Voice of the Emergent Customer

by Drew Boyd

Are some customers better than others at developing new concepts? Professor Donna L. Hoffman at the University of California Riverside thinks so. Emergent customers have a unique ability to "wrap their head" around a new concept and improve it. She created a scale to identify them so companies hear the voice of the 'right' customer during new product development.

Emergent customers are better at imagining how concepts address latent unmet needs. Dr. Hoffman describes it as a "unique constellation of personality traits and processing abilities that enables such consumers to engage in a synergistic process of visualization and rationalization to improve product concepts." Those characteristics are:

• Openness to new experiences
  
• Reflection
  
• Experiential and rational processing style
  
• Verbal (rational style) and Visual (experiential style)
  
• Creativity (self perceived)
  
• Creative personality
  
• Optimism

The study included 1,124 respondents and compared performance of those identified as emergent customers against those of lead users, early adopters, and a control group. The emergent customers significantly outperformed the other groups.

How would you put this to use?

• Market research firms could use the scale to screen research candidates. Emergent customers focus on improving concepts, while 'non-emergent' customers judge marketplace acceptance.


• Companies could learn about their emergent customer's behaviors and beliefs. Do they buy more, use more, or pay more for certain products? Do they use products in a different way? Do they influence other customers?


• Companies could set up advisory panels of emergent customers to watch for opportunities and threats.

How would emergent customers perform using a structured innovation method? It is tempting to assume they would do better using methods like S.I.T. These people are more motivated and optimistic. They are more hopeful about the output of innovation workshops and are likely to push harder. Star performers "Google" their mind to make innovative connections and associations in rapid fire fashion. This relates to Dr. Hoffman's factor of "experiential and rational processing style."

For innovation workshops, my 'dream team' would include a mix of emergent and non-emergent participants. Perhaps the ideal scenario is pairing them together. As the emergent thinker pushes ideas into new territory, the non-emergent thinker can offer quick feedback. Innovation is a team sport after all.

Researchers have long noted that the "voice of the mainstream customer" is not that useful in developing new products. Instead, finding the 'Voice of the Emergent Customer' could be a new source of competitive advantage.


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Drew Boyd is Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo-Surgery division). He is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd

Creating Innovation in the PARC

Interview - Mark Bernstein of PARC

I had the opportunity recently to interview Mark Bernstein, Chief Executive Officer of PARC.

Mark Bernstein has been the head of PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) since 2001, when he led the firm in its transition from a research division of Xerox to an independent business. PARC is among the world's best-respected centers of research and innovation, and its relationships include client services for industry leaders in consumer electronics, information and decision systems, networking and communications, and renewable energy. Among the firm's current projects is Content-Centric Networking, a new approach to networking that addresses massive amounts of internet content to achieve better security, scalability and performance.

Here is the text of the interview:

1. Please briefly tell people about what PARC is today (versus its history)

Today, PARC is a center for commercial innovation - for other clients besides Xerox. (Historically, Xerox PARC was a captive/internal R&D center). PARC is driven by the desire to see its research results impact the world in important ways and across multiple industries. The vision for transformational impact is still alive, but now the understanding of what that takes also comes from our commercial partners, embedded business development, and/or market experts like EIRs.


2. When it comes to innovation, what is the biggest challenge that you see organizations facing?

They are limited by the problems they see directly in front of them and the capacity of the resources they have in hand to address them. These constraints are stifling when unfamiliar complexities become visible and breakthroughs are required.


3. What are the keys to successfully partnering with PARC or other organizations like yours?

From our experience, an open and genuine interest in alternative perspectives is an enormous asset for any organization facing challenges to their entrenched expertise or assumptions. And then an essential trait for adaptability is being capable of internalizing the consequence of discovery or responding to radical shifts. Look at the media and automobile industries! Organizations must anticipate the need for change, not be in denial of it or pursue ad hoc solutions...


4. What are the secrets to successfully completing a research project?

Deep understanding of the scientific principles that constrain what's possible, clear thinking and teamwork about the experiments that will lead to a new state of knowledge, robust engineering to demonstrate that development through an industrial-strength technology prototype. (This last feature is where PARC scientists really differ from university researchers, because they have to think about the manufacturing and other constraints to make the technologies scalable). But another important "secret" to successfully completing a research project at PARC is involving our social scientists/ethnographers early and throughout the development pipeline. Some would argue that's an ingredient of our secret sauce.


5. From your experience, what are some of the keys to increasing variability to help get the best ideas?

Increasing variability is NOT necessarily the primary ingredient for producing the best ideas! Integrating a diversity of perspectives from multiple disciplines has been successful at PARC for addressing a number of big, complex problems.


6. What are some of the biggest barriers to innovation that you've seen in organizations?

Rigid internalized realities, incremental thinking, disabled innovation investment models.


7. What skills do you believe that managers need to acquire to succeed in an innovation-led organization?

Exercising flexible perspective, projecting a positive attitude for change, encouraging "what if" thinking to define possibilities - and constraints.


8. If you were to change one thing about our educational system to better prepare students to contribute in the innovation workforce of tomorrow, what would it be?

Focused, distributed, and collaborative projects in the math, science, and humanities - using various media to fuse information and capture knowledge. Collective learning is a fundamental experience for what's possible and problematic for global understanding.


Editor's Note: Mark Bernstein will be speaking at The Economist's "Innovation - Fresh Thinking for the Ideas Economy" conference and Blogging Innovation will be covering this SOLD OUT event for our readers on March 23-24, 2010 here on our blog and as @innovate on Twitter.


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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 Equality

by Tom Peters

Nobody disagrees with the fact that there are few things and maybe no things these days that are more important than innovation. I just want to add one small twist to that and it's what I call my Innovation Equality Act. And what I mean by that is, when we think of research and development, we almost always think of new product development. Well, here is my iron law, my request, my command, my rule:


Innovation and R&D budgets of significance are equally important in every single piece of the organization.


They are important in the logistics function. They are important in the purchasing function. They are important in the HR function. They are important in the finance function. That is, innovation (and R&D) is about every single nook and cranny within the organization. It's not just a marketing thing. It's not just a new product development thing. Think about it. An R&D budget in every training or HR department; it just doesn't happen very often, and that is genuinely, truly dumb.

You are just as likely or more likely to find that elusive competitive advantage in purchasing or HR as you are in an official engineering or marketing department.





