership isn’t about being soft. To the contrary, creative leaders tend to have imagination and conviction, the ability to see alternatives, envision something new, embrace multiple points of view, to inspire, let go of ego and be aggressively willing to take risks and be tolerant of mistakes.

Creativity itself could be explained how author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes it in his renowned work Creativity – Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. He states that creativity is any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one.

He goes on to state that creativity manifests in people as expressions of unusual thoughts, people who are interesting, positive, and stimulating – and, whose perceptions are fresh and judgments are insightful.

Leonard Nemoy hosted a wildly popular and creative television show In Search Of (1976-1982) that prompted the viewers to draw their own conclusions around many of the world’s mysteries. In search of how creativity drives profitability, a handful of leaders at three large enterprises explained the link between highly creative culture and the balance sheet.

Challenging ‘business as usual’

While he could not comment about the company itself, it is public knowledge that Levi Strauss is profitable, has launched a plethora of highly creative marketing campaigns and has remained a leader and legend in the retail fashion industry. In fact, in 2012 it held its own against a commoditized and saturated jeans market according to many news reports, despite drastic increases in cotton costs.

It is safe to say that for Wiley and his peers, business as usual won’t win. Wiley shared, “In my role, I work with people all over the world, they bring their own culture to the table and integrate it with the team. What inspires my Miami team versus, say my Hong Kong team, is different and I cannot pretend to have it all figured out.”

And, there it is – as a baseline for the creativity discussion just like the discussion that follows in this article — not being afraid to not know something.

Wiley further stated that in the sourcing game you have to question conventional wisdom and get creative. “At first it was all about China, until it was all about Vietnam, then Burma. It might be about all, or none of the above, and your teams have to constantly challenge conventional wisdom, or business as usual.”

You can feel a level of excitement from Wiley when he talks about this topic and as we close the conversation he says, “so many executives go on autopilot as they lead, but that is a recipe for failure. Habits are powerful, and bad habits can stagnate innovation.”

Levi Strauss & Company

Inspired culture, Innovative solutions

Too often creativity is branded as the sole domain of the marketing department. So to test that theory, we asked an executive with one of the world’s more recognizable brands, Levi Strauss.

Robert Wiley, Senior Vice President, Sourcing, in the global sourcing division of Levi Strauss, knows a few things about using creativity in unconventional places – in his case, it’s the global supply chain. Wiley flies 200,000 miles a year and has seen it all in the last 20 years at Levi Strauss.

Wiley says this about creativity: “It is about approaching challenges differently and leading teams in a new way.” Eschewing anything contrived or forced like “we are all going to wear purple hats today to be creative,” his instinct about creative leadership is that it cuts through the noise, attracting the notice of your team.

Glazer’s

Expanding EBITDA, 12% year-over-year growth

In the consumer goods distribution business, Glazer’s Distributors, a $3.8 billion (U.S.) company, hired maverick President and CEO Sheldon “Shelly” Stein in 2010 to make big changes.

This former investment banker’s challenge was to tackle opportunities from a new perspective to differentiate the brand amongst many old-line, family-owned dominant distributors. Glazer’s is now the fourth largest in its category.

“If I were starting from scratch, how would I do this … what is the best way to run this business?” was Stein’s first application of creative thinking. He stepped back, asked questions and moved away from the typical systems in this market, adding that many executives aren’t willing to “not know the answer,” quoting a former mentor of his as saying that a bad executive is one “who thinks his or her own body odor smells like perfume.” The point being you have to be willing to be wrong or naïve and entertain alternatives to your beliefs to harness creativity.

“Creativity is thinking outside the norm, knowing what really matters in making your company win, and finding a better way to do it,” Stein says.

Glazer’s growth has been astounding. The company has seen 12 percent year-over-year growth since 2010 and, going into 2013, expects more.This growth is underscored by expanding EBITDA.

However, you can’t drive creative solutions by just starting at the balance sheet. Stein attributes some of his success to:

• His belief in his team
• An open-door policy
• Staying aware that asking the most senior people their opinions means junior employees will never give you the real answer.

