Report 103

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

Wednesday 18 September 2013
Issue 237

Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your twice-monthly (or thereabouts) 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.

Note

Most articles in this issue of Report 103 can also be found in the archives together with dozens more articles, papers and thoughts.

In this issue of Report 103

The State of Business Innovation Today
The Baumgartner Report: a new, humour newsletter from me!
Creativity of the Artist Two: Live, Listen and Learn
How to have fewer ideas

The State of Business Innovation Today

By Jeffrey Baumgartner

Let's face it. Innovation has been over-hyped these past few years, forcing CEOs to proclaim it was and may still be critical to their companies. Middle managers have been assigned to be innovation managers and to innovate or else face the consequences. Idea management software has been bought, brains have been stormed dry and consultants of dubious nature have sold useless innovation advice at hundreds of Euro per hour. Not surprisingly, managers are starting to feel they've been led on. "This innovation thing has just been another business fad!" they proclaim, while wondering what the next fad will be.

Are they correct? Has innovation been useless hype? Well, the answer is yes and no. As I wrote recently, all companies are innovative. All companies innovate. That's why Ford's cars today are technically far, far advanced from the Model T. Products are improved. Processes are improved. But, for the most part, these improvements have been incremental. Breakthrough innovation is much rarer, harder to implement, disliked by management and employees and often greeted with disdain by customers. Really.

Customers Often Dislike Your Innovation

Think about it. If you use Facebook, what happens with every major upgrade? People complain. Bitterly. And they do this even before they accustom themselves to the changes. Why? They don't like changes -- especially changes outside their control. Those changes may well make the user experience better. Facebook certainly thinks so. But users don't like changes. But, as they have no choice, they become used to the changes and even come to like them so much that they complain bitterly with the next round of changes. Yet no one wants to revert back to a significantly older version of Facebook. That would also be change.

Almost 30 years ago, Coca Cola innovated their star drink and launched New Coke. Research, taste tests and more indicated that the flavour of the new drink was much better than regular Coca Cola. But no one liked the new drink. It was a failure and soon was consigned to the history of disastrous marketing mistakes. Coke drinkers, it seemed, did not want newer and better. They didn't want anyone innovating their favourite drink. The wanted the same old thing.

Indeed, very often when a company attempts a significant change of a major product, it is met with derision and dislike. Customers complain. They don't want change. They don't want radical innovation, thank you very much! Incidentally, Coca Cola apparently continuously tweaks the ingredients in its drinks -- resulting in incremental change. Their customers don't mind that. Incremental improvement is desirable. Big change is not.

Innovation Initiatives Often Fail to Deliver

Sadly, the experience many organisations have with innovation initiatives is that they fail to deliver. Suggestion scheme and idea management software products generate 100s and 1000s of ideas, many of which often sit in the software's database awaiting further development. Brainstorms take expensive employees out of the office for a day or two and generate dozens of ideas. But those ideas are seldom very new and are often buzzword ideas. Often, ideas from brainstorms are not implemented and those that do get developed tend to be ideas managers were working on already -- the brainstorm was just a means of legitimising those ideas as innovative. Even when the brainstorm manager chooses the best idea, research indicates she is most likely to choose moderately creative over highly creative.

There are a number of reasons why these initiatives fail. Sometimes it is because consultants were not very good. Sometimes it is because initiatives are poorly conceived and not in line with corporate strategy. But often, it is because people really do not like creative ideas. And innovation comes from the implementation of creative ideas. Think about it. Managers tend not like implementing creative ideas, because they are very risky. And while most managers would love to be behind a highly successful innovation project, their fear of being behind a project that fails is greater! As a result, most managers prefer to back less risky -- and hence less innovative projects. A project to improve slightly a top selling soft drink is far safer than a project to re-conceive that soft drink or launch an all new, untested drink product. How do you think the team behind new Coke felt?

Moreover, employees do not like the change that innovation brings, especially when they have no control over that change. And they hate it if they fear that the change will cost them their jobs. This is perfectly understandable. Would you be in favour of an innovative idea that would lead to your unemployment?

