When posed with a major (big) innovation effort, why do some people freeze?  Is it the size that intimidates them?  Yes in a way.  But size is relative.  If you have no perspective, then eveything can look big and daunting.

To build your perspective so that big programs aren’t so scary, you need to grow your innovation skill and experience.  So what are the steps?

Incremental Innovation

Incremental innovations have a bad reputation.  Some in the innovation space look down on incremental innovations as the lazy way out.  I don’t agree.  They have a role when it comes to meeting the quick, short term needs for innovation enhancements to current offerings.  Incremental innovations are low risk but allow the innovator to learn the skill of presenting an idea and getting it through the process.

Where organizations get themselves in trouble is by never going beyond incremental innovations.  If you never take the next step, you never build your innovation muscle.  Like exercise, if you don’t do something more strenuous, you will never build the muscle that will help to achieve your innovation goals.

Emergent Innovation

Emergent innovations are those “next step” innovations where trends and/or behaviors in your industry give you a path to what is next.  Emergent innovations are something new while based on a clear connection to the past and a logical future.  This requires the innovator to learn the skill of pitching a complete idea, not just an increment to something already being done.  Emergent innovations are lower risk since the idea is easily understood by the organization given the changes being experienced by the industry.

Game-Changing Innovation (Killer Innovations)

Game-changing (or what I call killer innovations) are those innovations that are significantly different to what everyone else is doing such that customers reward you with a margin premium.  These are the innovations that change organizations and industries.  To many, these kinds of innovations can be intimidating.  To make them more manageable, think of them as being made up of incremental and emergent innovations with some other elements thrown in.  If you break a game-changing innovation down into smaller elements, it looks much less intimidating.

Career-Changing Innovation (Society-Changing Innovation)

If you are lucky, you may get the opportunity be part of an innovation effort that changes society and your career.  These are the innovations that everyone talks about for decades after they are launched.  Some more “recent” examples include:

• Vint Cerf – One of the co-inventors of the internet
• Sir Tim Berners-Lee - Inventor of the web

There is a belief that these are random events where these people are “lucky”.  Luck had nothing to do with it.  I’ve spent enough time with Vint and Tim to know that they spent years and even decades exercising their innovation muscle to be ready to take advantage of the right idea at the right time.

To hear the rest on how to improve you innovation skill, listen to the 4 Steps To Grow Your Innovation Skills.  To get all of the shows, consider subscribing to the show either on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

To learn more about how to find ideas that turn into game-changing innovations, read Beyond The Obvious.  Why? Out of habit, we still cling to the “obvious” ideas that were once true in the rapidly receding past. In order to innovate, we need to learn to identify and ignore these “obvious” rules, ideas, or beliefs.  This books is a practical guide on how to go beyond the obvious and consistently generate game-changing innovations.

Yes — I’m going to sea in 2013.  I’ve been asked to extend my mentorship of entrepreneurs beyond the Unreasonable Institute to the new effort - Unreasonable at Sea.  So what is it all about?

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Unreasonable at Sea is a mentor driven accelerator for tech entrepreneurs who desire to take their ventures into new international markets. We are searching for technology based companies who are working to solve the greatest social and environmental challenges of this century. Why Unreasonable? After seeing the success of the model of the Unreasonable Institute, Unreasonable at Sea will take a new approach. Instead of uniting entrepreneurs in the entrepreneurial Hub of Boulder (as Unreasonable Institute does), Unreasonable has partnered with Semester at Sea to launch an accelerator on a ship as it travels more than 25,000 nautical miles around the globe to 14 international destinations.

Over the course of the 100 day accelerator, the 10 companies we work with will have the chance to…

• explore the local economies of 14 countries where they will experiment in taking their technology to market and will bridge connections with top government officials, foundations, venture capitalists, and serial entrepreneurs,
• be mentored by yours turly and 20 other serial entrepreneurs and innovators ,
• be connected to and form relationships with top-tier globally centric venture capital funds and foundations,
• go through an intensive accelerator ,
• live, travel, and work with 9 other extraordinary companies and their teams,
• live, mentor, and learn from the over 600 undergraduates who will be studying abroad on Semester at Sea throughout the entire voyage, and
• circumnavigate the globe on Semester at Sea’s MV Explorer (fastest cruise-liner in the world).

If you meet the criteria , then get your application in by June 5th

I can’t wait ….

