• User observation
• Brainstorming
• Prototyping
• Storytelling
• Scenario building

There is a commen thread between these tricks as they try to kickstart the imagination and generate ideas. All of them except perhaps brainstorming I would call tools to “Think in a different box”. By immersing oneself into story or scenario details become apparent that hold the key to fresh thinking. It might not be the obvious problem that needs fixng but an underlying current, tools made available to address issues or injecting thinking from a different field that sparks ideas and innovations.

http://www.wired.com/wiredbizprogram/videolibrary.html

The interviews feature:

• Jeff Immelt
• Jeff Bezos
• Scott Thompson
• Vivek Kundra
• Shai Agassi
• Elon Musk
• and others…

I found the interviews very insightful and encouraging to think big! Definitely worth 4 to 5 hours of watching the whole set of interviews.

Are there programs/conference that you have enjoyed following?

Reverse aging

Healthy living including good nutrition and exercises will be key for baby boomers as healthy living is the corner stone for a long enjoyable life after retirement. There are already plenty of studies around nutrition and how to supplement. My guess would be that within a couple years we see the discovery of a protein or enzyme that will reverse the aging and not only revitalizes the skin (as some products already claim today) but do the same for your internal organs and most importantly for one’s joints which can cause the most aches and pain.

Calorie counting

With a little bit of effort it is possible today to track what we buy and where we eat and the calories associated. I would predict applications that take a holisticview at nutrition and calorie consumption. If it is true that an average person consumes 800,000 calories a year (roughly 2100/day) then any one eating binge does not have a really big impact on the consumption over the course of a year, e.g. if one would eat 4000 calories one day. It would just increase the total number of calories for the year by 2000 calories or 0.025%.  The argument that I would like to make is that bad days are OK but that they need to be balanced with good days. The idea might be to introduce trade offs… if I eat 500 calories over my daily average I need to choose one of these options:

1. a) add 30 minutes to one of my workouts during the week.
2. b) reduce portion sizes over the next 5 days
3. c) accept the fact of adding permanently 50g to my weight.

The reverse would be true if I ate 500 calories less one day meaning e.g. I could skip 30 minutes of my workout that week or I felt really good one day and extended my workout by 30 minutes and can now go and eat an additional 500 calories… The idea could evolve into looking at healthy living as a bank account where we make deposits and withdrawls at different times.

Assisted transportation

My expectation would be that as people get older that in general terms it becomes more difficult to go places. I think  personal transportation options will need to increase. Depending on the distance to go and weather conditions an active lifestyle would have options on how to go e.g. from the sububs to downtown

1. take the bus
2. drive by car
3. use the bycicle
4. walk

Options 1) and 2) in my opinion do not quite fit into an active lifestyle. Given the choice between sitting and being active only options 3) and 4) provide excersise. The issue that should be addressed via innovations over the next couple of years is the probelmof fatigue when excercising. If it would be possible to define a personal acceptble level of fatique then technology could help assist and take on the effort beyond that threshold. We will probably see more supplemental battery power e.g. for byciclesand options to switch transportations modes, e.g. make community bycicles available for pedestriansala cars for city dwellers via Flexcar.

Volunteering

As the baby boomers leave the work place there will be a vacuum of social interaction and meaningful engagement. I would predict that volunteer organizations will be able to help address the need of social interaction in a non-competitive environment. Baby boomers in retirement want to stay engaged and want to contribute. Volunteer organization will allow baby boomers to tap into the passion of baby boomers and provide a framework that provides satisfaction and value.

• Reduce costs by 50%
• Improve time to market by 50%
• Improve return on technology investments by 50%

You might think this kind of improvement is not possible? Think again! That’s what innovation is all about! Start out with a big challenge and keep on thinking in creative ways on how to make the goal become reality!

When the challenge become big enough we tend to switch into a different thinking mode. If 5% cost redutions feels attainable it is very likely that a 50% cost reduction will not be possible the same way. A different approach and thinking is required! It also means that the goal is not easily achieved. A single brain storming session will probably not be enough to get anywhere near the 50% goal. It requires constant reminders about the challenges over a period of time so that new information can be viewed through this ‘lens’ and applied to the issue at hand.

An example of a successful 50/50/50 challenge migth be Netflix. Netflix challenged the public at large to come up with algorithms that would improve their movie rating system by 10%. You might say 10% is not much but for Netflix and millions of subcribers an matching improvement of 0.5% is already a celebrated improvement. Netflix knew it would not come easy and provided a 1 million dollar prize and tons of data to work with. Eventually after 2 years a couple teams have emerged that beat Netflix at his home turf and improved movie matching by more 10%.

