innovation playground Idris Mootee

So You Think You Are Creative? Many Simply Overated Their Creative Capability. There Are Many Ways To Join The Creative Class.

I have done about two dozen of interviews for new recruits the last 2 weeks in SF. 80% of them told me that they are very creative, and the other 20% didn’t mention that at all. I guess half of that 20% felt that there was no need to bring up that point as it is almost a given and the other half pretty much given up trying to convince me that they are a creative type. I think most people overrated their creative capability. Everyone thinks they have ideas. Who doesn't? And who is not creative? And what is a creative type?

Is creativity a skill that you can learn, a talent that comes with one naturally or a mindset that can be cultivated? Thinking that one is very creative is as bad as thinking one is not creative at all.  A lot of people overestimated their creative capability and thinking that if they can pump with a lot of crazy ideas, they are capable of solving complex wicked problems.  Then there are those who need to think and think a lot and believing that’s the opposite of creativity. It is just a different kind of thinking styles.

No question creativity is very important these days and B-Schools are not doing enough to teach that while D-schools are doing too much. Being creative doesn’t mean you don’t wear a suit (as long as it is not a cheap one). Being creative does not mean you don’t have a strong business mind (such as having MBAs).  Being creative doesn’t mean you have to be an artist, designer or a crazy scientist. Being creative doesn't mean you hear a strange voice of inspiration after midnight. Being creative doesn’t mean you cannot be perfectly happy with a standard $8 haircut. And you don’t have to dress in black and probably the turtle neck T-shirt.  But ideally you should be using a MacBook and not a PC.

So what makes a person creative? Throughout history, we have always regarded artists, musicians, poets, film makers and other creative professions as somehow different from (and mysteriously so) the average person. There have been several myths as to the precise nature of the creative ‘X factor’. But don't believe what you read.

Creativity often perceived as illogical, that’s not necessarily the case. I believe in the power of creative logic (or strategic creativity), applied creativity for specific purpose versus pure creativity for personal expressions. Both are two very different things.  And people mixed creativity with art. You can be creative but not artistic or you can be artistic and not creative. Or you can be both.

If you ask ten people to define love or lust you will get a hundred different answers, for such an experience is not deduced logically. That is creativity in its raw form. Strategic creativity is not the same; it is a mindset, a process and a toolkit.  We can experience creativity but there is no process to being creative, but we can also develop creativity with a process supported by enough stimuli, data and sense-making.

Want an example? Creativity can be boosted through the use of storytelling. Stories have forever given been cultural threads, help make sense of things and what's going on in the world. Learn to listen to people's stories you can become more creative. That's a skill you can learn in studying social anthropology.

Creativity can be the real enemy of creativity. Because it tries to contain itself in its simplest form. It can be dangerous when added even with a tiny dosage of ego. Thinking is not the enemy of creativity. Creativity can be trained though concrete experiences and abstract conceptualization, and those are two very different approaches, almost like creative doing and creative thinking, one is reflective observation and the other one is active experimentation. There are many paths to join the creative class. Membership is open.

50% Of All Market Research Spend Is Wasted; But It Is Not Difficult To Know Which Half.

Over the years I have seen a lot of companies producing tons of useless market research mostly telling them things they already know or useless data collected using the wrong methodologies or not properly interpreted. In most cases they commissioned the research, simply because they had allocated the budget for it, so they do it on a yearly basis. I guess the research vendor simply take out last year proposal and updated it slightly. So data collection and interpretation are on autopilot.I think we should tax these market research companies for wasting too many papers, they need to buy some carbon offsets.

And in some cases they did not even know why they were doing the research in the first place, and in other cases, management could have saved the company a lot of money and get better output by just spending a few days talking and listening to the feedback from the front-line people or customers.

Market research can be an extremely valuable tool when properly designed and with a very specific goal in mind to support a strategic initiative. The important questions to ask yourself before undertaking any research are:

• What do I want to know? Can talking to customers directly give us the answers or we need alternative way to get those data?
• Why do I need this information? Are we exploring new unknowns or validating some strategic decisions? Can the results link to a direct decision or help us to enrich our insights and make educated decisions?
• Do I want a research vendor that has been doing this for 10 years with all our competitors and carry the same inertia and legacies as we do? Or we need someone with fresh perspectives and creative methods to help us to reframe the problems?

