What are you willing to give up?

Innovation doesn’t come for nothing.

Innovation requires that something is given up in return. There’s always some kind of trade-off; resources, a process, a job, a machine or even an identity has to be abandoned in order to make room for innovation. The old way of doing things has to be left behind, or at the very least, re-contextualized.

If someone were to innovate the English language too much – perhaps in order to make writing and reading more efficient, to create more consistent spellings and grammatical rules, or to improve certainty of comprehension – they might create a better or more effective communication tool, but many will likely have to do without the benefits of understanding writings that are the bedrock of a shared culture and language such as Shakespeare, Dickens, or Wharton. Any innovation has to be compelling enough to give up the benefits of the old, and any innovation that dismisses the importance of an existing system, no matter how flawed, is unlikely to succeed.

But that doesn’t mean that people are unwilling to trade for innovation. When a new approach is compelling enough or when the old approach is too cumbersome or difficult, people will even give up things they are passionately in love with. When compact discs and then MP3 files replaced vinyl records – those records and everything that was built up around it, such as record players, cover art and vinyl record cleaners was abandoned by millions of music lovers. It was difficult to believe that vinyl records could be abandoned in just a few years, as everyone had to buy new disc players, re-build their libraries, and build new furniture to house their collections. And yet, CD’s became the dominant form of music distribution in as little as ten years. MP3 players, once introduced to the masses by Apple’s iPod and iTunes, took less than a decade to sell over 100 Million players, and 2.5 billion songs. (“Apple: 100 million iPods sold, and counting” by Peter Cohen, Playlist Magazine 4.27.07) Effectively, most people gave up their vinyl records even though they loved them.

Three or four generations of music lovers had grown up with vinyl, how could they give it up so fast? It turns out that despite our love for vinyl, there were shortcomings. The music degraded too easily, dust and scratches made distracting sounds; the records took up too much room on the shelves and dancing in a room with a record player tended to jump the needle off the turntable. Everyone was willing to live with those problems until someone better made those minor irritations seem unreasonable. Now, the only vinyl records that remain are essentially a nostalgic collectors’ item, and record companies are fast losing revenues as fewer and fewer people are even buying CD’s.

In the 1880’s, most homes were lit by gas lights. Thomas Edison had invented the electric light, but most reasonable people thought it was an impractical idea. In order to light people’s homes with electricity, an entirely new infrastructure of power generation and distribution would have to be built. As long as the gas light didn’t set your house on fire or poison the occupants, it just wasn’t worth the trouble and the investment to change. Gas companies didn’t want to lose the lighting market, (though they eventually got into the business of generating electricity in addition to providing for heating and cooking).

But over the next quarter century, electric lighting was adopted. Despite objections that electric light was less attractive than gas lights, the danger, cost and dimness of gas lighting became difficult enough that everyone abandoned gas lights and embraced electricity.

It seems likely that we will give up gasoline powered automobiles in the near future. Once a majority of drivers embrace a new form of locomotion, such as electric cars, those gasoline powered engines, along with all the companies, products and practices that surround the use and maintenance of those engines will have to be abandoned and or changed. That is one of the main reasons it has been so difficult for electric cars to be successful commercially – not because the technology is especially difficult, electric cars have been around at least as long as their gasoline cousins, but because companies and individuals who service and use the cars will have to give up a lot.

And yet, according to William Clay Ford, current Executive Chairman of Ford Motor Company, “Customers don’t want to give anything up. So our job as manufacturers is to deliver these new technologies in a way that doesn’t require any trade-offs.” (Ford Looks to the Future, by Bill Vlasic, NYT, 10.20.9)

Drivers will likely have to give up the satisfaction of a powerful rumbling engine as well as the particular look and feel of a gas-powered card we have grown accustomed to. Cars have to become smaller. “Refueling” an electric car takes a bit more time and perhaps some advanced planning. Driving ranges are different. Oil companies, refineries, and gasoline retailers will have to come up with different markets for their products or different products to manufacture and sell. Manufacturers of engines and support services will have to find new customers and new applications as well – and it is very likely that those new markets will not be as large as the ones they have today. There’s quite a bit to give up.

