Archive for decision making
Brasília: Lessons from a Brilliant Economic Experiment
Posted by: | CommentsBelow is a Pixetell recording to share some new information about the economic revolution in Brasília, Brazil, wherein a government in tune with the “voice of the innovator” has worked to get out of the way of business success and to do provide the infrastructure and educational opportunities needed for long-term success. Amazingly, the local government there has had the courage to do more than talk about being efficient and cost-effective, but has actually gone through the painful process of “debureaucratization,” reducing bureaucratic jobs by 20% and the number of government agencies at the state level by 59%. The results of this experiment over the past four years have been dramatic and are paving the way for further innovation and increased quality of life.
Special thanks to Adriano Amaral, Secretary of State for the State Department of Economic Development in Brasília for meeting with me and sharing his insights and experiences. Like many of the leaders in Brasília, Adriano is not a career politician, but an experienced business leader who has led successful startups, stepped in to bring struggling businesses to life, advised large and small companies, and taught some of the best MBA students in the world. The success of the Federal District of Brasília demands further attention, and will be covered in our next book. We continue to look for further experts to interview as we explore the many stories and lessons from this region and from Brazil in general. Let us know if you have experiences and expertise to share! Email me at jlindsay at innovationedge.com, or use the contact page on this blog.
The Pixetell below is set to 640 x 480 pixels). To see the full-sized presentation in higher resolution, click on the full-screen icon in the lower right-hand corner, or to view this in a new window, use this Pixetell link. Pixetell, by the way, is an incredibly easy and extremely innovative tool for sharing information from your computer.
Related resources include the Brazilian Studies Association, AboutBrasilia.com, and CETEB.
Beware Unintended Innovation Killers from Laws, Regulations, and Corporate Policies
Posted by: | CommentsIn the game of chess, experienced players know that a move that looks tempting can often open up fatal weaknesses that deliver swift defeat later in the game. With experience, discipline, and solid strategic skills, good players can look several moves ahead and be aware of broad patterns and principles that can give one an improved position with options for success in endgames too far away to calculate in advance. Novices look for easy fixes to threats and quick attacks based on looking just a few moves ahead. Many times they are surprised at how their moves to solve a problem or gain an advantage make them easy prey. Their style of playing is fraught with moves that bring unintended consequences later in the game.
One of the great tragedies of human decision making is the pernicious inability to consider far-reaching implications of an action. To avoid harmful unintended consequences of a decision, there are two possible solutions: 1) get assistance from experts providing guidance from many difference perspectives and do the best to consider new areas and issues that were previously overlooked, and 2) follow proven principles and strategies that increase the odds of success in spite of the impossibility of calculating everything. Both of these principles can be and probably should be used.
Innovation, for all the voices hyping it, is one of the least considered factors when policy makers start shaking things up. Whether it’s a new law, a tax policy, a regulation, or corporate policies, decision makers easily overlook innovation–real innovation, not just money spent in the name of innovation–because they tend to overlook the individuals who are the source of innovation. Real innovation begins in the minds of individuals with a vision and must be nurtured to succeed. The voice of innovators, including the voice of entrepreneurs, inventors, university professors post-docs, corporate R&D staff, etc., is rarely heard. The voices of CEOs or other top leaders from big companies may be heard. The voices of direct reports to a CEO may be heard. The voices of celebrities and activists may be heard, but who actually seeks out and listens to the real innovators or prospective innovators in our economy? Who considers what impact a law or policy will have on those individuals and their incentives to innovate or their ability to succeed? They are among the voices that should be carefully considered when making policies to avoid unintended consequences that might crush innovation and economic growth.
There are several general principles that should also be considered by policy makers. Innovation at the personal level, which is one of the themes of Conquering Innovation Fatigue, requires personal liberty. It requires a system in which individuals and companies are motivated to take on the high risks of innovation because there are incentives to succeed. These incentives for many require a form of government in which intellectual property rights are respected as well as property rights in general. When property can be seized capriciously, or when the fruits of one’s innovative labors can be taken on a whim or taxed to death, why bother innovating?
Every law, every policy, every act of government should be constrained by general principles, such as those espoused in the US Constitution, and done with care to avoid harming the economy with unintended consequences that trample on the delicate flower of innovation.