When You Need to Innovate

So, you, your managers, your subordinates and your customers all dislike innovation -- at least big, obvious innovation that involves significant change. So, why on Earth is innovation your company's number one priority? Why is it important to you? Why is it plastered all over your company web site? Why are you hiring innovation product managers when you don't really want them to be innovative -- or at least not very innovative?

To be honest, I don't know!

But I do know this. There are times when you need to get creative, develop truly innovative ideas and implement them. Here there are...

No Existing Solution to a Problem

Thanks to modern technology, it's remarkably easy to find proven solutions to problems. My partner dropped her smart phone and cracked the glass cover over the screen. She contacted the company that supplied the phone and they told her it would cost 100s of Euro to replace the screen. Then we spent 10 minutes on Google. We learned how to prise the glass cover off the phone and replace it with a new glass cover. Then we found companies in China that would sell us a cover for a couple of Euro! Would creativity have helped here? Probably not.

But sometimes, there is no established solution or there are reasons you cannot use the existing solutions. Some 40 years ago, a scientist at 3M developed a moderately sticky adhesive that could easily be removed from surfaces. He thought it was cool, but had no idea what to do with it. At the time, there were no established uses for glue that didn't stick very well and the product languished in 3M for years before a solution was found through creativity: put the glue on little pieces of paper. PostIt notes were born.

Faced with Disruptive Innovation

What do you do if your company has been plodding along happily for years making a quality line of products -- and one day some small start-up invents and launches a product that causes your market share to disappear within months? You basically have two choices. Pretend the disruption won't affect you because your products are better than the start-up's or innovate in a big way! To me, it's obvious the second choice makes more sense. But corporate graveyards are full of businesses that ignored disruptive innovations which they believed inferior to their long-established products. Kodak and Polaroid were brought to bankruptcy by digital photography. Fuji, another highly regarded photographic film company, survived by being innovative with their business model. Yes, Fuji was hit hard and lost a lot of business. But the company survived thanks to some serious innovation.

Different Differentiation

Imagine you are mandated with developing and marketing a new brand of toothpaste. There is a lot of existing literature on how to market new products and, in particular, the importance of differentiating your product. But if you look in any supermarket, you will be overwhelmed with dozens of different kinds of toothpaste -- each one ever so slightly differentiated from the other. The only way you will get your product noticed in such a mess of mediocrity is not to differentiate - but to be radically different. No marketing book will tell you precisely how to do that. Rather, you will need to come up with some crazy idea about how to package, market, deliver or sell your toothpaste -- or it will simply get lost among the zillions of competing products.

This is what Apple did with its iPod and iPhone. When they launched the iPod, there were many digital music players on the market. But Apple's was sleek, easy to use and beautifully designed. It was cool and different to the others. Likewise, there was an overabundance of mobile phones on the market when the iPhone was launched. But it's easy to use touch-screen was different and desirable.

Invention

Sometimes, you just have a brilliant idea as well as the wherewithal to build it and bring it to market. Twitter is a good example. Who knew millions of people would devote so much time to posting short messages on the web? If you had asked me, I would have guessed the idea was daft. So, it's a good thing the founders never asked me!

At other times, you simply spot an opportunity to exploit. Microsoft did this when IBM launched the first personal computer. Until that time, software was not big business. Computers were. So, IBM happily licensed Microsoft to provide an operating system for their computers. Jeff Bezos quickly grasped that the world wide web was a great place to set up a bookshop -- and Amazon was born.

In situations like these, it pays to be radically innovative. It's worth building wildly creative ideas and testing them. It's worth taking the risk of innovating in a big way.

But in your day to day operations, you are probably right to focus on incremental improvement over big innovation. It will keep you and your customers happier!

The Baumgartner Report

My New Bloggish Newsletter

I've just launched a new newsletter. The Baumgartner Report is a twice monthly almost blog-like newsletter with the aim of making you and its readers laugh! The Baumgartner Report is a light-hearted look at my mid-life professional transition, patchwork family and the absurdities of life. The humour is on the dark side. But if you like my writing and enjoy a laugh, check out the first issue of The Baumgartner Report here, find more information here and subscribe here. Enjoy!

