My experiments with innovation

To the readers: The technological innovations that happened in the last 10 years may be more impactful than those happened in the last 100 years. Everyone is impacted by innovation. Everyone is expected to be innovative. This blog is about how to become innovative.

In this blog I have listed many methods I used, many ideas & techniques I read/learnt/heard, and many approaches my team & I used, to get mixed results for over 10 years of my career.

To get the best benefit from this blog, read, pause, think and read.

Prologue

Creativity is about identifying new ideas and Innovation is about using ideas to solve problems. Innovations could be incremental, radical, transformational, disruptive, etc.

Can anyone be innovative? I think everyone could be innovative. Sometimes the simplest of the ideas could solve a tough problem.

Here is a tough problem: How to improve test score of students in schools? Go ahead. Pause for a few seconds and think of all possible solutions. Think of at least 5 solutions.

Got them? Ready?

Here is one solution. Give students eyeglasses.

Is this one of your 5 solutions? If yes, you do not need to read the research. Sometimes an idea that is simple to explain, easy to execute, costs less could indeed solve a tough problem.

Let's talk about some approaches we could adopt and become innovators.

Curse test

Where there is a curse, there is an opportunity for innovation. Next time when you hear someone cursing out of frustration/ anger/ irritation, you know there is problem and it is an opportunity to solve the problem.

Sacred Cow workshop

And if you are looking for a list of problems to address, think of Sacred Cow workshop. Questioning long established belief system (in the organization) will help people identify problems and help them think creatively. Bring people together to brainstorm and identify the scared cows in the organization.

I got a solution... now show me a problem!!

When you see a (innovative) solution being used in one context, try re-using the solution in a different context. In other words, if there is a solution, look for a new problem to solve. Here is a story. Long time ago, Marks and Spencers (M&S) wanted to enter Sandwich business in UK. Sandwiches need to have cheese in them and adding cheese to a sandwich is labor intensive. M&S was looking for an innovative idea to solve it. A smart M&S executive, one day, was visiting a vendor who screen-prints silk clothes. The workers in the factory were spraying paint on silk clothes. The executive thought “...why not we use the same idea to spray cheese onto sandwiches”. The rest is history.  

Robert Fulton invented steamboats but he used steam engines that already existed for 75 years. Viagra was invented to solve hypertension but later was used to solve erectile dysfunction problem. Minoxidil was used to treat blood pressure but later used to address hair thinning and hair fall.

No idea is a small idea. There is story about how a toothpaste manufacturer wanted to increase sales. They tried a variety of time-tested ideas (like marketing, discounts, incentives, bundling with other products, celebrity endorsements, etc.). Someone gave what seemed to be a simple idea. The idea was to expand the diameter of the mouth of the toothpaste tube. Again, the rest is history.

Sometimes the innovative idea to solve a problem may involve a very simple solution. No need for extremely complex solution. Here is an example. A factory that was manufacturing solid soaps was facing a unique problem. In the factory shop floor, the freshly minted soap would travel on a conveyor belt to get into a soapbox and all soapboxes would move on the conveyor belt to get into bigger cardboard boxes for final shipment. The problem was that some of the small soapboxes were turning out to be empty (no solid soap in them). Many complex ideas were suggested, including x-ray’ing the soap boxes to identify empty boxes and eliminate them. But here is a simple solution that was implemented. The factory placed a fan facing the conveyor belt. Empty boxes flew away in the wind leaving behind the filled soapboxes.

What is your personal problem?

When humans face a problem, some may just try to work around it. Innovators do not. Here is what one innovator did. He was a young student studying in MIT. He once forgot his USB drive filled with code while on a 4-hour bus ride. He wanted to work on his code but could not. He was frustrated and wanted to solve the problem. His name is Drew Houston and the company is DropBox. A travelling salesman was frustrated with his blunt shaving blade. He wanted a disposable one. His name was King Camp Gillette.  History is full of such stories where people who want to solve their problem instead of just working around it.

Mix and match

Here is another suggestion to get some innovative ideas.

Step1: Write down a few statements with a subject, object and a verb in the sentence. For example,

Cars run on roads.

Airplanes fly in the sky.

Restaurants serve food.

FedEx delivers packages

Step2: Now break each sentence into three parts: subject, object and verb. If you want to make it easier, arrange them in a table in three different columns.

Step3: Now pick one subject, one verb and one object (not from the same row of the table)

Here are some weird sounding statements that could be created from the sentences above:

FedEx delivered food

Restaurants fly in sky

Some of the statements will point to an innovative idea.

Hire non-experts

Some times lack of experience and lack of expertise could lead to innovation. In other words if you want to be innovative, pick a field you are not an expert in. Talk with experts in that new field and ask stupid & bold questions. Try asking “why” as a follow up to each answer till the expert gives up. That final answer will reflect an organizational sacred cow or blindly followed best practice or misconstrued myth or “that is how it is done here”.

