Innovation Teams Don't Work by Greg Gretsch

Greg Gretsch published an article titled "Innovation Teams Don't Work. Here's What to do," in which he sheds light on the failures of companies to embrace innovation culture. In most companies, innovation teams are created to innovate ideas and to be the creative team of the company.

According to Gretsch, this is the completely wrong structure a company can create for innovation. To innovate, a company must allow anyone to be innovative, not just a select tram. Therefore the entire company culture must allow any employee to present new ideas, and allow for execution of these ideas.

Second, companies don't embrace the true risk of innovation. Often ideas fail while others succeed for non-apparent reasons. Companies must allow for failure for innovative successes to be possible. Get such says often 80% of ideas that come from idea meetings fail, but that leaves 20% success.

Being able to pursue any idea, gives employees incentive to be creative and to present their possible ideas. A culture of these open ideas allows employees to willingly and happily share ideas to innovate the world around them.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/07/innovation-teams-dont-work-heres-what-does/

Roger Ebert: The Innovative Critc

Film criticism hardly seems like an innovative profession, but one man became synonymous with movie reviews: Roger Ebert. His passing last week caused all within the film industry to grieve and look back at a fruitful career. Ebert didn't just review films, he connected mainstream America with art criticism and critical thinking. His approval became a stamp films promoted to audiences.

Ebert innovated film criticism by making the profession mainstream in a way that captivated audiences. Film critics long before him wrote columns in local newspapers, but Ebert took his skills in writing and created a television series that America tuned into for his recommendations. Television wasn't enough to be deemed innovative, but Ebert changed criticism again by creating a new system of critical rating: the thumbs up. He trademarked the term "two-thumbs up" with his cohost Gene Siskel. Together these two changed film criticism by making it relevant to pop culture. While Ebert wrote about the most artistic films ever made, his show highlighted films for the masses. Often he had colorful insults for movies, but his show brought character to bland reviews for 33 years.

(1:13 mark to see how Ebert devised the Thumbs rating)

Ebert didn't stop innovating however. He also embraced Twitter as a means for mass communication from its beginnings. He used blogs to connect readers to other topics of discussion. Ebert's innovation was his ability to connect his views to a general population using any form of mass communication available to him.

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

In this TED talk, Simon Sinek reveals the secrets to success of innovative companies. In a capitalistic society, people focus on buying products and services. For companies to compete they must find ways to capture customers' attentions. Innovative companies such as Apple, Starbucks, and ESPN don't find success just by selling a product. Many company sells products that have cutting edge technology and design. These companies stand out because their focus isn't on the products. Instead, great leadership is found through the Golden Circle.

Sinek models out his Golden Circle with three circles inside each other like a target. The outermost shell is "What?" This is the products the companies make, the services they offer, what do you do. The middle shell is "How?" representing how you design the products, the processes to manufacture, and how you sell the products. The inner circle is "Why?" representing the core beliefs of individuals and/or companies. "Why?" explains the ideas and ideals of companies, why you do what you do. This is the foundation as to why you exist as a company.

Most companies approach the market looking from the outside of the Golden Circle inward. They sell products and explain how they make them. These companies fall by the wayside to true innovators. Innovators look outward from the inside. They promote their core beliefs and ideals as a company. Apple sells itself as a challenge to the status quo. According to Sinek, "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." This is the reason people line up all hours of the night to be the first to get the next iPhone.

The goal of a company shouldn't be the products they sell or making large sums of money. From inception, companies need to promote their beliefs and values and let these beliefs dictate the products they make.

This concept taps into the core of human emotion, triggering a response in the inner parts of the brains. The center of the brain controls decision making even though the outer brain controls analytical thought. By tapping into human emotion by promoting core values, companies find buyers who rally around any products they design.

Because of this you should never pursue the results. Instead work for the idea and core ideals. As a society we follow these leaders not because of their charisma or charm; we follow because we connect deeply and we follow for our own beliefs.

The Khan Academy's innovation

In our brainstorming session, Professor Holmes offered advice about the process. When a group gets stumped while brainstorming, it often helps to flip a problem on its head. With the Khan Academy, Salman Khan has flipped the classroom on its head unintentionally. Sometimes the best ideas and innovations can be completely serendipitous, such as the a Khan Academy. While he began by posting YouTube videos to tutor his cousins, he now creates tutorial for a complete online classroom community. Teachers using the Khan Academy in classrooms have inverted the classroom model. Students now learn from tutorials at home, and complete homework exercises in the classroom. Tutorials only move as fast as students can understand, allowing students to master topics before moving on. This industry reinvents the way people learn from schools. With the learning Khan also finds himself as a social entrepreneur, seeking to better humanity rather than maximizing profits, the same way Udacity and Coursara do.

