Next Level Innovation Blog

10 tips to become the "Innovation Company" ::: bonus: 3 free ideas for your Web2.0 Internet startup

Innovation means a lot of things, you could e.g. innovate in terms of improvement of processes or creating new products, which in itself could generate new revenue. Then again, that's what you pay your process improver or product manager for. You could leverage on your R&D department and create brilliant new solutions, products or just a battery of articles and patents. That's what you pay your R&D department for...

However innovation, true brilliant innovation, that actually generates large new revenue streams, e.g. create Google, IBM or Microsoft, is mostly not the work of groups, group-brain-storm-sessions op de hei or billions of investments in new product design or innovation centers.

Innovation usually is based on just one brilliant person within an organization. This could be your within-company Leonardo Da Vinci, your Einstein, or whoever special number walks around in your company. I usually call him Leonardo.

Based on statistics the chance is not so great that there are more than 1 Leonardo's on the right moment at the right time walking around in one group, in fact, chances are small that there are actually Leonardo's at all on this moment, which can be a discussion on itself. Leonardo's posses unique skills and capabilities, a sort of sixth sense which is not easily measured (the field of Cognitive Science). As an example, modern day innovaters would be Joshua Schachter who created del.icio.us; Marin Soljacic, modelling the flow of light; Michael Raab, who makes fuel ethanol more cheaply or Liam Paninsky who is decoding brain signals. (More examples in the Technology Preview 25 innovators 2006.)

This means a couple of things when you are running a company:

- if you are running a small company, the chance is smaller that your company holds such a Leonardo unless YOU are the Leonardo.
- if you are running a big company, the chance is bigger that your company holds such a Leonardo.

So you have the following options:

1. Try to find him, e.g. make up a competition for "new business ideas"
2. Become bigger
3. Become a place where Leonardo's like to stay (like IBM or MIT)
4. If you suspect your competitor's hold a Leonardo either watch them closely and mimic them or hire their Leonardo :)
5. Put 100 of your brightest people to work in a regular schedule with brain-storm sessions to mimic 1 Leonardo
6. Make it someone's job to check daily the memes on sites mentioned on e.g. populair.eu and act upon new ideas in your industry
7. Instead of innovating put your money in marketing and branding, who needs Betamax when there is VHS? (even better: do both)
8. Buy a company who holds a Leonardo, give him a new title and then invite him to every important meeting to give it a new fresh direction or fire him with a bucket of money and keep buying his next companies
9. Go for zillions of techniques from "what-if" scenario's to mission re-statement sessions for some time, throw the conclusions aside and then focus on (new) revenue and unknown Leonardo threats
10. Avoid group-think, it will kill your company, be the cause of a new bay-of-pigs invasion or another Vietnam war. Be open and provide discussion spaces. Think "business 2.0".

A lesson:

Beginning 1999 i started a "weblog", in fact, the oldest weblog in the Netherlands, in the following seven years millions of other people have followed the example, like this blog. During the years my blog sunk away in the sea of other more important blogs.

Shortly after the introduction of Orkut I wrote a letter to a large Internet company to build a social network for the Netherlands, they declined and now Hyves has sprung and has millions of members.

The message: innovation means nothing without 1. revenue, 2. the right timing  and 3. the right place and 4. people who listen to the message (recursive).

As a sort-of test I will provide three free internet ideas which will provide you with a small set of monthly money when you would implement them IMHO! Let me check this blogposting again in some years time.

1. Create a company which will gather feeds from the web holding "things for sale". Everyone will be able to put a simple xml file on the internet and your company will harvest the xml's and become a node for displaying these "things for sale". No webservices, just let the agent search for the files automatically, It will become a large competitor for e-bay and the like. Revenue works on advertising like Google-Ads, deals with associates, products dumpings and premium offers. Every individual and retail company on earth will want to be at the top of your listings.

2. Create a company which will hold a todolist market: one the one hand there will be busy busy people "todo items #26 repair my bike" on the other hand there will be people who have "enough free time" to help the busy busy people. Revenue works on advertising, deals with associates, job-market and such. In fact you will create a new market where the bike repair shops would really like a summary of all bikes to be repaired,  statistics and such. You have now the ability to create new jobs that never existed before, finding out demands where we never knew before there was this demand.

3. Create a mashup between Google Earth and anything you can think of e.g. the complete gouden gids and virtual shops for every shop on earth on Google Earth. I would love to go virtual shopping! I would really like to just travel to "Bangkok" on Google Earth and then just surf through the streets and see what they have for sale. You will create a new world-wide shop with everything that is for sale on earth. Must hold fantastic potential revenue, be prepared for a large datacenter.

For those serious readers: ;)

Are teams really innovating?

Is information available on who does the innovating?

From most communications about innovation one can generally get the impression that teams of people can innovate.

However ... I wonder if there is actually information available on the amount of innovation really being done by teams.

My personal opinion is that most innovation is done by one person who has the brilliant idea. Sometimes the credit for the innovation might go to a team that has taken this idea and made it work ... however if you do not have a person of this caliber in your team ... can it innovate?

To condense this into one simple question:

Is the innovating team a myth?

Encourage exploration !

Even in the hippest, edgiest organizations, very few jobs have “creative” or “innovation” in their titles. Mine does. :-)

As more companies pursue innovation with real zeal, we’re sure to see an expansion of job descriptions to include creative and innovative thinking.