Guest Writer

Following my first installment of "Creativity of the Artist" in the last edition of Report 103, Mark Turner got in touch with me to share some ideas. I liked them and asked him to put them together in an article which forms the second installment of the series.

Creativity of the Artist

Two: Live, Listen and Learn

1. See your creative endeavours from other people’s perspectives.

When I started painting, I was worried that I was ‘doing it wrong’. Sometimes the output on the canvas was not as I had originally envisioned it, and I would consider abandoning it. However, quite often my disappointing results were heralded by other people as being my best work. I could not understand this until I stopped trying to see the work from an idealised position, but from another person’s perspective. That is, to see my work ‘as it is’ and not ‘as I wanted it to be’. If other people liked it, then I have obviously done something right.

In my experience, people who come up with a creative idea often find it difficult to progress as the reality of making it come to fruition quickly fails to live up to their imagined expectations. However, I have learned that it is important to listen to what other people actually think of it ‘as it is’ and not your idealised notion of ‘what it should be’. Share your idea with trusted colleagues. If it has any merit at all, someone will tell you.

2. Making mistakes can be beneficial, but only if you are prepared to see alternative possibilities.

As an artist, I often make ‘mistakes’ on my canvas; that is, the paint doesn’t do what I want it to do. Perhaps it’s the wrong colour or texture, or even in the wrong place. On most occasions I attempt to rectify the problem; but on rare occasions the slip-up is such that I suddenly see something new which I could not have seen before. This may lead me down an alternative path of work, creating something hopefully unique and previously unconsidered. As with many of the great ‘accidental discoveries’ of history – such as penicillin, synthetic dye, or artificial sweeteners – creativity comes not just from trying to solve a problem, but also from observing what already exists and imagineering it into something new. Louis Pasteur famously once said, "Fortune favours the prepared mind". As a painter, I am prepared to see the new avenues of possibility on my canvas when I make a mistake. Are you prepared to see creative possibilities when they arise?

3. Get lost occasionally and enjoy the journey

Something that my wife cannot understand is my reluctance to use a SatNav. I try to explain that part of the fun of life is getting lost and finding yourself in an unexpected place or situation. I often stumble across new and interesting things as a consequence. Of course, there are risks involved, and I try to avoid the less savoury parts of big cities if I can help it. I also like to get lost when I paint. Sometimes I will try something very different from before; moving from abstract to still life to landscapes; using my left hand or trying different colours or textures. Sometimes the journey fails completely and I end up in an artistic dead-end. But on occasion I learn something new about previously unrelated ideas. This quite often creates new work or inspires my future pieces.

In getting lost occasionally, I find that I am not so worried about reaching my goal, but enjoy living the journey. Learning to be creative is less about imagining a fanciful future, but living in the here and now.

4. Creative people need a thick skin.

I love praise for my work. Which artist doesn’t? But at the same time, I have learned that not everyone will enjoy everything that I have done. If you stop going down a particular artistic road because of negative criticism, then you will not end up creating work which you can be really proud of. In my opinion, giving-in to negative criticism only breeds conformity and mediocrity. The radical artists in recent history like Pollock, Warhol or Lichtenstein were all criticised by the establishment. But they persevered, and when the future generations of artists looked back, they could see them for the inspirations that they were.

However, receiving negative criticism can be emotionally challenging. If you are going to thrive as a creative individual, then you need to develop a thick skin.

If you have a truly great idea, then you should not be put off by negative criticism. If anything, you should learn to embrace it, be critical of it (after all, it may be true!) and respond appropriately. It is likely that the more it is criticised, the more potential it has to become influential. Obviously, care needs to be taken when working in a business environment. Give due consideration to the cultural and political situation you find yourself in, and get creative influencing it in your favour. After all, it is no good if you get fired for trying to implement a radically creative concept against the prevailing will of the company.

5. You don’t need a certificate to be creative.

What credentials do you require to be creative? I am a 100% self-taught artist. I know that some people would question my right to call myself an artist because I do not have training or a certificate in painting. Frankly, that’s their problem not mine.