Beware the Unintended Innovation-Killing Consequences of Laws and Policies
Posted by: | CommentsThe road to innovation fatigue is paved with good intentions embodied in laws, regulations, and even corporate policies. Leaders at all levels must be aware of uninteded innovation-killing consequences that may follow from their good intentions. Staying in touch with the “voice of the innovator,” as we advocate in Conquering Innovation Fatigue, is vital in avoiding such pitfals.
The Wall Street Journal from Dec. 4 offers two columns with examples of innovation fatigue factors that can be introduced by well-intended actions. The first article I wish to mention is “Near-Zero Rates are Hurting the Economy,” an opinion column from David Malpass, president of Encima Global, LLC. He argues that the artificially low interest rates created by the Federal Reserve Bank in the name of rescuing the US economy have actually been driving capital overseas and starving small companies–the leading sources of most innovation, economic growth and job creation, as studies from the Kaufmann Foundation and others have shown. Here is an excerpt:
[M]ore than a year after the heart of the panic, the Fed is still promising near-zero interest rates for an extended period and buying over $3 billion per day of expensive mortgage securities as part of a $1.25 trillion purchase plan. Capital is being rationed not on price but on availability and connections. The government gets the most, foreigners second, Wall Street and big companies third, with not much left over.
The irony of the zero-rate policy, coupled with Washington’s preference for a weak dollar, is a glut of American capital in Asia (as corporations and investors shun the weakening U.S. currency) and a shortage at home. For gold and oil, the low-rate policy works, weakening the dollar so commodity prices go up and providing traders with ample funds to buy into the expanding bubble. Those markets are almost daring the Fed to try to break out of its zero-rate box.
But for small businesses and new workers, capital rationing is devastating, spelling business failures and painful layoffs. Thousands of start-ups won’t launch due to credit shortages, in part because the government and corporations took more credit than they needed (because it was so cheap).
Already countries with higher interest rates, Australia for one, are viewed as less risky because they have room to cut rates if there’s another emergency. This wins them capital and jobs that might otherwise be ours.
According to International Monetary Fund data, U.S. GDP has fallen to 24% of world GDP from 32% in 2001. And as U.S. capital escapes the weak dollar and high tax rates, the U.S. share of world equity market capitalization has fallen to 30% from 45%. This leaves the U.S. alone with Japan at the bottom of the monetary heap, with rate expectations so low they repel investment.
When single individuals or organizations make policies that affect millions, it is far too easy for good intentions to translate into new problems, unless the decision maker is essentially omniscience. Failing ominiscience, perhaps market forces should be given a try, allowing the invisible hand mediated by the mechanism of price to determine the right allocation of resources. But even with a reluctance to use market forces to set interest rates and allocate capital, wiser decisions could be made by policy makers if they understood the personal side of innovation and the barriers faced by the innovators seeking to propel our economy forward. Unfortunately, the real innovation engines of the future aren’t likely to be powerful, highly connected people today, but may be a lone entrepreneur or president of a small company today that could grow and create many thousands of jobs, if only given a chance. Giving credit and bailouts to well-connected dinosaurs can be based on good intentions, but it may be a misallocation of resources that only makes things worse for the most important prospective innovators and job creators out there.
A second article in the Dec. 4 Journal is “Sarbanes-Oxley on Trial” (p. A24), an op-ed piece that briefly mentions the economic burdens this 2002 law has imposed, and urges government to modify its implementation to be more accountable. There is much more that could be said, some of which we discuss in our book. Sarbanex-Oxley is especially burdensome on small, innovative companies and has driven many innovators to look outside the United States in launching a start-up. Intended to make businesses safer and more accontable, it has slowed job creation and economic growth, in the eyes of some experts. Unintended consequences. It’s something every policy maker and business leader needs to be worried about. Are you listening to the voice of the innovators who have to live with your decisions? That could be the difference between success and innovation fatigue.
Death Panels for Innovation: How Are Your Corporate IP Review Boards Doing?
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Is Your Company on the Cutting Edge of Innovation? Your IP Review Board May Be.