If you are an expert, try explaining what you do to a novice or a young person. The questions you face may trigger innovative ideas.

How your brain is telling lies

Sometimes just being aware of how your brain works will make you see the world differently and think differently. Brain is trained to match with historical patterns to make sense of current world. This is called confirmation bias. To show how blindly a brains works, here is a reference to an experiment done, from a book Welcome to Your Brain by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang. A researcher approached a local person on the street and asked for directions to a famous tourist spot. While the local person was explaining the directions, two workers carrying a big wooden mirror walked between the two, blinding the view of the local person for just a couple of seconds. In that short time, the researcher is replaced with another researcher. 50% of the times, the local continued with giving directions without realizing that he is now talking to a different person (who looks quite different).

Mindfulness

Our brain typically makes billions of decisions per day. Don’t believe?

Answer the following. How do you hold your toothbrush (left or right hand, which fingers, tail of the toothbrush touching your palm or not), how do you hold your toothpaste tube, do you squeeze gently or hard, how much paste, do you bend or stand straight while brushing and what are you looking at in the mirror while brushing.

All of these are decisions you are making. But you don't even know that you are making these decisions. It is so because 90% of the decisions are made subconsciously on a routine day. Want to test this hypothesis? Try taking a train in an unfamiliar city. You will suddenly be aware of how many decisions your brain has to make. What time, which train, which platform, where on the platform to stand, when to exit, how many stops later do I need to start moving to the door, which exit to take to get onto Market street, where to buy the ticket, etc. Every human being eventually lets the subconscious brain make the decisions.

Now let's talk about mindfulness. Mindfulness is the state of being aware of your body, feelings, emotions, surroundings, etc. at all the times.

Do the exercise of mindfulness. In this exercise observe every activity you perform and make a mental note (sometimes saying it aloud) of every thing you see around you (the color of your watch dial, the marks on your car tire, the shape of your car dashboard, your spouse’s sideburns, etc.).

It is a tiring job. Do it for 15mins a day for a few days. You will start observing new things in your life that you never did earlier. This new talent will give enough fodder to your brain to be innovative. Want to be mindful? Watch psych, a TV program.   

How are others doing it?

Reading about innovative ideas also helps you to be creative. You will develop a few innovative ideas of your own. Go to the websites of famous Venture Capitalists (VCs) and look at the websites of startup companies they are investing in. Also search for the Top Innovative Companies and study their websites.

Tread those places you never thought you would

Sometimes you may get new ideas when you visit places where you do not frequent. If you go to a music concert targeted for a different age/country/language audience, you may see things that you never saw or you may see what regular attendee may not be able to see. Go watch a ball game in the stadium than watching on TV. Volunteer in your daughter’s school for the prom night. Volunteer at a church or at a soup kitchen.

Write and re-write; Read and re-read it

It is a good idea to keep a journal to write down your ideas (or audio/video record your ideas). Have a whiteboard to write down ideas. Place the board at your workplace or bedroom so that you can keep reading. You may use post-its too.

Read interesting facts. Write down interesting facts.

Talk to strangers

Talk to people who you normally do not meet. Let’s say you never interacted with a lawyer. Next time you meet her, ask about her role and stories about exciting situations. Ask her about what bothers her as a lawyer.

How often do you take time to talk with an astronaut, a professor in anthropology, a Nobel laureate, a politician, a janitor, a realtor, a brain surgeon, a professional sports person, etc. Next time when you are on a flight or train, let go of your music system (or movies) and talk with your co-passenger.

My idea sucks!!

No idea is a bad idea. At the same time, if you got an innovative idea, please be aware that at least ten others would have got the same idea. Only one in a hundred dare to work on it. So do not worry if the idea is great or not. History is full of examples where an idea initially thought to be an excellent one, but flopped miserably (Webvan, Motorola Iridium, Quirky, Solyndra, Fisker, etc.) and a highly disliked idea was eventually a popular one (Snapchat, Garbage collection, 24hr news, eBay, Holy Ink, Doggles, FedEx, Twitter (140 chars, seriously!!), Mint, Instagram, GitHub, etc.). Even the smartest of the venture capitalists rejected great ideas (Google, Facebook, etc.). An idea does not have to be big or complicated. Just a simple one would do too, like Snapchat (pictures disappear), DropBox (cloud storage), Facebook (stay connected), YouTube (share videos), Instagram (share pictures).

Kids are the best innovators

Want to get innovative ideas? Watch kids or young adults. Go teach in a school or college. Sign up to supervise grad and undergrad students do their senior project. Volunteer in major cultural or industry events where large number of people gather, like, VidCon, ComicCon, Super Bowl, Indian / Chinese music concerts, Flea market, Mall on a Black Friday, etc. Look what they are doing. Listen to what they are talking about. Watch for signs of what they like / dislike, watch for their (weird) habits, what makes them happy and what irritates them. What attracts their attention and what distracts them. What they want (or do not want) to hold/ possess/ use/ eat/ talk about. Once you observe something interesting, look for reasons why.

