Digital Digressions

The LEGO Innovation Model

Innovation is one of those topics rife with debate and often what is innovation to one person is business-as- usual for the next. Communicating an innovation is often half the job of getting it on the shelf and innovators and designers alike, regardless of where they work, often have to be relentlesss lobbyists and use sophisticated tools of persuasion to further their concepts such as fancy presentations, multi-media, eye-popping visuals - you name it, these are the tools of the designer witch-craft. Needless to say, invariably the more skilled you are in all this, the more sought-after you are as a designer.

What we did at LEGO revamping our innovation process flew in the face of a lot of this. We recognised that some of this 'witch-craft' was getting in the way of making solid business decisions. Concepts were bought into, not because they had a solid business case behind them, but because people developed emotional attachments to them or saw it as their ticket to career advancement to push something through, regardless of the cost. To be fair, this happens all over the place, not just LEGO, but the difference is we chose to do something about it. Arguably some of this, along with the very hard work of the entire organisation in many different areas goes some way to explaining our remarkable turnaround from the doldrums in 2003 where our survival as a company was at stake. Last year, we posted our best results ever in the company's entire 75 year history. Perhaps just a little bit of that remarkable turnaround was down to this.

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/About-Design/managingdesign/Design-at-LEGO/

The link above leads you to the full case study published at the Design Council site and it makes not only for some very good reading, but also is a timely reminder of the value a common tool can have in bringing different disciplines together working on innovation that combines design and business thinking instead of encouraging a war between the two. Having a shared language is tantamount to bringing people together and this model in particular has helped us have some hard-hitting, but objective debates about the merits of concepts and collectively understand how to improve them. Only by creating a shared foundation can you have any hope in trying to solve a problem together.

Leadership lessons from John Wooden

Something I wanted to share with you that landed in my inbox earlier and in its simplicity captures more about leadership than many books written on the subject. Leadership is not something you are born with, it is something you do to people, either well or abysmally. We all have sour memories of how it felt when someone did it badly and we may be privileged enough to know someone who really inspires us in this regard. After all, its much easier to point to who is a good or bad leader, than it is pinpointing what it is they do or don't do that makes us say that.

However, John Wooden may be able to help us. He is generally regarded as the nation's greatest basketball coach. His UCLA teams during the 1960s and 1970s won 10 NCAA men's basketball national championships and set records for consecutive victories. But since retiring in 1975, the 97-year-old coach has gained fame as a philosopher and motivator.

[From LA Times]

Wooden sat down with The Times and offered up 10 tips -- one for each of the NCAA basketball championships his players won at UCLA -- for how business owners can become better leaders.

1. Listen.

One thing that is often overlooked in leadership is the ability to listen. Listening is so important to those under your supervision.

2. Care.

Another very important part of leadership is to make those under your supervision feel that you care for them -- not just for the job they are doing for you, but you really care for them personally. You just can't tell them you do that, you have to show it.

While some roles aren't as big or in the forefront as others, they are still very important. I used to use this analogy: It is like having a powerful car. Now the engine, like an Alcindor [now called Kareem Abdul-Jabbar], who played for me, that's powerful. Here's another fellow who is just a wheel. And there is another fellow who is just a nut that holds the wheel on. You have to have them all. You must make every person feel that they are needed.

3. Recognize.

When I was teaching in high school in basketball, for example, [I taught that] my players must never score without thanking someone. Don't run over and shake their hand but look at them and give them a little sign or something of appreciation. Everybody likes to have a pat on the back.

4. Prepare.

[Managers should be aware of] preparation for whatever their job is, little or big, preparation is so important. Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. You must not put things off.

5. Be industrious.

Nothing can be accomplished without work. You've got to work hard. If you are looking for the short cut, if you are looking for the easy way, if you are looking for the trick to get things done, you might get them done. But you are not adding strength, you are not building.

6. Have enthusiasm.

If you don't enjoy what you are doing you are not going to be able to give it the industriousness that you should have. You must have that to inspire others to do their best.

7. Be patient.

Good things take time. And that's the way it should be. We don't want it that way but that's the way it is. I think that is a very important thing that a leader must get across to those under his supervision.

8. Have confidence.

You must believe in yourself. If you don't have confidence in yourself you can't expect those under your supervision to act with much confidence.

9. Don't fear failure.

Have initiative but don't be afraid of failure. We are all going to fail at times because we are all imperfect. When I had assistants, I always wanted them never to be afraid to make a suggestion. We don't know a thing we don't learn from somebody else in one way or another. If you do agree [with their suggestion] and use it and it works, be sure that they are the one that gets the credit, not you. Now if it doesn't work, you take the blame because you made that decision to use it.

10. Win respect.

You have to have the respect of those under your supervision. You can't obtain that respect unless you are honest with them and they can depend upon you. Don't try to sell them a bill of goods or you will lose all respect.

Some very good rules to live your life by. Enough said.

Train Yourself Smarter

Sounds like the ominous beginning to a self-help book, but there is more truth to the title that what you may think. There are plenty of studies out there that suggest the positive benefits of brain training, often suggesting that doing cross-words and memorising long lists is a good way to get yourself thinking smarter, faster. However, this is like saying that simply doing curls with a dumb-bell will make you an Olympic athlete. It's not purely the muscle fitness that matters, it's the whole package, so aerobic fitness, endurance, stamina you name it - all have a part to play in what finally comes together in an explosive meter sprint for the finish line. Same with your brain.

Or put more precisely, of course intellectual stimulus helps develop your brain, but so does physical training. In fact, research published from Harvard Business Review onwards, suggests that if we want to increase our mental capacity, we have to increase our physical fitness to match. This, because the brain like any other muscle in our body depends on blood flow to do its thing and the higher your metabolism and ability to sustain physical exercise at an beyond your aerobic threshold, the better 'oiled' is the machine to deliver continuously on what makes all of us smarter - learning.

