Innovation Blueprints JUNE 2016 • ISSUE #102
INNOVATION STRATEGIES & SATIRE
Special feature:
WHY BEHAVIOURALISTS ARE CHANGING HOW WE INNOVATE
SPECIAL FEATURE: DRIVING INNOVATIVE BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE
Behavioural innovators • INNOVATION BRAIN: INSIDE THE INNOVATORS BRAIN • IMITATION VS. INNOVATION: HOW TO AVOID IMITATING • MISTAKE MAKING: RETHINKING THE VALUE OF MISTAKES
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LETTER FROM EDITOR
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nnovators never ceases to amaze me. What inspires me is the depth of thinking that professionals can bring to the forefront to allow themselves to innovate day in-day out.
In this edition we dig into some of the unique insight generation skills that behaviouralists can bring to the world of innovation. Insights are what help us determine where we should be innovating and behaviouralists are masters at identifying these insights.
Nils Vesk, Chief editor
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Insights help determine where we should be innovating
It therefore makes sense to investigate some of their behavioural secrets to help us all become better innovators. In this edition we have the good fortune of sharing the strategies of two world class behaviouralists. So get ready to hypnotise some chickens and read some minds. On another note we had great feedback about our last edition of Innovation Blueprints. Thanks also to those spreading the word about our unique magazine, it helps us work even harder to deliver something special. Keep on innovating! Cheers,
Nils
Nils Vesk Chief Editor & Founder of Innovation Blueprint nils@InnovationBlueprint.com.au www.InnovationBlueprint.com.au
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CONTENTS
Fra nzi sk shares h a Isel i er mark et g en i us i ng ti ps
i n s i d e th e i n n ovati on bra i n
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WHAT’S INSIDE Imitation - how to avoid the trap Inside the innovators brain Isolation innovation New innovations D.I.Y Innovation - innovation tips Innovation strategist - Donald Trump Scores for Insight generation
4 6 8 10 10 12 14
Behavioural thinking Innovative cultures How to market your ideas User groups to test innovation Leading vs. Bleeding edge Mistake making - innovation tips
16 20 22 25 28 30
Film review by George Clooney Regrettable innovations Innovation coach Q&A’s Social Innovation - Eat me chutneys
33 34 36 38
30 MISTAKE MAKING d why it 's so g oo
behavioural insights lead to commercial gold
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INNOVATION TIPS NEW HEADING HERE
IMITATION : THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SMART & BLIND IMITATION FOR INNOVATION WITH ANDREW POPE
LOOKING AT WHAT YOUR COMPETITOR IS DOING? MAYBE YOU SHOULD THINK AGAIN. ANDREW POPE EXPLORES IMITATION.
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mitation is the greatest form of flattery. And why not? If something works well, why not copy it. But innovation, I hear you say, is surely about inventing new things, not copying what's already been done. And you'd be right - the actual innovation is new. But imitation is a great innovation tactic - we have to get inspiration from somewhere! But there are different types of imitation. Smart imitation can be an important input to the creative process. Blind imitation...well, you've been warned! As with many things, imitation requires a balance. Here we look at when we should copy a good idea, and where we should draw the line.
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Imitating the boss' fashion Surely the biggest faux pas - before you even start innovating, you want to impress the boss. You subtly mimic their look, hoping to be a bit more like them. They start wearing a tie, so you start wearing a tie. They attempt shiny pink shoes, so you adopt shiny pink trousers. Not only will you look like a prat to your colleagues, you will possibly terrify your boss. And crucially, innovation is all about diversity - that we are all different. We need to think and act much more individually than just wanting to be like someone else, constrained by their imagination, not ours.
crucially innovation is all about diversity One of the biggest blockers to innovation is the expectation of how we should conform, not step outside the way they think. By all means be influenced, ride on their backs even, let them take you on part of the journey. But ultimately be yourself, and allow your own individual creativity to flow.
imitation
Imitating a good experience Had a memorable experience? Received a service that made you feel quite special? Then definitely imitate this. Crucially, this needs to be unpacked into why you felt so good - what was your un-met need that they solved? How did they go about doing this? It's all about replicating how they made you feel. Can you apply this feeling to what you do for your customers or stakeholders? Go back and look at all the ways that this experience interacted with you. What were the specific 'touch-points' that made the difference. Collectively, they may not be of much use to your specific project, but looking at the components individually, there may well be one or more that stand out, and can be used in your work. This isn't copying, it's simply absorbing what works, and bringing it into your thinking.
Copying a good slogan Sometimes we need a catchy slogan to get behind: "Yes we can!", "I'm luvvin' (sic) it", "Abbott for Prime Minister" - ok, maybe not that one! The importance of crystallizing your vision into something that connects with your target audience cannot be overstated. But adapting a slogan that works for someone or something else is not the way to do it. Our own innovations are by nature unique. It's important to find our our own motivation that inspires us to do wonderful things for our clients. And this slogan has to come from the wellspring of our own vision of the future. What are we doing that's so amazing for our customers, and how will we do it? Look at the future, then turn it into a way we work. That way it'll be finger lickin' good (hmmm, that one could come in handy for a flavoured rubber glove business...). Replicating a technique Many good innovators apply simple techniques to create great ideas. They transform things – find an assumption, then remove it. For example, we used to assume that fans need to have blades. So a wellknown household appliance company simply challenged that assumption: bladeless fans. We can apply that thinking to our everyday work. Can we remove something? Can we swap something? Can we do this differently? Simple techniques that can produce anything but simple outcomes.
So what about a major game changer being applied to politics? Creating a presidential nominee without a brain…? The next few months will show whether this is a technique worth copying. Repeating mistakes Innovation is all about making mistakes, right? We fail as we try to find a way around obstacles or when we try out new possibilities. We have two choices when this happens. We can either clean up and apportion blame, or work with those who failed to learn from what they did and thereby increase our future chances of getting it right. Failure is a natural part of innovating. Put an idea into an environment where you know it won’t succeed doesn’t sound itself like a good idea, but its this sort of approach that, when we pilot ideas, makes them stronger. It pushes us to come up with even more innovative approaches. It’s effectively innovation evolution, or survival of the fittest. Keep failing to make your final idea stronger. Some mistakes are worth repeating: Australia in the Eurovision song contest? Actually, it isn’t working out to badly. The UK finishing in the bottom five every year? Sometimes, repeating a mistake will never succeed!
