The Performance Paradox

by Stephen Shapiro

Every leader dreams of finding the magic bullet that will increase creativity, boost productivity, and improve morale. Surprisingly, one of the most effective solutions may be the most counterintuitive: sometimes less effort, not more, yields optimal results.


Keep Your Eye on the Present

A few years ago, I worked with a Formula One racing team. Pit crews, consisting of 19 people, serviced the ultrafast, high-tech race - refueling cars, changing tires, and performing required maintenance in a matter of seconds. The crew members continually shifted positions to find the best combination for the optimal configuration of the team. As they practiced, they used a stopwatch to measure their time to milliseconds. Yet, ultimately, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't work any faster. They had hit their performance plateau.

Then, they tried a new approach. They decided not to concentrate on their time, but on their style instead. Now, their movements became more significant than their speed. Astonishingly, the crew shaved several tenths of a second off their best time, even though they "felt" they were moving more slowly. This experiment reinforces the concept that the more you focus on your goals, the less likely you are to achieve them. By worrying about the future, you take your eye off the present.

In higher intellectual activities, the results are even more pronounced. Take the true story of a high school student who became increasingly anxious over passing her upcoming final exam in math, always her weakest subject. She studied hard, all the time focusing on her goal of passing her exam. In spite of her efforts, she failed. She pleaded with her teachers to give her one more chance. They did. This time, instead of concentrating on the goal, she used a powerful creativity technique.

Her first conscious thought each day when she awoke was to visualize herself as Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, a very successful, highly educated woman. Dr. Rice wouldn't worry about a high school math exam, right? By imagining she was someone else, she stopped agonizing and gained more confidence daily. By focusing on the present rather than the result, she scored a 93%, her greatest performance with less effort.


Dare to Be Different

Does this also apply to sales? Can we perform better when we don't focus on our sales goals? A woman's clothing store had a competition to determine who among its employees could sell the most in two months. The winner would receive a bonus and, possibly, a raise. All had their eyes on the prize, except for one sales rep who decided on a different approach. Instead of trying to make a sale, she zeroed in on serving the customer. If a customer needed help for eight hours to pick out a blouse, that's what she would do. If she felt customers would find a better product at a competitor, she would send them there. After two months, this sales person who was not trying to make sales outsold everyone else by a significant margin.

We have seen similar results in many sales and service organizations. We all know (and believe) the expression, "You get what you measure." But a serious question arises: will you get what you want? Often, targets and goals create stress and dysfunctional behavior.


Less Motivation, More Performance

The concept of reducing goal-obsession to improve performance is not new. In the early 1900s, Robert Yerkes and J.D. Dodson developed the eponymous Yerkes-Dodson Law. The premise is performance increases relative to motivation only to a point, after which performance drops. Typically, it is drawn as an inverted U-shaped curve.

If you lack motivation, the result is low performance. This is not surprising. As your motivation increases, your performance increases - to a point. This point is the sweet spot of optimal performance. Then, as you become more goal-obsessed, performance paradoxically decreases. Goals increase stress and cause you to fixate on the future rather than the present.

Yerkes and Dodson suggest that different tasks require different levels of motivation. For example, physically demanding tasks often require higher levels of motivation. This explains why professional athletes are inclined to be very goal-driven. Even so, as demonstrated by the pit crew example, too much goal orientation will hurt even athletic performance. In 2004, the New England Patriots broke the records for the longest winning streak in NFL history - 20 games in a row. At a press conference after the game a reporter asked the team's coach, Bill Belichick, to comment on this winning streak. He replied, "We did not have a 20-game win streak. We had 20 one-game win streaks." His philosophy was for the team to play each game to the best of its ability. Setting your sights too far ahead is a sure recipe for failure.


Creativity Has its Own Rewards

Within the business world, Yerkes and Dodson found that intellectually challenging tasks required lower levels of motivation. The more creative the work, the less motivation required to hit peak levels of performance. Studies reveal that creativity diminishes when individuals are rewarded (externally motivated) for doing their work. Why? The desire to achieve the goal overtakes the personal interest in the endeavor. A myopic focus on the outcome overshadows the intellectual stimulation of the process. As a result, risk taking becomes reduced and creativity vanishes.

"Working hard" may not be the best way to improve productivity and creativity. Maybe it isn't even "working smarter." As we have seen, perhaps the answer lies in trying less. Or maybe it can be found in understanding human behavior and motivation, as illustrated in the following studies.


Your Loss Could Be Your Gain

Which magazine do you think American men are more likely to buy?

• A men's health magazine with the cover, "Lose Your Gut Fast" or
  
• A similar magazine with the cover, "Get Six-Pack Abs"?

Although most people intuitively think that the second cover, "Get Six-Pack Abs," is the sure winner, when a magazine did such a comparison, it found that "Lose Your Gut Fast" sold six times more copies. Why? The answer lies in the three requirements for individuals (or an organization or a society) to change:

1. They must be dissatisfied or uncomfortable with the current situation.
   
2. They must foresee a better future.
   
3. They must believe that they can reach that better future with a reasonable amount of effort.

Point #3 is critical. Using the "gut" example, when someone is 20 pounds overweight, as are many Americans, six-pack abs may be desirable yet seem inconceivable. It's just too much work, and the likelihood of success seems poor. Only when your gut is gone will the idea of six-pack abs seem like a possibility. Similarly, only when your organization is a lean, mean fighting machine will people embrace longer-term, strategic visions.

A question I ask when I address my audiences illustrates this concept further: "Which would you choose?":

• Option 1: A guaranteed gain of $75,000 or
  
• Option 2: An 80% chance to gain $100,000 with a 20% chance of getting nothing?

Seventy-five percent of audience members choose Option 1, consistent across all groups, regardless of demographics. People are risk averse when it comes to increasing gains. What would you choose if I worded the question as a loss rather than as a gain?:

• Option 1: A certain loss of $75,000 or
  
• Option 2: An 80% chance of losing $100,000 with a 20% chance of not losing anything

Over 80% of my audiences choose Option 2. People will take risks to reduce their losses. This explains why the status quo often wins over change. Although there may be a benefit in changing, the risk of losing what you already have is too great.

