Innovation and In-The-Box Boundary Blindness

I like this quote for a blog post 10 Good Habits to Develop an Innovative Mind - Hongkiat

"The most innovative people in the world are also the most inquisitive among us. They ask lots of questions (often about what the rest of us often take for granted) and they’re always looking for ways to improve things. Unlike many of us, innovators don’t simply settle for the status quo; they love challenging what is widely accepted as the norm or the standard. Instead of relying on preconceived notions about things and people, they prefer to look at new things they’ve encountered, from various perspectives."

I was once told that I don't only think out of the box, I don't even know there is a box. (I took it as a compliment however I suspect it was not meant so). As I have read more and more about the history of inventions, and innovative paradigm shifts in science and technology, I am constantly amazed at how each major innovation pivot was often lead by a person whose contemporaries view as unconventional or rebellious to the norms of common thought. It makes me think about how hard it is within an organization of humans who are working towards solutions in concert to be an "out of the box" thinker, but how important out of the box thinking is to innovation. The brain science suggests that out of box thinking is related to brain plasticity - their ability of the brain to make unconventional connections is synapse patterns using different cognitive areas of the brain for unconventional purposes,

How Does Your Brain Work on Innovation?

by philmckinney

Most of us are familiar with the image of a light bulb signifying the idea that emerges from our brain. One moment the light is off, the next it is on and a “eureka” moment has occurred. Likewise, many of us have also experienced “eureka” moments when we least expect them – in the shower, on a long run, or in the middle of the night.

Neuroscience And The Brain

It turns out that neuroscience is offering some new insights into how the brain works for innovation. In a recent article in Harvard Business Review (July/August 2013), Adam Watz and Malia Mason describe the brain’s default network. Neuro-research shows that the brain is never at rest and this default network takes over when we think we are at rest (e.g. sleeping). As the default network takes over, the brain begins processing internal information rather than just the new, external data coming from the five senses.

That our brains can solve problems while we’re not working specifically on them lends support to free-time thinking policies. Many firms, including Google (until recently) and 3M allow employees to dedicate 15 or 20% of their time to projects of their own choosing. This “free-time” is especially important for developing breakthrough innovations, leading to Gmail and Adwords at Google and Post-It notes at 3M, for example.

However, forcing brain detachment is tough in today’s technology-driven environment. Encouraging innovation via the brain’s default network can be assisted by turning off distractions – email, calendars, cell phones. Employers can encourage innovation by removing excess job duties and ensuring employees get away from the office. Of course, free-time thinking also benefits the creative activities stimulated by the brain’s default network as well.

HOW SUCCESSFUL INNOVATION EFFORTS MIMIC HOW OUR BRAIN WORKS

Article by DANA GINN

Do you remember the last time you had strong physical reaction when learning something new? Maybe your pulse started to race or your mind felt like it was going to explode. That's the chemical and electrical reaction that takes place in the brain when we learn something or develop a new insight. 

Neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman explains how this works. When we learn something new, “we are creating new connections (which become) part of the overall network.” When we learn, it is not a single stroke of genius, it is not a flash that comes out of thin air, Eagleman says. “Everything you learn is in relation to things you already know, a network of associations.” We are physically changing our brain. Dr. Eagleman goes on to say: “The main way that learning gets into the brain is by engagement in the material, and this requires you be curious and care.” Insights favor the connected mind.

Innovation works the same way. Over the past several years, I have researched how the brain processes information, and I started to make some connections and realized: Successful innovation efforts mimic how the brain works. Here’s how…

Successful innovation seldom happens by getting people in a room together to brainstorm creative ideas and hoping for the bolt of lightning or the single stroke of genius. Instead innovation requires information gathering and data collection from multiple sources or “senses.” We need to do our homework.

Your brain gathers inputs and collects information constantly through all of the senses. Your skin acts like a “fabric of sensors” transmitting information. Your eyes, ears, nose, mouth and other senses, such as your ability to detect balance and temperature, all send a vast number of signals to the brain. This information is then processed, mostly during sleep, when our brain shuts down the senses, works with the inputs collected, tries things out, weaves ideas together, and builds connections and insights. Have you ever woken up with the answer to yesterday’s problem? Sleep inspires insights.