But it is a mistake to believe that no one will give up anything. Mr. Ford, though long a vocal supporter of alternative energy and sustainable manufacturing, has been limited by the conventional wisdom of automobile manufacturers in the US. If you take as a given that customers won’t give up anything, then you have accepted that innovation is impossible. Even if electric cars can deliver precisely the same performance that a gasoline powered car, they will not come without some kind of trade-off. The moment drivers are irritated enough with the price, the inconvenience and the implications of the internal combustion engine, they will be willing to give up the particular thrills of gasoline – no matter how much they may love it now. The instant drivers are seduced by alternative thrills, they will also likely drop their old love as quickly as an old scratched record.

A new buyer of a Tesla electric roadster, a sports car enthusiast and no stranger to the excitement of high octane driving recently confessed to me the thrills of never visiting a gas station, of silent exits and entrances and of unbelievable acceleration that only an electric motor can deliver. The pleasures of gasoline powered cars may begin to appear quaint in comparison, and giving up the advantages may not be as difficult as Mr. Ford imagines.

Just as electric lighting required us to abandon gas lights in the 19^th century, electric transportation will require us to abandon gasoline cars and much of what is associated with it. Just like the gas lighting industry, those engines, the technology, fueling and the support of those engines will be re-focused on task specific applications such as construction vehicles or on-site generation of electricity.

When innovating, make sure you understand the trade-off as well as the benefit, and don’t be afraid to give up the old in return for something better.

If no one buys it - did it happen?

It is a common mistake to believe that innovation happens when someone comes up with a new idea. New ideas are a common occurrence – every day, people all over the world come up with great new ideas, new solutions and brilliant potential innovations that could possibly end poverty, build a successful company, or make peeling an orange much easier.

Experiments, though crucial to discovering what is possible and how something might be innovated, aren’t innovation. Prototypes and inventions aren’t innovation either, though they are an important step towards proving how innovation could happen.

Innovation doesn’t happen in the lab, the skunkworks or the strategy off-site. It doesn’t happen in the garage of a genius, nor does it happen when a government task force comes up with an innovation blueprint. Innovation might happen afterwards when the products of everyone’s labors are used by others, but there are quite a few good projects and initiatives that are easily forgotten in a few years.

What about all the patents? According to the U.S. Patent office, over 350,000 new patent applications are filed every year with less than 200,000 patents secured – but a patent is no guarantee of innovation. U.S. registered Patents in the last few years for the “Insect Death Ray”, the “Beerbrella”, (illustrated at left), the “Flush Toilet for Dogs”, and the “Electro Shock Game”, are interesting, but can they be described as innovations? They may be useful as entries in the Museum of Obscure Patents, but I question if they are innovation.

According to Richard Maulsby, director of the office of Public Affairs for the US Patent and Trademark Office, “There are around 1.5 million patents in effect and in force in this country, and of those, maybe 3,000 are commercially viable.” (Karen E. Klein, “Avoiding the Inventor's Lament,” Business Week, November 10, 2005)

If someone invents something that no one buys, did innovation occur?

A good analogue to that question, surprisingly, can be found in metaphysics. In the early eighteenth century, the philosopher and developer of “subjective idealism” George Berkeley introduced the idea of “To be is to be perceived”. His ideas are usually introduced with the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it really fall?”

Rephrased by Charles Riborg Mann and George Ransom Twiss in their 1910 book,Physics, the question became easier to answer, "When a tree falls in a lonely forest, and no animal is nearby to hear it, does it make a sound?” When addressed as a physics question versus a metaphysical question, the answer is straightforward: Sound, as explained by Mann and Twiss, is made up of three things:

1. A source of waves – such as a tree falling and creating vibrations as it hits the ground.
2. A medium for those waves to travel – such as the air
3. A receiver – such as an ear, which translates changes in air pressure into what animals perceive as “sound”

Without any animals around to hear the sound, there are only rippling changes in air pressure – no actual sound has been created.