Andrew Pope is a specialist in innovation collaboration. To find out more stalk him at: www.Innosis.eu
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NEURO NONSENSE
INSIDE THE IMITATION BRAIN What 's drivi ng t os th e m i n d o f m ma nag ers
willingness to unlearn prototyping skills
ability to copy competition lobe spread sheeting cortex
impulse to re-use nerve
trend spotting
risk detector lobe
avoid new processes region career advance detector accept responsibility for failure
office politics nucleus
asking for new ideas particle
delegating nasty tasks cells
take credit gland
lateral thinking skills
ANTI - INNOVATOR
illustrations by Nils Vesk
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NEURO NONSENSE NEW HEADING HERE
INSIDE THE INNOVATION BRAIN
copy cat gland
What rea drives th l ly e of a n i n n m i n d ovator
prototyping skills strip pitching lobe
trend spotting gland
idea generator nucleus
adaptation region
excuse making micron
ego cell customer empathy nerve
marketing cortex
collaboration system
process improvement stem
R.O.I converter
problem seeking cells
wait for permission particle
fun nucleus
INNOVATOR
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INNOVATION TIPS
ISOLATION INNOVATION WE TAKE A LOOK AT WHY ISOLATING YOUR INNOVATION DOESN'T WORK BY NILS VESK
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come across a few organisations who have set up their own innovation teams or design thinking teams to create innovation for organisations. While the notion of having a smart team to develop ideas is admirable in reality it falls short on what they are trying to achieve - which is to innovate across an organisation. The reason why they fail is that they have separate units, that are isolated from the whole organisation. This means that whilst they might come up with some good ideas, the rest of the organisation (who incidentally are the ones who will have to execute the ideas) are more than likely receive any blame if the ideas don't succeed. Herein lies the problem. Innovation is not a separate skill reserved for the special chosen few. The more we prevent everyone from innovating the more other people will resent innovation, and especially resent the people who are allowed to innovate.
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Much of this stilted thinking mentality stems from the old notion of the R&D department. Too many organisations still think of innovation helping to invent the next widget. While it's important to continually create new products, innovation can also be applied to the processes & services we have in our organisations. These are all proven areas that can have just as much commercial return if not more than innovating on product. So if we can't have separate innovation teams who's going to spearhead innovation within the organisation.? This is a good question, because leading innovation is different to executing innovation. Innovation leaders should be there to help facilitate innovate either by teaching innovation skills, facilitating insight, ideation & prototyping sessions not to mention encouraging people to innovate. Keeping this type of innovative potential locked away in a separate team fosters resentment and a resistance to accept other peoples ideas.
So how do we find or create these innovation leaders and facilitators? Innovation like other key business skills is a skill that anyone can learn and apply. All you need is good innovation training, step by step innovation processes that people can follow and some work on creating behaviours that lead to innovative cultures.
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n my latest client research (as documented in my latest book Innovation Archetypes), I've identified 4 key phases to innovation that allow sustainable and profitable commercial innovation. Within each one of these phases there are a number of professionals trained with skills & mindsets that excel in innovating. After diagnosing an organisation's innovation strengths and weaknesses it's easy to look at recruiting or training strategies to strengthen any weaknesses in order to allow consistent innovation. Any professional can adopt the key innovative principles of what I call Innovation Archetypes (those that epitomise innovation). This might all sound expensive and time consuming. The reality is it doesn't have to be. With access to the right step by step processes anyone can become a world class innovator and any team can start to create world class innovations.
how isolated are your teams?
Innovation teams are often expensive investments that look impressive yet fail to deliver Rather than look at isolating innovation teams, focus on developing innovative facilitators and acquiring innovation processes so that everyone becomes equipped to innovate. Follow this up with some clear innovation objectives and KPIs such as the number of insights, ideas & prototypes etcetera that you would like to create each month or each business quarter.
Finally ensure you develop innovation rituals that encourage innovation. This might vary from innovation 'show and tells' from outside of the industry, celebrating failures, going on field trips and having a 'most improved innovator award'. Separate innovation teams are expensive investments that fail to deliver consistent. It's better to invest in training and equipping facilitators throughout the whole organisation with simple tools so that innovation becomes integrated, accessible and a powerhouse engine of profitability for your organisation. Go and integrate vs. isolate. Cheers,
Nils www.innovationblueprint.com.au
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J uk e De c k founders Ed Rex & Patri ck Stobbs
JukeDeck team working on their AI music composition software
NEW INNOVATIONS: JUKE DECK WE SCOUT THE WORLD FOR THE MOST IMPRESSIVE INNOVATIONS. FROM TECH TO CUSTOMER SERVICE, NO STONE IS LEFT UNTURNED AS WE AIM TO FIND GREAT INNOVATION. THIS TIME WE LOOK AT JUKEDECK.COM
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he god of innovation Innovatus once said"Take away their pain and you will be rewarded."
Many of the best innovations come from taking away peoples pain. Part of the innovators journey is investigating and being on the look out for peoples pains. If you can find a pain, you've just generated an insight as to where you can apply your creative thinking to create a commercial idea and innovation.
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One such innovation has recently come out from the UK in the form of an Artificial intelligence jukebox. Ed Rex was a music composer who understood the power of identifying a pain and innovating around it. Inspired by a lecture on artificial intelligence, Rex thought there must be a way for AI software to compose it's own music. At the same time, the pain that Rex had identified was in the cost and difficulty in sourcing royalty free music.
With over 400hrs of video uploaded to youtube every hour and 3000 hrs of video and film content produced every day, and some $2 billion spent on video music every year it was obvious this was an expensive pain as well. When you're trained in musical composition but you need to build a prototype, the most difficult thing to do is learn how to code and create a prototype of your idea. This is exactly what Rex did.
NEW INNOVATIONS
A music composer who taught himself how to code to create an AI program After working out his prototype, Rex teamed up with Patrick Stobbs, an old friend who worked in creating partnerships for YouTube and together they devised a business model for their concept 'Juke Deck Make'. Next came a pitch for funding to some Venture capitalists and then came the funding. The whole process before they launched took around 5 years, yet their product is making plenty of heads turn. Some of the unique features of JukeDeck.com is that every song is unique. That's the AI making that possible. At the same time there are components that enable the user to customise their story. The user chooses a genre of music style that they would like eg. Electronic, piano, folk, ambient. Then they choose the tempo and key instrument as well. They follow this by selecting a mood for the music eg. Uplifting, melancholic etc. and finally you select how long you want the song to be.
learn how to code & create a prototype of your idea
The AI takes care of the rest and the user ends up with a unique downloadable royalty free song. There are a variety of pricing models. Tapping into the freemium model -you can download 5 free tracks every month and then after that it's $7 a track.
If we were to unpack the key innovation steps taken by JukeDeck they were: 1. Identify a pain (cost & complexity of finding and buying music) 2. Be self sufficient and learn what needs to be learnt (coding) 3. Build a prototype 4. Create a winning business model 5. Pitch for funding (over 2million pounds received) 6. Complete execution (include customisation and DIY component) 7. Get some testimonials and case studies (the Royal family used a JukeDeck song on one their royal videos) 7. Launch product I hope this inspires you to continue to innovate. To check them out visit: www.jukedeck.com
Nils
Juke Deck's pricing is around 80% cheaper than the existing stock music libraries (and don't forget it's unique and cropped to your length). While it's still early days the future looks bright extremely bright for JukeDeck.com.
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INNOVATION STRATEGISTS
DONALD TRUMP TOP TIPS GREAT INNOVATION TIPS FROM A GREAT MAN
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UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMERS
I spent millions getting to know my voters and most importantly I know how to rub shoulders with them too. Well okay, it helps when you have 3 bodyguards to keep them from mugging you, but that's close enough. I mean have you seen some of these voters?
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IMAGE IS EVERYTHING
Personal branding is crucial to success. I work extremely hard in finding the right hairpiece that makes me looks younger and more vital than I'll ever be. That's great personal branding
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USE AN IDENTIFICATION PROCESS
Business is a tricky job and that's why I use processes to identify what I'm doing and what's mine. That's why I label my jet 'TRUMP' it just prevents me from stepping onto someone else’s plane. That's a smart process in place.
