August 30, 2010 | By Michelle James | Category: Best Practices

Interview # 21 in the Creativity in Business Thought Leader Series is with Stephen Shapiro, one of the foremost authorities on innovation culture, collaboration, and open innovation. Stephen is an author, consultant, speaker, and the Chief Innovation Evangelist for InnoCentive, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of open innovation.

Over the years, Stephen has shared his innovative philosophy in books such as 24/7 Innovation, The Little Book of BIG Innovation Ideas and Goal-Free Living - a manifesto on how to increase your creativity by not being so hyper-focused on your goals. Shapiro's work has been featured in Newsweek, Investor’s Business Daily, Entrepreneur Magazine, O - The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, and other prestigious publications. His clients include Staples, GE, BP, Johnson & Johnson, Fidelity Investments, Pearson Education, Nestlé, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.

His latest creation, Personality Poker, has been used by more than 25,000 people around the world to create high-performing innovation teams. It hits the book stores on October 28th and is a "game" that improves the performance of innovation teams by encouraging divergent thinking.

How does your work relate to creativity?

Shapiro: My life is about creativity and innovation. I help individuals and organizations connect the dots; that is, make connections between ideas, experiences, people, departments, and companies. For example, in my role as Chief Innovation Evangelist for InnoCentive, I help organizations leverage Open Innovation as a tool for connecting to "solvers" and solutions that exist outside of their organization. My passion is connecting the dots between people by encouraging new collaboration models that might not occur naturally.

What do you see as the new paradigm of work?

Shapiro: In the past, transactional work was outsourced (e.g., manufacturing or finance). But now even creative endeavors are being sent to external partners. Open innovation is providing new methods for finding solutions. If you want a solution to a problem you are working on, you are no longer limited to the expertise within your organization. You can now tap into a diverse group of experts who have experience across many disciplines. And the cost associated with some open innovation models is driven by the value received, not by the time invested. This ensures higher returns on investment.

What do you see the role of creativity in that paradigm?

Shapiro: Open innovation, when done successfully, truly encourages creative thinking. The reason is, it is perfect for helping to connect the dots across disciplines. For example, an oil spill recover problem (from the Exxon Valdez spill) was solved by someone from the construction industry. NASA solved a solar flare prediction challenge by tapping into someone in the cell phone industry. And a potato chip manufacturer found a way to reduce the fat in their chips from a musician. As I like to say, if you are working on an aerospace engineering challenge and you have 100 aerospace engineers working on it, adding the 101st will not make that much of a difference. But if you add a biologist, a chemist, or a musician, you might just find some breakthrough solutions.

What values and behaviors do you see as essential for effectively navigating the new work paradigm?

Shapiro: Before you can be open externally, you need to be open internally. This means you need to become more effective at connecting the dots with the people inside your four walls. Unfortunately, most organizations suffer from "chronic sameness" – the innovation-restricting disease in where commonality is valued above individuality. Contrary to conventional wisdom, opposites do NOT attract. Organizations are designed to be efficient which means that "fitting the mold" is critical. But this kills creativity.

This is why I created Personality Poker - it is the cure for chronic sameness. Innovation only occurs when multiple points of view are encouraged, valued, and utilized. Therefore, it is useful to get people to seek out the person who is their "opposite" – that is the person whose style is different yet complementary to their. For example, creative individuals might seek out planners while analytical people might seek out more emotional, intuitive individuals.

What is one approach that people could start applying today to bring more creativity into their work or their business organization?

Shapiro: In Personality Poker, we identify four key principles for creating high-performing innovation teams. One is to "play with a full deck." That is, make sure you have a balance of different innovation styles in your organizations. Here are some principles that can help you create a full deck:

Hire in pairs: Build diversity into your hiring process by hiring opposites at the same time. For example, when you hire a good project manager, hire a strong creative individual.

Ignore the golden rule: Don’t treat people the way YOU want to be treated, treat them the way THEY want to be treated.

Provide feedback based on style: Praise individuals based on their style. For example, praise a creative individual for their new ideas, and praise planners for their "on-time, on-budget attitude."

Balance your meetings: Meetings have "personalities," too. For every brainstorming session, have status meetings. For every customer data analysis meeting, hold a talent engagement meeting.

Balance your leadership: Make sure that your leadership team has multiple points of view. Balance your bottom-line, operationally-driven leader with a creative, innovation-driven leader.