It's hard to learn anything when you are tired, it's even harder when you are stressed and learning is what allows your brain to build more connections between neurons, which can potentially fire and give you ideas, helping you be more creative, think faster or even just make the right decision ahead of the wrong one. Worst of all, many of the high pressure jobs out there today requiring continuously operating at stress-levels, make learning all but impossible, so cycles of burn-out are not uncommon. We work hard, feel under pressure to do things better, smarter, faster so we get stressed, making it harder for us to learn how to do things differently, so we then get frustrated, which of course makes us even more stressed... you know the drill.

Interestingly, it is not all out of our hands however. There is a way of being methodical about it all and making it possible for you to prime yourself for some very steep learning curves, perhaps radical career changes even or new jobs in other companies where the mix of the familiar to the new is radically turned on its head and you have to spend most of your time learning, before you can become productive. This is crunch-time for many of us. Can we not just make the transition, learn what is necessary for us to deliver on the job, but also ensure we keep learning to make sure we stay ahead and begin not just doing the usual but increasingly the extra-ordinary?

Research suggests that balancing our increasingly busy work lives with some well-developed and above all challenging exercise can help us do just that.

From bikeradar A recent study from Illinois, USA gives further evidence that exercise can augment brain power.

Using 110 students researchers looked at a battery of fitness criteria (eg endurance run, push-ups, body mass index, etc) then selected the low and high scoring subjects to represent low and high fitness students [4].

All subjects were also assessed for IQ, visual cognitive speed by presenting randomly arranged pictures and activity. Additionally they were wired up to an electroencephalogram to measure brain activity across various regions of the skull. This allowed researchers to look at how fitness levels related to brain function. Their conclusion is very telling: “We found that aerobic fitness was positively associated with neuroelectric function and behavioural performance in preadolescent children engaged in a stimulus discrimination task”

Put more simply: fit children have better functioning brains. 

This research makes promotion of active pastimes and sports something we older humans should be engaged in for the well being of younger generations and it’s good for you at any stage of life too. Research on elderly subjects from 70 to 90 suggests that walking alone “is associated with a reduced risk of dementia” [5]. Across most age groups it appears that exercise of even a modest amount helps to keep the brain functioning better.

The bottom line is you don’t need to break 20 minutes for 10-miles or win a Grand Tour to gain positive mental health benefits from exercise. As Max Ehrmann wrote in his 1927 Desiderata: “Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself”.

And this is the point exactly, to improve fitness - not accelerate your burnout. I can personally attest to both greater learning capacity and ability to sustain higher workloads since I started a regime of road cycle training. I have gone from 30km nearly finishing me off to losing over 10kg and riding 140km the other weekend at a pace many of my fellow riders had to work hard to keep up with. This is progress for sure, but what it really has helped me do is be the reset-button to hard work, crazy travel, lots of pressure and make sure I stop, get out there, blast around the country-side getting rid of adrenaline and all those nasty stress hormones that make us sleep badly, gain weight and over time get depressed. Instead, by finding an outlet that works I am happier and have made greater leaps and bounds in terms of progress in everything I do, because as the quote goes in Starwars - it brings balance to the force.

LEGO Play - Constructing knowledge and transforming the world

Every now and so often I get these questions  like 'explain the meaning of life on one page', which get your head spinning and are entirely possible to answer, but never without spending a long time meditating on that answer first. For that particular question I have an answer, which you may or may not agree with, which is: Happiness, but I digress.. This particular question though was on the subject of explaining LEGO play, which although simple in some ways: you put a bunch of bricks together in any way you imagine - can actually be pretty complex if you delve into what is actually happening between the lines so to speak.

So if you ever wonder about that question, here's my take on an answer.. and discuss!

Most of us automatically associate childhood with play more than anything else. Children play as often as they can; play is fun. Play also contains in its very foundation all the most important elements that allow us to learn[1], to make sense of our experience and find our place and voice in the world.

 Give the mind a hand, and give the hand a system (or pattern, or language, or logic)

 LEGO play champions a “low floor, high ceiling and wide walls”[2] approach – meaning the threshold to begin play is low, but only the sky is the limit by virtue of literally endless combinations possible with LEGO bricks. The wide walls is about supporting a broad range of open-ended exploration and discovery, yet underpinning it is a shared build system creating an intuitive set of constraints challenging one to think up iterations to an originally conceived idea. It is the familiarity of this System in Play and its capacity to support infinite variation in expression that encourages exploration of the unknown and a mindset open to growth.

From the day we are born, we learn, thrive and grow in relation to others. Vygotsky in particular emphasizes the role of language and other artefacts in mediating human interaction. Children’s extraordinary talent as learners comes largely from their ability to set the stage allowing them to safely project themselves into the unknown through their imagination[3]. In expressing ideas or giving them form through building with LEGO, we make our ideas tangible and shareable with others which, in turn, helps shape and sharpen these ideas further and in that process we build our knowledge and our view of the world through our own personal experience.[4]

Creativity (as opposed to mere novelty) occurs when you think a thought that is outside the space of thought even conceivable to you[5].

Ultimately LEGO play is not just a matter of giving form to ideas, making them tangible and shareable. It is also a matter of bringing ideas and forms to life by making ourselves part of the play by acting out scenarios, events and stories. Treating our creations as if they were the ideas they stand for is what brings them closer to our mind’s reach and enables us to immerse ourselves with the situation at hand and allows us make a creative leap, in effect transforming our view of the world[6].

LEGO play welcomes young and old, experienced builders and novices, but above all it presents everyone with opportunities for creativity that are dynamic and malleable. The experience of flow[7] often associated with LEGO play is the balance between existing skills and the challenge at hand as well as between the anxiety and impatience in realising your idea.

