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We spent the 2nd Day of Christmas (December 26) at the home of German friends. There I was asked what I thought about the film “Dinner for One,” a film where a 90 year-old woman is served a birthday dinner by her butler. I’d never hear of it. Turns out it is an 11 minute long British film (in English) from the 1960s which has something of a cult-following in Germany, as well as a few other northern European countries. As a result, it holds a Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most frequently broadcast film—apparently it is better known than The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It has never been broadcast in the US or UK, though. If you don’t believe me, check out The German news magazine Spiegel’s story here. Or, better yet, you too can join the cult, and see the film on You Tube here.
I will admit to not generally getting the “British humor” of the film (or for that matter Monty Python). But so it goes. I am assured that anyone that likes Monty Python will be rolling on the floor over this film. The really interesting thing is that such an English film could become so popular in a country where English is not the home language!

As somebody who is going through same major transitions in life, I’ve been thinking about how important mentors are in one’s life. I would bet there are very few people in this world who truly believe that they got where they are in life completely alone. As in my case, there are many different people throughout our lives who could be considered “mentors” because they’ve taken some of their valuable time and donated it to someone else’s well-being.

Luckily, I’ve had many different people mentor me in a variety of environments and who continue to do so. I am sure that I would not be the same person without their guidance and I am always appreciative to those who reach out. I find that each one of these mentors bring valuable life experiences and resources with them, which, even by simply hearing their personal stories or experiences, help me to keep my mind open and see past potential road blocks. It helps to know, when things get difficult, that there are others who have made it through similar situations successfully and who have proven that the bar can and should be continuously raised. Mentors are not meant to make things easy or hand you an answer, but they can give you that extra little push, boost of confidence, or valuable resource that can make a difference.

Although mentor-mentee relationships are often informal, with the mentor taking their own initiative to help their student in a time of need or uncertainty, an organized program such as the Entrepreneur Mentorship program at California State University, Fresno can also provide an incomparable opportunity to learn from others. As a participant of this program, I have had the opportunity to contact, interview, and learn from a wide variety of the Central Valley’s most successful entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers. Each week one of these people offer their time to speak to our class about their successes, failures, and life stories. Through their stories, leadership recommendations, words of advice and encouragement, the students have collectively expressed, and I do concur, that a certain confidence is gained. The different lifestyles and level of success of these mentors seemed so foreign to most, if not all, the students in the beginning of the school year. As we edge closer to the end of the year and the class was asked to reflect on our experiences, it was unanimously agreed that it seemed as if the mentors’ willingness to share their stories and to allow us to see that they are human (through their experiences) and therefore not so different after all, has helped us along in our on-going transitions from students to teachers, dreamers to doers, consumers to creators, and from followers to leaders.

Whether formally organized in an on-going academic program, a work relationship, student-teacher relationship, or other, the positive influence that a mentor can have can not be overstated. I thank all of the mentors in my life, your time and effort is noticed and appreciated.

Hello everyone. The anthropology news feed is a very popular feature on ethnography.com, but something has happened on the provider side, and we’re not sure what yet. We are trying to locate someone to help us fix it.

Until then, read up on a few old travel posts… they might be fun.

The innovation business is full of gurus: people that companies hire believing that they have some special source of knowledge that they simply don’t have.

In my early days working in consulting, I saw a lot of people and companies sell themselves as being smarter than the clients they are supposed to help. A phrase I heard from one business development person I was acquainted with (thankfully, this was years ago) was “What you want to do in a pitch with a prospective client is to inject F.U.D into their thinking about the job they are doing and other consulting companies.” F.U.D. stood for “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.” This is one the more offensive notions I’ve come across professionally. Maybe I’m lucky, but most of my clients have been pretty smart bears. They’re eager to learn new methods, eager to share with you what they know, and I find working with them makes my process much better. I’ve been fortunate to have clients that have changed the way they interact with their potential customers after working with my company and their projects have raised our bar on what we deliver.

And this brings me back to the question: Is the innovation guru you have hired a true teacher? My clients experience with consultants seems to be that the consultant constantly raises their game, takes knowledge out of the company and does not add that much back. So if you’re currently a company that’s looking to hire consultants or have consultants on staff, the first question you need to ask is whether you learning from them. I don’t mean just in the sense of they provided you with results to a question. Ask a larger question, what are you learning that you can take forward long-term? Have you learned a different way of working from them? Are you seeing them actively take what they are learning from you, and using it to increase the effectiveness of the work you’re doing together?

So if you’re looking to hire a consultant to retain your current consultants, make sure you ask who’s getting the most out of this deal. Are they working with you, and teaching you with an open heart, open mind and mutual respect?

Just some thoughts..

Blog Disclaimer. I will often go back to entries to make edits or clarify points. If I am changing my point of view, that will be a new entry.

