The Innovative Leader: how to inspire your team and drive creativity, Paul Sloane 2007

Section 1: Leading innovation

1. Have a vision for change
• Innovation has to have a purpose.
• There should be an overarching statement which defines the direction for the business and which people will readily understand and remember.
• You want passionate, energetic people whoa are keen for the journey and ready to take on a challenge.
• Your job is to communicate a destination and to persuade them it is a target they can believe in and a goal worth reaching.
• Great leaders spend time with their teams. They illustrate the vision, the goals and the challenges. They explain to people how their role is crucial in fulfilling the vision and meeting the challenges. They inspire men and women to become passionate entrepreneurs finding innovative routes to success.
2. Issue a declaration of innovation
• The declaration of innovation is a statement of commitment and intent. It should contain the following elements:
  • An explanation of why innovation is critical for the organization.
  • A list of some of the key areas where innovation is needed.
  • A request for every employee to contribute his or her ideas.
  • A commitment to listen and respond to all ideas.
  • A commitment to allocate resources - in particular time, training and money - for creativity, idea development and innovation.
  • A determination to look for ideas from all sources, including outside the organization.
  • An affirmation of a positive attitude towards risk and failure. In particular, a message that employees will not be criticized or blamed for honest innovative endeavours that do not succeed.
3. Set drastic expectations
• Outstanding companies set outstanding expectations.
• GE Capital (Hamel, 2002: 254): 'It is expected that we will grow our earnings by 20% per year ore more. When you have objectives that are outlandish it forces you to think differently about your opportunities. If one guy has a 10% target and another has a 20% target, the second guy is going to do different things.'
• Drastic expectations reinforce the declaration of innovation and the innovation goals.
• Drastic expectations encourage people to think innovatively and act like entrepreneurs.
4. Fight the fear of change
• Success can be an enemy of innovation.
• Overcoming the fear of change is a key objective for innovative leaders.
• You can turn negative people around by asking for their views on how to make things better.
• Innovative leaders constantly evangelize the need for change. They replace the comfort of complacency with the hunger of ambition.
5. Tell stories
• Stories about the history of the company can help define the values you stand for.
• Stories about yourself, some of your learning experiences and mistakes that you made can help people understand what is important to you and your beliefs.
• Stories about employees who took risks or did exceptional things can inspire and motivate.
• Stories about how other companies failed or succeeded can show the dangers of complacency or the benefits of change.
• Each story should involve people who you describe so that your audience can relate to them and understand their feelings and motivations.
6. Set goals for innovation
• Lou Gerstner, IBM: 'People don't do what you expect; they do what you inspect.'
• So if you want innovation, you need to set goals for innovation and measure people in their progress against those goals.
• Metrics
  • Time to market
  • New product sales
  • Return on investment in innovation
  • Financial resources committed to innovation
  • Number of people working on innovation
  • Number of ideas generated
  • Projected payback from ideas in the pipeline
  • Cycle times for the entire process and specific parts
  • Number of ideas that move from one stage to the next
  • Number of new products or services launched
7. Get rid of the cynics
• Passion, belief and enthusiasm are great qualities - especially if they are allied with constructive dissent.
• The ideal companions on your journey want to achieve the same ends as you but they are prepared to challenge your views and to suggest better ways to do things.
• People who are cynical can act like a poison in the body.
• Mark Goulson, Fast Company, 2005: effective leaders move quickly to get rid of the bad apples. Categorize your people into four types - destructive, difficult, good or great. Recognize and cut the difficult and impossible people early on.
8. Throw down a challenge
• A great way to galvanize people into innovative action is to throw down a challenge. Give specific target and ask for ideas to meet it. Ask a 'how can we...?' question.
9. Encourage dissent
• The innovative organization has an atmosphere of constructive dissent.
• What you need to encourage is not a lack of respect but a lack of deference.
• The natural satisfaction that people derive from success can lead to complacency, which is the enemy of innovation.
• Often the innovator has to be obsessive to the point of apparent irrationality in pursuit of his or her dream. The innovator has to be rebellious in opposing conventional wisdom.
• So if you want innovators in your team look for people who are passionate about their ideas, who do not defer to authority, who are impatient for change and who are angry about the obstacles put in their way.
10. Be an arsonist and a fire fighter
• Innovative leaders are comfortable with ambiguity.
• The leader has a restless curiosity to try new things.
• Only by trying lots of different things are we likely to find the radical new initiatives that we need.
• Not every interesting project can be pursued to completion. It is essential to eliminate the less promising projects so that we can devote resources to those that show the most potential.
• Innovative leaders are a little schizophrenic.
11. Think like a venture capitalist
• VCs use a portfolio approach so that they balance the risk of losers with the upsides of winners. They are comfortable with the knowledge that many of the ideas they back will fail.
• Think like a VC and remember these key points:
  • Quantity is good - we want lots of ideas.
  • If an idea has been rejected before, we are happy to consider it again.
  • We will select the most promising idea using objective criteria.
  • We want a return on our innovation portfolio as a whole.
  • We know that many of the more radical ideas will probably fail.
