Archive for August, 2010

Captain Jack Sparrow’s Lessons on Innovation

Friday, August 27th, 2010

The Academy Award®-winner movie  “The Pirates of the Caribbean”  is one of the top blockbusters of the industry. If you didn’t watch the movie, do yourself a favor and go see it after reading this article! Featuring a world-class soundtrack, breathtaking special effects and famous actors like Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp, the movie tells a compelling story of love, adventures and, of course, pirates!

Additionally, if you look more closely, the movie also features some insightful lessons on innovation from Captain Jack Sparrow himself.

Let’s begin.

Lesson #1: Set clear & ambitious goals combined with a plan that’s easy to remember.

Without clear goals you’re easily lost. If you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, how do you expect to innovate? This seems common sense, but many companies today are so desperately trying to innovate that they forget what they’re trying to reach. Remember that innovation isn’t the end of the journey. Companies famous for innovation don’t publish a new innovative product and say: “Finally we’ve reached our goal!” No. They say: “Great job everyone. Now, what’s next?”. For these companies innovation it’s about the journey itself.

In the first movie of The Pirates of the Caribbean triology, Captain Jack Sparrow had a simple goal: “Become the captain of the Black Pearl.” Now you must understand, that Jack Sparrow used to be THE captain of the Black Pearl. At least until the crew mutinied and left him alone in a desert island. Alone with a gun that had only one bullet. This could be easily a major setback for anyone. But not for Jack Sparrow. He positively had no trace of doubt in his mind, that he would, once again, become the captain of The Black Pearl.

The plan? “Recruit a crew, steal a ship and go after the Black Pearl.” Simple and easy to remember.

Lesson #2: Use your resources wisely!

If you had unlimited access to resources, like time and money, the only limit for innovation would be your ability to use your creativity to create something of great value to a customer. Unless this is your case, you have to learn to use your resources wisely!

Don’t wait for the perfect conditions to set sail because they will never come. You’re just making excuses for not shipping. “Let’s talk things over.” That’s what we say to our family, friends and mentors before deciding if it’s the right time to launch a new business or a new product. However, we’re not searching for ways to make it work. We’re searching for ways to make it go away. Besides, if you don’t decide to do it, you won’t fail, right?

Take a lesson from Jack Sparrow. In the beginning of the “Curse of the Black Pearl” he barely reaches the local port with his little ship sinking. He had nothing besides his know-how and his will to win. Do you think that he sat down waiting for “the perfect conditions to arrive” or for “the right resources to appear”? NO! He knew his goals and his plan, so he went finding the resources he needed to make it happen.

Having limited resources isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing because it makes you focus on what you have, instead on what you don’t have. It’s also a great way to spark your creativity, which is an essential ingredient for innovation. Creativity comes when you absolutely need to solve a problem using the available tools.

Lesson #3: You’re going to fail!

What you do about failure is what makes you a success or a failure. If you’re trying to innovate, you are walking paths that few people have dared to take. And there’s a good reason for it. They are all afraid to fail! If you’re not failing, chances are that you’re not really achieving the best levels of innovation that you could be.

When something fails, you have a great opportunity to understand what went wrong and what you can do about it so it won’t happen again. It’s called learning experience for a reason. It’s also a good time to go back to your initial plan and make the necessary adjustments. The plan that started your journey and got you here, doesn’t have to be the same that will got you to your goals. Especially if your plan failed.  Sea conditions change. Wind changes. So should you. Adapt and move on.

Things will go wrong. That’s just part of life and a part of business. But the only way that you’re going to fail is if you quit. Watch any Pirates of the Caribbean movie and count how many times Jack Sparrow was caught and went to jail or worse.  How many times he faced near death experiences? Now, count how many times he decided to quit?

I understand that this is so easy to write and to watch in a big screen movie, but so hard to do. However, I do know that it’s also the key to innovate and win. Ask any great successful innovators. From Steve Jobs to Richard Branson. Ask them how many times they thought about quiting. It wouldn’t surprise me if they said a few times. Things get tough in business. But they still didn’t quit and they succeed!

So can you.

