By Roger La Salle
www.innovationtraining.com.au
www.matrixthinking.com
Open Innovation, the term used when companies and people literally open
their problems and issues to the world looking for advice and solutions is
possibly the most obvious form of collaboration.
There are a lot of issues with this so called open innovation model, a prime one of course is ownership of IP. This has the potential to be a minefield if not properly understood and managed.
However, before we go too far down the path of collaboration and open innovation it may first be useful to agree on what we even mean by the word innovation. Innovation, a word that seems to have been corrupted by so many, achieving nothing more that turning the simple into the complex!
It can be argued that Innovation is the basis for all things new and
better, but what inspires innovation and new ideas? More to the point, what is
the link between an innovative or inventive idea and an outcome?
If we think of innovation when applied to building a business and
making money, which is probably what inspires most innovators, then we need to
think about the risks in business.
In most cases when an idea is being pursued and a technology
development is being undertaken, whether it be an IT solution, new App, a
tangible product or a new service, in essence there are only two risks that
need to be considered.
The first is what we may refer to as technical risk, which means can
the technologist achieve the desired outcome?
In science and technology, for the most part the technologist will
deliver a solution or at least will be able to give some insight as to the
risks involved. For example if we were to ask the technologist to give us
anti-gravity boots they would easily be able to assign the risks associated
with achieving an outcome. Of course in this case the risk would be enormous.
On the other hand if we asked a clock to be developed with hands that
were in fact LED strips that were clearly visible in darkness, the answer would
be that this is achievable with no technical risk.
In short, technical risk is something we can generally measure and
assign a degree of risk.
However, assuming I did achieve the technical outcome with my
innovation, the real questions to be asked, and the ones that too many
innovators and even large companies get so wrong so often are “can I sell it?” –
“will there be a market?”
Market risk is without doubt out the single biggest risk in bringing
new products to market.
With this in mind we may be able to coin a definition of innovation
that has the effect of reducing market risk and with that we can explore the
opportunity landscape to hopefully create successful innovation.
When we look at some products from the past, Google, the i-Phone,
MasterCard and Visa, Nokia, Seiko, the IBM PC and Windows, one thing these all have
in common is that none we first to market. Indeed all were followers of some
prior art and yet all these were great successes. In short the secret to
mitigating market risk is to find a product or service that everybody is buying
and simply change it in some way to add value.
Thus a definition for innovation can follow.
The common synonyms for innovation are improvement or advancement.
Further, if we take it that people buy things because they see value for money,
then perhaps the best definition for innovation is “Change that Adds Value”. Indeed
this derivation and definition was coined in my book “Think New” many years ago.
This definition has now been adopted by many organisations and innovation
practitioners worldwide.
Whereas innovation may be about making changes for improvement,
inventions are more about novelty. Novelty of course is an essential ingredient
to a successful patent application. Having said that, there are many
innovations that do contain elements of novelty and are thus also patentable. Indeed
one may argue that there are few absolutely new inventions, though a few that
may fall into this category might be the electric light bulb, the transistor
device, the atomic bomb, RADAR and the LASER.
Given that we may have a better understanding of innovation the task
now falls to the creation of innovations. How does one do that and why is
collaboration so vital to successful innovation outcomes?
The secret to this comes from three elements, all essential ingredients
that underpin successful innovation:
- Observation
- Knowhow borne of experience
- Connections or collaborations
Observation
The key to finding opportunities for innovation lies in observation. That
is, looking at the way people interact with the world, with products and
services and finding the gaps and value added opportunities. Of course the idea
embodied in the relatively new concept of Design Thinking asks one to look at
the customer. However the fact is that from my reading of this methodology,
what it fails to do is to ask how one looks at the customer. Furthermore it should
also ask you to look at the customer’s customer. For example, is the retailer
your customer or the purchaser and user of your product? The packaging industry
seems to have worked that one out, for example in attending to supermarket
shelf storage space and customer convenience in opening and storing products!
Indeed there are five things that Design Thinking seems to miss in
exploring customer behaviour and the way people interact with products and the
world. These are in my book “Think Next” published over a decade ago.
- Predictable activity
- Widespread activity
- Repetitious activity
- Comparative activity
- Trends
If we explore our customer with these five, what I refer to as “seeds”
of opportunity, the game gets a lot easier. It’s further made easier if you
then use the eight thinking triggers I refer to as “Catalysts” to stimulate thoughts
about these seeds.
This is what I refer to as “opportunity Capture”.
Knowhow borne of experience
Young children are often very good at seeing what to them appears
obvious, whereas people who have been doing the same thing the same way for too
long often seem prone to overlook the obvious.
The young, the uninitiated and those untarnished with tradition are often
very good at seeing what may be possible, but what they lack is knowledge and experience
in looking at how such opportunities may be addressed and what seems sensible
and may be possible.
This is where experience and an older head is so valuable in innovation
outcomes.
There is a great saying, “knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom comes from
experience and experience comes with age”.