  • We will focus our resources on the winners and cut resources to the losers.
12. Break down internal barriers
• Within larger organizations one of the biggest obstacles to innovation is poor internal communication. A 'silo' mentality develops so that departments guard information and ideas rather than share them.
• The leader has to tear down the internal fences, punish internal politics and reward cooperation. This sometimes calls for drastic or innovative actions.
• It is the duty of the leader constantly to fight the silting up of internal communications and to force contact and sharing between departments.
13. Destroy the hierarchy
• It appears that successful organizations of the future will not resemble the hierarchical structures of the past. They will be fluid, adaptable networks. People will coalesce into teams to accomplish certain tasks and then re-form into new teams.
14. Have your best people working on innovation
• If you want to change the culture of an organization so that it values innovation and new business start-ups, then get your most senior and best people involved in these activities. Don't delegate the work to lower-level staff and hope for the best.
15. Be passionate
• Robin Fielder, 'Never, ever forget that people are more persuaded by your convictions than by your arguments.'
• Focus on the things that you want to change and the most important challenges you face, and be passionate about overcoming them. Your energy and drive will translate itself into direction and inspiration for your people.
• If you want to inspire people to innovate, to change the way they do things and to achieve extraordinary results, then you have to be passionate about what you believe in and you have to communicate that passion every time you speak.

Section 2: Problem analysis

1. Diagnose the current situation
• An honest and accurate assessment of the competitiveness and innovation capacity of the organization is essential.
• An innovation audit looks at a number of issues to see what is working well and what is impeding innovation in the company.
• A good impartial audit will identify key areas for improvement in corporate culture and in innovation processes. It will help you to prioritize the issues that need to be addressed.
2. Analyse problems
• There are several practical and simple tools that can be used to help analyze problems.
  • Fishbone Analysis
  • Why, Why?
  • Lotus Blossom
  • Six Serving Men
• Benefits of using a suitable problem analysis tool:
  • It stops you jumping to conclusions.
  • It challenges your assumptions about what the real cause of the problem is.
  • It helps give everyone in the team a common understanding of the underlying issues.
  • It helps prioritize where you should put your efforts.
  • It can give you a sequence of items to tackle - a road map for solving the problem.
  • It helps you to see connections between underlying causes.
  • Different people or different teams will come up with different analyses, which give you fresh insights into the possible causes of the problem.
3. Ask 'Why, Why?'
• This process is repeated until a full picture of all the causes is shown.
• The Why, Why? method is a simple but powerful way of showing all the probable causes of an issue.
• As with all problem analysis techniques the purpose is not to solve the problem but to understand the underlying causes before attempting to find solutions.
4. Use Six Serving Men
• It provides a simple, disciplined approach for probing a situation from 12 different points of view.
• What, Why, When, How, Where and Who + positive and negative perspectives.
• The ideas that come out give us a variety of options for tackling the problem. We prioritize these and move forward into idea generation.
5. Redefine the problem
• Ask 'How can we make your job easier?'
• If you have laboured with an issue for a while, stop and ask the group to redefine the problem using none of the original words.
6. Ask 'What business are we in?'
• CEO of Black and Decker once said, 'People don't go into a DIY store because they need one of our drills. They go because they need a hole in the wall.'
• Wonderbra, 'We do not sell underwear. We do not sell lingerie. What we sell is self-confidence for women.'
• Do not define your business by your product but by the benefit you deliver to your customer.

Section 3: Generating ideas

1. Have a suggestions scheme
• Great suggestion schemes are focused, easy to use, well resourced, responsive and open to all. They do not need to offer huge rewards. Recognition and response are generally more important. Above all they have to have the wholehearted commitment of the senior team to keep them fresh, properly managed and successful.
2. Run ideas events
• Declare the challenge in specific terms and the criteria that will be used to select the best idea and then let the proceedings begin.
• By running an event you focus attention and energy on the issue. People know that it is important and therefore they will make an effort. The event registers in their subconscious minds and the result should be a wealth of ideas. In addition the event will often be motivational, team building and fun.
• Set a deadline for submission of ideas. That will help concentrate people's minds.
• Also, show ideas that have already been submitted so as to avoid duplication. This also allows contributors to build on other people's ideas.
3. Allow line manager bypass
• Whatever suggestion scheme or idea initiation events you implement, it is important to ensure that there is a facility for individuals to bypass their line manager if necessary.
• Allowing people to bypass the normal chain of command provides an essential safety valve that enables radical ideas to be viewed dispassionately at some distance from their source.
4. Plan your brainstorm meetings
• Brainstorms remain one of the simplest and best ways to generate good ideas quickly.
• How many people should there be in a brainstorm meeting?
  • Between 6 and 10 is ideal.
• What sort of people should you invite?
  • Diversity - you want a mixture of people to contribute.
  • Be sure to ask someone who is lively and likely to come up with some provocative questions and ideas.
• How long should the brainstorm meeting be?
  • It depends how complex the issue is, how many methods you plan to use and whether you need to do some problem analysis work first.
  • People are generally brighter and fresher in the morning.
• Who should facilitate the meeting?