Lesson #4: Follow your passion

Jack Sparrow had one very special tool with him at all times. A compass. At first sight, it would seem like a broken compass. What’s the use for a compass that doesn’t point North? But you’re not trying to find North, are you? Jack Sparrow’s compass pointed to the thing that guided his journey: it pointed to the thing he wants most! It pointed to his passion!

It’s very hard to innovate in something that you’re not passionate about. This is true because with innovation comes a lot of hard work. If something hasn’t be done before you have a lot of things to complete. You’ll need determination, heart and discipline to do all the hard work before you begin to see the final results. Don’t fool yourself by thinking that all that it takes to innovate is to have a brilliant idea. An idea is the start not the end. The really hard work comes with the idea implementation. To make it happen.

Passion is the main motivator behind the greatest innovators of all time. Not money. Of course, that no one is in business to lose money. Money exists to measure the applause you get by the innovations you create, not to be the main goal of your efforts.

Lesson #5: Perfection is the enemy of innovation.

You don’t need the perfect ship. You don’t need the perfect crew. You don’t need the perfect weather conditions. What you do need is to get going!

If I didn’t follow this advice, the article that you’re reading right now, wouldn’t exist. (If I tried to perfect the article until the very last possible detail was covered, perhaps you wouldn’t even remember what the Pirates of the Caribbean movie was.) Do you think that the iPhone is a perfect product? Of course not. But is there such a thing as a perfect product? No. If Steve Jobs delayed the iPhone shipping the competition would beat him to the market. By the time he published the iPhone it would become obsolete. How many times someone has shipped something that you’ve already thought of? And you know why they did it? Very simple. Because they worked, they shipped and you did not.

What’s considered to be a curve jumping, paradigm shifting and world changing innovation today, isn’t necessarily true tomorrow. The pace of change today, fueled by constant technology breakthroughs, is unprecedented. In this kind of environment, time-to-market is a very important concept to understand if you want to innovate. Jack Sparrow knew this.  Steve Jobs knows this.  And so should you!

Be true to yourself. One of the reasons that you seek perfection is to find yet another excuse for not shipping. “Who wants to ship a good product? If we’re shipping anyway, then let’s ship perfection.” That doesn’t exist and you know it. You’re just too afraid to ship something that others will criticize. That’s understandable. Many people find fault like there was a reward for it. But if you’re more worried about the opinions of critics than worried about creating a world changing innovation, you’re in big trouble. No matter what you do. No matter how good your product is. It won’t be perfect for everybody. And that’s OK! If you’re try to please everybody you’ll destroy what makes your product different!

This happens all the time with Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean. He’s not worried about finding the perfect ship, the perfect crew and the perfect opportunity. He’s even less worried about what others think about him. However, he’s extremely focused on achieving his goals!

A great innovator called Henry Ford once said: “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” Don’t try to build a perfect product in one take. Improve it as you move towards your goals! Just get going!

Conclusion

In this article, I’ve showed you five simple but critical lessons for innovation, inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean story main character: Jack Sparrow.

Jack Sparrow was a pirate that, like every innovator, challenged the status quo all the time. This comes with a price: you’ll upset people in the process. Innovation involves change and the status quo hates change. An interesting question for you to ask yourself, to determine if you’re innovating is: “Who am I upsetting?” If the answer is no one, you’re not really innovating.

I really hope that you can take a few of Jack Sparrow’s lessons to heart and change the world!

-Bruno Coelho

Bruno Coelho is a Portuguese entrepreneur who loves Marketing, Innovation, Leadership, Customer Service and Entrepreneurship.  Read more from him at  http://bcoelho2000.blogspot.com” and find him on Twitter at @bcoelho2000

Photo Credit: Richard Winchell

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Build an Innovation Portfolio

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

One of the important ideas that follows from managing innovation as a process is that to be successful at it, you need to manage a portfolio of different innovation initiatives. This means that you need to have a mix of incremental and radical innovation ideas. One good way of building an innovation portfolio is to use the three horizons model.

The three horizons model was first published in The Alchemy of Growth by Merhdad Baghai, Stephen Coley, and David White in 1999. The fundamental idea behind the model is that we need to be thinking about innovation across three time frames. Sheldon Laube recently wrote a good post on this model as well, which included a nice visualization of the model, which I have adapted slightly here:

three horizons

When you innovate using the three horizons framework, the first horizon involves implementing innovations that improve your current operations, horizon two innovations are those that extend your current competencies into new, related markets, and horizon three innovations are the ones that will change the nature of your industry. In general, H1 innovations tend to be incremental, while H3 are more often radical innovations. There are several key ideas that arise when using the three horizons model.