Below are some examples that may illustrate the point of why knowledge
borne of experience is so important.
- The inventor who correctly realised that the
lead on a hairdresser’s hairdryer was a problem is a case in point. His
solution was to have a battery operated hair dryer. What his lack of knowledge
failed to identify was that even a car battery would not have had the capacity
to run a hair dryer even though the idea may have had merit. As it happened the
inventor did toil away at this innovation for far too long and spent quite a
lot of money before acquiring the knowledge that at this point in battery
development, his idea was simply impractical.
- A building company with very large innovation
teams, in fact four separate teams, which were trying to find ways to identify
if scaffolding that had been put in place and certified as safe was
subsequently moved by subcontractors, and perhaps rendered unsafe. They had
been wrestling with the problem without a solution. When the problem was put to
an older head the answer was simple, something the inexperienced innovation
teams had never even heard of. Tie the scaffolding to the building with “Tamper
Tape” that fractures on movement. This was a great solution, but one that the
young innovators were simply too inexperienced to have even considered.
- A fellow who proposed a warning device that
alerted parents if a child had unfastened their seat belt. This was nice in
theory, but what was overlooked was that many cars already have a “person sitting
on the seat but seat belt unfastened” alarm. Perhaps an easier solution could
be a seat belt clip latch that requires stronger hands to undo, or maybe a two handed
operation action much like a safety interlock on a power tool. We refer to this
as “re-question”. It asks you to explore the real issue and decide what is
really the ideal or best question to be asked in addressing a problem?
In my world we refer to the type of connections from problem to
solution as “connecting the dots”.
One of the great skills of clever entrepreneurs and innovators is
to see the linkages between seemingly unrelated issues. This is where broadly
skilled technologists and open minded thinkers come to the fore.
For example, suppose I run a lumber business, the business of
cutting up trees to provide timber for the building industry. What possible
connection does that have with mathematics? Perhaps none you may think, or
certainly the old fashioned timber manager may have thought. But in fact linear
programming, quite an old science these days, when employed in that industry
can optimise the way timber is cut to provide massive additional profits. But
in the closed non-collaborative model, such knowledge may never be acquired.
Similarly,
- The technologies developed in putting a man on
the moon. How could that possibly connect to the business of pots and pans? The
answer – Teflon coating
- Clocks and radio paging, is there a connection?
Indeed there is. Imagine having a clock equipped with a radio paging receiver
to receive time signals and thus keep perfect time and even update for Summer
Time changes. Such clocks were developed in Australia long before we had cell
phones with perfect time
- The
packaging business and home insulation? Of course, use bubble wrap as the
ideal insulator. It’s light weight, cheap, easy to install and with fire
retardant grades also available.
- Optics
and home insulation? Of course, use a reflective coating on one side of
the bubble wrap to reflect radiated heat.
- Physiotherapy
and the reduction of carbon emissions?
- The
tooth brush and ceramic crystals?
- Extruded
plastic “core flute” sheeting and aluminium extrusions?
The reader can ponder the latter three, but the connection in each
of these cases has spawned real businesses.
There is an endless list of these seemingly unrelated disciplines
that can be connected with appropriate knowledge and collaboration between
disciplines
Indeed this is why the new paradigm of “Opportunity Capture” is
now emerging as the preferred approach to the more narrow discipline of
traditional innovation.
There are endless examples like this which goes to show that perhaps
inexperienced people may have great value in identifying possible innovation
opportunities but really fail to deliver when it comes to real and viable
outcomes.
Connections and Collaborations
There are few cases where one individual or even one organisation can
solve all the problems and go from mind to market with an idea without assistance,
or perhaps better said, collaboration.
Possibly the best example is in the auto sector. Auto makers are really
just assemblers of parts made in most cases by third parties. No auto maker can
make all the chassis components, the body work the paint or the rubber, the
bushes, shock absorbers, alternators, windscreen wipers, the complex
electronics, the air conditioners and even something as simple as the seats and
the seat belts. Of course tyres, bearings even engines parts are provided by collaborating
third party suppliers.
Collaboration and finding the best parties to assist you on your innovation
journey is essential whether it is in the design, the engineering, the manufacture,
the business planning and even the sale and marketing. Indeed even the very
largest manufactures from food to cosmetics usually outsource their packaging
and even advertising campaigns. Collaboration at its best.
Collaboration is definitely the name of the game when I comes to
successful innovation outcomes.
**** ends ****
Roger La Salle,
trains people in
innovation, marketing and the new emerging art of Opportunity Capture.
“Matrix Thinking”™ is now used in organizations in more than 29
countries. He is sought after as a speaker on Innovation, Opportunity and
Business Development, is the author of four books, and a Director and former
CEO of the Innovation Centre of Victoria (INNOVIC) as well as a number of
companies, both in Australia and overseas. He has been responsible for a number
of successful technology start-ups and in 2004 was a regular panelist on the
ABC New Inventors TV program. In 2005 he was appointed to the “Chair of
Innovation” at “The Queens University” in Belfast