  • The best answer is to have a - skilled external facilitator. This is someone experienced, neutral, euthusiastic - and with good handwriting.
  • Generally speaking the department manager carries a lot of baggage and their presence as scribe or meeting leader can inhibit people from voicing controversial or disruptive ideas.
• How will you capture the ideas?
  • The three most popular ways to record ideas are on flipcharts, on reusable sticky notes and on computer.
• What criteria should you use to evaluate ideas?
  • The brainstorm meeting should have a clear objective. This should be expressed as a desired outcome rather a preferred approach.
  • 'How can we improve sales?' is good but to vague.
  • 'How can we increase our prospect conversion rate?' is good but a little too prescriptive.
  • 'How can we increase sales by 50 per cent?' is better.
5. Brainstorm meetings - generate great ideas
• The three phases of the meeting
  • The meeting starts with a definition of the problem or objective
  • The idea generation phase uses divergent, creative thinking to generate a large number of ideas.
  • The idea evaluation phase uses convergent and analytical thinking to select the best ideas to carry forward.
• During the idea generation phase it is important that the participants understand and abide by the rules:
  • Suspend judgement - no criticism of ideas is allowed during this phase. All ideas are welcomed, no matter how bizarre or silly.
  • All ideas are recorded and numbered.
  • Participants piggy-back on each other's ideas so each idea can trigger further ideas.
  • Quantity is good. We want a great many ideas.
• Often the first ideas are the most obvious, routine suggestions. The later ideas are more bizarre and creative. So keep going until you have reached an impressive total - 80 to 100 ideas is not uncommon.
6. Brainstorm meetings - evaluate the ideas
• The evaluation phase of the process is critical to the success of the session and typically needs as much time and attention as the idea generation stage.
• In evaluation we switch from suspending judgement to exercising critical judgement in order to whittle down the ideas to a shortlist of actionable items.
• Try to agree the selection criteria in advance so that you have a basis for selecting the strongest proposals.
• A recommended general set of criteria for all sorts of ideas is the FAN method.
  • Is it feasible 0 can we make it? Does the technology exist?
  • Is it attractive - does it appeal to us and to customers?
  • Is it novel - is it something new for our organization?
• Once you have selected the best ideas you should assign actions to follow up. Ask people to estimate the resources needed and the next steps. Implement the quick wins immediately and start the planning process for the more complex ideas.
7. Juice up your brainstorm meetings
• If your brainstorm meeting rusn out of ideas and energy, then it is time to turn to some advanced techniques to boost performance.
• Reverse the Problem
  • Brainstorm the exact opposite of the challenge.
  • For each idea, see what positive ideas can be generated by reversing the idea.
• Random Word
  • Pick up a dictionary and choose a noun at random. Write the word on top of the flipchart paper and then underneath list five or six attributes of that word. Then force connections between the word or its attributes and the problem to be solved.
• Similes
  • You state the challenge and then get everyone to write down on their own sheet of paper 'Our problem is like...' and then complete the sentence. They must do this in silence so that they are not influenced by each other's ideas.
  • The likenesses do not have to be accurate - they feelings rather than exact analogies, but each can act as a trigger.
  • You then write out everyone's simile and the group chooses the one that they think is the best simile to find solutions for that problem. You then analyse the ideas to see if any will translate to the original problem and give a working solution there.
8. Bring in unrelated experts
   • If you are planning a creative thinking session around a particular topic one way to help displace your thinking and inspire ideas is to bring in experts in the field but from entirely unrelated businesses.
   • If you are concerned about human resource issues consider getting a completely different point of view by bringing in an external speaker, such as a bishop, the head teacher of a school, a hospital manager, the director of a charity, a zoo keeper, an army officer, or the manager of a large hotel.
   • If you want to improve creativity, design or innovation you might start your meeting with a talk from a film director, an interior designer, a website designer, an advertising agency creative director, or a chef.
9. Use a facilitator
• Facilitators are neutral as regards the content and concerned only with making the process work. They welcome all input.
• They will ensure that the meeting runs to time and will focus on achieving the outcomes that you have set.
• They will use appropriate methods to encourage discussion.
• They can use novel and interesting methods to break the ice, to analyse issues, to generate ideas, to evaluate ideas and to summarize actions.
• Delegates are much more likely to engage in new activities and to be uninhibited when a complete outsider is the organizer rather than their boss.
10. Break the rules
• Radical innovation means contradicting convention and inventing an entire new game.
• If you can find a way to rewrite the rules of the game so that it suits you rather than your competitors, then you can gain a remarkable advantage.
• Every business operates in an environment of written and unwritten rules. Many of these boundaries and restrictions are self-imposed and accepted without questioning. Often it is the newcomer to an industry who can ask the question, 'What would happen if we broke the rules?'
11. Define your ideal competitor
• Take your group and divide them into teams of four to six people.
• Imagine that an immensely wealthy corporation has decided to enter your business market. This corporation plans to create a powerful competitor that will use innovative approaches to seize your current organizatoin's customers and wipe you out.
• Each team has to brainstorm innovative ways of reaching the customer, deliver better services and seizing a leading market share.