Innovation as a result vs. innovation as a practice.

Before talking about an innovative outcome, companies would be better served understanding and building a robust Practice of Innovation: the art and science of unraveling knotty problems in a way that reveals underlying need and refrains in a unique and robust way that guides and inspires long-term strategic development.

What do I mean by the art and science of unraveling knotty problems?
This means interesting solutions often start from interesting questions. Getting to the nuances of these questions clearly is a challenge for most companies as it often bucks convention wisdom in the organization. Asking the right question is a place most people don’t spend a lot of time on, but it is imperative. As a rule of thumb, that first question asked is not the correct one, it needs to be pulled apart in layers to get to the essence. Sometimes you don’t even know the most interesting question until you get out into the field.

In a way that reveals underlying needs.
This is key: often the surface issue is not the true need. For example, the WebTV service meets the need of letting people have an easy to use service that gives them basic access to internet functionality and e-mail without having to purchase the entire computer system. You plug it into your living room TV and the whole family and surf the web and do e-mail together!! (if this was ever a real need, why WebTV is a marginal idea would be an excellent case study). It does not take much ethnography to see the flaw in this plan for families. Most people want to read their e-mail in private, surfing the web as a group is not unlike trying to read a book as a group, and on top of it, it means that one person is monopolizing, usually, the biggest TV in the house. They attacked the surface need, and ignored that numerous underlying needs that would have radically changed the product/service.

Refrains them in a unique and robust way.
If it’s not a unique insight about the work, who cares? People in the social science end of this game should pat special attention to this. One of the jobs of the anthropologist is to go far past collecting and organizing data, but help your client understand the world in a way nobody else does. If you can’t get there, where is the competitive advantage?

That guides inspires long-term strategic development.
The practice of innovation is not aimed at creating a one-off product or service. Its creating a path or roadmap that others can follow and build on over time.

Blog Disclaimer. I will often go back to entries to make edits or clarify points. If I am changing my point of view, that will be a new entry.

They have a patent, but is it enough to help them keep their experience unique?

I purchased a Nintendo Wii just before the holidays for a simple reason: There has never been a console game that kept me interested. Punching buttons reminds me too much of the ceaseless typing I do now.

The Wii is a great system because they made the risky choice. They choose to create an entire experience rather than enter the technology arms race. If you have not had a chance to play with one yet, I can tell you it virtually brought work to a halt in our office for two days. People weren’t going mad over the graphics, it was the physicality between them, the game and the people they were playing with. The graphics matter so much less because of the fun they are having with other people and you can’t help but move around a lot when you play. There are a number of reports about just how aggressive this movement can be, note this lovely image off Engadget Sony is clearly concerned as the Wii is outselling the PS3 in almost all markets and a spokesperson for Sony made the amusing observation “the Wii is an impulse buy.” Pretty strong impulse on the part of the people willing to line up outside Target at 2am to buy one. “Honey, I can’t sleep. I think I’ll get a nice glass of warm mil…no, I’m gonna get a Wii, that’ll help!”

The question is can they keep this short lead? The technology in the Wiimote is wonderful because it shows how fairly simple technology can be put together in a compelling way to make something much more interesting. Accelerometers, Bluetooth connection like you have on your cell phone and the plain old IR just like your TV remote. All of this is combined in an interesting and compelling way. The question is, is it clever enough to prevent Sony or Microsoft from being the oh-so-dangerous Fast-Follower?

What they have done is possibly patent existing technology into a new form, its done all the time to everyone’s benefit. Let’s say you patented the eraser, and person #2 patents the pencil. A third can patent the idea of attaching an eraser to a pencil. Sure you can sue person three from using your patented eraser, but you are suing to prevent them from selling more erasers for you. The question for Nintendo is this wonderful combination unique enough to be their own?

I found a patent Nintendo filed in 1999 (#7,145,551) for a “Two-handed computer input device with orientation sensor”

A hand held computer input device includes a first housing portion having at least one user actuable input device. A first extending handle is coupled to, and extends away from, the first housing portion. A second handle is also coupled to, and extends away from, the first housing portion. An orientation sensor is coupled to the first housing and is configured to sense a physical orientation of the first housing portion. The orientation sensor provides an orientation signal indicative of the physical orientation sensed.

The question will be how clever the patent have been written and trust me, you want clever. It has to be broad enough that it covers current and past technology and anticipates future technologies. But, it can’t be so broad that it is generic and covers everything. So, I give it 9 months, MS or Sony will bring out something similar for their consoles, the lawyers will be let off their leashes and the games will begin.

There’s no choice really, Nintendo is betting on the best killer app being another human being. Sony and Xbox are betting on technology. They will have to open up the human experience to approach why people are excited about the Wii. That means getting past this patent.

