Sinnovation: The 10 Deadly Sins of Innovation

BusinessWeek ran an article last week on the 7 deadly sins of innovation.  Let me know which ones you face most often and how you deal with it! Here’s a summary of the article:

Sinnovation – BusinessWeek

October 21, 2009 (2:38 PM) by GMM

The seven deadly sins of the innovator—and how you can stop yourself from committing them

Just for fun, let’s take a look at seven of the most common and deadly sins of the innovator. We’ve seen all of these cause failures of Biblical proportions.

1. Lust. Innovating in a space you have no business being in. Trying to innovate outside your operational expertise or brand footprint creates incredible inertia internally. It also causes unhealthy confusion externally. “Wait,” the customer says. “My longtime supplier of plastic molding injection equipment is now making iPhone (AAPL) accessories? What gives?”

2. Gluttony. Trying to create too many initiatives with too few resources. Innovation takes emotional and financial capital and focus. Instead of making a number of small bets, focus your team and resources on one or two initiatives that have the greatest probability of hitting it big.

3. Greed. Taking short-term profits at the expense of long-term growth. The stock market demands a high rate of return, which naturally results in safe bets like line extensions — leaving you at risk of being blown out of the water by an industry-changing idea. The solution? Create two teams. Put one in charge of evolution and the other in charge of revolution. You’ll get both short- and long-term growth.

4. Sloth. Taking short cuts. Too many otherwise brilliant leaders have made the mistake of thinking that speed and short cuts are the only way to successfully innovate. While we agree that being overly cautious — “Let’s test the idea for the 83rd time” — is also potentially fatal, there is a happy medium. Think big, quantify, qualify, refine, and launch. This should take no more than 12 months.

5. Wrath. Being so focused on your competition that you miss the same opportunities your rivals are missing. You can’t read the label when you are sitting inside the jar. Don’t get kicked to the curb by someone outside your industry who is rightly focused on the consumer (and not either one of you).

6. Envy. In the context of innovation, envy means launching a “me too” product instead of finding a space you can own. So when your sales team comes to you and demands that you launch a product to compete with the “hot” new offering they just saw from the competitor, don’t take the bait.

7. Pride. You won’t give up on your favorite idea — even when the numbers prove you’re wrong. When it comes to your ideas, you must take a long, hard look at the data. Unless the data are overwhelmingly in favor of your idea, drop it and work on the one the team secretly knows is better.

Religion tells us the seven deadly sins are fatal to spiritual progress. We will let you debate that thought with the theologian of your choice. But we can tell you they are definitely fatal if you want to innovate successfully.

Read the full “Sinnovation” article in BusinessWeek

Happy Innovating!

Cindy Diamond

CEO, IGNiTE . . . fueling creativity and innovation

Facilitating Consumer Insights Workshops

One of the most difficult tasks for marketing teams to do without a facilitator is develop consumer insights.  I’ve seen “insights” that range from purely self-serving (“Mom wants a more healthy popcorn for herself”) to insights that are simply a finding from the research (“Teens want salty snacks to satisfy afterschool hunger”).  Getting to real insights is difficult because brand teams are so close to their brands and find it difficult to take a more holistic perspective of the target audience.   One thing, however, is certain: a penetrating insight into consumer motivations can help successfully seed a product or brand in the minds of target consumers and successfully motivate purchase.

In my insights workshops I often steer clients away from two common mistakes in developing insights: the first mistake is articulating a “consumer insight” that is simply an observation easily addressed or solved by the product or service offered by your company.  Most often, these self-serving statements are not insightful or relevant to the target audience.  The second mistake is looking at consumer research as a place to gather insights. Research findings are not insights. They are information that can be used by marketers to develop a deeper consumer understanding which can lead to insights when combined with other relevant pieces of information.

So what constitutes a consumer insight and how do you get to them through the facilitative process? A consumer insight can be defined as:

 ”A penetrating, discerning understanding about consumer motivations that unlocks opportunity”

A true insight is actually well, insightful! The discovery of a new insight triggers an “ah ha!” moment.  It requires using multiple windows into the consumer, including observation, product trials, creative techniques, and trend studies along with more traditional qualitative and quantitative methods. Together this information allows marketers to view consumer behavior from multiple angles and look for and make new connections to the brand. It’s an active process that makes for a great facilitated workshop. 

The facilitated process follows these three steps (I will lay out the facilitated process in more detail in another post as this is getting rather long!):

1. Identify the specific question about the consumer that needs to be answered – such as “What would motivate teenagers to consume  more Coke?”
2. Seek out and review as a team relevant information from your research, observations, trends, competitive data etc. that address the key question.
3. Dig deep and work to develop the penetrating discovery or “insight” from this information.

