Archive for creativity
Feeding Innovation: Nurturing the Social Component
Posted by: | CommentsMany creative corporate employees trying to innovate fail because they don’t fully grasp the social component of innovation. It is a social beast that must be fed and nurtured in many ways. It requires healthy relationships and many connections within your organization in order to help your peers and others recognize and act on the value you provide. For companies and individual inventors, developing the ties with the right people is again critical for innovation success, even at the earliest stages of your journey. The social component is often far more important that the technical components of innovation.
In this Pixetell video presentation, I briefly discusses the social side of innovation and give a plug for one of my favorite books, Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi, a resource that can help corporations and individuals better “feed innovation.” Keith’s book, coupled with the insights we provide in Conquering Innovation Fatigue, can help you build the right relationships you need for innovation success.
Overcome Innovation Fatigue with Fun!
Posted by: | CommentsUltimately, innovation in an organization works best when people are intrinsically motivated to innovate. The spread of an innovation–which is what innovation success is all about–also requires that target customers have an incentive to adopt and spread the innovation. FUN can be one of the most exciting incentives. Is your innovation sytem fun? Is your product fun? Have you considered how you can make it fun to drive interest and adoption?
Here’s a little video from The Fun Theory that shows how engineering fun can bring exciting results on the street. (Hat tip to inventor Fung-jou Chen.)
The Leap to Innovation: The Frog Tape Story
Posted by: | CommentsWhen traveling, I feel like I have a gift in meeting cool innovators on airplanes. Almost every time I fly, I meet someone whose story intrigues me. Recently I met a manager from Shurtape, the company that introduced the innovative Frog Tape® product. Frog Tape® is a masking tape for use with latex paint that prevents leakage of paint under the tape. This has been a persistent problem with masking tape of the years. While masking tape provides a barrier against paint, when wet paint hits the edge of the tape, it can often bleed into or under the tape because the tape is creped and has little valleys and ridges of texture. This can result in a less than clean line between the painted and unpainted regions, and extra clean up to remove places where bleeding under the tape occurred.
Frog Tape®
One proposed solution to this problem has been to use superabsorbent material in the tape that can swell when wetted with the moisture in latex paint. Swelling of the superabsorbent can help block off channels and reduce bleeding. The problem has been that mixing superabsorbent with masking tape can greatly increase the cost of the product. One of inventor, George Gruber, found a clever solution (see U.S. Patent No. 6,828,008). Instead of trying a complex and expensive formulation of the substrate or adhesive material combined with superabsorbent, he realized (if I infer or understand correctly) that all that was really needed was just a little superabsorbent powder on the edges of the tape. He found a simple mechanical way to grind the powder into the sides of a roll of tape, resulting in just the right amount of the swellable material in just the right place. Result: tremendous sealing performance right where it is needed at very low cost. Rather than incremental improvements in formulating a mixture across the entire tape, he “leap frogged” to a low-cost, simple, and patentable solution: apply superabsorbent to the edges only in an easy application method to regular tape. Bingo. Shurtape was smart enough to recognize the potential of the invention and acquire it in a great example of open innovation and technology licensing. I’ve read user comments about the product compared to competitive products, and think we’ve got a potential winner here.
Don’t be constrained by the assumptions you began with or those that hold your competitors in place. Look for the surprisingly elegant, low-cost solutions that can help you leap frog your way to innovation success.
Keep Intrinsic Incentives in Mind to Stimulate Creativity
Posted by: | CommentsThanks to Roni Horowitz in Israel for calling my attention to this excellent presentation from Daniel Pink, a leading career analyst who spoke at a TED Conference in 2009. He discusses research showing that traditional “if then” financial incentives are great for encouraging people to rapidly complete simple, straightforward tasks, but when it comes to creative problem solving and similar complex tasks, such incentives can actually decrease performance. For innovation, intrinsic rewards may be especially important. An environment where people feel that their work is relevant and makes a difference can do more to enhance innovation than financial perks. Watch the video and then consider exploring what kind of innovation culture you have. Do you really understand what motivates innovation in your environment?
Turn What You Know Upside Down: Innovation Tip
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A Building with a Ship for a Roof? (Manti Temple in Manti, Utah)
Today I heard a story about Norwegian carpenters who literally turned what they knew upside down to solve a difficult problem through innovation. This occurred in the nineteenth century in the wild Western frontier, where a team of Norwegian carpenters were helping to build a large and complex structure in Manti, Utah. These men were in charge of building the roof. They had built plenty of ships in Norway, but never a roof, and puzzled over what to do. Rather than become discouraged, they decided to draw upon what they knew of shipmaking to build a strong, robust structure like the hull of a ship – and then turn it upside down to make a roof.
In innovation, there are often complex problems to be solved and barriers to be overcome that seem beyond your experience and capabilities. Sometimes, the solution is to draw upon what you already know, but turn it upside down, applying it in a totally new way. The inventions and innovations that change the world often come from the intersections between disciplines, where solid knowledge in one area is applied creatively in a new area. So innovators, take what you know and be ready to turn it upside down or inside out.