I remember an old saying that "50% of advertising is wasted, except we don’t know which half." It is probably fair to say 50% of all research effort is a total waste, the thing that is different this time is it is not difficult to know which half. Here’s an example. Some Harvard and Northeastern universities researchers wanted to know or ascertain just how happy Americans are. Because they needed to place their fingers upon every wrist of American in order to get a sense of that, they creatively turned to Twitter.

The researchers analyzed 300 million tweets to determine just when and where people are happiest and saddest in the US. And the result...very unsurprisingly .... that the highly civilized, caring, relaxed, open-minded, and more delectable West Coast is "significantly happier" than the miserable folks in the east.

OK that’s nothing new here, people living in the west are always happier. People who love ice-cream are happier. Those creative spirits and geeks living our west that are constantly thinking about bettering-the-world, and never have to worry about the ‘hows’, at the same time some of the world’s smartest engineers are working on some disruptive apps, but have no idea of how it will make money. If we don’t need to worry about execution, we will all be a little happier too.

Five Common Mistakes On Innovation And Managing Change. Much That Is Held As Common Wisdom Regarding How Purposeful Or Successful Innovation Happened Is Wrong.

Walk into a Barnes and Noble you can find dozen of books on innovation. There are books from teaching the ‘how to” to creative thinking”. Not many good ones simply because the subject is a moving target with rules being broken and created everyday, existing tools are getting obsolete, and best practices are often worst practices. Much that is held as common wisdom regarding how purposeful or successful innovation happened is wrong. This is not to say that all organizations are not innovative; obviously many are not thanks to our management systems and education.

Innovation does not require a revolution. What it does require is thoughtful construction of a good sense making process, a robust pipeline management approach and a strategic intent from top leaderships. Innovation is not just about creativity and having feel creative punks doing money shows or a facilitator running some offsites. Coming up with good-to-great ideas is the easiest part (call me and I can give you half a dozen for free); the hard stuff is activation and mobilization.

There are academics telling people to do the different things but beyond that can’t really tell you more (because they have not done it). And then there are those who advocate how outsourcing your problems to the crowd is the best solution. Companies are desperate to look outside for help and often not getting it. My friend Dev Patnaik, founder of Jump, outlined some good beginners advice on five key strategies for managing change:

• Avoid the innovation title
• Use the buddy system
• Set the metrics in advance
• Aim for quick hits first
• Get data to back up your gut

They all seem to make sense, at least on a surface level.  But are those really good advice? It is not about that and let me tell you why I have to disagree with all of the them (sorry Dev). Better, here are my alternative views:

• Don’t avoid the innovation title, make it available for more people. Feel proud of that innovation title as it shows an organization’s commitment to innovation. Dev suggested that calling a new team the "innovation department" is a good way to get everyone else in your company to hate you. That is absolutely not the case, in fact it is a good idea to have people dedicated to own the innovation process and the innovation titles should spread across the organization. Some can have dual titles such as Director of Operations / Innovation Team Member. That is very empowering.
• Don't think buddy, think communities. The last thing you want is to create little innovation circle, build fences and hide inside a room to come up with ideas. Instead find creative ways to open the innovation dialogue to a larger group – connect and engage. Find ways to share stories and get more people involved. Don't think buddy, think community.
• Never set the metrics too early in advance. This is invitation for trouble, as people would immediately apply current metrics on these ideas. Metrics are important but only when the idea development is at a stage when it is ready and the implications are understood at a business strategy level, often there are a lot experimentation on how to monetize these innovative ideas. Putting metrics in place too early can push them into the wrong directions.

 

• Ignore the quick hits. According to Dev, because game-changing initiatives can take a few years to develop, while most new leaders have only a short window of time to prove themselves. He suggested spending your honeymoon period on quick hits. This is very commonly practiced and I honestly believe this is a very bad idea. In most case people got distracted and ended up focusing on achieving many small incremental quick wins and losing sight of the big idea. This advice sounds good but have serious side effects. Don’t do it.
• Instead of get data to back up your gut, use your gut to help make sense of the data. Quantitative data is of limited use in innovation, particularly very innovative ones. Most users have no idea of what the future holds and cannot give you any good input. But having said that, you need to use gut to understand what all those data means and interpret them under the lens of innovation. My experience is that many market researchers don’t know how to read data using a strategic innovation lens. It is not about justifying, it is about confirming industry blind spots.

If You Need To Think About Business Models, It Means You Don't Have A Strategy In The First Place.

