10 Faces of Innovation

I recently saw Tom Kelley, General Manager of Ideo, speak here in Cleveland about the 10 faces of Innovation and loved every minute of it. He did a great job of making something as amorphous as innovation easy to understand and important. This was particularly true given that most of the attendees at event are from Cleveland’s deteriorating manufacturing base, which desperately needs a strong does of it. But can innovation be taught?

Really, innovation is not difficult if you have the right people (curious and brave). Three of the 10 faces that he focused on were:

• Anthropologist: Observing human beings and their daily struggles to truly understand their needs. Once again he points out how focus groups don’t work and only lead companies to mediocrity.
• The Experimenter: The inventor who keeps tinkering until they find a solution. His/Her attitude is that nothing is impossible and there is always a solution (i.e. Edison)
• The Cross Pollinator: One who takes an idea from one area and reapplies it in another way that creates unforeseen opportunities. He used Muji as an example and explained how a young designer took America’s generic labeled products and made it into a lifestyle concept now doing over $1 billion in sales globally.

Tom went on to point out that Innovation is on many companies’ top 5 list of most important things that need to be done. However, so few get the innovation machine going because of all of the fires that need to be put out day-to-day. More importantly, he elaborated on how the Devil’s Advocate may be the real obstacle.

This I found to be the most interesting piece of Tom’s talk because I witnessed first hand how many people rose to power in Cleveland Manufacturing and the civic leadership circuit by being a good Devil’s Advocate. Organizations here in Cleveland, and many other regions in the world, value people who know how to ask that one question that sucks the air (innovation and creativity) out of a room in a heartbeat. You know, “now let me be the Devil’s Advocate for a moment.” Wow, what a way to manage risk! I too believe strongly that this simple way of being (small minded, stingy, fear based, safe, boring, authoritarian etc.), which is largely supported by corporate america, is single handedly responsible for stifling innovation.

Innovation is nothing more than passionate individuals taking risk and creating a new opportunity that naturally confronts status quo. While you can put all the processes in place to support innovation, it still comes down to having the right kind of people with a different way of being that is opposite the Devil’s Advocate.

To me, it’s so fundamentally simple – innovative people are constantly curious and brave. They ask questions, find answers, dream, don’t take “no” easily and lack common sense driven mentality (status quo). Even Einstein admitted to his biographer Carl Selig: “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” The Anthropologist, Experimenter, and Cross Pollinator all share this common trait of curiosity, which eventually forces people to step into being brave to confront the eventual Devil’s Advocate.

If you have the right people, then innovation comes naturally. It does not require a mandate or priority rating. Curious and brave people cannot help themselves – innovation spews out of them. But it’s a double-edged sword because their ideas and passion will make any environment that values the Devil’s Advocate uncomfortable. Furthermore, the process involves failing fast! Yikes, not the F word!

The reality is that companies and communities get frustrated trying to make innovation happen through people who are not curious and really don’t get it. When I asked Tom what was more important, the right people or the process of innovation, he of course said the people. Ironically, the next question asked was “how do you apply this innovation stuff to a region?” She did not get that her question had already been answered – YOU NEED THE RIGHT PEOPLE!!!

I cannot wait for Tom’s next book. I hope he delves into “being innovative” in more detail to complement the great work he and Ideo have done with “doing innovation.” The good news is that we are all born curious and creative, as these are common traits among young kids under the age of six. Some lose it and some maintain it. In theory, if it was there before, it’s likely you can get it back.

Jay

far better it is
to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs,
even though checkered by failure,
than to take rank with those poor spirits
who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the gray twilight
that knows not victory nor defeat.

– Theodore Roosevelt