The kind of exploration required to fill a blank page with ideas, designs and concepts is best conducted by a team. In a non-judging environment, a group of people can “brainstorm” to generate random ideas, suspend the need to defend them with rationale, and build on each other’s ideas, zigzagging in any direction.

Former IBMer John Patrick urges companies to "seek out the renegades and empower them to go like crazy, go as fast as possible."

And whether you label it collective intelligence, team synergy, concurrent engineering or group think, when “individuals come together with a shared intention, in a conducive environment, something mysterious can come into being, with capacities and intelligences that far transcend those of the individuals involved.”

In this way, the power to innovate is unleashed.

The creative process includes trying out all kinds of ideas, developing those that show promise, then revising and reworking and rethinking as needed. Yes, discipline and perseverance are part of the equation, too. Overcoming obstacles and breaking through walls often depends on team unity.

It’s hard work, but the results can be breakthroughs of inestimable value. It is about time to try it. Isn't it?

The Language of Innovation?

Innovation = Communication

Most innovation comes from combining an idea from one field with a perceived need from another field. Does this implicetely mean that without "good" communication between people in these different field innovation is impossible?

This has an impact on the innovation-power of a team of specialist. The better the communication between team-members and understanding of the others' jargon the higher the innovation power of the team.

This does seem to imply there are some prerequisites for innovation in general:

1. The idea (or invention) from one field has to be communicatable to others. Example, a scientist who has an invention lying on the shelf might not be able to explain the invention to anyone but his peers. This means innovation only becomes possible once someone in that field "crosses over".
2. A team needs to communicate between team-members to innovate. If all communication that is needed runs through the teamleader, innovation only happens if the teamleader alone can understand all data needed for the innovation.
3. Communication and language (or jargon) is a key ingredient to innovation.

So all these inventions lying on shelves waiting for an innovation, need communication from either the inventor or someone who can understand both fields.

Have fun.

Do you still believe your R&D department is your main source of Innovation ?

An innovative company has its ear to the ground

Attentive listening feeds our brains with input and provides fuel for ideas. That’s why listening is a primary catalyst for creative thinking and innovation. How does that fit in the real world of business?

To paraphrase John Patrick, an early Internet pioneer at IBM, on the evolution of business: The old model was plan, build, deliver. The new model is iterative – sense and respond, sense and respond. In other words, it’s listen and change. Respond to trustworthy input with appropriate change – in minutes, instead of months. Today’s best solution can always be improved tomorrow.

A corporate culture that fosters innovation is very externally focused. And given the furious pace of evolving technologies around the world, keeping an ear to the ground to constantly monitor what’s going on is a 24/7 priority.

More input from more sources from more places becomes fertile soil for new ideas. Then comes critical filtering and analysis, working toward the place where insight and true innovation can burst into the mix. This is how we can solve the most important problems in business and society.

Listening is also important for tapping into outside opinion for a critique of new ideas. So you go where almost all really good ideas are being talked about – the Internet. Blogs ;-) , wikis, RSS feeds, social bookmarking and multi-day jams are collaboration or “social networking” capabilities that promote innovation unlike anything we’ve seen before. Here you can get feedback from experts that’s unvarnished, worldwide and almost instantaneous.

Watch for yourself. The ideas drawing the most skeptical interest on the Net could well be the emergent breakthroughs we prize. And innovative listeners are focused on sensing and responding.

Hopefully your R&D guys had that message too. Don't worry if there are on the net all day long !

Is Innovation counter intuitive ?

Is it any wonder that companies, like the humans who build them, seek stability, familiarity and security? Oh, the comfort of rules set in stone, ironclad policies you can lean on and institutional practices based on tradition.

With every passing day, that kind of safe, predictable business culture is more passé. Like it or not, it’s self-perpetuating, a prescription for more of the same. In our global, hyper-competitive business world of the 21st century, we know that sameness is a prescription for stagnation, or worse.

Innovate to compete. That’s the current trend. Creativity is considered the core competence for sucessfull organizations. New products, new services, new business models. That’s the way to grow. Agility, flexibility and responsiveness to customers and markets are the characteristics of leading companies.

But transforming a company into an innovative one is pretty difficult. Why? Because encouraging unconventional thinking is simply that: counter–intuitive, “not the way we do things around here.”

Innovation has its roots in an attitude that permeates a company. It’s openness to unexpected and unsettling ideas – from the board room to the plant floor. Even more essential, it’s willingness to modify old habits and maybe rock the boat. It demands courage and readiness to change.

Innovation starts on the inside, in the corporate mindset. And where it takes hold, companies are apt to adjust and grow and look distinctly different on the outside, too. And maybe it also requires some courage from the shareholders?

Accepting innovation takes time

I remember when I was a little girl, we had to write a story about an invention. Mine was a TV that could hang on the wall. Everybody in my year said I was crazy. But, soon after, i met a man who was working at Philips. "Good idea", he said, "at Philips we're already working on it, but it will take time till you can buy it in a shop, because people take a long time to get used to the idea." Today this flat tv, known as flatscreen, is fastly becoming a common product.

On Business Innovation Insider I came across a similar story about innovation. Boeing is cancelling it's in-plane internet connection services. The service has been in development for over six years, but after 18 months of testing it's now 'on hold'. When will Boeing be able to get this in-market, will it ever become a success? I must agree with Thomas van der Wal, that airplane traveling is all about habits. And habits take a long time to change...

When is the right time for an innovation to become a hit?