• Ask each team to choose a model and then to answer three questoins:
  • What does the model look like?
  • What kind of organizaiton would be best placed to exploit this?
  • What should we be doing about this?
• The teams present back their ideas and the moderator decides on a winner. The emphasis is placed on creative ideas rather than undercutting on price or out-spending on promotions.
12. Try weird combinations
• Try combining your main product or service with a range of foreign concepts and see what you get.
• Take a product and think of an absurd way to make it work.
• You can apply the same process to combinations of partners and think of diverse individuals or organizations who could work with you.
• Combining your different skills could create an original approach to the market.
• Get your team together and brainstorm how you could mix your products with those from wildly different sources. Take it to the extreme. The more bizarre the combination, the more original the ideas that are triggered.
13. Go for quantity
• To be really creative you need to generate a large number of ideas before you refine the process down to a few to test out. To make your organization more innovative you have to increase the yield.
• When you start generating ideas you generate the obvious, easy answers. As you come up with more and more ideas,so you produce more acky, crazy, creative ideas - the kind that can lead to realy radical solutions.
• The quality of ideas does not degrade with quantity - often the later ideas are the more radical ones from which a truly lateral solution can be developed.
14. Try a different environment
• A change of environment can help engender a change in attitudes, so think about changing the environment in your office and also about using entirely different venues. Being somewhere novel will assist your people to think novel thoughts.
• Examples: a zoo, an art gallery or museum, a football stadium, a castle or stately home etc.
15. Conceive a different business model
• Is there a completely different way to operate in your business?
• If all your competitors are using a broadly similar approach, is there anentirely separate approach that could deliver what your customers want?
• How could you change your business model to bypass your competitor completely and delight customers with a radically better service?
16. Ask 'Who killed our business?'
• We can broadly simplify innovations into two kinds - incremental and radical.
• Christensen (2003), it is very difficult for successful organizations to develop disruptive innovations that would threaten the basis of their success.
• Most organizations have natural defence mechanisms against disruptive or threatening ideas. People immediately find reasons why they should not be considered. It is difficult to change the culture to one where such ideas are not only heard but are actively encouraged and developed. Asking the question 'Who killed our business' is a good way to start.
17. Look for new ways to reach the customer
• We tend to think of innovation in terms of new products and services but new routes to market can be far more effective means to gain competitive advantage. There is a new way to reach the customers you serve today and the customers you want to reach tomorrow.
18. Anticipate the wave
• They observe something that is already happening and see an opportunity in it.
• William Gibson, 'The future has already happened, it is just unevenly distributed.'
• What a minority of people are doing today the majority will be doing tomorrow. All you have to do is to find that minority. To do that you have to develop your skills at understanding trends. You do this by keeping an open mind and trawling many different inputs. Search Internet. Read blogs. Scan different magazines. Travel to other countries. Meet new people. Discover things outside your normal zone of expertise and interest.
19. Innovate by subtraction
• Next time you face the challenge of how to refresh your product don't just think about adding new features or services. Think about what you can cut out of the process or product. How can you make things simpler, less costly and more appealing to customers?
20. Look for the solution within the problem
• Systematic inventive thinking (SIT) - Two prisoners dug an 80-foot tunnel from their cell to escape from prison. Where did they hide the dirt?
• When we have to use the limited set of resources contained in the problem and its immediate environment we are forced to be more creative - and very often the result is a solution that is elegant, inexpensive and effective.
• One of the methods taught in SIT is to break the problem down into a chain of unwanted effects. Now consider in turn each element in the problem or its environment and say to yourself - this element can be adapted to stop one of the unwanted effects and to break the chain. Then come up with ideas. By rigorously and imaginatively applying this technique you will often find an inventive solution.
21. Ask 'What if...?'
• Creative people use lateral thinking to test the boundaries of situations and challenge conventional approaches.
• What if...? is a possibility thinking technique that can be used for problem analysis and exploration as well as idea creation. In the What if...? exercise every dimension of the question is tested with What if...? questions. The more ridiculous and provocative the questions the better.
• Start with the problem, generate a list of 20 or more 'What if...?' provocative questions. Then take these one at a time and use them to generate creative ideas. What are the consequences of the What if...? What would we do under these circumstances? Analyse and evaluate the resulting ideas. Some will lead to fresh insights.
22. Pass the parcel
• Each person takes a blank sheet of paper and writes the challenge at the top. Then working silently and individually each person writes a completely crazy, bizarre and impossible solution to the question. Each person then passes his or her sheet of paper to the person on their left.
• Now everyone has to use the idea in front of them as a springboard for a wild idea. This idea should be different from but triggered by the first idea. The sheets are then passed silently again to the left.
• Each person now has a piece of paper in front of him or her with two crazy ideas written on it. Each person has to use these to construct an outlandish but workable idea - one that is outrages but feasible given enough resources. The sheets are passed again.
• Each person has to use the ideas to construct a novel but workable idea; one the person could propose to his or her peers.
• Each person in turn reads out the four ideas on his or her sheet. The group then analyses all the final ideas and chooses one or two - or synthesizes some of the ideas together to come up with a proposal.
