Putting on my graphic-novelist’s hat for the afternoon, and here’s the result. Continuing the story of the Torrance test. The quantity of ideas is important, but you also need diversity or range. But, as this page implies, there’s more…
Looking for some feedback, then we’ll edit and re-post.
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I find myself with a backlist of blogging topics – but not wanting to spend the time when I “should” be working on the Graphic Innovation Guide. So this is another two-birds with one blog post, a partial page from the Guide done this afternoon. Once it’s done I’ll post the complete page, but in the meantime, enjoy…
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Still needs some shading, backgrounds and colour, but coming along!
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 I am completing a Graphic Innovation Guide and I would love to get you involved! If you sign upyou will receive a chapter per month until the book is complete. In exchange, we seek your feedback to make the final product the best it can be. Get a taste of what’s to come by selecting this link and sign up now!PS – To learn more about the Juice/Floworks training program Innovation in a Box, email us at lhall@juiceinc.comand we will send you one of the experiential exercises to try! |
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A colleague, Lara, asked me today whether I had seen the latest ads from Mark’s Work Wearhouse. I don’t watch much TV, so I hadn’t, but I went online to check them out. http://www2.marks.com/InnovationTV.asp
A few things stood out.
One is that “Innovation” is hot. We know that innovation is critical, for organizations, for individuals, for society, for humankind, for the planet. It’s also a buzz-word: “innovation” sells as a marketing adjective, as in “innovative products and services”. It’s the new “green”.
But real innovation also sells because it produces real improvements in products, services and processes. Truly revolutionary innovations create (and disrupt) services, users, industries, markets, categories. IDEO’s Tim Brown in Change by Design presents a simple matrix for talking about types of innovation…
In addition to radical or revolutionary innovation, there are evolutionary innovations, and incremental innovations – the latter category being the bread + butter of most organizations.
So where do Mark’s innovation lie? I’d argue that they range along the spectrum from incremental to mildly evolutionary.
I think they’ll do well by these products. The marketing is right, and although they’re not radical “wow!” breakthroughs, they are addressing simple but real performance gaps in the products they’re highlighting.
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| I am completing a Graphic Innovation Guide and I would love to get you involved! If you sign upyou will receive a chapter per month until the book is complete. In exchange, we seek your feedback to make the final product the best it can be. Get a taste of what’s to come by selecting this link and sign up now!PS – To learn more about the Juice/Floworks training programInnovation in a Box, email us at lhall@juiceinc.comand we will send you one of the experiential exercises to try! |
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Recently one of our distributors told me about a conversation she’d had with the CEO of a global logistics firm where he made the comment, “I don’t believe that you can teach innovation. Some people are creative, but most aren’t.”
I would have reframed the question for him: “Do you think that we can give people tools that will help them think more effectively? For instance, are there time and project management tools that will help an individual or team organize itself? Are there processes and tools that will help you analyze problems more effectively? Like six sigma ?”
My guess is that he would have had to reply with a “Yes”. Our argument in Innovation in a Box is that there is an innovation tool-set that will help anyone, creative or non-creative, generate more innovative ideas.
Let’s imagine that we have an individual who is decidedly not creative, by their own admission and frankly by the evidence. Based on the model outlined in our last blog post, they are acutely left-brain dominant. In fact let’s call then “green”: they’re linear, procedural, organized, practical. They’re very good at project-management, but when asked to “think outside of their green box” they have a tough time. They’re not sure what this means, let alone how to do it. Innovation in a Box answers both of these questions.
What does “think out of the box” mean?
In the same way that a traditional IQ test measures analytical thinking skills, there are a variety of tests designed to measure creativity. The classic is the Torrance Test. Developed by E. Paul Torrance, it uses benchmarking to measure relative creativity. The full test involves simple tests of divergent and lateral problem solving skills. A highly creative individual will perform well in three categories:
By definition our “non-creative” test subject will not perform well. They will produce a few ideas, that tend to be similar to one another, and similar to what other test subjects produce. An antiseptic test environment however is very different then the real-world, and we can use those test results as the basis for increasing innovation. Basically we can legitimately “cheat” to get a better score, as in an open-book exam. We’re interested in results rather than labeling or judgement.
