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Crash course in innovation
Jun 21, 2007
"Innovation" is one of the most popular buzzwords of the current moment, perhaps second only to "Web 2.0." Buzzwords often bring on lemming-like behavior in some people, so I'm naturally skeptical about the recent run of cover stories and business books on innovation.
Still, I have come across some worthwhile thinking on the subject, so here's a crash course in recent writing about innovation.
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My friend (and past Gel speaker) David Bodanis wrote an outstanding essay for the Financial Times about a month ago, Sparks Flew, about innovation. Bodanis reveals the secret: "Immerse your innovator in the hot new thing," and "Now the trick: tell your innovator to try the reverse of what everyone else is doing." That's true innovation: not doing what the lemmings are doing.
David's book Electric Universe contains many of the case studies in the article in more detail. I recently read the book and highly recommend it:
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Last week's Economist had a cover story on "Apple and the art of innovation." The thinking should be familiar to any customer experience practitioner: Apple's innovation revolves around the user, not the company itself or its products.
Apple illustrates the importance of designing new products around the needs of the user, not the demands of the technology. Too many technology firms think that clever innards are enough to sell their products, resulting in gizmos designed by engineers for engineers. ...
... Nintendo has done something similar with its popular motion-controlled video-game console, the Wii. Rather than designing a machine for existing gamers, it gambled that non-gamers represented an untapped market and devised a machine with far broader appeal.
Link: "Lessons from Apple" (site reg. required, unfortunately)
Link: A longer profile about Apple and Steve Jobs, in the same issue, "The Third Act" (reg. required)
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Finally, two other books to consider:
Scott Berkun's new book The Myths of Innovation describes some of the common pitfalls in innovation-related thinking and how to overcome them. Scott has run the Sacred Spaces tour at my Gel conference for two years; it's no surprise that the examples in his book are thoughtful and well-rounded.
Scott Rosenberg's book Dreaming in Code covers the story of Mitch Kapor's effort to build "Chandler," an ambitious piece personal organization software. Anyone interested in innovation in software processes would find this a useful case study to study. It addresses the question, "Why is good software so hard to make?"
As someone who's a user only and who considers my ability to blog (with limited assitance from time to time) the zenith of my technological prowess, I've always felt the goal of technology should be what I was seeing in the sixties on the original Star Trek.
You just talk to the thing and it does stuff...
Most people view innovation as radical change in existing paradigms. Such innovation is actually the exception, not the rule. We've studied how innovation evolves within about 200 consumer product categories and the path is remarkably predictable (even the iPod evolution). It's the companies that can "understand the path and see the future" that stay ahead of the game.
Another interesting newer book is Outside Innovation by Patricia Seybold (who also wrote Customers.com, a book much ahead of its time). (Full disclosure: I have no connection to her or her company). She clearly outlines how successful companies are embracing their customers into their product and service solution delivery process.
Elliot
The Unified Theory of Innovation (or beware what you write for you will be Googled later.)
Very Interesting article and yes, I am one of the many folks out there who has taken a deeper interest in finding a way to make innovation happen more often. Innovation methods seem to all have their foundation in a first phase consisting of deep observations especially the kind oriented around documenting thoughless acts. Improving our ability to observe (to recognize the vibrations in the throats)set's us up for the insight, trial and error (prototyping methods) get's us closer, but any attempt to understand innovation may lead us to the same chasm as understaning...um, Gravity...trusting Einstein and anticipating the results of Gravity Probe B, can we say that Innovation is a distortion in time and space and that for us to feel at home with Innovation, we have to feel comfortable with the idea that Innovation is not what you think it is, the leap of faith. Trust in the force and distort your Cerebral cortex - come out to California Mark. ;-)
The basic problem with software development, as summarized from Dreaming in Code, an easy and well written read, is that bushy-tailed optimism is no substitute for hard-nosed analysis and planning. Rosenberg reviews classic works and sites many new examples of failed software projects. Most of the problems in writing good software are not new.
The fundamental problem is that most software endeavors are started without a critical study of the history of failures and lessons learned. There have been comprehensive, clearly written studies that list the major success and failure factors of such endeavors, large and small. Google the CHAOS report.
Sadly this boils down to the truism, those who fail to study history are doomed... etc.