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ADAPT GOOD IDEAS
Most of my best ideas come from adapting ones I've seen elsewhere. For example my most popular idea at the moment is to build a wall between the USA and Mexico. I simply adapted the idea of the Great wall of China. Adaptation at it's best.
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CREATIVE RESEARCH
Most of the statistics you see in the world are made up. I know, I've done it for years in some of my businesses. Not everyone will believe them, but enough people will, which is enough to sell whatever you want, and that's smart thinking.
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EMOTION DRIVES BEHAVIOUR
Emotion really does charge behaviour. This is exactly why I pick the most emotionally charged topics and issues to discuss. It gets people moving.
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SPEAK THE TRUTH
I learnt a long time ago that 'blunt' was better than 'poignant'. Dare to 'say what no one else will say' and even if they disagree with you they'll respect you for talking about it.
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ANALYST ARCHETYPE
USING SCORES FOR CUSTOMER INSIGHTS USING ANALYTICS CAN DRIVE VALUABLE INSIGHTS. NILS VESK INVESTIGATES HOW SCORES AFFECT INSIGHT GENERATION.
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ne of the best examples and uses of data analytics is the practice of creating a 'score'. Many industries have developed 'scores' that utilise data to reveal more about an opportunity or existing situation. For example a financial institution may use a 'credit score' that is based on lending history, length of credit history, amount of credit borrowed, repayment history and the sort. The value is that it gives a person a quick score to determine the risk or level of security that will happen if lending to a potential client. 14
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Scores can be used to compare clients against one another, to help keep track of how a client or contact may be progressing and to help in decisions that need to be made.
When designing your score it's important to keep in mind whether the score is helping to quickly identify opportunities. Is it helping you to predict an upcoming action? Or is it helping you to make a better decision? If the score isn't enabling you to do these activities then perhaps it's better to have a number of scores or indicators.
A score can be as simple or as sophisticated as you like. The more variables and metrics you have the more you can use it to predict what might happen.
A good example of a score that may not always be interpreted the right way is the Intelligence quotient (IQ score), a prospective employee recruit who has a higher IQ than another candidate doesn't necessarily mean they will be a better hire.
Scores can come with a little bit of a risk in that boiling everything down to one number might mean that things get simplified too much.
Despite some of these issues, on the whole scores can provide us with a great opportunity to predict and make business decisions.
Another good example of a score is a Business lead score. A business lead score may be made up of a number of separate scores. This score commonly looks at elements such as engagement (how interactive a lead may be with your organisation - this could be through website, newsletters, events and the sort), a qualification score (to determine whether a lead is ready to be converted into an account or opportunity), and finally we have data quality score (this looks at the 'newness' of a lead as old leads die, completeness how much information you have on a client and relevance which may include position of client, industry or the lead source). The key elements to include in your score should be: 1. Criteria/ factor 2. Data - where you will be able to find the data 3. Metric - the metric you will use to measure 4. Weighting - how much weight each criteria or factor should have
Scores can be used to compare clients...& help in decisions that need to be made
Some key variables you may want to consider no matter what your score is about may include: Recency Urgency Difficulty Quality Risk Value Compliance Keep in mind metrics that you can measure regularly.
Other score examples include for financial advisors a 'retirement readiness' score, predictive policing scores (used to determine geographic locations of where people are likely to come from to create crime and crime zones), churn scores (used to phone providers to determine which customers are likely to switch providers), job security score, donor scores (which predict which households are likely to make donations to charities) and health scores. A good tool to aim to develop for your organisation is to create a 'score' for a certain part of your business. Enjoy your scores.
Nils www.innovationblueprint.com.au
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TAP INTO INNOVATIVE BEHAVIOURAL THINKING INTERVIEW WITH DARREN HILL BY NILS VESK
BEHAVIOURAL EXPERT DARREN HILL GETS GRILLED ON THE LATEST ON USING BEHAVIOURAL THINKING. " What if our induction program became the corner stone of the culture and was so engaging and popular that existing employees were actually asking to attend the induction because everyone has been talking about it? ".
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So how do we actually go about observing and measuring behaviours? hat's a day in a life of a behaviouralist involve?
Sprinkling pixie dust around the workplace‌. Well maybe not. A recent example was working for a major mining company where we were looking at the process of how they can do a better job of inducting new staff. For example, in mining a 'safety induction' is typically very boring and it's not that uncommon for some new employees to have experienced 50 of these in their career. Most of the inductions are uninspired, death by PowerPoint and boring to say the least.
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We often start by asking the question of our clients "How do you want your people to behave at the end of our work? " A response in this example might be "We want people to double check everything and ensure no one makes any mistakes". Now that we have a end behaviour in mind we begin to code backwards to establish what needs to happen to make this behaviour. Innovation is at the heart of this codifying. We want to find out what is the current story behind their behaviours eg. 'safety is boring'. And then we challenge the client to look at what this process could actually become.
Find a nice bush to hide behind‌ Part of the behaviouralist skills is in recognising that the client will know more about their people than you do, you just need to help them explain what they see using behaviour based language. A simple way we start is by asking "If you could clone your best people, what would they do and what would those behaviours look like? " Once we have that picture we ask them "What does your worst employee look lie and what behaviours would they exhibit? " Once they have both the 'best of' and 'worst of' they can go about identifying the gaps between them.
BEHAVIOURAL ARCHETYPE
For example in mining we might find that Lisa always cleans the truck at the end of her shift. Why does she do it and how can we get other people to do the same? It's an interesting fact that mining organisations actively seek out female truck drivers over male drivers because they care more about their equipment. understanding why and the story behind this is extremely valuable. The reason why it's better to look for someone who has the best qualities or behaviours that an organisation wants to emulate is because even behaviouralists come in with biases and cognitive distortions. Find the best behaviours and look to replicate this by 1000.
How do we go about getting people to adopt new behaviours? Most organisations aim to turn an objective into an outcome. For example the objective is to be more innovative and the outcome is to create a 'think tank' or a 'hackathon' once a quarter. This however isn't enough to determine success. To create behavioural change there are 2 critical components. 1. You need to create a compelling narrative or story that shares why doing this really matters in a way that speaks to someone’s heart. This is so crucial because of the second point:
Darren Hi l l
What do 'insights' mean to you as a behaviouralist?
Our brains are wired to respond to stories 2. Emotions drive behaviour. Our brains are wired to respond to stories. Cortisol (which stimulates concentration), Seratonin (which makes us feel good) and Oxytocin (which helps bond us) are all chemicals in the brain that are released by the emotional triggers of stories. For example the 'Mad men' (advertisers) of the 50's and 60's knew people would buy if there was a compelling story behind the product or service. Emotion is the biggest driver of behaviour and therefore the key to behavioural change. What's missing in organisations is stories or that their people have contradicting stories and carry old stories versus new ones.