23. Look for a distant relation
• Watch out for unexpected customer orders or compliments.
• Look for skills, strengths, extra services or by-products that your business has today but is not commercializing.
• Ponder what you are really good at.
• Ask employees and customers for ideas and suggestions.
• Keep an open mind as regards possibilities.
24. Idealize the answer
• When you are looking at a tricky problem try specifying the ideal answer in a world where there are no constraints.
• List the key ideas and attributes of the ideal solution.
25. Be careful what and how you reject
• Ideas that are rejected should be parked in a database so that they can be resurrected when input is needed.
• The way in which the rejection is communicated to the originator is important. It is essential that they receive proper feedback and know that their idea was carefully considered. They need to hear the reasons for its rejection.
26. Wear Six Thinking Hats
1. White hat
   • The information hat.
   • Information, facts, data
   • People can ask for more information or data to help analyse the proposal.
2. Red hat
   • The emotion hat.
   • Emotions, feelings, hunches, intuition
   • People have to say how this proposal makes them feel emotionally.
3. Yellow hat
   • The optimism hat.
   • Benefits, logic, positive vision, feasibility
   • Everyone in turn has to say what is good about the proposal. All the benefits are listed and the most important are prioritized.
4. Black hat
   • The pessimism hat.
   • Critic, risks, obstacles, caution
   • Everyone has to find fault with the idea. All the disadvantages are listed and the top ones prioritized.
5. Green hat
   • The growth and possibilities (brainstorming) hat.
   • Creativity, growth, new ideas, options
   • Everyone has to suggest ways in which the idea could be adapted or improved to make it work better.
6. Blue hat
   • The process hat.
   • Overview, control, decision, process
   • It is used to review the thinking process.

Section 4: Implementing innovation processes

1. Allocate time and resources for innovation
• If you want people to be creative, set the goals and then challenge them to come up with ideas. Then give them time and some resources to test their ideas.
• The leader has to free time for innovation in order to empower people to come up with great ideas and to explore them.
2. Give everyone two jobs
• Give all your people two key objectives. Ask them to run their current jobs in the most effective way possible and at the same time to find completely new ways to do the job.
• Being busy, efficient and effective is essential. It is necessary - but it is not sufficient. What is needed in addition is a restless hunger to find better ways to do things.
3. Identify the need for replacement
• Peter Drucker, 'Every organization must prepare for the abandonment of everything it does.'
• List all your current systems - in accounting, customer records, planning, marketing, sales, development, etc. Knowing that they will have to be replaced sooner or later, ask yourself: 'Which of these can we replace with something that will give us a real competitive advantage? How can we harness the latest technologies and thinking to leapfrog the competition?'
• It is silly to replace sound systems just for the sake of change. But eventually all systems run out of steam.
• The process of innovation involves abandonment and renewal. Plan them both.
4. Borrow with pride
• The scientific study of nature in order to copy its methods is called mimetics.
• A successful innovation in your business does not have to be an all-new invention. It just has to be something new to your business that is beneficial.
5. Train for innovation
• The main areas for training include:
  • Problem analysis
  • Questioning
  • Listening
  • Idea generation
  • Managing brainstorms
  • Idea evaluation
  • de Bono's Six Thinking Hats
  • Prototype development
  • Project gating
  • Project management
• Purpose of training:
  • To develop skills and teach methods that can be applied.
  • To yield useful ideas or help evaluate difficult choices.
6. Measure progress
• Innovation metrics to measure progress and to assess the overall state of your innovation capability:
  • Measure your ability to fill the pipeline by monitoring the number of new ideas being generated
  • Scrutinize how many submissions you get each month in a suggestions scheme
  • Monitor how many ideas make it through the initial selection and into the next stage as projects
  • How many projects become prototypes and how many prototypes become new products.
  • How many incremental new products or extensions of existing lines and how many radical innovations
  • Innovation cycle time
  • How many people are engaged in innovation activities
  • How much money is the organization spending on innovation
  • Projected value of the projects in the innovation funnel
  • ROI on the new products and services launched this year
  • Actual return vs original projected return
7. Broadcast success
• Draw up a story about the innovation and place it in internal and external media. Put it on your intranet and if appropriate on your main website. Put it in the trade press.
• Broadcasting innovations sends a positive signal to the outside world about the company.
• People feel good about seeing their name in print.
8. Reward success
• Reward the individuals who come up with good ideas.
• The more modern approach is to give many small incentives quickly.
9. Track the astonishing
• 'Astonishment report' - managers ask all new employees to complete the report at the end of their induction period. The employee must list anything he or she finds astonishing about the company - good or bad.
• The astonishment report can identify things that are surprisingly good, surprisingly bad or just odd about your company.
10. Be cool or outsource cool
• Sometimes a small agency can connect better with the clients than the company executives can.
• Sometimes the outsiders can find it easier to suggest risky things that the insiders dare not say or cannot conceive.
• It is very difficult to maintain a cool image - especially in a business where young consumers decide what is cool and what isn't. It requires a keen sense of what the new trends are, an ability to scan youth horizons and an ability to gamble on the next wave.
