OnInnovation : Visionaries thinking out loud™

Low Tech Tools to Foster High Output Innovation Thinking

One of the questions often asked by those seeking to create a strong innovation culture is, “What are some good tools for engaging people across my organization?” Well the consultant in me would usually hedge his bets and would offer the universal response, “It depends.” But that is as singularly unsatisfying to say as it is to hear, so I mostly take a multiple alternative approach in the hopes of landing close to the targeted need. The first place I usually start is with some of the very lowest of low tech: playing cards, or their trading card equivalent. Why? Because they are fast, fun, revealing, and energizing in a way that is distinct from other more formal tools.

The idea of using playing cards in unique ways is not anything new. Did you know that there aren’t only four suites of playing cards? We all know the usual suspects of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades and Clubs. There are also fifth suit variants that introduced an additional suit. Depending the time, location and game being played these suits might have been, Royales, Eagles, Stars, Pentagons, Quotations, or even Aether. Some modified decks have additional face cards and additional numbered cards, too. In the United States of America, in 1895, a gentleman by the name of Hiram Jones created a deck called “International Playing Cards” and it had two additional suits, a red suit with crosses and a black suit of bullets. Innovation in playing cards has a long and storied history.

The interest expressed by many clients is focused on how to use standard cards in a unique manner. Marshall McLuhan, the noted advertising guru of the 20^th Century used a standard set of four-suit playing cards as the basis for his creative thought starter set, the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Card Deck. The namesake Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was an integrated chain of some 63 radar and communication stations, stretching across Arctic Canada at approximately the 69th parallel designed to provide advance warning of imminent air attack to Canada and the United States. The DEW Line was considered a perfect metaphor by McLuhan on the role of art and the artist at a time of rapid social and technological change and he repeated the idea frequently.

To the blind all things are sudden. -Quote on the Jack of Diamonds in Marshall McLuhan’s Distant Early Warning (DEW) Card Deck

To use the DEW line of cards, the instructions direct the player to think of a personal or business problem, shuffle the card deck, select a card and then apply its message to the problem. McLuhan intended the card deck to stimulate problem-solving and thinking, in a way that would come to be known as “thinking-outside-the-box”. Sadly, even given it’s somewhat anachronistic worldview, the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Card Deck is no longer available. Standard playing cards however have been repurposed by others more recently in the pursuit of improved innovation.

One great use of a modified standard playing card deck is the one developed by Stephen Shapiro. Shapiro, currently the Chief Innovation Evangelist for InnoCentive, developed his Innovation Personality Poker® system (www.steveshapiro.com) using the four major suits as substitutes for broad personality types. Bearing some similarity to other personality type systems, Shapiro’s model is targeted specifically at innovation practitioners.

In small and large-scale events Shapiro uses the Innovation Personality Poker® system to actively engage participants in discovering their personal innovation preferences. During the session participants exchange cards with each other and build a “poker hand” that reflects them closest. This promotes a lively exchange between participants and elevates the need to include diversity of personality and opinion on innovation teams.

The person you like the least may be the person you need the most. And your greatest strength may ultimately limit your success. -Stephen Shapiro, while leading an Innovation Personality Poker® session

More recently in innovation practices, standard playing cards have been supplanted by those that have similar qualities to trading cards. A prime example is the set of IDEO Method Cards named for their eponymous producer, the design powerhouse, IDEO. The IDEO Method Cards are positioned as, “51 ways to inspire design.” The deck contains 51 cards, each one different, and the cards are classified into four unequal “suits”. The suits are focused on ways to engage with people – human centric design is at the heart of the innovation design approach – and include: Ask (exercises for asking people to help in design), Look (observational exercises for gathering information for design), Learn (exercises for deriving insights from what has been observed), and Try (exercises for physically exploring design problems or proposed solutions).