Before the launch of the book, foreign language translations of Beyond The Obvious were negotiated with publishers in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil.

Yesterday I was notified by my publisher (Hyperion) that a publishing house just purchased the rights for Korea.

My only frustration is the length of time it takes to complete a translation from start to finish.  The  book took 17 months (from November 2010 to February 2012) to complete and get on the shelf.  The actual writing was 8 months (November of 2010 to June 2011).

Translations take about 18 months.  The result is that the foreign language versions of the book won’t hit the shelf’s until mid-2013.

I’ve already lined up people to review the other languages — now to find someone who would be willing to take a read of the Korean version when its ready.

Late last year,I was asked to give a speech in Atlanta to AIMD (American Institute for the Managing Diversity).  Given the work with Hacking Autism, they also asked if my daughter could join.  So for the first time, Tara and I made a joint appearance.

The topic of the speech was on the need to expand the definition of diversity to include neural diversity.  Most of us are what is called “neural typical”.  The challenge we are facing is how to include individuals in the workforce that are not neural typical, especially those on the autism spectrum (autism, aspergers).

Given that 1 out of every 88 kids will be diagnosed with autism, what will be the impact on the future workforce?  Those adults who have been diagnosed with aspergers have a +70% unemployment rate.

So how does this impact innovation?  Innovation is about seeing opportunities/problems that others don’t see.  Individuals on the autism spectrum see everything differently.  I would argue that they could be the spark you need to create game-changing innovations.  The challenge is the need to organize and manage them differently.

The rest of the video’s are located here.

So you have an idea.  You thinks its a killer idea.  How do you make sure its the next great thing before committing significant resources (e.g. money, time, etc)?

Testing your ideas doesn’t have to be a big long dragged out process.  By following a few quick steps, you can have the confidence that your idea will lead to the next game-changing innovation.

Step 1: Does the problem exist?

Rememebr that customers don’t but products or technologies, they buy solutions to their problems.  To validate the problem, you need to:

• Frame the problem in a few sentances so that others can easily grasp the problem space you are going after.
• Define the impact of the problem (e.g. time, money, etc)
• Go talk to people NOT like you and see if they agree that the problem exists.

Step 2: Test Your Innovation

This is where you validate that what you’ve come up with solves the problem the customer has.

• Based on the input from Step 1, create a quick “fake” way to show people what your innovation is.  This could be a video, a Flash demo, etc.  Keep it cheap and fast.
• Again – go talk to people.  Find more people who agree the problem exists and ask them how well your innovation addresses the problem.

To learn more about how to find ideas that turn into game-changing innovations, read Beyond The Obvious.  Why? Out of habit, we still cling to the “obvious” ideas that were once true in the rapidly receding past. In order to innovate, we need to learn to identify and ignore these “obvious” rules, ideas, or beliefs.  This books is a practical guide on how to go beyond the obvious and consistently generate game-changing innovations.

During my recent trip to Denver, I stopped by Starto TV for a discussion on innovation, culture and mentors.  The interview is in the second half of the show starting at 13:08.  Starto is a start-up themselves  (this is episode #3).  If you are (or want to be) an entrepreneur, I would encourage you to subscribe to their YouTube channel.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Its easy to criticize others about “not getting” it when it comes to innovation.  Before we jump on others, how is your innovation attitude?

What do I mean by an innovation attitude?

Do you truly believe that you and your team can innovate in your industry and organization?

Many organization and entire industries have written themselves off when it comes to innovation.  I believe down to my core that you can create game-changing innovations in any industry and organization. There is nothing that is off limits.  Remember when everyone wrote off the PC industry 7 years ago?

Are you committed to fight the self-doubt?

We all suffer from self-doubt but innovation is about hope.  The hope that there is something better that can have an impact.  Self-doubt has its roots in fear.  We’ve all failed as some point and innovation is all about failure.  More ideas will fail than succeed so get used to it.  Don’t let your self-doubt talk you out of trying.

Are you willing to get out of your comfort zone?

Innovation is all about change and change is uncomfortable.  The only way to discover opportunities that others have missed is to get out of your comfort zone and look at the problem differently.  Otherwise, you are doing the same thing the same way you’ve done it in the past.  The result is the same old ideas.  Go beyond the obvious and find innovations that others have overlook.