11. Collaborate
• Many CEOs look outside for other organizations to partner with.
• The next step beyond collaboration is open innovation.
• Key steps for success in open innovation:
  • Each party should define what it wants to get out of the relationship
  • It must be clear who owns the intellectual property in the partnership
  • Each side should allocate a senior person with overall responsibility for the success of the partnership
  • Key obligations, expectations and milestones should be established early.
  • Each party should remember that honesty and trust is built on clear communicate - especially when objectives look likely to be missed.
  • A good legal contract should be in place.
12. Observe customers
• Customers are good at demanding incremental improvements in products, lower prices and better service, but they are notoriously poor at predicting significant new products or innovations to meet their needs.
• Asking customers for feedback is good but observing them can be much better.
• Many companies have a policy that senior executives have to spend some time each year working on the front line. This 'does of reality' has many advantages. Executives meet, serve and observe customers. It gives an up-to-date picture of what is happening at the sharp end of the business. It improves understanding of and sympathy with staff issues. Above all, it helps the executives see the many areas for improvement in operation and service. It has paved the way for many innovations.
13. Co-create
• Co-create with your customers. Set a competition and reward the most imaginative ideas.
14. Create a community
• e.g. Wikipedia, MySpace, company blogs
15. Crowdsource
• Outsource an issue or problem to an independent 'crowd' of experts who compete (or sometimes collaborate) to solve the problem.
• They are usually rewarded handsomely for doing so.
16. Gate the process
• Stage-Gate methodology by Bob Cooper (http://www.stage-gate.com)
• A Stage-Gate is a conceptual and operational roadmap for moving a new-product project from idea to launch. Stage-Gate divides the effort into distinct stages separated by management decision gates. Cross-functional teams must successfully complete a prescribed set of related cross-functional tasks in each stage prior to obtaining management approval to proceed to the next stage of product development.
• Stages are:
  • Where the action occurs - the project team completes key activities to advance the project to the next stage.
  • Cross-functional - (there is no R&D or marketing stage). Each activity is undertaken in parallel to accelerate speed.
  • Where risk is managed - vital information (technical, market, financial and operations) is gathered to managed risk.
  • Incremental - each stage costs more than the preceding one, resulting in incremental commitments. As uncertainties decrease, expenditures are allowed to rise and risk is managed.
• Gates are:
  • where the Go/Kill and prioritization decisions are made;
  • where medicore projects are culled out and resources are allocated to the best projects;
  • focused on three key issues: quality of execution; business rationale; and the quality of the action plan.
  • where scorecards and criteria are used to evaluate the project's potential for success.
• It is easy to become obsessed with getting projects through the gates - where the approvals are made. But the real progress is made in the stages - that is where the value is added.
17. Appoint innovation champions
• The innovation champions - a cadre of trusted allies in each department who are charged with making innovation happen at grass root level.
• They are senior people - but not necessarily department heads.
• They track the innovation pipeline in their area.
• They encourage the sponsors of promising innovation initiatives.
• They smooth obstacles and help secure approvals.
• They network across the organization and with other innovation champions.
• They stay aware of what is happening in other departments and outside the business.
18. Run an innovation incubator
• Speed up the innovation process by forcing the mixing of project teams and removing distractions. People in the teams are encouraged to be creative and to break the rules. They focus on getting the innovation moving. And they bring cooperation, enthusiasm and diversity to bear the problem.
• An incubator can overcome the problems of corporate inertia and inter-department fault-lines by concentrating the resources of people, skills and time needed to deliver new products.
19. Employ an ideas searcher
• 'Ideas searcher' - to source ideas for challenges that people bring to her.
• Having someone whose job is to drive idea generating programmes can liberate creative thinking and drive innovation.
20. Streamline your approval process
• National Audit Office, 2006, Government departments and agencies should ensure that:
  • Their review processes are purposeful and proportionate for the risk that the innovations pose.
  • Pilots are appropriately scaled for projects and analysed.
  • Reversible innovations can be tested speedily and at small scale before being rolled out more widely.
  • Decision-making processes take appropriate account of the opportunity costs of delays, especially the foregoing of expected financial savings.
21. Kill the losers
• Kill off the failing projects.
• Although the project may be beneficial, if it is blocking the implementation of a project with a significantly higher payback, then it should stop.
22. Build prototypes
• Get people to buy into an idea.
• Help them to really grasp the concept, understand what it is and to make suggestions rather than criticisms.
23. Implement
• Everything else in the innovation process is meaningless if you do not implement innovations.
• 'Ready, fire, aim' - don't wait until you are sure that your aim is true - take your best shot and see what happens.
• 'Paralysis by analysis' - planning and testing are essential, but their levels should be appropriate to the nature and risk of the venue.
• Your attitude to implementation is linked to your attitude to failure.
• Innovative leaders have a restless curiosity. They are anxious to be out there trying innovations and assessing real feedback from early users.
• 'Fail often and fail cheap' is their watchword. They implement innovation as quickly as they can. They kill off the losing products promptly. They reinforce winning innovations. They implement their way to success.
