@innovation

It is very evident that only “Individuals” innovate and “Businesses” extract value out of these innovations!! It is also believed that “group thinking” will not bring new ideas. But it will definitely help in putting ideas to work!! So, if we are part of a business and interested in innovation, what should we do?

If our business has a lot of engineers and managers, then chances are bright that what they know well is – only problem solving! This might be attributed to the training, orientation and experience they get throughout their careers. Not their fault. These folks are hardly taught how to research, invent or be creative at work – when the boundary of their domain is kept very open/vague!! I guess that’s why there are so many authors, trainers and tools living on the need to inculcate the habit of innovation in businesses, today than ever before. Most of us who have used these great resources know how sustainable these efforts are…. No offense to the means. But the end is always an open well!

In my quest of finding how to solve this puzzle in own area of work, one of the means I have found useful is – forcefully creating a set of problems out of every opportunity and letting the same to be solved by a set of three individuals for a reward!

Key thing is to define these problems diligently and fixing a deadline of not more than 2 weeks for the result. Any thing beyond two weeks is a sure shot failure if it is purely an internal initiative! At the end of two weeks, these individuals present their solution and defend how effective they are for the defined problem. This results in a wonderful experience for those in audience and creates a platform for new ideas as well. Then the same three folks are asked to stitch one solution out of their pieces + what they gathered in the meeting and make it work for the situation in hand within next 1 week. So, at the end of three weeks, there is a 90% chance of a real innovative solution that can be shamelessly applied across similar situations at work.

This has worked in both situations – finding a technical solution to a management problem and a management solution to a technical problem! Mostly, the final one is a combination of these two and addresses a business problem!

Also, this has been useful in both peace and war times of a work situation due to – the “time-boxing” phenomenon coupled with lot of “execution” than “thinking” – that generally forms part of innovation – by definition, if not design!

There are several good models that one can explore, experiment and adopt based on their own comfort level of risk & associated reward. One such interesting model is by Jeffrey Paul Baumgartner. Really powerful in representation and effect that it can create when practiced routinely….

~ Innovation, truly is a journey than an end! So, we can continue to find more routes, companions and tools to help with – “Problems” are one of them 😉

Getting innovation on track within companies is an interesting challenge for most of us who believe in the need and power of the same. Some key questions in the minds of people circle around a few elements like…

1. Innovation, Solution development and Creating a winning experience for our customer’s customer are all BIG Items – can be understood, articulated and may be developed by only a certain set of senior members – not truly a sweet spot for every engineer! So, how should I as an engineer contribute here? Do I really have a role to play?
2. How can I be an innovator – creating a truly non-linear value in any small/ big way? Is there a simple process I can practice – every day?
3. Can there be a simple “template” to help find solutions/ innovations that are critical for own work which in turn will impact our customer’s customer?

Everyone of us have a self fulfilling need to do our jobs better than before and help our co-workers/teams/managers/company succeed in fulfilling the promise we made to our customers. This simple route of ‘let me find and adopt ways and means to achieve better results in each and every action of mine’ is good enough trigger /contribution at all levels. When the same thinking and action is continued across levels/abstraction, we will naturally have winning solutions/accelerators – performing seamlessly!

Innovation is one subject that is researched, modeled, taught, written, questioned, and practiced across the globe for several centuries directly or indirectly. But the quest to define a method to this madness is still ON. Rightly so. If we had invented all problems and solutions that is there today and/or bound to appear tomorrow, this world would have been a different one – in shape, size or color!

If we study some very successful dreamer doers in the crowd, one clearly visible trend is the way they looked at innovation! Interestingly, most of them found a solution – a novelty first and all others spend their lives to define/find the problem(s) it will solve! This is true with our old friend Edison or the creators of Google, Face book, Twitter, Southwest Airlines and the likes… or even SEI CMM, ISO, IEEE! There always existed and exist a variety of solutions in these spaces. But these folks presented a new solution – more compelling enough to force everyone around – to be on continuous quest of new problems to solve through them!

Most of us tend to think, behave and breath problem-solving as our strength or core purpose. But, turning this upside down, we might see a different world!

Isn’t this amazing? Just pick up a product/ service or an existing solution, apply a systematic template to subtract, multiply, alter or combine some of its components / features to find a new solution! Then, look around and find problems you can solve with this new product/service?

Drew Boyd offers a simple, practical approach to innovation in this line. Check it out for a wonderful surprise!

One of the major bottlenecks in the process of innovation, apart from the critical question of “why should I innovate?”, is the common belief that everyone is an innovator! Not sure, why? But this might not always be true! Innovation is a skill to be learnt/practiced – definitely not a gift. So, it is important to know how good an innovator am I, and then learn the trick of the trade to upgrade and be successful.

Drew offers a simple, yet good self-analysis tool to establish our individual innovation quotient. Worth a try.