To hear the rest on innovation attitude, listen to Innovation Attitude = Career Success.  To get all of the shows, consider subscribing to the show either on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

To learn more about how to find ideas that turn into game-changing innovations, read Beyond The Obvious.  Why? Out of habit, we still cling to the “obvious” ideas that were once true in the rapidly receding past. In order to innovate, we need to learn to identify and ignore these “obvious” rules, ideas, or beliefs.  This books is a practical guide on how to go beyond the obvious and consistently generate game-changing innovations.

While in Denver, I was interviewed for ICOSA’s new TV show, Starto.  The photo above is me signing books for the staff after the taping of the show.

To top it off, ICOSA hosted an event for my book, Beyond The Obvious, in the ICOSA Garage and ~300 business leaders and entrepreneurs from the Denver area showed up!  They definitely know how to throw a party.  If you want proof, here are some photos from the event.

Click to see the poster full size

Based on my conversations with people who came out to the party, Colorado is on fire.  I head about some great ideas in the works and innovations that are in the market.   The passion and excitement of the entrepreneurs was contagious.

Keep an eye on Colorado ..

Some listeners to the show have confused “patience” with “timing”.  When I say patience, I’m talking about the need for organizations to be willing to invest time, money and resources over an extended period of time to take an idea and turn it into an innovation.

Timing is about knowing when to launch the innovation into the marketplace.  As I’ve said many times, the difference between and good idea and a great idea is the timing.

There are three (3) scenarios that play out when it comes to timing:

Too Early

• You find yourself educating the market before it’s ready.  Given that you are educating the market, you are also helping potential competitors since they won’t need to invest that money.
• You are over optimistic as to the timing and build up the team and burn rate in anticipation of wide acceptance.  The result is a significant over investment that puts you on the radar of your management team.

Too Late

• You are #3 or #4 in the market.
• The marketplace pegs you as being “me to” and looks to you as the low cost competitor.
• You spend time and money playing catch-up and never secure a market leadership position.

Just Right (Goldilocks solution)

• The customers recognition of the problem and the availability of your solution are aligned.
• Market awareness and urgency are emerging but not yet peaked.
• You are ready NOW (immediately) to fulfill the need.

In a perfect world, you would hit the timing just right.  In reality, top companies who are viewed as being excellent at market timing never get it perfect.  They are either a little early or a little late. The objective is to get it closer than your competitors.

The Four Steps To Market Timing

1) Be ahead of the market

You should be looking ahead 2x your typical development cycle.  If it takes you 2 years to create and launch a product, your innovation team should be looking 4 years out.  This allows you to create an opinion and be ahead of the market rather than playing defence.

2) Be disciplined NOT to over invest

Don’t let the passion and excitement drive your investment decision.  Keep your costs low and keep moving forward while the market gets ready.

3) Identify and track the weak signals

Identify 4 to 6 early indicators (weak signals) that the market is forming and then put a process in place to track each indicator.

4) Be ready to jump

Create detailed scenarios and plans for each indicator so that when its triggered, you know exactly what to do.

To hear the rest of how to get the timing right for your innovation, listen to Getting The Market Timing Right For Your Innovation.  To get all of the shows, consider subscribing to the show either on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

To learn more about how to translate ideas into innovations and then launch them into the market, read Beyond The Obvious.  Why? Out of habit, we still cling to the “obvious” ideas that were once true in the rapidly receding past. In order to innovate, we need to learn to identify and ignore these “obvious” rules, ideas, or beliefs.  This books is a practical guide on how to go beyond the obvious and consistently generate game-changing innovations.

Last Monday, I delivered the opening keynote to the Comptel 2012 show in San Francisco.  The objective of the keynote was to share with the audience the secrets of innovation and how they could take advantage of them in their firms.

Topics included:

• 5 Elements of Innovation (Innovation Attitude, Curiosity, Process, Support & Resources)

• 3 Areas of Innovation (Who, What and How)

• 3 Ways to Build Your Innovation Pipeline (Organic, M&A and Co-Innovation)

The video is a 15 minute summary of the one hour keynote.  It was created by Comptel for sharing with the attendees.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Strategic Storytelling

Why is it so hard to pitch your idea?  We’ve been taught that the way to persuade people to our ideas is to use logic and facts.  That approach ignores the role that emotion plays in our decision making.

So how do you engage the emotion of a person you’re trying to get a comittment from?  By using strategic storytelling to pitch your idea.

