You Might Get Your Problem Solved for Free

hypios.com has launched its first annual "A Problem to Love" promotion. hypios will pay a total of $50,000 to solvers of two of the world's most compelling problems, as determined by visitors to the site.

Teleportation? A cure for cancer? Maybe, maybe not. Candidate problems must be submitted by an employee of some form of research organization - any discipline, public or private. hypios envisions that the two "Problems to Love" will be perennially frustrating research and development (R&D) puzzles. Current unsolved problems on hypios range from the mundane (how to make biodegradable, nonpolluting batteries) to the abstract (a model for frame-dragging that is consistent with Einstein's general theory of relativity - the details of which will not be explained here).

The two top problems will be judged on structure and promise of impact, then posted on hypios for a prize totaling $50,000, giving each problem a fair chance to find a solution. One, chosen by a jury, will be worth $30,000 to the Solver; the other, selected by the public, wins the Solver $20,000 - both paid for by hypios.

The persons that posted the problems receive all intellectual property rights to Solvers' solutions, once accepted.

Is there a problem you want solved?

Enter 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.

The Solution May Be Within the Problem

by Paul Sloane

Two prisoners dug a tunnel from their cell 80 feet to escape from prison. Where did they hide the dirt? This is one of the examples used by Roni Horowitz of the consultancy group SIT to show the advantages of a method called Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT).

The answer is that they hid the dirt in the tunnel. The prisoners stole nylon sacks from the prison bakery and each day they dug the tunnel and put the dirt into the sacks. At cell inspection times they pushed all the dirt bags back into the tunnel and tidied the cell. When the prisoners escaped the guards found a cell full of bags of dirt and an empty tunnel.

It is a good example of one of the principles of SIT - look for the solution within the problem or its environment. The prisoners had very limited resources - but one of them was the tunnel itself.


Resource Constraints Engender Creativity

If we are given unlimited resources to solve a problem then we can always come up with something - and often it is expensive and over-engineered. When we have to use the limited set of resources contained in the problem and its immediate environment then we are forced to be more creative - and very often the result is a solution that is elegant, inexpensive and effective. Using the tunnel is a prime example.

At the end of the first Gulf War fires were raging out of control in the Kuwaiti oil refineries. What could be used to put them out? One answer might have been sand. But a better solution was found. The pipelines that were normally used to pump oil from the refineries were used to pump water to the refineries. By using an existing resource and reversing the flow the problem was overcome.

Engineers are accustomed to working in very constrained conditions. In the very early Volkswagen Beetle car there was a problem of how to provide the power needed for the windscreen washer. The ingenious solution that the engineers came up with was to use the air pressure from the spare wheel (which was in the front of the car) to power the water jet.

But it is not just product engineers who can use internal resources in ingenious ways. In 2005 the IRA pulled off a major robbery at the Northern Bank in Belfast - they got away with 25m gbp in banknotes. How could the authorities catch the criminals or stop them using the proceeds of their crime? They came up with a clever idea using one of the resources within the problem - the stolen banknotes. They changed the currency in Northern Ireland and reprinted all bank notes. Anyone holding old bank notes had to bring them in to be changed - and that is a big problem if you are holding millions of stolen banknotes.


How can you use this principle?

So how can you use this approach in your problem solving? One of the methods taught in Systematic Inventive Thinking is to break the problem down into a chain of unwanted effects. Now consider in turn each element in the problem or its environment and say to yourself - this element can be adapted to stop one of the unwanted effects and to break the chain. Then come up with ideas. By rigorously and imaginatively applying this technique you will often find an inventive solution.

Here is a moral dilemma that was used as a test in a job interview. You are driving along in your two-seater car on a wild, stormy night. You pass a bus stop, and you see three people waiting for the bus:

1. An old lady who looks as if she is about to die.
   
2. An old friend who once saved your life.
   
3. The perfect man (or) woman you have longed to meet.

Knowing that there is room for only one passenger in your car, what would you do?


Many answers were given but only 1 candidate out of 100 gave what was judged the best answer. He made ideal use of the resources in the problem. This is what he said, "I would give the car keys to my old friend, and let him take the lady to the hospital. I would stay behind and wait for the bus with the woman of my dreams."

The next time you face a tough problem do some lateral thinking. Try looking first at how you can use the resources in and around the issue. That way you might escape from prison, put out a fire or land a top job!


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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.