What do you think?


Editor's Note: Tom Peters has just launched a new book "The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence" - click here for more information


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Tom Peters is the author of "In Search of Excellence" and twelve other international bestsellers, and a consultant, columnist, seminar lecturer, and more at the Tom Peters Company

The Dangers of Design Research

by Idris Mootee

What is design research? It is generally referred to as the upfront contextual inquiry work that designers perform before they start ideation. Sometimes it involves some light ethnographic work and some interviews, but it is often not structured, comprehensive, or rigorous. Design research emerged only in the late 1960s with the goal of improving how we see consumers use the product and look for ways to improve the effectiveness of a product. It is pretty much a human factor investigation and is now widely practiced, but is now facing a few serious challenges.

Design research is more than just a design tool, and the truth is that 80% of the time, they are not designed and conducted properly.

The emergence of transdisciplinary design is changing what skills are needed by those who undertake research design. These required skills go beyond improving a physical product and now include knowing how to build the voice of customer into the design research process, either directly or indirectly. The ability to collect data is not the critical activity, but instead it is the ability to decode visual and non-visual data and translate emergent issues into concrete, actionable insights.

The effectiveness of design research is determined by the research team's ability to translate identified functional and emotional characteristics into unique innovation drivers. Ineffective design research activities are often characterized by the presence of assumptive decision-making, lack of immersion into the consumer's world and undifferentiated innovation drivers. Design research is lesser known than traditional market research among marketers, and they often misuse it as a market research tool instead of applying it as a product development or innovation tool.

Many organizations are only beginning to use an receive the full benefits of design research. Many see it as an unnecessary cost because the people who performed it in the past did not do it justice. Improperly done, many of the presented outputs are useless and unactionable. There are many reasons for this. First, most designers are trained to observe the insights for the purpose of applying them directly to their work, but are poorly trained to codify these insights, while also lacking the writing and analytical skills to make sense of what they see. Second, observation research and individual contact is very consuming, particularly when you need to see them performing non-daily routines. Feeding useful data input into the creative process is a critical skill, one that is an "intuitive learning process." During this process ideas 'evolve' or 'mature' and lead to the improvement of the previous idea.

Design research at Idea Couture is not just an observation exercise; it is often a participatory exercise. I can't talk more to our proprietary methodologies, but they are a lot more than just sending in two designers to learn about how a consumer uses a product. It is not productive to do that. Cross-disciplinary teams perform design research at Idea Couture and consider issues from multiple perspectives - from anthropological to human factors and brand influences. Design research for us is the starting point of reflective collaboration, getting D-School and B-School collaborating to solve wicked problems. It is fun. Designers often like the idea of involving users early and generally hate focus groups. Unfocus groups on the other hand are hard to manage and often discussions get side-tracked. Involving users is always a good idea, particularly when you need to gain a deeper understanding of cultural issues - such as lifestyles and wider issues beyond functional details. This is why you need anthropologists.

It is interesting to see that the contextual inquiry hype has been migrating toward the participatory/designer-led corner of the design research space the last few years as design-led methods such as visioning and storyboarding have been added to contextual inquiries. Finally, a lot of designers have difficulties moderating an unfocus group evaluation for a product idea that they designed, as the personal aspects involved often cause some uncomfortable situations. You can see why design research projects are so difficult to design and conduct properly.


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Alice.com Proves Not Making Money Can Be a Winning Strategy

by Ric Merrifield

It doesn't happen very often, but sometimes I hear about a new company or a new innovation and slap my forehead wondering why I didn't think of it first. Netflix was a little bit like that, but I heard about alice.com today and that one in particular bugs me because I have been writing about the basic idea behind Alice for nearly three years, I just hadn't thought to turn it into an actual Web storefront.

So what is Alice and why is it such an a great idea? Well, Alice (named for the Brady Bunch character - good move), is a site that sells consumer goods over the internet. Things like soap, toilet paper, laundry detergent, and so on. The clever part about their model is that they don't make any money selling the products that they offer. They make their money selling advertising on the site, and selling purchase data back to the manufacturers (which the manufacturers have wanted, but lacked forever). Data is king in the world of sales, and Alice is positioning itself to be the impartial third party that sits between the customer and the manufacturer. As long as Alice doesn't compromise the identities of their customers, I don't see how they can lose. Customers value price and manufacturers value richer customer data (what they buy and what causes them to buy), and everyone wins.

This model is in some respects like Costco in the sense that they also don't try to make any money selling the products in their stores. It's no secret that Costco's profits come from their membership dues and that model has served them (and their shareholders) very well for a long, long time. Counter intuitive, but brilliant in retrospect.

I love the spin that Alice is putting on this, and with such a great name, the only way they can fail is in execution, and with two seasoned leaders, that seems pretty unlikely.

This is the kind of rethinking other organizations need to be doing right now. Instead of just optimizing business models that are based on the old fashioned brick and mortar models (like narrow margins on markup), there are so many opportunities to solve age old problems (like manufacturers not getting good data on who is buying their products - and what advertising actually causes customers to buy their products). People need to figure them out like Alice.

I am half tempted to start a site that sells meat at cost and call it Sam (after Alice's boyfriend, the butcher), but meat's a very different animal, if you will.


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Ric Merrifield is known at the "Business Scientist" at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA and is the author of "Rethink". He blogs about ways to rethink through getting out of what he calls "the 'how' trap".

Innovation Perspectives - Trend Spotting Collaboration

This is the seventh of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on 'Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?'. Here is the next perspective in the series:

by Vyoma Kapur

Typically, a corporation would hire a market research or a consulting firm to keep up-to-date with the latest consumer trends. Millward Brown, Iconoculture and Forrester are examples of firms which use sophisticated research techniques to advise their clients on how consumers are behaving today, and how they might behave tomorrow. Whether we are talking about changing media habits, evolving taste buds or the growing popularity of a certain sport, keeping tabs on consumer lifestyles does not happen automatically. Time, effort and capital need to be invested to stay ahead of rapidly changes and adapting business operations accordingly.

However, trend-spotting does not always have to be a function of active, dedicated research. Often, passive observation can result in insightful findings of emerging habits and trends. With an observant eye, anyone can identify and take note of valuable information around him or her in the physical space. With information at our fingertips, we are also equipped to browse through the virtual space of blogs, forums and social networks at our convenience. Such an enormous amount of content can tell us something about every facet of consumer lifestyles. Hence, active observation of social activity is a resource everyone can and should take advantage of when it comes to trend-spotting and understanding emerging behaviors.