Structure of a Story

Strategic storytelling uses the basic structure of movies to tell the story of your idea.  The key is to tell the story in such a way as the listener places themselves in the story.  They see themselves, their family, their business, someone the know have the challenges you describe.  Its then you have created the emotional connection between your idea and the listener. The structure of the story is that of a 3 act play with some variations.

Rules of Strategic Storytelling

Over the years, I’ve collected some hard learned rules to strategic storytelling.

1. Keep it short (20 minutes is a good length)
2. Personalize the story to the audience
3. Put emotion and passion into the storytelling
4. Use “pause” and “tone” to create tension and excitement
5. Read the body language in the room.  Get everyone engaged
6. End the story with emphasis (end on a pause … the goal is to get a “wow”)

To learn more, listen to the Strategic Storytelling podcast

Escape From Our Past

The problem that that many businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and would-be innovators suffer from is our inability escape from our past. Simply put, we are all shaped by our past experiences, whether good or bad. We look at the end results of these experiences—“this idea worked”; “this idea failed”— and consciously or unconsciously turn these results into the rules by which we operate in the present. Sometimes these rules, or assumptions, are smart and valuable. However, the problems begin when we forget that these rules are a snapshot of an old paradigm or set of circumstances. In many cases, the world has moved on, but we are still clinging to the “obvious” ideas that were once true in the rapidly receding past. In order to progress, we need to learn to identify and ignore these “obvious” rules, ideas, or beliefs, and make room for future where the rules are constantly being rewritten.

Power of Questions

The core to my approach to “see differently” and to break-away from our past is to ask questions.  I’ve been fascinated by the power of questions, either good or bad, for my entire professional life. The more I thought about them, the more I began to notice how people used them. I started to see how some people had the innate ability to formulate and pose questions that propelled others to make investigations and discoveries of their own.

Great Questions

To avoid the obvious, ask great questions.  A great question is one that causes people to really think before they answer it, and one that reveals answers that had previously eluded them.

Yesterday, I recorded two segments  for NBC’s Press:Here that will appear on Sunday, April 8th @ 9:00AM in SFO and then later on cable in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas and Washington DC..

In segment one, the questions focused on the stodginess of HP, the Palm acquisition, the cancellation of the TouchPad, webOS and the role that culture plays in innovation.

In segment two, the discussion covered what do companies like HP and Yahoo need to do to be more innovative, killer questions, the role of founder CEO’s in the innovation efforts and CEO’s that are innovation leaders.

5 Biggest Risks To Innovation

Its been my experience that large and small companies suffer from a common set of risks to their innovation efforts.  These risks are independent of size, industry, longevity or geography. In this podcast, I present what is needed from executive leadership to remove the risks and what realistically can an innovation leader inside an organization do to succeed when faced with them.

The 5 biggest risks to innovation inside organizations are:

1. Corporate anti-bodies

2. Lack of patience

3. Ambiguous process

4. Unprotected resources

5. Poorly defined BHAG.

Listen to the 5 Biggest Risks To Innovation podcast

Subscribe to the Killer Innovations podcast on iTunes

Innovation Competition

Its that time of year and the Veterans Affair (VA) has just announced their 2012 Innovation Competition.

This is the third year the VA has held their innovation competition. Kudo’s for making this an annual event.  The 2010 and 2011 Industry Innovation Competitions resulted in nearly 600 ideas submitted from industry across eleven topic areas. In total, 37 projects have been selected for award and are in various stages of project design, development, testing, and evaluation. See the Funded Innovations page for a complete list of past awardees.

• Redesign of the PTSD Treatment Experience

• Mobile Applications for eBenefits

• Innovations in Prevention and Treatment of Pressure Ulcers

• Maternity Continuity of Care

Laws of Innovation

In the fall of 2011, I posted a blog entry titled The 7 Laws of Innovation.   The objective was to identify the critical areas for innovation. The blog hit a spot and has turned out to be one of the most popular posts over the +12 years I’ve been writing the blog including being picked-up by such publications as FastCompany.

Since that time, posters have been created on the Laws of Innovation (see image above) which will be on sale soon (portion of the proceeds will go to finding HackingAutism.org).

This podcast provides additional background on the Laws along with a suggested approach to identify where your organization can improve.

As a reminder, the laws are:

1. The Law of Leadership

2. The law of Culture

3. The Law of Resources

4. The Law of Patience

5. The Law of Process

6. The Law of BHAG

7. The Law of Execution

What is the secret to Apple’s innovation leadership?