Finally, what is creative leadership to you?

Shapiro: Leadership that encourages creativity. When this happens, leaders inspire others to be leaders. They create an environment where each individual feels and acts like they are an owner of the business. Connecting the dots between individuals, departments and organizations becomes natural.

In the end, it is less about new products, new processes, new services, or even new business models. The key is to create an organization that can adapt, evolve, and change repeatedly and rapidly. This is the only sustainable business model.

The Creativity in Business Thought Leader Interview Series is developed and conducted by business creativity catalyst, Michelle James, CEO of The Center for Creative Emergence and founder of Quantum Leap Business Improv.

August 30, 2010 | By Roy Luebke | Category: Best Practices

The cable TV channels History, Discovery, and Science have each been running a series of programs recently on the origin of the universe, the creation of planets, and an array of topics related to chemistry and physics.

On the surface this description sounds pretty boring, so imagine what it must sound like to your average high school student. Pretty lame. The origin of the universe is a complex and abstract concept. However, the way these television programs present this information was absolutely stunning.

It has been quite awhile since this author studied science in high school, and much of the knowledge presented didn’t exist back in those stone-age studies. These programs caused a reflection on how complex subjects are presented today and how students are being taught. Schools back in the day were geared toward preparing students for factory jobs. If a teenager was extremely bright they could go on to college and become an engineer, scientist, doctor, teacher or a lawyer.

The world has changed exponentially in the past 100 years, but our schools continue to teach in the same, rote manner. This author’s son is a 16-year-old high school junior, and his comments lead one to believe they are memorizing facts, regurgitating facts and basically being bored to tears.

In contrast, when this young man gets his hands on a cell phone or computer the entire world opens up and his engagement begins. His generation is interactive, online, always-on. Yet the schools don’t seem to be integrating new technology and approaches into their teaching methods.

One can only ask why there is not more interactive teaching going on. Why are teachers not embedding the Internet into their lectures? Why are tests not interactive? Why are students not researching and writing more, and taking abstract theories and trying to prove them through research?

Students are still compared individually to one another and not being taught to work in teams. How is this approach preparing them for 21st century work requiring collaboration, teamwork, and creating and sharing knowledge?

Socrates was probably a pretty good teacher. Maybe he was even a nice guy. His teaching methods still have practical use in schools in certain circumstances. We should take a lesson from Socrates and remember that teachers lead students toward knowledge.

In today’s parlance, teachers should be looked at a project managers. Teachers understand the spectrum of information that needs to be presented to students so they understand the current rules and current knowledge, but they also need to prepare students to discover and invent the next generation of rules and knowledge.

Teachers as project managers means they can establish the curriculum for a course, and point the students to outrageously cool and interesting on-line spaces to discover what the teacher is aiming for them to learn. On-line testing can be interactive, embed many visuals, and allow the student to better define what they have learned. The teacher can serve as the organizer and teach the students to work together in teams to define answers to complex problems.

Our schools must begin to use current technology more effectively to prepare our children for a new, emerging workplace. Schools should be involving working professionals in the classroom on a regular basis to invigorate the learning experience.

Emerging market economies are taking over the manufacturing of most goods in the world. Even those jobs will be eliminated sooner-or-later by robots and other technological advances. How are the societal and economic issues of the world going to be addressed when people have been taught to memorize basic information and not stretch their minds?

Humans are by nature visual storytellers. For thousands of years, knowledge was passed from generation to generation through stories told from elders to youngsters, and we remembered. We remembered because the stories captured our imagination and made us ponder what was beyond our daily reality.

In economically and socially advanced societies, education is the leading industry going forward. Yet it continues to operate as if it is still 1950. If education is the imperative in our societies, it needs to use new techniques, new methods, new tools, and creativity to make the educational experience more rewarding. It is time for education to catch up with society once again.

August 17, 2010 | By Chuck Frey | Category: Best Practices

Comedic legend John Cleese has an enviable resume: In the late 1960s, he became a member of the Monty Python troupe. After that, he starred in a number of movies and co-wrote and performed in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. More recently, he cofounded Video Arts, a firm that makes entertaining training films.

Which makes this YouTube video all the more remarkable. In it, Cleese reflects on the early days of his career, and how he discovered the remarkable power of his subconscious mind to incubate and generate ideas while he slept. Cleese is a consummate storyteller, and brings his unique and humorous spin to the topic of creativity.