This is not to say that casual observations should not be verified or backed up by data. Noticing something is only starting point of successful trend-spotting. Following that, objective and unbiased research needs to be carried out before a particular trend or behavior can be evaluated for business.

Therefore, for an organization to optimize its market research efforts, all its employees should take personal responsibility for trend-spotting and then sharing key observations internally. An internal communication system, where employees can post and discuss observations could be implemented. An open forum would enable everyone in the company to either back a particular observation ("I have noticed that too") or reject it ("I have noticed quite the opposite of that").

Employees could be given incentives in the form of prizes for the "Trend-spotter of the month". The most relevant observations could then be taken to the next level where their implications for business are discussed and further action is taken. Such an effort in open collaboration would facilitate the movement towards more effective and holistic ways of trend-spotting.


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on 'Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?' by clicking the link in this sentence.

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A marketing professional turned entrepreneur, Vyoma avidly supports and practices open innovation. Earlier this year, she founded Colspark LLC (www.colspark.com), a crowdsourcing platform to help companies tap into student talent for ideas and solutions.

Are Best Practices Your Worst Enemy?

by Holly G. Green

When I speak to CEO groups, trade associations, and industry conventions, this is one of my favorite questions to ask.

Why? Because I love the reaction from the audience. They look at me like I'm nuts!

Questioning the sanctity of best practices in a roomful of corporate leaders and managers is like walking into a Boston Red Sox convention wearing a New York Yankees cap. Or walking into a Microsoft Corp. strategic planning session with an iPad in your hand. I might as well criticize mom, apple pie, and puppies.

But I dont ask the question merely to provoke a reaction from the audience. I ask it because it may prevent someone from going out of business.

In the 1980's, when Japan was eating our collective lunches in one industry after another, best practices played a critical role in helping American companies develop better quality products. We wouldn't be where we are today had our business leaders not embraced the concept of studying what works best and applying what they learned in their companies.

Over time, however, best practices have become somewhat of a sacred cow. We rarely (if ever) take the time to re-examine them and see whether they still make sense for current market realities. And in today's high-speed business environment, accepting anything on blind faith - even a best practice - can be fatal.

Let me clearly state that I am not advocating that business leaders do away with all best practices. Just the ones that get in the way of achieving your strategic goals and objectives. Here's one that I see all the time.

During strategic planning, a common best practice involves conducting research in your industry to determine where the opportunities and threats lie. Who could argue against this practice? After all, in order to plan the future you have to understand the present.

The problem is two-fold.

One, this kind of research is almost always conducted by experts in their field who bring a boatload of preconceived ideas and assumptions about the way the industry operates. Two, this practice fails to take into account that your next biggest competitive threat may come from an area not even remotely related to your industry.

Do you know anyone who uses a fax machine anymore? Fifteen years ago, the makers of fax machines didn't worry about a little blip on the horizon called broadband Internet. They were too focused on important industry issues like baud rates, printer quality, and the cost of replacement ink. They never even saw e-mail coming.

So when I work with clients on strategic planning, I strongly recommend they make a list of everything they absolutely know is true about their customers, markets, and industry. Then I suggest they have a non-expert research each and every one of those truths. For example, have the CFO look at customer data. Or have the sales manager look at purchasing practices. It's amazing what a fresh set of eyes can see!

Each researcher shares their information with the management team. They explain the approach they took, the data they found, and any recommendations they have. Then I ask, "What questions do you have as a result of your research? What do you believe is possible to do that you aren't currently doing?"

Why is it so important to have non-experts conduct the research?

Because experts are human, and as humans we don't believe what we see. Instead, we see what we already believe. We constantly seek to prove what we think is right, and as a result we miss critical data and limit our success by getting locked into ideas and assumptions that may no longer be true.

So here's a new strategic planning best practice: research what you know to be true, both inside and outside your industry, and do it with non-expert eyes. My guess is that 50 percent of your "facts" will turn out to be wrong, especially if they're more than two years old.

The business world changes very quickly these days, and so should your best practices. Otherwise they may well become your worst enemy.

Which best practices are getting in the way of your success?


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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.

Reputation and Innovation

by Drew Boyd

Sustainable innovation requires structured methods. But it also requires collaboration and information sharing among colleagues. Innovation is a team sport - groups produce better results than the lone genius. So how do you create a more favorable context for collaboration and sharing in your business unit?

Reputation is what matters. The degree to which a technical worker will share information with a colleague depends on that colleague's reputation for returning the favor. The rule of reciprocity states that people give back to those in the form they have received from others. It is a social rule taught by every human society to its members - you give back to those who have given to you. But the key is: to make the first move. You have to be seen as someone who gives and shares information with others, and has a reputation for returning the favor when others give to you.

Dr. Prescott Ensign and Dr. Louis Hebert investigated this phenomena by surveying more than 200 pharmaceutical scientists working in the R&D operations of 63 different companies in Canada and the United States. They found that technical workers often hold critical information privately without fear of sanction or consequence. What motivates them to share with others is when they see the other person as likely to give back - the other person has a well-deserved reputation for giving information back to the other person that is meaningful. The complete results and analysis of the study are described in the book "Knowledge Sharing Among Scientists."

Here are the key findings (from Sloan Management Review, Winter 2010, Vol. 51 No. 2, pp 79-81):

• Past behavior by individual scientists, and the groups they belong to, influences whether knowledge is shared.


• Longer duration of interaction positively influences the flow of information.


• Quality matters more than quantity of information shared.


• Pre-existing personal and professional relationships increased the likelihood of knowledge sharing.


• Individuals who were already obliged to another person were less likely to be helped by that person that someone who was less obligated, not obligated or owed a favor.

Organizations who want to be more innovative need to do two things. First is co-location of knowledge workers and team building. Putting people in close proximity to one another and getting them to socialize will make them more likely to have the day-to-day, random encounters where they can share critical tidbits of knowledge and information. The second is training. Companies are recognizing a key gap in the skills of influence. People can be trained how to systematically and ethically influence and align their co-workers. Six universal principles of persuasion such as Reciprocity are well-described by Dr. Robert Cialdini in his book, "Influence: Science and Practice." Companies are even conducting formal training courses in the practice of influence to make their knowledge workers more effective.

