Dow Corning link foresight to innovation (McKinsey Quarterly)

Over the last few years Dow Corning has made a significant push in innovation to strengthen its growth momentum.ย  The CEO and CTO were interviewed by McKinsey and discussed how the organisation links foresight to innovation:

We are on the lookout for developments that are truly going to be disruptive and try to tie ourselves to them. We constantly challenge ourselves and refresh that list of the large trends that we should be looking at, and then we ask, how can silicon-based materials provide a solution?

Stephanie Burns (CEO): What weโ€™ve been doing over the past four years is to take these megatrends and apply filters that narrow them down to what really could be the opportunity, and identify how best our technology and competencies match that. Weโ€™re not just saying thereโ€™s a wonderful megatrend out there in the demographic of an aging population and weโ€™re going to invest all our projects against it, but instead, weโ€™re defining where the opportunities are for Dow Corning. Weโ€™ve been improving that process and have started to integrate it across the company.

McKinsey: How does the process work?

Gregg Zank (CTO): Our underlying challenge was to improve the way we develop a raw idea into something tangible. The approach we now use is to work very intensively for a highly compressed period of timeโ€”10 to 12 weeks. We will take something as large as the societal impact of an aging population and distill that down with numerous interviews outside the company. We dedicate a group of employees around the world to undertake a lot of strategic marketingโ€”both technical people, who are in my opinion very good early-stage strategic marketers because they ask a lot of difficult questions, and commercial folks. Then we have weekly meetings to say, what have we learned about this area? Itโ€™s got to be a large opportunity, itโ€™s got to get marketplace acceptance within a certain time frame, and itโ€™s got to be something that is not incremental to what we are already doing. We assess the applicability of our scientific tool kit against the opportunity and create an early proposal.

via Innovation in chemicals: Dow Corningโ€™s CEO & CTO – McKinsey Quarterly – Energy, Resources, Materials – Chemicals.

Learning from innovation at large companies

Nice short, and insightful read about what you can learn about innovation from large organisations.ย  The key takeaway is this:

Proven methods for inventing new products already exist. So why would you want to waste time, money, and other resources “discovering” processes that are already known and working well? Reinventing the wheel is never a good idea.

Successful companies and enlightened professors understand that there are extremely effective innovation processes. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs often hate process because they believe in the fantasy of the big idea.

via What Goliath Can Teach David About Innovation – BusinessWeek.

User-Led Innovation (is the wrong approach)

One evening, well into the night, we asked some of our friends on the Apple design team about their view of user-centric design. Their answer? โ€œItโ€™s all bullshit and hot air…

The article goes on to elaborate some more about the rationale against user led innovation:

But canโ€™t you create radical new products based on what the user wants? Why do the most innovative brands not care about what users want?

  • Users insights canโ€™t predict future demand
  • User-centered processes stifles creativity
  • User focus makes companies miss out on disruptive innovations

The most fascinating thing about this provocative article: there aren’t any comments from readers yet.ย  But I expect that will change very quickly.

via User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea | Co.Design.

Brainstorming – don’t do it.

Another gem of an article – this time from Booz & Companyย  – about how creative insights actually form.ย  Here’s my highlights:

Neuroscientists have ceased to accept Sperryโ€™s two-sided brain. The new model of the brain is โ€œintelligent memory,โ€ in which analysis and intuition work together in the mind in all modes of thought. There is no left brain; there is no right. There is only learning and recall, in various combinations, throughout the entire brain.

[…]

Just as the intelligent memory concept has replaced the old two-sided brain theory in neuroscience, companies need to replace brainstorming with methods that reflect more accurately how creative ideas actually form in the mind.

[…]

The presence of mind Clausewitz describes is akin to the calm state that precedes a flash of insight, which neuroscientists can now measure. Their subjects include Buddhist monks and other masters of meditation. That explains why you get your best ideas not in formal brainstorming meetings but in the shower, or driving, or falling asleep at night โ€” when your brain is relaxed and wandering, instead of focused on a particular problem. Incidentally, brian scans of these masters also show this presence of mind and reveal it as a mental discipline you can learn.

It goes on to make a link between how companies like Google encourage innovation – and why it’s the wrong way to do so.ย  The article offers a model for how to create insights based on a method pioneered by GE.

This is very solid and fascinating reading.

via How Aha! Really Happens.