Like the McLuhan cards, the IDEO cards are designed to trigger action and promote new and divergent thinking and exploration of ideas. There is no rigorous system for playing the cards, and there is no order or prescribed number of cards to use at a time. My experience has been that they are great to get teams “unstuck” when new ideas elude them, and are also great simple exercises for exploring those ideas we think we know intimately in new and unique ways.

The last set of cards to share are a more recent addition to the realm of card decks to be considered for innovation exploration. Stephen P. Anderson, of the site PoetPainter.com, has developed a set of cards he calls, Mental Notes. Of all the cards these are the most beautifully presented and packaged (not surprising given that Anderson is a phenomenal product and interaction designer.) Anderson’s Mental Notes are similar to the trading card style of the IDEO Method Cards in that each is unique. However their focus is more explores the life of the mind rather than the ethnographic focus of the IDEO cards. The Mental Notes cards are focused on a variety of insights into human behavior that inform design, psychology, neuroscience and behavioral economics.

Contrast: When scanning new visual information, we are unconsciously drawn to things that stand out against their surroundings. -Description on Mental Note Card, created by Stephen P. Anderson

As a firm believer in the power of human interaction in creating effective innovation cultures, I see Mental Notes as a powerful tool for exploring both impediments and points of leverage in organization culture. The better we understand the forces at play in organizations the easier it is to improve their receptivity to creativity and their subsequent innovation performance. Anderson’s cards are a great way for individuals and teams to identify and explore human behaviors at play in their organizations, their customers and, yes, even their competitors.

Now it might seem all fun and games exploring cards as tools for innovation but this is serious business. Anything that helps us experience the world anew should be of vital interest to those interested in improving their innovation performance.

Now, what cards are you playing?

Photo Credit: Incurable Hippie

One of the great, under-appreciated skills in the game of baseball is knowing how to manage a bullpen over the duration of a grueling, 162-game season. Knowing how to get maximum effort out of your bullpen pitchers can sometimes add up to 5-10 more wins each year — as well as the ability to eek out tight wins in pressure-packed situations during the playoffs.

In the same way, top managers in the business world need to think about how to effectively manage their Innovation Bullpen. After all, managers have a limited number of employees on their team to lead and execute on upcoming innovation projects. It’s not enough to rely on rising or established superstars to shoulder the workload — it’s necessary to have a robust cohort of employees with a variety of skills and experiences who can take on innovation projects as they arise. The game of baseball offers practical tips for maximizing the value of your Innovation Bullpen:

(1) Create a diverse mix of individuals with the talents and skills to handle any type of project. Just as great bullpens need a mix of left-handed & right-handed pitchers, flamethrowers & crafty curveballers, a great business bullpen needs individuals with a mix of experiences and skills to deal with any type of business opportunity that might arise. After all, an opposing lineup will begin to feast on a bullpen that only offers up the same type of pitcher, one after another — even if that guy consistently checks in on the radar at 100 mph. In the same way, an organization that only hires individuals with a certain background will be ill-suited for changes in the underlying structure of the market.

(2) Find individuals who excel in certain key roles. The truly great bullpens – the kind that takes teams to the World Series – have pitchers who understand their very specific roles. The “closers” always enter in the 9th inning when the game is on line. The “middle relief guys” have clearly-defined roles and can act as an effective bridge to the closer during the sixth, seventh and eighth innings. Finally, there are the “long men” in the bullpen who can eat up innings when games are out of reach, saving the closers and middle-relief guys from having to take on every project that comes down the pike. In the business world, this means developing talented individuals who are proficient at handling specific aspects of any project.

(3) Recruit specialists with hard-to-find skills. In the game of baseball, there will always be a market for the left-handed relief specialist who can get out the toughest bat in the opposition’s lineup. For years, the Yankees searched far and wide for a lefty who could match up with David Ortiz of the Red Sox. They just needed one lefty they could call in at critical times to get Big Papi out. Most managers, of course, lack the luxury of having a left-handed relief specialist. In the business world, left-handed relief specialists are the guys with some arcane skill or knowledge that is nearly impossible to find elsewhere. They are called on at very specific times, often when the game is on the line, to save a project.