There is a myth that the Eureka moment only occurs for the brilliant select genius. This is a myth. Insights are a result of the 'choice architecture' you have in front of you. 'Choice architecture is used to describe the environment that leads to our choices or decisions. For example in retail, the supermarket aisles and shelves are laid out a certain way to help you make decisions as to what to purchase by narrowing your decision stream. The 'choice architecture' in your environment can either make or break innovation. Surround yourself with the worst people possible, have a work environment that breeds boredom, prevent people attending programs, prevent the reading or finding out about new ideas and you've got the 'choice architecture' to prevent insights from happening. However, if you can create a mix of great people with an environment where people can hang out and share their thinking, give access to books, magazines and publications, support people to attend programs then you can't help but create a new behavioural set as a result. www.innovationblueprint.com.au
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CATCH INSIGHTS
If you are truly innovating you will be on the cusp of failure
Where else do you think you can see innovation better applied?
How else can we introduce habits & rituals around innovation in the workplace?
Nearly all or 98% of the R&D budget goes to product innovation. Product innovation however can come with a high failure rate. Yet innovation on systems, processes, culture and customer service has significantly less failure rates whilst significant results. Innovation is skewed to products yet if an organisation has complaints about hierarchy or structures within an organisation, innovation would be better spent addresses these areas for improvement.
Once again we need to ensure that we create the 'why' story first. Creating a compelling story as to 'why' we need to innovate and then looking at a ritual that will embed the 'why' behind the story. If we fail to have the 'why' no matter how well designed, interactive or spectacular our event may be, it will become a 'yawn-fest' or 'cynics delight' with no emotional buy-in. Examples of generic visible innovative behaviours include , for example a team going as a group to a cafe at 11:15am and having some 'slow think' time to write ideas and notes in their moleskin diaries before talking as group on projects and ideas. Taking the team out for an industry visit to another organisation in a completely different industry. Yet the big daddy behaviour would be having leaders continually tells stories of successful & unsuccessful stories of innovation with reverence. What they learnt from the experience and how important it was. It's worth noting that events such as 'hackathons' don't work unless leaders turn up and participate in them and after the 'hackathon' the leaders keep telling stories about how good they were and the value that they created. 18
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What are the biggest obstacles to innovation or innovative behaviour in a business? The biggest obstacle is punishing or shaming someone around a project failure. The reality is that if you are truly innovating you will often be on the cusp of failure and shaming someone for trying to innovate will kill innovation across an organisation. Another common obstruction is people being 'shut down' by a manager and not given the opportunity to innovate on their idea or even share their idea. This is compounded when people aren't given adequate time to innovate because they're expected to do their every day job.
What are the best ways to establish what a client or team member needs, desire or wants to avoid? More often than not organisations will have a stack of pure data in the form of engagement surveys. You simply need to ask 'what' and 'where' is the existing data that's revealing how people are feeling? ' Failing that, taking a cross section of 50 people across an organisation and running a 'think tank' with them and asking the team for areas of improvement and the sort can work really well.
Do external rewards work for increasing the motivation and output of innovation? Externalising rewards will change the intrinsic motivation as to why someone should be doing it. Money is not a great emotional driver for innovation. It's better to invest in a great story as to 'why' you need to innovate. You'll find when this is strong enough that you can continually build on this story and you'll no longer have the need to reward people for their efforts. Darren Hill is a behaviouralist and founder of Pragmatic thinking. He's the author of the best selling business book 'Talking about the tough stuff' and consults and speaks around the world on behaviour. To find out more stalk him at www.PragmaticThinking.com
Insight.Full
Fill your innovation treasure trove with commercial insights. Innovation Blueprint
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CULTURES CAN MAKE OR BREAK INNOVATION INTERVIEW WITH CORPORATE ANTHROPOLOGIST MICHAEL HENDERSON
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hat do you do as a corporate anthropologist?
Culture auditing is one the most common activities we do in our job. This is where we observe behaviours and audit these behaviours against their values and strategies they have for their culture. We then help them to articulate their culture in a way that makes sense to both customers, shareholders, the board and to employees. Essentially we codify cultures from an anthropological perspective versus a systems perspective. To do this we look at behaviours, their motivations and find metaphors to help describe what they do. We then look for contradictions that might indicate whether an organisation is misaligned. 20
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The 2nd part about our work is about cultural education and planning. Values are what drive the behaviour of people doing the work, yet what people talk about is not the behaviours. We try to keep these and the following things in mind.
We also try to help them identify the capability that they need to be better at. Where do you think innovation is best applied in an organisation?
1. Sense of purpose 2. Sense of identity (how you see yourself and how others see you) 3. Values 4. Background 5. Heroes journey 6. Cultural capacity & capability To live 'values' in an organisation you need to have a skill set that enables you to live the value. For example the value of collaboration means that an organisation has to have the skill set of listening. We then codify how listening occurs in an organisation so that they can replicate it if it is working well.
1. Price - innovative techniques to manage costs 2. Product - innovative product invention 3. Service - innovative customer delight
There are 3 areas that innovation can be applied:
What's the best way to create behavioural change? To initiate behavioural change first you must help people achieve an 'aha' moment or an insight. Asking "do you know where your good ideas come from & where do they occur? " is often a great insight generator that leads to the 'aha' moment.
BEHAVIOURAL INSIGHTS
What would you need to change in order for you to believe that you actually can change? Anthropologist Michael Henderson
Other questions include: "Are we using that at the moment? " and then "how do we replicate that? " Those 'aha' moments make people open to possibility or elevation. Here's an example of a 'call centre' that we were working with. Essentially the client was having a poor performance with their sales, and so our team went and asked individuals within the team questions such as "What's the worst aspect of your job? " and the most common response was that they said "Fridays - it's impossible to sell on Fridays". When we looked at this hypotheses we actually found contrary evidence. We found that the best sales people could still sell on Friday. So we asked the group "if it's possible that some people can sell on Friday why can't we all sell on Fridays? " and followed it up with " What would need to change for in order for you to believe that you actually can change? "
We then asked them "what could they do to sell more on a Friday" and the ideas started rolling in. Later that Friday they gave it a go and they had the best results of any day they had ever had before.
What are some ways to keep a culture innovative? Identify where good ideas are already coming from. To do this we want to ask: "Where were you when the best idea came to you? " "What were you doing when the idea came to you? " "When did the idea occur? " "Why do you think it happened? " "Who were you with and how long did the ideation process take? " A good example of an organisation doing this is Google. They have a full-time anthropology team who's job is to identify and locate where the best ideas come from and how to replicate it.
Their investigation found that the queues for the canteen was the space and place where the most number of ideas came from. They found that people would share what they've been working on and tell people about what they had been stuck upon and share solutions. They realised that it takes about 3-5 mins of conversation in the queue for people to share the best breakthrough, so they have designed the queue in the cafeteria to last for at least 3-5 minutes to provide the best opportunities for those breakthroughs. "The cafeteria was also designed as a comfortable place to sit and continue the conversation over lunch." Michael Henderson is an international author, speaker and anthropologist he is the founder of Cultures at Work. To discover more about Michael stalk him at www.CulturesAtWork.com
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10 WAYS TO HELP MARKET THOSE MILLION DOLLAR IDEAS TOPS TIPS FROM INTERNATIONAL MARKETING GURU FRANZISKA ISELI
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IMAGINE THE PERCEPTION OF YOUR PRODUCT
Think of the perception or image you want to create to be perceived by your market. The exciting piece about this is that you can make it up. For example I want to be perceived as fresh, exciting and cheeky. Just ensure the perception is authentic.
