Can we dent the universe, too?

6 tips for innovation inspired by Steve Jobs

By Andrew Sherman When I heard the news of Steve Jobss death last Wednesday evening, my first thought was of how much Jobs accomplished with so little time. In the last ten years, Jobs changed the paradigm of human-technology interaction completely. His company released a new, enticing product at least once a year, creating and then satisfying enormous consumer demand. In his short life he rebounded from serious public failures. And he grew a multibillion dollar company from nothingtwice. For Jobs, money was of little consequence. He earned a dollar per year during his second stint as Apple CEO. He professed that his success was motivated by passion and his desire to make a ding in the universe. Jobss ding is significant. His capacity for innovation was amplified by the looming shadow of his own mortality, and his passion inspired a generation of Apple users and enthusiasts with superior products and a reminder of what a single person is capable of when passion and ability meet a great idea. For Jobs, innovation at Apple was a certainty. But for many of us, innovation is really difficult. We know the importance of innovation, but actually innovating on a sustainable and continued basis is often so elusive that I wonder whether we are inspiring innovation, or implicitly conspiring against it through our failure to provide guidance to ourselves, our teams, and our companies. Jobs had a spectacular innovation compass; some of its directions can guide our inner innovators, too: 1. Follow your passion. Jobss genius was magnified by his enthusiasm for innovation, his work and for his company. In his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford, Jobs said Youve got to find what you love and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you havent found it yet, keep looking, and dont settle. Innovation in our work requires ideas, and ideas come easiest when we are passionate about what we do. 2. Meet a customer need. A decade ago, our best bet for mobile music was a Discman. Since the Discman was bulky, heavy, prone to skipping, and required CDs, most of us didnt make listening to music on the street part of our everyday lives. The IPod changed that as it went from being unimaginable to shifting the paradigm of mobile music entirely in just a few years. Jobss innovation made high quality music available in small, beautiful, and durable packages. The IPod was possible because Jobs believed that sometimes, there is a huge market for something people dont even know they want. In a January 2000 interview with Fortune, Jobs explained innovating from within the company. He said . . . that doesnt mean we dont listen to customers, but its hard for them to tell you what they want when theyve never seen anything remotely like it. 3. Keep it simple. Jobs knew that innovations had to go through the ringer before they would be marketready. In a 2006 interview with MSNBC and Newsweek, he explained when you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if

you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just dont put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through. Jobs proved the value of innovating towards simplicity and usability. 4. Know when to say no. Innovation can come from anywhere, and companies with innovation cultures have fair, consistent systems for vetting ideas. Successful implementation requires focus on the products most likely to move the company forward, and sometimes this means saying no to good ideas. In a 2004 interview with BusinessWeek, Jobs said innovation . . . comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we dont get on the wrong track or try to do too much. Were always thinking about new markets we could enter, but its only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important. 5. Keep money in perspective. Innovation can be very expensive. But it doesnt have to be. Jobs knew that he was outmatched in terms of spending by peer companies, but he wasnt deterred. In a 1998 interview with Fortune, Jobs said, innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. Its not about money. Its about the people you have, how youre led, and how much you get it. 6. Come back from failure. Jobs was ousted, very publicly, from his own company. He admits that he thought about running away from Silicon Valley. But when he realized how much he loved his work, he rebounded with a new kind of innovation. He started Next and invested some of his fortune in Pixar. When Pixar was bought by Apple, Jobs was back in as interim CEO. The position became permanent in 2000. The same philosophy applies to the failed innovations that we really believe in. Sometimes, the innovation can be successfully resurrected when times and conditions are little different. Jobs was an unparalleled innovator with a drive to make a mark on the universe and a passion for technology. For most of us, making a dent begins by making a scratch on our own lives, and in our work. Jobs and his company are responsible for the personal computer, for hand held devices, for changing what humans extract from technology. He is one of the greatest innovators of all time, and uniquely beloved by the public not only for his ability to tap in to human desire, but to inspire innovation among others. How will you make a dent with innovation?