The link from foresight to strategy (McKinsey Quarterly article)

I’m of the opinion that there is a continuum between foresight, strategy, innovation and design (in that order).ย  A recent article on strategy in the McKinsey Quarterly elaborates on this further:

Strategists must take trend analysis seriously. Always look to the edges. How are early adopters and that small cadre of consumers who seem to be ahead of the curve acting? What are small, innovative entrants doing? What technologies under development could change the game? To see which trends really matter, assess their potential impact on the financial position of your company and articulate the decisions you would make differently if that outcome were certain. For example, donโ€™t just stop at an aging population as a trendโ€”work it through to its conclusion. Which consumer behaviors would change? Which particular product lines would be affected? What would be the precise effect on the P&L? And how does that picture line up with todayโ€™s investment priorities?

via Have you tested your strategy lately? – McKinsey Quarterly – Strategy – Strategic Thinking. (free registration required)

The Number One Key to Innovation: Scarcity

From the HBR blog comes this link to a fascinating study on innovation.ย  I’ve always held that resource constraints help – not hinder – innovation, but this study goes way beyond a mere hunch:

How should an enterprise go about inventing something novel and useful? Is there a structured thinking process that reliably produces results? Believe it or not, at least 162 different answers have been proposed to that question.

So when it happens that these rigorously researched methodologies independently converge on a common factor โ€” something they all find valuable in an innovation process โ€” it’s pretty safe to assume that it really is important. Having done that kind of meta-analysis, we can tell you the one element that comes through loudest and clearest: the value of scarcity as a spur to creative problem-solving.

via The Number One Key to Innovation: Scarcity – Uri Neren – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review.

Fortune favours the prepared mind : Great (Accidental) Inventions

A great post from Gizmodo about inventions that were not necessarily the result of years and years of thinking, but of accidental discovery.ย  The first paragraph is a literally a teaser to get you into the story:

Percy Spencer, an engineer at Raytheon after his WWI stint in the Navy, was known as an electronics genius. In 1945, Spencer was fiddling with a microwave-emitting magnetronโ€”used in the guts of radar arraysโ€”when he felt a strange sensation in his pants.

via Whoops! The 10 Greatest (Accidental) Inventions of All Time.

Jack White(from band “The White Stripes”) on Creativity

Book only four or five days in the studio and force yourself to record an album in that time. Deadlines and things make you creative. Opportunity and telling yourself โ€œOh, you have all the time in the world, you have all the money in the world, you have all the colors in the palette you want, anything you want,โ€ I mean, that just kills creativity.

via Makin’ Ads: Jack White on Creativity.

Why have three day workshops?

An article in the NYT covers the story of a group of neuroscientists on a rafting trip where there is no way to go online.

The rationale for the trip is to debate whether email, phones, IM etc reduce your ability to hit your cognitive peak.ย  However the most interesting part of the article for me was the piece where one of the scientists makes an observation after a few days:

…the group has become more reflective, quieter, more focused on the surroundings. โ€œIf I looked around like this at work, people would think I was goofing off,โ€ he says.

The others are more relaxed too. Mr. Braver decides against coffee, bypassing his usual ritual.

Mr. Strayer, the believer, says the travelers are experiencing a stage of relaxation he calls โ€œthird-day syndrome.โ€ Its symptoms may be unsurprising. But even the more skeptical of the scientists say something is happening to their brains that reinforces their scientific discussions โ€” something that could be important to helping people cope in a world of constant electronic noise.

โ€œIf we can find out that people are walking around fatigued and not realizing their cognitive potential,โ€ Mr. Braver says, then pauses and adds: โ€œWhat can we do to get us back to our full potential?โ€

If you want to tackle a thorny problem, challenge a paradigm or bring to bear some serious intellectual horsepower, taking an hour or two out of your daily schedule isn’t going to do the job.

Taking an afternoon or even day off won’t have much impact either.ย  However there is plenty of evidence to suggest that multi-day events are very effective at increasing productivity.

(via Your Brain on Computers – Studying the Brain Off the Grid, Professors Find Clarity – NYTimes.com.)

The problem with suggestion boxes…

As a tool to facilitate and encourage employees to share their ideas about new business opportunities, suggestions boxes have the same effect as a shredder does on paper.

What’s more they don’t scale, they don’t manage expectations and they’re not robust.ย  About the best thing you can do to a suggestion box is to ask employees to suggest the most creative way to destroy the box itself.

So what do you once the suggestion box has been burnt/shredded/crushed and microwaved? Start researching prediction markets from companies like BrightIdea, and read posts like this from James Gardner