Much like knowledge is an experience to be actively built, both individually and collectively[8], LEGO is a product that isn't finished when it leaves the factory; your imagination makes it complete. It is a creative material, a catalyst in enabling us to influence the world by building and experimenting, pushing our cognitive boundaries and advancing our collective thinking by growing us as individuals.

---

[1] Hans Henrik Knoop, The Danish University of Education

[2] Prof. Mitchel Resnick, MIT

[3] Prof. Edith Ackermann, MIT

[4] Prof. Seymour Papert, MIT

[5] Prof. Margaret Boden, University of Sussex

[6] Prof. Edith Ackermann, MIT

[7] Prof. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Claremont Graduate University

[8] Prof. Seymour Papert, MIT

Think Eco-Systems not just Issues

Take global warming or government regulation as examples - these are all very complex topics, collections of variables where solving the problem cannot be achieved through solving one issue alone, but in fact the solution rests in addressing the eco-system tying together all the inter-linked variables. In fact, seeing things on purely the issue level may in fact be contributing to the problem.

In the book Freakonomics the authors quote numerous examples of cases where seemingly complex phenomena have very simple origins, but often in an entirely different field and the eco-system magnifies the impact through all the inter-related variables and creates an impact on local, sometimes national and international levels. One of the striking examples is their analysis of crime figures in large cities in the US. The numbers were growing at epic proportions year-on year until sometime in the mid-eighties the trend suddenly stopped and began a steady decline. Experts tried to attribute this reversal to anything from an increase in spending on the police, a growth in numbers of staff, prisons, different governments, new laws etc. but the biggest impact came from the legalisation of abortion.

How could this have anything to do with crime figures you may wonder? Here the eco-system comes in: the women most likely to have an abortion back in the 60s where women in low-income households with several children already and who before the legalisation either had to risk their lives to have an abortion by often unqualified people in unsafe conditions and risk prosecution or not have one at all. Many didn't and subsequently struggled to look after their children, who often ended up in crime from a lack of opportunity in life. As abortion became legal in many states, the numbers of these 'unwanted' children dropped and the sheer numbers of disadvantaged youth decreased, thus decreasing the populace likely to commit crime. It's not to say that the other measures had no impact at all, but collectively they helped solve the problem as the eco-system of ideal conditions leading to crime gradually became more untenable.

Biofuels are another example of where eco-system thinking really needs to be applied on a much larger scale than today - touted as the solution to the West's reliance on fossil fuels, the growth of crops destined for biofuels is now accelerating across the world, leading to an increased rate of rain forest destruction (these are our most efficient weapon in clearing CO2 from the atmosphere) as land is being cleared to grow palm oil - a crucial ingredient in biofuels. Much agricultural land previously home to food production is being converted to grow crops for biofuel, putting food production in danger. The biggest irony of all is that the process of producing biofuels has a greater negative impact on global warming than fossil fuel use - proving that there is no simple 'solution' to global warming, in fact simple solutions may in fact be aggravating it further, instead we need to think in eco-systems, not just locally, but nationally and internationally.

Nancy Gibbs of Time, talks in her column about the Vatican reflecting on its mortal sins for the modern age (24th March 2008) of the fact that back in the past sloth, lust, greed, envy and anger accounted for virtually all the crimes of mankind, whereas today the issues that once were the clear culprits behind our follies and misfortunes are far more complex than the 7 deadly sins alone. Causes and consequences come together to form eco-systems, where one problem feeds another and addressing consequences is meaningless without understanding and addressing the causes. Contextualising what was once simple in our now increasingly interlinked world - Quoting Mohandas Gandhi's version of the 7 deadly sins:

• Wealth without work
• Pleasure without conscience
• Science without humanity
• Knowledge without character
• Politics without principle
• Commerce without morality
• Worship without sacrifice

The responsibility rests with the individual, but that includes the duty to take care of others as well as yourself.

Things for sale I will mail you

This little site caught my attention today, because not only is it witty, but fun too. We all knew the next frontier of business development is in providing and designing experiences, but you don't need to be a big business to do it. Perhaps you go and have the experiences and send the proof to people who paid you to go have it - the ultimate archair experience.

Below are some of my favourites, but go to David's site for the full menu:

If you give me $1,626 I will go to the small Okinawan island called Taketomi and send you an envelope filled with star-sand (don't worry, I've been there before, I know where to go). I will send it from there.

For this project, anyone can make a donation until I reach the amount. So, anyone can donate to this, and I will put how much I have raised here. You can donate any amount, but, I will only send you the sand if you donate over $100. Thank You!

If you give me $250 I will read the Little Prince in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in the middle of a work day. I will send you photograph documentation of this. (or: if you give me $1000 I will buy as many copies of the Little Prince as I can and give them away to people leaving the New York Stock Exchange after a days work)

If you give me $30 I will walk around New York, and the first homeless person I see I will buy him or her whatever he or she wants to eat (as long as it is less than $30). I will mail you back the exact change (minus the paypal fee and the cost of the postage stamp) with the receipt for the food and the name of the person who ate it.

      

• Kris Efland bought a really big Kentucky Fried Chicken meal and an orange drink from Nedick's for Regional Keith on W 33rd and Broadway on February 24, 2008.
• Joie Mikitson bought a bunch of groceries from Park Avenue Food Court for Francis on E 10th and 4th Ave on February 25, 2008.
• Bart Schouten bought a pizza full of every topping except anchovies from Johns' of Bleeker Street for Marvin who was in the Houston train stop for the 1 on February 28, 2008.