Creative people don’t need courses or training to be ‘more creative’. If anything, they need less of the expectations of others (like teachers and managers) on what it means to be creative, and just be confident in their own thoughts to get on with it. The simple things mentioned in this series: observing the world; being aware of problems and being prepared to see solutions; accepting criticism as par-for-the-course, these are all known by everyone who is in any way creative already. Confidence to be creative can be boosted by a fancy piece of paper, but at the end of the day, it is what you do that determines your creative success. You instinctively know you are creative, so get out there and do something about it today.

About the Author

Mark C. Turner is currently the Head of Internal Audit for a major international electronics company. In addition, he is a painter working under the name Emsity, and an internationally published technology writer. After leaving school he joined the British Royal Navy, completing an apprenticeship as a weapons engineer on nuclear submarines. Whilst serving in the navy he also gained a degree in technology, specialising in robotics design. During his life-time he has, amongst other things, founded a Buddhist Meditation group; played saxophone in an orchestra; sung with a choir and been a council member of the United Kingdom Rocketry Association. He has three children and lives in Essex with his long suffering wife and his dog. At the time of writing, he is waiting for his application for Mars One to be accepted to enable him to begin the colonisation of the red planet. You can see some of Emsity’s paintings at http://www.emsity.com . You can read Marks latest magazine article about the hazards of Martian colonisation here (PDF) and see his Mars One application here.

Buy Art

Speaking of art, you can buy examples of my painting or hire me to paint your portrait (especially if you are in the Brussels area). More info here.

How to Have Fewer Ideas

If you are always looking for new techniques, tricks and tools for generating ideas, you might be surprised that there are people who are looking for techniques, tricks and tools to prevent or at least limit the flow of creative ideas temporarily. As I have written in the past, highly creative people naturally have lots of ideas. It's simply the way their brains are programmed. The thing is, these people can also find it difficult to turn down the creativity when they don't want so many ideas.

I believe this is why so many artists, musicians and authors drink a lot and often use drugs. Not, as many may believe, to stimulate creativity. Rather to shut it off so that they can relax a little.

Moreover, when a highly creative person finds herself in a dark mood, the ideas that come to mind can be very unpleasant. All the more reason to turn the creativity (or imagination) down!

Excessive drink and drug taking may seem to provide a short term solution. However, such behaviour is highly destructive over the long term.

What else can the creative person who wants fewer ideas do? Here are some suggestions, most of which have been shared with me by creative people.

Write thoughts down. A great way to get thoughts out of the head is to write them down. This gives the brain permission to stop worrying about them.
Express negative thoughts in art, music or other creative endeavour. This is similar to writing thoughts down. Art or music often allows you to put energy into releasing ideas and thoughts. This can be helpful.
Jogging or other intense exercise. By forcing the brain to focus on the next step, breathing, running, you do not give it the opportunity to think complex thoughts or imagine very much.
Meditation. Many people find meditation in its various forms an excellent way to relax the mind and focus on things other than an outpouring of unwanted ideas.
Share the thoughts with someone you trust. Sometimes, ideas can form a negative downward spiral. This is particularly true when thoughts are dark in nature. Sharing those thoughts with the right person can help you exorcise them.
Read something light. Light reading, such as humour, mysteries, thrillers and other books that do not require deep concentration are great for taking your mind off unwanted ideas while you focus on a lightweight plot and enjoyable reading.

What about you? What methods have you found for reducing creativity and imagination? I'd love to know!

Creative-ize Your Team

If you need a more creative team, division or company -- I can help with a workshop or talk for you and your team. I've worked with companies, governments and non-profits, including Pepsi, Genentech, TE, Afton Chemicals, Philip Morris International, the Government of Dubai, Apgico Associação and the Algarve Region of Portugal. My anticonventional thinking approach is a fun and effective alternative to brainstorming that focuses on developing a big idea and an action plan. I also litter my workshops and talks with tips and suggestions of the kind you read about in Report 103.

Want to know more? Visit my workshops page, contact me or just reply to this newsletter.