Last Friday, I sat down with Brian Caulfield (Senior Technical Writer at Forbes.com) to discuss the killer questions and the card deck.

Enjoy . . .

Forbes Interview:  Killer Questions

“Creating Killer Innovations” presentation given at Maker Faire on May 30th. 

To view the presentation, click in the presentation window then the “right arrow” at the lower right to advance the content.

The tool used to create the presentation is Prezi.  It allows you to break “free” from the constraints of the typical presentation format.  If you give it try, tell Paul and Adam where you heard about it . . . .

I was asked a few months ago by Makers Faire to share the "how" of creating killer innovations. For those of you not familiar with Makers Faire, its the largest festival devoted to DIY culture and technology in the country showcasing individual creativity and grassroots innovation.  The logistics just got finalized so I apologize for the late notice to those of you in the Bay Area.   

The logistics are:

Date: Saturday, May 30^th

Time: 1:30PM to 2:00PM

Location: San Mateo Events Center – Fiesta Hall - Stage A

Tickets are required ... get them early as they sell out!

The topic description as it appears on the Makers Faire site ... as written by PR/marketing people ;-) ...

Title: Creating Killer Innovations

Description:

Innovation is a key catalyst for economic recovery, yet some find it elusive. As Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for HP’s Personal Systems Group, Phil McKinney sees daily examples of the breadth of human ingenuity to solve social, economic, political and even technical challenges. McKinney is passionate about tapping that human ingenuity to deliver great results and is regularly sought out to guide teams to unleash their own creative potential. In this presentation, McKinney will share the “how” of unleashing your own personal creativity.  One example that he will share is the turning points in his own R&D team’s journey to identify and create a whole new way for computers to interact with the world’s population -- ways that involve natural human expression with nary a keyboard or mouse in sight. Attendees leaving his presentation will discover a renewed level of confidence in their own ability to create the next killer innovation while organizations will have the confidence that they can compete and win in the emerging creative economy.

The link to the main site at Makers Faire is: http://www.makerfaire.com/

The link to my specific session is: http://makerfaire.com/pub/e/2862

If you attend, make sure to "say hi" ....

Note for those living outside the Bay Area:  The presentation will be recorded for future release on the podcast (audio and possibly video)

Is there really a physical deck of killer questions? Yes – there really is a killer question card deck. My printed (original)deck contains about 50 questions (as you see in the picture). 

What was the motivation?  I’ve been fortunate to be part of teams that created some great products.  During my 1st retirement (1999-2001), I was asked by a number people “how did I come up with the ideas?”.  I never really thought about the “how” – it just seemed to happen … so I spent three years reverse engineering how breakthrough innovations are conceived and launched. 

What role does questions play in creating breakthrough innovations?  What I found during my research was that the quality of the innovation is directly tied to the quality of the pool ideas (no big surprise).  The key to improving the quality of the ideas is to improve the quality of the questions being asked during ideation (the big aha!).  What my research also discovered was that there are set of common questions that come up over and over again as being key to breakthrough innovations.  Those are the questions in the deck.

After spending +3 years developing the original questions and now +6 years of using them, what have you learned?  After 100’s of workshops and brainstorming sessions using the killer questions, I’m convinced that anyone can improve their ability to create better ideas by asking the right questions. 

Have you added new questions since you created the original deck? I’ve added another 25 or so that are in my moleskin but not yet fully integrated into the deck.  If you have questions you would like to suggest, email them to me.

Is the deck available for download?  Not yet … I’m in the middle of an update to make it easier to select the “right” question based on the innovation value you are looking to achieve.  Until then, your best option is to subscribe to the twitter feed.

Do you have a favorite killer question?

Killer Question #38: What makes my product hard to use?

Have you ever wondered what life was like before battery powered power tools?  I’m a nut for tools … drills, saws, nail guns … you name it, I want it.  I remember as a kid helping my dad do odd jobs around the house.  The biggest hassle was dragging power cords around to power the tools.  When my dad purchased an early version of the batter powered drill, I thought nirvana had arrived.

Do you know the history of this innovation?  It all started in April of 1969 when Makita deliver their soltution to the hassel of powering drills by launching the 6500D battery-powered drill as the first rechargeable power tool. 

Makita didn’t rest there.  They have remained focused on a creating a series of innovations that helped reduce or eliminate the hassle of of using power tools for both construction works and do-it-yourselfers like me.  These string of innovations include:

• April, 1969 - 6500D battery-powered drill  as the first rechargeable power tool.
• Dec 1978 - 6010D rechargeable drill  as the first nickel cadmium battery tool
• Feb 1981 - AN5000 pneumatic nailer and AC6001 air compressor as the first air power tools
• Aug 1997 - 6213D rechargeable driver-drill  as the first nickel hydride battery tool
• Feb 2005 - TD130D as the first to use Lithium-ion battery

Talk about focus and leadership by answering just one question …

What makes my product hard to use?

