Rise of the Innovation Ninjas
by Mitch Ditkoff
Every once in a while I come across a quote or excerpt from an article that I want to immediately post on the windshield of every client of mine. It cuts to the chase and lucidly states what I've been trying to say, in various Neanderthalic ways, all these many years. Take this Einstein quote for example:
"Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted counts."
Bingo! Bullseye! What a perfect way of explaining to a left-brained addicted world that metrics and analysis is not the only game in town.
And then there's Gary Hamel. He takes a bit more time than Albert to make his point, but hey, it's all relative isn't it? Check this out from the man behind one of my favorite business books of all time:
Today, innovation is the buzzword du jour in virtually every company, but how many CEOs have put every employee through an intensive training program aimed at boosting the innovation skills of the rank and file? Sure companies have electronic suggestion boxes, slush funds for new ideas, elaborate pipeline management tools, and innovation awards - but in the absence of a cadre of extensively trained and highly skilled innovators, much of the investment in these innovation enablers will simply be wasted.
Imagine that you coaxed a keen, but woefully inexperienced golfer onto the first tee at Pebble Beach. After arming the tyro with the latest titanium driver, you challenge him to split the fairway with a monster drive. You promise the neophyte a $100 bonus every time he hits a long bomb that stays out of the rough, and another $100 for every hole where he manages to break par.
But what you don't do is this: You don't give him any instruction - no books, no tips from Golf Digest, no Dave Pelz and Butch Harmon, no video feedback, and no time off to perfect his swing on the practice range. Given this scenario, how many 200-yard drives is our beginner likely to land in the fairway?
How long is he likely to stay avidly devoted to the task at hand? And what kind of return are you likely to get on the $2,000 you spent on a bag full of high tech clubs and the 450 bucks you shelled out for a tee time? The answers are: Not many, not long, and not much. And no one who knows anything about golf would ever set up such a half-assed contest.
That's why I'm dumbfounded by the fact that so few executives have invested in the innovation skills of their frontline employees. The least charitable explanation for this mind-boggling oversight: senior managers subscribe to a sort of innovation apartheid.
They believe that a few blessed souls are genetically equipped to be creative, while everyone else is a dullard, unable to come up with anything more exciting than spiritless suggestions for Six Sigma improvements.
A more charitable reading: CEOs and corporate HR leaders simply don't know how to turn on the innovation genes that are found in every human being.
Obviously, you can't teach someone to be an innovator unless you know where game-changing ideas come from. In other words, you need a theory of innovation - like Ben Hogan's theory of the golf swing.
This is why, a few years back, I and several colleagues analyzed more than a hundred cases of business innovation. Our goal: to understand why some individuals, at certain points in time, are able to see opportunities that are invisible to everyone else. Here, in a pistachio-sized shell, is what we learned:
Successful innovators have ways of seeing the world that throw new opportunities into sharp relief. They have developed, usually by accident, a set of perceptual "lenses" that allow them to pierce the fog of "what is" in order to see the promise of "what could be." How? By paying close attention to four things that usually go unnoticed:
1. Unchallenged orthodoxies - the widely held industry beliefs that blind incumbents to new opportunities.
2. Under-leveraged competencies - the "invisible" assets and competencies, locked up in moribund businesses, that can be repurposed as new growth platforms.
3. Under-appreciated trends - the nascent discontinunities that can be harnessed to reinvigorate old business models and create new ones.
4. Unarticulated needs - the frustrations and inconveniences that customers take for granted, and industry stalwarts have thus far failed to address."
Thanks Gary!
Clearly, what's needed these days are organizations full of Innovation Ninjas. Skillful, agile, perceptive, courageous, and highly trained individuals who know how to find their way through the seeming obstacles in the way in order to get a result.
These obstacles might be "internal" - as in the outdated assumptions, paradigms, and habits of people with three letter acronyms after their name. OR the obstacles might be "external" - as in an organization's funkadelic infrastructure, protocols, and processes.
But whatever the obstacles encountered (not counted!), our nimble ninjas of necessity manage to find their way to the goal. Imagine if you had hundreds of these people working in your company. Imagine you had thousands.
Don't miss an article - Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=9c4fd274-0dc7-4f71-a3ed-91dd26366726)
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.
