Call for March 'Innovation Perspectives'

March's opportunity to contribute your Innovation Perspectives is now here.

This monthly feature presents our loyal readers with different perspectives on a single topic all in one place - from several different authors. It gives our innovation community the opportunity to compare, contrast and discuss them in the comments here on Blogging Innovation and with the 2,300+ people in the Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn.

Here is this month's topic for publishing the week of March 29-April 4, 2010:


How should firms develop the organizational structure, culture, and incentives (e.g., for teams) to encourage successful innovation?

• Thank you to Drew Boyd for submitting this month's topic


• Thank you to Brightidea for sponsoring Blogging Innovation this month. Find out more about Brightidea here.


• The submission deadline is midnight GMT on March 27, 2010

Several contributing authors will be writing articles on this topic, but you are also welcome to submit an article. The process is simple:

1. Submit your article using our contact form


2. I will e-mail you back with a request for a 1-2 sentence author byline and a photo like those on Blogging Innovation

We look forward to sharing March's Innovation Perspectives with you and hearing your thoughts!


If you missed February's Innovation Perspectives, you can find them here.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Innovation? - Just Do It

by Jeffrey Phillips

I'm constantly amazed by all the talk about innovation that I hear within many organizations, and how little real action is taken. It's time, my friends, to gird up your loins and take action. Let's borrow the motto from Nike and decide to "Just Do It."

If you are waiting for the sign from above (by that I mean your executive management) that you may now go and be innovative, stop waiting. Even if the sign comes, it will be so watered down and so filled with misdirection and uncertainty that you wouldn't act on it anyway. Act now, even in small ways to develop innovation activities and skills, so that you can then build on those activities and flesh them into new ideas, and new products and services.

When I say this to many mid and senior level folks I talk to, they want to know: what can I do to make a difference? There are a host of small actions you can take to start innovating, and as you do you'll build credibility and will attract others who are interested and want to work with you. If you never start, you'll never build the community or team you need to succeed.

Here are just a few things that are very easy to do, and very inexpensive to do, that just about anyone in any firm can do to add value and start innovating. Once you do these things you'll build your credibility and get to do even more.

1. Document trends and provide your sense of what they'll mean for your business in the near future. Yes, I know this isn't your job, but as it turns out it's not anyone's job in most businesses but everyone needs this synthesis. A well organized consolidation of trends, transitioned into a document that provides shape and clarity to a potential future outcome, is helpful to any organization. And, since no one else is doing it, you are now the expert. If someone disagrees, then you've attracted a compatriot who can work with you to provide a counterpoint. All innovation starts from recognizing an opportunity, issue or threat before others do. Trend spotting and synthesis can get your team there first.


2. Observe your customers. Go read the complaint letters. Read what people are writing about you online on Facebook or Twitter, or other blogs. Go watch your customers use your products. Become a customer of your products or services. Write down what you like, and don't like, about your products. This is free Voice of the Customer and Ethnography. As you do this you'll gain insights into unmet unarticulated needs, which are also a great opportunity for innovation.


3. Use brainstorming and other idea generation tools as frequently as possible, and use them in the right situations and contexts. Rather than pull a rarely used tool out of the toolbox ocassionally, use the tools regularly and effectively. In that way, idea generation doesn't seem so artificial, but a natural part of doing business. And since you're doing it regularly, you learn more about how to do it well.


4. Read the best books about innovation, to learn more about the best practices and tools, so when there are opportunities for innovation, you can recommend the appropriate tools and techniques. Learn to be a good facilitator, and understand the rules and techniques for idea generation. As your skills grow, you'll be asked to lead idea sessions for other teams.

There's always something you can do, and starting now is much better than starting when you finally get the OK. In many firms, the OK may never happen. Create a small innovation capability and generate ideas about the future, new product and service ideas, and help other teams generate ideas. You'll attract others who have similar needs and interests and gain incredible credibility. Eventually you'll be the go-to person for innovation. Don't laugh, I've been in at least two organizations where the head of innovation was simply the person who started doing innovation and was eventually recognized as the expert.


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Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at OVO Innovation. OVO works with large distributed organizations to build innovation teams, processes and capabilities. Jeffrey is the author of "Make us more Innovative", and innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com.

Org Chart Kool Aid

by Mike Myatt

Since Organizational theory is a hot topic these days, I thought I'd poke a bit of fun at that old corporate tradition that is the Organization Chart. Over the years I've seen every type of org chart in existence. Some have come and gone only to come again. Every year or two the latest revolutionary thinking in corporate organizational theory spawns a new form of charting. The dynamics of corporate organization are so revered by B-school professors and management consultants that an entire generation of corporate management has drunk the org chart Kool-Aid. These managers often rush to adopt the latest thinking without any consideration for whether or not the new form of structure is even appropriate for their business. So powerful is this dynamic that entire companies and numerous products have been built to support these latest trends. In the time it has taken to author this musing it wouldn't surprise me if Visio had a new product release.

So, is an org chart a corporate asset or a waste of time? The answer depends on the purpose behind its creation, the process used to create it, and the corporate purpose for the existence of the chart post creation. The following list contains my top 10 reasons not to create an organizational chart:

1. To give the CEO an opportunity to view his name at the top


2. Because you need to beef-up your management presentation and you have room for an extra PowerPoint slide


3. Your management consultant told you to create one


4. The business planning software you purchased has a template for one


5. Your CFO just read a new article on corporate organizational theory


6. You just attended an off-site where someone drew an off-the-cuff chart on a dry erase board and it looked good


7. When reviewing your competitor's website you noticed they had one, and well your website needed updating anyway


8. There wasn't anything better for the intern to do


9. Someone got a promotion


10. It just seems like you should have one

Putting the satire aside, a business should in fact have an organization chart. A sincerely motivated, properly constructed, and actively implemented organizational chart can in fact help refine the operational aspects of any business. The development of an org chart should be a serious initiative born out of solid underlying business logic, process and methodology. Culture and environment are considerations that are often times completely ignored in the design of and org chart while perhaps representing the most critical architectural elements.

