A common request I get is to create something that listeners of the podcast can share with their managers and team members.  Something that shares the foundational "what" and the "how" of innovation without listening to the +60 hours of audio that now makes-up the podcast catalog.

For the last number of months, I've been recording the audio to create a CD that anyone can download, burn and share.

The project is not yet done but I wanted to give you something ...  The links below are to the podcast audio files that will ultimately will be used to create the CD.

Send me your feedback ...

Track 1: Why is innovation important?      (show notes)

Track 2: A better way to innovate      (show notes)

Track 3: Focus your innovation search      (show notes)

Track 4: Ideation - Creating killer ideas by asking killer questions      (show notes)

Track 5: Ranking your ideas      (show notes)

Track 6: Execution - Translating idea to innovations      (show notes)

This is a speech I gave at the "Bootcamp for Growing Companies and Entrepreneurs" hosted by the Business Alliance.   The PowerPoint slides contain speaker notes.  The speech was recorded and the audio will be posted soon.

Updated 4/20/08:  Link to audio:  Creative Economy - Recorded LIVE

Topic:  The Creative Economy

Background:  Change is something we may try to stop but never will.  From the agriculture economy to the manufacturing economy to the knowledge/information economy to that of the creative economy … where wealth creation is dependent upon the capacity of a nation to continually create ideas.  In short, a nation without a vibrant creative labor force does not possess the knowledge base to succeed in the creative economy, and must depend on ideas produced elsewhere.

The creative economy is a new a world in which people work with their brains instead of their hands.   A world in which innovation is more important than mass production.  A world in which investment buys new concepts or the means to create them, rather than new machines.

In this new world … ideas are the new global currency ...

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Link to the PowerPoint slides ... which are also available for download.

Link to audio:  Creative Economy - Recorded LIVE

Have you ever notices how things look differently when you stay up late ... when you've been working way too many hours ... when you're clearly suffering from severe sleep deprivation?  Strange things happen in the middle of the night.

When we are well rested, our "filters" will rank/disqualify ideas based on our experiences.  No matter how hard we try, the filers are always there. 

Take advantage of the times when you’ve pushed yourself too far.  Your natural idea/mental filters are down.

The bandwidth of the world is much greater than your TV or your broadband connection.  You cannot predict what is happening in the world from the couch or office.  You need to immerse yourself and experience the world.  Put yourself in uncomfortable positions to see the needs, interact with customers, understand your partners and rub elbows with others who "think differently" from yourself.

I'm not talking about going to an industry event or tradeshows.  I'm talking about going out into the real-world and observing real-life.

Go out and touch the world -- you could be surprised by what you see, feel and experience.

Good is a known target.  Its what we all agree to.  Its the result that emerges when the goal is consensus.  Good is not good.  Excellence comes from exploring the unknown.  It comes from taking risks and leaving the path that everyone else is on and exploring down the dark alleys.  It requires us going places that are more than just a little scary.

Excellent is about not accepting just good.  Don't give in just to achieve consensus.

If you accept good, you will never get excellent.

Cool is not the end goal.  Dressing in black doesn't mean you have better ideas.  It becomes the mask that many hide behind to avoid being truly original.  Resist the urge to dress like the "creative's" within your job category (e.g. black for designers, jeans/t-shirts for web types, etc).  If your willing to compromise to dress like others, are you willing to compromising your vision/ideas/creativity?

Be honest .... Are you spending time looking at your competitors and focusing on how to create "cool" products/services like them?   Who owns the definition of cool?  If you are focusing on the others to define cool, then its obviously not you.

Here is a radical idea ... Why not try being un-cool?  You might find yourself defining the new hit thing.

Cool is conservative fear dressed in black.

We all fall into the trap of complaining.  When it comes to complaints, you have one of two choices.  You can continue to complain and get more and more frustrated - or you can fix it.

Early in my career, I was involved with some of the early software companies here in the valley.  One of the biggest complains we had was around duplicating the disks (yes ... 5 1/4" floppies) that would go into our packaging.  Back in those days, we would hire high school kids to set in front of a PC and duplicate by hand.  The problem was that kids would be kids.  We would end up with blank disks (oops - forgot to stick than one in) to disks with prank software (remember: this was before virus scanning tools).

It seems that others had the same complaints and proposed the idea of creating an automatic disk duplicator.  The company was Mountain Computer (Scotts Valley, CA) and the product was ImageCopier (Code Name: McKinley).

I was so convinced that this was a complaint that I could and should fix, I signed up to be responsible for writing the software (as a contractor) while others designed the hardware.  In record time, we developed something that was a direct fix to the biggest frustrations for software companies .. the product went on to be the leading duplicator for many years.