A very busy week in San Francisco meeting with two dozens of potential employees from strategists to futurists and designers, seeing a dozen of office space and catching up with a couple of friends. Have to make some decisions on the office in the next few weeks, it is always difficult to accept the trade offs between location, ceiling height and size of windows and fengshui etc. I wanted something with a strong sense of artistic flair and the high creative energy of start-ups.

Talking about start-ups, the valley is probably the only place in the world where people puts lots of money into companies (technologies) before figuring how does it make money. And that's where the word "business model" came from. And someone is stupid enough is thinking about developing an application to design business models for use in iPad. That's really a joke, if business is that simple. I believe it will come with many templates, if you need to use them to design your business model, it is like using Microsoft Power Power with built-in templates to create your presentations. Bad idea.

For those who are still confused about business model, let me provide you with more clarifications. Is business model and business strategy really just the same thing? Business models were first popularized when there were a lot of technologies investments in the early 90’s with no idea of how to create value or how to make money. So it is essentially a company with a half-baked strategy, meaning they have a customer value proposition, know who they are selling to and who they are competing with, attracted lots of users but cannot charge them for the services and so have no idea of how to make money. Or another way to look at it, they have either assets (content), audiences (eyeballs) or members (communities) and need to figure out a way to monetize them. I think monetization strategy is a better word than business models.

If you need to look for a business model, it means you don't have a sound strategy in the first place. It is like firing a missile first and then go looking for a target, but your fuel is limited. If you are Facebook, then it is a different story, that's really an exception. You have almost unlimited fuel circling the earth.

Business model should have a narrow focus on how the company can make money and put emphasis on pricing strategy, strategic partnerships and channel choice. All of these decisions are around top line impact with a goal to optimize revenue or sometimes survive an early phase of a business. It is a creative design of how a company makes money through a variety of revenue streams. Business strategy deals with much broader and deeper issues including competitive differentiation, capital structure, cost structure and asset utilization etc.

Hope this helps to clarify this. A key takeaway for you, don't rely on business model design to save your business, look at the overall business strategy. That's should be the main focus. Business model is just another hyped up thing. A case in point, the media business is facing daunting challenge and many believe that it's unquestionably the business model is not working: example how to generate revenues online that are comparable to what our traditional businesses yield or how new digital realm generates the revenue it will take to support high quality journalism. This is not a business model problem, it is a strategy problem. Media needs new strategic thinking, not playing around with its business models.

Everyone likes Idea Couture's summer colorful Ts, seven colors to pick from. Everyone has their favorites, I think I like the brown one. Olive green and orange are the other favorites. If you are around our office next week, drop by and pick one up.

Have a great weekend.

Innovation Needs To Expand To Include "Leadership And Management Innovation". Business Schools Need A Reset.

Here is our summer collection. Everybody like these. I guess the message is cool. I get people coming up and ask me where did I get those.  Rethinking management and leadership - one innovation that is less talked about is “Leadership and Management Innovation”, OK what does it mean?

Management practices have always circled around a narrow view of Return on Capital and that drives many of the key business decisions. Optimization of profits, financial capital and assets are an important part of executing a business strategy, but have we thought about how to innovate “leadership and management” itself. I mean new thinking around business strategy that provides additional bottom lines beyond just financial. Where money, purpose and systems are aligned.

Any CEOs who are only interested in maximizing short-term profits or trading hedge funds and companies are not the one that can steward organizations to a healthy and sustainable future. So what do we mean? Here are some examples.

There are cases of CEOs who have broken away from the norm of the “classical, narrow view of what investor accountability which is suffering from QRB (quarterly returns obsession). What they have been doing in innovating the very core of leadership and management and rethink the role of it. Here are some examples:

Founder and exCEO of Nike, Phil Knight, who responded to global protests by overhauling the company’s labor standards and then lobbied for other firms to be held to the same standards; Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, who sought to convince shareholders that legislation capping US carbon emissions is a smart business move; and Yvon Chouinard, founder and CEO of Patagonia who was the first to pledge 1% of annual sales to grassroots environmental organizations and the first major retail company to switch all its cotton clothing over to organic, the first to make fleece from recycled soda-pop bottles.

Each of these business leaders broke the rules of what their own organizations would have considered the right thing to do, and is not only profits, profits and profits. Leadership requires building a culture of “Integrity”, creating a brand with “Authenticity”, reinforcing purposes and values through “Communities”, encourage the organization’s decision-making style for “Transparency” and making sure key resource decisions need to consider “Sustainability” beyond just environmental.