The most common mistake made by corporate management is that the organization chart is created way too early in the process before business rules and logic are aligned. Much like the order of operation principles that apply to an algebraic formula, if you get the sequencing wrong you can't solve the problem. An org chart is not where you start the process, but is rather the culmination of many processes helping to insure a certainty of execution and clarity of direction by creating a road-map to be followed.

There's an old joke in business circles that says "every company has two org charts... the one that's put into graphical form and incorporated in the business plan, and the one that never gets published but is actually representative of how things really work." The process of corporate organization is most succinctly and easily understood by using the following order of operation which I developed more than two decades ago:


"Values should underpin Vision, which dictates Mission, which determines Strategy, which surfaces Goals, that frame Objectives, which in turn drives the Tactics that tell an organization what Resources, Infrastructure and Processes are needed to support a certainty of execution." - (Mike Myatt 1988)


The org chart should enter the organizational construction cycle as deep into the cycle as possible to avoid the joke that led off the preceding paragraph. By waiting to create your organizational paradigm until there is at least some level of maturity in the business, a clear picture of who, what, when, where, why and how will begin to develop. It is only at this stage that you can properly align expectations, with process, culture and environment. It is then and only then, that you should address the need for, and deployment of, your human capital assets.

The bottom line is that I have observed all types of organizational structures (in vogue, antiquated and otherwise) succeed, and I have also seen them fail. It is not the "type" or the "style" of chart used that works or doesn't, rather it is the process of design that was used in creating the org chart that will determine its usefulness, functionality and adoption. That said, my personal preference is to build a very flat organization, and where a hierarchical framework is necessary, to drive complex decisioning down as low as possible within the organization structure.


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Mike Myatt, is a Top CEO Coach, author of "Leadership Matters...The CEO Survival Manual", and Managing Director of N2Growth.

Good Acting can be Bad for the Business

by Holly G. Green

When Shakespeare said that all the world's a stage, he probably didn't have employee performance evaluations in mind. But for anyone who has ever endured a less-than-candid performance appraisal, his words definitely ring true.

Giving and receiving feedback is a complex process made infinitely more complicated by our human emotions and reactions. In particular, our fears, uncertainties and doubts about the feedback process can make us very uncomfortable. So when we give or receive feedback, we often appear as though we are on stage, performing a role.

Performance evaluations often feature two primary roles: lead actors (the person providing the feedback) and supporting actors (the individual receiving the feedback). Do you recognize any of the following performers in your company?

"...and the Oscar goes to..."

Leading Actors (providing feedback):

• The Magician disguises her feedback so that the employee can only guess about the real message. "You did great & here's one thing to work on, but you did great..." In order to minimize conflict and keep the employee guessing, she only slips in negative comments when the employee isn't looking. The magician typically appears when a manager is afraid of hurting the employee's feelings or worried about not being liked. The receiver walks away wondering what the show was all about.


• The Corporate Enforcer's main goal is to protect his "good guy" status. His impersonal "I'm just doing my job and delivering the message; it's not like I wanted to or that I even believe it is necessary" approach gets him off the hook for having any negative thoughts of his own or opinions about the employee.


• The Hero plays the part of protector while delivering the feedback as if he is there only to help. "Don't worry, I'll do it." He may pretend not to agree with the feedback while backpedaling out of the discussion, and will frequently step in and offer to resolve any issues for the employee.


• The Interrogator asks a series of tough questions, trying to get the employees to figure out what they might not have done well. "Do you think it went well? What do you think others thought? Do you think that was the best approach?" She remains in control by never providing the answer and by not offering any specifics on the behavior(s) in question.


• The Game Show Host prefers a guessing game in which the employee doesn't really know what the manager is thinking but is expected to play the game anyway. "Guess what I think is your strength? What do you think I want you to focus on?" As with the magician, the employee leaves the meeting wondering what it was all about.

Supporting Actors (receiving feedback):

• The Victim is so hard on himself that any feedback is taken way out of context. "It's always my fault. I knew I would fail at this." He often perceives the feedback as a personal condemnation and overreacts.


• The Sheepherder believes there is safety in numbers. "Everyone does it that way." She finds or at least identifies other employees who engage in the same behavior. This is a perfect way to avoid responsibility & accountability for personal performance & it can be intimidating to a feedback giver since it feels like the whole organization is suddenly against you.


• The Con Man (or woman) creates tangents and diversions by bringing up other projects, issues or behaviors. "Did you hear about what is going on in X department?" The goal is to get the manager off track and avoid the real issues at hand.
  
• Ex-Spouses blame the other person for anything less than perfection. "It's your fault. No it's your fault!" In this scene, the lead and supporting actors both become defensive and stop listening altogether.

Do any of these casts of characters remind you of anyone? All of these lead and supporting roles require sophisticated acting skills. Yet, most people are not consciously aware of when they are performing. So when any of these actors appear on stage, it's time to yell "Cut!" and re-shoot the scene.

Start by recognizing that the role being played is nothing more than a way of avoiding fears. If you're the one doing the acting, take a look at the behavior getting in the way of your valuable feedback and try to develop a better understanding of why you do it. If the employee is the one on stage, show some empathy for their fears and then gently redirect the conversation back to the issue at hand.

In Hollywood, a best actor award will definitely advance your career. When it comes to being a great leader or manager and assessing your employees, not so much. Keep the acting to a minimum on both sides and you and your employees will enjoy more honest and productive performance evaluations.

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Holly is the CEO of THE HUMAN FACTOR, Inc. (www.TheHumanFactor.biz) and is a highly sought after and acclaimed speaker, business consultant, and author. Her unique approach to creating strategic agility, helping others go slow to go fast, will change your thinking.

