innovationmanagement

Here’s a topic I’ve been thinking about a fair bit recently – are we more innovative when we focus on solving our own problems? As Matt put it on the 37 Signals, there’s a strong argument for designing what you know:

I know it’s not always possible, but, when it is, pick something to work on that you’re around all the time. Something that bugs you. Something that you’ve been paying attention to for years. Solve a problem that you yourself experience. Design what you know.

Here’s an example – Jane McGonigal explaining her latest, very personal, game:

If you’ve run across McGonigal before, you’ll know that she builds games designed to solve big problems. I think that one of the reasons that her games are so innovative is that she has developed a deep understanding of how games work, and, more importantly, of what gamers get out of playing. This has allowed her to design games that popular, but which also serve a greater purpose.

Up until this new game, SuperBetter, she has been focusing on solving big problems, not her own. Will the new game be better because it is more personal for her? I’m not sure – I think this is an innovation paradox:

we have to understand that not everyone is like us, and we need some kind of process for learning how they differ and what they need. So we have to get outside of our own head. On the other hand, we also have to be willing at times to ditch our processes and rely on our own good judgment. So we have to ignore what everyone else says and stick with what we know ourselves.

How can we do both?

There is a strong argument for sticking with what you know best. You are much more conversant with the problem, and with the issues that people in your situation face. The key question then becomes: how many others are in a situation like yours? If there are a lot, then this is a good strategy. But what if your situation is genuinely unique?

I’m not sure what the answer is – tomorrow I’ll tell you a story that illustrates some of the problems with innovating what you know.

In the meantime, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the answer to this question:

When we’re innovating, is it better to focus on solving our own problems, or should we focus more on other peoples’ problems?

(thanks to the Worldchanging blog for the pointer to her talk)

Are you willing to crawl through the mud for innovation?

by Holly G. Green

Have you seen the new HBO made-for-TV movie called “Temple Grandin?”

It’s a powerful story about a woman, Temple Grandin, who overcame autism to become one of the most influential figures in today’s livestock and animal husbandry industry. Not only is Temple’s story a testament to the ability of the human spirit to overcome tremendous obstacles, it teaches many principles that all business leaders would do well to embrace.

When diagnosed at a very early age, doctors said Grandin would never speak. When they recommended life-long institutionalization, Grandin’s mother refused to accept that possibility, and continually pushed her daughter to develop her abilities and learn to work around her autistic limitations.

With the support of her mother and several key mentors along the way, Grandin went on to graduate from college and earn a Ph.D. in animal science. More important, she revolutionized the livestock industry by designing innovative systems that improve herd management and facilitate more humane treatment of the animals we depend on for food. (Lesson #1: Don’t let others tell you what you can and can’t do!)

In North America, almost half of the cattle are handled in a center track restrainer system that Grandin designed for meat plants. Her innovative curved chute and race systems for cattle are used worldwide, and her writings on the flight zone and other principles of grazing animal behavior have helped many companies to reduce stress on their animals during handling. Grandin also developed an objective scoring system for assessing handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants that is currently used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare.

At first, livestock companies balked at implementing Grandin’s designs due to the high cost. But when they saw how much money they could save through lower manpower costs, fewer deaths and injuries to cattle, and more efficient slaughterhouse systems, implementing the designs became an easy choice. (Lesson #2: True innovation is always cost-effective.)

Here’s the most important lesson of all: Grandin was able to come up with her revolutionary designs because she saw the world differently than anyone else in the industry.

Because of her autism, Grandin could see patterns in livestock movement and behaviors that others couldn’t. She studied how the cattle responded to all the different aspects of the stockyard/slaughterhouse process. She listened to their mooing to determine how they communicated with each other. She got down on her hands and knees in the mud and the muck to see what the cattle saw as they moved through the chutes. In other words, she literally got inside the cows’ world to understand what the stockyard experience was like for them and how she could make it better. (Lesson #3: Get an understanding of your customers and other stakeholders as much as you possibly can.)