I got an exciting little boost today when Bruce Nussbaum, Business Week’s long-time writer on innovation and design coverage, posted my entire response to his entry on “Who Is Tired of innovation?” to his blog. Thanks Bruce, my first “official” business publication. You can find it at his site under the “Clown Theory of Innovation.”

The gist is what is Innovation vs. the emerging Practice of Innovation? The second point is what do we really mean to say when we suggest that someone doesn’t “get it” ?

In looking at the post, I really need to get a proof-reader. A nice way to start the day though.

Well, Bruce Nussbaum has being making me think alot apparently, I posted yet another comment to his recent entry asking if CEO’s have “innovation fatigue.”

I think that is partly true, but I wonder if it is more about “broken promise fatigue” rather than “innovation fatigue.” Companies that you listed: the Nikes, GE’s, Apple’s of the world have all seen great returns on big bets, and can also stomach the loss they have experienced in the past as well. They know what this Practice of Innovation can offer when done in a disciplined way, and are experienced in working through the failures that are also part of the process. Trying to squeeze out more efficiency is a short term bet that has short term results. The fact is that most of the world-class manufacturing players are pretty blasted efficient already, and there is not much water in that well. Many are already seeing the best efficiencies of scale they can get. Who are the people that are most susceptible to broken promise fatigue? I suspect they are the ones that approach trying to create compelling new opportunities for their companies in the same way, and with the same expectations, as they think of squeezing profits from efficiencies. Rather than being part of a systematic whole, expressed strategically, it is approached on a very tactical level. It would be like building the iPod without iTunes, partnerships with the music industry, and signaling a direction for the entire company.

So this word “innovation” popped up as the next silver bullet to improve revenue streams as the other methods: downsizing, manufacturing, squeezing other people in the food chain, have been tapped out. I suspect that over time, innovation as the primary word for this practice will fade into the background, as it should, to be replaced with a core intellectual competency that is as standard to a modern business as having an HR department. Humans (as opposed to companies, a legal construct with no thoughts or feelings) have been in this business of innovation for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The printing press, the cotton gin, the original walkman, all innovations that somehow changed the landscape.

I think what is tangibly different now is that shift we talked about previously. Now companies are talking about making the practice explicit, rigorous, embedded in the culture so it is far less random. People are realizing the problems of waiting for the company guru, like a Henry Ford or Steve Jobs, to have a eureka moment, or the seemingly scatter-shot approach to R&D of many avenues of research in parallel. Instead, we are drawing the threads of the company together in a conscious and deliberate way to create an approach to increasing revenue that can set a large strategic vision, and has an output of a roadmap of tactical action.

Perhaps the job skill of the future might not be “manager” but “facilitator”. Who cares about your degree, can you help different parts of the company tie diverse activities together in delightful and unexpected ways? Are you able to have draw out and help people expand on their best ideas? Can you prescribe for them the actions to take to go to the next level? That’s how you build revenue in the long term.

Posted by Mark Dawson on May 5th, 2007 | Permalink | No Comments
About the Practice of Innovation

This is the comment I made on the Nussbaum on Design blog the other day for those that prefer to read it here. Its not the first time I’ve tried to define the Practice Of Innovation, it’s part of an earlier entry.

James Todhunter over at Innovating To Win also picked up the comments, emphasizing that The Practice of Innovation, rather than simply innovation is a core competency that should be seen as a C-level issue. Based on my experience at Jump Associate, I would say that companies are certainly taking notice at that level. The new VP’s of innovation that are emerging are not on-off imagination product wizards, but intertwined with corporate strategy on a very deep level.

Ah yes, the “Clown Theory” of innovation. I prefer to call it the manure theory, toss a bunch of “wacky” people into a room and hope something tasty grows. Your post points to a couple of issues, that people are still looking for that magic bullet to solve problems now, and the other, more problematic phrase, that people don’t “get it”. People still tend to think of innovation as a one-off product, they see the iPod as spawning all these other goods and services. The innovation was in the how’ and the whys of reframing what the model for digital entertainment looks like. The iPod is an extremely important cog in the machine, but it is not the primary innovation. This is why I prefer to think of the Practice of Innovation, rather than just Innovation as a verb.

Companies that are on the cutting edge of the Practice Of Innovation are ones that have learned that a groundbreaking product or service (the innovation) is the happy outcome of a lot of hard work. In my view, this Practice of Innovation can be defined as:
The art and science of unraveling knotty problems in a way that reveals underlying needs then reframes them in a unique and robust way that guides and inspires long-term strategic development.