Much like sound in a forest, innovation requires three things:

1. A source of innovation – a person or a team that is motivated enough to not only to come up with good ideas – but to develop them and influence others to follow.
2. A medium for their ideas to travel – such as the marketplace, writing, broadcasting, the Internet, classrooms, churches or any other gathering of people.
3. Receivers - People pay for the innovation, who will change their lives, collaborate with the source, give up something in order to innovate. The more people who receive it, the more innovative it becomes.

And just like the theoretical forest with no animals to listen – if no one adapts the new idea, process, concept or machine – innovation has not occurred. Put another way, “If someone doesn’t pay for it, then it didn’t happen.”

Innovation then, happens when others do it. When customers buy a new technology, when a community stops doing what they did before and begins using a new rule of behavior, when an old paradigm is abandoned for a new one – that’s when innovation happens.

Innovation occurs, not when a new idea or invention is discovered, but when everyone else innovates.

This all suggests three conclusions,

1. In order for innovation to happen, society must agree to that innovation – in effect, to subvert the formerly agreed to rules and participate in that innovation.
2. Innovators are persuaders as much as they are inventors – in effect, they must persuade others to innovate.
3. We all have to start innovating. Now.

What is innovation, really, and how do we get some?

Innovation is both more difficult and less mysterious than we have been led to believe.

Innovation goes far beyond the laboratory - far beyond Silicon Valley startups, institutes or technology incubators. Innovation is less an activity or product as it is a lifestyle or way of thinking. The best innovators are able to change their frame of reference, see a system, a process or a problem in a way that few others can - then find ways to manipulate, change and ultimately improve what they see. And their innovation can occur anywhere, anytime – lab or no lab.

Innovation can be high-tech; but more often it happens at the level of an individual charting a new path for their life, a company creating a new business model or a new way to sell to their customers, an organization finding a more direct path to their objectives. Innovation isn’t just the creation of a new technology, but also the everyday thinking required of anyone to survive and succeed in a rapidly changing environment.

Anyone can innovate and everyone must innovate…every day.

Too often, innovation is described as something done only by magical geniuses. Stories dwell mostly on the flash of insight, or "Eureka" moment. How many profiles of innovative companies describe the beginning with a brilliant ideas that led to great success? Scott Berkun, in his marvelous book, The Myths of Innovation, describes this as "They myth of epiphany"

"Even if there existed an epiphany genie, granting big ideas to worthy innovators, they would still have piles of rather ordinary work to do to actualize those ideas. It is an achievement to find a great idea, but it is a greater one to successfully use it to improve the world."

I worry that too many people are waiting for the "great idea" to solve their problems. For every Fortune 100 company that started from a brilliant invention in a garage - there are millions of people with great ideas that never went anywhere. And yet, entire industries have been built up to serve the faith of ideas. Consultants, executives and businesses spend money and time to brainstorm, to elicit and evaluate new ideas. Investors often make decisions based on a valuation of an idea or business model. Politicians are evaluated by voters based on the perceived value of their ideas.

And yet, the success of the company or the government is only partly determined by the quality of the ideas. Ultimately, inventors are only successful if someone is willing to pay for their invention. Businesses become profitable not because they have a great business model, but because they persuade enough customers to pay more for something than it costs. Politicians become good leaders through competent management, sound decision making, and quite a bit of slogging back and forth in order to persuade people to work together...the ideas they sold during the election are often left behind or reworked once they enter office.

Sit inside a coffee shop and you can hear any number of brilliant ideas. But unless those ideas are turned into something real, the ideas are worth less than the coffee.

The best ideas don't win. Good ideas that are used for actions, products and new behaviors can win...sometimes.

Think about the most successful companies, the most successful leaders, the most successful countries. Did they have the best ideas? Or did they have good ideas that they translated into good products, services, markets, companies, laws, governments, and treaties. If you look close enough, you can find any number of really bad ideas that those successful entities have used to succeed despite themselves.

So why do we think that ideas are so valuable? Why do otherwise rational people believe that the best ideas will save their company, their country, their family?

Perhaps it's because ideas, brainstorming, planning are much more fun than the reality of innovation. The reality of innovation is much like the reality of scientific discovery - as exciting as it is to imagine how something works, that imagining is only part of the process.