For individual innovators:

• Make the first move. Share critical information with others even if they have not given anything to you. Make sure the information is meaningful and customized to that specific individual so that they feel especially obligated to return the favor.


• When you receive information from others, reciprocate in kind. Build a reputation as a person who is willing to give back to others who give to you.


• Develop informal social relationships and networks within - and outside - your work group.


• Learn the principles of influence and how to deploy them in the workplace and increase the level of knowledge and sharing.

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Drew Boyd is Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo-Surgery division). He is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd

Study of Innovation Risks

Building upon the Boston Consulting Group innovation study, Altin Kadareja has configured a research study for his graduate thesis titled: "Quantification of Innovation Risks".

He is focused on developing a model that can identify, analyze and quantify the risk of innovation projects. This model stands besides innovation project management practices and is based on a step by step structural framework empowered by a PRA (Probabilistic Risk Assessment) analysis.

He is closing out his research this week, so please help him out by filling in a
short online survey (only 13 questions).

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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.

Exploiting the Competition for Innovation

by Mike Myatt

Whether you want to admit it or not, competition is part of your world, and likely a bigger part than you'd care to admit. Granted, exploiting the competition is not a novel concept. Even so, it is still very common to hear many executives adopt a competition neutral position. These executives simply don't believe competition to be a significant factor in the execution of their business plan.

While this may make for a nice sound bite, I don't buy it, and if they're truly honest with themselves, neither do they. In business you can either choose to deal with your competition (even if that means partnering with them), or you can opt to stand idly by and let the competition eat your lunch. In today's post I'll share my thoughts on the proper way to view your competition and how to identify competitive threats...

While some companies talk a good game with regard to competitive strategy, in my experience very few businesses actually address the issue in adequate fashion. I suppose much of my perspective on competition was formed during my days as a soldier and athlete. In the military we valued intelligence, studied our enemy's strengths and weaknesses, developed a battle plan around a solid strategy, and executed our tactical mission as if our lives depended on it - because they did.

Similarly, in my days as an athlete, our game plan each week was refined based upon the strengths and weaknesses of the team we were playing next. If we didn't study films and scouting reports, develop plays that would exploit match-ups, and execute our game plan we would lose... it was as simple as that. Dealing with competition in the business world is really no different than dealing with enemies on the battlefield or competitors on the athletic field... you either win or lose based upon your state of preparedness, desire and commitment.

How well do you know your competition? No, really... Not how well do you think you know your competition, but how well do you really understand them? Do you have a business intelligence platform? When was the last time you conducted a formal competitive study? Do your R&D and innovation programs evaluate the competitive landscape? Do your marketing, PR and branding initiatives exploit the competition? Do you stack-up as well as you think, or have you just adopted a position out of convenience?

The first step in developing a competitive strategy is to identify your current and potential threats, and then to prioritize said threats based upon perceived risk/reward and cost/benefit scenarios. The following list is clearly not exhaustive, but it is representative of the main competitive threats to a business. As the following list indicates, competition can come in the form of any one or combination of the following potential threats:

1. Existing or potential direct and indirect competitors.


2. Existing clients or end-users that could either become competition or strengthen your competitors if they have a change in loyalty.


3. Current or former employees who could become competition.


4. Vendors, suppliers or distributors that could become competition, or provide an edge to your competition.


5. Competitive innovations in process, management, talent, pricing, efficiency, etc. that can cause disruption in the market.


6. Strong changes in brand perception via news, PR, branding, litigation etc. can create changes in the competitive landscape.


7. Competitive technology innovations that could adversely impact your business.


8. Competitive mergers, acquisitions and roll-ups that could adversely impact your business.


9. Political, legislative, regulatory, or compliance actions that could create a competitive imbalance in the market.


10. Changes in general market dynamics that could create competitive changes in the market.

Once all areas of competitive risk have been identified and prioritized it will be much easier to develop a strategy for stacking the odds in your favor regardless of when, where, or how you encounter the competition.

The key to successfully exploiting competition over the long haul is linking your competitive strategy to the discipline of innovation and the mindset of custom centricity. A sustainable competitive advantage is not found by creating minor advantages in product features. Long-term competitive separation is created by innovating around the needs of your customers and clients with a focus on long-term value creation.


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

Increasing Innovation Productivity

by Stefan Lindegaard

In a 2006 article, P&G's New Innovation Model, P&G stated that their open innovation program - along with improvements in other aspects of innovation related to product cost, design, and marketing - made their R&D productivity increase by nearly 60 percent since 2001.

When I listen to P&G talks on innovation today, the innovation productivity has nearly doubled and open innovation is a key reason for this.

Every company would like to increase their innovation productivity significantly so I am looking into how companies can do this. I am still researching and it would be great to have a discussion here on my blog. A few conversation starters:


What does innovation productivity mean?

In this video, P&G gives us some insight on innovation productivity including this quote from A.G Lafley: "...the other obvious way we measure innovation productivity is how much innovation do we generate per person and how much innovation do we generate per dollar invested in innovation." You can read a transcript at the link.

Which other metrics can we use to track innovation productivity?


Maximizing Innovation Productivity

In this article, PRTM focuses on four areas of opportunity that offer high potential for productivity and innovation leverage but are often overlooked or underutilized by development organizations: platforms and architectures, resource management, information automation, and cross-functional teams.

To which extent does your company apply this? Does it deliver results? What else do you do?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and input 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.

Using Networks to Spread Ideas

by Tim Kastelle

Yesterday I talked about some of the benefits and challenges of distributed innovation within organisations. One of the biggest challenges you face when you make everyone responsible for innovation is this - how do you get new ideas to spread throughout the broader group? This is part of what John and I are studying in our major research project at the moment. We have a three year grant to look at innovation networks within project-based firms. As we're getting further into the research, it is becoming clear that this issue of idea diffusion is one of the biggest problems that these firms face.

Earlier this week, we did a pilot study for a student's part of the project. Their question concerns how people search within their networks for information that they need. Because we haven't made a good video talking about this yet, here is Venessa Miemis explaining some of the issues:



(there's more good stuff from her here)


So the network facilitates innovation, as well as the diffusion of information - but how? That is what we're trying to figure out because the 'how?' part has generally been treated as a black box. To get at this, we will map networks within four groups of people in one firm that share a knowledge area, but who are spread across a number of different locations. This week, we tested the survey on a small group in the firm, and we learned some interesting things even from this.