24. Overcome customer resistance
• Customers can be very conservative.
• You need to find ways to reassure them and to mitigate their risk.
• You need early adopters so that you can get some traction in the market, customer feedback and positive reference.
• Choose the right early customers - some people love new technology and others hate it. Select the best early adopters from among your top clients and then secure their personal testimonials when the product succeeds. You are in it together and it must be a win-win for both parties.

Section 5: Building a creative culture

1. Don't tell, ask
• To build an innovative culture you need to ensure that everyone can ask questions and does ask questions.
• Why do people not question things:
  • Comfort, complacency and even laziness
  • Too busy to stop and ask why they are doing the things they are doing or whether there is a better way.
  • Afraid to ask basic questions for fear of looking foolish or of being upbraided by their manager for challenging him or her or questioning company policy.
• Leaders at all levels must encourage people to ask questions and must welcome those challenges when they come.
• A good way to kill all three birds with one stone is to hold good brainstorm meetings.
2. Praise the innovators
• Praise the behaviour you want to see.
• By praising someone for failing you are sending a strong message that countervails the current culture.
3. Focus on what went right
• By focusing our attention on the negative we miss the opportunities presented by the positive.
• By focusing on our strengths and capabilities we can see positive opportunities. If we concentrate on fixing the current model, then we can easily miss new opportunities.
• Look for success stories, talk to delighted customers, ask them what makes your organization better than the others.
• Find the right partners to compensate the areas where you are ordinary to weak and free up time to find creative new ways to exploit your strengths.
4. Make it fun
• Humour, playfulness and laughter go with creativity.
• When you run events where staff are encouraged to be silly or make fools of themselves it is best if the boss and other senior executives take the lead. By making fun of themselves they help break down barriers, debunk the hierarchy and empower others to be feethinking.
• As they chortle and become more playful, people are more likely to come up with creative, unorthodox and radical solutions.
5. Welcome failure
• Tom Kelley of IDEO, 'Fail often to succeed sooner'.
• Deborah Bull, Artistic Director at the Royal Opera House in London, 'We need to get away from the idea that everything has to be a hit at the box office and a hit with the critics. If everything we do succeed, then we are failing, because it means we are not taking enough risks.'
• Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda, 'Many people dream of success.
• Success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection.
• Success represents the 1 per cent of your work that results from the 99 per cent that is called failure.'
• Tips for succeeding through failure:
  • Recognize and communicate that when you give people freedom to succeed, you give them freedom to fail too.
  • Distinguish between two kinds of failure - honourable failure where an honest attempt at something new or different has been tried unsuccessfully, and incompetent failure where people fail for lack of effort or competence in standard operations.
  • Make sure people know that honourable failures will not be criticized.
  • Get people to admit to or even boast about failures they have had where they tried something innovative that did not succeed. Turn these into learning experience.
  • In a culture that is very risk averse and keen to apportion blame tackle the issue head on by rewarding honourable failures. Publicly praise and reward those who have had them.
• The innovative leader encourages a culture of experimentation.
6. Fear success
• Success can be an enemy of innovation.
• The leaders see the new technologies as risky and lower quality and they fear cannibalization of their mainstream revenues.
• The political forces within the business tend to be inimical to new ideas.
• There is considerable revenue associated with the current success model.
• Careers have been built on its growth. Any change to a new model threatens those revenues and those reputations.
• The innovative leader has to vigorously fight the complacency of success. What is needed is a restless hunger for experimentation and change.
7. Set puzzles
• Lateral thinking puzzles (sometimes called situation puzzles) are good at developing questioning skills, listening, teamwork and imagination. They consist of strange situations where the team is given a limited amount of information and then has to ask questions in order to figure out what isgoing on. The quiz-master can answer questions with 'Yes', 'No' or 'Irrelevant'.
8. Use the right language
• 'We must win this bid. We've got to do everything possible to win it.' vs 'We really want to win this bid. Let's think of every possible way we can succeed.'
• Choose words that are supportive, constructive and inspiring. Instead of giving instructions, pose questions that seek ideas and input. By doing so you can enthuse your people to be positive and creative.
9. Make your own products obsolete
• The fear of 'cannibalization' has prevented many a promising idea. And yet it seems clear that if you do not cannibalize your own product line with better, cheaper, faster, more effective or more appealing products your competitors surely will.
10. Trust
• Innovative leaders trust their people. They allow them to try out ideas.
• They empower their people to take initiatives.
• How to build trust with your team?
  • Start with a very frank dialogue.
  • Ask what they want out of their job and how much freedom or supervision they think is ideal.
  • Discuss goals rather than tasks and ends rather than means.
  • Show that you are keen to help and support them.
  • Stress that you want to be kept in the picture.
  • Agree that within certain guidelines they can take action without asking you first.
  • Always do what you say you will do.
  • Be honest and treat people fairly.
  • Be discreet.
  • Admit your failings and apologize if you let your people down.
  • Praise people for initiative and honest endeavour even if it results in failure.
• Trust takes time to build and it can easily be destroyed.
11. Empower employees
• Empowerment follows on from trust. Each one builds the other.