In very broad terms, the process known as "the scientific method" can be broken down into the following steps: Observation, Hypothesis, Testing/Experiment and Evaluation. Innovation follows the same process:

First, in order to innovate, it is necessary to Observe reality as closely as you can to discover what is currently happening.

Second, the innovator gets to have fun with ideas - (s)he forms a Hypothesisof what might work better.

Third, that hypothesis needs to be tested in an Experiment prototype or pilot, where a small form of reality is compared to the hypothesis.

Fourth, measurements from the experiment are used to Evaluate the original hypothesis - did it do what was expected? Can that hypothesis be changed in order to affect the desired change?

Mysterious? not really. Both scientists and innovators follow a process, evaluate data and find new answers to old problems. Science and innovation isn't magic, it's just a way to find the truth - about physics, about business, about politics or about how we live - and then act on that truth in a better way than before. As the Harvard business professor and author Theodore Levittonce said, “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.”

Easy to understand, but quite often hard to do…and yet, innovation can become a little easier when faith in "the great idea" is put aside - and "good enough" ideas are put to the test of a scientific or innovative method.

October 19th Innovation Roundtable

How are we going to innovate when everyone’s hiding under their desks?

Markets are tight and unforgiving. Budgets are almost non-existent and customers scarce.

Trying something new isn’t exactly the easiest thing to pull off right now. And there are so many reasons not to innovate. But in a market where everything has changed – where capital is difficult to obtain, energy uncertain, and customers reluctant to buy. Companies that do not innovate will not thrive.

So what do we do now?

The second of a series of Business-to-Business roundtable summits on October 19th will focus on implementing innovation – how to effect change in individuals, in processes and in organizations.

Go to the Roundtable Overview to learn more.

Experience: Friend of Foe to Innovation?

At the heart of innovation lies a difficult paradox. The greatest obstacle to innovation is experience. At the same time, experience is essential to make innovation happen.

When someone has experienced a process, a market and product – and understands what works, what doesn’t, what is reasonable and what is impossible, it is rational to view any new approach with a great deal of skepticism. If something worked before, it is only logical that it will work in the future. And it is reasonable to then avoid or even dismiss innovation. A lot of crazy and wasteful ideas are avoided when experienced people are in charge.

And yet… before recent times, it was foolish to believe that people could fly. If someone managed to fly, it would never be economically viable. Given such a tangible reality, the more reasonable course of action would be to ignore any new developments in aviation and concentrate on building faster trains or ships.

Going to the moon, of course, was ridiculous and obscenely expensive to consider, and satellite-based navigational systems were the stuff of dreams, not serious business plans.

At one time, offering free education to all children was seen as an unnecessary expense with little meaningful return and perhaps even a corruption of working class values.

Segregation was an accepted practice in the U.S., and only the most radical would consider that an African-American would ever be able to eat a sandwich at the same lunch counter as a Caucasian, much less become president.

Of course, for every innovation like flight, or desegregation, there are any number of ideas, good and bad, that never become meaningful innovations, usually because experienced people are certain that they are impossible, impractical, or even irrelevant. Experience can stop innovation with the most solid arguments:

• It hasn’t worked before, it’s not worth trying it again.
• We’ve always done it this way before, why risk making things difficult?
• Why change, technology doesn’t fundamentally change things, it just improves or complicates them, why not just add on to what we already have?
• Let’s not cannibalize what we already have – our customers don’t really want that much change.
• People will never really change, why even try?

And for a while, the experts can be right. Quite often the same practice can and should be repeated while new ones ignored or put off. After all, most companies only start to make money after they’ve repeated a process or sold a product many times. If everything were always changing, modern capitalism could not create anywhere near the wealth it does today.