10 Signs That Innovation Will Fail

by Stefan Lindegaard

What are the signs that innovation in a company is set up to fail? It would be great to have a checklist, but unfortunately innovation is too complicated and company-specific to employ a standard checklist for this.

However, we can share our insights on this and help each other become better at spotting the signs of failure.

Thus I have listed (in a non-prioritized order) the red flags I look for when I talk with executives and innovation leaders trying to get an understanding of their corporate innovation capabilities. What do you think and what can you add?

1. The lack of an innovation strategy. Executives and innovation leaders have failed to link innovation with the overall corporate strategy. As a result, the innovation efforts have no clear directions and there is not a proper mix of incremental, breakthrough and radical innovation. No strategy, no focused effort, no results.


2. No definition of innovation. Innovation means different things to different people. Every company should develop their own definition that fits their situation and use this definition to build a common language for their innovation initiatives.


3. Too much focus on internal capabilities. The future of innovation is open and global. Who will get this first? You - or your competitors?


4. Too much focus on open innovation. This is not the Holy Grail. You need to go open, but keep a strong focus on your internal resources. A key to innovation success is the ability to combine internal and external resources and act on the opportunities that arise from this.


5. Internal silos are not broken down. If you cannot make innovation happen across your own business units and functions you cannot expect to succeed with external partners.


6. Too much focus on ideas and too little focus on people. People and processes matter more than ideas. Yet, too few companies establish programs in which they can identify and develop the right people and match these people with the right ideas at the right time.


7. Executives do not understand that a strong innovation culture equals a strong networking culture. Although executives might acknowledge the value of relationships, they often leave this in the woods saying that people can figure this out by themselves. Not true. Executives need to establish networking strategies and employees need training that fits these strategies just as well as the time to build and nurture relationships.


8. Innovation efforts focus on technology or products. Most companies do not work with innovation models such as the Ten Types of Innovation which helps the employees and external partners view innovation in a more holistic way. Remember that innovation is also about services and processes.


9. The usual suspects play the game. Innovation champions and other elite units can work, but the setup of such units often also sends the signal that these guys will take care of it. Other employees might think they do not need to get involved. Everyone should not work with innovation at the same time, but programs or platforms that give everyone opportunities to work with innovation should be in place.


10. Executives and innovation leaders underestimate the speed of change. One example is open innovation. A key objective here is to become the preferred partner of choice. This will happen fast and yet many companies are not even getting ready to claim their position.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on this.


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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Design Thinking For Your Writing

by Matthew E May

William Bostick over at Core77 wrote a terrific post called "How (Not) To Write Like a Designer." Design thinking is how I prefer to think about my style of problem solving. I'm not alone...IDEO and Stanford's D School coined the term, and Tim Brown's blog is all about it. But what I liked about this particular post was that it talked about writing as design. In other words, writing as designer thinking and problem solving. And anything that reads, "...you work with contraints to find elegant solutions to complex problems..." is sure to catch my eye.

I put William's five points to the test in reflecting on my process in writing In Pursuit of Elegance, and in the eventual work product.

1. Use Your Skills

• Bostick says ask: Who's this for? What's the big idea? What are the pieces I'm using? In developing the proposal for the book, all of those questions were asked and answered. Check!

2. Kill Jargon

• Stay away from buzzwords, acronyms, cliches, formulas, steps, etc. Check!

3. Tell a Story

• The point here is to think less about "what it is" and focus more on "what is happening." People want stories, want to know what what's happening before they want to know what it means. Good news: the book is nothing BUT stories. Check!

4. Don't Be Afraid to Put Yourself Into Your Writing

• In other words, use first person. Check!

5. Finally, And Most Importantly, Don't Say Too Much.

• Funny, that's my entire premise. Any book on elegance better be simple yet powerful. No fat, no fluff. It better have some pieces missing. Check!

So, tell a story, put yourself in it, use real words, and don't write too much. How elegant.

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Matthew E. May is the author of "IN PURSUIT OF ELEGANCE: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing." He is constantly searching for creative ideas and innovative solutions that are 'elegant' - a unique and elusive combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power.

The Elegance of My Father

by Matthew E May

My father's 78th birthday would have been this year, had he lived to see the day. It's been ten years since his passing from complications arising from a rather rare blood disorder called polycythemia...too much blood. In honor of the decade without him, I thought I'd post part of my book that did not make the final edit. I'll reprint it here as it would have appeared...the final story in the book.