People are slowly coming around to the fact the we can craft a discipline around innovation, and those that are doing it are combining design, social science and business brains in clever ways. Rather than tossing all the clever company rebels into a project, it is about finding and cultivating people that have a passion for all three areas, and developing rigorous methods to combine them to gain insight for competitive advantage. Somewhat counter intuitively, the broader the area you are working in, the more disciplined your team needs to be.
I also don’t think it is a question of who get it or does not get it. That is actually a phrase that I am trying to encourage people to stop using. In my experience, when someone says that another person doesn’t get it, particularly when talking about innovation in the abstract, it is often a gloss for: a) I really couldn’t explain my position very well, and they kept asking me questions I could not answer clearly, or b) It’s a neat and tidy way of separating the “smart” people from the “dumb” people. Its just too easy, once you say someone doesn’t get it, you let yourself off the hook for being better at articulating the why.

Aside from the time tellers that have the, sometimes well deserved, belief they already have a good handle on the pulse of what’s coming next, there are other reasons why people appear like they sometimes “don’t get it” so to speak. Sometimes it’s because they just don’t care. When someone tries to explain to me their magical experience at Burning Man and why I should go, it’s a bit of a waste. I get it, I simply don’t care and trying to convince me I should care is taking valuable time away from playing Zelda on my Wii. Another reason people appear as if they don’t get innovation is fear. They understand quite clearly that to make whatever it is being suggested means big changes. Big changes are scary and risky, especially if your business serves the latter side of the adoption curve.

Then there is the worst reason: they have been burned in the past. An ill-conceived or executed “innovation project” was approved and failed on their watch. Lots of cash went with little value in return. But I am hopeful that enough organizations out there are making the turn to the “Practice Of Innovation” that the risk/reward ratio will come into a better balance.

So I’ve been struggling all weekend trying to think of a unique take on the Maker Faire. Frankly I’ve given up. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it and I think it is best to point you to this Wired article. I know it’s cheap not to write my own, but frankly, if you ever been to Maker Faire, its hard to understand the concept of “Maker Faire shock.”

I recently responded to a post by Helen Waters on the Business Week NEXT blog titled “How to create a product that lasts today.” She has a quote in the entry that seems like it is a bit more old-school thinking. The text is below:

It’s an interesting thing to see a quote like “Great design is simply the personification of its creator” in the context of a blog about innovation in 2007. Most of our clients (Jump Associates) are aware that relying on a single genius who seems to have the muses on speed dial is a short term strategy at best. That’s why the companies that understand design as a strategic competence understand there’s more to it than tossing colored pencils to those funny creatives the marketers never talk to. Great design is more often the result of the hard work of many people, insights that other people missed, and having the skills, talents and resources to execute on that design in a defensible way. Steve Jobs is one of the most significant influences on design today, but Apple has an army of brilliant designers of all kinds that actually design… not Jobs. He didn’t show up at the office one morning with the iTunes model engraved on one stone table and a CAD drawing of an iPod on the other. (Though I certainly admit, it sure seems like that’s possible.)

Being able to create buzz and adroitly follow trends, is not the same thing as monetizing that buzz for sustainable growth and remaining relevant to the motivations and needs expressed in those trends. It’s just those companies that rely on buzz or trends that don’t generally stay afloat. What got a bigger buzz than Segway? For every Facebook and Myspace, I can’t count the number of dot-bombs out there that are dead or dying trying to follow that trend. The skilled ability to monetize buzz and surf trends without chasing them is just what the fashion industry is exceedingly good at. The fashion industry is often the place we look for “what’s next” in color, materials, textures, even emotional out look. But the major names don’t change their Look with a capitol “L” with every fad. It does not matter if you are talking about Gucci and Armani or Land’s End and Diesel, they have a distinctive look that responds to trends, but are not tossed out wholesale and started over because of them.

There are designs out there that are all about being the personification of its creator. I am interested in those as well, but they have a different place than something like the iPod. Take Philippe Starck as an example. I don’t go to a hotel designed by or in collaboration with him to have an experience I am used to; I go because I want to experience his vision, his whimsy. But what Starck is after is quite different from what Jobs is after. Jobs is looking for design to express a vision that will resonate with people and reframe how we see such ordinary tasks as buying music. Starck is more interesting in tweaking the world’s nose, letting you see what resonates with him.

The iPod can be compared with the Olivetti Valentine typewriter, as a design icon of its own, that celebrates the elegance of form and function to a mundane task. In contrast, Starck’s Juicy Salif juicer is a much closer relation to Duchamp’s Dadaist Fountain urinal installation. Starck’s juicer is a monument to uselessness. The unholy love child of a 1940’s rocketship and a sex toy, his juicer, like Duchamp’s Fountain, makes no pretense to actual functionally. That and people like to metaphorically pee on both of them. Its all about the designer expressing their desire to create an artifact and the actual outcome be damned. I’m fine with that, I like sculptural things that aren’t really functional if that is what I am expecting. If I want to juice, I have a $2 plastic hand juicer that works like a dream in my cupboard.

There is a place for the lone genius, and the hard working team, the question is who’s ride do you want to take in the moment?