My advice: fix what drives you (or your customers) crazy.  

Rule #1:  Share what you know and learn from others

I have found that best way for me to learn is to teach.  Take my podcast as an example.  I started it about three years ago with the mission to use it as a platform to mentor others in what I had learned/discovered over my career.  My original mentor (Bob Davis) gave me the foundation, guidance, feedback, tools, skills and direction I needed.  In return all he asked was that I mentor others later in my career.  To pay it forward. 

What I have gotten back from the podcast is much more than I have given.  The listeners have reached out and shared their ideas, their frustrations, what they have done to bring innovation to their organization and as a result I have learned from them.  The mentor becomes the mentee. 

Never become over confident and believe that you are "the" expert that everyone else should come to.  When that happens - stop what you are doing and go into a business you know nothing about.  Only then will you challenge your creativity muscle.

Are you following rule #1?

As we move from the information/knowledge economy to the creative economy, a new category of jobs will need to be created.  The new jobs will be critical to helping companies make the transition from the "old world" to the "new". 

For those of us who watched the "geezers" (anyone over 65 years old) struggle with the emergence of the information/knowledge economy, we can only guess what the transition will be to the creative economy.

So ... below is a sample job description of one possible role .....

Title:  Creativity Guru

Background: 

Once leading company finds itself in the uncomfortable position of loosing market share and profits as a result of little to no focus on creating products and services that matter to their customers.  The company felt that it could succeed by doing what they have always done.  They missed the transition to the creative economy and still doubt that there is such a shift underway.  They do acknowledge it needs to do something and therefor agrees to adopt this trend called "innovation" as the savior for the business.

Responsibilities (as defined by the company): 

Create products like Acme Industries, our chief competitor, that has taken the market leadership role,  so that we have the same profit margin and market cap.

Responsibilities (what it should be): 

Take long sabbaticals away from the office to ensure no undo influence from the "corporate anti-bodies".  Use these sabbaticals to immerse yourself into markets and customers and to find new, never before contemplated market opportunities.  Find those unspoken needs and wants.  Bring these ideas to the executive team and convince them on the viability and opportunity.  Don't take no for an answer.  Be the innovation champion.

 

If you were the hiring manager, what skills and experiences would you look for? 

Post your thoughts in the comments section.

Note:  I've invited my summer interns to write-up their thoughts/opinions/lessons learned from the summer experiment.  Below is the first post from Curtis ...

Phil

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Things I learned from Phil . . . .

1. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing , always produce, complete the assignments that you are given it may require work after hours but that is the price of success.
2. Never be too proud to ask for help.
3. Remember it doesn’t matter what you do at work or what your title is - you are yourself at home.
4. Some of the most historic deals in technology don’t happen in offices but at hole in the wall restaurants.
5. Wienerschnitzel is open till midnight!
6. Remember it doesn’t matter who you are or who your boss is - what ever mom says is law
7. Have fun tonight, but remember if you do something stupid I will bail you out of jail. We will have a talk and you don’t want to have that talk.
8. One of the most productive ways to get one intern to finish a project, have him share a room with and intern who snores… Really loud.
9. You can never have too many cables - who knows when old tech can come back in style
10. Just because you get a video games doesn’t mean you will have any time to play it
11. Do your best

The ultimate objective of any innovation is to transform business and transform lives.  How do you know if your innovation is of that transformational kind?  Here are my definitions that I use for the different stages/types of business:

• If you charge for undifferentiated stuff, then you are in the commodity business.
• If you charge for distinctive/differentiated tangible things, then you are in the goods business.
• If you charge for the activities you perform, then you are in the service business.
• If you charge for the time customers spend with you, then and only then are you in the experience business.
• If you charge for the benefit customers (or "guests") receive as a result of spending that time, you are in the transformation business.

I would argue that to win in the market, you need to aim your innovation efforts towards creating a transformational business.

So ...

1. Which business type are you operating under?
2. What innovations would you need to create to re-define your business?

For Thanksgiving, we went to San Diego to visit family.  While there, we spent a day working in the fire area helping families who were impacted during the recent wild fires.  We met up with the same team (Camp Hope) I worked with during Katrina (photo, podcast).  It was yet another humbling experience ....

At the base camp, a number of major corporations stepped up and helped including Tide (Tide's Load Of Hope).   Families that are impacted can drop off their clothes and Tide will wash, dry and fold.  You can't under estimate the impact of having clean clothes to help you get back into the regular rhythm of daily living and re-building.

My "day job" donated laptops with broadband access donated by Globcomm (thanks guys!!) to provide a cyber cafe for residents to sign-up for benefits, pay bills and stay in contact with loved ones.  The Cyber Cafe has also been popular with state and local groups helping with the rebuilding.