Death panels have been a hot topic for speculation from some folks worried about health care reform, but in the world of innovation, genuine death panels have long been in place in corporations. Innovation death panels, disguised as intellectual property review committees or IP review boards, have been sending great inventions and great business concepts to an early death for decades. Further, the ways these panels operate can kill innovation at a broader level by discouraging inventors, keeping them out of the loop, and ensuring that whatever is left of their drive is unlikely to bear fruit.
Rationing has to be a reality when it comes to IP because only a small fraction of potentially valuable concepts justify the expense of filing a patent. But failure to pursue a patent need not be an innovation killing event. It can, in fact, be a valuable opportunity. When operated properly, the IP review board can provide a tremendous opportunity to educate, motivate, guide, and inspire corporate inventors, even when the current invention they have brought forward is not right for patenting.
One key is treating the inventors with respect and giving them a chance to be heard, as well as a chance to hear and learn from the review board. Many inventions are not properly understood before a decision is made, and inventors facing that can become cynical. Many inventors in corporations also don’t fully grasp how decisions are made and what the review board is looking for. Use the review process as a way to help the inventor understand the process and the criteria for decision making. ideally, you have a written strategy statement that provides guidelines and specifies where innovation is needed, helping the inventors know what to invent. You can also use the review board experience to recognize the contributions of inventors, treat them with respect, and help them feel motivated and connected, even if their first few tries don’t go anywhere.
The culture engendered by your IP review board or committee can be a matter of life or death for innovation in your company. Don’t let it become a death panel. Watch the process through the eyes of the inventors–listen to the voice of the innovator–and make sure you have a healthy and wholesome system that strengthens innovation, not decapitates it.
In Conquering Innovation Fatigue, we discuss the importance of understanding innovation from the perspective of innovators, and make recommendations for managing and motivating prospective innovators in the corporation, including suggestions for running IP review boards and guidelines on building trust, aligning innovation efforts with corporate needs, and creating cultures of innovation. Sections on corporate innovation are written for both employees seeking to develop innovations and for leaders seeking to encourage it. You must understand and conquer or work around the many innovation fatigue factors that impede innovation in so many corporations.
The View from Singapore: Vision and Leadership in Conquering Innovation Fatigue
Posted by: | CommentsI just returned from an adventure in innovation and culture in one of the world’s most delightful and innovative nations, Singapore, where I spoke about innovation during Innovation and Enterprise Week 2009 sponsored by A*STAR, the government’s large program for the advancement of scientific technology and research. What remarkable vision is at play in this effort!
Singapore is an example of what can be achieved in a nation with a bold vision of economic progress and long-term growth. One consistently gets the impression that officials there, whether university leaders, team leaders, or high-ranking politicians, have a strong desire to advance the welfare of the nation and its people by giving people the resources and opportunities to work hard and succeed through innovation and entrepreneurial activity. There is a culture of cooperation and vision that seems to permeate the activities of leaders and influencers far more than you might see in other parts of the world. The nation is not without its problems, and no individual is without human flaws, but what I saw impressed and surprised me.
The nation decided years ago that it wanted to be a place for world-class research and development. They boldly recruited leading talent and ramped up education for its own citizens. They crafted beautiful complexes for interdisciplinary research to pursue targeted areas. This resulted in a large science park, and then the One North complex with Biopolis, a collection of large buildings for R&D in the life sciences, and Fusionopolis, a massive edifice intended to bring together numerous disciplines in other areas. They invested huge amounts of money to support R&D. While other companies and nations are cutting back, they are increasing their R&D spending from what was about 2.5% of the GDP recently to 3% in 2010. Many billions of dollars are being committed to achieve their vision.
One cannot explore Singapore without realizing that its leaders are serious about making Singapore an attractive place for business, for research, and for innovation. They understand the importance of location and co-location. They have worked hard to make Singapore a center for business for many multinational corporations. Currently over 7,000 MNCs have a presence in Singapore. They have worked to bring many disciplines together for targeted purposes by co-locating disciplines in research at One North, which is also near to the National University of Singapore, the Ministry of Education, and other key facilities, not to mention integrating industrial centers such as the Lilly Center for Drug Discovery on the Biopolis campus. Bringing people and institutions together physically creates opportunities for synergy and cross-fertilization that can’t be matched by remote online interactions.