Management needs to innovate itself the very idea of management and leadership. CEOs have larger responsibilities, not only creating a viable future for the organizations and return for shareholders; they need to be change makers of our future societies. Real change will not come from governments; it will be the multinationals that possess the power. My observation is that that the biggest constraints that business leaders facing are their “inability to value new types of “competitive advantage” and the true power of “sustainability” embedded in business strategy making.

Government and NGOs can advocate our social problems, clean water, climate change or obesity or women empowerment etc, but top business leaders are having a hard time interpreting, sense-making, translating them into business strategies, One day we wake up and realize “Sustainability has become the new Capitalism.”

On a different note, MIT Global Challenge is a wonderful idea towards solving many of our problems. In 2011 the global MIT community will be invited to celebrate the 150th anniversary of a world-changing institution. In the spirit of celebration, innovation and service, the MIT Global Challenge is launching a competition to involve the MIT community worldwide in innovative, multidisciplinary problem solving, reconnecting alumni with the spirit of invention and enterprise that pervades the Institute. Idea Couture is proud to be a partner to design and develop the platform which is an unique online space through where people can engage in an ongoing, interactive process to identify problems, propose solutions, reward the most innovative and workable ideas, and document experiences as the winning ideas are implemented in communities around the world. Our team is very excited to be on this project.

There are no shortage of global challenges. Some are really complex. For example, the inequality of the distribution of natural resources on the planet, especially of energy, gives rise to powerful structural tensions within the systems that try to resolve the problem locally with uncivilized methods. 

Another example is business as such. The obvious globalization of worldwide production all the more powerfully enters into conflict with the national character of political activity, when business in the lawless space of an international muddle acquires the forms of earlier, wild capitalism with all the terrible consequences for society and the environment. But the attempts of some public movements to stop the globalization of money flows are waste of effort: no one has the least chance of successfully resisting the laws of economic development. These are no simple challenge that simply throwing money at it can solve the problem or creating a new policy. It truly requires innovative thinking. Probably too much for the sunny weekend.

I am pleased to officially announce that Idea Couture is the proud sponsor of TED 2010 Toronto. We’re looking forward to connect with others in this exciting event. Expecting to see many cool people.

Off to the arrport to SF for a a few days. Back-to-back meetings but looking forward to meet up with old friends and colleagues.

What Do You Know About Business Model Innovation? People Are Confused About The Difference Between Business Model, Strategy And Innovation.

Most people think they know what a business model is. But when you ask them about the "strategy' then they wondered what they're talking about. Most of the time they mean business strategy (what a company does and how to make money) and use the words interchangeably. That’s fine. Then some people even get more confused when they apply that in innovation context. They mean changing or rethinking the business itself, including its core, boundaries, activities and capabilities. That’s strategic innovation. Business model innovation could be part of the outcome. But let’s face it, how many companies out there need to (and can afford to) rethink their business models?

A company can innovate strategically but with no need to change its business models. After all, there are only less than 10 business models out there, it is not like you can do unlimited creative explorations. At its simplest, a business model simply about exploring various ways to develop, improve or optimize your revenue stream(s) and matching them to your customer value propositions. Here are some examples of how people missed the term: 

Google is probably perceived as one of the most innovative companies today. They are essential exploiting technology innovation and you can say they have created an innovative culture. But there is nothing innovative about their business model design. Selling ads and sponsored links, not different from other media in that case, but there are so many people saying Google has an innovative business model.

And think about Amazon.com, it is an online retailer started with books and now expanding into new categories and even products. OK, it is a pretty innovative company but there is nothing innovative about their business model. They are an online direct merchant even though they open up their channel for others to sell their products and take a cut, that doesn’t qualify as business model innovation. That’s retailing except there is no physical store, just technology infrastructures.

What is Facebook’s business model? Not sure there is one, but so far it is advertising. And what options are available to them, not many. You don't need a strategist to perform a business model design innovation exercise, I can tell you in 5 minutes. I’ve read so much garbage about people running seminars on business model innovation, these are feel business yoga classes for those who knows nothing about real business strategy or Jnana yoga.

I’ve just finished writing 90% of our Innovation and Strategy Training package material, lots of good stuff and we will be using them to help our clients to truly innovate from organizing to planning and activation. These materials can turn anyone with a few years of good general business experience into an innovation strategist in a few days, and smarter than those who write books and articles on business model innovation who are as confused as the people who they talk to.