The first is that you must have innovation efforts aimed at all three time horizons. If you only look at the exciting transformative H3 innovations, you’ll lose business to current competitors who are using incremental innovations to improve their operations. Consequently, you might have the best ideas for the future, but you’re no longer around to execute them. On the other hand, if you only focus on H1 incremental innovations that make your current business better, you’ll end up being replaced by organisations that are driving disruptive innovations in your field. Using the three horizons framework helps us balance our innovation efforts between incremental and radical, which is important.

Google basically uses a version of this model. Here is how Dave Girouard – President, Enterprise of Google describes it:

Girouard concedes that not every idea may bear fruit, but says there is internally a “formula” to assess new ideas. “We have a 70/20/10 model which Sergey Brin came up with several years ago, which is 70 per cent of our efforts are to be focused on our core business, 20 per cent should be focused on related but new areas that we’re developing off of that, and 10 per cent we should reserve for ‘crazy’ ideas, some of which may turn into great advancements and many of which may not pan out at all,” he adds.

The second issue is that horizon 2 is incredibly difficult to manage. H2 innovations seem very similar to your current products and services, and the overpowering temptation is to use the same metrics to assess their success. However, because these ideas are new, it takes time to get them configured effectively. This means that if you treat H2-oriented innovations just like H1-oriented innovations, you are likely to abandon them too quickly because it will seem like they’re not performing well. You have to figure out a way to ringfence H2 innovation efforts.

The final point is that people often mistake the three horizons model for a planning tool – it isn’t. John and I have talked about this before (here and here, to start with)- this is one of the critical mistakes people make when applying this tool. The Alchemy of Growth’s version includes a time scale, which makes it look like H3 ideas are only those that will become important in 5+ years. This isn’t really true – the time will depend on how turbulent your market is. If you are in a media industry at the moment, H3 innovation is required right now!

If you keep these three points in mind, the three horizons framework can be very useful in helping you develop a robust innovation portfolio.

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Preserving Dignity to Drive Creativity

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Brainstorms at INDEX: Views

We’ve all had the nightmares in one form or another.  You find yourself at a podium and you forgot what your speech was about.  Or you are at the office and realize that you aren’t wearing any pants.  These nightmares are powerful reminders of our deep seated fear of exposing ourselves to the judgment of our peers, and the associated loss of dignity when we feel we are not prepared to face that exposure.

Now think about the way many companies solicit new ideas from their employees.  In their quest to remove constraints to encourage the flow of ideas, they can inadvertently set up a similar situation in which employees are expected expose their ideas to the judgment of their peers without any way to prepare themselves for the exposure.

People who facilitate workshops, brainstorms and ideation sessions understand this, and take great pains to establish a “safe” environment in which people can feel free to contribute thoughts and not be judged personally.  Yet, what is missing are any tools to enable people to prepare themselves for the exposure.

Rather than removing constraints to solicit new ideas, a better strategy would be to provide clear direction for what successful ideas would achieve.  Humans are natural problem-solvers.  When they clearly understand a challenge, their brains will be continually working in the background to solve it.  They will be able to build a rationale for their own ideas, and provide better support for others’ ideas.  Enabling people to prepare themselves to expose new ideas will go much farther than putting them in an environment that is superficially safe.  It will preserve their dignity.

“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.” Oscar Wilde

In setting a clear direction that will encourage new ideas it is easy to either make it too broad, like a company mission statement, or too narrow, such as a specific definition of what needs to be done.  It needs to stretch far enough to solicit ideas that are not basic variations on existing solutions, yet not so far that people can’t critically evaluate the merit of a solution.  While the right direction will differ for each company and industry, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind to make sure it will work for you.

Present the direction as a problem that, if solved, will add value to the company

Posing problem statements is a good way to set the tone to solicit new ideas.  As mentioned before, people are natural problem-solvers.  This helps to establish a balanced environment of creative problem-solving and critical thinking; a good recipe for generating new ideas that may actually work!