As with many real breakthroughs, people initially scoffed at her. Just an autistic woman with a tenuous grip on reality. Plus, the industry was dominated by men and their “good old boy” notions about how to process cattle. But once they began testing Grandin’s designs, they quickly realized how much more efficiently and humanely they moved cattle through the system.

Unless you suffer from autism, you probably don’t have Grandin’s innate ability to see the world differently. And I’m not suggesting you get down on your hands and knees and crawl around in the mud and the muck to make your business better. (Unless that’s part of your business process.) But the principles are the same.

Innovation involves looking at your world and the world of your customers in ways that no one else has seen before. It requires constantly questioning the way things have always been done in your industry. And it requires asking on a regular basis, “How can we do things cheaper, faster, better, or different in order to add more value to our market?”

If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it. Grandin found a way to turn her biggest liability into her greatest strength. And in her triumph, there are lessons for all of us who lead people and organizations. How can we learn to see our world, and the world of our customers, differently? And, how can we turn our own weaknesses into strengths?

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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.

by Roy Luebke

Many people struggle with trying to define innovation, or what innovation is within an organization. I’ve recently been re-reading one of the best business books I have, “The Essential Drucker. The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Writings on Management” which is a compendium of his writings.

Drucker wrote that purposeful innovation results from analysis, systemic review and hard work and can be taught, replicated and learned.

Purposeful, systemic innovation begins with the analysis of opportunities. The search must be organized and conducted on a regular basis. It seems that we may be getting hung up on “the fuzzy front end” and other views that make innovation seem really obscure. Drucker identified seven sources of opportunity that will ultimately drive innovation:

1. The organization’s own unexpected successes and failures, and also those of the competition.
2. Incongruities, especially those in a process, such as production, distribution, or incongruities in customer behavior.
3. Process needs.
4. Changes in industry and market structures.
5. Changes in demographics.
6. Changes in meaning and perception.
7. New knowledge.

Innovation is both conceptual and perceptual. The imperative is to go out to look, to ask, to listen. Successful innovators use both the left and right side of their brains. They look at figures and they look at people.

To be successful, Drucker wrote that an innovation has to be simple and it has to be focused. It should only do one thing or it confuses people and won’t work. All effective innovations are breathtakingly simple. It should focus on a specific need that is satisfied and on a specific end result that it produces. This makes innovation seem pretty straightforward, doesn’t it?

Drucker indicated that effective innovations start small and they should not try to be clever. Innovations try to do one specific thing. Starting small allows for adjustments. Starting small keeps the requirements for people and money to be fairly modest. Innovations must be handled by ordinary human beings, and if they are to achieve any size and importance at all, by morons or near morons (his words, not this author’s!).

Another key factor was to not try to innovate for the future, but innovate for the present. The innovation may have long term impact, but if you can’t get it adopted now there won’t be any future.

According to Drucker, there are three conditions that must be met for an innovation to be successful including:

1. Innovation is work. It requires knowledge, ingenuity, creativity, etc. Plus, innovators rarely work in more than one area, be it finance, healthcare, retail or whatever. This work requires diligence, perseverance and commitment.
2. To succeed, innovators must build on their own strengths. They must look at opportunities over a wide range, then ask which of the opportunities fits me, fits this company. There must be a temperamental fit with the practitioner and a link to business strategy.
3. Innovation is an effect in economy and society, a change in the behavior of customers, of teachers, of farmers, of doctors, of people in general. Or, it is a change in a process, in how people work and produce something. Innovation must always be close to the market, focused on the market, and market driven.

Drucker wrote that innovation by its nature is risky, as is all economic activity. But defending what was done yesterday is far more risky than making tomorrow.

Innovators define risks and seek to minimize them. Innovations are successful to the extent that they systematically analyze the sources of opportunity, pinpoint the opportunity, and then exploit it, whether an opportunity has small and definable risk, or larger but still definable risk. Successful innovators are conservative, they are not risk-focused, but rather are opportunity-focused.