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Source: Makita company site

“Innovation” died in 2008, killed off by overuse, misuse, narrowness, incrementalism and failure to evolve. It was done in by CEOs, consultants, marketeers, advertisers and business journalists who degraded and devalued the idea by conflating it with change, technology, design, globalization, trendiness, and anything “new.”

I agree (previously mentioned in the August 27, 2006 Killer Innovations podcast on the Corporate Corruption Of Innovation).  I don’t agree that the next thing is “transformation”.  Bruce puts forth the rational behind transformation as:

It implies radical transformation of our systems—education, health-care, economic growth, transportation, defense, political representation. It puts the focus on people, designing networks and systems of their wants and needs. It relies on humanizing technology, not imposing technology on humans. It approaches uncertainties with a methodology that creates options for new situations and sorts through them for the best quickly.

In stead, I would put forward that we need to focus on the key component that enables innovation and transformation – ingenuity. What is the difference?  A definition of innovation I like is:

Innovation is the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.

While the definition of ingenuity is:

Ingenuity is the power of creative imagination; the quality of being cleverly inventive or resourceful; inventiveness

Ingenuity is the key ingredient to creating innovation.  Ingenuity is the smallest element of innovation … the spark that starts it off.  Innovation is the outcome of applying an individuals ingenuity.

In my opinion, we are squashing ingenuity out of our students and workers.  We reward conformance in approach and doing well on tests.  Rote memorization is the skill of success rather than creative problem solving.

So, I would put forth that for 2009, we should focus on improving and nurturing individuals inherent ingenuity to create innovations.  We need to find ways to create incentives for individuals to use their ingenuity to solve social and economic issues while also creating products and services that improve our lives.

What incentives would you create if you were in charge of a business or government?

Leonard filled dozens on notebooks, large and small with notes and drawings that record a half-century of projects, and experiments in the areas of art, technology, and science.  Leonardo’s notebooks are rarely neat and organized.  Seldom do they offer a coherent discussion of a single topic over sequential pages. 

Less than half of Leonardo’s notebooks has survived.  The ones that did survive offer incredible insight into his areas of interest and ability to document the smallest details of his experiments and ideas. 

Keeping a notebook to collect your ideas is key to growing your ability innovate.  Notebooks give you a way to look back and see your progress along with building your own personal idea pipeline.

In my case, my collection of notebooks (+20 years of ideas) is one of my most valuable possessions.

Are you keeping a notebook? 

When things get tough, the common reaction is to scale back and standardize the processes.  The objective is to take costs out of the business.  What would happened if you went the opposite direction?  Rather than standardize, why not customize?

The perfect example of this is the recent phenomena of custom motorcycles.  Like other forms of transportation, motorcycles are mass produced with the biggest choice being what color you want.

Paul Teutul, Sr. began his business of building custom choppers out of the basement of his home. With the creative help and following of his oldest son, Paul Jr., the two were soon on their way to the top with the success of Paul Sr.’s first bike, “True Blue” at Daytona Biketoberfest in 1999. From that point on, Paul Sr. knew he had something and established Orange County Choppers, Inc. that same year.

The Teutuls were quickly becoming recognized by chopper enthusiasts everywhere. They were not only making a name for themselves in the custom choppers world, but were picked up by the Discovery Channel in 2002 as the basis of what is now the hit television series, American Chopper. Their popularity has led them to build custom theme bikes for some of the biggest names in corporate America such as Microsoft, Lincoln and Coca-Cola.

Paul Sr took what many were convinced was a mass produced category and created one of the world’s premier builders of custom motorcycles.

What would happen if you customized your standard product or service.

To receive the weekly twit of killer questions, then follow on twitter....

Source: Orange Country Chopper site

After much much procrastination, we finally got around to getting a new logo developed (logoworks.com) .  We focused on keeping it simple and clean while also conveying what the podcast and site are all about.

Inspiring the readers and listeners to use their inherent ability to create breakthrough/killer innovations.

So .. what do you think?

Post/read comments over at killer innovations

Killer Question #54: What are the unshakable beliefs in my industry about what customers want?  What if the opposite where true?

Its easy when we are being successful to stick our heads in the sand and believe our own PR.  We can easily brush off minor threats with the argument that the customer wouldn't go for whatever was being offered.  We hold on to the belief that we know best what trade-offs they are not willing to make.  Be careful.  As soon as you start believing your PR and juicy rationalizations as to why you will continue to be successful, you are setting yourself up to fail.

Take the local phone company.  For many years, they held a monopoly providing phone service to consumers and businesses.  When the threat of the early VoIP (voice over IP) providers emerged, they discounted the risk saying that the customers wouldn't accept the "low quality" and "unreliability" of this new service.  They pointed to the poor audio quality of the early providers as one example of why they were not a threat.