The Why game

Play the why game. Gather a few friends and ask them a controversial question (like why do we people stand in line days/hours ahead of time to buy the new Harry Potter book; why Star Wars has such a huge following). Keep asking why till you cannot answer. Typically you may end up at “that is how people are”, “money/time/other resources”, or “Oh shut up… I don’t know”.  Some of the answers you get to those whys may trigger a new idea in your brain.

Counter intuitive statements?

Here are some statements that will make you think ..huh...seriously?

1. During gold rush, people who supplied tools to the gold seekers made more money than the gold seekers
2. In software world, companies developing platforms are making more money than those developing products
3. If drunk driving is not safe, how about drunk walking? (Not safe)
4. You can make more money when you give away your software for free
5. Is more money good or less money?
6. Is it smarter to buy a lottery ticket when the prize amount is $3million or when it is $300million
7. Make more money by sending off people to other websites than let them hang around (Google Search)

Buddy system

Find a buddy who is similarly inclined (i.e. interested in becoming innovative) and talk about new ideas. Go for a long hike.

Many venture capitalists ask the founder to find a co-founder before they fund a startup. There has to be at least two people in the team. Two brains are better than one.

Here is an idea that further improves the previous idea. Form a team of like-minded people. Decide to meet regularly. In such meetings, each member will research an innovative idea and share it with the team. The team could discuss the idea, talk about why it is interesting, what the benefits are and why you think it is a good/bad idea.  And if your team has starting troubles, look at the websites of a bunch of startup companies.

Read and listen

Try to gather a broad perspective of what is happening your world. Listen to TED talks, podcasts, read papers and books. Read about world changing people, ideas and inventions. Reading relevant tech or popular magazines will also open you mind to the current issues and problems. Also listen to or read material about topics that are not related to you. If you are a tech person, read about philosophy, religions, anthropology, history, and politics. Attend free Stanford seminars.

How to arrive at weird ideas?

Sometimes innovation could happen when you make ridiculous sounding ideas. Heard of the story about innovation in ice cream cups? Some decades ago, plastic ice cream cups were damaging the environment. A committee was set up to solve it. One idea they received was to “eat the cup too”. Though it sounded ridiculous at first (how can you eat plastic ice cream cups), the team later developed an edible cup (or cone).

What is the worst idea?

Here is another approach. Brainstorm with some friends on “what is the worst idea to develop” and develop the opposite.

Did you identify the correct competition?

Innovation is possible when you change your perspective of who your competition is. A few decades ago, many electronics manufacturers were struggling with sagging sales of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). Apple, Go, Sharp, Slate, etc. introduced PDAs but did not gain traction. Palm’s Jeff Hawkins thought “.... wait a minute…. we all think that PDAs are competing with a computer. And we are cramming so many features of a computer into a PDA. But the actual competition is with paper. Let's develop PDAs that compete with paper”. This forced Palm to rethink and reissue PDAs that were hugely successful.

Old habits and new solutions

Here is another suggestion on how to become innovative. Make a list of tasks you perform as part of daily life. Identify the products/ appliances/ tools that you use to accomplish those. Now imagine accomplishing those tasks using entirely different set of tools. Here are some examples of old tasks (with new tools):

Send mail using USPS (email)

Buy a book from store (Amazon)

Publish a book with a publisher (Scribd)

Rent a DVD to watch movie (Netflix)

The mother of all innovations

If you are really serious about innovation (and I know you are… else you wouldn’t have read the boring blog this long), answer the following question. The answers will trigger some ideas.

What do human beings love to do?  

Here are my answers (you may have a different list):

1. Stay connected with other people
2. Gamble
3. Fall in love
4. Feel superior to others (in smartness, looks, sports, height, etc.)
5. Safety (heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?)
6. Complaining
7. Be lazy but dream to accomplish their dreams
8. Get recognition (Read Dale Carnegie)

Solving human problems or addressing human needs will make you to think creatively.

Impossible?

Some ideas may sound impossible to implement. Some are and some may not be. Sometimes the limitation is just in the mind. Heard about the great talent of Kenny G? He could play flute for 45 minutes without pausing to breathe. Impossible is what the critics derided Henry Ford when he announced that the future is about cars when everyone was using horses. Edison faced opposition when he marketed electric streetlights when gaslights were popular and reliable.

Epilogue

Innovation is hard and easy, simple and complex, succeeds and fails, cheap and expensive. Everyone sees and feels innovation differently. We are not done with innovation. Miles to go...

If you want to be innovative, re-read this blog a few times.