Every once in a while I come across a quote or excerpt from an article that I want to immediately post on the windshield of every client of mine. It cuts to the chase and lucidly states what I've been trying to say, in various Neanderthalic ways, all these many years. Take this Einstein quote for example:"Not everything that counts can be counted; and not everything that can be counted counts."
Bingo! Bullseye! What a perfect way of explaining to a left-brained addicted world that metrics and analysis is not the only game in town.
And then there's Gary Hamel. He takes a bit more time than Albert to make his point, but hey, it's all relative isn't it? Check this out from the man behind one of my favorite business books of all time:
Today, innovation is the buzzword du jour in virtually every company, but how many CEOs have put every employee through an intensive training program aimed at boosting the innovation skills of the rank and file? Sure companies have electronic suggestion boxes, slush funds for new ideas, elaborate pipeline management tools, and innovation awards - but in the absence of a cadre of extensively trained and highly skilled innovators, much of the investment in these innovation enablers will simply be wasted.
Imagine that you coaxed a keen, but woefully inexperienced golfer onto the first tee at Pebble Beach. After arming the tyro with the latest titanium driver, you challenge him to split the fairway with a monster drive. You promise the neophyte a $100 bonus every time he hits a long bomb that stays out of the rough, and another $100 for every hole where he manages to break par.
But what you don't do is this: You don't give him any instruction - no books, no tips from Golf Digest, no Dave Pelz and Butch Harmon, no video feedback, and no time off to perfect his swing on the practice range. Given this scenario, how many 200-yard drives is our beginner likely to land in the fairway?
How long is he likely to stay avidly devoted to the task at hand? And what kind of return are you likely to get on the $2,000 you spent on a bag full of high tech clubs and the 450 bucks you shelled out for a tee time? The answers are: Not many, not long, and not much. And no one who knows anything about golf would ever set up such a half-assed contest.
That's why I'm dumbfounded by the fact that so few executives have invested in the innovation skills of their frontline employees. The least charitable explanation for this mind-boggling oversight: senior managers subscribe to a sort of innovation apartheid.
They believe that a few blessed souls are genetically equipped to be creative, while everyone else is a dullard, unable to come up with anything more exciting than spiritless suggestions for Six Sigma improvements.
A more charitable reading: CEOs and corporate HR leaders simply don't know how to turn on the innovation genes that are found in every human being.
Obviously, you can't teach someone to be an innovator unless you know where game-changing ideas come from. In other words, you need a theory of innovation - like Ben Hogan's theory of the golf swing.
This is why, a few years back, I and several colleagues analyzed more than a hundred cases of business innovation. Our goal: to understand why some individuals, at certain points in time, are able to see opportunities that are invisible to everyone else. Here, in a pistachio-sized shell, is what we learned:
Successful innovators have ways of seeing the world that throw new opportunities into sharp relief. They have developed, usually by accident, a set of perceptual "lenses" that allow them to pierce the fog of "what is" in order to see the promise of "what could be." How? By paying close attention to four things that usually go unnoticed:
1. Unchallenged orthodoxies - the widely held industry beliefs that blind incumbents to new opportunities.
2. Under-leveraged competencies - the "invisible" assets and competencies, locked up in moribund businesses, that can be repurposed as new growth platforms.
3. Under-appreciated trends - the nascent discontinunities that can be harnessed to reinvigorate old business models and create new ones.
4. Unarticulated needs - the frustrations and inconveniences that customers take for granted, and industry stalwarts have thus far failed to address."
Thanks Gary!
Clearly, what's needed these days are organizations full of Innovation Ninjas. Skillful, agile, perceptive, courageous, and highly trained individuals who know how to find their way through the seeming obstacles in the way in order to get a result.
These obstacles might be "internal" - as in the outdated assumptions, paradigms, and habits of people with three letter acronyms after their name. OR the obstacles might be "external" - as in an organization's funkadelic infrastructure, protocols, and processes.
But whatever the obstacles encountered (not counted!), our nimble ninjas of necessity manage to find their way to the goal. Imagine if you had hundreds of these people working in your company. Imagine you had thousands.
Don't miss an article - Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group!