In Silicon Valley, you can’t avoid the game of comparing every company to Apple. There is no avoiding the success Apple has experienced. So what made Apple so successful at establishing its innovation leadership and avoiding the traps and roadblocks other companies’ experience?

Was it Steve? In a way – yes. Steve was that rare breed of CEO who bucked the organizational challenges and provided the innovation leadership skills their companies needed.

How did he do it? It’s not as mysterious as many would like to believe. He was a founder CEO. I’m not talking about equity ownership but the influence and emotional control that founders uniquely have. He wasn’t the first founder CEO who used their unique position to provide innovation leadership to their organizations. This club includes such innovators as Walt Disney and Bill Hewlett/David Packard.

So why are founder CEO’s unique?

Founder CEO’s have a unique place in the business world. Their motivations are much more personal. The success of the business is more than just satisfying Wall Street’s drum beat of the quarterly results. The bond between the founder CEO and the company are inseparable (Can you separate Facebook from Mark Zuckerberg?). Founder CEO’s are willing and able to take risks that others can’t or won’t. Founding CEO’s never see themselves leaving their company so they are there for the long term.

Non-founder CEO’s are employees. They are motivated by the compensation package put in place by the Board. They keep their job if they deliver the results the board dictates. No matter how powerful a CEO is, a non-founder CEO is challenged in their ability to use their position to take risks while having the patience needed for innovation success.

So what happens when the founder CEO is no longer around?

As with stock, nothing keeps going up and to the right forever. Just look at Disney and HP as two examples. Both companies have gone through significant leadership challenges post their founder CEO’s.

How can a company avoid the post-founder CEO issues?  Blow up the typical CEO compensation package. Create an incentive program that aligns with the longevity of the organization. For example, a CEO’s stock awards should mature far enough in the future so they are rewarded or penalized for their decisions.

What do you think is needed to drive innovation success after a founder CEO is gone?

Idea Management Is Key To Your Innovation Strategy

Ideas are the currency in the new creative economy therefore you need tools to manage this valuable asset as part of your overall innovation strategy. Idea management is often overlooked as a crucial component in the overall innovation process.

What are the features you need in your idea management system?

1. Idea capture and tracking

2. Idea evaluation

3. Idea collaboration

4. Track ideas through your innovation process/gates

5. Ability to pause ideas

6. Support innovation challenges

What is your design inspiration?

Back in my architecture days, I would collect photo’s, rip pages out of architecture magazines and collect trinkets that provided the design inspiration I needed to complete the class projects.  Since then, I’ve kept it up but moved from the physical to the virtual not to mention going from architecture to technology innovation.

As part of the progression, I’ve now moved to Pinterest where I’m pinning items on:

• Products I love – Innovations that I have fallen in love with and use

• Innovation Style – Innovation has style beyond the aesthetics to include the elegance in how the innovation solved a problem.  Others may call it design

• Books Worth Reading – Books that have had an impact on me.

• Innovation Inspirations – Images that have (past) or will (future) inspire innovation

If your interested, follow over at Pinterest.

A long time listener to the Killer Innovations podcast based in Australia, Tim Reid, invited me on his podcast show to discuss small business innovation and my book  Beyond The Obvious.  The show covered:

• A process for coming up with new ideas for your marketing and product / service development;
• Why brainstorms don’t work;
• How to become innovative (even if you think you’re not);
• Why innovation in small business is so important;
• The concept behind Phil’s own innovation process called Killer Questions;
• How to run an innovations session.

The Small Business Big Marketing Show  focuses on sharing with its listeners how other small business owners from around the world go about their marketing. It’s fun, entertaining and always full of helpful ideas and insights for small business owners to apply to your business.

 Link to the full show

Co-Innovation As A Type Of Innovation

One of the areas that is overlooked by most organizations is the opportunity for a new type of innovation: co-innovation.  Co-Innovation is different from what most organizations call joint R&D, joint ventures (JV) or customer driven innovation.

What is co-innovation?

Co-innovation is where two organizations come together in a 50/50 contribution of resources with the relationship having the following charactersics:

• Each party has IP (intellectual property) to contribute
• The two parties have an agreed upon area of strong mutual interest
• There is agreement on the target (who is the market for the innovation, what is the innovation and how we go about creating and launching the innovation).
• Neither of the organizations can deliver the innovation alone thus a mutual dependency.
• The partners agree to deliver a real innovation to the market is an aggressive timeline (e.g. 24 months) where the innovation will have real and meaningful impact to both organizations

To lean how to setup co-innovation relationships, the lessons learned from having run +30 of these relationships and the pitfalls to avoid, listen to the podcast.

