General — Third Thought

The Surprising ROI in Innovation

18th of April ~

Look at any organization chart and you’ll see a familiar list of Departments: Operations, Risk Management, Marketing, Sales, Human Resources, R&D, Finance, Look at your own organization charts and assess how many of those groups are involved in regulatory and risk management activities.

Look at how you spend YOUR day. How much of your time is spent reacting and putting out fires?

My point is that innovation requires proactive work. And in most companies there’s no Department of Innovation. Research and Development is involved in new product or service development but that’s just one slice of your innovation opportunities.

According to research by Doblin, an innovative strategy firm:

Most companies equate innovation with the development of new products. But creating new products is only one of ten types of innovation, and on its own, it provides the least return.

That’s right. Most innovation effort is put into new product development. But that’s the LOWEST in terms of cumulative value creation. They’ve identified 10 types of Innovation under three categories:

Configuration
Offering
Experience

And when you dig into their ideas you’ll see that every part of the company can innovate.

INNOVATION IS EVERYONE’S JOB. IT CAN HAPPEN IN EVERY DEPARTMENT.

Productivity Tools

22nd of January ~

Don’t you want to be more efficient? I do. I want to make the time I spend at my desk as efficient as possible because I want to save time for doing all my other enjoyable activities.

Last week I attended a webinar by Connie Malamed who is a learning expert. She’s the author of a nifty little app called Instructional Design Guru and shares provocative information about adult learning,

One of my favorite posts is the Best Productivity Tools for 2012. I’ve started using the online TaDa list which is accessible anywhere, you can share it and send yourself a copy. I know I can actually WRITE a list on a piece of paper and have a hard copy instantly. But I am finding it useful for categories of lists that I don’t want to lost.

Thanks Connie!

Third Thought Deck

19th of December ~

Knowing When to Quit

10th of October ~

One of the most difficult decisions we face as innovators is when to carry on and when to throw in the towel. As a confirmed optimist I can image a rosy outcome for a very long time. Maybe too long.

photo by Stu French

The Sunk Cost Effect

The book, Into Thin Air, tells the story of a disaster on Mount Everest in which 8 climbers were killed. The causes of the accident are in controversy but some of the factors suggest that the climbers were too close to quit. They’d invested $80,000. They’d almost made it the year before but had been disappointed. They were within a short 100 yards of their goal.

We experience the Sunk Cost Effect when we are reluctant to pull out because we’ve invested time and resources into a project or idea. We continue in blind hope. “I’ve already spent so much!”.

Additionally, there is an element of shame associated with quitting. Nobody wants to be a quitter. I remember getting a fresh dose of hope when a friend said to me, “You don’t want to quit just before the miracle happens.” Hope sprang forth anew. I didn’t quit when it was time and wasted another two months on a fruitless effort.

So When Should You Quit?

I suggest there are a few areas to help you with these difficult decisions.

Where is your energy? Do you still feel energized by the work/project/journey?
Are you getting fresh reasons to hope or are you starting to look delusional?
What’s your track record? If you err toward dilettance try staying with it a little longer.
Are you looking backward for forward? Sunk costs are already sunk. Perhaps you’ve heard the adage, “Don’t throw good money after bad.”

This is never an easy decision. But one of the hallmarks of innovation is the recognition that not every idea is a precious pearl. Know when to quit and put your energy where it can pay off.

Technique Tuesday: Force Fit

20th of September ~

Force Fit is an open-ended idea-generating tool. Use it when you want to:

Find uncommon ideas
Challenge yourself to find unusual connections

photo by Vineet Radhakrishnan

Steps:

Select 5 objects to stimulate the 5 senses.
Clarify Challenge Statement. For example: In What Ways Might We…(insert problem to be solved)….
Using your Force Fit worksheet (below). select an object and describe its attributes in the left-hand column. In the right-hand column force connections to the challenge statement.
Repeat the process until you’ve reviewed several items.

Guidelines
Choose stimuli that seem unrelated to the challenge
Use these principles of idea generating:

Respect for the Newborn
No Evaluation
Quantity Leads to Quality
Humor and Silliness are GOOD

Stay with the process–it feels awkward at first but you will definitely generate uncommon ideas that can be refined into something viable.

Force Fit Worksheet

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