Examples of powerful insights that have led to successful business building initiatives:

• “Today information is the key to power and freedom”    –  Microsoft
• “My pets deserve my love more than people because they are more devoted to me.” — Sheba Pet Food
• “In a world that is hectic and stressful, consumers need an opportunity to relax and have a break.” — Starbucks

Insights should be checked against the following list of criteria:

• Is it relevant to the target audience?
• Is it enduring (does it have the power to remain relevant over time)?
• Is it inspiring (is the team excited by the insight? does it inspire different applications)?

Marketing teams need good facilitators to steer them from information and findings to insight. It is difficult for marketers who are close to their brands to see the consumer and how your brand fits into her/his life from a broader, more holistic perspective.  A facilitator can help teams to get to insights by asking “WHY is that important?”  when looking at key findings (keep asking “WHY?” until insights emerge).

True discovery comes from looking at what everyone else looks at but seeing what no one else sees (even if it’s right in front of them)!

Cindy Diamond, Founder and President IGNiTe

Facilitator and Chief Marketing Strategist

Core Values: An essential part of core ideology or not?

The most misunderstood, misguided and misrepresented part of an organization’s core ideology is often the core values. These values, which often give lip service to such things as: “We respect each other as equals,” “We seek diversity and diverse points of view,” etc. rarely manifest themselves within the organization they are written for. Why? For one, exactly because they are “written for” an organization and not with the input of the employees but, equally important, it’s because the management team is not equipped with the tools, the coaching and the know-how to help all members of the organization live these values day in and day out.

Why do core values matter anyway? If they permeate an organization, core values can help with recruiting employees, retaining employees, attracting and retaining new customers and creating customer loyalty. It’s impossible to ignore the importance of these values. It must be said that every company HAS core values — they just may not be the ones the senior leadership team created!

There is no better example of a company living it’s core values than Starbucks.  For anyone, facilitator or leader, attempting to create a set of core values and infuse them into the organization, I recommend reading the little book called  How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gates Gill.  This book provides a rare glimpse into a company that is actually living it’s values. I was amazed (and I think you will be to!) at how successfully Starbucks has created a culture of respect for each other, listening, and attention to the customer by bringing their core values to life in each and every store.

So, how does a facilitator or company/organization leader help leadership teams live their core values?  Here’s a short list of tips I have learned along the way:

1) Gather input from the organization. Use an anonymous survey tool to find out where things are really at and how far away you are from the values you would like your organization to embody.

2) For each of the values, determine how committed the leadership team is to actually “living” that value day in and day out. Articulate what it means to “live” the value.  Set aside those values that not everyone is willing to commit to.

3) Articulate what the organization will look like when all the values are being actively “lived” by all in the organization. Create a vivid description using picture and words to communicate your vision to the organization

4) Create and implement a communications plan so that every single person within the organization knows how they should live each of the values and what that means for their everyday interactions with co-workers, leadership and customers.

5) Set up a consistent reward and staffing structure.  Reward ALL employees based on how effectively they convey the organization’s values. Hire only those people whose own values are congruent with the organizations.

This little book, How Starbucks Saved My Life, is a powerful depiction of the impact an organizations values can have on both the success of the overall entity and, even more importantly, the happiness of the employees who are out on the line serving customers.

Click on this link to see the core values of another successful company:  Zappos

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/21/news/companies/obrien_zappos10.fortune/index.htm

Cindy Diamond

IGNiTE . . . fueling creativity and innovation

Developing a Vision for Your Organization: A Great Team Building Experience

building-your-companys-vision-overview-of-key-concepts3 (link to a Powerpoint presentation)

Of all the workshops and ideations sessions I facilitate,  I believe the best team building experiences are created through my vision workshops. Both new and existing teams benefit immensely from this experience. The most essential piece for the success of the workshop is the participation of senior leadership. If the senior leaders and present and are openly and honestly seeking the input of the team these sessions are wonderful bonding experiences for all involved.

I based my vision workshops off of the the HBR article on vision written by James Collins and Jerry Porras titled “Building Your Company’s Vision.”   They introduce the idea that vision is made up of “core ideology” and an ”envisioned future.” When developing “core ideology,” which consists of core values and core purpose, it’s essential that the group that does the actual work in the organization has input into the ideology. Core values must reflect the values of the people who come to do the work every day; if they do not, the values are irrelevant! The core purpose articulates the reason the organization exists. The people  who come to work at your organization everyday should have a passion for doing that work. 