People will take great risks to minimize their pain/losses yet play it safe when the option is to increase their pleasure/gains. When your organization's change plans are utopian visions of a grandiose future, your employees move to the far end of the performance curve: high motivation, low performance. They become cynical about success and feel as though you are not addressing their current pains and frustrations. Instead, fix immediate problems first, then move on to more strategic visions.


The Bottom Line

To create a pervasive culture of innovation, you must first create an environment of performance and motivation. Achieving this is often, paradoxically, the result of less, not greater, effort. Although goals and performance targets are useful tools, they can also have a detrimental impact on results. When people are too future-fixated, their creativity and overall performance diminish. Find the sweet spot of optimal performance, and you will undoubtedly see an increase in employee productivity, creativity, and satisfaction - all with less effort.


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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.

Innovating to Compete

by Drew Boyd

Innovating is a form of competitive behavior. When we innovate, we compete with someone or something. We innovate to survive. We innovate for glory. We innovate to win. Leaders of organizations need to understand and leverage this competitive aspect of innovation to embed it into the organization.

Innovating to compete occurs at many levels:

• At the national level, governments compete with other nations for trade, economic power, and global political influence.


• At the municipal level, cities compete aggressively to attract investment, firms, and employees to stimulate jobs and economic growth.


• At the industry level, competition among sectors is fierce. Industries want to attract customers, investment, talent, and favorable government treatment.


• At the company level, firms want to be more competitive by differentiating themselves in the marketplace.


• At the business unit level, franchises compete with one another for budget resources and manpower.


• At the individual level, peer rivals compete with each other for promotion and bonuses.


• At the personal level, we compete with ourselves to achieve a new "personal best" when overcoming challenges.

Here are suggestions of what leaders can do to embrace competition and drive innovation:

1. National: Governments need to create a National Innovation Policy. The policy should outline a vision, identify opportunities, create guidelines for investment, coordinate partnerships, and nurture the development of human talent. Here is an excellent example of an innovation policy from the Czech Republic. Countries that pursue these policies will thrive.


2. Municipal: Cities compete just as nations do. At the city level, government leaders can further the state of innovation by coordinating activities between firms, entrepreneurs, venture funds, and universities. Many cities spark innovation by sponsoring innovation contests.


3. Industry: To be more innovative, firms within the same industry need to band together and form trade groups to facilitate and coordinate programs that sustain the vitality of the industry. Trade groups can no longer focus just on government lobbying. They need a coordinated approach to technology transfer and scientific investment. They need to address the systemic flaws in their industry that stifle growth.


4. Firm: Companies need to train their employees how to innovate using systematic tools and processes. Firms need to "innovate on demand" and maintain a healthy flow of new projects into the pipeline. Most importantly, innovation strategy must be pursued within the context of competitive strategy.


5. Business Unit: The business unit is where innovation happens. Innovation is a team sport, and franchise leaders need to deploy teams using facilitated workshops to create new products and services. Leaders should allocate resources disproportionately to those who systematically produce new pipeline concepts...organically.


6. Individual: People succeed through innovation. An employee's value and vitality is sustained by the ability to generate novel ideas day in and day out. People need to see innovation as a skill, not a gift, that can be learned through university or corporate training programs.


7. Self: At this level, it starts with a simple question: "Am I an innovator?" Says Steve Banhegyi, "Your self image controls your level of personal innovation. Your ability to innovate rests largely on who you think you are. You are as innovative as your narrative allows you to be."

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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

Winning the Gold Medal

by Holly G. Green

I love the Olympics. I am fascinated by curling (although like most of you I can't quite figure out the rules). I love the thrill of the downhill, the luge, the speed skating, hockey, and the snowboarding events. And I am especially enthralled when I watch the Olympic athletes visibly get clear on winning.

Did you notice Lindsey Vonn at the top of the slope? Eyes closed, arms moving, legs bending as if she were already traveling down the slope in just the manner necessary to win? She was using a practice known as 'success visioning'. She was imagining the course, every twist, every turn... and how she would successfully meet the challenge of it and win the race. Olympic athletes have used success visioning for decades; since the time Roger Bannister broke the world record for running the mile in less than 4 minutes in 1954.

Premier athletes the world over know the power of getting clear on winning BEFORE they get in the race. They imagine it. They get clear on what it looks like, what it feels like, and what they must do. And it works because your brain is amazingly powerful. Once you are clear on winning, your body will follow. In many ways, it can't not follow. Your brain does not know you can't run faster, ski quicker, make higher jumps... it only knows what you tell it and your body steps up to deliver.

Winning also requires practice. Winning for an athlete means he/she is in top condition. It is likely they have practiced their race thousands of times. They are eating the right foods, taking care of themselves, and making progress almost every day towards their goal. Lindsey did not just sit around for a year, jump up, and ski her race. She got clear on goals, met them, and then set new ones. She spent her time and energy towards achieving them. She stopped doing things that got in the way. She stayed focused.

Are you clear on winning in your business? Do you know what it looks like at the end of 2010 when you have been insanely successful? What are the key operating achievements you will have accomplished; what will your company culture be including in regards to the attitudes, beliefs, values, and operating principles; what skills/knowledge/abilities will exist in your organization; what organizational structures will be in place; what work processes and metrics will be used; what tools, systems and technology are necessary; what products will be in market (existing and new); what products will be in development; who will the customers be; who will the competitors be/what types of companies will you compete against; what will the brand represent?

Get clear on winning, your body will follow.

Is it obvious to you and everyone on your team and in your company what it will take to win a gold medal? If not, what race are you running?


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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.

Simple Justification for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

I stumbled over an interesting paper, "Sourcing External Technology for Innovation", by the Alliance Management Group which has developed lots of great content including the Want--Find--Get--Manage framework below:

• Want - What external resource(s) does the firm want to access from the outside world to meet its strategic intent?


• Find - What mechanisms will the firm use to find these external resources?


• Get - What processes will the firm use to plan, structure and negotiate an agreement to access the resources?


• Manage - What tools, metrics and management techniques will the firm use to implement the relationship?

The article focuses on the Want element of this framework and what I in particular liked is the equation: A + B = C. I have inserted the below edited snippets from the article in order to introduce you to the equation.

We will define our terms:

• Variable A - "Represents the firm's existing 'assets' including its production equipment, core capabilities, intellectual assets, resources and perhaps even its market presence."


• Variable B - "Represents assets that are complementary to the firm's resource base and are only available externally."