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.Labels: Gary Hamel, Innovation, insights, Leadership, Mitch Ditkoff, Strategy
posted by Blogging Innovation at 12:04 AM
1 comments
I believe this question should really be broken up because there are three VERY different (and incredibly important) pursuits intermingled here:![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=87b56773-a91e-47ef-b684-69bd4b8086ca)
I am a professional name developer, and I like to gather opinions about product names. Earlier this year I posted a Twitter Poll to gather opinions on ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=6fd7a5f2-2164-4cfe-ac82-ad8bbde89e72)
Apple announced it's rumored tablet device yesterday and chose to call it the Apple iPad - a very strange and difficult choice. "iPad" is a trademark that is apparently at present 
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=302e470c-4a20-4671-ae27-10048b38c2d0)
Today is the day of Apple's latest media event. This is the one where everyone expects Apple to introduce some kind of new tablet device (iPad, iTouch, iSlate, etc.). Because this could be another transformational device innovation by the company, and because insights should always come before ideas and solutions, we've been discussing some of the potential insights behind the device here on Blogging Innovation.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2e1b5c19-a1f3-4c67-a3f7-ed597f3cc561)
My kitchen is overcrowded. There is no end in sight as we continue to invent new kitchen gadgets.
Yes, think "system." The team says the trouble with today's kettles, toasters, juicers, food mixers and coffee grinders is that each type of gadget tends to have a different space-hogging design. Kettles tend to be jug or dome-shaped, with a protruding handle and flex on one side, and a spout on the other. Toasters are generally box shaped, with the timing and toast ejection mechanisms protruding from one end. That means users must leave a large "footprint" around each appliance so that their handles and controls can be reached easily. That's a very smart way to start. Kudos to the Dyson team! 
You can hardly turn around these days without running into some sort of reference to innovation. Dozens of books about the topic line the shelves at Borders and Barnes & Noble, from "The Art of Innovation" to "The Myths of Innovation." Innovation is rapidly becoming the latest business buzzword. 
As usual it was Peter Drucker, the godfather of modern management, who said it first. Right back there in 1966 (!), in his landmark book "The Effective Executive", Drucker argued that companies would need to build a new kind of organizational capital as the industrial economy gave way to the knowledge economy. His famous proclamation was that, in future, brainpower would be a more valuable asset for wealth creation than factories and financial clout. All of which came true, of course. But that was not the end of it. Now, over four decades later, we are once again challenged to rethink organizational capital as we make the transition from a knowledge economy to an innovation economy. And that creates a new agenda for every single company.
Co-authored with Peter Skarzynski, CEO of Strategos, in close collaboration
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.
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!)
Jeffrey Phillips is a senior leader at 
Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to 
The other day in Cincinnati I met Filippo Passerini, Procter & Gamble's Chief Information Officer. Fascinating guy. Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Rome. Father of three. Technical mountain climber. And the toast of his organization right now for what he and his troops have been able to accomplish. 
Passerini's vision was that the entire company should operate from one consolidated, integrated global services network. He and his team assaulted the assumption that the way P&G handled back office functions like finance and accounting, HR, facilities management, and IT was good enough. They knew it was riddled with duplication and waste. So they set forth to build a new unit -- Global Business Services - to take over and consolidate all such operations. 
Robert B. Tucker is the President of 
I had the opportunity to meet and chat with local ethnographic researcher 
Because the team will likely only get the insights mostly right, it is important that your go-to-market processes include a great deal of modularity and flexibility. In the same way that product development processes have to design for certain components that are 'likely' to be available, but also have a backup design available that substitutes already released components--should the cutting edge components not be ready in time.
It happened a few months ago, when I was meeting with some people from one of the world's leading consumer goods manufacturers. This is a company where you would expect innovation to have been honed down to a fine art because it has launched a slew of successful innovations over the course of its long, proud history.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against electronic suggestion boxes or idea management software per se. Indeed, one of my key messages is that companies should involve as many minds as possible - inside and outside the organisation - in their innovation efforts. So, essentially, these platforms are a good thing.
One company that has done this highly successfully is Whirlpool, the global appliance manufacturer. Instead of just setting up a passive electronic suggestion box, the company established a sophisticated IT infrastructure several years ago called 'Innovation E-Space' which is open to anyone at Whirlpool who has intranet access.
Congratulations to Evelyn Hannon!
In 1982 when few women were doing it, Evelyn Hannon put a backpack on and went out into the world to travel solo. An early adaptor on the web, in 1997 she began telling her travel stories online at 