While many articles, white papers and books have been written lately about innovation, Peter Drucker seems to have nailed it decades ago.

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Roy Luebke is an innovation expert focused on discovering new, customer-driven opportunity areas to help define the future of a company. He is inspired by knowledge and learning, and applying structured tools and methods at the crossroads of strategy and innovation to achieve business growth.

The Rise of the Biomimetist

by Yann Cramer

One of IDEO’s ten faces of innovation is the anthropologist: the one who observes human behaviors and actions to discover wasted effort that could be turned into an innovation challenge. In the past decade, an eleven’s face has been quietly but steadily rising to prominence in the innovation team: the biomimetist, who observes animal and plant characteristics to discover supreme efficiency that could be turned into an innovation breakthrough.

The kingfisher’s beak isn’t just a fashionable accessory that the bird has picked on the shelves of supermarket nature. It is the result of millions of years of evolution and natural selection. The biomimetist starts from the humble assumption that, even if it is not obvious at first, there may be a good reason why nature has designed animal and plants as we see them. The kingfisher’s beak turns out to be supremely efficient at crossing the air-water interface with the minimum amount of turbulence, thus making the bird more successful at catching fish by surprise.

It was the source of inspiration for the design of the Shinkansen, the Japanese bullet train. Obviously the train does not dive into water, but it has many tunnels to pass through. Tunnels tend to create an air-air interface between the inside and the outside, which, when crossed, generates turbulence and noise. The efficiency of the design has enables engineers to create a train that is the most silent of its kind.

Likewise, attentive and questioning observation of the lotus leaf inspired glass manufacturer Saint-Gobain. How does the lotus leaf manage to remain clean in a muddy environment? Electronic microscope observation of the surface of the leaf revealed a hydrophobic nano-structure on which mud does not stick. It then lets the lotus maximize its exposure to sunlight for photosynthesis.

This surface structure that enables the plant to yield maximum benefits from natural resources, namely the sun and the rain, became the inspiration for Saint-Gobain’s design of a self-cleaning glass. The company designed a hydrophobic surface structure on which dirt that is decomposed by sunlight is washed away by the rain.

Observing nature, humbly, questioningly, letting it fill us with wonder, can be a fantastic source of inspiration. Not only for its beauty, but also its efficiency.

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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.

This is the fifth of several ‘Innovation Perspectives‘ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘How should firms identify innovation opportunities and predict market potential at very early stages and in new areas (“green fields”) and ambiguous environments?’. Here is the next perspective in the series:

by Mike Dalton

Last month’s perspective suggested getting out of your environment and into the customer’s as one of the three steps to caffeinate your innovation. It’s fitting then that this month’s call for innovation perspectives should ask how firms can identify innovation opportunities and predict market potential at very early stages and in new areas.

In this innovation perspective, I’ll brief six of the most effective practices in conducting customer visits for the purpose of identifying new and emerging opportunities in B2B markets.

1. Focus on the problems

Customer visits must be focused on both finding problems that you might later be able to solve and also identifying the value that can be created by doing so. Think Mary Leakey the archaeologist there to unearth clues – maybe even a little Sherlock Holmes and Stanley Livingston. Remember, you’re there to study the indigenous peoples, not change them – at least not yet.

2. Find the pain

It’s best if you can observe people at work. What part of the customer’s operation is inconvenient, time consuming, costly, inefficient, dangerous, dirty, messy, frustrating, infuriating, embarrassing, or otherwise holding them back from achieving their goals or desires? That pain is where you need to dig, but don’t feel bad. You’re there to find the places where you’ll eventually be able to help.

3. Dig below the surface

You have to get below the surface of the problem. Continue asking why until you get to the root cause and then if necessary go deeper to find the part of the problem where you might be able to eventually develop a profitable solution.

4. Be prepared to cover the economics

B2B product success depends on helping customers sell more, spend less, or free up working capital. Your interview guide needs to include these questions and the team needs to include someone capable of discussing them at a detailed level with clients.

