The Innovationist

Bill Belichick is widely regarded as a football genius, contrarian, and grump. He is also an innovator. All of the X's and O's of design thinking can be found under the hoodie.

This is not a revolutionary list – there are a number of these lists out there, and within the collection there is both clear overlap as well as room for customization.  In talking through these I hope to get people’s reactions as to what really is necessary to achieve breakthrough innovation, and in so doing I hope to get a sense of what the industry standards are and where the differentiation tends to lie.

What is the state of creativity today?  Is creative thinking following the roller coaster ride of the economy (with lots of stomach-churning drops)?  Or, is creativity going the way of gold, holding steady in spite of the tumultuous times? 

Last week we led a client team through two and a half days of inventing.  This brainstorming session marked a pivotal moment in the work we’d been doing over the previous three months gathering insights about the forces at work in the space around their industry.   The Invention Session is one we describe as “invigorzhausting” (one of the client team countered with “exhaustorated”) because of the extended amount of time we ask them to be “on” coming up with newness. 

Business Model Innovation is becoming a hot topic these days as business leaders increasingly recognize that disruptive innovation requires not only innovative products, but also fundamentally new business models.  Recognizing this trend, the Product Development Manager's Association (PDMA) featured a full day Business Model Innovation Lab at their 2011 Annual Global conference.  I had the pleasure of co-chairing the lab along with Matt Benson, Advanced Innovation Manager at Faurecia.  Our panel of speakers consisted of Josh Suskewicz of Innosight; John Lynch, Head of Innovation at EMD Millipore; Philip De Ridder, Co-founder of Board of Innovation; and Creative Realities President Jay Terwilliger.  We were also joined by an experienced and thoughtful group of participants, which made for an engaging and stimulating session.  Here are a few of my key takeaways and some business model innovation tools that you may find useful.

Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. 

If I hear once more about how Facebook and the iPhone define the speed of change in business I’m going to scream. And the tragic passing of Steve Jobs has only increased the noise on this topic. The fact is that like all aspects of innovation the same rules don’t apply everywhere.

Check out this awesome musical tribute to Steve Jobs from Timeflies.  An innovative tribute befitting the innovation icon.

Newton did it lounging under an apple tree.  Archimedes did it soaking in a bathtub.  Einstein did it while shaving.  Those are the settings in which these great minds did their best thinking (at least according to legend).  The common theme is that they were in the state of relaxed concentration.  Rather than sit at your desk hammering away at a problem, it is often wise to let your mind wander.  In his terrific book The Element Sir Ken Robinson describes the process: 

In Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries, a fantastic book about the creative process, Peter Sims builds a compelling case for why breakthrough ideas come about as the result of lots of little experiments. Drawing on everything from Chris Rock's method of developing stand up comedy, to the production process of the animation teams at Pixar, to the "HP Way" corporate culture inspired by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, to Frank Gehry's unconventional architecture designs, Sims advocates for a creative process that defies the common understanding of creativity. Sims slays the myth of the creative genius who gets hit with a bolt of inspiration out of nowhere like lightning. Sims argues that, instead, most people who are highly creative achieve success through a constant, deliberate cycle of experimenting, failing, adapting, and fine-tuning.  Here are a few of Sims key insights.