Download the Co-Innovation As A Unique Type of Innovation podcast

Previous podcasts discussing the different types of innovation needed:

1. Internal innovation (Organic) 

2. Innovation from M&A

3. Co-Innovation

Innovation from M&A

Getting your innovation mix correct includes having innovation from M&A’s as part of the innovation strategy.  As with anything, there are pros and cons so go into innovation M&A with your eyes open. There are two types of innovations from M&A:

• Acquiring a company

• Purchasing IP (intellectual property such as patents, trade secrets, etc)

In some cases, M&A can allow an organization to become lazy when it comes to innovation.  M&A can lower the risk since the other organization has proven the opportunity, it also has a lower return.  Innovation from mergers and acquisitions needs to be part of the mix rather then the primary way an organizations fills its innovation pipeline.

Innovation Strategy

When M&A is part of the innovation strategy, it can be a great tool to secure a key position in the existing industry (e.g. acquire a competitor with unique IP) or grow into an adjacency (e.g. acquire new skills and expertise needed).

Link to the audio for the Innovation from M&A podcast

Subscribe the podcast on iTunes

Referenced:

• 3 Elements to getting the innovation mix correct

• A winning innovation strategy = a balanced internal (organic) innovation approach

Organic (internal) Innovation

Organic Innovation, based on the use of internal resources, is one of three elements of an organizations innovation mix.  As with any type of innovation, there are pros (control) and cons (risk).  To properly manage internal innovation programs, an organization needs to properly manage the innovation profolio.

Innovation Portfolio

The innovation portfolio consists of:

• Areas of innovation

• Innovation Funnel

Before any organization starts down the path of organic innovation, an honest assesment needs to be made of:

• Innovation contribution

• Customers needs and wants

• Innovation Timing

Listen to this weeks podcast …

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes

Last Thursday I had the great pleasure of being the guest of John Hollar at the Computer History Museum for an hour-long discussion on Beyond the Obvious. One of the greatest challenges of writing the book was eliminating so much interesting material due to space constraints. The interview at the Computer History Museum provided a great opportunity to cover additional information as well as to answer questions directly from the audience.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

What question would you have asked?

Innovation Mix

The innovation mix is about managing the 3 different sources of innovation in a way to; a)  improve the innovation success rate while, b) reducing the innovation risk.  The 3 sources of innovation for the mix are:

• Organic Innovation

  Organic innovation is the innovation that results from the resources (people, time and money) from within an organization.

• Innovation from M&A

  Innovation from M&A comes into the organization via some form of acquisition.  These can be entire companies/teams or the acquisition of IP (e.g. patent purchases)

• Co-Innovation

  Co-innovation is the approach where you define a join effort (money, people, etc) with another organization where both would greatly benefit yet neither can do it alone.  This is NOT the same same as “joint R&D”.

Why is getting the mix correct so important? Listen to the podcast …

Download this podcast here

In the March issue of Harvard Business Review magazine, Julia Kirby (@JuliaKirby) wrote a review of Beyond The Obvious as part of a larger piece titled Are We Being Creative Yet?.  Her thoughts on the book include:

Phil McKinney’s job over the past 20 years, most recently as head of innovation for Hewlett-Packard, has been to make sure innovation is really happening. His book Beyond the Obvious: Killer Questions That Spark Game-Changing Innovation takes the approach he has come to rely on and packages it up for use in a workshop setting. What does he mean when he exhorts product developers to look “beyond the obvious”? It’s a call to question what appear to be clear design constraints and boundaries on the problem space they are addressing. By asking questions such as “What features of my product create unanticipated passion?” and “Who am I not selling to because I think they can’t or won’t pay?” he’s finding different angles of attack to dismantle people’s deeply held assumptions. Does this constitute a disciplined process for ideation? It has that reassuring appeal. But the strength of McKinney’s approach is not that it provides the scaffolding for creative thought. It’s more about knocking it down.

Read the the full story and review over at HBR (registration may be required).

The antagonist of the innovator is the corporate antibody.

