The Daily Innovator

Dump innovative now!

A hat tip to The Innovation Insider for this post confirming the basic uselessness of the word "innovative."  Long ago, I advised colleagues, clients and audiences to stop using this word because it was essentially meaningless.  CEOs and executives make their companies sound more interesting and attractive by spicing up their speeches, annual reports and web sites with descriptions of so-called "innovative" initiatives and projects.  All too often, these efforts are nothing more than yesterday's ideas repackaged as new or different.  Moreover, when everything from audio/video equipment, to consulting solutions, to food, to pavement can be described as "innovative," how can we effectively calibrate our understanding?

My advice:  rather than trying to be "innovative," be about innovation.  You can't change your organization's future with adjectives, but you will with action.

Join the iPod Economy!

Check out this great post on the Church of the Customer Blog about the wedding photographers who now offer what they call "iPod Proofs" to newlywed couples.  What a fantastic idea!  (I actually like Ben's suggested name better, but it is still a great idea.) 

At the Arizona Heart Institute, doctors are using video iPods to communicate with and educate patients.  (You can access the Institute's podcast site here.) 

These are just two examples of how organizations are using iPods either to create new market opportunities and/or create new value for customers.  How can your organization join the iPod Economy?

Quotations to innovate by #37

Here's another great quotation to inspire your work today!  Tim is absolutely right, of course.  The question is whether we will choose to think about our work in this way, as well as convince others to do the same.  If innovation naysayers are left with no alternative but to reframe their own thinking, we've made a step in the right direction!

"Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems."                               
                                                                    —Tim Brown, CEO, Ideo

(From Fast Company First Impression newsletter)

Will you ask the bold question?

Just wanted to make TDI readers aware of a post I made to the PCMA 2006 Philadelphia Weblog that should be of interest.  I'm serving as blogmaster for PCMA's Annual Meeting, and my hope is that the meeting's attendees will have the courage to ask the bold question.  I hope you do as well. 

Write a letter to the future...

I just came across a site called FutureMe.org where you can send an e-mail to yourself in the future.  My recommendation is that you register for the site so you can update your e-mail address if necessary.  You have the option of marking your e-mail as either public or private, and you can read the messages that others post publicly.  Some of these e-mails are quite interesting and even touching.  (Please note that not all message are workplace safe.)

There is nothing remarkable about this tool in terms of its underlying technology, but I still think it is quite useful.  As a daily innovator, you can use this site to inspire yourself and your team to think ahead about what is possible in your organization. To get started, let me suggest you and your team write FutureMe e-mails about the big ideas you have for your work, your department or your organization.  Schedule the e-mails to arrive in three months and arrange to meet at that time to discuss how much progress you've made in implementing those ideas.  This is just one of many possible applications for catalyzing the work of innovation. Please share your ideas for using the site here at TDI!

Very cool tool!

I discovered a very cool new tool called Springdoo yesterday.  Springdoo, which is based in New Zealand, lets you record e-mail messages by phone and send them to contacts.  The contact receives an e-mail  with a link that opens to a player you can customize with your photo and text.  You can create groups of up to 20 contacts each, with a maximum of 899 total contacts. You dial a toll-free number to record your message, and the cost is 29 cents per minute (US) for the call. 

I see all kinds of interesting applications for Springdoo. Let me know what you think about it.  I look forward to your thoughts!

Best practices: Enemies of Innovation

Okay everybody, we need to get something straight:  your organization will never achieve genuine innovation by focusing on best practices.  Yet leaders today just love best practices, probably because they seem easier, safer and less time consuming than original thinking.  In truth, however, best practices are nothing but fading copies of once great ideas, pale imitations of past originality.

My advice to you:  look around your organization and try to identify the so-called best practices in use.  Once you've done that, make every effort to erradicate those eroding approaches by developing new, creative solutions that seriously consider the changing, unmet or unseen needs of the customer.  The battle against best practices can be a wellspring of innovation if you're willing to fight it. 

My question in Fast Company

I received the October issue of Fast Company yesterday and, as I always do when it arrives, I sat right down and paged through it.  It looks like a great issue, especially the excerpt from the new book, The Ten Faces of Innovation, by The Art of Innovation author Tom Kelley of IDEO.  The book comes out in mid-October and I'm certain I'll be talking about it here on TDI.  In fact, I expect to be posting on the FC article within the next week or so.

(Before I continue with my primary story, I want to share a brief anecdote about my experience with Tom, with whom I did an interview back in 2001.  He is a really nice guy, and we had an excellent conversation.  In the course of our interview, Tom asked me if I had ever read the book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving With Grace by the late Gordon MacKenzie.  I told him that I hadn't, and he strongly suggested I pick it up.  When I returned to the office a few days later, there was a package from Tom.  He had sent me the book as a gift.  I was very impressed by this gesture and I've tried to honor his gift to me by giving copies of Orbiting--a truly great book---to friends and colleagues over the last few years.)

But I digress.  So my wife came home from work and began flipping through FC herself, when she unexpectedly discovered my name on page 14.  Needless to say, I was surprised, particularly since I had just been through the magazine once myself.  It's not a big deal...they've paraphrased a question I posted to FC NOW during BlogJam 2005, in which I participated last month.  (The link above takes you to post that includes the question.)  I'm flattered that my question was included, but I wish it had not been separated from its context.   Anyway, I suggest you read this post and let me know what you think. 

The power of questions

On the Fast Company blog yesterday, Doug Sundheim has a superb post on the value of questions.  Here is the crux of the post, and the part I really love:

Questions, not answers, are the seeds of success. Someone focused on answers says, "This is the way." Someone focused on questions asks, "Is there a better way?" Questions force you to explore - to stretch, to learn, to grow, and to be creative. Answers let your mind go to sleep. You get lazy when you think you've found the answer. You haven't. And you never will because things always change. To stay vibrant and relevant, keep living the questions.

As a DI, it is imperative that you live in and with the questions that capture your imagination.  Your questions are precious gifts to the cause of innovation.  From the well-considered question can emerge extraordinary insight and enormous opportunity, even when there are no definitive answers.  Organizations tend to prefer answers, of course, so you must be steadfast in asking questions in the presence of your colleagues and even your bosses to make sure they don't end valuable inquiry prematurely.  In those difficult moments, try to remember Doug's words.

Does this happen in your organization?

From the Dilbert website, the cartoon from September 14, 2005:

TDIs don't let naysayers blame others for failure.  Indeed, TDIs challenge naysayers to be open and courageous in examining how failure occurs and what can be learned from it, even if it requires difficult self-examination.  In your role as a board chair, CEO or team/department leader, it is critical that you not allow the questioning and reflection skills of your colleagues to atrophy from lack of use.  Indeed, you should be the questioner-in-chief, asking the hard questions, not only about failure but also about success.  And you should make reflection a genuine priority, because it is often through learning from reflection that the most unusual and intriguing new ideas emerge.