Innovation Begins with Real People

If you are trying to innovate and are looking for new ideas and insights for new products or services, nothing proves more useful and fruitful than getting out of the office and out from behind the computer, then immersing yourself in the World outside. Where real people live and work. Go to where your customers and potential users are.

The art of seeing and observing people with an open mind and especially recording those observation with good ethnographic techniques, such as video, diaries and in person interviews. Makes you more aware of existing pain points, that can be fixed and improved upon. It can also fuel new ideas for things that can be introduced and created to improve peoples lives and make your services and products better and easier to use. Techniques such as participant observations where you try for yourself what others have to go through, will give you incredible first hand experience of what people do and how they do it. Living with a customer for a day or watching them use your service or product without prompting can be incredibly insightful, about what is lacking, and where improvements can be made. The data and information your gather can fuel many insightful innovations.

This you cannot gain from sitting at a computer and just assuming what people do in the outside World, where noise and distraction can occur. You cannot even always believe what people say they do, you sometimes are best seeing them do it and then trying it for yourself. Then you can better empathize and really begin to use design to solve and build something with a clear purpose for improvement. Designers are incredibly adept at solving problems and coming up with innovative solutions, sadly though their focus is not always finely tuned to the exact problem they are solving or they are tasked with the wrong problem to solve by their clients. Getting them out of the office and educating your clients that can hide behind their data from focus groups gets you closer to problems and ideas that really need fixing, inventing or improving.

Disagree to Innovate

In a recent article from one of the designers at continuum, the idea of innovation occurring when disagreement happens is laid out. Daniel Sobol, puts forward 5 things you need to keep arguments in line with the creative process. One that particularly stood out to me was the paragraph about saying "No".

He suggests that where traditional brainstorming is mostly about building on the ideas of others and using the improv technique of saying "yes, and..." leads to a nice group dynamic, the power of saying "No, because..." can lead into a dialogue of critical thinking. This is an interesting idea and something I am keen to see how well it works. I think the value of this technique maybe after an actual brainstorm session has occurred and you are more in the mode of evaluating the ideas you have come up with and maybe looking for the best to build upon. My biggest concern would be controlling the group dynamic of criticism and keeping people from feeling to personal about the responses. I would also think that it could easily lead the generation of ideas to a halt as you analyze each idea in your mind. Still it is an interesting idea and I think with the right people and teams it can be an effective tool in brainstorming.

He outlines the other techniques to help in this augmentative approach as,

No Hierarchy. No one rules the ideas, and everyone is welcome to add to the idea pot.

Say "No, because..." Find another perspective that proves the original idea wrong. Say Why.

Diverse perspectives. T shaped people, and diverse backgrounds brings fresh perspectives.

Focus on common goal. Make sure everyone remembers the purpose and point of the exercise.

Keep it fun. Fun and happiness help people think and create outside the box.

Maybe when combined with all these other aspects he outlines the concerns I have disappear from the group. Still an interesting article and something I would love to try sometime.

Ringing the Innovation Bell

This article from the NY Times website has an interesting story about the small group of scientists that produced some of Bell labs amazing innovations. Most intriguing to me was the insight to the culture that Mervin Kelly put in place at the lab to make things the most creative they could be amongst the scientists and engineers.

He setup an environment for creativity that allowed the exchange of ideas to flow between people. His focus was on making space one that allowed people to interact with one another easily. This is something that has been written about by Steven Johnson in his book about where creative ideas come from, the ability of people to cross pollinate ideas is a great way to inject others point of views. Like coffee houses in the old world, these types of environments foster conversations and debate that can lead to thinking in new ways about old problems. Being in close physical proximity to others even from other disciplines is a great way to have those chance encounters that can lead to interesting shared knowledge and problem solving.

Kelly also placed the labs inside the manufacturing plant, so that ideas could be transferred into things. This to me, describes the rapid prototyping ability that he wanted to foster. Prototyping gets people talking and conversing around a physical thing and can be a great catalyst as it keeps people focused on the task at hand.

He also believed in freedom for researchers to investigate the things that they most felt compelled and inspired to research. This is inline with the work Daniel Pink has written about, that autonomy is one of the driving factors of motivation for thinkers versus manual workers. It also allowed people to work at their pace and follow their own leads and direction. This I am sure was critical in helping Bell constantly create innovative new ideas and solutions to problems and new products. This kind of thinking is also what I think made Mervin Kelly a good leader of his group, he brought onboard the right people, self motivated and trusted them to work hard and produce great work, without constant monitoring.

Bell labs invented the laser, the transistor and the solar cell. I have no doubt that the insights of Mervin Kelly to the creative process and innovative environment he helped create were instrumental in the amazing work he and his team produced in their time.

Questions for Innovation

Sarah Krasley along with Bill O'Connor recent put forward 6 questions that can lead to innovation at an article found here.