Much like antibodies in our immune system attack and destroy foreign objects that might harm the body, “antibodies” in your organization identify and neutralize forces that threaten to destabilize a company. And in much the same way as antibodies can damage the very thing they seek to protect — for instance when they cause the body to reject a transplanted organ — corporate antibodies can stunt a company’s growth (and not address the innovators dilemma) when the shut down the fresh ideas and unconventional thinkers it so badly needs.

Some of the types of corporate antibodies are:

• The Ego Antibody

• The Fatigued Antibody

• The No-Risk Antibody

• The Comfort Antibody

Antibodies are the roadblock to innovation.

So how do you fight the corporate antibodies? Listen to the podcast …

Note: This podcast presents the highlights from Chapter 3 from the book, Beyond The Obvious.

Consider subscribing to the Killer Innovations podcast on iTunes

Over the years, I’ve tried every combination of metrics you can think of when it comes to measuring the impact on an organization from their investment in innovation.  Below are the 6 metrics that I found most useful to measure innovation success.  My advice is to use them as a set and don’t cherry pick one or two.

% of Revenue Spent on R&D

I’m not a fan of the R&D as a percentage of revenue but it’s the one that Wall Street uses and one that public companies need to deal with.  The mistake comes when this is the only metric used.  One word of caution with this metric – don’t look just at the % but also track and measure actual dollars spent.  In fast growth companies (i.e. Apple), revenue is growing much faster than R&D.  If you just looked at the %, you may come away with the wrong conclusion that they are under spending.  In the case of Apple, as the % has dropped, their actual R&D spend continues to increase.

R&D Impact = Gross Margin / R&D Spend

This is an “old” Bill Hewlett and David Packard metric they used to ensure proper return for the R&D effort being invested.  Why gross margin?  The theory is that if you build a better mouse trap, the customer will reward you with a margin premium which will show up in gross margin.  Target:  Benchmark your competitors and you want to be in top quartile.

% of Revenue From Products Launched In The Last XX Years

This is what I call the “3M Metric”.  3M is famous for pushing their executives to embrace the new by putting in place a metric that reinforces the need to constantly re-invent itself.  So what constitutes a new product?  Rather that describe what it is, it’s easier for me to describe what it isn’t.  It’s not the next generation of an existing product (the next years model of a car or laptop doesn’t qualify) or a line extension (a new flavor of soft drink doesn’t qualify). Target: 10% to 15% is good starting target.

Patent quality

Some in the industry focus on total number of patents rather than the quality of patents.  Quality is defined by how often your patents are referenced as fundamental technology in other patents (others are building ideas based on your work) and the value of the patent portfolio (how much would someone pay you for your patents). You may think that large organizations have the advantage here. This is not the case.  A small firm is more than twice as likely to be found among the top 1% highest impact patents than is a patent from a large firm.

% of Time Executives Spend on Innovation

The key measurement of where executive focus is to measure where they spend their time.  Does your organization do a “once a year” look at innovation or do the top executives regularly schedule sessions where they put aside tactical/operational discussions and focus on strategy and innovation?   Target: ~10%

R&D Spend – Follow The Money

Not all R&D spend is good spend.  In many organizations, there is a tendency to over spend in the current money makers (core) and starve the new ideas.  Target:  Varies by industry but a good starting point would be 70% to the core (existing products to existing customers), 20% to adjacencies (existing products to new customers, new products to existing customers)  and 10% to New/New (new products to new customers).

For more background, listen to the Killer Innovations Podcast “Measuring Innovation Impact“.  It’s from 2007 but still has some good background …

Does your organization have a different set of metrics they use?  What are they and do they work?

With the launch of the book yesterday, there seems to be a lot of interest in the history of how Beyond The Obvious came to be.  It all stared some years back when I took some time off.  During this time, I was challenged by some companies to share how it was that I consistently deliver major innovations across a wide range of industries. The truth was – I didn’t know how I did it.  I just did.  This time of self -reflection allowed me to reverse engineer the process.  The blog, podcast and now the book, are my way of sharing it with you.

So what was the key learning?  Listen to the podcast and then read the book.

Download the February 7th podcast

A few weeks past, I was interviewed by the hosts of the Deep Fried Bytes Podcast (Keith & Woody) on the topic of innovation.  The discussion covered everything from how anyone can learn innovation to the role innovation plays in your career. Keith and Woody also drill me about the book, Beyond The Obvious.

Listen to me being Deep Fried