Being Too Innovative Might Get You Fired

by Rocco Tarasi

A North Carolina principal was terminated for approving an "innovative" fundraising idea proposed to her by the parent advisory council. Their idea was to allow students to make a $20 donation to the school's new technology fund in return for 20 "points" that could be added to two of their exams (10 points per exam). For example, if a student scored a 68 on an exam they could add 10 points to make it a 78. After enough parents complained the school district stepped in, stopped the program, and terminated the principal (though they characterize it as "voluntary").

Maybe you like this particular idea, or maybe you don't. Either way, what I took away from this story is how difficult it can be for people to accept new ideas and thinking outside the box - especially when it comes to education, which seems to defy all natural laws of disruption and innovation. As different writes and readers have pointed out about this story, 20 points isn't going to make any significant difference in a person's overall grade. And does anyone really think this will encourage a student to slack in their studies simply because they can add 10 points to an exam?

But the quote from the article that shocked me the most was the following:


Teachers giving extra test credit to students who bring in classroom supplies is a longstanding practice at some schools.


The article didn't clarify that this particular school had this "extra credits for supplies" program, or which schools did. But there is ZERO difference between a $20 donation for extra credit and bringing in school supplies for extra credit, and if this is a "longstanding practice" then maybe it shouldn't cost someone their job.

The state's department of education officer said that "paying for grades teaches children the wrong lesson." I think that is a convenient excuse, and in fact you can choose to look at it the opposite way: if a student was given the choice of spending $20 of their own money on extra credits or on a new Transformers DVD movie, which would they choose? Perhaps that decision could itself be a valuable lesson.

The state also said that it would be unfair to students whose parents couldn't pay. This may be a more valid argument, but this could be easily solved by offering alternatives to the $20 donation, such as volunteer work that would require some effort or work from the students instead.

It's sad to see someone lose their job when they're taking the initiative to innovate, but mix an uber-sensitive society with an uber-political organization like a school board and the result shouldn't surprise anyone.

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Rocco Tarasi was an accountant, investment banker, and CFO before becoming a technology entrepreneur. He writes about innovation at www.InnovationMinute.com with a focus on "everyday" innovations in business models, sales strategies, products and services.

Creating Conditions for an Innovation Culture

by Jeffrey Phillips

I've been thinking a lot lately about "creating a culture of innovation", which is what a lot of firms suggest they want to do. Of course this is a very lofty goal. Changing a corporate culture doesn't happen easily, and it certainly doesn't happen overnight. Yet clearly one of the most significant barriers to innovation is the entrenched culture of effectiveness and efficiency, of risk-avoidance and following rather than leading.

So, that led me to think about when teams and groups within an organization can be innovative, and what the conditions were when that happened. We regularly lead teams on trend spotting and scenario planning exercises that create some really radical future scenarios, with little resistance, and often lead ideation and brainstorming programs that achieve a large number of disruptive or radical ideas. These small programs demonstrate that innovation can happen in any organization under certain conditions. Let's first look at what makes these small programs effective.

We find that we can be most effective with these discovery and idea generation programs when we set very clear expectations about our goals and prepare the team carefully for the work, setting out specific rules and expectations. Typically when we go into the work, we'll close the door and tell the team that anything that happens in the room is fair game, and open for discussion, and we aren't bound by the "normal" rules. This helps get the team out of the "day to day" thinking and encourage their creative thinking. They know that no one will be allowed to ridicule an idea or submit challenges that will block the consideration of an idea. For those few moments or days, we have created a "micro-climate" for innovation, probably akin to a hothouse in the wintertime.

So, if we can create some assorted micro-climates where teams can spot opportunities and emerging trends, and effectively generate ideas, can we build on the "micro-climate" concept to create more areas where conditions are ripe for innovation? Using the flower analogy, can we move the ideas from one hothouse to another, gradually exposing the ideas to the elements and improving the chances for survival, while we try to change the conditions of the organization at large (change the cultural attitudes to innovation)?

I'd like to suggest the first step may be to create a number of "micro-climates" - safe locations to generate, develop and evaluate ideas that exist specifically to give ideas the necessary environments to grow. Some firms use a designated space for innovation. Perhaps the best way to change the culture is to start small, with several micro-climates that establish conditions for innovation and allow the process to prove its worth.

Eventually the idea needs to be exposed to the conditions, and planted where it will bear fruit. That is, it must make a transition from an interesting idea to a new product or service, and that means it must work its way through the product or service development process. There are two considerations here: either the existing product or service development process must be adjusted to accept and manage new, possibly more disruptive and fragile concepts, or new product and service development models must be developed for more radical ideas. To carry the plant analogy further, any farmer worth his salt will cover plants in the field that are susceptible to a killing frost or unexpected conditions. So, too, must an organization provide more cover and care for a radical idea as it moves through a traditional product development process.

The point here is that too many times we talk about "changing the culture" and immediately reject the concept, since it is such a Herculean task. Perhaps what we should do is establish small teams and locations where the conditions are beneficial to innovation - small micro-climates where ideas can succeed, and string them together. Once we've demonstrated success, we won't have to worry about changing the culture, because slowly the organization will recognize success and begin to adapt to the best concepts that the conditions in the micro-climates offer them.

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Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at OVO Innovation. OVO works with large distributed organizations to build innovation teams, processes and capabilities. Jeffrey is the author of "Make us more Innovative", and innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com.

Innovation Perspectives - Trench Innovation

This is the first of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on the following question:

"Where should innovation reside in an organization, and who should 'own' or manage innovation?"

To kick it off, here is 'Trench Innovation':

by Steve Todd

Where should innovation reside in an organization?

For many decades the answers have ranged from 'dedicated research facilities' to 'globally distributed research teams'. Hewlett-Packard has HP-Labs in Palo Alto. IBM has eight distributed research teams.

The highest executive levels within a corporation have looked to these teams and asked "where do we go next?"

These research teams often 'hand off' the latest innovative ideas to dedicated development organizations.

A recent article in the NY Times is questioning the efficiency of dedicated corporate R&D labs.

The truth of the matter is that innovation cannot solely reside in these organizations any more.

Innovation should reside in the corporate trenches.