This is one of the networks that we mapped. It shows the links based on responses to the question 'who provides me with significant knowledge?' In this case, we defined significant knowledge as that which was essential for solving a work-related problem. There are a couple of interesting things that we learn from this.

The first is that it is a relatively sparse network. This surprised the group - the manager thought that we wouldn't learn much from this team because they worked very closely together and they are highly cohesive. Still, even within a highly cohesive team, knowledge is not evenly distributed.

The second issue concerns the diamond formed by the four people in the middle of this network. This group of four was at the core of all of the different networks that we mapped. The surprising thing here is that this structure actually reflects the formal hierarchy of the group pretty closely. Organisational network analysis often shows that the informal networks are quite different from the formal structures of the firm. But that doesn't appear to be the case here. We've actually found this in other parts of our research in other firms as well. So we're starting to think that in distributed innovation networks, hierarchy is actually more important than we expect it to be. This is still very speculative, but it's potentially interesting.

The bottom line is that when our innovation efforts are distributed, it is critical to understand the structure of our knowledge-sharing networks.

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Tim Kastelle is a Lecturer in Innovation Management in the University of Queensland Business School. He blogs about innovation at the Innovation Leadership Network.

Scouting for Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Nerac is a global research and advisory firm for companies developing innovative products and technologies. Two of their employees, Kristy Lutz Ulmer and Margaret Fiore, recently published a report on how companies scout for innovation.

I just got to read it and I find this to be great stuff that I want to share with you. You should also download the full report here - Innovation Scouting For 2009

The findings in the report fit well into a key thing being discussed in the open innovation community right now; the real effects of open innovation are due to behind-the-scenes activity rather than flashy portals and idea-generation campaigns.

The report has lots of great insights and the authors want to highlight these conclusions:

• Innovation scouts acknowledge a general lack of formal knowledge of the process of scouting, including how to find and evaluate ideas.


• The more integrated a company's products are into other companies' products, the higher the likelihood that scouting is considered important.


• There are many different approaches for implementing innovation scouting, with companies using internal innovation scouts, external partners, third party scouts, and consultants.


• Most companies operate with a small cadre of scouts, usually fewer than six resources.


• The scouting role is not always confined to internal R&D departments within an organization, but instead is often jointly sponsored across multiple business units.


• Innovation scouts use many methods for finding new ideas, with competitive intelligence the most prevalent source of ideas.

As we can see from the snippets below, the report is full of data and interesting conclusions:

Usage of Innovation Scouts:
Of the nearly 600 companies surveyed, approximately 30% of the respondents knew that their companies use innovation scouts. Another nearly 8% were aware of plans to begin using innovation scouts. Surprisingly, just over 42% were unsure whether or not their company employed scouts, so the usage rate could actually be higher.

Age of Scouting Program:
When asked how long scouts had been in place, 37% reported their companies have used innovation scouts for over five years, followed by another quarter that have used scouts between two and five years.

Size of Scouting Program:
Most companies operate with only a handful of innovation scouts. Our survey found that of the respondents who use innovation scouts, nearly one third have fewer than three employees in this role. Only 14% have more than 25 scouts.

Objectives of Scouting Programs:
The most important driver cited by 70% of respondents was "early identification of disruptive technologies." This is followed closely by building the product pipeline, leapfrogging the competition, and creating something novel.

Sponsorship of Scouting Program:
38% said that scouting was sponsored by their R&D organization. Another 24% reported that it was sponsored by Business Development followed by 21.8% respondents that indicated their scouting was jointly sponsored by several executives or groups.

Scouting Resources:
Our survey sought to identify norms regarding how scouting programs are staffed. We found that the most common staffing approach (at 63%) is to tap company employees on a part-time basis. However, over 25% have full time employees in this position. Over a third of the respondents characterize their scouts as technically oriented, and over one quarter as business/marketing oriented.

Scouting Methods:
We found the most common techniques for uncovering external ideas include conducting competitive intelligence (76%), attending relevant conferences and tradeshows (72%), leveraging academic connections (71%), and exploiting their network of innovators (55%). Other, less common methods include the use of third party networks (41%), innovation "bounty" challenges (18%), and crowd sourcing (8%).

Knowledge Gaps of Scouts:
Our survey asked an open-ended question regarding the biggest knowledge gaps or primary training needs for innovation scouting. The most common response, by a measure of over 3:1, was a lack of understanding the "process" of scouting, that is, how to actually go about doing the job.

Successes and Failures:
More than two-thirds of respondents rated their innovation scouting programs as just "moderately successful," with only 12% rating their efforts as "very successful." While a majority of companies surveyed feel their scouting programs are successful, this indicates there is certainly room for improvement.

Great job by Kristy and Margaret of Nerac! Check the full report here: Scouting For Innovation 2009

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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.

Creating New Innovations with Customer Insights

by Jeffrey Phillips

I guess my kids are just too old for crayons anymore, so I missed the Crayon Maker when it was first released, but I'd like to use it as an example of understanding customer needs and identifying lead users, and how an innovation can open up an entirely new market space and revenue opportunity.

For years kids have had broken crayons and their parents have melted them down and formed new crayons, often by mixing the broken pieces. My wife did this for our kids just a few years ago using a muffin tin in the oven. I'm going to guess that Crayola was aware of this activity, neither encouraging or discouraging the activity, until 2003, when it released the Crayon Maker, a machine that allows kids to melt down their crayons and create new ones. Now, crayons have been with us quite a while, and parents have been melting down the broken pieces for quite a while. What took Crayola so long to respond to these lead users who were creating their own crayons?

But let's push through the existing Crayon Maker and think about the opportunities for new innovation. Right now Crayola is only positioning the Crayon Maker to melt down old, broken Crayons. Why not offer Crayon Shavings or Crayon Bits, built specifically for melting down? These would probably be cheaper to produce, and Crayola could probably charge more for them, giving kids two activities - making crayons and using the crayons. Next, why not let kids make Crayons in different shapes? Right now the Crayon Maker makes Crayons in the same shape as they come out of the box. Creating forms or molds in different shapes wouldn't be difficult and could be more fun for kids.