Institutional hubris meets the empowered consumer: The Terminal 5 song

A while ago I treated you to the full transcript of my own experience with British Airways on my return journey, which got delayed a full 28 hours. Back last summer that was an epic delay and worthy of headlines, but it pales in comparison to the debacle known as Terminal 5.

Newspapers here in the UK have been full of articles cataloguing the events that transpired when the new Terminal was finally opened to the public, mass-scale computer failures preventing anyone from logging in to check in passengers, an incomprehensible baggage-handling system that failed as soon as it was turned on, an elaborate and beautiful glass-covered building with inadequate signing and logic to handling vast quantities of people needing to move from one floor to the next, the list is endless.

Outraged consumers have filled columns and airwaves venting their spleen about how this kind of behaviour can be tolerated and how come no one has sued the pants off BA and BAA by now - it surely would happen in the States. The most creative expression of consumer-generated discontent is the Terminal 5 song that captures brilliantly some of the madness that this episode in the history of disasters known as BA/BAA ventures and service - it's even catchy! Bring on the empowered consumer!

Hello world... and a new book: Groundswell

No, contrary to popular belief i have not fallen off the edge of the planet (just yet) although my silence recently could have given you that impression. Things have just been bonkers, I have been travelling too much and at times been so tired I have had absolutely nothing to add, which knowing my ability to talk may actually come as a blessing to my colleagues..

Things are looking up though - for those of you who followed my efforts to use this blog to recruit someone to join me, the news is: it worked! Surprisingly social networks and namely Facebook came to my rescue in that a friend came across the blog post and thought of a friend who would be perfect for the job (and he is!) and told me to get in touch (via Facebook). Sounds serendipitous and it was - but it turned out to be the best bit of sideways recruitment I've ever done. Now we both owe him a beer so Alex, when you do stop twittering and feel the onset of a beer, let us know.

Apart from that many things are afoot, which I need to share with you in the coming weeks, but in the meantime I wanted to build on the topic of communities, social networking and the lot and introduce you to a new book, Groundswell where my colleague, Tormod Askildsen, head of community development at LEGO has been interviewed too. read a little here on the topic of AFOLs or Adult Fans of LEGO:

Groundswell on Social Media Today

Avoiding the 3 pitfalls of Innovation based on Insight

Don't get me wrong - I'm a fierce proponent of innovation based on insight. How else would you be able to frame your innovation and understand whether what you are proposing is even relevant, unless you understand the competitive landscape in which you operate? The purpose of this post is not to question whether you need insights or delve into how innovation works or how to fuel it, but instead, assuming you have a smooth running innovation machine - and you work from solid consumer insight - how come things can still go wrong?

Interestingly, cognitive science can help us here, specifically the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who three decades ago explored the benefits and risks of heuristics, or shortcuts in thinking. Heuristics help to explain the time we get it wrong even when having been presented with all the reasonable information and insight, which presumably should have led us to make the right conclusions rather than the wrong ones. There are three errors, which are common when this happens:

Anchoring error - This is when you seize on the first bit of information and basically make your mind up before you have heard the whole argument, even when some subsequent findings may be contradicting what you seized on initially.

Availability error - This is when some surprising findings emerge that remind you of a dramatic past case and you mistakenly apply mental models or conclusions from that case to new findings and rationalise them in the same way, again leading you to potentially make the wrong conclusion.

Attribution error - Despite getting a ton of insight, it can sometimes be very tempting to group these findings into stereotypes and grossly generalise, to see information as ways of confirming what you already know, rather than seeing the little inklings that your stereotypes aren't correct. Here again the information may be correct, but your use of it incorrect.

These mistakes are all very human and can easily happen, but research in other fields are showing just how dangerous these mistakes can be. In the engineering field these errors can lead to countless hours spent hunting for a technical problem in the wrong place, in the medical fields the very same mistakes can lead to gross misdiagnosis and potential patient deaths and of course in design, to redundant products and solutions. To err is human, but to err without learning from your mistakes is plain stupid.

Debunking Popular Myths about Creativity

Like innovation, there are plenty of misconceptions about creativity out there, which makes it all the more confusing when people are extolling the importance of creative skill in the 21st century. To continue my quest to unravel these complex topics this instalment is all about explaining what creativity is NOT.

• You have to be an artist to be creative There are many creative engineers, scientists, financiers etc. creativity is not a privilege reserved to poets and artists alone. Nor is it a characteristic of loners, misunderstood geniuses or crazy people. It is about invention and innovation, often by teams!
• Creativity is a talent that some have and others don’t Viewing creativity as a talent is one of the best excuses for doing nothing. True, some people have a natural curiosity; an active imagination; a relentless energy; and a desire to think differently. But these qualities can be learnt!
• Creative people are mostly rebels (won’t play the game, play mostly by their rules) As we begin to understand the ‘game’ of creativity, we know how minds form patterns [in which they then get caught] and what it takes for people to move across patterns to generate new ideas (serious play). You don’t need to be a rebel to enjoy the sense of freshness that arises from unlocking stifling thought-patterns.

• Creative people are ‘liberated’, free-spirited and child-like. The ‘liberation’ myth is based on the notion that freeing people up from their inhibitions, and encouraging them to be playful and child-like will unleash their creative fibre. Comparing adult creativity with the playfulness of children is difficult. Children are endowed with a creativity bourne out of innocence because their minds have not yet formed as many stifling patterns. The minds of adults, on the other hand, are filled with many useful patterns to be cracked and bridged for the purpose of innovation.
• Tools and techniques are confining This myth rests on the notion that systematic tool-use is contrary to the nature of creativity, which must be ‘free’. According to this view, materials should be malleable (like clay) and user-friendly (like clay). Contrary to belief, however, materials with an integrity (a ‘logic’ of their own) are often more useful in boosting a maker’s creativity - provided, of course, the maker is a fluent user of that tool!
• Creativity occurs as a single burst of genius Despite the plethora of myths pertaining to this, extensive research into both artists’ most famous works and numerous inventions attributed to a single stroke of genius have shown that instead, ideas emerge through a process of fabrication that evolves over time and through hard work

Instead creativity:

• requires both divergent and convergent thinking
• is not a matter of left brain vs. right brain alone
• involves both problem-solving and problem-setting
• balances tradition and innovation, continuity and change
• combines/blends individual and collective contributions
• involves making the familiar strange and the strange familiar

For those interested in finding out more, have look at  Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation by Keith Sawyer, which gathers all the most recent findings in the field of creativity research and also outlines how different disciplines view creativity.