From ‘no’ to ‘yes’

You have to drop the attitude, get out there, and talk to employees and customers in a meaningful way.

Stein was asked for an example of alternative thinking and creative problem solving to overcome a “no” to get to a “yes.” His answer was, “I have about 20 of them.” He went on to describe how a leader had said the current sales and account management process could not be redesigned to save money and make customers happy at the same time (it had been that way for 50 years).

His employees and leaders, who are free to express their feelings and make mistakes, quickly went to work and designed a new approach. Since that change, profits have doubled.

When you hear Stein speak, you immediately hear the spark, the energy, and the passion. He creates comfort without losing a very aggressive edge. On the topic of assertion versus aggression in pushing creative ideas, Stein says that creativity and being aggressive go hand in hand. Otherwise taking “no” for an answer and dealing with basic, safe assertions will rule.

When asked if a COO and a CFO can be creative, he says, “I wouldn’t hire one who wasn’t, so I do not see why they can’t be.” Whether it is working on the front lines, in the distribution center, or fostering employee opinion, Glazer’s executives think differently about how to lead and the results are showing.

Ryan

Creative culture, Blockbuster performance

The corporate financial consulting field is a huge space. Companies like KPMG, Deloitte Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers dominate. There is one CEO who came from the big firm space, started small in the corporate tax services space, and is rocketing back up the competitive ladder with 20+ diversified corporate tax and financial accounting practice areas – profitably. That would be Brint Ryan, CEO of Ryan in Dallas.

Ryan has been awarded just about every award you could imagine from best places to work to a leader in customer services. Ryan was set to break the $300M mark in 2012; it could reach $400M in 2013, and in the next three years is poised to reach the $1 billion mark.

Part of what’s created that growth is creativity.

“I have never been afraid to push the envelope and reach for the stars in services, client satisfaction, and technology, and I ultimately realized I needed to take the same approach with our work environment,” Brint Ryan says.

Creative culture

Delta Emerson, Executive Vice President and Chief of Staff — and Ryan’s right arm — went on to say, “once we applied the same level of creative thinking to our culture as we did to functional areas, the results have been unbelievable – a company’s bottom line and creativity are intertwined.”

Ryan eschewed the rigid culture typical of big financial consulting firms for a flexible work environment.

Called MyRyan, the employee engagement program not only supports flexible work arrangements, career growth and opportunity, it’s a way of empowerment. Employees may work from home, remotely or in-office, as long as they are delivering the expected results.

Team members are empowered to do what is best to get the job done. The same applies to how time-off is administered.

Scaling for growth

Although a creative work environment can drive growth and profit, it’s not a switch that can be turned on and off, Emerson says.

The Ryan executive team has shown that organizational learning, managerial flexibility and constantly deploying innovative business practices go hand-in-hand with gains against the competition.

In asking about the C-Suite at Ryan the discussion turned to how the CIO/CTO and CMO could use creativity. Emerson states that typically C-level executives have been functional domain experts and “they need to be comfortable working outside their area of expertise to get creative.”

Ryan’s CIO, for example, has played a role in looking at community outreach for the company and developed Ryan-teering [volunteering] to track and recognize peer- to-peer community outreach and giving. The CFO was very involved in helping think about metrics for MyRyan. “Sometimes leaders kill their own good ideas because they go off in a dark corner or stay hidden in the C-suite and do not involve people to explore,” Ryan says.

It is evident that creativity is critical, whether you are on a climb to the top of your market or protecting your position and want to ensure you have all the ingredients for sustained and meaningful growth and profit.

As Csikszentmihalyi describes in his work, creative leaders possess the ability to be both extremely smart and very naïve at the same time. They naturally tend to balance extroversion and introversion. Leaders are able to navigate both and they know the importance of seeing and hearing others’ ideas.

Imagine the possibilities if you and your leadership team mastered these same characteristics. Get creative. Anything is possible.