Posing problems also helps people to self-critique, so that the ideas presented to broader groups have already passed at least one filter as to whether they are worth pursuing.  It encourages critique that is based on objective rationale, rather than personal preference.

Pose a problem that is market focused

Most companies have a steady stream of ideas for how to do what they are already doing, but better.  However, market-focused problems are the ones that will lead to solutions for new offerings.  The onus is on company leadership to guide the direction of these problems, as this direction is a direct expression of how the company has strategically chosen to compete in the market.  For example, a good market-focused challenge would be “How do we provide a banking experience that is both secure and convenient?”, as opposed to an operationally-focused challenge such as “How do we use fewer buttons on the front of the ATM?”

Use brainstorming and other techniques to iterate solutions and the problem

Using idea generation sessions as a forum to present, critique, and build ideas often results fewer, more solid ideas than open-ended sessions.  It also sets the tone for continual improvement and building upon ideas, resulting in more collaborative participation.  In addition, more iterative sessions will allow facilitators to examine the scope of the solutions presented, and decide whether the challenge should be broadened or narrowed for future sessions.

Preservation of dignity is a fundamental human motivation.  Admitting it could be the cause of stifled creative pursuits is itself an exposure most would rather avoid.  By setting clear direction for idea generation leaders can pave the way for creative contributions that avoid the nightmare of exposure and add great value in return.

Photo Credit: @boetter

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Innovations Begin When the System Is Stuck

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

All great innovations emerge out of rigidity. They are born when someone recognizes that the system – the company, the industry, the country – has frozen and can no longer react to new opportunities or threats. When this rigid state appears in the business world, what you see is a company that is stuck in an old perspective. The competition is also stuck in the old frame, and so are the industry experts, customers, distributors. This state persists until someone with sufficient discontent recognizes the hidden opportunity in the frozen system.

Thus the starting point to innovate is to recognize when the system has fallen so far into a state of rigidity that the time is ripe for a new order of things and thus challenge the rigidity with a new idea. Doing this is not easy. Most rigidity comes not from physical limitations but from mental ones that are harder to recognize and harder to dissect.

Recognizing when the system is stuck

You can learn to understand stuck-ness. Start by familiarizing yourself with the two mental dynamics that characterize the condition, and then analyze your situation to see whether one or both exists. It may be your company or your competition that exhibits these dynamics, in either case you need to understand what is happening.

  • The system is stuck in a set of beliefs that prevent people from seeing change as possible.
  • The system is living in a story that leads people to inaction.

If you or your competition is experiencing one or both of these dynamics, the current climate is ripe for innovation.

Change is constant, nothing ever stays the same

Because we are susceptible to a natural human tendency to become trapped in beliefs, assumptions, attitudes, identities, or habits we fail to see the need for change. As we grow we start learning to respond to familiar situations unconsciously in the same way we’ve done before, the same thing happens to companies. And when our beliefs, assumptions, attitudes and identities prove false and prevent us from realizing a goal or solving a problem, they become traps. We fall into traps when we stop questioning something and simply accept it.

So then innovations begin when someone questions what others have accepted as ‘the way things are’.

A recent profile by BusinessWeek of BankSimple founder Josh Reich paints a picture:

Ask Josh Reich about banks, and he’s quick to tell you they “suck.” Traditional banks, Reich says, have become giant tangles of computer systems that can’t talk to each other and can scarcely keep track of their customers. So the 32-year-old developed what he calls BankSimple, an alternative bank with “the agility and mindset of a tech company.”

The idea is to provide a bank experience more akin to Twitter than to Chase, with a notification system for debit transactions. After every swipe of a BankSimple card, a message will pop up on the customer’s phone showing the amount charged and the balance—which serves both as a record-keeping tool and an instant fraud alert.

Other examples abound of innovators that recognized the system was stuck and chose to challenge it: Apple’s iPod challenged the belief that music labels would never allow their music to be downloaded, Dell challenged the belief that computer buyers needs hands-on help from retailers before they are willing to buy.

In conclusion, almost any meaningful innovation emerges when someone is dissatisfied with the way things are, recognizes rigidity and brings forth sufficient discontent to question the established system.

Ask yourself: What do I think sucks and how can I do it better?

Photo Credit: Tim Ove

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