Understanding Innovation

Innovation is one of those words that are very hip these days. Granted, even I have it in my title. Interestingly, it is also one of the most misunderstood words in business today, so perhaps it's worth spending a little time understanding exactly where it comes from.

If you look for the definition of creativity on Wikipedia, you'll find over 60 different versions - most will agree on the basic premises below and beyond that, the views are radically different depending on your scientific or cultural background. Summarising:

• At the simplest level, creativity is about bringing into being something that was not there before
• Creativity is a mental process involving the generation of ideas and concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts
• Creativity occurs when a person thinks a thought that is outside the space of thoughts that is even conceivable to that person Margaret A. Boden

Now creativity is not innovation, although the two are frequently confused for one another. Innovation is actually made up of two halves:

• Imagination: No new ideas can be generated without a person’s abilities to ‘ think outside the box’ or envision alternative ways in her mind
• Creativity: No insights, however brilliant, will ever be realised unless they are projected out, i.e given material form

A person’s creative expression is the visible face of imagination at work.

Imagination and creativity are each faces of a coin called innovation

With this in mind, innovation becomes a process of fueling the imagination and using creativity to bring into existence the ideas at imagination gives rise to. The two go hand in hand and innovation becomes very hard if a) your imagination is stifled or b) you lack the creativity to bring to life the ideas that you've had.

Therefore fostering innovation is about a process to ensure that there is enough food and stimuli for individual and collective imaginations to engage and about creating avenues for creative expressions to materialise and be improved iteratively either by individuals or collectively. Some past blog posts to inspire you:

Avoiding Creative Apartheid 

Why Innovation cannot remain in the realm of the few

The 7 Must-Do's of Innovators

How to Encourage Innovation in Business

The Conditions for Thriving Innovation

That is not to say that these traits all need to exist in a single individual, instead they can collectively emerge in a community, in an organisation, a film crew, and so on. Successful organisations, communities or creative groups accommodate both the acquisition of stimuli to inspire the imagination of members as well as individuals with an ability to creatively realise those ideas. Collectively or individually, an essential part of innovation is the social dimension that fuels imagination and creativity as well as the process of iterative improvement. None of us are as smart as all of us.

Go LEGO!

Today my feet touched down in Billund again, the home of the beloved plastic brick, and a very special day it was too. 50 years of the brick was the occasion, and what 50 years it has been. In those years much has changed in the world around us, technology is everywhere and indeed this very notion of having a blog, to be read by people on the Internet, was not even a glimpse in the eye of Godtfred Kirk Christiansen when he decided to gamble all on the LEGO brick as the toy for the future.

So today was a great day of taking stock, celebrating a little (not as much as we did last August when the company turned 75 years old), but enough to crack open the champagne and eat some cake, as is the Danish tradition for virtually any occasion when more than 2 people meet. (what I do marvel over is that the Danes do manage to eat more cake than virtually any other European nation, yet they are one pretty slim and trim nation.. oh well. Must be all that brain work of playing with LEGO..:) )

Today also saw an unprecedented acknowledgement from arguably the most creative on-line company in the world, where the Google doodle was taken over by bricks and a mini-figure to celebrate LEGO and its profound impact on the founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin. Some of our craftier fans speculated whether Google is simply an anagram from Go LEGO, put I wouldn't go that far although it's a funny thought what a spelling mistake can lead to.. as I think the origin of Google the name came about. In any case, more proof of the pudding just what creativity can accomplish so a big toast to all you out there who still have stacks of bricks hidden in the cupboard, or under your bed - take it out and make something and you will be surprised what you'll come up with!

The Dilemma of Recruitment

As you've noticed I've been having my private writer's strike and not posting anything here for almost a week - a crime punishable by law in the blogosphere. This inactivity is partially due to tons of work, (for some reason January is always a nightmare!) and due to the process of recruitment I'm doing at the moment. And no, this is not going to be a post where I deplore the lack of intelligent candidates or anything like that - it's more the opposite; the dilemma offered by some great candidates and the crafting of a role where people can make the most use of their skills and abilities.

This is the heart of successful recruitment as I see it:

• A clear and honest understanding of the requirements of the role - not just skills and background required, but also what kind of person (personality, preferred way of working etc.) is most likely to succeed given the demands of the job.
• A balanced and diverse enough process for recruitment to enable a holistic view of each individual, to not only ascertain what s/he can do, but also what s/he is motivated/likes doing. Thinking being that even if you are great at doing something you don't enjoy, you still won't do it very well. Also, interviews that only take into account say your CV and a verbal discussion, take into account half or 1/3 of the reality, the challenge is to find out the other pieces of the pie. Moreover, some people are great at talking about themselves, others are not and if there aren't any other tools at your disposal to balance the view, you will be stuck.
  