Next, why not sell dies or additives that let kids make their own crayon colors? You could turn the creation of crayons into a science experiment, allowing kids to create their own colors, textures and perhaps even scented crayons. Simply by creating a machine that allows kids to create new crayons we can open up a lot of other product and service offerings. What's taking you so long, Crayola?

Or how about a mold that allows you to make your own Legos? A firm such as Lego could easily create and sell molds that allowed children and parents to make their own Legos out of Play-Dough or bread dough or a host of other viscous material. Then the kids could create, and play with, their own Legos, perhaps creating Legos of different colors and textures. When they were done playing with them, they could easily dispose of them (or in the case of Bread Legos, perhaps eat them!)

These examples are simply thought exercises that indicate how innovation should work. A customer need or lead user is identified, a new product or services is delivered and it opens up an entirely new market opportunity. What customer insights are hiding in plain sight in your business? What lead users are creating products and services to simplify their lives based on your products or information?

Think this doesn't happen in the "real world" of adults? Check out Mint.com, which is taking the financial world by storm. Mint simply helps individuals consolidate a view of their financial lives online. What we've been doing in spreadsheets is now done automatically for us by Mint. Why didn't the banks see this opportunity? What new products and services could a Mint create by offering a consolidated view of your financials?

It's important to interact with your customers and understand what they are doing and creating to improve your products. Sometimes you may discover customers who have created entirely new products or solutions based on your existing products. These lead users often point the way for new product or service development. Once that new product or service is developed, it can open an entirely new market for your firm.

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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.

Now is the Time to Innovate

by Steve McKee

Have you given up on innovation? MIT's Michael Schrage says that can be fatal to any company, no matter the industry.

Schrage offers an interesting counterpoint to a famous statement by Columbia Business School's Bruce Greenwald, who said, "In the long run, everything is a toaster." Schrage disagrees, citing the evolution of two-sided toasting (1919), toaster ovens (1950s) and digital toasters (1990s), among other advances.

And Schrage says the opportunity for innovation can be especially ripe in industries that appear to be commoditized. "Price wars for products don't necessarily mean that innovation has reached its limit;" he says, "but the low prices could be a signal that more advances are needed."

Even in the mundane world of toasters, the playing field is continually changing. How are you using innovation to change the dynamics of your industry?

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Steve McKee is a BusinessWeek.com columnist, marketing consultant, and author of "When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What To Do About It." Learn more about him at www.WhenGrowthStalls.com and at http://twitter.com/whengrowthstall.

Sex and Creativity

Is there a connection? Study shows number of sexual partners corresponds to creative output.

by Idris Mootee

Creative people are fun. Creative people are likeable. But many creative minds are unorganized and sometimes deficient in handling complex logic. Some creative minds are highly analytical too, although the processing was sort of in the back and you don't see it.

Creative people are more social than others. Here's a case in point. Psychologists at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Open University found that professional artists and poets have about twice as many sexual partners as other people. The study also shows that the average number of sexual partners increased as creative output went up. So the more creative you are, the more sexual partners you should have. You tell me if this true. Now I understand why so many people want to be a creative director.

More on creativity and sex drive. The desire to be creative or feel creative, whether expressed in music, industrial design, art, fashion or photography or film, coexists with the primal urge to commit the sex act, and other layers in between. It is like onions that we have many layers. What if your desire for sex is weak, does it mean you are less creative than others? If you buy the above argument, then this should the case. When sex is suppressed in some cultures, does this in effect force the libido up into "higher" forms, and thereby further enhance creativity? I don't know.

I believe our creative motivations are often based on some of our most primal passions, such as joy, fear, anger, love and lust. In an article "Creative Juice - A Dozen Key Lessons for Creative Dreamers", Suzanne Falter-Barns quotes Deepak Chopra:


"Creativity is ultimately sexual - I'm sorry - but it is!"


I am not a Chopra fan, but he may be right this time. Love and lust make us think differently in that they trigger global processing, which in turn promotes creative thinking. Love and lust are good for creativity.

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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Innovate or Die - Tactics #43-72 of 110

by Tom Peters

This is the third of four parts of the list of 110 Innovation Tactics.

• Click here to view Part One - Innovation Tactics #1-16


• Click here to view Part Two - Innovation Tactics #17-42

Celebration!

43. Celebrate! Innovative organizations are places where people enjoy their peers' work, good tries, good screw-ups, milestones reached, etc. Celebrating these events, large and small and very small, is a fullscale part of the "innovation culture."


44. Celebrate failures. This peculiar form of celebration deserves particular mention. "Fast failure" is innovation's bedrock. Hence the encouragement thereof, rather than the stigmatization, is of paramount importance. Hence, the hearty celebration of the quick try run amok is of strategic importance.

R&D, Ubiquity of - "Staff Department" R&D Paramount

45. R&D spending/Overall. This is a "boring" staple of innovation, but obviously of great importance. Aggressiveness is called for. In addition to the firm itself, having, say, a set of vendors, most or all of whom are top-quartile in R&D spending in their industry, is also of great importance.


46. R&D/Big Co, Small Co. Aggressive R&D is not just the provenance of the big company. In fact, it is more important to the 2-person Professional Services Firm than the lumbering giant - talk about "Innovate or die"!


47. R&D spending/Small projects. Make sure the R&D portfolio includes many one-off, short-term projects. (Quite often, these little fellas grow to become the biggest of the big.)


48. R&D/100% Staff Departments. Aggressive R&D is as important in Finance and Purchasing as in IT or New Product Development!!!


49. R&D/Systems! Innovative systems are as important as innovative products (witness Dell's 2-decade systems-driven run, which changed the world). Manage the hell out of this!


50. R&D/Practice "Nudgery." Small system nudges can cause grand behavior changes. Become a "nudge aficionado." Teach Nudgery.


51. "R&D" Play Money/Ubiquitous. The ability for virtually anyone to get their hands on a few bucks (and a mentor) to play around (right term) with a new idea is essential.


52. Venture Funds/All levels. This can run to billions of $$ at Intel to much smaller sums, but the idea is casting a wide, speculative net.


53. University support. Research universities are among America's most vital competitive advantages, and are likely to be so for decades. Associations, large and small, with universities are an important part of the innovative enterprise.


54. "Sell-by" date, consideration of. Peddling old stalwart parts of enterprises when they become commoditized may help free the spirit of the enterprise to move toward a new playing field. (On the other hand, oldie goldies can surprisingly often become hotbeds of new innovation under inspired leadership.)