Innovation by Pain

Consider a salesperson that loses a deal to a competitive rival, or a field engineer being raked over the coals for a product bug or feature deficiency. Are they motivated to come up with an innovative solution?

Consider a software engineer with a legacy software architecture that's hard to maintain. Consider a manager leading a team with a seemingly impossible deadline. Think about the pressure they feel when sales and support report the urgent laundry list of problems. Are the developers motivated to come up with a better way of doing things?

The people in the trenches are feeling the pain, and they operate with a sense of urgency that maximizes productivity. If innovation is all about the delivery of ideas, then the trenches is where innovation truly belongs.

Employees in the trenches are not motivated by solutions coming from a corporate R&D lab. They often view the research facility as an ivory tower.

My message to the trenches is this: you don't need permission from your corporation to innovate. Just do it. But it's a lot easier if the corporation knows how to leverage intrapreneurs. Here are two ways that a corporation can 'own' or 'manage' trench innovation.


"What are you working on that I don't know about"

Line managers working for a company with a 'trench innovation' mentality should be regularly asking their employees the above question. They should challenge their direct reports to pursue answers to pressing customer needs by researching creative solutions in a skunkworks fashion.

Some managers will punish their employees for working on solutions that are outside of their core job. I'm suggesting that managers encourage them to do just that. This is the most direct way to 'manage' innovation.


Corporate Ownership

Ownership of this type of innovation should be loosely coupled. A central monitoring entity should exist, typically in the office of the corporate CTO. They should be innovation ringmasters under the big tent of corporate, academic, and industrial circles.

The final piece of corporate ownership is a strong social media strategy. There needs to be a corporate backbone that enables collaboration between corporate intrapreneurs, academia, industry, and customers. Managers and employees should 'bubble up' their ideas through this mechanism.

When the highest levels of corporate executives asks "where do we go next?", they should look to their innovators in the trenches.

They're the ones standing right next to the customer.


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles published so far from the different contributing authors on "Where should innovation reside?" by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Steve Todd is a high-tech inventor and author of the book Innovate With Influence. An EMC Intrapreneur with over 140 patent applications and billions in product revenue, he writes about innovation on his personal blog, the Information Playground.

How to Ruin a Brainstorming Session

by Paul Sloane

The brainstorming session is the most popular group creativity exercise in business. It is quick, easy and it works. But many organizations have become frustrated with brainstorms and have stopped using them. They say this group ideation technique is old-fashioned and no longer effective. But the real reason for their frustration is typically that the brainstorming meetings are not facilitated properly. A well-run brainstorming meeting is fun and energetic. It will generate plenty of good ideas. But a poor session can be frustrating and demotivating. Let's look at some simple ways to ruin your next brainstorm meeting - so you understand what practices you should avoid.

1. Having no clear objectives

• A brainstorming session with a vague or unclear purpose will wander and lose its way. So be sure set a clear objective for your meeting. The purpose of the brainstorming session is to generate many creative ideas to answer a specific goal. It is best to express the goal as a question. A general objective is not helpful. For example, "How can we do better?" is not as good as "How can we double sales in the next 12 months?" However, the question should not be too detailed, or it may close out lateral possibilities. To follow our previous example, "How can we double sales, through existing channels and with the current product set?" is probably too constrained. Once the question has been agreed it is written up clearly for all to see.


• It is worth setting objectives for the number of ideas to be generated and the time to be spent. "We are looking to generate 60 ideas in the next 20 minutes. Then we will whittle them down to 4 or 5 really good ones." For best results, your brainstorming session should not be too long - between 25 and 35 minutes is generally best.

2. Too homogenous of a group

• If everyone is from the same department, then creativity can be inhibited and you may get "group think." Choose the members of your group carefully; the best size is somewhere between six and twelve people. Too few people and there are not enough diverse inputs. Too many people and it is hard to control and retain everyone's commitment. Sprinkle the group with a few outsiders from other areas or even from outside the business - people who can bring some different perspectives and wacky ideas. A good mix of people - varied ages, men and women, works best.

3. Letting the boss act as facilitator

• Beware of having an autocratic boss with his or her team. He or she can inhibit or shape the discussion in undesirable ways, and can often inhibit the group's creativity. If the boss is present then it is better to have a good independent facilitator - someone who can encourage input from everyone and stop one person from dominating. The worst formula for a brainstorming session is generally the department manager leading the team and acting as scribe and censor at the same time.

4. Allowing early criticism

• The most important rule of brainstorming is to suspend judgment. In order to encourage a wealth of wacky ideas, it is essential that no one is critical, negative or judgmental about an idea. Any idea that is uttered - no matter how stupid - must be written down. The rule about suspending judgment during the idea generation phase is so important that it is worth enforcing rigorously. A good technique is to issue water pistols; anyone who is critical gets squirted.

5. Settling for a few ideas

• Don't get a handful of ideas and then start analyzing. Quantity is great. The more ideas the better. Brainstorming is one the few activities in life where quantity improves quality. Think of it as a Darwinian process. The more separate ideas that are generated the greater the chance that some will be fit enough to survive. You need stacks of energy and buzz driving lots of wacky ideas. Crazy thoughts that are completely unworkable are often the springboards for other ideas that can be adapted into great new solutions. So keep the crazy ideas coming - you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find one prince!

6. No closure or follow through

• Don't stop the meeting after generating lots of ideas with a vague promise to follow up. If people see no real outcomes they will become frustrated with the process and lose faith. You should quickly analyze the ideas at the meeting. One of the best ways is to divide the proposals into three categories - promising interesting or reject. If any of the promising ideas are real no-brainers - so good that they should be implemented immediately, then give them to someone as an action item immediately.

You should categorize and collect the ideas. On a separate flipchart, write all the promising and interesting ideas which are marketing ideas, on another chart all the sales ideas, etc. This process of rearranging the ideas can help you see new combinations and possibilities. Some people use Post-It notes at this stage so that they can easily move ideas around.