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EMOTIONAL 'EDU-TAINMENT'
Be attractive to your audience by creating a cross between educating and entertaining. Activate the emotions of your audience by making your audience 'feel' things. The more emotional words you can use the higher the engagement. 22
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4
CREATE GREAT CONTENT
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LAUNCH INTO A PLATFORM
Content marketing is the most successful of all marketing strategies. Create content that adds value to your client whilst connecting it with the perception you want to create.
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THINK WHY YOUR CUSTOMER NEEDS IT
When it comes to selling a new product, process or service think about 'why' your customers really need it. Be mindful of 'why' they need it before looking at marketing it. And although it's important to understand the 'why' of your customers, it can be as valuable to know your own 'why': why you are in business as to why you are in business.
The biggest mistake people make when it comes to marketing is launching into nothing. That is, they don't have a platform or audience and therefore no one pays attention. Build your audience and platform 5-6months before you launch your new product.
MARKETING ARCHETYPE
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OWN YOUR OWN PLATFORM
To succeed in marketing you need to have your own platform. Start collecting through your database & build your own platform by distributing your message via social media be it audio, video, or written material.
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Franziska Iseli is the co-founder of 'Basic Bananas' an international marketing agency. To stalk her visit www.BasicBananas.com
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CREATE PARTNERSHIPS
When building a platform from scratch or at the start of your journey, in launching a product, partnerships can really accelerate your reach. Be mindful of how you can add value to your partnership. Know who your market is and what your edge might be as well as considering what other things your audience is interested in.
GET VISIBLE NO MATTER WHAT
No matter how good you or your organisation are, you need to be 'seen' to sell. One of the biggest obstacles people have when it comes to marketing a new idea is the fear of being seen, and a fear about what other people will think. People need to be irreverent, and get over themselves.
CO-CREATE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE
When it comes to designing a new product, or service from scratch it's a great time to get your audience involved in the beginning of the process so that they feel like they are co-developing the new product or project together. This increases buy-in and loyalty.
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NEVER LOOK AT THE COMPETITION
Don't look at your competition. Marketers of today rather than worrying about the competition need to be courageous and think differently. Radical is good as long as you match your intended market perception.
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Making
INNOVATION ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE
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Is it possible there is one way to innovate that creates more commercial success than any other?
nnovation Architect Nils Vesk knows there is just one such way. Determined to discover why so many organisations were suffering from too few innovations, he started researching, testing and applying the principles of innovating through professional archetypes. His research was startling, as he discovered that professional biases had led to the creation of an obstructive innovation paradigm. This book has set out to change that. The old paradigm was that innovation
was only for the privileged few. The new paradigm is that innovation be accessible to everyone, so everyone has the opportunity and knowledge to innovate. The new paradigm means revealing the limiting biases and perceptions that have been thwarting innovation potential. This book counters these obstructions by utilising key principles from the worlds best professional innovation archetypes, allowing you to generate commercial innovation day in day out.
To find out more about the book head to www.innovationblueprint.com.au/products/ 24
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NEW HEADING HERE
WHY YOU NEED USER GROUPS BY NILS VESK
GOING TO TEST OUT YOUR OWN PROTOTYPES ON YOURSELF? THERE'S A LITTLE BIT MORE TO IT THAN THAT.
T
his article is all about user groups, test groups, market groups or whatever you want to call them and how to best use them to help in the innovation of your new product, process or service. Test groups in short are most often a small representational group that personify some of the key attributes of a potential customer or user of a product, process or service. Test groups are used in a variety of industries and can range from advertising, digital user experience (UX), to clinical trials and product test groups. One of the most successful test groups in the world meet in the showers every work day. What on earth does shaving and showers have in common with innovation you might be thinking? A lot in fact.
This happens to be the way that Gillette use test groups to test the prototypes of their latest shaving equipment. Employees are encouraged to shower and shave at their workplace (specially designed to have bathrooms to cater for this) in order to gain valuable feedback and ideas on how to improve their shaving equipment. If Gillette can have a great user group, you can too. Market researchers like to think they have all of this test group stuff sorted, and that the only way you can effectively test a new product is by using their very expensive services. Whilst it's true that market researchers are good at what they do, we don't all have to have double psychology degrees or 'two way mirrored' glass in order to start testing out our new innovation. Here's some simple things to consider when wanting to use a test group to test your latest prototype or potential innovation.
Intention Answer the following questions: What are your intentions about the product, process or new service? Who's it intended to be used by? When is it intended to be used? What time, what day of the week, what season? Where is it intended to be used? Internally, externally, in an office, on a phone? How is it intended to be used? Sitting up, standing down, when driving, when on computer? What happens when it is used & when it isn't being used? Selecting & recruiting you user/ test group Do they represent the typical type of user/ customer? Do you cater for a variety of demographics including, sex, age, profession, location, experience? Familiarity Do they need to have a prior experience with the product, process or service? Will you group be biased by prior knowledge or prior experience? Is familiarity a crucial part to the user group knowing how to use it?
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NEW HEADING HERE
Biased Will your user group be likely to behave differently in order to impress, show how smart they are, or any other modified behaviour? Observer/ observation Is the use of the product, service or process going to be occurring in their typical natural environment? Are the observers typical of the people they would have around them? Is it possible to have other people who are in their natural environment day-in, day-out, to do the observation for you?
SCRATCH TESTING
Ask for a specific response and you'll get what you need, if your question is too general, you'll get a monologue that's interesting but not very useful. Consider asking both quantitative and qualitative questions: Qualitative questions might be: What did you enjoy most about the service? What would you do to improve the way this functions?
Difficulties Do you notice any difficulties that the user might be having with the innovation? Difficulties in understanding what its used for? how to use it? how to start it? open it? change things? stop it?
Quantitative questions might include: Which functions of our program are most important? Which feature is the most appealing?
Questions& topics to address NB: it's a good idea to work on both open ended questions and closed questions. For example a closed ended question might be "is it easy to use? " whilst an open ended question you could ask is 'what specifically makes this easy to use? " or "what specifically makes this difficult to work with? "
Usability Consider asking questions that will ascertain what might make it more: Efficient Effective Simpler Safer Stronger Easier More intuitive
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Needs Are there any more needs that the user might have with the product. Eg. It needs a handle, or it needs a button, or the new 'sign up' page needs a 'wizard' to help show me how to fill out the form. Desires Are there any desires that the user would like to be able to do beyond what already exists? For example "I wish I could hold it in one hand" or "I wish my assistant could fill out this form instead of me". Aversions Are there any elements that annoy the user so much that they wish it didn't exist or was changed? For example "it's so heavy I can't lift it" or "there's just too many questions and it takes too long". Recruiting Where and how are you going to recruit your study group? Existing clients, colleagues, family friends, suppliers, partners?