When asked to think “out of the box”, we’re really asking people to come up with great ideas. To do that you simply have to support people by giving them methodologies and tools that help them increase the number, range and originality of their ideas. This is no different then giving a disorganized person time-management tools, or someone who is always late, an alarm on their watch or phone. In fact research shows that teams that use innovation tools produce up to 500% more quality ideas then unsupported teams.
So, the “what” of thinking outside of the box is increasing our impact: the number, range and originality of our ideas. In future posts we’ll give various examples of tools that will help you deal with the “how”.
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| I am completing a Graphic Innovation Guide and I would love to get you involved! If you sign upyou will receive a chapter per month until the book is complete. In exchange, we seek your feedback to make the final product the best it can be. Get a taste of what’s to come by selecting this link and sign up now!PS – To learn more about the Juice/Floworks training programInnovation in a Box, email us at lhall@juiceinc.com and we will send you one of the experiential exercises to try! |
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In a world that is defined by complexity and ambiguity, we need innovation in both the private and public spheres. A real challenge in both is framing issues and solutions in ways that people understand.
We had a municipal election this week in my hometown of Guelph, Ontario. The winner was our incumbent, Karen Farbridge, who could be described as an activist or progressive mayor. Although Guelph is in Canada, we’re close enough to the U.S. geographically, and perhaps even “closer” media-wise, that the tension between progressives and conservatives is a factor in elections, and I always wonder how much individual’s innate mental preferences (or wiring) plays a role in their voting.
In Innovation in a Box we use a four quadrant model to describe thinking preferences. People (voters) who are left brain dominant tend to be analytical and linear – organized, disciplined and procedural. If they’re strongly left-dominant, they will see the world, problems, and solutions in black and white terms. They will tend to vote for the candidate who mirrors these preferences. The astute politician speaking to a Left Brain audience will want to outline black + white solutions to problems.
On the flip side, voters who are right-brain dominant will tend to take more of a strategic and creative approach to issues, and will tend to be more people-centric as well. Again, they’ll support candidates who reflect those preferences. The astute politician speaking to a Right Brain crowd should feel comfortable speaking in big-picture, even visionary terms, and needn’t shy from complexity. Their supporters will be comfortable with “shades of grey”and ambiguity, in fact, they may even prefer it.
A successful politician needs to speak to the concerns of all constituents in order to get elected. If it stops there, we call it pandering. A truly successful politician however is one who leaves a legacy of accomplishments. This requires a “whole brain” approach beyond the election – where they identify and analyze key issues (left brain), enlist the public and brainstorm solutions (right brain) and then implement those solutions responsibly and effectively.
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While editing the Graphic Innovation Guide, I noticed that there are a lot of light bulbs.
For decades of course, lightbulbs have symbolized innovation, and in my rough draft I’ve used them liberally – they’re a convenient shorthand. They’re also easy and fun to draw. However it crossed my mind that perhaps I could, even should, “walk the innovative talk” by coming up with a new icon. So I pulled out a pen and scrap piece of paper and did a bit of two step mind-mapping.
The reason we use icons (e.g. traffic, washroom and safety signs) is they are immediately recognizable – we don’t have to think about them. When I look at the options I generated, none of them jump out at me crying “I’m a clear symbol of innovation!”. In my pursuit of innovation for the sake of innovation (or novelty) I’d actually be doing the reader a disservice – and undermining my own work in the process.
In short, there are tools, products, services and icons that are classics, and just fine they way they are. Give thanks to the lowly lightbulb!
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| I am completing a Graphic Innovation Guide and I would love to get you involved! If you sign upyou will receive a chapter per month until the book is complete. In exchange, we seek your feedback to make the final product the best it can be. Get a taste of what’s to come by selecting this link and sign up now!PS – To learn more about the Juice/Floworks training program Innovation in a Box, email us at lhall@juiceinc.com and we will send you one of the experiential exercises to try! |
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