Muhammad Yunus' TEDxTalk

Muhammad Yunus created a whole new financial sector when he decided to create a rural bank for women and the poor. Yunus brought design thinking to his endeavor by looking at the existing industry and aim his enterprise at the available demographics and sociographics. Big banks of Bangladesh aim their business toward wealthy urban men, so Yunus created a bank aimed at the opposite. When Yunus does give loans to the poor, he believes everyone is an entrepreneur. His loans gave beggars opportunities to become shoppers for households, able to give up begging for their own businesses. Yunus continually creates new businesses to solve problems he finds. However one of his keys to success is giving himself the ability to fail. He shrugs off failure and moves on. Failure is inevitable so by accepting it from the beginning of creating businesses, he will make decisions not based in hesitation and fear of failure.

Steve Jobs' Lost Interview Reaction

The Lost Interview of Steve Jobs offers insight into the genius of the man behind some of the greatest modern innovations. Deep in the core beliefs of Apple, Steve Jobs created a company built upon personal computing machines that were elegantly designed in every aspect yet affordable for the average consumer. He spoke about where he and other divisions of Apple differed in opinion of design. The Apple Lisa didn't fail because it was a poorly designed machine or because Jobs created internal conflict by heading up the Macintosh design team at the same time. Instead the Lisa failed because the product differed from Apple's core beliefs. The Lisa was a $10,000 machine made by a company focused on building affordable consumer products, leading to the machines failure in Apple's marketplace.

Jobs also gave great advice on ideation and implementation. Great ideas don't make great products, in fact great ideas by themselves seldom make successful products. Jobs compared ideas to rocks in a rock tumbler. While ideas begin rough and unrefined, when they are bounced off each other and friction occurs between collaborators, the ideas become smooth and refined like tumbled rocks. Only after this process are ideas ready to become great products.

The talent around these ideas and products also must be great. A-list products attract A-list talent, and this talent will perpetuate a disciplined and refined environment of great ideas and products.

Innovator's Dilema: Intro and Ch 8

The Innovator's Dilema is to design a sustaining product or process not a disruptive one. Companies need to focus on products that an provide long term profit and success, not just groundbreaking inventions that aren't able to find a foothold in a the current marketplace. This isn't an easy task in marketplaces that develop technology far more quickly than designers can output to consumers. The computer industry is one example of this, with machines evolving very quickly. Within a year most technologies within this industry could be considered out of date. To keep up pace with development, companies must pinpoint designs that consumers will readily buy, while avoiding being too groundbreaking as to not find a customer base. In my understanding, this is more simply boiled down to: it's not the first product on the market that finds consumers, it's the best developed and refined.

Chapter 8 discusses the framework a company creates to succeed. This framework consists of 3 factors: resources, processes, and values. While small companies can change their processes and values, large corporations are fixed to theirs pending a massive overhaul to the company's culture. Companies need to evaluate their own values and processes to determine what sustainable products they can develop. 

Transforming the Corporation

Procter & Gamble are now seen as forefront designers and developers in their industries. After developing many modern conveniences throughout the 20th century, the company fell into a repetitious lull of thinking and conservatism. Instead of chasing design, the focus became on profit margins and repackaging. What seems crucial to change a corporate culture is to hire someone who thinks differently from the current system. Often this aspect comes from outside a company, but P&G hired from within for their vacant CEO position. A.G. Lafley restructured the company completely to focus on design and development. To do this Lafley had to change the complete research and development division, as well as reorganizing the structure of the company throughout the globe. Lafley began by seeking help from outsiders. He hired a new head of design who worked to develop a new process of design in all sections of the company. She works with different managers to help them realize where they can implement design thinking into their work. Lafley also crated a board of designers outside of P&G to critique new ideas. External validation and criticism from respected professionals helps designers focus on important designs and quickly evaluate their products before entering the market.

Wicked Problems

Despite the evolution of design thinking in the 20th century, wicked problems are the source of most design problems, even if those problems are not initially realized. Wicked problems are not simple to define, but they do adhere to a criteria defined by Richard Buchanan

1) There is no definitive formulation, but all problems relate to their formulated solution

2) These problems can be perpetual, without any timeframe of stopping

3) There are no true or false solutions to the problems, only good or bad

4) There are infinite possible solutions to the problems

5) Every problem has multiple explanations

6) These problems are merely symptoms of larger problems

7) You cannot test solutions to the problems

8) Solving a wicked problem comes from throwing out a solution, not through prototyping and testing

9) Every problem is unique

10) The solver is fully responsible for all solutions

Wicked problem to me are very difficult to understand in this context, as they seem very vague and difficult to define. All wicked problems stem from the involvement of human beings. In society, behavior creates these problems because of human ego and interactions.

Tim Brown Prototyping

Tim Brown's article on prototyping points to prototyping as a foundation of a successful design. Thomas Edison not only invented the lightbulb; he invented thousands of failed bulbs, early prototypes that didn't meet his standard. This process should be implemented in any firm hoping to be successful at design. However prototypes don't have to be tangible products which are usually first to the mind. Instead, processes can be the focus of a successful prototype, as one story about emergency room workflow points out. 

    

Prototypes do not have to be rigid well formed products either. They can be as simple as necessary to highlight certain aspects of a design. Markers and an eraser taped together can help visualize the grip for a new tool. I often think these small steps of a visual understanding don't constitute a prototype, but by changing my framework of understanding, I now know they are.

Reading with Kevin

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