Become a creative artist whose medium is everyday life, urges improv expert
October 19, 2011 | By Michelle James | Category: Best Practices Send to a Friend Comments Interview #30 in the Creativity in Business Thought Leader Series is with Cathy Rose Salit, CEO of Performance of a Lifetime, a training and consulting company that brings the tools and framework of theater and improvisation to corporate and organizational life. Cathy began her career as an upstart and risk-taker at the age of 13, when she dropped out of eighth grade and, along with some friends and their more open-minded parents, started an alternative school in an abandoned storefront in New York City. This innovative endeavor led to Random House's publication of their book, Starting Your Own High School. Since then, Cathy has spent her life as an onstage performer, educational pioneer and social entrepreneur, launching innovative businesses and organizations designed as centers for change, learning and growth. Her clients include PricewaterhouseCoopers, Microsoft, Mars, Credit Suisse, the US Olympic Committee, Barclays and John Hopkins Hospital, where her recent work includes a ground-breaking resiliency program for oncology nurses. An accomplished singer, actress, director, and improvisational comic, Cathy can be seen performing in improvised musical comedy with The Proverbial Loons at the Castillo Theatre in New York City. Q: How does your work relate to creativity? Salit: In my work, I help people in organizations to be creative in response to all kinds of challenges and situations in life and work. Im very committed to helping people engage in a creative process all the time, which means that it doesn't matter whether the "end product" is brilliant. Q: What do you see as the new paradigm of work? Salit: We all need to get much better at handling uncertainty, dealing with the unknown (and perhaps unknowable), and embracing change and the unexpected. Organizations (and their leaders) who are interested in developing their people to be more open-minded and to take risks and are willing to invest in it are part of a new paradigm of work. They focus on creating a work environment and culture that supports shaking things up and nurtures new ideas and practices. And part of what makes that possible is helping people to grow and develop emotionally, socially and intellectually. Q: What do you see as the role of creativity in that paradigm? Salit: Its essential. It takes creativity to break out of our habitual ways of working, conversing and interacting with colleagues, customers, stakeholders, etc. We get stuck in our scripts, comfortable with our stock characters. I think that exercising the creativity needed to expand your professional and personal repertoire to try out different performances is crucial. In my work, theater and improvisation provide the creative venue. For example: a colleague and friend of mine, the developmental psychologist Lenora Fulani, has created an amazing program in New York City called Operation Conversation: Cops and Kids. She recruits police officers and inner city young people (whose typical relationship is, to put it mildly, estranged), brings them into a room, and directs them in creating improvisational theater together. Its awe-inspiring. It

completely changes how they see each other, and what they can then say and hear. Thats the power of creativity! Or Andy Lansing, the CEO from Chicago recently profiled in the New York Times Corner Office column, whose first question to potential hires is Are you nice? I love that! What a creative question! It conveys a message about what it takes to succeed at this company (which obviously places a premium on how people relate to each other), it challenges the interviewee to think and talk in a way that they dont expect (personally), and it breaks the mold of what a CEO (or anyone for that matter) would ask a potential new hire. Q: What mindsets and behaviors do you see as essential for effectively navigating the new work paradigm? Salit: Improvise. Perform. Relate to every conversation, meeting, and interaction as an improvisational scene in which you are a performer, writer and director. Break rules and make up new ones not just in coming up with ideas, but in how we organize what we do together and how we do it in the workplace. Become a creative artist whose medium is everyday life. Q: What is one approach that people could start applying today to bring more creativity into their work or their business organization? Salit: Learn and use the golden rule of improvisers: Yes, And. Our natural tendency is to say Yes, but, which blocks the flow of conversation and any chance of creativity. Saying yes means that you accept the person and what she or he has said. And lets you build on what your colleague has given you, adding your contribution. Try this exercise: when youre in a conversation with a colleague at work, listen extra carefully. Dont plan what youre going to say just listen. When your colleague finishes, say yes, and and let that guide what you say next. Even if you dont agree! Start paying attention to all of the Yes, buts that you say and hear. See if you can start to bring this creative positivity into the meetings and conversations that youre part of. Q: Finally, what is creative leadership to you? Salit: Creative leadership is being willing to fail. That school I started at 13? I cant honestly say that it was an unqualified success. (To this day I still cant identify a subjunctive clause or multiply past 6). But for me, success or no, it changed everything. It taught me the fundamental importance of creatively questioning and creatively building new ways of living and working in our world. Creative leadership is doing things before we know how (and encouraging others to as well). Our culture, with its insistence on knowing how things are going to turn out (an illusion in any event), inhibits our appetite for and skill at bringing new things into existence. Creative leadership means working and playing well with others. Creativity is not a solo act. Everyday creativity is an ensemble performance, in which people build on one anothers contributions to create new possibilities and new understandings of what they are doing together. Creative leaders model all this in what they do and how they do it, and dont swerve from their commitment to helping other people take risks which as often as not means taking the risk with them. You cant control it! Let things emerge and then take on the creative challenge of figuring out what to do next.

The end of mass innovation

By Mary Kay Plantes Want a quick peek into the future? Marketing guru Seth Godin, in his new book We are All Weird, argues that the age of mass markets is over. Furthermore, the alternative to mass is not niche, but weird small groups with unusual taste. As a baby boomer, I grew up in mass markets. At night, I could secretly watch our neighbors TV through the hall window. With only 3 TV channels to choose from, odds were high that the audio from the channel my parents were watching in our living room would match. Today, forget it. The Big Three market shares fallen from 90% to under 30%. We rejoiced over Howard Johnson, which offered my family the security of finding a comfortable bed while travelling in a new state. Pittsburgh had A&P grocery stores, so you went to A&P. Cereal choices were few. (Today, according to Godin, the cereal shelf alone is larger than the entire packaged good section of the grocery store in my youth.) Media, marketing and companies all existed to push us to mass. That was where the money was. Serving a large uniform market created leverage to lower marginal costs, which in turn increased profits. And mass was where most people were in terms of their tastes (or so we thought). In Godins world, the tails of the normal distribution are getting fatter and fatter as the center where mass market solutions thrive continue to shrink.