I will bring the search for elegance to a close with a story my father told me many years ago during a rather uncomfortable drive home from college for winter break my freshman year. For the entire semester I had been wracking my brain, stymied by a particular physics concept that I just could not for the life of me wrap my brain around. With physics in general, I was struggling. My father had been a physics major, but rather than deliver immediate relief in the form of the answer to the particular riddle I was wrangling with, he told me a fable about a simple farmer who comes across an immense boulder when clearing his fields.

Now, no matter how hard he tried, no matter what he did, the farmer could not push the massive stone off the field. Repeated attempts to do so only stole his energy and enthusiasm. The rock remained, however, and he could not plant his crops with it in the way. The farmer was at a loss, mourning his predicament, and paralyzed by the thought of his imminent misfortune. He fretted to the point of becoming desperate. Throwing his hands up in surrender at his fruitless efforts, he walked away and went to the well for a cool drink of water. As he peered into the dark hole, inspiration hit: a hole!

The farmer raced to his shed, grabbed a shovel and a lever, and returned to the field. He dug a broad and deep hole around, under and in front of the rock and used the lever to tip the boulder into the hole. He then covered it with dirt. From that day on, the farmer stood each day on the spot where he'd buried the boulder. What had been his biggest barrier had now become part of his very foundation.

If you think about it, that's a fairly elegant solution, because symmetry (the boulder remains the same), seduction (filling in of a gap), subtraction (removal of dirt) and sustainability (problem solved without causing others) all play a part.

This was my father's way of telling me something, and it was up to me to figure it out. Knowing my dad, I knew his message wouldn't be something as obvious as "keep at it and it'll come to you." That would have been too easy, and not nearly thought-provoking enough. As we pulled into the driveway, he made an offhand comment: "The break will do you good." I nodded, then stopped short. That's it! His message about the farmer was to take a break, get away from it. Do nothing about it, give it a rest. My father was looking over at me, and seeing that I "got it," played coy with one of those nonchalant shrugs: "What?"

Sometime during my two-week winter break, under the questionable tutelage of some of my newfound college chums, I learned to ski. Or, more accurately, fall down a mountain wearing ski equipment. It was on the slopes, on my back looking up at the worried faces of a few mates, my ears ringing from the rather whippy whack I took on my noggin, that I finally had the flash of insight about the physics principle. Perhaps a bit of a bang on the head was what it took for me to realize that all I needed to do to get this elegant concept was to stop and think, or maybe think and stop.

I'm not exactly sure if the ringing was of the immortal variety Donald Knuth spoke of when referring to that most famous of Einstein's equations, but it was most certainly E=mc2 that I finally understood.

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Matthew E. May is the author of "IN PURSUIT OF ELEGANCE: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing." He is constantly searching for creative ideas and innovative solutions that are 'elegant' - a unique and elusive combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power.

Creating a Culture of Innovation

I define innovation as an "organization's ability to adapt and evolve repeatedly and rapidly to stay one step ahead of the competition." A culture of innovation, when done right, gives you a competitive edge because it makes you more nimble with an increased ability to sense and respond to change.

A culture of innovation has less to do specifically with new products, new processes, or new ideas. There are of course discrete innovations such as the iPhone or a battery that is powered by viruses (MIT has developed this). These are valuable and necessary in order to create a culture of innovation.

But a culture of innovation is more than new ideas. It needs to be repeatable, predictable, and sustainable. This only happens when you treat innovation like you treat all other capabilities in your business. This means having, amongst other things, a defined process.

An organization's innovation process must achieve three things. It must:

• focus on the "right" challenges


• find appropriate solutions to those challenges, and


• implement the best solutions.

These translate into three "portfolios" an organization must create:

• A portfolio of challenges


• A portfolio of solutions


• A portfolio of projects

Let's take each one at a time.


A Portfolio of Challenges

All companies have challenges. They can be technical challenges on how to create a particular chemical compound. They can be marketing challenges on how to best describe your product to increase market share. They can be HR challenges around improving employee engagement.

An organization's ability to change (i.e., innovate) hinges on its ability to identify and solve challenges. Challenges are sometimes referred to as problems, issues, or opportunities. But at the end of the day, they are all just various forms of challenges. I will use these terms interchangeably here.

Where do you find these challenges? You can find them anywhere - from customers, employees, shareholders, consultants, vendors, competitors, and the list goes on.

Let's face it, companies have no shortage of challenges.

And guess what, some of the most important challenges to solve are hidden due to organizational blind spots and assumption-making.