I highly recommend that you watch this video, because it's a great reminder of the latent power of our minds. This technique of "sleeping on it" when you get stuck creatively is so simple, many people who have heard about it have discounted it, or completely dismissed it as some sort of psychological mumbo-jumbo. But the fact is it works!

Thanks to Mitch Ditkoff for bringing this enlightening video to my attention!

August 17, 2010 | By Chuck Frey | Category: Best Practices

Last night, I experienced my first-ever InnoBeer tweet-up event in Boston. I was in the city for a trade show, and James Todhunter and Parna Sarkar-Basu from Invention Machine were nice enough to schedule an event to coincide with my visit (thanks so much for your hospitality, Jim and Parna!) at the Kinsale, a well-known Irish pub in downtown Boston.

I had heard of the concept of tweet-ups before, and have seen a number of innovation professionals talking about InnoBeer on Twitter. So naturally, I had to go, to see what all of the excitement was about. Also, I was the guest of honor - so I had better show up!

I found this to be a fascinating event. I met some awesome new people and reconnected with some people who I have corresponded with by e-mail and Twitter for years. It was an eclectic bunch, including a group of marketing agency folks, a professor from a local college, an author and speaker, and several people from a local software company. They were all fun and engaging to talk with, and they made me feel very welcome!

Attendees included Stephen Shapiro (author and speaker), Boris Pluskowski (Continuous Innovation Blog), James Todhunter and Jim Belfiore (Invention Machine), Robert DeFilippi from Suffolk University, Stephen Dill (SRD InterActive and avid blogger), David Wallace (GameChanger) and Adam Sadowski (the Antler agency). 

The discussion was wide-ranging, from our favorite open innovation resources and the pros and cons of using WordPress to manage a large site (I'm trying to decide on a new platform for InnovationTools.com) to brewing beer and the challenges of working with clients to implement social media campaigns.

Based on my experience at the Boston Innobeer, I definitely want to take part in more of these great events. They're an awesome way to meet like-minded professionals, to get inspired by the projects and pasttimes that other people are focused upon and you may even learn a thing or two.

InnoBeer - short for Innovation Beer Summit Tweetup - events are now taking place in at least 8 cities here in the states:

• Boston (the birthplace of InnoBeer)
• Chicago
• Denver
• Minneapolis
• Los Angeles
• Philadelphia
• New York
• Michigan

If you visit the official InnoBeer website, you can view a schedule of upcoming events. I highly recommend that you take an opportunity to participate in an event in your area - or if there's not one nearby, why not start a new group? You'll be glad you did!

These are informal events that don't have to be extensively planned. Jim and Parna use a web-based service called EventBrite to enable people to register for these free gatherings (they use it just to get an approximate head count).

Thanks again for an awesome evening, everyone!

August 11, 2010 | By Derek Cheshire | Category: Best Practices

It is often said that entrepreneurs have nothing to fear but fear of failure, to borrow a turn of phrase from Sir Richard Branson, entrepreneur and daring risk-taker extraordinaire. He recently wrote an article for Open Forum that I found to be very interesting, and worthy of reflection.

Branson makes a very interesting point about fear of failure, but how can innovation actually fail? It is quite simple, the only way is to DO NOTHING. Innovation is all about getting things done (or trying in the case of Virgin) and learning from the result whether it is success or failure. This way you can either try again or use your acquired knowledge in some other way. The route forward may not necessarily be a straight line, but you will move forward and potentially gain competitive advantage.

In the article, Branson openly admits that he learns much more from business failures - from Virgin's business units as well as other companies. The company's highly decentralized structure encourages employees to behave like business owners. "When things do go wrong, the team members feel such ownership of the enterprise that they usually roll up their sleeves and turn it around," he explains.

Thomas Edison is reported to have made over 2,000 attempts at creating the first light bulb. His view of this was that he found 2,000 ways NOT to make a light bulb. Imagine that there was no patent and a competitor had no knowledge of what Edison had done. Even if Edison was on attempt number 1,999 he was still 1,999 steps ahead of his competitor, none of which he would have made without failing!

In the words of Sir Richard Branson:

"If you can identify and learn from your mistakes, you have a much greater chance of bouncing back from them - and succeeding the next time."

But first of course you must actually DO something or otherwise you are guaranteed to fail.

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