• Variable C - "Represents the new product or market offering that goes beyond what the firm is able to deliver utilizing its existing 'assets' alone."

Variable C is a more valuable commercial result that comes from combining the firm's existing 'assets' (Variable A) with those sourced externally (Variable B). This simple equation makes a simple point. If the firm does not access external technology (i.e. there is no Variable B) then Variable C will be limited to what can be achieved using existing capabilities and assets. In other words, Variable C is determined by Variable A.

The goal of the A + B = C equation is to find new value that the firm cannot identify using traditional planning processes. Internal resources (A) retain their prominent role and integrate with external resources (B) to enable a visionary market offering (C) that was unthinkable just yesterday.

When the organization purposefully moves in this direction, senior executives require project managers to redefine C as a variable, enabled by A and B. This is an uncomfortable change for some managers because Variable C is ill-defined, Variable B is fuzzy and Variable A is the only known quantity.


I believe open innovation is about bridging internal and external resources and to identify and execute on the opportunities that arise on this interaction. I like how The Alliance Management Group turns this into an equation and I wanted to share this with you.

Don't forget to read the full article: "Sourcing External Technology for Innovation"


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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.

Microsoft and Creative Destruction

by Scott Berkun

A recent NYT article by former Microsoft VP Dick Brass has caused quite the stir, but for the wrong reasons. Every follow up article I've read, including one from Microsoft, gets much of it wrong some key things wrong.

The premise: The core point of the Brass article is how the introduction of middle management and bureaucracy has killed innovation at Microsoft.

My counterargument: Microsoft has always been a conservative, platforms company. Visionary design and creative leaders think in terms of great products, which Microsoft has never been good at. Brass assumes the challenges that hampered Tablet PC were new and local, but they have always been there. Microsoft's best, and most creative, work has come when a competitor forced one of the few Renaissance-VPs (VPs who were not over-promoted engineers but actually had a diversity of management skills) to take product design seriously.

My credentials: I worked at MSFT 1994 to 2003. I was on the IE 1.0 to IE 5.0 team among others (Windows, MSN, and MSTE/Best Practices, where I worked with many groups across the company). I wrote a bestselling book about Innovation and I've spoken and consulted with various groups at the company dozens of times since I left in 2003.

My take:

1. The primary problem at Microsoft regarding good design & innovation is the diffusion of creative authority. The problem is not the numbers of people at the company, or the layers of management, as many gripe about. Layers don't help, but it's not the problem. The real issue is the inability to grant creative authority to the few people worthy of it. Microsoft has always been a place that gives way too many people a say in matters of design, vision and user experience, and it shows in the pervasive mediocrity of the majority of its products. Films need directors. Orchestras need conductors. But if you divide things into 30 pieces and ask 30 people to play creative visionary, mediocrity ensues. The better products at Microsoft are the ones where VPs modify the distribution of authority to create clear creative authority.


2. Few VPs are qualified to be creative leaders, at Microsoft or elsewhere. And there is no creative lead role at Microsoft. There never has been. This is not new, it has always been true (at least since 1994 when I started). This is why when brilliant, genius type software designers come to the company, they are baffled by how little creative power they can earn, so they retreat to research or future thinking groups that have no skin in the game (e.g. Bill Buxton, Steve Capps, Ray Ozzie, Jim Gray (RIP), etc.). Microsoft is simply a hard place for to accumulate wide authority over design, which is required to make coherent visions, user experiences and innovations come true. Worse, it's rare for leaders to acknowledge death by too many cooks since those who have never worked elsewhere, and have no conception of creative process, can't imagine any other way. The culture has always been a heavily consensus/collaboration driven place for managers, which waters down ideas, and shifts what goes out the door heavily towards conservation.


3. Management at Microsoft is fat with inbred managers who are not worthy of their title, but this has always been true. If you are hired to manage version 5 of something, you inherit a host of decisions made with skills you do not have, yet get credit for anyway. If the team you inherit does good work, and you happen to be the manager, you receive credit, regardless of how little you did. Entire unprofitable, failed divisions, funded by the rest of the company, promote people out of corporate obligation, creating the existence of middle managers who have never actually successfully managed anything in the marketplace. For the 90s, this was MSN and Consumer products, which were perennial failures. The quality pool of people who managed in those divisions was below average and as the company aged more of these groups were born. Microsoft, like all companies, has suffered from the Peter principle, or worse, perhaps the Paul Principle (people who are lousy at even simple management skills but inherit mediocre projects they don't understand, and simply manage not to get fired via their team's noble but unheralded efforts, which hide their shortcomings). As a result, there are line level managers at Microsoft who are more competent than some middle or senior managers. But this has always been true, given the diversity of the company. It's worse now because of the size.


4. Real layoffs would be a blessing. In 1999 when I left the Internet Explorer team (before the ill-fated IE 6.0 release), I looked around the company for other teams to work on. I couldn't believe how many lost, misguided, sad, self-destructive teams I saw. This was in 1999! The company has more than tripled in size since then. Mini-Microsoft is so clearly on the mark about his core ambitions. I don't wish unemployment on anyone, but I'd say a) the ratio of managers to programmers is insanely out of whack b) The number of projects and divisions that have never made profit and are market laggards is obscene. If the company were split apart, few groups are competent enough to survive a year. This defeats the "strategic value" these properties supposedly have, as dumping of buckets of money earned by Office and Windows profits into their bonfires of incompetence does not a strategy make. You need basic leadership competence, which all too many groups at Microsoft don't have (and many never did).


5. Microsoft's best and most inventive work has often been driven by competition. A visible and serious threat is the only situation where leadership, historically, was forced to be creatively aggressive, giving a chance for creatives to obtain enough power to do good work. Windows 95, Office 95, Internet Explorer 5.0, MS Natural Keyboard, XBOX 360 were all excellent products by most standards, and were made possible by strong competition. The question executives need to ask is why divisions like Mobile & MSN,or the entire Vietnam like 15 year history of imploding efforts of web search (there is a great book to be written by someone about this), have been disasters despite clear and strong competition - this is the analysis to post on every office door at the rest of the company.