The "meta-challenge" for all organizations is to find which challenges, if solved and implemented, will create the greatest value. Given that organizations have limited resources and money, prioritization is critical.

My favorite quote (used many times in this blog) comes from Albert Einstein - "If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions." Most companies spend 60 minutes of their time finding solutions to problems that just don't matter.

Therefore, the first step in creating a culture of innovation is to surface, identify, and codify challenges. And then you must become masterful at valuing, prioritizing, and framing these challenges.

Think of your innovation portfolio much like you would handle a financial investment portfolio. You want some safe bets (incremental innovation) and some riskier investments (radical innovation). You also want a variety of innovations ranging from technical challenges to marketing challenges, and service challanges to performance improvement challenges.

Once you have the right challenges to solve, the next step is to find solutions.

A Portfolio of Solutions

Every challenge has multiple potential solutions. And there are multiple ways in which to find these solutions.

Some challenges are solved in the moment by the person who thinks them up. Most challenges in fact are solved this way. These challenges tend to be "unarticulated" in that they are not presented to the organization as a problem to solve.

Other challenges are more complex and require specialized expertise. You need to find the right person(s) with the right knowledge.

Others require less technical expertise and are solved through creative thinking.

For each challenge, you need to first determine which mechanism would best yield a viable solution. Approaches include, but are not limited to...

• Internal Individual/Team: This is the most common way challenges are typically solved. This is when you use internal resources whose job is to solve these types of challenges. For example, this would be the development team members assigned to a particular product. They are paid to solve their product development challenges. Brainstorming is often the tool of choice.


• Internal Crowdsourcing: Sometimes the best solutions are found by people who typically do not work on this problem. It might be a customer service representative finding a great new branding idea. Or maybe it is tapping into R&D people who are in different parts of the organization. Sometimes this can be achieved through company-wide competitions. Read my article on how reality TV show type competitions can be used to stimulate creativity.


• Outsourced (External Single Source): Some challenges can be solved (and potentially implemented) by a third party who takes ownership for delivering the result. Typically, outsource partners are found through some type of RFP process. eLance.com is a well-known example of a platform that matches specific challenges with bidders who are able to solve specific types of problems.


• External Crowdsourcing: Some challenges are best solved by a diverse group of external solvers who can independently work on a solution to your problem. In some circles, this is referred to as Open Innovation. InnoCentive and 99Designs.com are two good examples of this. A challenge is posted and solutions are provided by a wide variety of solvers.

These are only a few of the many approaches. If one technique (e.g., internal team) does not yield a workable solution), try a different approach (e.g., external crowdsourcing).

Regardless of which technique(s) you use, the result will be a portfolio of solutions for the given challenge. Depending on the technique you use, you may end up with a low signal to noise ratio. This is the ratio of a signal (what you want - that is, good ideas) to the noise (what you don't want - the duds). Your success is often based on your ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The next step is to strengthen and select the best ideas, combining them into a comprehensive solution. If you find a solution that works, the next step is to implement.

A Portfolio of Projects

The final attribute of a culture of innovation is the ability to take all of the selected solutions and turn them into programs/projects so that they can be converted from ideas into reality.

Elsewhere on my blog, I discuss many different ways of making this happen. Some of them include "Build It, Try It, Fix It" - an iterative development process where you learn by doing rather than analyzing. Other more "waterfall" type development approaches are more linear and rely heavily on analysis and testing (analyze, design, build, test, deploy).

Regardless of how you implement, without this step, you end up with lots of ideas on the cutting room floor, none of which create value.

During implementation, it is critical that you keep track of the value proposition for each project, having the courage to change direction, or, in some cases, killing ideas altogether.

Bottom Line

A culture based on surfacing, solving, and implementing valuable challenges can make innovation repeatable and predictable. This requires more than just a process, it requires an entire innovation capability [read my perspectives on the innovation capability].

My mantra is, "When the pace of change outside your organization is faster than the pace within, you will be out of business." And as we all know, today's pace of change is crazier than ever. A culture of innovation, when done right, can give you a leg up in a highly evolving marketplace.

P.S. There are many different "techniques" that can be used at each stage of the process. Communities, social networks, customer-feedback systems, etc. These will be addressed more fully in future articles.

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Stephen Shapiro is the author of three books, a popular innovation speaker, and is the Chief Innovation Evangelist for Innocentive, the leader in Open Innovation.

