Report 103

Your newsletter on applied creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.

Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Issue 161

Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your fortnightly newsletter on creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.

As always, if you have news about creativity, imagination, ideas, or innovation please feel free to forward it to me for potential inclusion in Report103. Your comments and feedback are also always welcome.

Information on unsubscribing, archives, reprinting articles, etc can be found at the end of this newsletter.

GOOD REWARDS FOR THE WRONG PEOPLE

As you doubtless know, rewards are an important element of innovation initiatives. Rewards motivate people to share ideas, develop ideas and implement ideas. When we start new clients up with our idea management software (see below), we stress the importance of rewards in order to encourage participation in use of the software.

Moreover recognition is a particularly important form of reward. Indeed, according to a survey by Rober Half International, “'limited recognition and praise' was cited as the most common reason for why employees left a company. It was ranked higher than compensation, limited authority, personality conflicts, and all other responses.”

So, when you read in the Acme Widgets company newsletter that Elmer McGillicuty, the vice president for Research and Development, has received an Innovation Excellence plaque from the CEO, you might think that the company is motivating people for their contribution to innovation. Sadly, if Acme Widgets is a large company you would probably be wrong. In fact, by giving this plaque to Elmer, Acme is very likely demotivating people from participating in innovation initiatives.

Who Is Really Doing the Innovation?

That is because in most large companies, high level managers are at best a small part of the innovation process. Actual innovation is being performed by teams of individuals who devise ideas and see them through to implementation. So imagine how employees in Elmer's division feel when they read that he has been given a plaque for innovative work that the employees have performed themselves. After all, the only thing worse than not being recognised for your efforts is seeing someone else being recognised for your efforts! From what I have been hearing from clients, innovation specialists and even friends, this kind of thing happens a lot. Worse, it is generating a lot of bad feeling which is impeding innovation in many large firms.

The reason that this problem exists is obvious. In companies with thousands of employees, top management does not usually look at the performance of individuals or even teams. Rather they look at the performance of business units or divisions within the company. And when a business unit performs well, they often reward the head of that unit. However, when the organisation is very large, the head of unit is unlikely to have any hands-on participation in innovative projects. Rather she is looking after strategic issues for the unit. This is not to say that the head of unit does not play a part in the innovation process. On the contrary, she plays a very important part. However, it is only a part. And when the many people of the unit see that she is getting all the rewards for their hard work, they are likely to be annoyed. And if the head of unit is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as not really being involved in the innovation process, employees in the unit are likely to be especially annoyed to see her winning rewards they believe they deserve themselves.

Rewards Hierarchy

The solution is not simple. Top management cannot realistically monitor the performance of all individuals and teams in an organisation in order to identify who is adding what to the firm's innovation initiative. The head of unit, who wins an award, is unlikely to want to give it away to another individual or team in her unit – and in any event, she is probably deserving of an award if she is encouraging innovation in her business unit. However, she is not the sole individual deserving of an innovation award.

The secret of course, is to change the way awards are granted. Vice presidents, heads of units and other people in charge of large numbers of employees should not be awarded for being innovators themselves. Rather they should be rewarded for facilitating innovation. And proof of their merit in facilitating innovation should be based on several factors: the number of innovations coming out of their units, the value of those innovations and, most importantly, the number of people and teams participating in devising, developing and implementing creative ideas that become innovations.

When senior managers are rewarded, as they should be, for helping people to innovate better rather than simply for running innovative divisions, they become motivated to recognise the innovation contribution of their subordinates and to communicate to the company the contributions of those people.

To achieve such results, it is necessary for top management to create a rewards hierarchy that recognises different levels of participation in a company's innovation process. In addition to division heads who facilitate innovation, firms should reward creative thinkers who devise ideas, teams who develop ideas and production people who implement ideas. All of these people contribute to the corporate innovation programme. When they are all recognised and rewarded, they will happily put more effort into innovating.

And that's what you want, is it not?

BACK TO INNOVATION BASICS

If you are a regular reader, you will know that in Report 103 we are running a series of articles on the basics of corporate innovation. Unfortunately, in spite of the growing interest in corporate innovation, there is a disturbing lack of agreement on common terminology and even how some very basic processes work. We are addressing that here in Report 103. You can read the original article on “Innovation: Back to Basics” at http://www.creativejeffrey.com/creative/innovation_basics.php and find previous articles in the series at http://www.creativejeffrey.com/report103/archives.php.