6. It's lazy arguing to assume an organization of 10,000 or 100,000 is uniform in any way. Groups at Microsoft have a different culture, and some have been wildly more successful than others (e.g. Office vs. MSN/Live/whatever it's called this week) in part because their leaders have developed superior cultures that diverge widely from other groups. Windows 7 is an excellent product no matter how it stands in comparison to Apple's work, and the turnaround from Windows Vista, which many heralded as the end of MSFT, was beyond noteworthy. If Windows 7 or XBOX 360 is made in the same company that makes all the products you hate, you have to realize the limits of painting broad strokes. This is where many critiques of Microsoft fall short, including the one by Brass. They assume uniformity, projecting a local set of experiences in part of the company as the model for the entire company.


7. If you talk only to people who quit and were disgruntled you can't possibly have the whole story. I've never met Dick Brass, but I know the Tablet PC was a commercial failure. As smart as Dick is, its likely he never understood how IE beat Netscape (it was more than the monopoly stuff), or Office beat Lotus/WordPerfect etc. He also might not know the long history of Windows and Office rejecting most requests from most other teams as a matter of both basic sanity and arrogance. Specific to Tablet PC, it started as a Bill Gates pet project. Working with Bill, who Dick curiously never mentions, was no treat, and unlike Steve Jobs, his direct involvement in matters of design is likely not a godsend. Articles like this one reads too much into corporate policies, as many of them are old (e.g. the review process) and good managers have always had ways to work within these rules to reward good employees. I'd agree the processes could be improved, but all the good VPs find ways to bend rules into loopholes.


8. The greatest disease at Microsoft is lack of sharing lessons from failure, especially where innovation is concerned. Microsoft has made many big, visible bets. Many of them have failed, but that's par for the course. The problem is these expensive lessons are swept under the rug, encouraging others in the company to repeat the same mistakes. Everyone loves to make fun of Microsoft Bob, but few can articulate why it failed. If you don't understand why it failed, you don't have any reason for laughing so hard, and you likely aren't half as smart as you think you are. A case study on Vista, MSN Search, Microsoft Bob, The Tablet PC, etc. should be produced by an outside consultant, and stapled on the forehead of every manager at the company, once a day, until they read them all word for word. Then they'd take advantage of Microsoft's so called experience and wisdom. Otherwise, they are being set up to make the same expensive mistakes again and again.


9. The idea of Innovation, and Innovation Systems, is a distraction. Success in the market is a better scorecard and the most reliable source of criticism. Innovation, as the word is used in these articles, is a matter of taste. You can be very inventive and still get your ass kicked. Or do a great job with mostly conventional ideas, and kick more interesting competitors off the field. Apple, if you study their choices, doesn't pull things out of the sky (digital music players, cell phones, and tablet PCs were all established ideas). They enter games others are already playing and kick their ass. But innovation is the least useful lens. The best criticism of Microsoft's management is how, or how not, they've done against their competitors in terms of customer satisfaction. If innovation matters as much as people seem to claim it does, it's well reflected in either market success or customer satisfaction, so worry more about those solid measures, rather than the ethereal notion of who is innovative and who isn't.

Editor's Note: Scott Berkun will be speaking at The Economist's event - "Innovation Fresh Thinking For the Ideas Economy" at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley on March 23-24, 2010. As an added value for our loyal Blogging Innovation readers, we have negotiated a $150 discount when you register using our discount code - "BLINN" - register now.

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Scott Berkun is the bestselling author of "The Myths of Innovation" and "Confessions of a Public Speaker." His blog and lectures can be found at scottberkun.com.

Growing a Garden of Innovation

"Companies are actually living organisms, not machines. We keep bringing in mechanics, when what we need are gardeners." - Peter Senge


by Mitch Ditkoff

Sustainable innovation, the endless effort to find a better way, cannot be achieved by robotically lining up best practices and imitating them. The real catalyzing agent for renewable innovation is the ground from which these best practices spring - the confluence of purpose, people, and processes better known as culture.

From where will the next wave of groundbreaking innovation come?

Not from organizations mechanically mimicking each other's best practices, but from organizations with the authentic commitment to take their stand on ground that has been cultivated for breakthrough.

If you check the contents of the most popular books on innovation, the same topics show up again and again: strategy, systems, process, leadership, customer focus, risk, speed to market, prototyping, metrics, mass collaboration, market intelligence, technology, and creative thinking.

Clearly, all of these topics are important. But none of them can take root in an organization without one fundamental element being in place - a consciously created culture of innovation.

Is such a culture simple to create? Yes. Is it easy? No. And the reason why it is not easy is because the ground of most organizations is hard, untilled, and in major need of clearing.

The metaphor that most clearly conveys the effort required is creating a garden.

To experienced gardeners, the steps needed to create a garden are simple. To the inexperienced gardener, it is a tangle of complexity.

Yes, gardening demands sustained and methodical effort. And yes, sweating comes with the territory. But getting a yield - something to harvest - is a fundamentally straightforward task.

If your company is clear about the effort required, creating a culture of innovation (lets just call it a garden of innovation) is simply a matter of taking the time to execute each step thoroughly 0- in the time honored way gardeners have always practiced their craft.


1. WHET THE APPETITE

If you are serious about being a gardener of innovation, the first thing you will need is hunger - a real appetite for results.

Growing a garden takes sustained effort. It is hard work - most of it unglamorous and unappreciated. Hunger for a yield is the serious gardener's real motivator. Yes, the serious gardener likes being outdoors and, yes, the serious gardener likes getting exercise, but the ultimate product of his/her labors - the harvest - is what it is all about.

Without this level of commitment, the gardening effort remains only a hobby and does not have the roll up your sleeves and get dirty quality so essential to reaping a result.

If your workforce has no appetite for innovation, you will need to find a way to whet it. If you choose not to, people will sit idly by, waiting for R&D, senior leadership, or the tooth fairy to lead the charge. And while they may talk about growth, shovels, and the need for bulk purchase of mulch, talk will not put food on the table.

Fortunately, somewhere, deep inside everyone in your organization is the impulse to create. This impulse is innate. Your task is to awaken this impulse and help people own the effort to innovate. If they do not own the effort, the only thing you will be eating at harvest time will be your own words. (P.S.: Winter is on the way.)


2. STAKE and PREPARE THE GROUND

Amateur gardeners, fueled by visions of ripe tomatoes, have a tendency to plant before they are really ready. Unclear about how large a garden they can sustain, unsure about what is needed to prepare the ground, unable to resist the impulse for a quick yield, they rush in willy nilly.