If you are pressed for time, then an alternative method of selecting the best ideas is to give everyone five points. They can allocate points to their favorite ideas in any way that they want. They can give one point to five separate ideas or all five to one idea. After everyone has voted, total the points and select the best for further action.

Close the meeting by thanking everyone for their input. Mention again one of two of the best, most inventive or funniest ideas. Then see which ideas you can implement - even if they are small things.

People enjoy short, high-energy brainstorms that lead to actions. These meetings can motivate people, improve efficiency and drive innovation.

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Paul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader published by Kogan-Page.

Save the World - One Action at a Time

Saving water is going to become ever more important as time goes on. If you're easily offended, skip this one, but it's really pretty harmless and the ad campaign referenced is targeted at children.




by Kevin Roberts

A great ad is one that can be understood across borders without the need for subtitles or translation. That's the case with the TVC above created by F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi for the Brazilian environmental group SOS Mata Atlântica. The message here couldn't be any more clear.

SOS Mata Atlântica says that if a household avoids just one flush a day, it can save up to 4,380 litres (1,157 gallons) of water annually. It's the little ways we can make a difference each day. Adam Werbach, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, focuses on the impact of our collective "nano-practices" - the hundreds and thousands of tiny things you do each day that together make up your lifestyle. In his 'Birth of Blue' speech last year, he explained the idea: "How you tie your shoes, the type of shoes you wear, your choice of socks, how you fold your socks, and whether you wear your shoes indoors. Instead of trying to change the big things about someone's identity...we start by finding daily or recurring practices that can express his or her values." We all could cut down on our water consumption every day. It might be peeing in the shower, taking a shorter shower, or waiting a day to do a load of laundry. One thing can add up.

The other reason this TVC has had such a big response is the way it communicates with us. Sure, the environment is an important and serious topic, but preaching doom and gloom is no way to save the world. Instead of scare tactics and depressing statistics, this ad goes for humor, and there's no better spokesperson for tomorrow than kids. They can diffuse any situation. The campaign includes posters, a television film and a website which features a frog imploring us to pee in the shower, all to generate awareness about water wastage.

Saving the planet turns out to be easier than expected. Listen to the children and xixi no banho!

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Musical Chairs

by Mike Brown

Not sure where I learned this originally, but it's a great, simple tactic for meetings where you're voicing a position contrary to someone else's: never sit across from them.

Try sitting next to, or at least on the same side of the table as, whoever might be an adversary. The arrangement makes it so much harder to employ confrontational body language. Instead, you're likely forced to discuss your differences rather than posturing about them.

And while we're at it, here's one more idea for arranging seating: if there are going to be two or more distinct "teams" represented in a meeting, consciously keep them from sitting in groups. Forcing group members to intermingle helps break up confrontational group body language.

These two tactics may sound silly, but I've seen them work too many times to not try and carry them out in every situation where they're appropriate.

So come sit over here by me!

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Mike Brown is an award-winning marketer and strategist with extensive experience in research, strategy, branding, and sponsorship marketing. He's a frequent keynote presenter on innovation and authors Brainzooming!

Run Your Business Like a Life

by Matt Heinz

For many of us, business and life - personal and professional - blur together on a regular basis. But the idea of running your business (or your career) like a life is a good one. Chris Brogan wrote about this in his newsletter this morning, and I've included some excerpts below. Worth a quick read:

In writing "Trust Agents" with Julien, I've been building more and more information up around the idea of being human at a distance, and about the way human-shaped business works. One thing I believe: that lots of situations in business feel a lot like relationships, and vice versa.


Think of Everyone as a Relationship

Customers are a relationship. Prospects are, too. Coworkers are those people we spend more time with than many of our extended relatives. But do we treat everyone as if we're in a relationship with them? I don't mean that you have to kiss everyone (though hugging wouldn't be all that terrible, would it?), but I do mean that if we considered this, even every once in a while, our business experiences (from communication to interpersonal interactions) would improve. For instance, we don't spam our family.


Make Everything Into an Improvement Project

At home, we carve up things into projects. We paint the deck. We decide to build out a new sun room. We replace the living room furniture. Some of our projects are recurring: vacuuming, laundry, meal preparation.

Business runs the same way, even if your job is made up of recurring tasks. If your role is director of marketing, the overarching goals of the organization are to drive more awareness and translate that to sales (let's say). Why not find ways to chunk that into projects: email marketing improvement, online presence management, blogger outreach efforts, print campaign streamlining, integration efforts, etc. Can you see how that "project" mindset changes business?


Integrate Your Presence and Profile

Online, I'm often asked the question as to whether one should have a work and a business profile separate from one another. I say no. Except in extreme cases (your fetish art hobby doesn't work well with your day care center job, maybe), I believe that our profiles and how we conduct ourselves online should be an integrated thing.

This might require some help from friends. You might need to request that your Facebook friends not tag you in photos from the party where you did the kegstand in your band costume. It might mean having to do some untagging when one of your friends tags you anyway. But I think it's worth it.

Social software allows for a more enriched view of our interests, our pursuits, our goals. By connecting on various sites as an integrated whole, we treat people more like humans, and we operate human-shaped businesses.


Will it Work?

You might be wondering if any of this improves the bottom line. My answer? Yes. Does it work for every organizational culture? No. But here's a trick: culture is a non-physical consensual reality that only exists because others perpetuate it. Inserting new programming into the culture, is similar to hacking software (or our immune system): appear externally to be compatible with the culture, and then inject small traces of the new programming into the system. Defend against the antibodies, and soon, you're in.

Hack your workplace, friends. You deserve it.

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Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt at matt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.

Innovation Perspectives - What exactly is an innovation strategy?