BACK TO BASICS: INNOVATORS

What do Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster and individual employee innovators have in common? In spite of what many people think, there is no empirical evidence that any of these beasts actually exist! Since Big Foot and Nessie have little to do with corporate innovation, we will look at the myth of the employee innovator.

An Example

Consider this example. Manar is a research and development manager for Jamilah Flying Carpets. She wants to develop a technology that makes acceleration more graceful so people do not fall off the carpets when they take off – a serious problem in the industry. She launches an ideas campaign which generates a number of ideas. Three of them, by Nasira, Hilel and Kaliq are not only brilliant, but can be combined together to create an elegant solution.

The project team responsible for developing the ideas into a viable concept and overseeing its implementation is managed by Najah and includes seven others with diverse skills. After all, we all know that Jamilah Flying Carpets is a highly innovative company and got that by utilising diverse project teams.

The team called on Ming, a production manager in their factory in Shanghai, to get feedback on how how their ideas could be realised in the manufacturing process. He also followed development through regular video conferences.

Once a viable concept was drawn up, it was sent to Matteo, Maria and Elvira in Milan in order to develop a prototype for testing and feedback. They did a brilliant job and added their own creative touches that not only improved the functionality of the original ideas, but ensured the new flying carpets looked incredibly stylish.

Following some feedback from dealers, the prototype was sent to Ming who called together a team in order to plan the production process. Several main suppliers were also brought in. Sahn, a research scientist in an electronics firm that has worked with Jamilah Flying Carpets for years made a suggestion that would slash production costs of the new flying carpets by at least 10%.

A clever marketing campaign designed by Shadiyah and Yumn helped communicate the innovative features of the new carpets, ensuring their launch in the marketplace was a tremendous success.

And, as you will no doubt know if you follow the business news, Jamilah Flying Carpets made record revenues as a result of the new carpets, which sent their stocks up by a quarter over the past year.

Question: in this scenario, who was the innovator?

Corporate Innovation Is Almost Always a Group Effort

In the first article in the Back to Innovation Basics series, we defined innovation as “the implementation of creative ideas that generate value, usually through increased income, reduced costs or both.” In other words, innovation is a process that in organisations involves at minimum a team and in many cases dozens of people, if not more. Sometimes, the entire company is involved. As a result, no single individual can be called an innovator. Although, in the example, Jamilah Flying Carpets could claim to be one.

Nevertheless, we hear the term “innovator” applied to individual employees all the time. How is this possible?

It is because people are confusing the term “creativity” and “innovation”. In most cases, when I read an article or blog post that refers to an individual employee as an innovator, the author appears to mean “creative thinker”. Even this is problematic as few innovations are the result of a single creative idea. They may be sparked by a single idea. Nevertheless, all but the most incremental innovations are the result of numerous ideas – as was the case in the example.

Not just Semantics

This issue of differentiating between an innovator and a creative thinker may seem to be a minor issue of semantics. But it is not. If in Jamilah Flying Carpets, only the people who have big ideas, that eventually lead to innovations, are rewarded as innovators, a lot of very creative, productive and clever people who contributed to the innovation process will feel left out and may well come to feel demotivated.

In the example above, it was Nasira's idea that arguably formed the core of the new ideas that lead to the development of the innovative flying carpet. However, if only Nasira is rewarded for being an innovator, then the other idea generators and the development team, all of whom contributed considerably to the project, will feel that their work is not being recognised. In future, this may mean they are less likely to contribute their own creative efforts in order to see an innovative project through. Indeed, in a worst case scenario, jealous co-workers might even try to sabotage a project in
order to make Nasira look bad!

Fortunately, Jamilah Flying Carpets appreciates the importance of rewarding and recognising all participants of the innovation process (I told you they were innovative!). Nasira, Hilel and Kaliq are seen as top creative thinkers, not innovators. Other teams and individuals are recognised for their expertise and contribution to the overall innovation process. And they all had a terrific party in Dubai to celebrate their innovative work!

Innovators Are Teams, Groups and Companies

The key point here is that companies can be innovators. Teams within companies can be innovators, although “innovative” team is probably a better term. But individual employees are almost never innovators. The only exception to this rule is the one person company in which the owner creates her own innovative products and sells them. A craftsman or woman making innovative products is an example.

Rather than slapping the term “innovator” on anyone with great ideas, you would do better to recognise the creative thinker as a creative thinker. Likewise, recognise the many other people who enable her ideas to become innovative products, services and processes. When you do this, you are far along in creating a corporate culture in which innovation thrives!