The “envisioned future,” which consists of a BIG goal and a vivid description of that goal help the group paint a picture of what the future looks like. It creates alignment within the group and has everyone marching toward the same goal.  Simply put, if you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter how you get there! The envisioned future gets everyone onto the same path so that efforts are synergystic and effective in moving the organization forward.

 I have attached a short Powerpoint presentation that summarizes the key concepts from the HBR article. I have added some additional examples for non-profits. I have found this way of thinking about vision to be just as effective for non-profit organizations as it is for corporations.

Please feel free to send any questions!

Cindy Diamond

President and CEO Diamond Marketing Solutions / IGNiTE

A strategy, innovation and creativity consulting firm

Brainstorming: Finding the Next Big Idea

Finding the Next Big Idea (link to presentation)

Last week I went to Palm Beach, FL to present at the CASRO conference for market research professionals. I presented on . . . you guessed it! . . . “Brainstorming: Finding the Next Big Idea.” My goal was to provide some structure and process tools to assist these professionals in facilitating innvoation sessions with their internal teams or client teams. I’ve attached the presentation so you can view it if you’re interested. Feel free to post questions or comments and I will respond. I received some great questions from the audience at CASRO and I’m looking forward to your questions too! I hope you find the presentation useful (the link is at the top of this post).

Cindy Diamond

Diamond Marketing Solutions / IGNiTE

Principal, Strategist & Facilitator

Fueling Creativity and Innovation

10 Reasons to Hold Retreats to Build Your Business

I read this article on the Brandchannel.com website at http://www.brandchannel.com/brand_speak.asp?bs_id=197 and thought it was worth sharing with others interested in facilitation as well as with corporate teams seeking to conduct multi-day meetings to achieve a specific objective. While this article specifies “marketing teams,” most of the ideas are applicable to any team. The article text is included in full underneath my comments. Team retreats, much like those discussed in the Leoncini book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, can be a real boost to productivity and team building. While team building is typically a secondary objective, it often becomes the biggest catalyst for increased productivity and success. Retreats are unique in that they allow teams to take time to thoroughly discuss ideas, to come to mutual understanding by seeing issues from others points of view and because they allow the facilitator enough time to work with team members on trust building. Trust is the foundation upon which high performing teams are built. Without it, team members spend an abundance of time and energy on political games and competitive maneuvering instead of seeking cooperation and maximizing team synergy.   Another benefit of the retreat is really getting out of the mindset of the corporate day-to-day world and giving team members the time and space to think creatively and to envision the future. A skilled facilitator will structure this time so that it is somewhat less structured than the typical corporate meetings yet structured enough to provide multiple ways into the creative tasks allowing creativity to flow naturally for participants. I thought this article was a good reminder of why and when it’s important to get out of the corporate meeting room and spend some time in a more relaxed environment working, creating, ideating and playing with your team members.   — Cindy Diamond, Diamond Marketing Solutions & Ignite   Ten Reasons to Hold Marketing Retreats to Build Your Business and Your Brand by James S. Twerdahl July 14, 2008 issue Management retreats can be a very powerful tool for effecting change in organizations and brands. They do need careful planning and thoughtful and experienced facilitation, but properly done they can really help take your brand or organization to the next level. They are particularly important for those who are responsible for creating, building and maintaining brands. Here are the principle reasons to consider a marketing retreat for your organization.

 