The synergy between business and state-funded R&D is further strengthened by sending researchers into industry for internships or limited engagements to provide firsthand experience into the realities of a start-up or other business.
The planning behind A*STAR has resulted in many fruits. There have been nearly 30 spin-off companies from these recent efforts. A patent estate of over 3,000 applications and patents exists (this number from A*STAR apparently includes filings in multiple nations, so the number of patent families is considerably less, but still healthy). Significant growth in licensing revenues is coming through the efforts of Exploit Technologies, the licensing and commercialization arm of A*STAR. International recognition is being earned for the accomplishments of A*STAR.
How a small nation of four million people has transformed itself into a powerhouse of R&D and excellence in science and business shows what can be done with strong leadership and a commitment to the future. Of course, you can’t overlook one of their secret weapons that help attract and retain so much great talent: some of the best food in the world. Check out the food courts at Biopolis and across this island nation. This is a land that understands the importance of great food. After all, isn’t food ultimately the fuel behind human innovation?
Here is a gallery with a few photos I took while in Singapore. Click on a thumbnail to see more of the respective photo. The first photo shows the famous mascot of Singapore, the mythical Merlion. The building in the 2nd and 3rd photos is Fusionopolis, showing two different views (north and south sides). Then there are some downtown shots and a Buddha in Chinatown.
Innovation has often been killed by poor metrics, part of the innovation fatigue factor of flaws in judgment and vision. Poor metrics can include financial analysis that emphasizes short-term gains but overlooks the future. One way of illustrating the problem is with the “Apple Tree Analogy.” Imagine a fruit production company that is concerned with the rising costs of apple production and the poor efficiency of manpower at harvest time. A hot-shot expert steps in to shake things up and turn things around. Suddenly, executives in their distant offices see reports showing dramatic gains in the efficiency of harvesting (perhaps a measure of the time required to pick the fruit from a tree) and a sharp drop in harvesting costs such as expenses for ladders and labor. Wonderful news!
Harvest Efficiency: Sudden Huge Gains!
Harvest Costs Show Dramatic Drop!
But what is the cause of the gains? If management is remote and not in tune with what is happening on the ground, they might rely on the metrics or key performance indicators to conclude that the business is healthier than ever and issue huge bonuses to the geniuses who transformed the apple business. In reality, the short-term gains might have come at a surprisingly high cost, namely, the future of the business, as shown below.
Real Reason for the Short-Term Gains Revealed
Sometimes dramatic cost-cutting efforts can lead to great short-term metrics and make a business seem healthy, when in fact, it is doomed by the very actions that gave it the short-term boost. Cutting down every apple tree in the orchard will greatly simplifying harvesting. No need for ladders at all! But the crops of the future have been wiped out.
Innovators in your company are the source of your future crops. Cutting innovation staff will always look attractive for the short-term, but can your future afford it?
Make sure you are using wise metrics in making decisions about innovation, research, and new product development. It’s a topic we address in Conquering Innovation Fatigue, and one of the important reasons why you and your team need to be familiar with this book.
Not Optimism, But Healthy Paranoia: A Key to Innovation Success
Posted by: | CommentsShortly after I became Corporate Patent Strategist at Kimberly-Clark Corporation in 2001, I had the opportunity to address nearly several hundred people in the innovation community of K-C at a large internal technical conference held at Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Georgia. My theme was “Healthy Paranoia” as the key to success in innovation. I drew upon the experience of Admiral James Stockdale, the highest-ranking naval officer held in captivity during the Vietnam War and a remarkable survivor and leader. James C. Collins’ famous book, Good to Great, describes a conversation with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy that helped him survive. Stockdale explained:
I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.
Then he asked Stockdale about the other POWs who didn’t survive. What made the difference? Who were they?
Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, “We’re going to be out by Christmas.” And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, “We’re going to be out by Easter.” And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.
This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
The need to confront brutal facts applies to all of us, and especially to those involved in innovation and business development. Foolish optimism leads businesses to neglect competitive threats, to ignore key information from early market studies that challenges expectations, or to make terrible mistakes with intellectual assets.