MULTILINGUAL BRAINSTORMERS

If you are facilitating brainstorming sessions in international companies, the chances are those sessions are in English, but not all the participants speak English as a first language. In such a scenario, the inherent weaknesses in traditional brainstorming are exacerbated and the creative output of the session may be of poor quality unless you recognise the problems and deal with them appropriately.

Weaknesses of Traditional Brainstorming

Traditional brainstorming, as defined by Alex Osborn in his 1948 book Your Creative Power, is where a facilitator asks a group of people to shout out ideas in a non-critical, relaxed environment. The facilitator writes down the ideas and, in theory, by building upon each others' ideas the group reaches a higher level of creativity than they would if they generated ideas individually. Sadly, the theory is wrong. Traditional brainstorming has repeatedly been demonstrated to be less effective than simply having a group of people write their ideas on paper and then compiling all those ideas.

Keith Sawyer, in Group Genius, cites three main reasons that brainstorming does not work: production blocking, social inhibition and social loafing. For people who are not native English speakers, two of these are even greater impediments to participation.

Social Inhibition

Social inhibition is when people are afraid to share their ideas with a group, typically out of fear of ridicule. Since it is the most outrageous ideas that are also the most creative, this often means that the best ideas are not shared in a traditional brainstorming session. For a non-native English speaker, there is the added nervousness about expressing one's self badly, particularly if other members of the group are obviously more competent in English than is the non-native speaker.

Non-native English speakers may also fear that their idea has already been suggested, possibly in different words, and again be afraid to suggest the idea for fear of seeming stupid.

I should clarify here that these problems are not limited to non-native English speakers. Native English speakers who have had to brainstorm in other languages will also suffer these same problems. I know I have.

Production Blocking

Production blocking is when people have to stop and listen to other participants' ideas. Because this demands their concentration, this time is lost to idea generation and sharing. Non-native speakers will typically require slightly more time to process an idea in English. In a high speed brainstorming event (that is, one in which people are shouting out ideas quickly), the native speakers will grasp a new idea faster than the non-native speakers and will already be shouting out new ideas while the non-native speakers are still processing previous ideas. This can result in a mental back-log of ideas for the non-native speakers. At this point, they no longer contribute and simply struggle to listen.

Friendly Translations Become Unfriendly

In some instances, a more fluent non-native speaker may help out the less fluent. Imagine a brainstorming event in English that involves English and Japanese speakers. One of the latter studied extensively in the USA and so is very fluent in English. Other Japanese members of the team all speak at least functional English and one or two are reasonably fluent.

As the brainstorming event progresses, the fluent Japanese speaker may translate ideas into Japanese for her colleagues. Although this may seem helpful, it will actually cause two serious problems.

Firstly, while the highly fluent speaker is translating, she will not hear new ideas being suggested by the English speaking colleagues. Neither will the less fluent Japanese speakers who are listening to their colleague's translations. Worse, if the less fluent speakers ask questions, more time will be lost.

Secondly, the English speakers will become uncomfortable about the Japanese speakers talking in their own language (and this will be even worse, if any of the Japanese laugh, perhaps out of embarrassment for misunderstanding an idea). This has been observed in research, on disruption to collaborative teamwork in global environments, by Tsedal Neeley, Pamela J. Hinds, and Catherine Durnell Cramton.

If the native English speakers become irritated that within the brainstorming session, there are discussions going on that they do not understand, they are likely to feel uncomfortable and possibly angry. That may seem unfair. After all, the Japanese in this example are at a disadvantage linguistically. But the English speakers are unable to understand the Japanese conversations and feel left out.

Fixing Multilingual Brainstorming

One of the best methods of solving the problems of brainstorming in English, with a multilingual group, is to do the brainstorming on-line. This has been proven to be more effective than traditional brainstorming. For non native English speakers, it gives them time to read the challenge and other ideas as well as gives them time to more carefully write their own ideas. An ideas campaign, which is essentially a more sophisticated form of on-line brainstorming, also shares this advantage.

Nevertheless, if multilingual brainstormers are to generate ideas together in a room, there are two things you should do. Firstly, you should present them with the challenge in advance of the brainstorming. This will allow the non-native speakers to research the topic and check on relevant vocabulary prior to the event. This is important, familiarity with key vocabulary will make the non-native speakers more confident about participating.

Secondly, the brainstorming should include periods during which people write their own ideas down on paper. My preferred approach is to have people write ideas individually for 10-15 minutes. Then put them in pairs to compare ideas and add more. Then put the pairs in bigger groups and continue until the entire group is working together. This allows non-native brainstormers to write their own ideas down first. Then, when working in pairs, they will have time to discuss and compare ideas at their own paces. They can also question their partners if anything is less than clear.