• A fair and honest matching of requirements of the role with a clear understanding of the person and their strengths It is not about luring a highly competent person in to do a job which requires only 2/3's of their skills and trying to pay them as little as possible. It's about recognising the knowledge and skills that people already have and crafting a role where they can not only operate from a position of strength, but also with wide enough horizons to explore and to grow into. There is nothing more depressing than making people jump through hoops and hoops and then locking them into such a tight box that they will never grow beyond it or there isn't scope for them to do that. That's like having a door slammed in your face already at the first day of work.

So to do all this, requires nothing short of hard work. Being utterly frank about the pro's and con's of the role - also recognising that there are people out there who would be great to have on-board, but to have them locked in only performing to half of their potential is not fair on them nor is it good for you either, you just create a source of frustration, not of positive contribution. So I'm in the process of narrowing down on the person with not only the greatest growth-potential, but also the one most naturally capable of performing in the demands of the job, with an innate curiosity to learn and ability to bridge the unlikely bedfellows of research and design.

So there we are - I'd rather do my recruitment well than do it half-hearted and pay for the consequences later and first and foremost I want to create something with not only a lasting impact on the organisation, but a situation where a person who joins me will have a chance to grow and to really make a difference. That takes time, but rather take the time upfront than waste time later.

A Portrait of the Digital Teen

A recent report published by Pew Internet creates a fascinating picture of the on-line media habits of the 12-17 year olds. Some findings at a glance:

• The use of social media – from blogging to on-line social networking to creation of all kinds of digital material – is central to many teenagers’ lives. 
• Girls continue to lead the charge as the teen blogosphere grows; 28% of on-line teens have created a blog, up from 19% in 2004. 
• The growth in blogs tracks with the growth in teens’ use of social networking sites, but they do not completely overlap.
• On-line boys are avid users of video-sharing websites such as You-Tube, and boys are more likely than girls to upload.
• Digital images – stills and videos – have a big role in teen life. Posting images and video often starts a virtual conversation. Most teens receive some feedback on the content they post on-line.
• Most teens restrict access to their posted photos and videos – at least some of the time. Adults restrict access to the same content less often.
• In the midst of the digital media mix, the land-line is still a lifeline for teen social life. Multi-channel teens layer each new communications opportunity on top of pre-existing channels.
• Email continues to lose its luster among teens as texting, instant messaging, and social networking sites facilitate more frequent contact with friends.

Some curious facts about teen blogging
Apparently, girls continue to dominate the teen blogosphere; 35% of all on-line teen girls blog, compared with just 20% of on-line teen boys. The gender gap for blogging has grown larger over time. Virtually all of the growth in teen blogging between 2004 and 2006 is due to the increased activity of girls. Older teen girls are still far more likely to blog when compared with older boys (38% vs. 18%), but younger girl bloggers have grown at such a fast clip that they are now outpacing even the older boys (32% of younger girls blog vs. 18% of older boys). 

Beyond gender and age, two new developments emerged in this survey in the demographics of teens who blog. While there was little or no variation in blogging activity among teens according to household income or family structure in 2004, both variables have become important indicators in the 2006 data. Teens living in households earning less than $50,000 per year are considerably more likely to blog than those living in higher-income households; fully 35% of on-line teens whose parents fall in the lower
income brackets have created an on-line journal or blog, while just 24% of those in the higher income brackets have done so.

An even more pronounced contrast is evident when looking at teens who live with single parents vs. those who live with married parents. On-line teens living in single-parent homes are far more likely to have shared their writing through a blog; 42% of these teens keep a blog compared with 25% of teens living with married parents.

Hmmm.. curiouser and curiouser as Alice would have said. I particularly wonder about the propensity of kids of divorced parents to be blogging, are they just venting their spleen or have they learnt to express their thinking more as a result of the complexity of their family life compared to those with both parents still at home?

For more information visit the Digital native research project.

Meet My Latest Addiction: The Yamaha Tenori-On

Ok ok so you figured I'd gone a bit quiet over Christmas - no surprise really as no doubt all of you have had Decembers similar to mine, trying to finish off everything in time for the holidays and still remain sane. Well Christmas did finally arrive and I went and got myself a long-awaited addition to my musical arsenal: the Yamaha Tenori-On, radically turning electronic music-making on its head through the innovative new user interface. I'll write more later, but here's a demo of how it works:

A couple of links: Global Yamaha site;
UK site for Tenori-On 

2008: When the Internet slows down to a crawl (again!)

A great article over at the Economist.com reminds me just how fragile our brave new (Internet) world is. Several sources have been lamenting the exponential increase in on-line traffic and the subsequent slow-down of speed this will inevitably result in, but moreover it is not just a matter of sheer numbers of people and devices - but also of the volume of data flowing back and forth. As our appetite for on-line video has taken off big-time and everyone and their grand-mother now setting up sites with streaming video, down-loadable video, pod-casts and playing games hosted on-line it is not surprising that the pipeline is getting jammed.

A big surprise (although in a way I'm not surprised) is the enormous bulk of traffic generated by spam (over 90%!) and as it is only in the interests of us customers, phone companies and other large ISPs haven't really bothered to do anything about this, because it would simply cost too much to fix. Personally I'm grateful for the e-mail quarantine system on my in-box, yet still the occasional spam wiggles its way past the jaws of the spam-stopper - suggesting I follow a link to go watch some ungodly assault on women in various imaginative ways or cheap(! not free!) pirated software from some strangely named individual. This of course presuming I don't have yet another security-alert that my account has been unlawfully accessed by a bank I don't even have an account at, prompting me to send all my security details to some Phisher sitting with his finger poised at the buy-button of his favourite e-commerce/porn site waiting for a ride on my card or indeed some Nigerian wealthy official offering me a cut if I help smuggle money out of the country. Honestly, how stupid do spammers think we really are and no, thanks, I don't need Viagra either - I'm a woman in case you haven't noticed..