What they failed to comprehend was that technology would improve (improved broadband speeds, better audio codecs, etc) and that a new business model could emerge which would present a tipping point for customers.  The net effect was that when these all came together, customers switched in mass because the quality was "good enough" and "price was right".  What emerged was a new competitor they were unprepared to compete against.  Such companies as Skype, Vonage and Comcast became the "new local" phone company.

While this was going on, the wireless operators came in and started taking away the local phone customers also.  How?  Customers recognized that the wireless service quality was "good enough" and that "mobility" was key given the changing lifestyle.

Its interesting to note that the phone companies came into existence because the telegraph companies turned down the invention of the phone.  They felt that there would be no need for phones as the telegraph worked just fine.

What was the blind spot for the local phone companies?  They had made some assumptions about their customers:

1. They would value superior quality (99.999% reliability). 
   • Customers were willing to trade-off quality for other things (price, mobility)
2. They had the best and brightest technologists and business thinkers and that smaller companies wouldn't be able to out innovate them. 
   • A handful of engineers in Europe created Skype ... enough said.
3. Nobody could do it cheaper. 
   • New business models such as free VoIP forced the industry to restructure to compete.
4. Government regulations would protect them as a monopoly. 
   • The 1996 Telecom Act was the crack these new competitors needed to compete.  Competition is good.

The lesson learned, be careful of your assumptions ...

To receive the weekly twit of killer questions, then follow on twitter....

When things go wrong with technology (like that never happens!), men and woman react differently.  When a piece of technology isn’t working as expected, guys will not give in.   Its an ego thing … the technology will not win.  They will fiddle with it, they will download a patch, they will check forums.  For men, there is a certain level of satisfaction that comes from conquering the challenge of “making” it work.

For woman, they have what I call the “three strike rule”.  The first time it doesn’t work, they are surprised.  The second time, they are annoyed.  The third time, its out.  Move it to the garage, put in the trash or take it back to the store.  They’re done with it.  Their motivation comes from the benefit the technology brings, not the technology itself.

Innovators who get this difference will jump on the idea of focusing their target customer to be woman.  Why?   Woman have a higher adoption bar, requiring that your team focus on ease of use and delivering true benefit that the customer values.

The other benefit, from this focus for technology companies, is that it forces the team to think beyond themselves.  Most R&D teams in technology companies are male dominated, given the mix of men and woman in engineering schools.  As a result, R&D teams typically fall into the trap of designing for themselves since they are missing the counter opinion on their teams.  With a focus on woman, it forces these team to get out of their cubes and engage their target customer.

The result is better products for all of us.

Xavier over at notebooks.com caught me on video and asked me to list what devices I was carrying with me at CES .  For those of you who are curious, enjoy.

Next time you see me, feel free to ask what I’m carrying … I just might surprise you.

Why the AEE is better than CES

The story I shared comes from my spending time most weekends in Best Buy watching people buy technology.  The “story” goes like this:

A husband and wife are standing in front of the wall of TV’s trying to figure out which they should buy.  The husband goes into “sell” mode by listing off the technical specifications (50”, 3 HDMI connectors, 4 ms refresh, etc) expecting that will be enough for her to be convinced.  The wife stands there, listens and looks at the options before finally make the simple comment of “..it doesn’t match the furniture”. 

Who wins?  The wife 100% of the time …

The lesson … Don’t assume you know who makes the decision when it comes to your customer buying your product or solution.

(Thanks Radiris and Michael)

' target=_blank>Link to video of CNET Supersession at CES

Design quickly becomes one of the key differentiators in highly competitive markets.  Furniture, fashion, architecture and products have benefited from a focus on design.  The standard belief is that if a product can be highly customized (a product of 1), then even a higher value can be extracted from the creative output.  The challenge is that this prices the item out of the reach of the average customer.

Target's (TGT ) changed all of that for the average consumer with their design-for-the-masses housewares by big name designers.  So how did Target transform what has been highly customized products for the rich and famous and bring it to the masses?

It all started when the company agreed to give money to support the renovation of the Washington Monument. But during an early visit to the site, executives were horrified to find the sacred Target logo was plastered next to rotting scaffolding and ripped plastic. After much brainstorming, Target decided to sponsor an architectural competition to build a scaffolding. The winner was a well-known architect named Michael Graves, who proposed an elegant, lighted structure made of flexible PVC foam.  Given the support that Target showed him for his design, Graves presented a stack of product designs "the size of a phone book."  and asked Target executives "Do you think Target would have any interest?".

Later that year Graves' iconic, affordable tea kettles and kitchen gadgets hit shelves. "People have within themselves a paradox," says Robyn Waters, a former Target executive who now runs consultancy RW Trend. "Fit in and belong, and also stand out and be unique." With Target's designer wares, shoppers could do both. The company followed up with "mass/class" collections by the likes of Philippe Starck and Todd Oldham, and started to market Target as a destination for design.

The moral of the story -- Don't be to quick to attach value/price/affordability to customer segments.  Everyone would love to have what has traditionally been out of reach.

Given your customer based, what do they have a desire for but cannot afford?

Source:  CNN