But nothing lasts forever. Change always happens – eventually. The short-sighted arrogance created by experience can trick people into believing that change can’t happen. The challenge is to perceive opportunities for improvement, imagine a different world, understand that no one has all the answers, then make something happen – even when most experienced peopleknow that it’s impossible. A couple of currently evolving examples include:

• Electric cars? The are too expensive, too strange and GM found it to be impossible to make a practical electric car that could be sold for less than $50,000….
  and yet at least 5 models of electric cars are expected to be broadly marketed in the next two years while a $23,000 electric gas hybrid, thePrius was in the top ten list of cars sold in July of 2009 in the US.
• Solar Power? Too expensive and impractical….and yet the market for solar power grew by about 40% a year between 2000 and 2005, reaching about $11 billion. (source: the Economist)
• Web based social networking? Just a kids’ toy – no one will use such things for serious business…and yet 95% of companies use LinkedIn as a primary tool for find employees (source: Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey ), and the fastest growing segment of Facebook users is women between the ages of 55 and 65. (source: Inside Facebook Blog)

In each case, the experienced view that these innovations can’t work is being revealed as invalid. Does that mean, then, that only non-experienced people can innovate?

Actually, experience is essential for innovation – but the arrogance that can come from experience is not. Beginners can be very good at understanding how something might be innovated – but without a deep appreciation for how things work, it is very difficult for them to actually implement something useful. Innovators aren’t beginners but they behave as if they are. Usually, they have or acquire in-depth experience – and at the same time always look at their products, their organizations and their customers as if for the first time.

They have what is called Shoshin in Zen Buddhism, or “Beginner’s Mind”. This state of consciousness occurs once a certain level of mastery has been achieved, when it is possible to be open to possibilities without preconceptions, to be humble, and to see things as they truly are – not as we assume or want them to be.

Beginner’s Mind is experience without arrogance.

So how does someone with experience acquire a “Beginner’s Mind”? There are any number of ways to get there. Consultants and advisors can help give teams a new perspective. Studying other industries where one does not have experience can help bring new perspective. Talking to customers, partners and suppliers and trying to understand how they perceive the process is also a popular method for getting beyond the biases of experience.

Sometimes, Beginner’s Mind can emerge from crabbiness. As my colleague Buckley Brinkman recently put it, “In order to change things, I have to be irritated – not miserable, not in a good mood – but almost cranky.” If one is too unhappy, one is resigned to the way things are. If one is too happy, there’s no reason to change. If someone is tetchy enough, they can see things for what they truly are, recognize the imperative for change, then do something about it.

Innovators are experienced people who are able to defy the arrogance of experience. They may be irritated, but they are certainly willing to change something when it makes sense. To innovate is to see things for the first time.

One Year Blog Anniversary!

Thank you, everyone who has followed this blog. After one year of writing posts, hearing comments from subscribers, and continuing to hone ideas around innovation and marketing, I continue to be excited about working in the "blogosphere". After learning so much about blogs and blogging in the last year, I finally feel ready to be a beginner blogger.

Although I plan to continue posting blogs at this address, I encourage all my subscribers to change their subscriptions to my new and improved web site/blog address: www.bransonpowers.com. If you go to that site and subscribe, I will manually remove you from this list so you only receive one e-mail per posting.

Why switch? The new site, which was created in WordPress, allows for a design that is easier on the eyes, and much more pleasant to follow. It should also be easier for readers to comment on what they read.

If you like what you see, please also feel free to tell your friends, colleagues and family members to sign up. I look forward to everyone's comments and feedback.

Gunnar

Jump the Groove with Beginner's Mind

Innovation is both simpler and more difficult than most realize. It’s difficult, as it involves risk, change and the unknown. It’s simple, as innovation is as natural to people as breathing. It’s what human beings have done since the beginning of time. But quite often we forget how to do it, so we rely on innovation processes.

Innovation doesn’t have to be a 2-step, 6-step or 10-step process. It doesn’t require specialized techniques, experts, off-sites, focus groups, task forces, laboratories or even “skunk works”. All these things are useful, but the process is not innovation – it’s just process. A mad genius, an expert or a task force can innovate, but so can regular people in their everyday work.

Quite often, innovation is seen primarily as an expensive, risky and time consuming activity that only big government or big business has the resources or patience to undertake. Entrepreneurs, with their addiction to risk are also known for innovating – but only by working out of a garage, mortgaging their house, running up their credit cards and more often than not – failing. Only crazy people and well funded companies innovate.

Special innovation processes are popular. Even though they can be expensive and time consuming, they help people feel a little less risky and a little more reasonable. The process helps everyone feel more “normal”.