The result? Lots of wasted effort and the kind of sweating that signifies almost nothing. The same holds true for organizations who claim they want a culture of innovation.

The antidote is a simple, two step process (though the description of the process is much simpler than the execution).

First, an organization needs to get clear about the scope of the effort they want to make. It needs to stake its territory or, more precisely, define the fields in which it wants to innovate. (If it tries to innovate everywhere, all the time, it will only deplete its resources and exhaust its workforce.)

Secondly, it needs to prepare the ground for planting.

This task includes removing obstacles that will interfere with growth, as well as enriching the fertility of the soil. Weekend gardeners cringe at this kind of preparatory effort. It does not feel like fun and there is nothing immediately to show for it. But without this effort there will be no foundation - no ground - for future success.


3. FIND THE SEEDS

You can have ample space to plant a garden. You can know exactly where that ample space is. And you can have lots of fertile soil in this ample space. But unless you have healthy seeds to plant, space is all you will ever have.

If you want a garden of innovation, you need seeds. Not just one kind of seed, but many. Indeed, the more varied seeds you have, the greater your chances for an interesting yield.

In the realm of innovation, ideas are the seeds. All innovation begins with an idea. Ideas are the fuzzy front end of the innovation process - the alpha and omega of new growth. No ideas, no innovation. Its that simple.

The big question, then, is this: Where will your company get its new ideas? Is there an existing process? And if so, is this process working? Can you count on your workforce to deliver high quality, game changing ideas? Or is there something else you need to be doing in order to tap their brilliance?


4. PLANT THE SEEDS

While it is true that some seeds, spontaneously carried by the wind and landing on fertile soil, find a way to plant themselves, most gardens require that seeds be planted in a more dependable way.

If your company is sincere about its intention to create a culture of innovation, it will need to refine its seed planting process. More specifically, it will need to establish a more effective way for the carriers of seeds to increase the odds of those seeds taking root.

Yes, aspiring innovators will need to become more adept at pitching/planting their ideas. But at the same time, the people to whom new ideas are being pitched will need to become more receptive to the possibility that something new is worthy of taking root.

Having a silo of healthy seeds is a good start, but ultimately those seeds need to be planted - and they need to be planted in a way that will radically increase the odds of them growing into seedlings.


5. FENCE THE GARDEN

If you have ever planted a garden, you have experienced the phenomenon of uninvited predators showing up at all hours to devour your tender, young seedlings. Deer, raccoons, moles, rabbits, and a host of other unidentifiable varmints seem to have no other mission in life but to downsize your dreams of winning the state fair or, at the very least, eliminate all possibility of you having fresh lettuce for dinner. It comes with the territory. And it will continue to come with the territory unless you fence your garden.

Organizations of all shapes and sizes experience the same phenomenon.

Promising new business growth ideas - the tasty indicators of breakthrough innovation - are routinely devoured by ravenous corporate naysayers. That is, unless the organization finds a way to protect their aspiring innovators.

Your role, as a gardener of innovation, is to fence your garden and protect your people from the overly acidic scrutiny, doubt, and premature evaluation of predominantly left brained, metric driven, analytical inhibitors of innovation. It can be done. It must be done. And you are the one to champion the process.


6. TEND NEW GROWTH

Conceiving a garden is relatively easy. It requires no special skills, discipline, or education. Anyone can do it. Indeed, anyone does do it every single Spring and Summer. Getting a harvest, however, is an entirely different matter. It is not so easy - and unlike conception, requires skill, discipline, resources, and the ability to learn on the job.

In the same way, conceiving new ideas is relatively easy. It happens every day of the year to millions of people. Bringing them to fruition is not so easy. Along the way, they get neglected, mishandled, and trampled on. What starts out as a brilliant new possibility, often shrivels on the vine. Most organizations have no conscious process for nurturing the growth of new ideas.

As a result, many powerful, new ideas never mature.

They may break new ground, but they do not necessarily flower and bear fruit. The good news? It does not have to be this way. With the right kind of sustained effort, gardeners of innovation can dramatically increase the odds of exciting new ideas becoming part of the harvest and making it to market.


7. THIN and TRANSPLANT

Inexperienced gardeners, intoxicated by their need for a big harvest and overcompensating for their fear of having nothing to show for their efforts, tend to plant too many seeds too close together. Their fear usually dissipates in a few weeks when the first sprouts emerge, but then another challenge surfaces - what to do with the apparent bounty of new growth?

While the profusion of greenery certainly looks good to the untrained eye, the reality is different. New seedlings start competing with each other for water and nutrients. Roots entangle. Left unaddressed, the results are disappointing - row after row of stunted, scraggly plants.

Savvy gardeners respond quickly, thinning out new growth to make room for a select number of the healthiest plants to flourish.

Really savvy gardeners go one step further - transplanting the healthiest of the thinned out plants to new, roomier locations.

Organizations trying to raise the bar for innovation face the same challenge. Intoxicated by their need for impressive growth (and wanting to involve as many employees as possible in the process), they get overwhelmed by a profusion of ideas and initiate too many projects - ideas and projects that end up competing for the same, finite resources.

The result? Scraggly, stunted, and undeveloped ventures.

The antidote? A clear strategy for how their organization will evaluate, select, and fund new initiatives - along with a process for identifying promising new growth to be transplanted for future development.


8. CELEBRATE THE HARVEST

All cultures around the world have a holiday, ritual, or ceremony dedicated to expressing gratitude for the bounty of the harvest. In their bones, they understand the purpose, power, and privilege of giving thanks. Their recent harvest may have fed the body, but the collective acknowledgment of the harvest feeds the soul, strengthening everyones resolve to begin the growing process again the next season.

Corporate cultures could learn a lesson or two from this age old practice.

Historically, organizations have been severely lacking when the time comes to acknowledge the harvest and the people whose efforts were essential to manifesting that harvest. The endless demand for output drives most business leaders to conclude that acknowledging successes is a waste of time - a luxury no bottom line watching organization could afford. Somehow, deep within the collective psyche of senior leaders, lurks the fear that celebrating successes will invariably lead to a fat and lazy workforce.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

People flourish when their efforts are acknowledged - not only individually, but as an entire workforce. If you are serious about establishing a sustainable culture of innovation, remember to take the time to acknowledge your gardeners. For their effort. For their resilience. For their collaboration. And for whatever harvest they are able to manifest.