5. Keep information flowing

The detailed kinds of information mentioned above only comes out if the customer feels you need the information in order to decide if you can develop a win-win solution. Develop being the operative word. Any premature solution discussion shuts down the information flow because they suspect you’re trying to price the solution. So if possible, I recommend not involving your sales force for this activity as it can be quite a challenge for them not to jump to solutions. It’s not impossible, but not recommended without specialized training.

6. Never enter the jungle unprepared

Cross-functional teams, consisting of marketing, technical, manufacturing, and sometimes other functions must prepare before making any visits. They need to develop an interview guide and determine what role each will play in the interview (lead, scribe, observer).

You can check out all of the ‘Innovation Perspectives‘ articles from the different contributing authors on ‘How should firms identify innovation opportunities and predict market potential at very early stages and in new areas (“green fields”) and ambiguous environments?’ by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Mike Dalton is the Chief Innovation Coach for Guided Innovation Group and the author of “Simplifying Innovation” and the Simplifying Innovation Blog. Guided Innovation Group has a simple mission – helping companies turn their new product innovation into more bottom-line impact.

Hello everyone.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, InnoCentive’s new website is now live!   We’ve been working hard to update the site with both a new look and feel that we believe better represents today’s Solvers and Seekers and with a framework and functionality that is more flexible and robust.

With this new site, you will immediately feel the difference-it’s lighter, friendlier and, most importantly, it is richer in content than it was before. And it’s going to continue to get better and better rapidly over the coming months thanks to an open framework and content management system on the back end.

We also think you will start to see improvements and enhancements to key functionality that will make you more efficient and effective, as well as enable you to collaborate more easily and more often with improved Team Project Rooms (coming this fall) and more social media tools to help you connect when you want and with whom you want. The basic workings of the website will remain the same: your user information, your archives and your Challenges are exactly as you left them. We haven’t changed the processes you’re used to, such as signing Solver agreements, opening project rooms and submitting solutions, however we’ve tried to make them a bit more user-friendly, and will continue to do so.

It’s worth reflecting that InnoCentive is a marketplace that brings Solvers and Seekers to difficult Challenges. And our site reflects the complex nature of this relationship by providing sections for both sides of the equation. But we encourage you to look at the “other” side if you are a Solver or a Seeker, because there’s lots to understand and learn about how Open Innovation really works today.

With our new site, we’re working hard to make this complex area easy. Please let us know what you think. You can provide your feedback by clicking on the “feedback” link on the homepage, or by clicking on the “contact us” link on any page in the site.

We’re very proud of the new site – it represents months of work by the InnoCentive team, and valuable input that we’ve received formally and informally from Seekers, Solvers and partners alike. Thanks for your support during this process – we couldn’t have done it without you.

Best regards,

Dwayne Spradlin President and CEO, InnoCentive

Entrepreneur. I must admit all this concern in the past few years about what defines an Entrepreneur has me wondering why the fuss. The successful entrepreneurs I have known, and many I have consulted too, can really only point to two things that defines them. These being, First, they believe that taking risks is expected and required for success and, second, that finding talented people and mentors to assist them in the endeavor is critical. To me these factors don’t require much further ...

One of the most illuminating comments I heard recently in a training program we offered was one participant's realization that innovation, especially bringing a new idea to fruition, might require more than just product innovation.  It may involve innovating the way the firm thinks, the way it works, how it manages and how it performs.  In other words, when you are just starting out in an innovation effort, you may have to innovate and invent new methods, new processes and new ways of thinking to bring a new product to life.

There's a good reason for this thinking - it's very difficult to create something entirely new to an organization that doesn't fit to existing thinking and processes.  You either adjust the new idea to existing thinking and processes, or you create new thinking and processes to enable the new ideas.  And if you follow that thinking, you can see immediately why firms with highly entrenched methods and processes can find it very difficult to innovate, while firms with flexible thinking and nimble processes and systems can more easily innovate.