5 approaches to creativity from Shelly Stein
Glazer’s President and CEO, Shelly Stein, shares his approach to fostering creativity, which has been profitable for the consumer-goods distributor:
1. Make sure employees enjoy their job or they will spend their creative energy looking for another job.
2. Have a “no jerk policy.” Everyone’s opinions have value. Leaders should not think they are too good to be wrong, no one should feel diminished or feel a lack of respect.
3. Truly tie compensation to performance and reward creative ideas. This is what changes behavior.
4. Don’t penalize mistakes. People aren’t willing to try new things when they are afraid.
5. Aggressive is not a bad word. Embrace leaders who are constructively aggressive to spurn creative outcomes.

The post The profitable side of creativity appeared first on Insigniam Quarterly.

When the currency of the business is promises kept rather than quality or impact of the work, then employees will be afraid to make the kind of promises that will stretch their thinking.

Can you imagine at the beginning of the AIDS/HIV crisis researchers thinking they would discover a treatment without having any failures along the way?

Rather than focusing on keeping a promise, the question should be: Is what you’re giving your word to worthwhile? Instead, strive for the tension that’s generated by standing for something that’s out of the ordinary. Stirring up those creative juices may lead to failure — or a whole new way of doing things.

Michael Waldman is one of the founding partners of Insigniam. Subscribe to his innovation blogs at insigniam-innovation.com

The post An innovation is more important than the promise appeared first on Insigniam Quarterly.

Popsicles
An 11-year-old Frank Epperson was mixing powdered flavoring into his soda water one winter evening in 1905. He left the drink outside overnight in record-cold temperatures with its mixing stick still in it. Epperson found a frozen treat the next morning. Almost 20 years later, after selling his treat at a California amusement park, Epperson applied for a patent on his creation that he initially called an Epsicle.

Coca-Cola
John Pemberton, a pharmacist, was trying to make a cure for headaches by mixing together a bunch of ingredients. After eight years of being sold in a drug store, the surprising combination became popular enough to be sold in bottles.

Corn Flakes
The Kellogg brothers forgot to store their boiled wheat properly, and once it was later processed, it came out as flakes. The younger brother, Will Kellogg, tried the same process with corn and created a crispier flake.

The chocolate-chip cookie
Ruth Graves Wakefield, co-owner of the Toll House Inn, was making a Butter Drop Do cookie recipe and ran out of baker’s chocolate. In its place she added a few pieces of semi-sweet chocolate. The chocolate didn’t fully melt, and she ended up with chocolate-chip cookies.

Microwave oven
Engineer Percy Spencer was touring a Raytheon laboratory when he stopped in front of a magnetron. After a moment, he noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket was melting. His curiosity piqued, Spencer next put unpopped kernels of popcorn in front of the magnetron and watched them explode. These experiments led to the development of the microwave oven.

Artificial sweetener
Constantin Fahlberg, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, was investigating the oxidation of o-toluenesulfonamide. One day he ate his dinner without washing his hands first and noticed the food he was eating tasted very sweet. After further research, he discovered that what he tasted was a form of saccharin.

The post Mistake or innovation? You decide… appeared first on Insigniam Quarterly.

Since 1984, Dr. Thomas D. Zweifel has lived and worked on four continents. Forged in the fire of clashing cultures, he developed a fool-proof methodology for managing across borders successfully. He has packed Culture Clash 2.0 with fascinating stories, sound research, and practical techniques – the global and intercultural competencies managers need to get the job done anywhere in the world.

Dr. Zweifel is a management consultant, leadership professor, and author.

The post Reading vroom: culture clash 2.0 appeared first on Insigniam Quarterly.

Networking with executives from 30 countries
12-plus mainstage speakers
Exploratory field trips and interactive workshops
Access to the online WOBI community

World Innovation Forum New York 2013
New York City Center
New York City
June 12-13, 2013
http://www.wobi.com/event/world-innovation-forum-new-york-2013

The post Challenge the unconventional: World Innovation Forum 2013 appeared first on Insigniam Quarterly.