55. R&D/good times and bad times. R&D may have to take its lumps in tough times like the present. But beware of cutting too much muscle. Moreover, bad times can be the perfect time to get the jump on competitors with innovations if at all possible. Tough times are also ideal for little R&D projects that might just grow legs.

The Essential Role of Lead Customers - Loving Angry Customers

56. Lead customer portfolio. Innovation is not natural in the best of circumstances. Stasis is comfortable. Hence, we must force ourselves into uncomfortable circumstances. (I accept speeches to groups where I have no expertise.) Customers who are far from our norm are frontline change agents. We must formally create a portfolio of lead customers - and then commit to joint product development and connection in general. Again, this must be managed and not left to chance.


57. Customers on all teams. Customers must pervade our electronic and physical halls. They must especially be part of all innovation teams.


58. New network forms. Constantly experiment with new forms of networking with customers of all sizes and shapes.


59. Pissed-off Customers Association. No group is more valuable than pissed off customers!! (Even, or especially, irrationally pissed off customers.) Make them part of the family. Shower them with love. Reward them for their contributions. Bring then into electronic and physical networks.

XFX/Cross-Functional Excellence - No Option

60. XF Obsession. Implemented innovations generally (100% of the time?) include and are significantly shaped by contributions from all departments. Lousy cross-functional (XF) communication-cooperation-synergy-esprit is often Problem #1 in enterprises of all sizes. Thus a culture of innovation is dependent on constant-strategic-executive attention to XF effectiveness.


61. XF Innovators. The heart of an innovation that goes in a wonderfully unpredicted direction is very likely to have come from a contribution by a "secondary"-to-the-project functional expert.


62. XF Programs. Formalize numerous programs and nudges, small more important than large, to specifically and measurably attack-enhance-vivify XF effectiveness.


63. XF Friendships (measurement thereof). It is this simple: Friendships across boundaries are the best lubricant there is. Foster them! Formally!


64. XF-centrism in evaluations. Repeated XF obfuscation is a firing offense. XFX (cross-functional excellence) is cause for early promotion, hefty bonuses, etc. This part of the evaluation must have sharp teeth.


65. XF/All teams. Foster cooperative XF involvement in activities of all sizes and shapes by all sorts of folks, even, or especially, when the need is not obvious.


66. XF assignment as requisite career step. Promotion to relatively senior positions or above is dependent on at least one full XF assignment - e.g., a year or so tour of duty.


67. XF/Finance. Get as many managers as possible to spend non-trivial time in finance, to develop a "business" perspective on their work - this is especially important regarding innovation activities.

Project Team Primacy - Project Managers Rule

68. Project team as basic organizational unit. The largely independent project team, the coherent entity of 2, 21, or 212, is the basic building block of the innovating enterprise. This comes as no surprise, but must be underscored anyway. Innovation work is rarely accomplished via a routine grouping that follows the conventional org chart and involves members from various functions who remain under the jurisdiction of their traditional bosses. Obvious or not, innovating organizations are collections of energized project teams - with functional affiliations secondary.


69. The excellent project manager is the Superstar of the innovation-centric enterprise. These are the small numbers of superstars who must be retained at almost any cost. And they do stand out as superstars.


70. The development and care and feeding of your cadre of project managers is human resources Job #1. Effective project management is a peculiar discipline requiring a raft of skills, from the very hard to the very soft. Understanding the discipline and carefully developing project management skills is paramount to creating and maintaining a culture of innovation.


71. Project manager cadre diversity is imperative. Period.


72. Entire talent pool available to project managers. Creating a process, preferably Web-driven, for project managers to cobble teams together for the long haul or for a 48-hour project is essential. But remember to take into account the "soft stuff," and not over-mechanize the process.

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Tom Peters is the author of "In Search of Excellence" and twelve other international bestsellers, and a consultant, columnist, seminar lecturer, and more at the Tom Peters Company

Optimizing Innovation - Dr. Stephen K. Goers of Kraft Foods

by Braden Kelley

We are happy to bring you some of the key points and insights from Dr. Steven K. Goers' talk at the Optimizing Innovation Conference, which was held October 21-22, 2009 in New York City.

Dr. Steven K. Goers, VP, Open Innovation and Investment Strategy at Kraft Foods, oriented his talk towards 'Innovating the How'. Dr. Goers sits in the R&D department and looks after Knowledge Management, Intellectual Property, and Open Innovation.

Kraft Foods has 99% penetration into United States households, but still is trying to grow the company at 5%+ (which translates to $2B a year). To help achive their goals, they are trying to harness the power of internal innovation networks - 2,000 scientists and engineers and 98,000 employees - while also leveraging external innovation networks. They are currently expanding their innovation capacity (ability to do more) and capability (to integrate open innovation).

Kraft Foods needs to innovate because they are in the fast-moving CPG industry, maintain a breadth of categories, and need to continue to maintain an edge over private label products.


"We must ensure that we know what we know"


Knowledge Management Pains:

• Discovery (ability to easily search & access relevant information)


• Documentation and Content Management (capture, organize, transfer & archive info)


• Collaboration & Social Networks (leverage collective power of organization)


• Expertise Management (accessing expertise and know-how)

"How do we make sure that we are leveraging and sharing the information and expertise that are spread around the organization?"


Enabling Networks & Collaboration Tools to begin to address the pain:

• Innovation Web Site & Toolbox


• R&D Knowledge Suite


• Innovation Supplier Portal (probably have dealt with hundreds)


• Ask an Expert (blog type tool to route questions to senior tech community)


• Technical Subject-Matter Experts (expert management system)


• Category Linkage Meetings


• Innovation Days (get people to work in cross-functional days to ideate and innovate once a year - about 25 products have come out of these including Oreo Cakesters)

Deli-Fresh Case Study

• The technology that was developed a dozen years ago was found and leveraged, and this saved about four months of development time


• "New challenges can have old solutions"


• "Going slow to go fast"

"Innovation Capability = Know How + Know Who"


Knowledge Management - "Know what we know"

Open Innovation - "Knowing what others know and leveraging external solutions and capabilities"


Kraft Foods is moving to open innovation because innovation landscape is changing, pace is acclerating, cost is increasing, internal resources are constrained, and speed-to-market needs to improve:

• There are a lot of smart people outside of Kraft


• Kraft owns only about 2% of the food-related IP - #1 us patent holder and #3 globally, but that still only gets us to 2%


• We've done partnerships and open sourcing before (example of partnership with Starbucks in grocery stores)

Open Innovation (OI) Strategic Imperatives (currently focused on building capabilities):

1. Focus (things our businesses really want - not OI for OI sake)


2. Building capabilities, and becoming a partner of choice


3. Addressing the culture

Accelerating our approach to open innovation is not without headwinds within the company:

• "I was hired to create"


• What you create is equally important as what you FIND and who you know


• "We didn't find an internal solution - let's now look external"


• Build OI strategies into business plans (consider open innovation at the beginning of the project


• What is the best path to the solution of this problem?