Food for thought?


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Mitch Ditkoff is the Co-Founder and President of Idea Champions and the author of "Awake at the Wheel", as well as the very popular Heart of Innovation blog.

Five "Must-Haves" for a Strategic Plan

by Holly G. Green

Strategic planning methodologies are like shoes - one size does not fit all.

Some companies use a top-down, autocratic approach, where the plan gets created by a small group of senior managers and handed down to the rest of the organization. Some prefer a more democratic approach, with employees at all levels contributing their ideas and input to the plan. Most companies employ a hybrid of these two models.

The best approach for your company depends on several factors, such as size, industry, culture, type of workforce and management style. Regardless of which approach you choose, however, every strategic plan needs five key elements in order to achieve the intended results.

1. Mission. This defines why you exist as an organization. Specifically, it tells others (not just those in the organization) why you exist. Ideally, it describes some noble purpose that is both inspirational and aspirational, so that it instills pride in all those connected with the organization.


2. Guiding principles. Also called organizational attributes, these describe how you expect people to behave with each other and with other stakeholder groups. Guiding principles broadly define which types of behaviors are acceptable and which behaviors will not be tolerated. In particular, they describe how you will behave when faced with difficult situations or challenges.


3. Value propositions. These explain the value you provide to your organization's different stakeholder groups, both internal and external. For example, why do customers buy from you? Why do employees come to work for your organization? What kind of return can shareholders expect? How does your community benefit from the work you do?


4. Destination points. These identify where your organization wants to go within a specified time frame. This is perhaps the most critical element in the whole process because the more clearly you define your desired end state, the greater your chances of getting there.


5. Areas of focus/strategies. These define, in a broad sense, how the organization will get to where it wants to go. They are the three to five areas everyone should be focused on to get to the destination points. What cuts across several destination points; where should the majority of energy be focused; what must everyone keep in mind as they make investments in people and other resources; and, what guides you on what to do and not to do are the core questions answered.

These five elements form an essential foundation for the strategic planning process. If even one of these bedrock elements is missing, your chances for success become marginal at best.

Once these elements are in place, the next step involves action planning and breakthrough modeling to determine what it will take to get to where you want to go. Here is where you get down to the nitty-gritty to figure out what organizational capabilities (systems, tools, processes, people and technologies) are needed to reach your destination points. Effective strategic planning also requires that you set goals and define team and individual accountabilities, as these link the big picture to individual goals and competencies.

Ultimately, strategic planning is like a jigsaw puzzle - all the pieces must be in place in order to complete the picture. The mission and guiding principles inspire and energize employees, while creating pride and connection throughout the organization. The value propositions provide a touchstone for staying focused on what matters to stakeholders. The destination points provide clear goals and milestones that provide the big picture employees want and need. And the strategies/areas of focus create alignment and ensure that everyone in the organization is working toward the same goal.

Have you got your five must-have's in place? And is everyone clear on what they are?


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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.

Boosting Sales for Beginners

by Paul Williams

Ah... "Drive Sales." Is there a company that doesn't have 'sales driving' as a key strategy?


It can't be much simpler than a choice of three levers.

1. Find New Customers
   
   • Create a New Market with a new product or service, or
     
   • Go deeper with your existing targets
   
   
2. Increase Frequency - Get existing customers to use your business more often.


3. Increase Average Ticket - Get existing customers to spend more when they use your business.

While simple doesn't mean easy. It helps to know that these are your three launching points.

When choosing one - or perhaps all three - of these strategies. The next step is to ask "How?"

• How can I find new customers?
  
• How can I get existing customers to come more often?
  
• How can I get them to buy more?

From these base questions will branch new, potential solutions.


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Paul Williams is a professional problem solver at Idea Sandbox. He can help you create remarkable ideas to grow your business. You may read more at his website and find him Twittering as @IdeaSandbox.

Seth Godin, Nobody is Indispensable

by Mike Myatt

There is no shortage of information circulating of late espousing the benefits of making yourself indispensable to your employer. While this mantra has clearly gained some traction, if not actually becoming quite popular, popular thinking does not necessarily equate to sound thinking. Let me be as clear as I can - nobody, and I mean nobody is indispensable. I don't care who you are, what role you play, or what your title is. If you perceive yourself to be indispensable, you are setting yourself up for a very rude awakening. Furthermore, anyone who by design sets out to orchestrate a situation to make themselves indispensable is not operating in good faith. In today's post I'm going to share my thoughts as to why the myth of becoming indispensable is very dangerous thinking to say the least...

A well managed company does not allow itself to become dependent upon the performance of any single individual. Those individuals who attempt to hoard knowledge, relationships, or resources to attain job security should not to be valued or viewed as indispensable, but should be admonished as ineffective and deemed a liability. Corporate talent that cannot be shared, duplicated, distributed, or leveraged is not nearly as valuable as talent that can.

So, where has all this recent self-indulgent, misguided thinking come from? I believe much of it stems from the self-help types that proliferate the concept of self-promotion for self-benefit over the concept of service above self. More distressing is that this concept was recently validated in Seth Godin's new book "Linchpin".

Let me begin by stating that I'm a Seth Godin fan. While I agree with him more often than not, I will from time-to-time find myself shaking my head wondering what in the heck could Seth possibly be thinking? In his recent book "Linchpin", Seth Godin puts forth some great concepts that we should all aspire to. I wholeheartedly agree that each of us should become the best we can be, that our work should become developed and refined to the point where it is viewed as art, and we are seen as the artist behind the masterpiece. So much of what you'll read in between the covers of "Linchpin" is as close to inspirational brilliance as you'll find in a business book, which is why it pains me to have to point out the critical flaw in "Linchpin" that regrettably overshadows the highlights - namely the concept of the linchpin itself.