USER EXPERIENCE
Facebook has become one of the simplest and easiest recruiting options that exist. You can select a target group, age, demographics, location etc. And nearly all of the time you get the user to use their web-cam to film and record their interaction with the innovation being tested. Size of the user group? When it comes to digital usability, the worlds leading UX design firm Normal Nielson suggest that 5 people are enough to ascertain a good sense of usability on a product or process. What this means is that you don't have to have thousands of people to recruit, but a small number with a good cross-section will suffice. Tools for assessing Digital - eye tracking technology can help, though it pays to have the psychology of why people are looking at certain things sorted. Just because people are looking at one point on a screen doesn't mean it's good. I could be because it's so confusing that people are stuck.
Surveys The simplest, cheapest and most effective tool by far for surveys is SurveyMonkey.com - you can do a lot with a free account and you can do even more with the paid account, well worth the investment. The study group designer and observer need to think and determine "why are they doing that? " "what's behind their decision and behaviour to do that? " "can we modify it and do something else? " Here's why you don't have to be a behaviourist to observe the a user group: Lego, one of the worlds most successful toy manufacturers use mothers as their behavioural team. Knowing that observing children in a different environment to their home would skew results, they realised it would be much easier to study them at home, and even more effective if they got their mothers to do the observation. That way there would
be no external influencers on the children. Just a child playing with their Lego and a doting mother keeping an eye out & jotting down some notes from time to time. With the right questions, strategy and thinking anyone can engage their behavioural intelligence to study their user group and formulate ways to improve their innovation. Good luck becoming that user group behaviouralist. Cheers,
Nils
www.innovationblueprint.com.au
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INNOVATION TIPS
LEADING VS. BLEEDING EDGE EVALUATING THE PROS & CONS BY NILS VESK
Reduce the bleeding component & reduce the risk
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hen it comes to innovation, we come across the dreaded curse of 'risk-itis'. After all there are so many stories of organisations blazing a path to be the first in a new market only to come crashing down. Well at least that's what we're led to believe. The reality is quite different, sure there a some good examples of organisations that have been at the bleeding edge of innovation only to be overtaken by a leading edge innovator a short time later. Yet on the whole, the organisations that are the leading edge innovators are still conducting bleeding edge activities it's just that they utilise prototyping, piloting and trialling to reduce the bleeding component and reduce the risk.
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Even organisations that have had a bleeding edge setback, will learn from their mistakes and often you will find that their next innovation, comes with more testing and subsequently more commercial success without the pain. On the other had we have what we call trailing edge organisations. They come onto the scene after everyone has already forged an incredible product, brand and trust in the market place.
utilise prototyping, piloting & trialling
Trailing organisations think that simply imitating the leading edge will suffice. It seldom does, for they end up spending too much time and resources trying to reduce costs of production. By the time they do get to market, the leading edge innovators already have a new & improved product or service hitting the market. Here are 7 ways to become leading edge without bleeding or having to compete on price.
ITERATION
ra pi d prototypi ng PLAN TO PROTOTYPE ANTICIPATE 1. Anticipate future trends such as sociocultural, technological, environmental, economic and political trends so that you can foresee the needs of your future customers before they have realised they will need you.
CATCH INSIGHTS 2. Borrow from behavioural sciences and look for insights that go beyond just what your customer needs. What are your customers desires, aversions and capability issues as well?
IDEATE 3. Generate lots of ideas that respond to upcoming trends and to the customer insights you have generated. Just because you have an idea doesn't mean it's going to satisfy someone else's needs. Be customer centric.
PROTOTYPE RAPIDLY 4. Start rapid prototyping before you've even finalised a concept. Conceptual prototyping will enable you to generate better ideas and helps you think of ways to make it all possible. If you need to ask permission to prototype then you've raised the bar too high. Allow yourself no more than 30 mins for rapid prototyping. Do the following - a) identify customer needs, desires & aversions b) follow up with ideas that satisfy the needs & desires etc. c) flesh out an idea and finally build a conceptual representation of your idea
6. PLAN -Start to plan your prototype/ pilots include elements such as What, Where, When, Who, How long, etcetera of your prototype. For example- 'what are you trying to test or prove? Where will you run the trial? Who will be involved? When is the best time to test? PREDICT - Predict what you think will happen during and after the pilot or prototype has been executed. Will sales go up? Will things be easier to use? Will there be less breakages? TEST - run the tests on your trial or prototype and measure everything that happens. Observe as much as possible and record your results.
PITCH 5. Share your conceptual prototype with others. Feedback is favourable, develop further with more conceptual prototypes
EVALUATE - compare your results against your predictions. Was there a shortfall? Did you exceed your expectations? What did you learn?
PLAN AGAIN 7. Plan your next experiment/ prototype incorporating the learnings of the last. Continue to test until you feel have enough certainty and the risk has been lowered considerably to go live with the product or service.
Avoiding bleeding edge will not mean we become leading edge. It's only through strong iteration of piloting, prototyping and testing that we can reduce the risk and potential pain. Start planning your prototyping now.
Nils
www.innovationblueprint.com.au
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INNOVATION TIPS
MISTAKES ARE SMART
Mistakes shouldn't be punished but rather celebrated
BY NILS VESK
WHY MISTAKE MAKING IS SMART BUSINESS
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t's no surprise that innovation comes with risk and that includes the risk of not succeeding or as some might call it 'failing'. If we want a strong culture of innovation, that means creating projects, products and services that will unfortunately from time to time fail. How we deal and respond to those failures plays a crucial part in whether we build a strong innovative culture or a culture that suppresses innovative thinking. I had the great fortune of interviewing a colleague of mine recently who had some great views on the subject. Michael Henderson is one the worlds leading corporate anthropologists who helps organisations create high performing cultures. I was asking him about innovation and failure and he said celebrating failures is crucial to innovative cultures. In fact of all the organisations he has worked with across the world the most innovative ones were the ones who would celebrate their innovation failures.
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Michael, as he often does, simplified the concept by telling a story of a common ritual that tribes use. Say a small hunting party has been out on a hunt to find a good meal for the tribe. After tracking a buffalo for the last 2 days they are finally in close proximity and ready to make the final kill when accidentally one of the tribesman steps on a twig and the cracking twig sounds spooks the buffalo and it charges off into the distance. The tribesman have to return to camp empty handed and with some difficult explanations to do. Later that night around the fire, the tribesman who stepped on the twig has to explain to everyone in the tribe why they're all hungry that night and why there's no buffalo on the menu. He has to share the mistake he made, what caused it, and how to avoid it next time. The next day a new young hunter joins the hunting party and you can be guaranteed that he has learnt about the twig mistake and will do everything he can to avoid it happening to him. This same tribal concept of acknowledging, sharing and learning from mistakes is what organisation with strong innovative cultures do.
W.L. Gore & Associates (the organisation that invented GoreTex the breathable fabric used in outdoor parkas) is a great example of just this. Their 'celebration of mistakes' culture plus an innovative flat business structure that encourages collaboration on projects are some of the key reasons it's made the list on Fortune Magazine's '100 Best Companies to Work For'. Gore & Associates not only celebrate the mistake and take ownership of it, most importantly they learn from it. Henderson suggests that organisations should actually create champions of certain mistakes so that they become the 'go to' person on how to avoid that mistake from happening in the future. Risk is inherent in innovation, whilst we can reduce this risk through prototyping, no innovation is ever guaranteed success. The only thing we can guarantee is that we can always learn from the mistakes we make and use this knowledge to be better prepared for the next upcoming life changing, industry changing, world changing innovation. Go & celebrate those mistakes.
