Sausages & Innovation...
Robin Gissing
Innovation and R&D Leader | Design thinking & human-centred design specialist | Facilitator | Armchair Futurist
Friday Thought -?
This is a story about a sausage, and what that has to do with innovation.
Go read ‘Act Fourteen’ in the link below to a transcript of the ‘This American Life’ podcast, and come back here (if you want to listen to it, it starts at 34:11) it’s one of the greatest corporate America anecdotes ever.
Welcome back! Great story wasn’t it. So, what does this have to do with innovation? Well… people often refer to the terms ‘Top Down’ and ‘Bottom Up’ when it comes to innovation.?
With Top Down being the preferred option from most Heads of Innovation, because if the problem comes from the top, it has a better chance of being funded, and then your innovation metrics go up. But, have you really solved the problem? Hopefully! But probably not. Same as the sausage story. Shiny new factory. Solved the top folks’ problems (more capacity, clean, shiny) but, it didn’t work, but it addressed the original challenge as described by the top. Companies have collapsed with lesser challenges than Chicago’s Vienna Sausage Co had at this point. Thankfully, as you read/heard it got solved eventually, through a bit of detective work (more on this later) and their delicious sausages are still enjoyed today!?
When innovating it is important to search for problems at the coal face (be that a customer, or a member of staff working at the pointy end), as much as finding out what problems are troubling the top levels. Where the real innovation happens is when you find a MATCHED challenge. Where both the folks actually doing the work or using the product see the same problem as the directors. Without the context of what is actually happening on the ground,?you run the risk of being an ivory tower innovation function, swanning in to solve the top brass’ problems, but not actually solving the business’s problems. And that’s a recipe for disaster in the medium term.?
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Equally, if you do get a problem from the top, go and sense check it on the ground. Quite often, someone without direct experience of the problem will quote a symptom of the problem as being the problem. Because the symptom is the only thing they see reported in their metrics.?
An extreme and silly example perhaps, but bear with me; ‘I just can’t get these red stains out of my white tennis gear, I need something to keep this tennis gear clean’ - you’d go away, ideate 100s of ideas and bring back a new type of stain remover. But the red stains keep coming back.?You’ve ignored the fact they’d cut themselves earlier in the day shaving, which you’d find out had you asked the razor.?
So yeah, the moral of the story is, when seeking innovation challenges don’t just rely on what people are telling you from the bottom or the top on their own. You must investigate and cast the net wide. I call this ‘Innovation Shoe Leathering’, you have to put yourself into the mind of a fictional detective like Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, Poirot or the ultimate innovating detective, Dick Tracy, to get to the bottom of things. (The 1940s writers gave him a smartwatch, which directly inspired Martin Cooper’s invention of the mobile phone. A little bonus fact for you there)?
Seek out your Irving’s of the world, they’ll shine a new light on the problem, and probably have a good solution for you at the same time. And, it’s not to say that everyone at the top doesn’t have a clue what they are going on about. Bottom up innovation has the same issues but different. The folks on the ground don’t necessarily have all the metrics related to other parts of the business. They certainly don’t have the funding. Both have just one volume each, of a larger story. This is why the matched innovation challenge is the one to seek out.?
Have you ever had the holy grail of a matched innovation challenge? What was it?
Right, I want a sausage for lunch now…