So, there really isn't such a concept as "product" innovation as an isolated effort.  Creating a new product or service will force you to rethink how you collect and synthesize market insights, how you conceive new products and how you bring them to market.  Thinking deeply about a new product or service may in fact lead you to consider new business models or new sources of revenue or new channels as well.  This means that what may initially seem like a simple act of creating a new product will in fact force your firm to reconsider how it works.  That's another reason why a half-hearted, let's give it a shot innovation programs almost always fail.  There are simply too many things that must change to do innovation easily.  Yes, you can ramp through a new product or service without changing some of these other features and attributes of your business, but you'll run roughshod over the existing thinking and processes.  Not to say they don't need to be roughed up a little, but they'll give as good as they get.

Innovation at any level is interrelated to so many other factors of your business.  A new product or service may require a new method to service customers or a new channel, or new business model.  New ideas can't live in isolation and may not play nicely with existing ideas - and that's the point.  A radically new or different idea needs different organizational structures, channels and models to survive.  Innovation is also interdependent with other processes and strategies.  Try creating a new innovation effort in your business without communicating what you are doing, or changing how the participants are evaluated or compensated.  You'll soon find that while innovation may seem isolated from the "regular" business processes, it relies on and demands services from those processes that may seem unreasonable. 
Yes, you can create a skunkworks and hold innovation at arms length.  That can create really interesting and radical ideas but will need to duplicate a lot of the capabilities and processes you have already in existence, and the new insights and learnings won't filter back into your existing business.  The skunkworks model is effectively like exercising only one arm and hoping the rest of the body benefits.  If you plan to innovate, you need to know that you can't simply create a new product.  A really interesting new product or service will almost by definition force a rethinking of your existing management styles, business models and org structures.

In many towns and cities, day-to-day decisions are made by employees entrusted with overseeing the millions of dollars residents contribute to making sure their water is clean, their roads are paved or clear of snow, and their schools are staffed with the best educators available.

These decisions are often made with little direct oversight by residents. There are, of course, exceptions – Maywood, Calif. recently made headlines when it outsourced all its services, and as the New York Times observed, “The sky didn’t fall.”

A government-sponsored idea campaign can result in real benefits, provided the ideas for improvement actually get carried out. In fact, many real-world examples of Idea Central can be applied just as easily to the budgeting and service-related problems of governments big and small.

Achieve Goals In business: The business sets targets and looks to executives and employees to find ways to meet these goals and targets (e.g. “How can we reduce costs by 20 percent?” or “How can we enter the automotive market?”). In government: Looking to cut costs? A single Idea Central event pooling the brainpower of hundreds or thousands of employees and residents can yield new approaches and set targets (“If we cut programs, what effect will this have on different segments of the population?”)

Bureaucracy Buster In business: Identify wasteful processes or procedures to streamline work and reduce overhead. Introduce Lean initiatives. In government: When an elected official says in a campaign, “I promise to improve government,” have them show you how.

Channel Leverage In business: Explore how to leverage partner network or close externals (e.g. agents, distributors, even customers). In government: Are there services you can share with a neighboring town? Open your online event to employees and stakeholders in surrounding areas to promote a larger conversation.

Diamonds in the Rough In business: Move the good concepts from events and other sources into Idea Central’s Portfolio Monitor to develop them further with collaborative input. These ideas have not been selected for direct implementation previously because of some missing component (e.g. cost of resources/raw material or lack of technical solution). People are invited to enter the instance, add input and solve problems, and on a periodic basis an evaluation group reviews the ideas, and promotes improved “diamonds” into formal concept projects. In government: It’s great to have the community add ideas to a big pot, but if nothing is ever implemented, did anything really change? By keeping tabs on an idea’s entire lifecycle, voters can get a clear picture of how quickly and how often their representatives are acting on their suggestions.

“If I Had a Million Dollars…” In business: Discuss what to do with extra money; develop a list of opportunities more broadly to help make better decisions (more options mean better choices). In government: Identify grant opportunities, or if a grant is administered, pool neighbors to identify which area is in of most need.