Utilizing each of these managerial tactics is one way to maximize the efficiency of a bullpen and ensure that everyone stays fresh and rested for the stretch run, such as during peak business cycles or the end of the quarter. While the closer with the blistering, lights-out stuff who can strike out hitters in the 9th gets most of the attention, his role is set up by all the other members of the bullpen who “hold” the game for him. Many teams discover that middle-relief is the soft underbelly of their bullpen and even have a hard time getting to the 9th inning.

Baseball, it turns out, offers real lessons for successful business. Too many managers assume it’s only a matter of having one flamethrower in the bullpen (the hotshot MBA) and then “mixing-and-matching” their way through innovation projects with everyone else. Instead, they should be developing each of the individual team members who can help an organization take on the type of innovative, high ROI projects that form the basis for future business success.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Act different to think different. Easier said than done right? The truth is we’ve already been-there-done-that when we were kids, we just forget we did it. How is this possible? How is it that we lost that inquisitive mind? How is it that we stopped facing life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement?

We just lost our imagination, we threw away the crayons and got caught up in the reality of the adult world. That’s what happened.

Most innovations come out of some insight (aha! moment) someone had and it was all because this person was looking deeper and questioning the ‘believed’ truth of how something works. Just like kids, inquisitive people have a habit of questioning everything, looking for deeper insight by questioning the truth. Yet most people accept things for what they are, why is this? Because it’s safe, it’s that simple. We get trapped in automatic, mechanical thinking with no interest in asking why we’re doing whatever it is we’re doing and how we’re doing it.

When you look at things and believe that that’s the way they’re going to stay then you’re making a huge mistake because as you well know nothing stays the same, everything changes . Our job as innovators is to not accept reality for what it is, it’s to imagine what could be and that means thinking differently.

If you wish to change your reality I challenge you to regain your inner child. I challenge you to ‘be a kid’ again.

But before you start thinking differently (being a kid) you have to create the habit of ‘acting’ differently. This means that you’ll have to piss people off, it means challenging established rules, it means breaking tradition, it means putting away the tried and true, it means breaking away from reality.

Are you ready? The single biggest thing you can do right now to start ‘acting’ differently is to ask:

• ‘WHY?’ Do it everyday, do it 5 times for everything you come across. Ask yourself why you do things the way you do them, this will get your mind moving in all sorts of directions you forgot existed.
• ‘WHAT IF?’ to shake it up some more and get your imagination going. At this point your imagination is going to run wild and you’ll come up with some crazy ideas and you’ll start feeling like a kid again.

The final piece to get you acting differently is to ask:

• ‘WHY NOT?’ When you get here, you’ll think than anything is possible and that my friend is the whole point.

Asking questions is part of an innovators skill set, but the truly imaginative one’s don’t just ask them all time, they ask them because they imagine a better way of doing things. If you want to create a better reality for yourself and for others, imagine what could be. Repeat after me: Why? What if? Why not? Repeat.

What do you think?

Photo Credit: Robbie

In a world of convenience, one thing that’s always been a difficulty is suitable health care. Epicenters of progressive and innovative treatments are often in large cities that can be hundreds of miles away from the families that actually need attention. For disorders that have no succinct plan of attack, this can result in more fruitless trips to medical centers than productive ones. Furthermore, for families of autistic children that need constant attention and forward-motion for genuine long-term improvement, this can be very emotionally and financially draining.

Autism is a word that is thrown around a lot but not truly understood. Amidst rumors of vaccine-related cases and the anger that speculation has evoked, a pressing need to address the shortage of qualified therapists for the one in 110 children that falls under the “spectrum” of autism must take precedence.

Autism is described as a “spectrum disorder” because it affects each person differently and to a varying degree. The main symptoms seen across the board include difficulties with spoken language, motor skills, and social interaction. People afflicted with the disorder tend to fixate on objects and details and have difficulties connecting with other people on any social level.