Not only is it about the increased bandwidth of data continuously accessed - it's also about those hoards of 'smart' little devices that simply refuse to even talk to you unless they have all connected to the net and checked for updates first. And then there is social networking, suddenly creating a captive audience for all that video you shot at the weekend, not to mention P2P file sharing which of course explicitly relies on you to not only download, but upload too. Don't know about you, but my Internet slows down to a crawl as soon as I attempt to upload anything other than blog posts. So now roll on TV-networks, Hollywood studios and everyone else who have discovered that making money with advertising is far more lucrative than charging people to watch your content - if you have it, they will come and better still - if they are watching, advertisers are paying.

Oh and what else - come the Digital television revolution, meaning that the 700-megahertz frequencies used by channels 52 to 69 of old-school analog television will become available to be auctioned off to mobile phone companies lusting for the their long range and broadband capabilities. Bring on mobile television and improved Internet browsing from your handset - in fact, hold on to your hat as the new Android operating system launched by Google, make it ever easier for other handset manufacturers to provide the features hankered for by consumers, i.e open access that have none of the restrictions the big carriers impose, like not being able to download games from other makers, browse the Internet freely or make VOIP calls from a Wifi hot-spot. It will suck to be a phone operator soon oh and guess what, all that traffic from your mobile will also be on - you guessed it - the Internet.

Interestingly, the beauty of freedom in the form of open-source is becoming more attractive too, making it harder for us to part with old trusted toasters of computer equipment, given another lease of life with the sleek Gutsy Gibbon adaptation of Linux. So not only can you forgo the latest OS to make a dent in the information superhighway, Nicholas Negroponte of the OLPC initiative has frightened a lot of big-time computer makers into having a go at making cheap equipment themselves, not wanting to lose out on a potential market measured in the hundreds of millions.. oh and I forgot to say - they will all be on-line too, along with all those old bangers you would have resigned to a computer graveyard in the past, but now with user-friendly Linux on them, even they can join in clogging up the arteries of the on-line world - reminding us how it felt having dial-up.

Avoiding Creative Apartheid

Right, here we are - new year, new challenges and not surprisingly: probably still a lot of the old challenges about too, hopefully with the wisdom (and increased girth) of some time off during Christmas, we will be able to approach those issues afresh.

So my first post of the year is dedicated to a topic capable of arising fury within me, over and over again - despite my (by now) many years within the field of design and most recently innovation. This topic, so aptly named Creative Apartheid by Gary Hamel, captures the problem very well:

Too many executives seem to believe that while few people in the company may be really clever and creative, most folks aren't. Gary Hamel

Just before Christmas in fact, did something happen that reminded me yet again of how widely spread this notion is and how it can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy - i.e this way of thinking means that those esteemed to be 'creative' become intellectually lazy and stop making an effort to ensure that those not currently deemed to belong to the 'creative class' can make a useful contribution, thus proving that creative output invariably only comes from those already belonging to this group of esteemed individuals. Sound confusing? Let me explain by using an example of something that happened to me recently:

2 external consultants had been hired to revamp the value proposition of a service. Famed for their role in a number of award-winning commercials and one being a well-known author, this pair had the credentials of 'creative genius' written all over them, certainly within the advertising field. Personally I have nothing against the duo and find their work and ideas highly refreshing, but what happened next is what constitutes the problem.

To boost the creative work a series of brainstorms had been called, with a mixture of both individuals from the team involved in providing the service as well as a few select externals, including myself, whose insight and background was relevant to the task at hand. Coming in to the workshops I was taken aback by firstly, how linguistically focused many of the excercises were in the sense that not only did they focus on creating ideas, but also crafting these ideas into the most beautiful prose ever - all at the same time. Secondly, the sessions dived straight in, with no warm-up whatsoever to bring the team together and with a very ambitious agenda of work to achieve by the end of the day.

As you would expect, the sessions floundered and much less was accomplished in the time available than what the organisers hoped for. The two consultants, like everyone else, were completely drained by the days activities and proceeded to question why some of the individuals had been present at the meeting, when they clearnly weren't going to contribute anything. It appeared that lines had got crossed between the leaders of the group and the consultants as to what was the outcome of the session and who should be involved. Some of the comments from the consultants annoyed me hugely and I began to think in detail about what had happened and why I had adjusted to their working methods and some of the others hadn't.