Innovation depends on the same mechanism, the same data gathering process we see in the brain. Successful teams do their homework. These teams gather as much information as possible from a variety of sources throughout the innovation life cycle (see below). They don’t just rely on what they already know. Successful teams study market trends, customer insights, and technology trends. These teams collect data from consumers and non-consumers, inside and outside industry examples. These teams can get inspiration from other disciplines, including by studying the natural world.

Recently, I worked with a manufacturing company that took time to study 160 global market trends and determine which ones would impact their customers, their industry and their business. They used this information to push through existing psychological barriers, made new connections, and added new ideas to their innovation pipeline.

INNOVATION REQUIRES THE USE OF A RAPID ITERATIVE, YET SYSTEMATIC LIFE CYCLE PROCESS 

Structure does not stifle innovation, it actually enables it! There are billions and billions of neurons in the brain each connected to approximately 10,000 other neurons creating about 100 trillion connections all the time. The language of the brain, the process of making connections, is very structured and systematic. Each neuron has “arms,” one of which generates electrical signals and then triggers a release of chemicals. Another neuron then detects these chemicals, which causes that neuron to make electrical signals and so on. Other cells, even more numerous than neurons, called glial cells provide the “glue” or foundation that allows the neurons to function. Some neuroscientists say glial cells have not gotten the recognition they deserve, and may also be a source of imagination and thought. While scientists are still exploring the mechanics of exactly how the brain works, in short, we know the brain follows an extremely fast, yet very structured process.

Innovation teams who have been successful have followed a similar rapid, intensive yet structured process.

A financial services company team was in the front-end of innovation process, and needed to gather customer insight data within five weeks. We followed a structured approach to ethnography (the practice of studying and observing how customers try to get their “jobs done” by chosen methods and solutions), interviews and surveys, and collected a significant amount of data using an iterative learning approach. We identified the importance and satisfaction of outcome expectations from a representative sample of customers. As a result, this team learned that what they thought were the most important outcome expectations were in fact not that important from the customer’s perspective. This led to more targeted development of specific solution ideas and prototypes that had a much higher probability of customer adoption when fully commercialized.

INNOVATION REQUIRES CURIOSITY AND AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION 

We need to care about the subject or task at hand. Again from Neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman, “When you try to learn something new, you have to have something to hook it to. It needs to be salient to you.” Many Montessori schools understand this well. When children in a Montessori school try to learn mathematics, it is tied to something the student is interested in, like sports or history—it has a “hook.”

Caring is critical to learning and to your innovation efforts. Have you ever been on a team that struggled to find the inspiration? Your teams will do what you ask them to do. They will go through the motions of identifying innovation opportunities and developing new products, services, processes or business models.

But if you want your teams to come up with the most robust solutions, if you want them to retain what they learned and insource innovation skills, you must develop an environment that allows people to care. Hook the innovation efforts to something they care about on an emotional level. Help them discover a shared emotional connection to the change.

THE BEST IDEAS ARE PART OF A LARGER FABRIC OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE

For innovations to succeed, the ideas we create must be married with a market need. Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist from University of Chicago, defines true creativity as the “… interaction between a person’s thoughts and a sociocultural context.” In his book Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention, he states, “Creativity is to bring into existence something genuinely new that is valued enough to be added to the culture.”

When you learn new things, your brain is taking inputs and connecting them to things you already know. The brain does not store information as single pieces but rather by creating networks of associations. It is the same with new innovation ideas. A great idea is only great if it is networked and connected to a customer need.

Brain functioning is a wonderful metaphor for how to innovate. For more information on how to achieve a higher success rate with your innovation opportunities, visit bmgi.com/innovation.

Dana Ginn is a senior client partner with BMGI. This article was originally published on LinkedIn. You can follow Dana on LinkedIn here.