Dec 11, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
Web based A/B testing goes a long way towards eliminating dumb mistakes, making the best choice, creating a discipline around innovative activity, and encouraging change, and has been made far easier in a whole range of areas by the data collection capabilities of the net.
But what happens when you cannot test, when you are doing something so completely new that the frame of reference necessary for good test results does not exist?
Try testing the Model T in 1890, only a few would have seen the possibilities because the horse was the frame of reference, the early cubic paintings of Picasso, art that so broke the rules as to be outrageous, or the calculations of Copernicus demonstrating the earth was not the centre of the universe, something catholic church felt pretty strongly about.
At some point testing becomes a redundant tool, you simply cannot test everything, and you have to rely on the guts, instinct, and insight of the few outliers who see things differently to make meaningful change
Nov 22, 2012 | Communication, Innovation
Innovation is all about seeing beyond the obvious answer, making the connections others miss, recognising cause and effect relationships differently.
Most also accept that with training, our bodies perform better, we run faster, further, jump higher, etc.
Surely it is the same with our brains? The more we stretch the boundaries in our nuts, the better we become at doing it. Therefore, it seems to be pretty sensible to do some training. The cryptic crossword in the local paper, deliberately inserting yourself into situations that are different and uncomfortable, and even, yes I am assured by my 30 year old son with a couple of degrees, playing some of the more creative video games (cannot bring myself to do that one).
I often start a workshop, presentation, and even casual conversation with a conundrum of some sort to try and get the juices going, so these two posts from Holly Green are gold.
Nov 21, 2012 | Collaboration, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
“The harder I work the luckier I get”
I’m not sure who said that first, but it is certainly widely agreed, absolutely true, and therefore almost a cliché.
The more ideas, the more the variation in the background, training, and attitudes of those exposed and asked to think about problems and opportunities, the greater the chance someone will see something new. It makes sense therefore to increase the diversity of people thinking about any problem or challenge, as their diversity brings different experience, perspective and understanding to bear, and can create connections not seen by others.
Discussion needs to be stimulated and encouraged, curated if you like, a hothouse for ideas and experiments, where every trial that does not work is one more way that we know does not work. “Edison’s law.”
The new collaboration tools of the web are fantastic, a breakthrough for innovation, but they still do not come close to the potential of motivated individuals exchanging ideas and views in a relaxing, but stimulating face to face environment.
Serendipity happens after the work has been put in, not before.
Nov 14, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
The interesting and fun bits of our world are driven by the vision, imagination, and execution capabilities of people. Much of the capital and technical capabilities required to enable these great things to happen are tied up in our corporations, governed by the legislative, and community demands for absolute compliance to an established norm.
Almost by definition, the norm is boring, ordinary, “so yesterday” as my beautiful daughter would say. How is it then that the boards of those same companies, the people with the ultimate responsibility to determine the long term priorities of the business, and allocate the resources to deliver them for stakeholders make the necessary choices. They have to make choices between the creative, the risky, and the new stuff that will cannabilise their existing position, whilst being tied down to processes that demand short term, conservative, risk averse, and ultimately boring behaviours.
The Corporations Act and various accounting standards, domestic and International, require many things of directors, almost all are quantitative, take great time and energy, and deplete resources, when the real value is added by the qualitative.
As a community, we demand probity from directors, and largely we get it, but the few who play fast and loose, who feed self interest at the expense of the interests of those who are footing the bill, ensures that there are rules crafted to catch the 1%, but that hamstring the 99% in the process.
The few truly great leaders around in charge of our large corporations that manage to make those choices are the exception. Jack Welch at GE made six sigma the manufacturing standard of the west by driving GE along a path invisible to most, and his successor, Jeffrey Immelt followed by a pivot of GE into green power, and has created an 18 $billion manufacturing division in just a few years that promises to be hugely profitable whilst delivering enormous value to the planet. There are a few others, the oft cited Apple, FedEx, Disney, add your own, but it is a short list.
Perhaps it is happening again as the suppliers of the milling and moulding equipment used in manufacturing, are about to be made at least partially redundant by a few outliers who are putting manufacturing equipment on desktops.
Just a pity there appears to be so few in Australia.
Nov 9, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Marketing
Much effort, particularly by public bodies, is focused on invention, in the mistaken belief that by inventing, patenting, and just being first to do something new, will lead to some great outcome.
Not so.
It is a bit like supply side economics, make the rich richer, and some will trickle down to the less well off, not a great outcome there.
Innovation is driven by different things, a perceived need in the market, an opportunity to improve something, two bits of existing technology combined in a different way, something from one market applied to another unrelated market, and many more. Invention is generally driven by curiosity more than anything else.
Don’t confuse the two, the technologies that have changed the world have largely been commercialised by entrepreneurs, or innovators who saw the opportunities, not by the inventors who conceived the technology.
Invention and innovation are not the same thing.
Oct 30, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Operations
Remember when there was a market for only 5 computers in the world, then a few thousand appeared in governments, huge corporations, and a few big R&D labs, then suddenly along came the PC, and there were millions of them in our homes, then hundreds of millions of “devices” in our pockets, seemingly almost overnight?
It is happening again.
Coming to a desk near you is the personal machinist, the 3-D printer that will do for small scale manufacturing what the PC did for personal information management and communication.
This post from Mitch Joel has a link to a video interview of Chris Anderson on his new book “Makers – The new industrial revolution” which should blow away a few intellectual cobwebs.
Theo Jansen whose Kinetic models have been a youtube hit has had miniatures produced, working models of astonishing intricacy produced by Shapeways technology, one of the revolutionaries.
This stuff is coming to a desk near you, soon, and the only limitation is your imagination.