The True Nature of Innovation (Perception vs. Reality)

The new reality TV series, "Stars of Science," gives 16 young Arab inventors a chance to design and build their dreams. From a solar-powered generator for tents, to an oxygen-infused juice drink, contestants vie to impress the judges and the audience. The show has captured the attention of many viewers, some of whom are eager to demonstrate that the Arab world can produce innovations as clever and profitable as the rest of the globe.

"Stars of Science" is sponsored by the Qatar Foundation. While it's an honorable undertaking that encourages individual creativity, the one problem with the show is that it promotes only the popular perception of innovation. That is, a singular genius tucked away in a laboratory, experimenting with ways to make his or her inspiration a reality.

Many people equate inspiration, and subsequent inventions, with innovation, but they are not necessarily the same. The electric light bulb, for example, is one of Thomas Edison's best known inventions. But even Edison realized that the light bulb would be of no value unless electricity was available in every home. Thus, the innovation was not the light bulb itself, but the electrical grid later designed to make the light bulb a useful invention for people.

Another example is the wheel - an inspired invention, but one that only lived up to its potential after some innovative thinker attached more than one wheel to a slab and created a cart. Many inspirations lead to inventions. Like the wheel and the light bulb, some inventions catch on. Others, however, never make it past the prototype, and they never reach the level of innovation.

Contrary to the popular perception, innovation is actually the process of uncovering a problem for which there is no solution (or no good solution), and then developing a way to solve the problem. For example, the light bulb, when coupled with a citywide electrical grid, solved the problem of providing light after sunset without the mess and danger of candles. The wheel, when attached to a cart, solved the problem of transporting goods long distances over land. In these cases, the innovative solution was a tangible item, but innovation can also take the form of a process or approach that solves a problem.

For instance, consider the age-old innovation of curing meat to make it last longer, or using spices to make food more palatable. Restaurant service is another innovation, a solution for travelers and others who can't eat at home. Take-out and delivery are innovative approaches to restaurant service that solve the problem of eating at home without having to cook.

In the business world, in addition to solving problems innovation must also provide value to customers. In other words, the innovation must solve a problem that customers care about, and provide a solution for which they are willing to pay. All too often, companies offer new product features or expanded services, that company engineers and marketers think are innovative, but which don't really add value from the customer's point of view. (Think of the software upgrades you may have been required to purchase with a new computer, or the 'new and improved' shoe polish that seems to work just as well as the old kind.) As Scott Berkun points out in "The Myths of Innovation":

• "Many bright would-be innovators... fail to spend enough time exploring and understanding problems before trying to solve them."

Part of understanding the problem is viewing it from the customer's perspective. In this regard, we need to avoid the typical questions such as:

• "How can we improve this product/service?"


• "What innovation can we implement?"

The question to ask is "What is the user (or customer or client) trying to accomplish?" Such a question often leads to gaps that have been overlooked, and provides a perfect opportunity for real innovation.

For instance, when a person shines his shoes, does he care more about having a good shining experience, or about having polished shoes? Focusing on the experience of shoe shining, as the shine manufacturer might do, may lead to various product improvements, such as a quick-drying or non-streaking formula. However, focusing on the end result (polished shoes) might lead to the formula for a spray that can be applied when the shoes are made to provide long-lasting shine. The first is merely an incremental improvement, but the second is an innovation that not only meets the customer's end goal, but also broadens the market for the shoe shine company.

Solving problems and providing value to customers is the crux of innovation in business. But innovation should also lead to growth opportunities. Strategically, this means developing a balanced innovation portfolio that includes different types of innovations: products, services, processes, strategies and business models. A manufacturer, for example, shouldn't focus all its innovation efforts on new products, nor should a government limit its innovations to new services.

An organization's innovation portfolio should also be varied when it comes to the degree of innovation, from incremental to significant to breakthrough projects. Organizations that diversify their innovation portfolio along these lines almost always generate higher return on investment than companies that limit innovation to only one type or degree. In addition, companies that innovate simultaneously in multiple areas reap more rewards than those that innovate in a single area.

Today, innovation is a popular buzzword, but organizations that wish to grow through innovation will only succeed if they pursue real innovation - using a strategically-sound approach, which enables them to solve problems that provide real value to customers. It is an approach that can be learned and assimilated into any organizational structure, with the right guidance and tool set.

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Kamal Hassan is President and CEO of Innovation 360 Institute, and is responsible for leading the company's global operations and customer acquisition.