These six innovation questions are:

• What could I look at in a new way? (Steve Jobs looked at the computer in a new way, leading to the Mac and the personal computer revolution.)
• What could I use in a new way? (Paleolithic humans turned fire from a scourge into a means of cooking, heat, light, and protection.)
• What could I recontextualize in space or time? (The Sumerians moved language from spoken to written form, expanding its power and reach.)
• What could I connect in a new way? (Thomas Edison connected the light bulb to the electrical grid, leading to electrified cities.)
• What could I change, in terms of design or performance? (Nearly 3 million years ago, the world’s first “innovator” transformed a simple rock into a stone hand-axe.)
• What could I create that is truly new? (In 1776, American colonists created the first “intentional” nation, based on specific abstract principles.)

Design Thinking

Design thinking is an alternative way of thinking about problem solving and idea generation. It could well be one of the most important new ways of structuring new business teams and creating environments for future workers that has been put forward in recent years. The concept is not really anything new, and certainly many historical figures like Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Tesla, would be in my mind classed as design thinkers. Really the newest step forward is the more formal acceptance of the process of design thinking as promoted by companies such as IDEO that produces reproducible successful results. Most people in the realm of invention and idea creation really have been practicing design thinking for centuries.

Design thinking is a really a process in approaching a problem. The basic four steps of design thinking are: 

Define the problem

Create and consider possibilities

Refine and dissect results

Repeat(optional)

Execute most successful outcome

Within each of these steps are tools and methods that help get the most out of the process. 

Defining the problem, involves a discovery phase with analysis of the problem space. At this point in the process it is critical to immerse oneself in the problem, existing solutions (if any), and the all the available resources and literature. It may also require observation of people and processes already in place. Only after a full discovery would it be worth moving onto a creation phase. At this point in the process it is worth considering tools like brainstorming on smaller parts of the problem, grouping and ideating ideas together to be evaluated as worth pursuing. Which leads nicely into to a complimentary part of the phase of creating prototypes of various levels of fidelity. To test out concepts and encourage team engagement at the early production stage. This is when things begin to really stand out as feasible and worthwhile solutions or not. Then, comes the refine and dissection of those ideas that seem most worthy. Further prototyping, and maybe some usability tests can help refine the results. repeating earlier stages may also prove advantageous. After things seem to funneling into a particular result it then becomes time to execute the most successful outcome into the final product or service.

That in a nutshell is design thinking. Again nothing completely new but really people's acceptance and corporate push for innovation has brought these now more well defined steps into new consideration. They are effective and powerful ways to generate ideas and produce prototypes that lead to more successful end products and services, when done correctly.

Other breakdowns of the steps include.

Discover, Analysis, Ideation, Prototype and Evaluate.

Define, Research, Ideate, Prototype, Choose, Implement, Learn.

In each instance you can see the common form of four basic steps.

I have some further reading here for design thinking.

You can read some more of my thoughts on prototyping here.

And some ideas on idea generation here.

Zero Gravity Thinking

In my quest to just keep filling mind with great thinking and approaches to design and innovation techniques, I came across an intriguing book that caught my eye in the local Goodwill book section. Titled "The innovation killer" by Cynthia Rabe it raised my curiosity enough to buy it. In this book, which should really be titled "Zero Gravity Thinking", she describes the need for teams, that are working on new and creative projects, that require innovative thinking to introduce certain personality types she refers to as zero gravity thinkers.

A zero gravity thinker is someone whom Edward De Bono would call a lateral thinker, or IDEO would refer to as a T-shaped person that has a deep expertise in one area of knowledge, but also is following a broad interest in different fields of study or knowledge these personality types when mixed with established teams can often reinvigorate the stagnation of ideas with new perspectives and considerations. Rabe, goes on to describe the importance of someone whom would be called an outsider, that can be more open to new ideas, has self confidence to know what they are talking about and a willingness to introduce an existing team to new approaches and consideration, most likely from another field of knowledge. The zero gravity thinker is someone whom the team can collaborate with, that most likely is not an expert in their field, but probably has a basic understanding of their knowledge space, but does have an expertise in a similar or different field that has similarities to the problem space. A good example might be a team of biologists introducing a zero gravity thinker that is a chemist.

The value she describes is very compelling, and considering that companies like P&G and Microsoft hire external agencies like IDEO and Ziba to brainstorm new ideas and improvements to existing products reinforces the idea that external thinkers can work out well in innovating with existing teams. IDEO of course is the most recognized company in the World for innovative team thinking, and the products and services they design are proof it works. Their teams are often described as a mix of great thinkers from different fields of knowledge.

The concepts she introduces are not new, but the book is a great summary of the concepts and definitely describes the zero gravity thinker concisely. It is a good read and nice introduction to the concepts of this new style of problem solving.