1.   To reaffirm your company and product brands and overall strategic direction. Markets served by virtually all organizations are changing at an incredible pace. While mission and vision statements and the overall positioning of your brand should be designed for the long-term, it is critical that they periodically be reviewed and reaffirmed. Changes in technology, competitive activity, the world economy and any number of other factors can necessitate change in your brand positioning. At the very least, the near term strategic direction must be reviewed and adjusted to account for the changing reality. And, there are still a great many companies who have not formally set forth their brand positioning statements—a retreat is an ideal time to do so.  2.   To unify management. Even the best management teams can lose focus on overall goals as individual managers work in their respective areas. Retreats can be a good way of re-unifying the team and making sure that everyone is embracing the same overall objectives, goals, and brand engagement strategies. Retreats are also an ideal way of integrating new managers with older team members. Both in formal meetings and at breaks, meals and recreation times, participants can get to know one another much better and form bonds that are tough to forge when involved in day-to-day operations.  3.   To solve disputes and mediate tensions. Tensions and disputes arise in all organizations. Rather than letting them fester and become destructive and counterproductive, open discussions in non-threatening retreats, can be a good way of letting people share points of view and resolve conflicts.  4.   To identify issues. In the daily heat of battle, issues that have not been resolved often come up. Issues that cross departmental lines can remain unresolved because it takes unified actions to attack them. In a well managed retreat, issues can be identified, analysis can begin, and initiatives or action plans set to resolve them.  5.   To brainstorm and be creative. Away from the fray of day-to-day activities without phones ringing and e-mails to be answered, it may be possible to foster higher levels of creativity. Group creativity sessions can be highly synergistic as one person plays off of another’s idea.  6.   To develop new products and programs. In addition to brainstorming for new products and programs, healthy discussion about new directions can take place and plans laid. Because new products and programs typically involve actions from many departments, retreats can be a good way of outlining the plans and assigning responsibility, setting overall timetables, establishing budgets and other activities from the “big picture” perspective.  7.   To face and resolve crises. Even the best brands may periodically have to deal with crises of one kind or another. Typically when a crisis occurs, there are several hurried meetings to try and deal with the immediate situation. It is often helpful to get away from the immediate issues to assess the situation overall and make sure the organization is realigned not only to deal with the issue but not have it impact future growth and development of the brand.  8.   To provide management training. A key part of many retreats is on-going management training either from internal resources or from outside speakers brought in to address specific topics. Many retreats have themes and in keeping with the theme, speakers can discuss industry best practices, new trends or other areas to improve managers’ effectiveness individually and as members of the team. Retreats are also excellent ways of orienting new leaders in their new roles in the organization.  9.   To reward and recognize outstanding efforts. An important element in many retreats should be to recognize those team members who have really made great contributions. Discussing their successes and accomplishments, if done properly, can help motivate others and build a sense of team. Clearly the accomplishments praised have to be ones that contribute to the team overall, but acknowledging someone who has helped the team can really encourage others to do so as well.  10.   To build consensus. If done well, the first nine points should all be helping to build consensus and a unified sense of where the brand is going. This last point is highlighted as a summary because often organizational leaders may meet resistance in fostering change. Even though a leader can exert their organizational authority, it is often much more important to “sell people” than to “tell people.” Retreats can often be used to expose all sides of an issue and allow the team to reach the best possible conclusions. When reached as a group with everyone buying-in, the likelihood of success can be much greater than if the direction is dictated. Brands are organic and continue to evolve and change over time. Constant monitoring and reassessment are necessary to optimize the long-term returns from your brand.

James S. Twerdahl is the managing director of James S. Twerdahl & Associates.

Facilitation Techniques for Innovative Creative Thinking

Facilitating groups through brainstorming and idea generation can sometimes feel like trudging through mud — particularly towards the end of a day or with a difficult topic.  You can energize a group’s creative thinking by taking them away from the topic for a short period of time to a new arena that is parallel or loosely connected, and then returning to your topic using that new thinking. This is a lateral thinking technique called “associations” that can be used with any group. Let me give you an example.

• Let’s say you’re facilitating a team through an idea generation session for energy efficient flash lights.  You’ve been in ideation for hours and there simply are no more ideas flowing.  Ask the group to forget about flashlights for a minute and answer the following question: “Name some things that are energy efficient.” Record the responses so the group can see them. You may get responses like: solar powered watches, small cars, electric vehicles, screen savers, long-distance runners, etc.
• Next, using the list of energy efficient items just generated, ask the group: “What are the attributes of things that are ‘energy efficient?’” Record the responses so the group can see them.  Responses might include: electric, solar powered, turn themselves off, store energy, etc.
• Finally, ask group members to take a few quiet minutes to come up with ideas for energy efficient flashlights using the list of attributes just generated. You might get ideas such as: a flashlight that turns itself off after a certain period of time, flashlight that stores solar energy to operate when it’s dark, flashlight that stores electric energy, flashlight powered by human contact, etc.

The best ideas in this exercise often come when group members build on each others ideas. A wacky idea often becomes a very innovative idea as groups work together to build them.

Here are some other related lateral thinking exercises you might try:

• Get Fired Ideas: Ask the group “what idea could you go back to your CEO with that would definitely get you fired.” Make a list of these “get fired ideas” and then one by one turn them into ideas that would get you promoted.
• Worlds: Give each team member a “world” to go to, such as: Space, rock-n-roll, pre-school, high-tech, low-tech, nature, Hollywood, etc. Ask each team member to go to his or her world and find example of things that have a key attribute of your innovation focus (for example, portability) and write them down.  Next, using the association technique, make a list that answers the question “why is that item in your world portable” (fill-in the attribute you selected); build new ideas for your innovation focus from the list of attributes.
• Role Play: Give each group member the name of a famous person. Tell them to assume they are that person. Ask them to think about what’s important to that person, what their living environment is like, what are they thinking about? Next, ask them to invent a new product within your innovation project scope that works for that person.