Seth describes a linchpin as somebody in an organization who is indispensable - who simply cannot be replaced because their role is just far too unique and valuable. Making things worse, he then goes on to say how important it is for all of us to become indispensable, for not to be indispensable is tantamount to economic and career suicide. Encouraging somebody to make the most of their talents and abilities is quite laudable - encouraging them to become indispensable is validating a new level of self worship that I find quite troubling.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that anyone who sets out to make themselves indispensable would be the one committing career suicide for two reasons:

1. Anyone who is "perceived" as indispensable in their current role completely eliminates any possibility of promotion


2. Any good leadership team who finds themselves dependant upon a linchpin will immediately move to mitigate the risk of finding themselves in such an untenable position

It is an organization's ability to collect and convert data into information, turn information into knowledge, and knowledge into an operating advantage that allows an enterprise to effectively address current needs as well as to strategically drive innovation and forward planning. This cannot happen if one person positions themselves as a linchpin. Put more simply, a corporation's employees must be able to acquire knowledge (learning), transfer knowledge (out of the head and into an information system), apply knowledge (from the information system into an actionable event), manage knowledge (execute with focus, timing and precision), and secure knowledge (keep it from evaporating or even worse from walking out the door to a competitor). Let's see if we can bring this issue a bit closer to home for some of you. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Have you ever had a disruption in business continuity because someone who possessed a wealth of experience and/or information retired, quit or was terminated?


• Have you ever lost a deal or had a major operational problem because somewhere in your organization you found yourself dependent upon a single person's expertise and they dropped the ball?


• Have you ever found yourself in the unenviable position of desiring to terminate an employee only to be held hostage by the fear of losing the knowledge that they possess?

While I could go on ad-nauseum with day-to-day operating examples of how a linchpin can adversely affect a business, I think I've probably dredged-up enough painful memories for now. As a CEO or entrepreneur, the fact that you would allow an employee to become indispensable to begin with means that at a minimum you have a lack of transparency and continuity in your organization, and more probably that you lack depth of talent and are weak in process and knowledge management.

How would you answer this question... Is your company talent poor and linchpin dependent, or talent rich or linchpin independent? From my perspective there is a monumental difference between real tier-one talent and a primadonna who thinks of themselves as indispensable. Employees who represent true tier-one talent see themselves as part of the team seeking to make those around them more successful. Contrast this with those primadonnas who are interested solely in their own success without regard to those around them. Any company that bestows a primadonna with recognition as somehow being indispensable, is a company about ready to experience a completely avoidable disaster.

If you want to eliminate unnecessary dependencies, don't allow any individual to create ultimate domain over anything that is considered key or mission critical. Instead create a culture that values transparency, knowledge management, mentoring, coaching, and process. By doing these things you will add both depth and breadth to your organization and increase the overall level of talent across the enterprise. Bottom line... encourage people to be a valuable part of the team, to maximize their contribution to others and the overall enterprise, but under no circumstances allow someone be become the proverbial cog in the wheel.


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

Don't Strive for Perfection

by Mike Brown

Last Thursday, I presented a session on 'Linking Blogs to Business Strategy' at Kansas City's Central Exchange. While discussing editing blog posts, one potential blogger asked about overcoming the problem of perfectionism when writing. I rather flippantly answered psychological help might be in order.

While trying to be funny, the answer wasn't completely facetious. I love when things happen exactly on strategy. Through years of observation, however, I've come to realize very few mistakes mean even a 'figurative' end to the world. Why drive yourself crazy trying to solve every little issue.

This realization began in earnest early in my career, when another person and I were working on a matrix comparing our company to major competitors. It was an arduous project, with many revisions and lots of eyes (including eyes senior to ours) reviewing various drafts. It was eventually published for several thousand sales and management people in the company.

Everything was fine until I received a call from someone who pointed out our company's goal of "reducing customer exceptions" was mistakenly printed as "reducing customer expectations." Figuring we were both fired, my co-worker and I went to our boss and informed her of the mistake.

We didn't get fired. In fact, no one else ever came forward as even noticing the problem.

Despite lots of effort to avoid them, mistakes happen all the time in life. Not that I condone poor performance, but don't waste your time seeking needless (and often self-defined, not customer-defined) perfection or losing your temper when mistakes do happen. You'll be much more content and better off if you use a different strategy.

When mistakes occur around you, look hard for what's actually better because of the mistake than what was originally planned.

In the case of the "lower customer expectations" gaffe, what was better was it made me a more careful editor. Does that mean I'm a perfectionist in writing. Not necessarily. It means I've learned and developed a whole repertoire of techniques for overcoming proofreading problems.

For you other perfectionists out there, what strategy do you employ to protect yourself from the tendency to be too correct?


Editor's note: Too often people try to make a potential product or service innovation perfect before they launch it. You know what? Often the last 10% of modifications that you make, generally take the longest and aren't always what the customer thinks will make it perfect - they're what YOU think will make it perfect. Instead, determine your potential risks, plan your risk response, get it in the hands of a customer sample, get ready for feedback you never expected, and love every bit of feedback you do get (it's a gift).


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Mike Brown is an award-winning innovator in strategy, communications, and experience marketing. He authors the Brainzooming TM blog, and serves as the company's chief Catalyst. He wrote the ebook "Taking the NO Out of InNOvation" and is a frequent keynote presenter.

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.

The Museum of Why

by Matt Heinz

Too many brands, companies and even vertical sectors assume what they do is, well, what they do. They define their value based on their current tactical, delivered product or service to the market and to their customers. But that's not at all what they do, of course. Let's look at a couple examples.

People don't buy a newspaper because it's printed news. They can get that news from a myriad places today. So what makes newspapers unique? What value do they really serve? I actually read the newspaper more often now than ever, but I don't subscribe to the print edition. I read online every day, check various reporters' blogs for intra-day updates, and count on newspaper reporters to take complicated issues and boil them down to something I can read briefly, get the gist of the story or message, and move on with my day. That's value, and has nothing to do with the means by which that value is delivered to me.

So many sectors, so many businesses need to ask "why" several times over to understand their value to their customers. Why is this important? Why do my customers care? Why is this different and valuable to the marketplace?

Let's say you're the curator of a museum. Historically, your product has been a building with artifacts, exhibits and other physical manifestations of the history and ideas you are preserving. But if you were starting the museum from scratch, what would you do differently? How would you boil down your purpose to its essence, combine that with the target audience you're serving, and deliver a product that more directly reflects and achieves that focus?

If you still think part of the answer is a building to preserve artifacts, that may be fine. But keep asking why. At the end of those "why" questions is your core value.