This is the seventh and final 'Innovation Perspectives' article we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on The Importance of Innovation Strategy:

by Rowan Gibson

At many companies, the term 'innovation strategy' refers simply to an agenda for new product development or a technology roadmap for R&D. This is like picking up a single leaf in the forest and calling it a tree. Innovation strategy is not merely about the next product launch or patent registration. It's about exactly how your company intends to become (or remain) a world-class innovation champion. Let's face it, not many organizations have so far managed to build a deep, enduring capability for innovation - one that consistently drives profitable revenue growth and that delivers a strong competitive advantage over the longer term. This should be the highest goal and purpose of any innovation strategy.

The real strategic issue facing every company is this: How are we going to create growth and shareholder value in the future?

Sounds like a simple question. But organizations have had a wide variety answers at their disposal over the last few decades. For some, the solution was going global, or cutting costs, or improving quality. For others, it was raising productivity, or offering the best customer service, or standing out with excellent product design. Today, however, these traditional strategies are running out of steam. They no longer offer very much potential for driving growth and wealth creation over the longer term. As marketing expert Steve Yastrow put it in a recent blog, they have become nothing more than "basic business hygiene - the 'brushing your teeth' of running a company."

There is a growing realization around the world that organizations have only one strategic option left for delivering growth, company value, market share and competitive advantage. And that's radical innovation - in products, services, technologies, processes, cost structures, marketing strategies, and business models. However, an honest assessment of the business landscape reveals that radical innovators are still very few and far between.

When you pick up a copy of Forbes or BusinessWeek, you inevitably find yourself reading about the usual suspects - a small handful of innovation champions like Apple, Google and Gore. It simply seems incredibly difficult for all those other companies out there to make the transition from innovation laggards to innovation leaders. And that's why there's an urgent need right now for organizations to develop a corporate innovation strategy - a blueprint for building, sustaining, and managing an enterprise-wide innovation capability.

Nancy Tennant, co-author of Strategic Innovation, and former global vice president of innovation at Whirlpool, the appliance giant, says that an innovation strategy should encompass "a wide range of actions that assimilate, incorporate, internalize, and imbue the entire fabric or lifeblood of an organization with the mind-set and skills of innovation."

At the core of this strategy must be a broad-based vision of innovation embedment - a vision that is created and owned by the top team, that is accessible to all levels of the organization, that is both feasible and flexible, that can guide decision making, and that can be clearly and easily communicated. It must be based on a highly systemic view of the organization - a sense of connection, interaction and integration between all of the various parts of the system - where the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. And it must enable each and every employee to understand the link between their own individual performance and the attainment of the company's strategic innovation goal.

Once this vision is in place and widely shared across the company, the next imperative is to turn strategy into action by making the necessary stepwise changes to leadership commitment and accountability, organizational infrastructure, management processes and policies, resource allocation, knowledge management, employee contribution, rewards and recognition systems, competence development programs, measurement and reporting systems, cultural values, and so on. All of these organizational components need to be hardwired into the company's innovation strategy.

"But stop", you say. "Is all of this actually possible?" Can companies really make the gargantuan leap from boring to breakout, and from insipid to inspired? Consider an encouraging example.

When Whirlpool's former CEO Dave Whitwam set out to define his company's global innovation strategy back in 1999, he chose to call it "Innovation from Everyone and Everywhere." This was a huge aspiration, considering that at the time Whirlpool had 68,000 employees in 170 countries, as well as 50 manufacturing and technology research centers around the globe. But Whirlpool rose to the challenge, and today the company has become a best-practice model for the embedment of innovation as an enterprise capability across a large, global organization.

The key objective of Whirlpool's innovation strategy was to help every single employee to think outside the traditional 'white box' of home appliances, and imagine exciting, customer-relevant solutions that create new wealth for the company. The outcome has been a stream of breakthrough ideas for products and businesses that have come from all over the Whirlpool organization- ideas that have delivered value to consumers in ways never before seen either at the company or in the industry. As a result, Whirlpool has seen a steep upturn in its annual revenues from innovative new products. In the three years between 2003 and 2006, for example, these revenues rose from $78 million to $1.6 billion (a figure over twenty times higher). And the whole strategic transition has made a massive contribution to growing Whirlpool's overall revenues and profits.

Today, the company has well over five hundred projects in its innovation pipeline, representing expected future revenues of $3.5 billion. And, having witnessed the power of Whirlpool's innovation strategy firsthand, current CEO Jeff Fettig is planning no change of course in the future. He told BusinessWeek, "If we keep innovating we'll keep growing."

What Whirpool's example amply demonstrates is that it is entirely possible to turn an 'old-line' industrial organization into a catalyst for continuous, break-the-rules innovation. But it can't be done piecemeal - an innovation reward program here, a corporate venture fund there, or a few days of brainstorming somewhere else isn't enough. Rather, a company has to be willing to recalibrate its whole organizational system around the paradigm of innovation. And that is never going to happen unless it develops a wall-to-wall, top-to-bottom, 'soup to nuts' innovation strategy.


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on The Importance of Innovation Strategy by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Rowan Gibson is a global business strategist, a bestselling author and an expert on radical innovation.

Top 10 Gary Hamel Insights (Spigit Innovation Summit)

by Braden Kelley

I had the good fortune to hear Gary Hamel of London Business School's Management Innovation Lab speak on the first day of the Spigit Innovation Summit on August 13, 2009.

Here are the top ten insights that I captured from Gary Hamel's speech:

1. We need to openly challenge our corporate management policies and processes, and experiment like we do in other scientific disciplines


2. The more consolidated the control of change is, the less resilient an organization will be


3. To come up with any really good idea, you have to challenge your deep orthodoxies - we need to do the same thing with our management principles


4. Two hard problems - (1) How do you do things at scale without being inflexible? (2) How do you have strong coordination without centralization?


5. "If call wait time is 30 minutes, how come I can't pay $2 and jump to the front of the queue?"


6. The future is not necessarily unpredictable, but it is often uncomfortable - As a result, management often fails to react


7. As knowledge becomes distributed across organizations and countries, it becomes harder to create sustainable differentiation


8. Not only is the pace of change going exponential, but business is getting a lot tougher because barriers to entry are falling, and things are changing so fast that by the time regulators understand something new, it's out of control


9. The time from leader to laggard in an industry is now sometimes measured in months


10. "We can create organizations that can manage incredible complexity, but with great inflexibility" - even though we complain about how organizations are managed, startups do it the same way only smaller

What do you think?