Another method is what I like to call “lick-and-stick” brainstorming. That is where brainstormers write ideas on Post-its and stick them on a wall. I have, to be honest, never been a fan of this approach. But many facilitators swear by it and it does allow non-native speakers time to write their ideas and time to read other ideas.

The Positive Side of Multilingual Brainstorming

If you have come this far, you may feel that multilingual brainstorming is a bad thing that will lead to cultural problems and poor collaboration. This can indeed be the case, but if you follow my suggestions of informing participants about the event in advance and include a strong reading and writing element to your event, non-native speakers can cope very well.

That is good, because when you bring people from different cultures, different educations and different languages together, you vastly increase the breadth of thinking in your brainstorming group. And with care at the facilitation stage, that will lead to a higher level of creativity during idea generation which, of course, is the purpose of brainstorming!

References

Keith Sawyer (2007); Group Genius; Basic Books; pp 64-66

Tsedal Neeley, Pamela J. Hinds, and Catherine Durnell Cramton (2009); “Walking Through Jelly:
Language Proficiency, Emotions, and Disrupted Collaboration in Global Work”; Harvard Business School Working Knowledge; http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6226.html

WALKING THROUGH JELLY

As business becomes more and more international, the operating languages for more and more companies is English. Even in countries where English is not the national tongue, multinational companies are adopting English as the official language. This can pose problems when collaborative teams include people whose English skills vary from functional to native.

A Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Paper entitled “Walking Through Jelly:
Language Proficiency, Emotions, and Disrupted Collaboration in Global Work” is an initial study of such teams in a single German company which has recently adopted English as their official language. The results are interesting and this should be critical reading for any manager working in such an environment. You can download the paper from http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6226.html

REVISED CORPORATE INNOVATION MACHINE

The Corporate Innovation Machine, a paper I wrote in 2005 and first introduced in this newsletter, has remained popular. Since publication, it has been downloaded nearly 50,000 times. It has been cited in numerous blog posts. The cartoon illustrating the article has been reproduced in at least two magazines and the article reprinted in another.

On reviewing it a few days ago, I felt that several points were out of date or no longer entirely accurate based on the knowledge I have gained over the past four years. So, I've updated the article in a few places. You can download the new paper from http://www.creativejeffrey.com/creative/innovationmachine.php

JENNI INNOVATION PROCESS MANAGEMENT

When you invest in Jenni innovation process management, you do not simply gain access to the best idea management software in the world. You also gain access to my colleagues, me and – most importantly – our cumulative knowledge of organisational innovation. We advise each of our clients on how to promote an idea management initiative in their company, how to formulate an innovation challenge in order to get results and how to run effective evaluations. We advise clients against making common mistakes that can hamper innovation initiatives and provide tips on how to get the most from Jenni.

Best of all, our expertise is included in the standard pricing of Jenni which, unlike other companies, we publish on our web site.

If you are looking for a structure for your innovation initiative, Jenni is your best choice. Based on proven creative problem solving CPS methods, Jenni is an effective tool for generating ideas, evaluating them and developing them. Moreover, Jenni is the only idea management software explicitly designed to align your innovation process with your strategy.

Find out more about Jenni at http://www.creativejeffrey.com/jenni/ or contact us (http://www.creativejeffrey.com/contact.php) to talk about how Jenni and an innovation coach can turn your firm into an innovator!

ARE YOU AN INNOVATION CONSULTANT?

If you are providing innovation services such as consulting, training or coaching and want to add a great idea management software solution to your portfolio of products and services, contact me (jeffreyb@jpb.com or +32 2 305 65 91 or Skype Eurojeffrey) and let's talk about how Jenni can help your clients innovate better – and help you gain new clients.

You benefit from our generous commission programme, marketing on the popular www.jpb.com web site (150,000-200,000 page hits/month) and collaborating with a fantastic global team of innovation, marketing and sales experts (http://www.creativejeffrey.com/about/index.php). In addition, by packaging your services with Jenni, you can provide your clients with value added innovation services that help them increase profitability.

It's a fantastic win-win-win scenario for your, your client and jpb.com!

LATEST IN BUSINESS INNOVATION

If you want to keep up with the latest news in business innovation, I recommend Chuck Frey's INNOVATIONweek (http://www.innovationtools.com/News/subscribe.asp). It's the only e-newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on all of the latest innovation news, research, trends, case histories of leading companies and more. And it's the perfect complement to Report 103!