Of course, process, techniques, teams, tools and special work spaces do help. A skunk works is a very comfortable environment for innovators to work. Getting away from the office with a good facilitator can help stimulate new thinking. Working through a formula or process can give people comfort when facing the unknown. It can also help determine what is likely to work and what won’t before too much money and time is invested.

But it is important to understand that most of these innovation activities are not what makes innovation happen. Innovation is not an activity, a process, a building, or a department…

…it is a way of thinking, a way of seeing, a way of living.

When people are not innovating every day, they tend to behave like a scratched vinyl record. Before explaining this metaphor, it may be helpful to explain vinyl records to anyone who is not familiar with this older technology.

Before compact discs and MP3 recordings became commonplace, most music was distributed by vinyl records played on a rotating turntable. Sound was encoded on the record on a long groove that started on the outside of the record and spiraled into the center. The groove itself had bumps and valleys inside it that could be read by a small pointed needle or stylus that tracked through the groove and transmitted the sound ultimately to the speakers. The needle was attached to a flexible tone arm that allowed the needle to be dragged through the grooves at an even speed.

When the vinyl records scratched or accumulated dust in the grooves, there was a tendency for the needle to get “stuck”. The music would play normally up to a certain point in the song, then, unable to continue, the needle would be pushed back to a previous point in the song. The song would continue until it hit the obstruction again and started over once more.

If nothing was done to fix the problem, records would continue to play the same few moments of a song over and over again.

There were a couple of ways to solve the problem. Listeners could hope that eventually the needle would push the obstruction out of the way and the song would continue playing on its own. Occasionally that would work, but it would often take a long time to get there. More effective were a variety of strategies to jump the groove; to get past the obstruction by hopping over it to the next section of the song. Those strategies included lifting the needle off the record and moving it past the obstruction, hitting the side of the record player so the needle would “jump” to the next groove or even stomping on the floor so the vibration would jump the needle for you.

In order to innovate a process or product, it’s important to find a way to jump the groove as well. Just as the record player gets stuck doing the same thing over and over with the same disappointing result, companies and organizations often get stuck as well. Perhaps a product no longer sells as well as it used to no matter how hard the sales force works. Perhaps a financial system is no longer providing safe leverage to businesses. Perhaps energy sources aren’t as reliable or as safe as they once were. In every case, the immediate instinct is to try doing the same thing until eventually the needle becomes unstuck by itself. Alternatives are usually seen as too difficult, too risky or perhaps even impossible.

The job of an innovation process is to jump the groove. Just like the record player, once an organization is able to see the problem from a different context, once they are able to jar their sensibility in such a way that they can see alternatives, then innovation is not only possible, it becomes a more rational, safe, even accepted activity. The best processes focus on pushing people out of their current thinking and into a place where they can start over again with a “beginner’s mind”.

As it was eloquently put by Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi, ”In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

But jumping the groove doesn’t have to wait for a special brainstorming session, a project, or for the skunk works. It can be as simple as looking at an old problem for the first time. Instead of assuming that the needle must progress on a straight path through the groove, maybe there is a way to jump out of the problem. Just as Toyota’s Kaizen or Continuous Improvement empowers individual employees on the assembly line to find ways to eliminate waste, improve a process, or even stop the assembly line if something isn’t working, if everyone is encouraged to look at their work for the first time, every time – innovation becomes as natural as breathing.

At least, that’s how habitual innovators do it. I doubt that Thomas Edison, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, and many other innovators ever had trouble jumping the groove in their minds. To them, every problem, every process, every business was a new one. When they looked at something, they looked for the first time, no matter how much experience, knowledge or success they had in the past. That’s how they are able to re-imagine and rebuild answers to questions of products, technology, physics, government. They jump the groove, not by doing what was done before, but by looking at the problem for the first time.

Surprisingly, solutions that are found through everyday innovation are quite often far less expensive and far less time consuming than the alternatives. There are very important innovations that take a significant amount of capital, planning, time and process, but so many opportunities abound for everyday innovation as well. It may be time to encourage everyone to look at their problems for the first time once more.