There is no known cause of autism that is singularly responsible for the variety of disabilities that are included under the “umbrella.” There are, however, many types of biomedical and psychological treatments currently being used.

Sensory integration is a form of autism therapy that helps children become familiar with certain situations that might otherwise be distressing to them. It uses a combination of interactive technologies such as sight, sound, and touch to help establish a higher baseline of normalcy that the child can tolerate, in turn making the child more peaceful and at ease with his or her environment. In order for autism to be treated most effectively, it must be diagnosed as early as possible so that treatment may begin immediately.

The gap in the amount of kids that can be treated by qualified therapists is hoped to be addressed by taking therapy to the next level in using robots to interact with the children. The University of Southern California has taken sensory integration therapy, in combination with robotics, to produce a robot called Bandit that has the ability to make simple facial expressions and movements coupled with a complex decision-making ability in response to the child’s behavior.

In order to reach the children on a level they are most comfortable with, Bandit takes what’s known as a “humanoid” form. If he were to be designed too human-like, it would defeat the purpose of his existence since autistic children prefer machines over humans due to their predictability.

Bandit itself can only use pre-programmed visual cues, or cues read by an engineer that can also manually operate the robot, to react to the child and monitor his/her behavior to accurately respond. It also uses cameras and a microphone that can record a compiled video if the child is particularly agitated. Then the video can be reviewed at a later time with parents and doctors to determine the cause of distress.

MIT has developed a wristband that can be worn which would provide added feedback on the emotional state of the child. This in combination with any robot on the market used for autism therapy would make it an even more efficient tool since it could read the heart-rate, perspiration level, and breathing rate of the child and feed that information into the robot for a more tailor-made response. When used in conjunction with a superior monitoring system, such as the wristband sensor system, this innovative robotic therapy becomes a completely personalized autism treatment plan for each individual child that is afflicted.

Temple University has been doing research on their own robot called KOALA that uses fuzzy logic to store behavioral and social cues over time.  With this small amount of artificial intelligence, the robot can personalize itself for the child to which it belongs.

The developer of Bandit, Maja Mataric, wants to put a Bandit in every autistic child’s home for about the cost of a laptop within the next decade. The complexity of Bandit and the need to make it as benign as possible to the children in which it hopes to treat will make an inexpensive price tag difficult. The many moving parts on the face coupled with a quiet motor to prevent distress in the child are cited as the main problem areas for cost.

Doctoral student, Marek Michalowski, at Carnegie Mellon University, and his mentor Dr. Hideki Kozima of Miyagi University in Japan, disagree with other labs about the degree of humanization that therapy robots should have. He believes that in order to truly connect with the child, the robots have to be much less humanoid and more cartoonish to account for the autistic tendency to prefer objects over people. His mentor’s creation, Keepon, is a bubbly little guy whose only movements are to bop and dance around on his platform. As he only has two small camera eyes and a microphone nose, there are no external moving arms, fingers, eyebrows, lips, etc., to drive up the cost.

Considering that the average lifetime cost of caring for an autistic child is between $3.5 and $5 million dollars, the more inexpensive the treatment robot, the better. One amazing benefit that cannot be overlooked is the ability to bring the robot home with the child no matter where the family lives, making long commutes to hospitals and treatment centers in larger cities less frequent.

This is a location-independent treatment option that can revolutionize the way we manage autism by putting therapy more in the hands of families and friends than in the hands of doctors. This has the distinct advantage of keeping children more at ease around those they most trust and love.

By automating the therapy via robotics, we have the potential to reach children that would have never received proper treatment in the past. Not only that, but the human faults that we all encompass – temper, lapses in attention spans, laziness – will no longer be an issue. Therapy-bots like Bandit and Keepon have the ability to maintain decorum, not lose their tempers (because they don’t have them), and keep working until the job is done. Or until their batteries need to be replaced.

What do you think?

Photo Credit: Clint JCL