Nils
the innovation process, reinvented.
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RYAN
NATALIE
DANIEL
BRADLEY
GOSLING
PORTMAN
CRAIG
COOPER
COPYCATS every good idea is worth stealing
SCREEN AUSTRALIA ;BAD TASTE STUDIOS PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH INNOVATION ENTERTAINMENT *WES ANDERSON RYAN GOSLING NATALIE PORTMAN DANIEL CRAIG /BRADLEY COOPER cBECKdJEAN PAUL GAULTIER tKEN DONE eGONSKI f BAZ LUHRMAN g TOM FORD p MIKE TYSON a ENYA j EMINEM k WES ANDERSON IN CINEMAS AUGUST 19
FILMS WORTH WATCHING
FILM REVIEW: COPYCATS WITH GEORGE CLOONEY
THINK 'OCEANS ELEVEN' MEETS THE BIG SHORT' AND YOU'LL HAVE A GOOD IDEA OF THE COOL THINGS THAT WILL HAPPEN IN THIS LATEST EDGY MOVIE FROM WES ANDERSON
I
must admit, I was bummed that I wasn't asked for the lead role in this movie, after all it had many of the hallmarks of the uber cool thieves from my Oceans 11, 12 and 13 movies whilst being a little bit more heavy hitting. My loss has been Ryan Gosling's gain. Maybe as Ryan ages he's going to become the new 'George Clooney'? Ryan plays the lead character of Chad Whittaker an ex -Harvard MBA and McKinsies consultant who heads up business intelligence at the ageing but well known corporation of Eggson Oil. Like many multi global conglomerates that are listed on the stock exchange they're an organisation that don't seem to really do much for the world. As the building intelligence officer, Chad puts his Menses IQ to the test with devious ways of finding out what competitors are doing. From insider contacts, to pretending to be customers and clients, Chad uses spy-craft, intelligence and brazen balls to get the ideas that other organisations are using. At first glance, Chad has the ideal life, the brilliant career wife Lani (played by Natalie Portman), and the perfect home. But the cracks begin to show as Chad befriends a new neighbour who's a crackpot inventor who's working on a new business app that will revolutionise a whole new industry.
What starts as an innocent bit of business advice starts to develop into a business venture that runs parallel to his work. Crunch point comes when Chad starts to enjoy creating ideas versus stealing ideas, his intellectual thefts of the past start to catch up with him and he wrestles his inner demons and moral wrong-doings. The tension is palpable as Chad is led to a 'life defining' and 'career making' decision that could either decimate one persons life savings or set one up for life. Daniel Craig replaces his 007 gun for his corporate briefcase and excels as the protagonist CEO Edmond Faulkner who is constantly pushing Chad into more extreme situations to find the intel they want. Heart throb Bradley Cooper triumphs as the slightly offbeat, mentally unstable yet brilliant inventor who has his own demons to face in actually getting commercial success with his ideas. This movie will leave you with either the desire to want to innovate or leave you with pangs of guilt for all the other great ideas you've left on the table.
George 4 and a half stars. www.innovationblueprint.com.au
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REGRETTABLE INNOVATION
LEARNING FROM LEMONS WITH NILS VESK
mi stak es ha pp e n
WHEN INNOVATION COMES CLOSE BUT FALLS SHORT
C
reating an idea isn't good enough to create an outstanding result. It takes a couple of more steps of going from an idea to a finished product or service. It's in these steps that we can lose a good idea and end up with a lemon. Generating ideas is all about creating as many ideas as possible. In the 'ideation' stage we are looking for quantity not quality. Sometimes in our excitement to be 'creative' we can lose our common sense and the innovative part of our idea. The iteration stage is when we start to sort our ideas and start to prototype them to see if they have legs. I recently noticed an advertising agency in the UK had started to invest time into not just creating ideas for their clients but started to create products for consumers from their own ideas. They started to move into the world of product design. 34
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The creatives saw a possible opening in the area of personal alarms (targeted at women) and came up with some very creative ideas. Their main concept was having an alarm that screams like a woman. There is a lot of creativity at play here, something that's unexpected and hadn't been done before. essentially it was a good concept, the only problem is that the idea wasn't challenged and tested to ensure it would create an outstanding result. If they had run their idea through a strong sorting system they might have realised it needed a little bit more work. If it had then gone through vigorous prototyping they also might have been able to salvage a good idea rather than create the lemon that it was destined to be. The sad fact is that around the world people may hear the sound of a screaming person yet unlikely to respond. Interestingly the sound that has been known to get attention & assistance is when people shout FIRE.
The concept behind the agency's ideas was to catch someone's attention, the attributes would be something that's loud, something that wouldn't be ignored and would prompt someone into action. Unfortunately the choice of a women screaming didn't satisfy all of these attributes. If their prototyping tested other sounds it may have well worked. A recording of the words call of FIRE, FIRE, FIRE would have had more success. To make sure your great creative thinking doesn't result in a sinking ship, be sure you have a sorting process and prototyping stage which thoroughly tests other materials, elements and components to best achieve an outstanding result. Cheers
Nils
™
©
®
let me think
Innovation starts with having permission www.InnovationBlueprint.com.au
Q&A INNOVATION COACH WE ALL GET INNOVATION CHALLENGES FROM TIME TO TIME. IN OUR COACHING SECTION WE SHARE SOME OF THE QUESTIONS WE HELP TO SOLVE FOR OUR CLIENTS.
Q
Most of our executive team believe that only the R&D team need to innovate. How can I change this mindset so that we can start applying innovation elsewhere?
A
Nice question. The modern reality is that innovative organisations will apply innovation across three areas. Product, process and service. The reason for this is that even if we have the worlds best product, if our processes suck then we'll be wasting time, energy and money. Add to that poor service and we'll have a tough time selling our amazing product. I've always found the best way to create change is through a good story or two. You can approach this in a couple of different ways. Find a story about a number of organisations with successes innovating on process or service & business model. Then look for examples of where innovation has already occurred in your organisation that contradicts their 'mental story' of where innovation can be applied.
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Another important component to work on is understanding the R.O.I. Product development has a fairly high risk associated with it and it will have a higher failure rate than that of process innovation. You need to demonstrate the value that a new improved innovative process will bring to the organisation. Is it saving time, money, resources etcetera?
Often some of the biggest innovation successes I have with my clients can be found in the inglorious departments such as finance and the overlooked area of business processes. Good luck.
Nils
Persist with this, as innovation is certainly not something that should be confined to product nor to any particular department such as R&D. Send us an email with your challenge: coach@InnovationBlueprint.com.au
INNOVATION COACH
Q
We ran an innovation brainstorm session a few months ago, and despite the energy on the day, it seems that nothing has happened with our ideas and our team have lost interest in the notion of innovating. What's the fix?