The key to successful creativity with lateral thinking techniques is to move people away from concentrating on the specific opportunity area you are brainstorming on to another place. Let them incubate in the other place for a while and then force fit that new thinking back to the innovation opportunity.

Sometimes it takes a change in focus to open up creativity in the brain. Facilitating your group away from your primary focus to another area provides stimulus for their creativity and can be a productive, energetic and fun way to make significant progress during innovation sessions.

– Cindy Diamond, Diamond Marketing Solutions & Ignite

Facilitating Idea Generation — Divergence and Convergence

I read a great snippet today that said “Innovation is 10% idea generation and 90% process.” I have found, in my work as an innovation strategist and facilitator, that this statement is 100% true! That has inspired me to discuss the Diamond Innovation Process.

Click on the following link to see a chart of the process: Diamond Innovation Process

There are two main components to the idea generation process. The first is the expansion phase, also referred to as the divergent thinking phase. This is where the facilitator helps the group explore lots of territory where ideas might be uncovered. The goal of this phase is to generate lots of ideas around a clearly articulated problem or opportunity. The second phase is the convergence phase. This is the phase where the facilitator takes the group through a process to hone down the ideas and select those that are most likely to solve the problem or best address the opportunity.

The graphic attached called “The Diamond Innovation Process” depicts these two processes in a diamond shape. In the diamond shape, both processes have equal weight — the top triangle is the expansion (divergence) phase and the bottom triangle is the convergence phase. This is not always the case in reality! Teams will often spend the majority of their time on the divergence process and save ten minutes (if any time at all!) at the end for the convergence process. Ultimately, this does not produce the best result. Particularly when problems are complex, multi-faceted or mission critical, teams most likely need to spend at least as much time on convergence as they do on divergence.

Each of these phases has multiple steps as follows:

Expansion phase:

Step 1: Clearly identify the issue that is to be addressed with the innovation process

Step 2: Immersion: Explore information relevant to the problem. This could be trends, current operating environment, market research, competitive data, etc. — specific information that helps to shed light on the issue being explored.

Step 3: Identify opportunity areas: The team identifies buckets, called “opportunity areas” where a solution may be found. For an innovation session focusing on introducing a new snack product the opportunity areas might be “healthy snacking”, “kid focused snacks”, “snacking for energy”, and “indulgent snacks.”

Step 4: Idea Generation: For each of the opportunity areas, the faciltiator leads the team through idea generation techniques to help uncover new possibilities. During this process, the rules of brainstorming apply (see my post on “Setting the Stage” for some effective rules). As you move through the idea generation, new ideas become harder to find and the facilitator must be prepared with exercises that stimulate the group’s thinking. This is often when the best new ideas are born!

The Convergence Phase:

Step one: Setting criteria – the group works together to set the criteria for how ideas will be selected to move forward to the next step. These might include “fits with the brand” and “is unique in the category.” At this stage, be careful not to narrow the sieve too much or you may lose some great ideas before they get a chance to be explored.

Step two: Idea Selection — using a variety of convergence techniques (I’ll talk about these in another post), the facilitator helps the group narrow down the number of ideas to a manageable number. This will include voting, combining like ideas and championing favorite ideas. Championing favorite ideas is important so that the consensus oriented process doesn’t drive out really creative, unique (but sometimes difficult) ideas.

Step three: Synthesis/Discussion – the team comes to agreement on the ideas that will move forward into concept research or whatever the next step of your process will be.  The group provides definition around each of the lead ideas — perhaps, at this stage, creating concept outlines that can be written into concepts for the research step.

Step four: Research Preparation– this is the process where the new concepts are finalized and the research parameters are identified. Parameters include the key objectives of the research, the audience to test with, the screening criteria and the survey or discussion guide.

With this BRIEF description (I know, that’s funny!) you can see how process is 90% of the innovation process and ideas are 10%. Effective idea generation requires strong process for both the expansion and convergence processes. These two phases are equally important to the innovation process. You can generate lots and lots of ideas, but without structure and process for evaluating them they remain only ideas.

– Cindy Diamond, Principal Diamond Marketing Solutions & IGNiTE