New Venture Identification and Development In business: Define large-scale business opportunities (an ongoing process, usually lead by Corporate Strategy, Business Development or New Ventures groups). Invite wide but selective participation from across the organization. In government: Where should the next park be located? Or where can land be bought and preserved as conservation space? Leverage the expertise of land management groups and conservation stewards.

Trends and Insights In business: Gather consumer or market trends and use this as stimuli for employee creativity for new product development, marketing initiatives, R&D, service opportunities, etc. These events started in consumer packaged goods companies, but the trend has now spread to financial service companies that want to delve deeper into customer problems, and understand trends in advance of specific customer needs. In government: It is ever important to keep up with county, state, provincial, and national topics, which can quickly trickle down to local governments. An Idea Central event to gather public opinion on larger government issues can be more effective than a traditional petition because it will illustrate the variety of views on an issue.

In a brilliant post this week, Charlie Stross asks what’s the minimum world population needed to maintain the current level of the technology available to us today. Not long ago I talked about how isolation from the mainland made Tasmanian technology go backwards for a significant period of time – this is exactly the issue that Stross is addressing as well.

Here are a couple of the points that he raises:

And as for your smartphone? The damned thing has a component count somewhere between ten major subsystems and frame components and a hundred billion (if you go down to the smallest scale and count the capacitors in its FLASH memory). The number of fab lines on the planet that can make memory chips of that density is limited, and they rely on rare elements mined only in exotic locations and in tiny abundance.

…seemingly similar artefacts (cars, phones, airliners) have invisibly accreted complexity. The complexity makes them better (safer, more economical, more luxurious) than their predecessors, but vastly more difficult to engineer; stuff that used to be fixable by shade-tree mechanics and jobbing electricians has receded over the horizon. Back in the early 19th century, the complement of a sailing ship could expect to maintain the ship in every significant way using tools and expertise that they could carry aboard the ship. Today in the early 21st century, that’s not an option with airliners or probably even automobiles.

Thirdly, the complexity embodies in these new products means that their production is dependent on a complex web of lower-level specialities.

Then I found this current example of how we lose technology via Ralph Poole – the US has forgotten how to make Trident missiles. Here’s the story:

Plans to refurbish Trident nuclear weapons had to be put on hold because US scientists forgot how to manufacture a component of the warhead, a US congressional investigation has revealed.

The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “lost knowledge” of how to make a mysterious but very hazardous material codenamed Fogbank. As a result, the warhead refurbishment programme was put back by at least a year, and racked up an extra $69 million.

For the first time, the report described the difficulties faced by the NNSA in trying to make Fogbank. A new production facility was needed at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, because an old one had been demolished in the 1990s.

But vital information on how Fogbank was actually made had somehow been mislaid. “NNSA had lost knowledge of how to manufacture the material because it had kept few records of the process when the material was made in the 1980s, and almost all staff with expertise on production had retired or left the agency,” the report said.

The moral of the story is simple. Connections drive innovation. We need input from people with a diversity of viewpoints to help generate innovative new ideas. If our circle of connections grow too small, or if everyone in it starts thinking the same way, we’ll stop generating new ideas. And then we’ll forget things like how to make a fishing hook. Or a trident missile.

We need a critical mass of intellectual viewpoints if we want to innovate.

by Jeffrey Phillips

You’ve perhaps heard the saying that politics is the art of the possible. Otto von Bismarck said that over a hundred and thirty years ago. He was the chancellor of the German nation. You’d think that a guy with that much power would have been able to push almost anything through, no matter how harebrained. But he realized and accepted the limitation foisted on him by the political system.

Otto was interested in what could be accomplished within the framework of his political situation, which was bounded by the bureaucracy of the government, the expectation of the people, what his treasury could fund, and a number of other constraints and barriers. What he wanted was the best possible outcome based on these constraints. Unfortunately, a lot of people who want to be innovators think this way as well.

