Alliance Partners

Sunday, September 12, 2021

So what is innovation and what are the 9 ingredients to create a culture of innovation



Solving a problem in a different way

  • Small step - incremental innovation 
  • Hop - gfi (great fucking idea )
  • Jump - radical innovation 


So where does innovation come from?


Innovation doesn’t come from the boardroom. 

It is not isolated geniuses. 

It doesn’t come from a lab at a university 


It happens  

  • When people collaborate with a view to solve a problem 
  • When they allow constraints to focus their creativity. 
  • When they crave feedback. 
  • When it’s ok to fail 
  • When they are prepared to throw everything away and start again if they’re not solving the right problem. 


Its a mindset that become a part of company culture. 


It is a state of being when you’re uncertain of how something will turn out, but you are immersed in experimentation and fueled by an overwhelming desire to impact people.   


2 examples that happenned from a different goal that created an amazing outcome 


Post-it Notes were originally invented by 3M scientists to stop bookmarks from falling out of church hymnals.


Ruth Graves Wakefield allegedly discovered the chocolate chip cookie when she was attempting to make Butter Drop Do cookies for guests at the Toll House Inn and ran out of baker’s chocolate. 




Gary Nakanelua, Managing Director of Innovation at Blueprint Technologies and Phil Mckinney 

https://philmckinney.com/innovation-culture-mean-matter/

shares with us a few  things  that you need to do, be or have to foster innovation in your workplace , and  I have added a few more .



1. Be able to Communicate and Collaborate 


Without communication, there is no vehicle for innovation.


  • Rewarding risk-taking,
  • Execution is critical - talk - but take action 
  • Create opportunities for teamwork within different groups. Make sharing innovative concepts easy and meet them where they are, email, Whatsapp, verbal communication, or a folder outside the door.
  • Create an environment in which creativity is encouraged and every individual knows that their input is valued

 

2. Know your problem - and really want to solve it 


In a Forbes article, Spanx founder Sara Blakely shares the pain from uncomfortable pantyhose that led to her invention, “It’s Florida, it’s hot, I was carrying fax machines.” 


If it’s a problem you don’t experience directly, immerse yourself with those who do. Their pain should become your pain.


Ideally you want a painkiller for your problem and not a vitamin 


3. Be excited by constraint. 


  • Know your constraint 
  • Own it 
  • Be motivated by it 
  • Does it have a deadline? 


During the development of the initial iPhone, the software engineering team was “struggling for months to lay out the software vision.” Steve Jobs gave the engineering team two weeks to figure it out, or he would assign the project to another team.


4. Be hungry for feedback. 


Feedback refines the problem, constraint t and solution and keeps you on the right track 


Make sure it doesn’t paralyse you though


In 2017, a Tesla customer tweeted at Elon Musk with feedback about what to do with the steering wheel and driver seat once the vehicle was in park. Elon responded that the feedback would be integrated into a future software release. 



5. Be ready to blow everything up and start again 


If you are truly maniacal about solving the problem, you need to blow it up when an idea doesn’t meet the mark.


The founders of Twitter originally set out to form a podcasting platform called Odeo. When Apple announced in 2015 that iTunes would include a podcasting platform, the Odeo team realized they weren’t even using their own platform. “We built [Odeo], we tested it a lot, but we never used it,” an Odeo engineer said. A year later, Odeo’s podcasting platform was scrapped, and Twitter began to emerge. 


6. Be sure to create a safe space - that it’s ok to fail 

Create a safe collaborative space


Innovation comes in many forms and kinds. From brainstorming sessions like innovation jams to crowdfunding, these forms of growth all mobilize a diverse group of people with a variety of skills. 


7.  Have diversity in your team 


Surround yourself with people unlike you: Find the people who can fill in your blind spots and help you with things you don’t know. This means embracing individuals you may have nothing in common with: thinkers who see the world differently than you do. 


Choose your team carefully

8. Find experts in that field 

Gather the talents of those who can teach you and give you expertise 


9. Resource ideas 

Funding to support an idea is key . 

Vc - Tim Draper says that  his biggest failures have been when he did not back the innovation when they came to him.

Case in point - Facebook 


Give the idea the best chance to work .

Trust your team 

 

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