If you could start your business or category/sector from scratch today, how would you address the answer to that final "why" in a different way? How could you deliver value faster, more effectively, and more completely than you do today?


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

Innovation Perspectives - Purpose, Frequency and Responsibility

This is the fifth 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 Jeffrey Phillips

I've written before about the reactive nature of many businesses. It often seems there are more incentives to ignore signals in the marketplace and then conduct heroic efforts at recovery than to simply plan effectively and study trends and act accordingly. The purpose of today's topic is to examine whether or not trend spotting and scenario planning is important and valuable (hopefully already answered) and if trend spotting and scenario planning are important, what individual or team within your firm should be focused on this work, and how frequently it should be done.

First, let's put to bed the debate (admittedly a thin one) about whether or not your organization should track trends and try to understand likely future scenarios. The answer for most firms is a resounding "yes", especially given the increasing pace of change. In the past you might have been able to argue that change was slow and steady, and an occasional peak in the periscope was all that was necessary. As globalization increases and the pace of change increases, you need to be identifying trends and making sense of those trends consistently, or the disrupters will eat your market share for lunch. Your planning efforts can't assume the future looks a lot like the present, and also must look further out in time. You need to look further out in time because even though the demand cycle has sped up, many firms haven't improved their product or service development cycle, so if you only look a year or two into the future, but it takes 18 months to two years to get an idea through the pipeline, you are shooting behind the curve.

OK, let's assume for the sake of argument that you agree that trend spotting and scenario planning are valuable. Then the question becomes - who should spot and capture trends, who should develop scenarios and who should interpret the results? These questions need to be answered on two levels: at the corporate or business unit level, and at the product or service level.

Trend spotting should be underway, all the time, as a consistent activity by a wide range of people within your organization. Those trends should be reported to a central analyst (individual or team) who is capturing, recording and tracking trends. This model works at both the product/business unit level and at the corporate level. We at OVO emphasize this work at the corporate level, because work at a product or business unit level can too easily be focused too narrowly on a specific product or market or geography, and miss trends or disruptions from other sources. We'd rather see a number of people recognizing and reporting trends throughout the organization, centralized in some team at the corporate level, who capture, report and synthesize the trends, typically in four or five categories (demographic, technological, economic, governmental). One central repository of these trends reduces the "my trends are more accurate than yours" debates and should ensure a more all encompassing view of trends. Of course everything I've described can be replicated in a business unit or product line, with the awareness that these are often more narrowly tailored.

If we centralize this skill, what kinds of people are necessary to capture, analyze, report and synthesize trends? Anyone in the organization who reads, or interacts with customers or business partners, or who has an interest in what's happening or unfolding can capture and register trends. We've set up several systems like this where anyone can report trends. Additionally, the central team can also track and register trends. As trends are recorded and categorized, we can also begin to identify which are important and relevant for the business, and request more insight or investigation into some trends over others. As this is an ongoing activity, over time it becomes evident that some "trends" fade away while some are enforced. Periodically (we recommend twice a year) a team comes together to select trends and build scenarios about a 5 to 7 year distant future.

We tend to pick 5 to 7 year futures because in many firms the selection and implementation of a new idea and the rollout of a new product can take several years, so we want to get the product to market slight early rather than slightly late. With the pace of change as is currently experienced, trying to understand more than seven years into the future is really a crap shoot. Using a horizon less than three years is really not effective, as most concepts will be incremental.

Who should develop the scenarios? We believe these should be guided or facilitated by people who don't necessarily have a vested interest in the outcome. A scenario guided by a product manager is likely to reinforce his or her biases, since they have a stake in the outcome. Again a central innovation team acting as facilitators with a representatives from a product unit or business unit can mix the best of both worlds and ensure a relatively unbiased examination of several potential future outcomes.

Note that through all of this discussion we assume that this function exists as a continuous offering over time, not a discrete, start-stop program but a team that builds insights and skills and offers them to executives within the business. If you want the inexpensive, low hanging fruit of innovation, here it is. No where else can you get a great understanding of the near future and your opportunities and challenges for less cost. The only requirement after the scenario plan will be your ability to take action.


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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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.

What does Apple do when it all goes pear-shaped?

by Yann Cramer

Most CEOs would say that innovation is critical to their companies' success. Loads of people would like to exercise their creativity and innovate, but whether at the corporate or at the individual level, something holds everyone back: risk. "What if it all goes wrong?" This can be more or less marked depending on the degree of acceptance of trial-and-error as a learning process, but to some extent it exists in all cultures, countries and companies.

What can we do about it? There are process answers around framing the project and keeping it focused, rapid prototyping different versions of the product or piloting in the market. But most importantly there is a mindset answer which is both accept it and don't accept it.


Accept It

Forbes provides an interesting list of Apple failures: a few forgotten computers such as the Lisa, the Mac portable, the Taligent, the power mac G4 cube, and a raft of other products that most people may be surprised to hear about: the Newton PDA, the Quicktake digital camera, the Macintosh TV, the Pippin video-game console, the Motorola Rokr mobile phone/mp3 (Apple developed with Motorola).

For all its resounding successes from the Apple II to the iPhone, Apple has not been immune to failure. The difference that makes the difference is that they accept that there will be some failures along the way. They have a portfolio mindset: they continuously scan the environment, they identify potential opportunities, they try, they go for it. When it does not work they pull the plug decisively, but when it works: bingo!


Don't Accept It

Apple may have failed with the Newton, the Quicktake and the Rockr but they have remained true to their multi-media vision, they sticked to the strategic challenge they had set for themselves to get into the handheld market, and ultimately they found "the magic number" to succeed with the iPod and the iPhone.

Accepting failures does not mean accepting that these mark the end of the road. Too often, a company's response to a few innovation failures is to abandon the field and shift strategic priorities in another direction. As they do so, they actually reduce the relevance of what they have learned (or should have learned) from their failures, they land themselves in a new field where they need to learn everything, and their chances of success are actually lower than if they had sticked to their initial strategic priority.


So, accept that you will be thrown off-balance along the way, but don't accept being blown off-course.


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Yann Cramer is an innovation learner, practitioner, sharer, teacher. He's lived in France, Belgium and the UK, he's travelled six continents to create development opportunities with customers or suppliers, and run workshops on R&D and Marketing. He writes on www.innovToday.com and on twitter @innovToday.