1. Relaxing before innovating - check out some 'non-method' methods of how to get people to drop some of the familiar office-induced tensions and anxieties that are the enemy of any creative brainstorm Running Creative Brainstorms
2. Beware of imposing your own ideal way of working on others - advertising as an industry seems to be extremely word-heavy, rewarding to people with linguistic intelligence and capability, but those who lean more towards visual or spatial intelligence, or indeed are capable technological innovation sometimes struggle expressing their ideas purely in words. Be aware of your own comfort zone in terms of not just working style, but also jargon and lingo pertaining to your own professional field and how that can turn off people who aren't doing the same work as you. What are the things that all of you have in common? Concentrate on that to bring together a diverse team and build on everybody's strengths rather than exposing their weaknesses.
3. Don't divide people into the creative and non-creative, not even implicitly - a Freudian slip earlier in the day from one of the leaders made the rest of the day excruciating to say the least. When discussing how the groups should be split, rather than just talking names, the person emphasised the importance of having at least one 'creative' per group, this way of talking of course again deriving from the advertising industry's way of talking collectively about creatives when in fact meaning art directors and copy writers, yet to non-advertising folk this sounds like dividing people into creative and non-creative people. Again, when this is the perception, it is needless to ask why anyone would bother contributing.
4. Concentrate on one task at a time - Again, break things down into manageable-sized chunks - if you are a team with a track record of previously working together your chunks can be bigger, but your innovation may only be incremental as being familiar with each other means your thinking may already have got stuck in some grooves. To avoid this manifestation of group-think, you could adopt a role-play approach, where each of you champions the cause of a specific group relevant to the problem you are trying to solve, for instance consumers, marketers, designers, programmers etc. If you are a diverse team, the chunks need to be smaller, yet your innovation can potentially be bigger, because fresh pairs of eyes on old problems can help see things from new angles.
5. Plan accordingly - if it is a huge task you are embarking on, and you have a diverse team to help you with it, one brainstorm or workshop may not be enough, but you instead need to plan a sequence of them, progressively narrowing down the scope. Again, the earlier you start your planning the more options you have at your disposal.
6. The facilitator often does the most work, but invisibly so make sure you have one and that they understand what is expected of them and why the others are there - The best facilitators just make things happen and that's how it seems, but the reality is very much that of the swan in the lake, above the water graciously gliding past, making it seem effortless while feet paddle feverishly under water to keep the bird moving. That is the facilitator for you and with a diverse team the facilitator often has to be the one capturing comments, building on people's comments, coaxing input from the more quieter team members, keeping time, the lot. A task not to be underestimated and often the success of any brainstorm is down to how good the facilitation was.
7. If language is an issue, focus on expressing ideas, not composing the most lyrical prose - Capturing ideas and phrasing them for most conceptual impact are two different things and require two very different modes of thinking: ideas need your mind to be in open-mode, thinking freely, broadly and making lateral links as well as conceptual jumps. Finding the best adjectives to describe a product you already know what it is, requires your mind to be in closed mode - analysing, evaluating. Often people stuggle to leap from one mode to the next in the same session, so it's a good idea to split them apart, forcing everyone to be in the same mode all at the same time.
8. Allow contribution and input, even when the official session has ended - particularly if this is your own team you are drawing upon, it's no good if you normally tell them to zip it when they have a suggestion or idea for you and then you ask them when it suits you. Walk the talk and allow people to be part of the beginning as well as the end. Sometimes you can't make amendments anymore despite people coming up with an excellent idea, but grace them with an honest explanation of the situation and if possible, think up a way of using their idea somewhere where it still can make a difference. If you do that, you find people are more willing to help you too.
9. Having the idea is the easy bit, implementing it is often hard - that means making sure the ideas live on beyond the brainstorm and they will, if you have observed the rules above. People you have involved will have a vested interest in making sure the ideas survive and are acted upon, because they were part of creating them, but invariably it will take a lot of hard work, not just from you, but from everyone - so what better than having a team around willing to help!

So creative brainstorms can work - and pooling people's ideas, regardless of background and don't you believe anyone that tells you the opposite. In fact, if the brainstorm didn't come out as planned, rather than blame others, it's worth taking a long, hard look at yourself to see if you indeed committed some of the mistakes catalogued above. Fix the problem and try again. As Gary Hamel puts it:

When you look at companies like Toyota, you see their ability to mobilize the intelligence of the so-called ordinary workers. Going forward, no company will be able to afford to waste a single iota of human imagination and intellectual power.

Surely We must be smarter than this? Lessons in Leadership from Monkeys

This great post got me really depressed this morning. It's all about a science experiment with monkeys, where they get soaked with cold water as soon as any monkey tries to climb a ladder in the cage that has a bunch of bananas placed on top. Before you know it, the monkeys are beating up anyone who tries and moreover, the new ones introduced to the cage quickly get beaten up too if trying to climb the ladder and join in the beating, even after the soaking with cold water has stopped.

It's a depressing tale of habit over initiative, settling with culture rather than asking the question why. I found it particularly depressing as I'm an idealist at heart and believe in people's ability to rise above stupidity (at least eventually!) and be smarter than that. I pray I'm not wrong, but this experiment sounds awfully like some bad workplaces I've come across in the past..

So the conclusion being that if you want culture change, you will have to do more than just tell people that's what you want.. if the Pavlovian conditioning is too strong you need something equally strong (if not stronger!) to balance it out, moreover something more than extrinsic motivation and then back it up with people leading the change themselves by being role models or like Gandhi famously said: Be the Change You Want to See in the World.

Update from LEGO Universe

It's all very exciting - we recently had BBC Newsround's Adam over to the LEGO HQ to sample the work going into creating LEGO Universe - a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) where everything is made out of LEGO bricks and you can build just about anything - alone or together with your friends. Here's Adam's report

Best of 2006: Oldies but Goldies

So here we are; another year nearing it's end so I thought a good way to start clearing the path for new exciting topics to be meditated upon in the new Year, would be to first celebrate some of the all-time most popular posts on this blog. Without further ado here goes:

1. Life Observations in a Nutshell: best bumper stickers This hilarious selection of one-liners will have you chuckling long into the night.
2. The Secret of Happy Employees Happiness at work really isn't rocket science; very similar in fact to what makes us happy in our everyday lives too.
3. The Myers-Bricks Recruitment Method is of course a hilarious take on the famous Myers-Briggs test so liberally applied in recruitment these days.
4. A Procrastinator's Guide to Getting Things Done getting organised is really this simple. Honestly :)
5. How to Encourage Innovation in Business some rules for revolutionaries
6. Life Observations in a Nutshell: Best Bumper Stickers part II the follow up to the most popular post ever; here are some more additions to an almost unbeatable collection already
7. Death by Powerpoint never be accused of making a boring presentation ever again - here are a few tips and tricks to keep you going
8. The Essence of Intelligence is in the Ability to Understand Others nuff said
9. Worst Analogies Ever use with caution; you have been warned!
10. Running Creative Brainstorms: a Collection of 'Non-Method' Methods use these and harness the creativity of your friends, employees, family members...

So there we are - hopefully these nuggets will keep you laughing and thinking until I think of something else to blog about. :)