Why are we living in a world of fatter tails?

1. With more wealth, we all across the globe have more choice and are willing to act on that choice. The world is getting richer at an amazing speed, creating opportunities for differentiated tastes and choices. 2. The Internet, new 3-D printing, and other new technologies amplify our individual creativity. Anyone can reach anyone. We can all be producers meeting the unmet needs we discover our own and others. We dont have to rely on the producers for the masses to get our needs met and, with more choice, mass solutions are increasingly likely to disappoint us. 3. With the Internet, marketing can be far more efficient at reaching individuals. And because the Internet has removed place as a requirement for commerce, you can seek out individuals anywhere and anytime.

4. Finally, tribes (the subject of Godins earlier book) are more connected. The Internet amplifies what tribes are all about and pushes tribes to take their shared interests as far as they can go. I recently read about a tribe that convenes from across the globe to wear ancient armor to reenact middle age warfare. A market exists to supply this community with weapons and armor. Amazing. While there are, according to Godin, nostalgic moments when we feel we are all one tribe (e.g., Super Bowl Sunday), what we yearn for most is to belongbut not to the ber tribe. Our own little circle is what we really want, Godin states.

Implications for innovation

So what does this mean for innovation? Here were my reflections after reading Godins book. Watch out for the cultural bias we all have to think that mass is best. Explore markets through the lens of a kaleidoscope versus a macro lens. Focus on differences rather than spending your time figuring out the mass market solution. Godin gets it right when he says, There is no us. No mass. No center. Just tribes in search of those who would join them or amplify them or, yes, sell to them. This is not utopia. But it is our future. Define your business models around smaller and smaller groups of people. Achieve efficiency through the use of shared platforms. Offer solutions that can be personalized. Real personalization (how I configure my cell-phone functionality using Apps). Not faux personalization (the color of a Dell computer case). Rethink your metrics. We have few ways to predict the advantages of duplication and focusing on smaller groups. So many companies consolidated units in the 2008 recession to save money. Perhaps revenue is not growing because, in the scaling, we no longer look for unique, unmet needs. Rethink the structure of your company and why it should exist as a company. The company of tomorrow may be a huge number of small communities each serving a widely divergent set of tribes but sharing a common purpose and key process, knowledge and skill platforms. Personalize communication delivered to the individual when and where he or she wants it. This is an awesome and exciting challenge for media and marketing.

There will be large markets in our future. But they will emerge more and more from consumer affinities, not producer financial metrics.

Innovation strategy: Explore 'parallel universes' for solutions

By Jack Hipple "The history of medical innovation is one of inspiration, unexpected insights, and the sharing of ideas across disciplines" - Methodist/DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center ad, back cover of Continental Airlines magazine, Nov 2010. It's amazing what you find in airline magazines. During a recent trip to present a workshop at the Mexican TRIZ Association meeting in Puebla, I flew Continental Airlines through Houston and took the time to read their airline magazine, Continental. It was November 30th and the last day this issue was in the seat pocket. Now I enjoy the interesting articles in many of these magazines and of course the crossword puzzles and Sudoku. Seldom do I pay attention to the ad on the back cover. But this time I did and saw an ad for the joint R&D program (The Cardiovascular Energy Collaborative) between Exxon Mobil, the University of Houston, and the DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center, which has been in existence only since 2007. This consortium is holding its first international meeting in April of 2012. Here are some quotes from last year's meeting: "Much like moving oil through a pipeline, the heart must pump blood through the body. Both systems need clean, well-functioning pipes (or blood vessels), free of blockages or corrosion, to function efficiently" Its amazing the ideas that flow when energy and medicine experts get together. The interaction sparks ideas that would never have materialized if we stayed in the medical center and they stayed in the oil field." Pumps & Pipes III: Better Together will have speakers in the morning sessions from medicine, energy, and academia discussing use of advanced nanotechnology, robotics and distant monitoring in common issues like pipeline corrosion and blood vessel integrity. The afternoon sessions will feature new discussions on pipes and fluids, a concept that spawned joint oil and medicine ideas in the past when Methodist researchers looking at preventing aneurysms gained a new perspective of blood flow dynamics from pipeline engineers who used fluid dynamics to predict pipeline ruptures. Talks will focus on managing imperfect pipes, next-generation intelligent conduits, and advanced materials for energy and medicine. The presentations are designed to offer common language and terminology to all parties, as well as provide a platform to discuss the hurdles facing each discipline. There are several web links, but here are two to get you started, here and here. Isn't this amazing? Here are two industries that have had their focal point in Houston for over 50 years, and from a TRIZ and chemical engineering (my other passion) standpoint, are doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING. They are moving fluids around in "pipes"; they worry incessantly about friction and pressure drop, Reynolds number, flow uniformity and restrictions, valve integrity and pump curves. Can you imagine where we might be if these two industries had started talking to each other in the 1950-60 time frame rather than waiting until 2007? Do some real soul searching about whether the problem you face is really all that unique and talk to

someone in a parallel universe. You might find out your problem has already been solved, or that you have a solution to a parallel universe problem.