A
Thanks for your question - Unfortunately it has a number of causes and challenges with it. Congrats on running an innovation event. This is much better than most organisations will ever get around to, so kudos for the commitment to running it. The big issue here is the commitment to continuing it, and it needs to come from the top down. I'm curious, was the CEO present through the whole activity? And did the CEO continue to talk about the session and how valuable and important it was? I've got a feeling that the CEO wasn't seen. I've seen it first hand, the leader disappears to another mtg. and unfortunately people take notice. If the CEO's not hanging around it can't be too important. Even if the CEO did stay around, what usually is lacking is the continued message of support, encouragement and sharing the story of 'why' innovation is so important. Without a reinforced message as to the 'why' we need to innovate, people lose interest and motivation behind it.
Let's say however that the CEO was involved, and continued the message (which is highly unlikely in this case) what's most likely going on is the innovation structure that you have in place. The quickest way to lose innovation is to have a separate innovation team that are supposed to create ideas, new products and processes. The reason these teams or strategies fail is that the people who helped come up with the idea have no more involvement in the process. It's a bit like a suggestion box, they write it down and then forget about it. The next factor that hammers the nail into the coffin for innovation is having a secret committee of people deciding which ideas are going to get the green light. Very few do and those whose ideas don't get the nod feel left out an alienated. I was recently contacted by an organisation that had spent well over $1million dollars on a program just like this and they were looking to salvage the whole thing with no budget to spend.
Some successful strategies that we've already implemented are presented below: Run multiple smaller events through out the year versus a 'one off' event. This will show to the team that the organisation is serious about innovation. Include prototyping as part of the session so that people start to understand the need to prototype, pilot and test their ideas. Allow teams to have a continued involvement in their idea, after all they were the ones who came up with it and the knowledge they learn in co-developing it will help immensely. Avoid having an 'innovation team', instead have innovation trained facilitators available to help and guide the innovation process. Continue the story of 'why' innovation is so important. The higher leadership and more consistent this message is delivered the more the buy-in. There's a lot more but hopefully this helps. Good luck.
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SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS CREATING CHANGE THROUGH INNOVATIVE THINKING
SOCIAL INNOVATION SOLVING GLOBAL WARMING PICKLE WITH CHUTNEY.
E
at Me Chutneys is an Australian social enterprise rescuing bruised and 'ugly' fruits and vegetable from landfill by converting them into chutneys. Their goal - is to prevent food wastage to reduce landfill whilst creating ethical and sustainable chutneys that are good for people and the planet. They also aim to focus on providing employment to disadvantaged female job seekers. Eat Me Chutneys was founded by Mother & Son duo Jaya & Ankit Chopra. Ankit is a corporate 'drop out' with some clever thinking behind him including stints at SAP and Deloitte, whilst mum Jaya brings the chutney experience with him. Ankit, not to be outdone by his mum has taken his culinary skills to the next level and is a Cordon Bleu trained chef. Following in the footsteps of switched on Social entrepreneurs Ankit is a recent graduate of the Stanford Social Entrepreneurship Executive Program.
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Not content to sit back and wait for support to come their way, Eat Me Chutneys worked the markets for a couple of years before creating a crowd funding campaign on StartSomeGood.com to help accelerate their growth. Eat Me Chutneys believe transparency is key to their success. They use organic produce and Fairtrade spices and sugar in their chutneys.
Eat me Chutneys are serious about being self sufficient as is epitomised in their definition of social entrepreneurship:
"Social entrepreneurship is about innovative, market-oriented approaches underpinned by a passion for social equity and environmental sustainability.
It's estimated that roughly $4-5 billion of fresh produce is wasted every year in Australia Ultimately, social entrepreneurship is aimed at transformational systems change that tackles root causes of poverty, marginalisation, environmental deterioration and accompanying loss of human dignity."
I
n my interview with social entrepreneur Ankit Chopra who's the co-founder of Eat me chutneys I asked him a series of questions to find out more about his innovative thinking.
1
What's the most important thing/ lesson your mother taught ...........you? Never give up on family.
2
Where and how did the idea for Eat me Chutney's come to you ...........and or your mother? The idea for Eat me chutneys was developed over a long time that started with growing up with a family where food was never wasted and our father used grow his own produce in India. Even back then if we had 'wonky' vegetables they were all used, nothing was wasted. When our family moved to New Zealand I became aware of Fairtrade and Oxfam. Fast forward to a job in the corporate world and then I decided I wanted to become a chef and moved to London and then to France to study and become a Cordon Bleu chef. I was training in a 3 star Michelin restaurant and noticed that in their
strive for perfection how much food was being wasted. Then I spent a year cooking in soup kitchens and saw how 'donated' food was so valuable. Finally I went back home and was helping my mum taking and selling chutneys at the markets. I decided to get a bit more serious and applied a strategy document similar to the ones I had used at Deloittes' to try to work out where all the ingredients we were using for our chutneys were coming from. A year of research and we were then getting fair trade certified. I also noticed when going to buy and pick up some rhubarb from a farmer, that there was some left over rhubarb that was looking a bit frail and I asked him what he was going to do with it and realised most of it would be thrown away. So I offered to buy it a cheap price. The more farmers I met, the more I realised the same thing was happening and we decided to 'rescue' these frail and 'wonky' vegetables to use in our chutneys.
h Intervi ew w it ci a l pren eur o s NEW HEADING HERE Ank it Chopra - co-founder of Eat Me Chutn eys
3
When you think of the word innovation who's the first person you ...........think of? I think of region versus people. I think at a grass roots level people in Asia are very innovative. Because when you don't have access to everything and you are under pressure you have to use what you have at your disposal.
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How did you go about prototyping your product and venture? The farmers market was our testing ground and in many ways we were forced to buy the materials ie. these are the veggies available right now so "how can we turn them into chutney? " We made small batches for the markets and as we expanded we had to start standardising our recipes and methods.
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Chutn eys savi ng our pl a n et
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Having to sell a product I've noticed how to fund your social refreshing your copy venture is no small task, writing is on your what's your take on marketing website, was that self created and what has worked for you? or did you find someone to do that for you? When we first went to markets we had to educate people about We did it ourselves because we 'rescued' vegetables and we didn't have the money for any would say this is reused chutney. copywriters. When I was working We also realised that even more at Deloitte's we used something waste was happening in people's called the 'bull index' to apply to own kitchens, and so we started to our reports to detect whether too expand into teaching people how many jargon words were being to make their own chutney from used. So when it came to our their own food that was destined to website we used simple language become waste. as the social problem we are We didn't really do any traditional working doesn't need to be sugar marketing as we didn't have the coated and it was best to 'keep it money for it though we did do real'. some crowd funding through www. startsomegood.com even though it was already 2 years after we had started our business. If you're doing something special then cool people will rock up to buy it, especially if you're doing something with a good intention.
A game changer for us was our first hire.
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When you're feeling down or overwhelmed with the immensity of the work in front of you, what do you do? Just get through it, though a game changer for us was our first hire. Suddenly with an employee it's a big responsibility and you just find a way and all the emotional connections you have with people such as the farmers you meet help you to get through it, not to mention a few funky emails from customers.
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What advice would you give a twentysomething version of yourself about to launch a new innovative business? Ask him "have you travelled? " and if the answer was no, then encourage him to spend 1-3yrs travelling as you will learn and absorb so much more by travelling.
To find out more about Eat me chutneys head to: www.EatMeChutneys.com.au
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