Why Innovation is Hard

There's a fantastic interview with a author Dr. Philip Zimbardo of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, by Guy Kawasaki of the blog How To Change the World.

It's worth it to read the entire interview for yourself. but here's what struck me.

People are not born evil, but rather with survival talents, and remarkable mental templates to be anything imaginable...Most of us fail to appreciate the extent to which our behavior is under situational control, because we prefer to believe that is all is internally generated.

The human instinct to survive more often than not causes us to chose the path of least resistance, lest we find ourselves outcast from the group.

This human tendency is what makes Innovation so hard. If honesty is not the norm, if risk is punished, if failure is rewarded with a silent demotion, then people will respond with the appropriate behavior and the subsequent politics, games, and corporate entertainment do anything but produce great products.

Any genuine discussion about Great anything (products, process, profits) needs to start as an authentic discussion between people. A discussion that begins to build trust. Any system, process, whatever, that doesn't start with how to relate with each other as people is wrong.

Why Innovation Matters

Still don't get the importance of product development? Consider this from today's Wall Street Journal:

If you miss a beat someone else is there to step in and clean your clock.

Neat Idea

I thought that this was a really simple, low cost, way to make sure that no one tripped over the step between the deck and the ramp. How often do people just paint the step yellow?

Hope

I’ve been doing some deep thinking about Hope lately, most of the muse being provided by the book Putting Hope to Work.

Hope is a lot like Optimism. (True optimism, the kind that comes naturally from a place deep inside you, is in fact, Hope. Part of the problem with the discussion of Hope is that there isn’t a clear lexicon of words.) But, more often than not Optimism is akin to a varnish overcoat; creating a glossy exterior but not really fixing the cracks. Trying to install a “happy” program on your negative operating software just won’t work.

Rather, in order to change your strategic frames you need to come to grips with your core belief and value structure and honestly answer the question, “Why should I change?”

As you mull the answer to that question you run into questions of purpose and faith and it is from these answers that you are able to understand why you should change. It is from this that Hope is born.

Hope is not a “happy” program. It is a core belief structure that develops as a result of deep reflection of who you are, why you are here, and what you stand for.

Hope is important because it fuels perseverance, tenacity, results.

It is through Hope that you can unleash the assets of your team and create truly great things.

Innovate Me

An open letter to the folks at Stonyfield Farm:

To the Great Folks at Stonyfield Farm,

I love your YoBaby drinkable yogurt. It’s pretty darn healthy and my daughter can’t get enough of it. We buy a ridiculous amount of your product. No really, we buy a lot of freakin yogurt.

The problem is that dispensing said yogurt in the original container results in a yogurt explosion when said container is used by a child who does not understand the concept of don’t-put-the-bowl-of-pasta-on-your-head. While “yogurt explosion” sounds cool, and is fun to say, “yogurt explosion” is not fun to clean up after a day at work and a napless child. Can I get an Amen from those who know what I am talking about?

The solution – by the way, this will make millions – is to incorporate a plastic sippy cup top into you original container cap. Parents would remove the top, peel back the foil, and then replace the top. You don’t need the patented flap valve thing either, the small hole things that are on the disposable sippy top would work great too.

Thanks for listening,
Greg Eisenbach

Neat Idea

Consider coffer maker number one, how do you know how much you should fill it?

Oh, you look on the side.


Here’s coffee make number two. See how much easier it is to know the correct amount?

Good design is simple, intuitive, cheap.

Springtime In Lititz

Seen on my morning walk into work.

Project Plans

If your project is larger than just one person than someone needs to be staring at this a lot.

Project plans really aren’t worth the paper that they are printed on because rarely does anyone take the time to understand them. Instead, what’s really cared about are the three or four key milestones: When did you look at the project and decide it was possible? When is the design complete? When is product off of production tools? When is it ready to ship?

Yet I insist on building, and staring at project plans, for hours and hours, because during the process of building the project plan I learn a lot. I learn the constraints. I learn when someone else should be starting their part. I learn when I need to make Senior Management commit the money. All of these things aren’t wishy washey figure it out later things, they are make or break type of issues that allow me to hit the key dates tracked by management.

That’s why on every project at least one person needs to pay a ridiculous amount of attention to the project plan.

Silence or Violence?

There’s an interesting debate over at Tom Peter’s blog: In short, do you survive a difficult situation by detaching or, as Tom puts it, “LIFE IS TOO BLOODY SHORT TO SPEND ONE DAMN MOMENT OF INDIFFERENCE!!!!” [Capitals are Tom’s]

My response? The question is moot.

This is a sucker’s choice: do you capitulate, roll over, sell your soul or do you yell, scream, hop up and down, rant and rave? If you capitulate, you don’t preserve the status quo. You learn helplessness. Ranting? It works when you are on the outside. Not many ranters last long on the inside.

Find the third way. You need to maintain a sense of self, and island of disagreement, and at the same time flow with the organizational tide. Doing this is easy to write, hard to achieve.

The best way to do this is to have an extremely strong sense of self and perspective. The sense of self is important because it enables you to cleanly divorce yourself from the judgment of the organization. If you know what you passionately stand for, then the decisions are self evident. Having perspective allows you the gift of time. Not every battle determines the outcome of the war. Not every crisis is the organizational tipping point. Knowing that there will probably be another chance allows you the opportunity to interact enough to start the dialog while knowing that getting over the top will take some time.

How do you gain a strong sense of self and perspective? It’s a lifetime journey of learning and self reflection, driven by the fact that everyone else seems to know more than you but nobody seems to know what the hell they are talking about.

Neat Idea

This hand sanitizer station is located right outside the kiddie play pen at the local mall. It's been known for a while that a regular regimen of hand washing is one of the most effective ways to avoid getting sick. According to the Center for Disease Control, hand sanitizer, while not as good as the old soap and water, is a quick and effective way to get those little hands clean. It's especially effective if the alternative to a quick hand sanitizer is a trip to the bathroom for the old lift and squirm with the kiddos.

Innovation Zen

Consumer fact that may interest only me: Venezuela is the world’s largest consumer of 18-year-old whiskey.


Extremely interesting concept by Scott Berkum of The Berkum Blog:

“The diffusion of innovation is a social process, based more on psychology and sociology then technology.”

Yes, Yes, and more Yes! Team Innovation, there is no lone inventor since even they arguably need a team to implement, doesn’t happen unless people make it happen! Ergo, psychology over technology.

Be Great

Do something better than anyone else in the world.

The world’s getting global. We have to compete against everybody.

But that’s ok. They have to compete against us. I like the odds.

We all have something, some talent, that makes us US.

Too often we discount it.

But there’s something about us THAT ROCKS.

We shouldn’t boast. Outwardly.

We should boast inwardly. It’s called confidence

What are you waiting for?

Do something better than anyone else in the world.