Week Five (Last One)

The last chapter of new content was how to cultivate an innovative culture though philosophies.  The key concept here was ensuing it was ingrained into the fabric of the organization - and to do so one must start at the top.  By having a CEO who is very innovative, they will surround them selves with like minded people and this trend will hopefully play out to all levels of the organization.  To ensure this happens there were some best practices.

The first was underscoring that Innovation doesn't stop at R&D, that all areas of an organization must innovate.  That R&D can often have narrow focus, and that perspective from a diverse set of people from the entire company can provide much more insight into problems which can and should be solved.  However getting people to recommend innovative ideas can be very difficult, so to ensure this philosophy is followed, safe environment and time must be allocated where ideas can be shared and built upon.

The second is that disruptive innovation must be considered.  This may involve entering different market spaced then the organization typically plays in, a la Apple with the iPod/iPhone etc.  In most companies the majority of time is actually spend on derivative improvements on existing products, and although important, this will not lead to sustained competitive advantage like disruptive innovation can.

Thirdly, innovation needs to be organized, and it should be organized in small complementary teams.  The consensus is that large teams prompt delivery skills, not discovery skills.  Amazon suggests that all teams must be fed dinner with two large pizzas.  Along with the organization, teams must be giving the autonomy to explore and experiment with ideas to understand what works, and what doesn't.  The faster a team can determine if something doesn't work, the faster they can move on to find something that does.

Lastly "smart" risk taking should be encouraged.   Failure must not be feared, it should be embraced.  By learning how to quickly use discovery skills to find and qualify ideas, a team can learn to better judge risks upfront and thus take smarter more calculated risks to offset the less risky derivative work which makes up the majority of the time and effort in an organization.


There have been a lot of takeaways in this book.  I think I've learned that I probably do not want to start my own business, at least not at the moment.  I do think I'd be good at helping an existing organization innovate, and perhaps help develop new disruptive ideas at some point in the future.  In the mean time there are actions I should do to help develop my discovery skills.  I should really start my own book of ideas to take quick notes and sketches down of my ideas.  I think I need to continue to read and research about broad areas of science and technology to develop a good "T" shape in my knowledge expertise.  I should really improve my networking skills and start attending more innovative type meetings and conferences.

Applying this to our project is difficult, as we would not actually be creating an organization as part of the project.  But as with any start-up  if we were to create this business of custom 3d printed toys, we would need a very small, dedicated team with specific skills and broad knowledge to come together and converge their expertise into a very new, potentially disruptive technology and market.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog over the past few weeks.  The Innovator's DNA has been a very good read, and I'd recommend it to anybody who is curious about the innovation concept and curious how they would fit into it.

Week Four

This week I read about how transportation can foster innovation through people and teams as well as through process.

From the people and team perspective, the main premise is that very successful innovative companies have innovative leaders. Innovative leaders then lead to innovative teams and innovation companies.  This should ultimately be seen through the innovation premium on the stock price which I discussed last week.   Although I can be very difficult to find individuals who excel at all of the discovery skills, it is easier to find individuals which have very high ratings for one or two of the discovery skills.  From this you can form complementary skilled teams to provide a boost to innovation up to the leadership of the organization.  However it isn't often enough to have a balance of discovery skills, a team also needs a balance of the delivery driven skills in Analyzing, Planning, Detail-oriented implementable and Self-disciplined.  When teams had those skills balanced with the discovery skills, Associating, Questioning, Observing, Idea networking and experimenting. Naturally different organization functions would want a different balance  for instance the product development would want to be weighted more to the discovery driven side, where was say the finance department would be more weighted to the delivery.  The author also discussed the concept of how a "T" type person is important for innovative teams.  The "T" person has a wide breadth of general knowledge and is specialized in another area.  A team of "T" people with different specialization can be very compelling as holistically the team would have many synergies because of the overlapping of the breadth and many specializations.

The next chapter was how an organizations process can help with innovation.  The idea was turning the "B employees  into "A+" employees through process.  The process to do this in Questioning was by using the "5 whys" of Toyota to find the root cause of their issues was an example of how to innovate.  As a person who's job it is to find root cause of issues on a  daily basis, I personally found the examples they gave as very over simplified.  Often it isn't enough to have 5 whys.  We take the approach to question to the void, until no more information can be gathered.  That was part of the Kepner-Tregoe troubleshooting which I discussed previously.  For Observing the process recommendation was to focus on how your customers were operating and what pain they were seeing and from there one could observe new ideas for doing things better perhaps though new products or services.   Networking was particularly interesting.  I had always heard of Google's 25% unscheduled time for employees to contribute to products of their choice.  However I never looked at it from the same angle as the author.  By allowing employees choose which products they put time in, they are allowing the free market (internally) to guide the products which they develop and ultimately sell.  They also externally network by having beta programs where people can test out products in a more controlled environment before being externally available.  Lastly Experimenting has never been easier and is recommended by a crucial part of any development cycle.  Again this can be accomplished with beta testing, rapid prototyping via exciting new technologies (3D printing) or simply by launching test sites to gauge interest.  Another key process which was discussed was the hiring process, to ensure that you get an innovative A+ employee.  The authors suggest finding people who "demonstrate strong discovery skills", "have T shaped knowledge profile", and lastly "displays a passion to change the world and make a difference".  It sounds a lot easier than it probably is, but it is certinly a process to consider when looking to hire a new employee.

Relating these concepts back to our project is a little difficult since they are all about ensuing that an organization has the people and process to be innovative.  If the project were to continue beyond the business validation stage, then it would be very important to form a team with more diversified discovery and delivery skills.  With only four people, two of which have telecom expertise we are not a diversified bunch.  Ultimately we would want an image processing expert as well as somebody with experience in 3D printing.  Without two people with these skills I don't believe we could launch the business.