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Part 2 - Nature's 10 Simple Rules

Here's the second half of my thoughts on Nature's 10 Simple Rules for Business Survival (read Part 1 here). Send me your views on this list. Also, make sure you pin it up on your wall, your company's survival may depend on it.

Nature's # 6. Integrate metrics. Nature brings the right information to the right place at the right time. When a tree needs water, the leaves curl; when there is rain, the curled leaves move more water to the root system. OK, I'm not a big metrics guy. Experience has shown me that a quick decision grounded in intuition often beats the 100 page report and meeting from hell. But I also find inspiration in understanding how the world works, and for that big picture we need numbers - just numbers from a lot of different sources. Smart, revealing, insightful numbers. For example, James Dyson worked through around 5,000 prototypes before coming up with the wildly successful Dyson vacuum cleaner. Let the truth of that number hit you around the head. When did any of us make 5,000 attempts at anything? If all you read are balance sheets, that's how you'll see the world and you will fail. Too many factors impact on us for any one perspective to show the way forward. If you think otherwise, ask a banker about subprime.

Nature's # 7. Improve with each cycle. Evolution is a strategy for long-term survival. The long-term is the only term if you want to survive. Short-term thinking - like the ridiculous obsession with quarterly earnings - has taken more eyes off the ball than a couple of streakers at a football match. The magic mix? Big, long-term ideas combined with the spirit of "Fail fast, learn fast, fix fast". We can all learn from the frenzied world of fashion. In my first job at Mary Quant, we had nine months to conceive, produce, launch, sell, and then discontinue, a complete line. We got better at it - I promise you.

Nature's # 8. Right size regularly, rather than downsize occasionally. If an organism grows too big to support itself, it collapses. If it withers, it is eaten. When businesses start there are usually just a few people doing everything. Then there comes a time when more people are on the job than can comfortably fit around the lunch table. Thus middle management kicks in and, as Kurt Vonnegut put it in Slaughterhouse-Five, "So it goes". Right size is such a great term. The right size of a business depends on the business. This is where business gets specific and where clarity counts. If you want to manufacture cars for the world to drive, your right size is nothing like that of a boutique fragrance. The key though is to know what's right - right size, right people, right choices - and to take action.

Nature's # 9. Foster longevity, not immediate gratification. Nature does not buy on credit and uses resources only to the level that they can be renewed. Since joining Saatchi & Saatchi, one of my great pleasures has been the opportunity to speak to the P&G Alumni. These are people who have worked for P&G and believe in P&G principles. Best of all, they keep the P&G flag flying long after they have left the company. They are in it for the long-term and the long-term extends beyond a job at P&G and even their working life. They are an amazing renewable source for P&G that promotes the company, attracts more great people to work there, and connects P&G in rich and complex ways to the communities and countries it works in. Longevity is about making a worthwhile contribution. Gratification is about an immediate sensation.

Nature's # 10. Waste nothing, recycle everything. Some of the greatest opportunities in the 21st century will be turning waste - including inefficiency and underutilization - into profit. This rule can transform businesses, regions, nations, and people. One area of waste that I take very personally is the waste of human potential. That's why TYLA - Turn Your Life Around - is very close to my heart. This remarkable program based in New Zealand helps kids at risk start to make positive choices about their lives. We use mentors, fresh opportunities, experiences, support - whatever it takes to transform these young people into hard-working, energetic and joyful citizens. In today's tough climate, we want every hand to the pump. Waste not, want not.

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Two Steps to Innovation

Innovation is a company's future. Don't believe me, ask the stock market.

"Today, some 70% of the valuation of the top 500 S&P companies is made up of intangible capital, value not on the balance sheet," according to Mark Van Clieaf, CEO of MVC International.

Future growth from innovation is a significant contributor to intangible capital.

What to do? Well companies need to rethink, at a fundamental level, their approach to innovation. I don't have the ego to say I have the solution. But, I believe that companies who follow these steps to innovation will achieve their innovation goals, validate the Wall Street's assessment of their intangible value and secure competative advantage. First, companies should create a new position in the C-Suite, the Chief Innovation Officer (CIO). And then companies should create and fund innovation incubators.

These aren't original ideas. The concept of a CIO has been around for a while and some would say Silicon Valley is one giant incubator built on a foundation of VC money. But are you applying these ideas to your business? Probably not.

Step One - The Chief Innovation Officer

"...innovation is not simply about developing new products or better ways to communicate to the market, but about transforming the way the entire organization thinks about the market and the company's place in it."

This is a statement from Heidrick & Struggles, the well known recruitment firm, made in a 2006 brochure describing the importance of the CIO position.

The CIO position needs a clear mandate from the CEO and Board to stimulate and foster fresh thinking. The CIO should have two broad mandates: support and foster innovation within the company, and lead an incubator charged with discovering and developing innovation outside traditional corporate confines.

To do this the CIO needs to consider the following:

Idea Management - Identification and development of ideas sourced from within and outside the company; new solutions, technologies, processes designed to make the business more effective. Make it easy and rewarding to bring new ideas, fresh thinking to the surface.

People Management - Identification and training of company staff, regardless of discipline, who demonstrate the skills and aptitudes to be innovators. Don't force the right-brain thinkers out to become entrepreneurs because they aren't great at process. Bring their skills to bear on the future of the company.

Innovation Champion - Foster innovation within the company's culture by celebrating innovation, both inside and outside the company. The CIO needs to meet with business leaders from other innovators, and then tell the company about what they learned. They need to inject innovation throughout the company, into even the most mundane activities.

These represent the core areas of responsibility for the new CIO. Easy enough to describe, at a high level, but difficult to execute the way companies are structured today.