• Supportive of subordinate's radical idea and allow him to pursue it.

Section 6: Personal creativity

1. Check assumptions
• In business, assumptions are dangerous.
• The innovative leader know that everyone in the organization needs to challenge assumptions. He or she has to show that the boundaries and limitations that we conform to are largely self-imposed. This is done using many of the methods and techniques above.
2. Ask questions
• One of the biggest obstacles to creativity in the workplace is our tendency to find fault with other people's ideas.
• The next time someone comes to you with an idea that you can immediately find fault with don't criticize, ask questions. Keep asking questions about the idea. Build it up rather than point out problems. As you discuss the idea all sorts of possibilities occur. This is the power of questioning.
3. Move out of your comfort zone
• Deliberately push yourself out of your routine. Try things you do not normally try. Do things that you have never done before. Do things that scare you.
• If we as individuals need a good push to get us out of our comfort zones, then unwieldly organizations need a mighty shove. It takes guts and determination to try new business initiatives in areas outside our core competence.
4. Simplify things
• If you want to innovate around a process or service then try simplifying.
• Break the process down into all its component parts. Then next to each part write one of two words - essential or non-essential.
• Now we write a second and shorter list - just the essentials. We look at this and ask the question - how else could we achieve these essential actions?
• We can go further by looking at the non-essentials and asking - can we eliminate or replace any of these?
5. Look at things from a different angle
• Albert Szent-Gyorgy, who discovered Vitamin C, put it this way, 'Genius is seeing what everyone else sees and thinking what no one else has thought.'
• Instead of looking at the scene from your view, try looking at it from the perspective of a customer, a producer, a supplier, a child, an alien, a lunatic, a comedian, a dictator, an anarchist, an architect, Salvador Dali, Leonardo da Vinci and so on.
6. Trust your intuition
• Sure it helps to be analytical, intelligent and rational, but what makes people like Richard Branson, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs great business leaders is not their undoubted intelligence but their passion and commitment to their cause.
• Logic and analysis can always find fault with innovative ideas.
7. Incubate
• One of the best ways for an individual to come up with great ideas is to incubate the problem. Do not look deliberately for ideas but follow this simple four step plan:
  1. Define the problem
  2. Forget about it for a while. Do something else. Sleep on it.
  3. Wait for an idea or two suddenly to occur to you.
  4. Check out the ideas.
• The critical part in this process is the second part, the incubation. It relies on the subconscious mind chewing the problem over in the background.
• Eventually something pops up.
8. Don't take the first answer
• The first answer we come up with is unlikely to be the best answer. A better approach is to take a little time to generate a long list of possible ideas and then evaluate them in order to select one or more to try.
• Our first idea is often the most obvious, the most straightforward response. It is rarely the best response. As we mull over the problem and force more and more possible solutions, we generate less conventional, less routine, less automatic choices - we come up with the creative, the radical and the better option.
9. Develop your personal creativity
• Many great ideas come from group sessions. But even more come from individuals.
• You should:
  • Set personal innovation goals
  • Allocate time for reflection
  • Challenge your personal assumptions and self-limiting beliefs.
  • Look for stimulation from new sources.
  • Mix with different people and ask them for their ideas and opinions.
  • Keep asking questions, listening and learning.
  • Be positive about risk and personal failures.
• Always carry an ideas notebook.
10. Become an evangelist
• If you are middle-ranking managers or staff members and you see a great opportunity that you are convinced the company should pursue, you must build a lobby of support for the idea.
• Tips:
  • Build a coalition of the like-minded
  • Lobby at the very highest levels.
  • Gain a high-level sponsor as soon as you can.
  • Gather data, trends and external evidence that support your case.
  • Start small. Establish some small successes - a trial or a prototype that customers like.
  • Be prepared to take risks and break some rules.
11. Simplify your life
• The number one obstacle to innovation is time. Many people are just too busy to find time for creative activity.
• If we can de-clutter our lives, we can free time for important things.
12. Be disconnected
• Many of these contacts are not crucial or even necessary. They just make us feel important and involved.
• If we are constantly in communication with people, we deny ourselves the opportunity for serious thought. Try giving yourself a quiet period each day and using it to mull over important points.
13. Visualize with mind maps
• Buzan, 1977, http://www.buzan-world.com
14. Keep fit
• To have an active, creative brain it is important to have an active lifestyle. That means the right diet and the right level of fitness.
• Plan to give yourself some time each day for exercise and some time for relaxation and quiet reflection.
15. Be lucky
• Dr. Richard Wiseman, 2004, four main traits that lucky people have that help them to be 'lucky':
  • They create, notice, and act upon chance opportunities that come up.
  • They make good decisions using their intuition as well as their logic.
  • They have positive expectations about the future.
  • They don't let bad luck get them down; they find a way to turn it into good fortune.
• By changing your attitudes, behaviours and actions you can change your luck.
• People with a positive outlook recognize that each obstacle is a step along the way and that there is much that can be learnt from setbacks. They learn lessons from reverses and they seek out fresh opportunities. They are always optimistic and receptive to ideas. They see opportunities in situations where others give up.