Whether you are in government, in a not-for-profit, in academia or in a commercial enterprise, there are constraints that will be applied to any new project or initiative. Resource constraints, funding constraints, resistance to change, the expectations of customers, shareholders or constituents. These are realities we all face. However, if we allow these constraints to frame the way we think about innovation, and constrain our thinking to achieve only what we believe is “possible” within those constraints or boundaries, we’ve lost the innovation war from the start. Rather that take as a starting point our existing situation and all of the constraints as givens, as innovators we need to think about innovation as the art, not of the possible, but of the improbable or even the impossible.

I’ll use an example to illustrate my case, once again from my home state of North Carolina. In the 1950s a number of leading executives and government officials decided to create a research park in what were farming communities between Raleigh and Durham. They had a long term vision of North Carolina as a center for serious scientific research. At that time their ideas must have seemed impossible. North Carolina was primarily known for agriculture – tobacco especially. There were few high tech firms here, and building a research park that required the cooperation of several universities, in a state that had few high tech firms, must have seemed daunting. If the executives and politicians in that day had begun from the “art of the possible” they would have never made these investments. There were many reasons and many constraints that would have stopped the creation of Research Triangle Park. The park was a huge bet on the future, on technology and research, in a state that had traditionally focused on furniture, agriculture and textiles. But those folks had a vision, and decided to think about the “art of the improbable” to make a significant investment that still pays dividends today.

My point here is that if those leaders had allowed the constraints and barriers to get in the way, the teams would have whittled down the concept of Research Triangle Park to a small office in an existing facility with little resources and no funding, and North Carolina would be far less evolved in technical research. If they had worked completely within the “art of the possible” then IBM and the pharmaceutical firms that use the park would never have moved here. Instead, they chose to see the possibilities and shrugged off the constraints and barriers to reach for the art of the improbable.

Far too often I hear people who are the “innovation” leaders within their firms talk about innovation and then temper their goals and aspirations based on what’s possible. If you start your effort with what everyone agrees is “possible” then you’ll only achieve incremental improvements at best, and everyone will be disappointed and frustrated by innovation. If you’re going to innovate, please stretch your thinking. Consider what would be improbable or even impossible and use that as a starting point or goal. In any initiative the scope gets watered down and reduced, so starting with an impossible goal will eventually be watered down to an improbable goal, which is far better than starting out constrained by what’s possible.

Here’s a simple test for your would be innovators. State your innovation goals loudly and often within your firm. If people don’t stop and gasp, and tell you that your goal is impossible, you are settling for the art of the possible, which won’t be innovative. And rest assured there are people eyeing your market or customers who are willing to attempt the art of the improbable, to disrupt your offerings and services and take your customers. Don’t start on an innovation project that is hemmed in, constrained and bounded by the “art of the possible”. It will only end in dissatisfaction and recrimination as the results simply aren’t interesting or unique. Start with the “art of the impossible” and force people to confront the barriers, challenges and issues, and create a vision that helps them understand why reaching further will create so much more value.

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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.

by Stephanie Susman

Well it’s about time!

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) announced in May that it’s launching three Energy Innovation Hubs, designed to “help advance highly promising areas of energy science and engineering from the early stage of research to the point where the technology can be handed off to the private sector.”

These hubs not only demonstrate the nation’s commitment to tackling our energy and climate challenges, but they also represent an innovation endeavor not often associated with the U.S. government.

Each of the three hubs will tackle a different energy challenge in a highly collaborative way that welcomes diversity of thought. They will “bring together top researchers from academia, industry and the government laboratories with expertise that spans multiple scientific and engineering disciplines under the leadership of a dynamic scientist-manager.”

They differ from other DOE R&D projects that have smaller teams, more clearly defined leaders and few disciplines represented.

The first hub, the Nuclear Energy Innovation Hub, will “allow engineers to create a simulation of a current operating reactor that will act as a ‘virtual model’ of that reactor,” which they can study to address questions about operations and safety. It will be located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory site in Tennessee.