The area (Ramona, CA) suffered the largest loss of homes (+400).  The fire traveled up a creek bed (far right picture) and destroyed all of the homes that were along the creek.  During my time with the group, we spent the day cutting up the frame left from a burnt-out trailer.  The owner of the trailer we were working on, an 80 year old woman, was under insured, lost everything and has no ability to re-build. 

Many believe the San Diego fires are over .... there not.  There is a need for volunteers to help the people of Romona rebuild.  If you want to volunteer, call 703-368-6286 and tell them Phil sent you .....

I will be back in San Diego the week between Christmas and New Years and I will be volunteering again.  If you want to join me, drop me an email at podcast (at) killerinnovations (dot) com.

Articles on the San Diego fire and the volunteer work still going on there ....

Union Tribune: Fire Victims Can Find Food, Laundry on Church Grounds

Ramona Sentinel: CIA May Be Best Secret In Town

If you are a regular reader of the blog and/or listener of the podcast, your familiar with the basic foundation of the Killer Innovations approach is to define the area of focus for an innovation and then ask the "right question" (If you are not, go have a listen).  I've covered the topic of killer question but what I haven't addressed much is how to define and describe the innovation focus so that the team can comprehend the challenge yet be open to create the breakthrough. 

Let's say you have a team that tasked with developing some new ideas/products that your company can sell around a computer mouse.  How do you challenge the team to breakout and come up with something that is truly radical?

The typical approach would be to look at existing products in the market and then tweak the aesthetics.  Fairly mundane and the results are me-to products.  However, if one takes a few steps back and looks at the task in a broader sense, the challenge changes considerably.  For example:

1. design a mousepad (MUNDANE)
2. design of a new environment to work a mouse in (INTERESTING)
3. design of a new hands-based computer control interface (CHALLENGING)

With (1), the team is very much fixed by the immediate product that interacts with the mousepad- the mouse. Solutions are likely to be based on the stereotyped existing product- a flat shaped surface that allows smooth mouse movement.

With (2), opportunities arise where the team can explore how the mouse is used and provide solutions that do not necessarily involve the mouse being flat on a table, or even on anything at all. Note that with (2), the team is still tied down by having to design around a stereotypical mouse.

In the case of (3), the team is left with a great deal of freedom and can design a system which redefines the environment between the user and machine.

So, if you were going to construct the "challenge" for the team, which do you believe would get you a killer idea that would be game changing?

Some tricks/tools in writing an "innovation focus" statement:

• abstract your current products/services (mouse = method to controlling a PC)
• validate the scope (current method to control a computer = hand or something broader)
• write and re-write the focus statement
• test and re-test the focus statement as way to ensure while giving guidance
• repeat - abstract it further and repeat the process . . .

In this weeks issue of BusinessWeek's In Innovation special report, there is an article on my "day job".  The photo above appears in the article and is of Rahul Sood, Founder of Voodoo, and myself ....

The article gives a good overview of how large corporation's can use start-up's to influence their innovation culture.

Probably the most notable quote in the article is . . . .

Their new strategy is innovation via absorption—and that's very hard to do. "It's difficult to infuse the acquirer's culture with the target's culture," says Saikat Chaudhuri, a Wharton School assistant professor of management who's followed the tactic for a decade. Even HP's McKinney admits: "Companies have to realize this isn't a quick fix. It isn't business process re-engineering. This is a fundamental shift in the culture of an organization."

HP has embraced many kinds of innovation in recent years. The acquisition of Compaq, for example, changed the nature of its business. Hurd's move to raise efficiency and cut costs changed its many processes. Now, it's inciting a cultural change. And the company that began as the prototypical story of two guys experimenting in a garage is trying to see the world through the fresh eyes of a startup. Again.

Read more . . .

Change is inevitable but it doesn't always have to be a surprise.  When we become comfortable in our position (industry structure, market leadership, etc), we open the door for change to catch us by surprise.   How do you keep your eye's open?  By scanning the areas of possible change .... and planning for the unlikely ....

• Long range changes in growth
• Changes in buyer segments served
• Buyer learning
• Reduction of uncertainty
• Diffusion of proprietary knowledge
• Accumulation of experience
• Expansion (or contraction) in scale
• Product, marketing and/or process innovation
• Structural changes in adjacent industries
• Government policy changes
• Entries and exits

If you want to explore and plan for change:

1. For each of the areas of change, list the extreme case if the change became a reality - both positive and negative.
2. From that list, determine the impact to your business/career.
3. Then develop strategies/responses that will optimize the benefit and/or minimize the negative impact

You may not be ready for every possible outcome .. but you will be better prepared when change happens ...

The question for you:  Are there other areas of change that should be added to the list?