• Is it internal, is it external)


• "We need to own the IP"


• "You need rights to use IP"


• "OI is what they (that central group) do"


• People think my group handles this and so they opt out instead of proactively seeking themselves


• OI needs to be embedded into how everyone innovates

Kraft Foods like many of the other organizations here, operate a Hub & Spoke construct to drive open innovation:

1. Hub - Tools, Process, Culture


• Build org capabilities and networks


• Scout for new biz partnerships


• Governance and metrics


2. Spoke


• Scout, content, collaborate


• Identifies key business unit priorities


• Scouts for BU opportunities


• OI advocate/champion

Kraft Foods intends to embed open innovation into strategy and business process:

• Considered at onset of project


• Shared ownership and alignment


• One set of goals, Business Unit owns, OI group enables

The Innovation Hub tries to serve as a catalyst for these efforts, not as the driver:

• Supplier Innovation & Co-creation (most effective method so far)


• Innovation Challenges (Internal Innovation Days and external challenges as well)


• Expanded external networks


• External Investments - univ research and venture capital


• OI web site & cool tools (to help enable and connect people)


• http://www.innovatewithkraft.com (unsolicited idea submission portal)

Supplier-based innovation example (Oreos/Chips Ahoy):

• Resealable packaging for oreos and chips ahoy (no more sliding tray out of plastic and back in)


• Solution is the "Snack 'n' Seal"


• 51% to 70% boost in customer preference "definitely would buy"

Triscuit/Wheat Thins/Planters example:

• Here we put the strategy and customer needs statement with selected strategic suppliers


• This was very difficult to make happen


• We use these case studies to raise awareness and open doors to other groups changing their behaviors

Kraft Foods is currently doing mostly supplier-based open innovation.

Another case study (All Out Squeeze Kraft Mayo):

• Customer complaint of too much product left in the container


• We bought a technology that allowed us to coat the inside of the containers and allow complete evacuation of product


• This allowed us to turn consumer dissatisfier into a growth enabler


• But, not only that, as we started working with this company, we developed additional IP to make things work on our high speed lines, etc.

Kraft Foods High-Level Innovation Framework:

1. Business Strategy


2. Technical Needs


3. Intelligence Gathering


4. IP & Technology Sourcing Strategy


5. Development/Commercialization

One of Kraft Foods' key challenges is that often because of time constraints, people try to skip Intelligence Gathering and IP & Technology Sourcing Strategy:

• Knowledge Management - What do we already know internally?


• Open Innovation - How can we leverage external knowledge & innovation?


• Intellectual Property - How can we create or access an invention & operate freely?

Embedding innovation into the organization:

• Focus on the fact that the benefit is for them - the scientist/developer


• Communication


• Executive sponsorship and support

Finally, in response to a question from the audience, Dr. Goer did delve into the topic of corpoarte/university partnerships for a brief moment and his key points were the following:

• It's gotten a lot harder over the last few years


• Contract negotiations are taking a lot longer


• Questions about whether we really need to own all of the IP or whether having the rights to use it or the rights of first refusal are okay

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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.

Creating Innovation with Synthesis

by Jeffrey Phillips

I've read several books about innovation, and am reading another which I'll review shortly here on the blog, which talk about the importance of combining disparate skills or capabilities when innovating, or holding two diametrically opposing ideas and finding the happy medium. What should be obvious is that one of the most important skills from an innovation perspective is the act and insight of synthesis.

This is a real challenge, because most people are taught to break down problems into smaller, finite pieces and solve the smaller problems. We also work as specialists, with deep understanding of our core capabilities and knowledge, but often with little insights or knowledge beyond our education or jobs. So most people don't use synthesis skills on a regular basis, and are probably prone to avoiding synthesis since synthesis requires introducing a number of new and possibly unknown factors which may simply make the problem larger and more difficult.

Well, to a certain extent that true. However, innovation often happens when we take a step back, look at the bigger picture and combine two concepts or technologies or ideas that are seemingly unrelated and create something completely new. And when you boil it all down, that is what synthesis is all about.

Synthesis happens in all phases of innovation, starting from the very beginning. We usually like to start a project by collecting trends and synthesizing or combining them to create new, alternative futures (or scenarios). Rather than simply focus on one trend, it is more interesting (and a bit more difficult) to combine three or four active trends and project them into a 7 to 10 year future. The synthesis, or combination of these trends helps create a view of the future which we can use to identify new opportunities or emerging threats.

Synthesis happens in customer research. We often will engage ethnography or voice of the customer work to discover customer needs and wants. Talking with a number of customers or observing behavior can lead to a range of insights. Synthesizing or combining these insights and seeking the common themes or threads is what is really valuable. Insights or needs from one customer is interesting, aggregating insights and understanding them from a range of customers is valuable.

It's not at all unusual to use synthesis as a method to generate ideas. We can ask ourselves what would happen if we combined several capabilities or technologies, and what that combination would create. Clearly synthesis is a powerful tool in almost any phase of the innovation effort.

The way we generally use synthesis is almost always the same, however. Using synthesis requires a team to slow down, step back and look at a bigger picture - to gather more data and more disparate information or insights than may seem necessary. In many ways this may cloud the picture, but if your team is willing to do the extra work synthesizing the materials, or insights, then the results will be even better. Good innovators are synthesizers, and use synthesis techniques in all phases and stages of innovation. This fact is also one reason that many firms struggle to identify innovators - there are simply too few people who are good at synthesis and who use the tool regularly. As with any capability, misuse or lack of use causes the skill to atrophy. Perhaps one of the most important things you can do as an innovation leader is to find people who are comfortable with the approach or skill, or introduce it as a technique and train your teams on the approach.

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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.