The second, just announced yesterday, will focus on developing “a solar energy fuel conversion system through artificial photosynthesis and (bringing) it to commercialization,” according to FastCompany.com. The Fuels from Sunlight Energy Innovation Hub, will be led by the California Institute of Technology in partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The third hub hasn’t been launched yet, but it will focus on designing, constructing and retrofitting commercial and residential buildings to make them more energy efficient than today’s buildings.

The topics these hubs address are top-of-mind across the globe as countries seek to reduce their emissions. These hubs will help the United States compete in the battle to go green.

Each hub will receive $122 million over five years. And, according to the press release, the hub managers will have “enough resources and authority to move quickly in response to new developments.”

That means they have a great potential to “achieve energy breakthroughs as quickly as possible.” I wish them well and look forward to following their progress!

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Stephanie Susman is a senior account executive and certified innovation facilitator in the Innovation practice group at Fleishman-Hillard. Stephanie leads the practice group’s marketing efforts through various media including their blog, What Are We Thinking?, and two Twitter feeds: @FHInnovation and @ssusman.

This is the fourth of several ‘Innovation Perspectives‘ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘How should firms identify innovation opportunities and predict market potential at very early stages and in new areas (“green fields”) and ambiguous environments?’. Here is the next perspective in the series:

by Drew Boyd

Here are three green field innovation approaches:

1. Find Innovation Adjacencies:

Adjacent markets are an attractive way to grow. Adjacent markets are not too far away from your core business in terms of channels, technology, price point, brand, etc.. To find them, I recommend The Big Picture framework developed by Professor Christie Nordhielm at The University of Michigan. The Big Picture outlines four quadrants that completely define any market category. To find “green fields”, consider each quadrant one at a time and imagine extending beyond the bounds of the category in some close by, adjacent way. The key is to stretch, not leap beyond your inherent business model. Ask yourself these questions:

• Quadrant 1 Adjacencies: What substitute products are non-category consumers using to fulfill the need. Where are they buying it? What complementary products go along with these substitutes?
• Quadrant 2 Adjacencies: What other products do your loyal customers buy, perhaps at the same price point or to fulfill the same or similar brand promise?
• Quadrant 3 Adjacencies: Why do multi-brand customers use several brands? Is it time-dependent? Situation-dependent? Why does it vary? What other products are used when the competitive brands are consumed?
• Quadrant 4 Adjacencies: What other category of products does your competitor sell? How do those fit into their product line? How could they fit into yours?

Once you identify potential adjacencies, apply an innovation method to create new-to-the-world concepts.

2. Cooperate with the Competition:

Co-opetition is an idea described by Barry Nalebuff and Adam Brandenburger in their book, “Co-opetition.” It means cooperative competition – when industry participants behave in a way that benefits all. They coopetate rather than compete. The trick is to apply innovation templates to the Value Net model of co-opetition. Here’s how. List the activities of each Value Net participant (Company, Supplier, Customer, Complementors, Competitor). Rotate each specific company in the Value Net model so that each takes a new role (competitors become suppliers, suppliers become complementors, etc). Use each template on the new list of activities, starting with Task Unification. Using Function Follows Form, envision how the new role creates a “green field” market.

3. Listen to the “Voices”:

Here are three less obvious sources of “green field” opportunity.

• Voice of the Product: Products have enormous amounts of information coded into them through years of design improvement. A corporate innovation method such as S.I.T. lets you “interrogate” the product to find new, undiscovered market benefits.
• Voice of the Brand: Brands also have information coded into them. The key is to extract the information and data that contributes to the brand promise to see hidden assets and market potential. For this I recommend the semantic search engine, Goldfire.
• Voice of Serendipity: Many products are invented accidentally. Serendipity led to the microwave oven, corn flakes, Teflon®, penicillin, fireworks, Viagra®, chocolate chip cookies, and the most famous of all accidents…the Post-it® note. While serendipity is unpredictable, there is value if you can unlock its hidden secrets.

You can check out all of the ‘Innovation Perspectives‘ articles from the different contributing authors on ‘How should firms identify innovation opportunities and predict market potential at very early stages and in new areas (“green fields”) and ambiguous environments?’ by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Drew Boyd is 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