One small company with a terrific innovation recently told me not to worry about their intellectual property, for they were sure it was rock solid and didn’t need any further attention. I said, “OK, but every time I’ve heard that kind of talk in the past, it was a sure indicator of trouble.” Turns out their intellectual property estate was in shambles, and when I gently pointed out the gaps, they ended up asking me to prepare a new application, which we were able to do quickly just days before it would have been too late. Near disaster!
Innovation is always a high-risk activity. Those who do not recognize the risks and think everything is secure and sure to succeed are inevitable disappointed and often poorly prepared for the real risks they face. Those who practice “healthy paranoia” and recognize that there are risks and unknowns at every stage are much more likely to pay attention to those threats and mitigate them.
Mere paranoia and fear of the unknown is unhealthy, as it causes people to abandon the dream unnecessarily. The gloom-and-doom anti-innovation crowd lacks the faith that inspired Stockdale with the vision that he would prevail in the end. Successful innovation requires that faith, for it drives people to keep trying, to learn from their mistakes and learn from the market to iterate and find new approaches to succeed. A combination of faith in the end but a willingness to face and respond to the many brutal facts of reality – a “healthy paranoia” rather than blinding optimism – is what it takes to succeed.
The brutal facts of reality include inevitable failure in initial efforts. This is what separates the innovators from the rest. You are going to fail: the patent will receive a rejection, the initial launch may be a disaster, the partnership may go sour, the funding source may fall through, or the focus group will turn up their nose at your product. Success will go to those who learn from that, and iterate to improve and come back again. “Iterate to innovate.”
Keep the end vision intact while applying healthy paranoia to face and overcome the many innovation fatigue factors that will stand in your way.
The Beautiful Palm Pre
As I began writing this post, my wife was in a car a thousand miles away with a brand new smart phone. I received a call on someone else’s phone informing me that my wife’s smart phone had quit working completely after following the instructions she received from tech support to fix the GPS system in her phone. The GPS had quit working that morning after tech support had her do another set of procedures to fix another problem. Now she had no GPS and also couldn’t make or receive calls. The problem would later be resolved. I’m still not sure how much of it was due to network trouble (the black hole effect I describe below), hardware trouble, user error, and questionable tech support, but after almost 3 weeks of experience, I can say two things about the Palm Pre: 1) It is a terrific and beautiful phone with many innovations, and 2) Palm is doomed. Doomed, I fear, unless they make some changes in their business model and better consider the harmful long-term impact that some short-sighted decisions may have. The exciting work of the innovators within Palm may be destroyed, in the long run, by Innovation Fatigue Factor #5, “Flaws in Decision Making and Vision”(the subject of Chapter 9 in Conquering Innovation Fatigue).
The problem, in a nutshell, is that Palm and Sprint (the only network for the Pre) apparently have decided to focus on getting the limited production of Palm Pres into the hands of as many users as possible, rather than letting tech support staff have them. The quality of customer service is being deliberately sacrificed to grab more market share and get more buzz among consumers, but this may backfire and create negative buzz due to some compounding factors. Some users may be happy with what they can figure out on their own and never need tech support, but I think many Palm Pre users are likely to need support. I say this because users are not given the Palm Pre manual and the manual in PDF form is not provided on the Palm Pre, cannot be downloaded from the Palm Pre, and even if loaded onto the Palm Pre, cannot be read by its PDFView application without crashing the phone. It’s a painful irony that makes aggressive users rely more than they should on tech support, and yet tech support is in the dark. When you call 888-211-4727 for support, you will be speaking with someone who has never used the phone, perhaps never even seen one. You can usually get to a human in under three or four minutes, which is wonderful, but simple questions can take far too long to be answered, if an answer ever comes. If uncorrected, this will drive consumers away from this phone and toward the many alternatives that can do many of the same things.
Here’s an experience that illustrates the problem of using inexperienced tech support instead of people familiar with the phone. I had a problem with a disappearing icon. There are five icons across the bottom of the screen for a newly installed phone: one for dialing, one for contacts, one for email, one for the calendar, and one that brings up a directory of apps and services. On day two of using my phone, the email and calendar icons disappeared. I’m still not sure how. There were suddenly just 3 icons, not five. I was able to still find email by navigating through the apps, but wanted the convenience of rapid access to email that the icon provided. So how does one get it back? Nothing in the skimpy guide given to new users addressed the issue. So I called tech support.