What kind of outragous goals do you have for your organization?

I find it interesting to contemplate a couple different areas of customers for innovation:

• My own organization
• My business partners
• My suppliers
• My value chain
• My customers

My own organization

When thinking about tools and technologies it is important to keep up internally with the pace of the market place. When an organization can develop better processes, strategies and business models then it is clear that these innovations will have a clear impact in the market place as well. Over time they will create a better cost structure and ability to explore opportunities better than other players in the market.

My business partners

If my organization can make doing business easier with my downstream business partners it reduces friction and frustration as well as increasing good will. Therefore it is important to understand what my business partners have to go through to work with my organization and help to streamline it. If a little bit more effort on my organization’s side reduces an enormous overhead for my business partners all are better off and  eventually better service and prices for customers.

My suppliers

Similar to business partners it is critical to understand how difficult of a customer my organization is. Does my organization let suppliers jump through unnecessary hoops that drive up costs on their side and on my organization’s side? What if there are ways to optimize the whole relationship and realize and share efficiency gains? It takes and effort to reach out to suppliers and build deeper understanding and relationships. They payoff is cost saving, efficiency gains and a combined stronger competitive position.  

My value chain

It might be worthwhile to look not only at business partners and suppliers but also at the whole value chain to find opportunities to innovate. Taking a system optimization approach will help to innovate and create trust, e.g. :

• Reduce overlaps
• Reduce wait times
• Increase flow of market information
• Improved inventory management

My customers

Last but not least innovation for my customers. This area will probably be the largest area of innovation but the other areas mentioned before should also be considered in order to not overlook opportunities.

• Fact based
• Rigidly structured
• Hypothesis-driven

This general management analysis approach can also be applied to innovation!

Fact based

In my experience innovation works best when subject matter experts get together and look at a particular problem or opportunity. They bring with them enormous fact based experiences that help them to make new connections and find a solution to the problem at hand.

Rigidly structured

Ideas need a framework to florish or they will wilt and die. The framework I have in mind is a innovation process that ensures that ideas and concepts get tracked and managed in order to understand their potential and need for additional solutions. With a good structure and a good elevator pitch it is much easier to sell and idea and innovation to senior management. It also allows for creating metrics, measurements, targets and benchmarks that help teams to become accountable and ensure that only the best ideas make it to market.

Hypothesis-driven

It is much easier to follow a path that has been positively identified rather than trying one option after another. Focusing via a hypothesis creates deeper understanding and insights that can add tremendous value to new ideas and innovation.

Which management approaches have you used and applied to innovation? Please share your thought!

Well, it takes foresight to create budgets before a downturn hits to ensure that innovations are protected from immediate needs. In my mind a good budgeting process takes into account the different requirements of the business. In general terms business requirements can be categorized into 3 buckets:

• Keep the light on
• win the game 
• Change the rules of the game.

In each bucket innovation can be practiced and implemented. I would like to highligh below the most promising innovation appoaches for each bucket.

In my mind the best innovation approach when ‘Keeping the light’ is incremental innovation. It ensures minimal disruption of current processes and adds predictable benefits. Cost benefits analysis spreasheets can be used as a great tool to calculate the ROI.
In areas where a business tries to ‘Win the game’, e.g. against their competition a mix of innovtion approaches should be deployed. Incremental, radical and open innovation should be used to generate ideas and solutions that help the company to win. Its about the sheer number of ideas and innovations that help a company to gain an edge against their competition.
Last but not least efforts to ‘Change the rules of the game’ need radical innovation. Crazy ideas, unproven concepts, new business models and groundbreaking technology belong in this area. These ideas are the most difficult to nurture and grow as they require a willingness to fail and learn as perhaps less than 0.1% of ideas make it eventually into the market place.
A great benefit for organizations that establish budgets for each of the 3 areas will be that similar projects compete with each other. Only byputting up budget walls between initiatives can organizations ensure that projects e.g. for creating a new business model is not at the mercy of paying the electicity bill.

I found Google Wave to be very impressive as I believe it represents the next wave (pun intended) in what email can do and how we collaborate via email (or wave as Google calls it now). During their demo at wave.google.com they hit on all the major issues that I usually run into when emailing and having longer conversations via email. Who said what and when during adicsussion and having a consolidated version of the email at the end.

With waves these issues go away as they have a “play back” button that highlights changes. It almost feels like real collaboration on email and much different than hacking an email via Outlook (e.g. scrolling down to the paragraph to edit/respond to).

I’m really impressed how Google was able to implement Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as the main email stays on the server and only updates (e.g. text, pictures, links)  are communicated. It’s in beta now but I’ll probably be one of the first to test the released version when it comes out! Well done!