The biggest hurdle to innovation in most companies isn't a lack of ideas or talent, it's a lack of budget. The CIO needs budget and staff; budget to fund innovative thinking and staff to support the execution of new ideas. The budget should be a fixed expense and not connected to short-term revenue. To be successful, the innovation budget must be the companies investment in its future.

The CIO can and should work within the existing company structure to champion and foster innovation. This will help but it's not the complete solution. To build a new model, to turn promising ideas into viable business models, the company needs to sponsor an incubator, an entity, led by the CIO, but outside the traditional company structure and financial requirements.

Step Two - The Innovation Incubator

IBM has done a lot of research into innovation and they report that business model innovation has the most impact on future growth. Their 2006 report, Expanding the Innovation Horizon says, "When we looked at financial performance over a five-year period ... business model innovation had a much stronger correlation with operating margin growth than the other two types of innovation (Product/Service/Market innovation and Operations innovation)."

There are any number of ways a company can look at this. What is certain is they won't have significant change, change at the business model level, without some experimentation. The Innovation Incubator is the place to do this.

Picture a small- to medium-sized multi-disciplined group of business professionals. At the core of the incubator is a think tank. The core members, the members of the think tank, have been selected carefully. They are creative and have good right- and left-brain balance. They are open minded. They are intelligent, experienced, and work well with others. Each has specific expertise in one or more areas. They are supported by another team of business professionals, also carefully selected, who provide execution expertise.

It will be the Chief Innovation Officer's responsibility to lead the incubator. To adjudicate over decisions and direction. To achieve and maintain a culture of innovation, a culture where ideas can flourish, develop, succeed or fail.

Failing is very important. The incubator must be free to fail. In fact, smart failure should be rewarded. Keep the incubator free of entanglements and allow it to explore and experiment. The primary goal is innovation for the company sponsor. Add money to smart people and stir.

I'm not saying business considerations aren't important. They are essential. But in order to find the simple answer a lot of mess will be created. This mess won't and shouldn't be rational from a business perspective. At least in the beginning it won't. It takes time. Google wasn't the first search company, and its success didn't happen overnight. PayPal went through several business models before landing on the one that worked.

Bringing innovation to most companies won't be easy. It will require strong, committed leadership from the CEO and the Board. Leadership that encourages thoughts and ideas that are out of their comfort zone. No neat packages here. My suggestions, hire a Chief Innovation Officer and fund an Innovation Incubator, are two ways to address the problem. There are others. Bottom line, companies need to do something, and that something needs to radically change business as usual, or they run the risk of joining Kodak.

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James Hipkin, understands the practice of marketing as only someone with decades of practical experience can. James is an accomplished speaker and consultant, and writes about Marketing Strategy, Customer Relationship Marketing and innovation on Hipkin's Hip Shots.

Part 1 - Nature's 10 Simple Rules

I've done the helicopter view of Adam Werbach's book "Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto" but now's the time to dig deeper. Right at the front of Adam's book (and picked up by Fast Company) is a list of Nature's 10 Simple Rules for Business Survival. In this list Adam draws from nature a tough bottom line for sustainable business. "Nature is far harsher than the market: If you are not sustainable, you die. No second chances and no bailouts." I'm not usually a fan of rules but these ten make sense to me. They are big-scale - forest-scale. Ocean-scale. Planet-scale. I've jotted down my own thoughts on each one. I'll share them with you here - five this week and five next.

Nature's # 1. Diversify across generations. This idea has certainly inspired me to write a number of posts here that I've called Stella's World. Of course they are about my and Ro's first grandchild but they are also about what change across generations can really mean. How few companies have that aspiration! In principle we all want our businesses to thrive across generations, but how few succeed. Adam tells me that fully one-third of the companies profiled in Jim Collins' "Built to Last" as out-performers, are now under-performers. Think Ford and Citibank. They lost the juice of excitement, wonder and delight and got lost in expectations and self-obsession.

Nature's # 2. Adapt to the changing environment - and specialize. To get to the future first you have to take on what I call the three A's - Adapt, Adopt and Act. It's worked for children, for animals - for all living things and never forget that businesses are living things too. People are often held back by the feeling that the challenges we face are so great that they can't effect any meaningful change. My response? If you can’t change the situation, change yourself. At Saatchi & Saatchi we have a True Blue sustainability program called DOT. Do One Thing. In other words, don't take on the world; specialize. Sure, some of the things people chose to change are small, but put them together and we're talking serious action. Action that can build as we get more confident about Adapting, Adopting and Acting.

Nature's # 3. Celebrate transparency. Every species knows which species will eat it and which will not. I like to see transparency as opportunity rather than threat. Take the emotional transparency of Lovemarks. You can't hide love - and few of us want to. Check out Lovemarks.com and see how that community responds to the brands it loves; openly, without hesitation, with pride. When consumers can push a brand like Tropicana to revert to its traditional packaging in just a few months, something's up. And what's up is that consumers are in control. They want confidentiality for themselves and transparency from their Lovemarks. No one said it would be easy.

Nature's # 4. Plan and execute systematically, not compartmentally. Every part of a plant contributes to its growth. Anyone who has been in business understands the damage caused by silo thinking. Community is key. All of us are better than some of us. In Peak Performance we demonstrated the power of inspirational leadership and teams. Groups of like-minded people working together to overcome all odds and achieve impossible goals. At Saatchi & Saatchi we sum this up in our spirit 'One team, one dream'. And our dream? "To be revered as the hot-house for world-changing ideas that create sustainable growth for our clients."

Nature's # 5. Form groups and protect the young. Most animals travel in flocks, gaggles, and prides. Packs offer strength and efficacy. This is a fantastic rule and the best argument ever for playing in teams. Most young people aren't educated into creativity; they are educated out of it. At Saatchi & Saatchi we give people an elastic-sided sand box, a problem, a deadline, and we get out of their way. To make sure they reach their full potential we have some older folk around to guide, mentor and run protection when it's needed. Usually it's not needed because what they want is responsibility, learning, recognition and joy. All that they get.

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.