After being escalated through three levels of tech support over the course of an hour, I still hadn’t found anybody who could answer that question, so I gave up when, mercifully, the signal dropped. The top-level person didn’t call back. The next day, when I had to call again for another issue, and while talking to a rep, I asked this new guy if he knew the answer to the icon puzzle. He put me on hold for about 60 seconds, and then came back with the simple solution: press any icon in the apps window for several seconds until it glows, then drag it into the row of icons at the bottom of the screen and it will stick. I was delighted. “Wow, that’s great. Do you mind if I ask why you were able to help so quickly when three levels of tech support yesterday all searching for the answer couldn’t help?” “Oh,” he said, “there’s another guy over here who owns a Palm Pre. So I asked him and he was able to show me.” Ah, someone with experience – someone with a phone!
Because the person I reached knew someone with experience, he was able to reach out to his local value network and get the knowledge I needed, and he could do it in 60 seconds, compared with a fruitless hour of my time and Sprint’s when talking to people without experience. My wife and I have been contacting tech support a lot– far too much, but usually out of necessity–and nearly everyone I’ve talked with didn’t know much about the phone at all. Thank goodness one person had access to someone who had one.
By going for short-term market share by getting more sets into the hands of the public instead of into the hands of your own support staff, Palm is taking a huge risk and incurring costs that may well outweigh the benefits of the accelerate distribution to the public.
The Downturn: This Is the Time to Invest in R&D/New Product Development
Posted by: | CommentsAn April 2009 report in the McKinsey newsletter, “R&D in the downturn: McKinsey Global Survey Results,” reveals that many leading companies are not shredding their R&D budgets. These companies view R&D and new product development as a source of competitive advantage. Where R&D is clearly important for future success, many companies are actually expanding their programs. This is excellent strategy. During a downturn, a lot of great talent will be laid off by short-sighted competitors. This is the time to pickup the brains needed for the next wave of game-changing innovation. It is also a great time to take the steps needed to seize market share in the near future by building momentum as others are slowing.
At the same time, it is frustrating to watch some companies aggressively downsize their innovation staff and innovation efforts, even when it is definitely not needed. They may get a boost in stock price over the short term, but as the economy revives, those who pay the price now to build innovation momentum will rush to victory and leave the laggards in the dust. (That’s if the economy revives, which it certainly should–if we can resist the temptation to give it too much artificial help. Sometimes well-intentioned first aid, like over-zealous CPR on a patient whose heart is beating, can be worse than doing nothing.)
Economic downturns can seem like huge external fatigue factors, but for those who are prepared and wise enough, they can be great opportunities to change the balance of power in the market. Don’t forsake innovation, even when times are tough. Look for creative ways to expand your efforts and become more innovative.
One thing that can help is pursuit of low-cost intellectual assets (there are many creative things that can be done with defesive publications, for example) and more cost-effective innovation strategies such as the targeted “just in tune” innovation based in the “Horn of Innovation” model that we discuss in the book, Conquering Innovation Fatigue.
“Fake Innovation”: Lessons from Fake Work
Posted by: | CommentsFake Work: Why People Are Working Harder Than Ever but Accomplishing Less, and How to Fix the Problem by Brent D. Peterson and Gaylan D. Nielson (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009) strikes a chord in most anybody who has been in Corporate America – or most anybody who works, for that matter. Dr. Brent Peterson from the Marriott School of Engineering (Brigham Young University) and Gaylan Nielson, CEO of The Work Itself Group, apply decades of experience in facing the dysfunctions of modern business and diagnosing the problems of wasted effort. They estimate that over half of all work is meaningless, or “fake work”–work that is not related to the objectives of the business and does not help a business to survive. Fake. Meaningless. Wasted. These are terrible adjectives to apply to the exhausting efforts we go through, but they are accurate much of the time. As I’ll suggest later, insights into “fake work” can illuminate a related problems in innovation: “fake innovation.”