To strategically innovate or complete redesign of a company business model, first there must be a need, or strategic intent. Driven by a business strategy that forces the rethinking of the business models. Not the cart before the horse. Also one must understand what options exist and the migration paths. Strategic innovation can sometimes include business model redesign in combination with product, service, social, technology and experience innovation.

Not every company need to make radical changes in its core business itself, and in some instances the case for change becomes desperately obvious – as it is in the case of Blockbuster, Kodak, Palm or GM. Business model redesign is driven by of strategic innovation (a strategy to play a new game). This means complete transformation—of the organization, its core offerings, structure, systems, culture and capabilities—to create value in a new way. This include a business strategic decisions to move up-market or down-market or shift from products to services or solutions when the pace of commoditization continues to accelerate or the industry boundaries is opening up for new entrants. Not every company needs it. But every company needs to innovate around their products/service/experience/delivery/technology in order to remain competitive, all without rethinking their business models. My strategy and innovation material includes methods and tools that are rigor and effective, sometimes reading these junks can actually confused me.

What Business Strategy And Photography Have In Common? It Is All About The Decisive Moment.

Marketing of any innovative technologies always encounter one big problem, they are being compared with an older generation of technology and although usually do better in many fronts such as performance and features but there are always those who wonder if the analog quality is better than digital. The argument for analog music versus digital has been going on for more than 20 years and now we’re finally coming to a point where people accepted that digital is equal to if not better from a naturalness and purity of sound perspectives.

The same thing for cameras has been going on for a long time. There are diehard fans that rightfully believe that digital quality still has a way to go. The claim that digital capture vastly surpasses the performance of silver halide material has a strong psychological basis that are not based on facts. The same case for those who loves vinyl records. I was only convinced recently that digital audio has reached a point where they don’t sound digital anymore.

For photography, I think we are seeing that happening now. I’ve seen a lot tests that with high end digital cameras such as a Leica M9 can now favorably be compared with the best ISO 100 emulsions and can hold this quality even up to the ISO400. (The photo above was part of a gallery exhibition of photos, taken at St. Germain, Paris 1988 with my M4-2)

I have yet to test my Lecia X1 which I picked up just last Thursday and see how far it compares to my old M4s. The unboxing experience was a big delight, even better than the iPad or iMac unboxing. The X1 is pretty camera with a good size and the best part is the manual function which works and feels like a film camera. Both aperture and shutter speed can be manually selected in a simple way on the deck and no need to go into navigating through different screens. The X1 has a 12.2-megapixel full size CMOS image sensor and an Elmarit f/2.8 lenses. The 24mm lens equate to 35mm which is great for photojournalism. And unlike the Leica M9 which can only manual focus, the X1 provides auto focus (contrast detect based) and can be live-view through a 2.7-inch LCD screen. The design is elegant. Makes you think why other cameras are so poorly designed with a few exception.

One exception is the Holga. The other end of the spectrum…the cheapest end. Remember the plastic cheap cameras in the 70s. It is really a camera more than a toy. Someone is resigning it and the digital version retains the qualities and simplicity of the original Holga camera and brings back the joy and delayed gratification associated with good old analog photography.

For those people who have no idea what a Holga is, it is an inexpensive, medium format 120mm film toy camera (yes toy), known for its surrealistic effect as a result of poor quality optics and design. 

It has a low-cost construction and simple meniscus plastic and that creates vignetting, blur, light leaks, and other 'qualities' that's unacceptable a traditional sense. But the quality problems have attracted a cult as a creative style. The best part is there is no feature. Yes no feature. I hope there are products in other category that offers no feature. No feature is one big innovation opportunity that everyone misses. Just remember you first hear about that here.

On another note, I missed the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition in MOMA, I was in NYC almost every week but couldn’t even find an hour to see that. Henri Cartier-Bresson is one of the most original, influential, and beloved master of photography (yes, he used Leicas ony). His work of the early 1930s helped define the creative potential of modern photography, and his uncanny ability to capture life on the run made his work synonymous with “the decisive moment”. The beauty about photography … it is like business, you’re always waiting for that “decisive moment”, the rest of the time is just wait and wait. And when it comes, you have only one shot. So you gotta be prepared for that moment.

Have your Leica ready! And happy July 4th!