GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

How do you get your competitor to promote your value proposition? By thinking inside the box, or, in this case, using the box.

DHL did just that in the highly competitive package delivery category. Shipping companies compete on the basis of speed, convenience, and reliability. So the race is on to prove to the market which company performs the best.

In this campaign, DHL spoofed its competitors like UPS to broadcast that it’s faster. Can you guess how?

This clever campaign is an example of two of the five techniques of Systematic Inventive Thinking – Task Unification and Attribute Dependency.

The Task Unification Technique is defined as: the assignment of new tasks to an existing resource (i.e. any element of the product or its vicinity within the manufacturer’s control). In this example, the “competition” has been assigned the additional task of “promoting the DHL value proposition” about being faster.

To use Task Unification:

1. List all of the components, both internal and external, that are part of the Closed World of the product, service, or process.

2. Select a component from the list. Assign it an additional task. Consider ways to use each of the three Task Unification methods:

• Choose an external component and use it to perform a task that the product already accomplishes
• Choose an internal component and make it do something new or extra
• Choose an internal component and make it do the function of an external component (effectively “stealing” the external component’s function)

3. If you decide that an idea is valuable, you move on to the next question: Is it feasible? Can you actually create this new product? Perform this new service? Why or why not? Is there any way to refine or adapt the idea to make it more viable?

The Attribute Dependency Technique is defined as: the creation/removal of symmetries or dependencies between existing product properties. As one thing changes, another thing changes. In this example, DHL created a dependency between “elapsed time” and the “visibility of the message.”

To use Attribute Dependency, make two lists. The first is a list of internal attributes. The second is a list of external attributes – those factors that are not under your control, but that vary in the context of how the product or service is used. Then, create a matrix with the internal and external attributes on one axis, and the internal attributes only on the other axis. The matrix creates combinations of internal-to-internal and internal-to-external attributes that we will use to innovate.  Take these virtual combinations and envision them in two ways. If no dependency exists between the attributes, create one. If a dependency exists, break it.  Using Function Follows Form, try to envision what the benefit or potential value might be from the new (or broken) dependency between the two attributes.

image credit: with megaphone image from bigstock

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

“As usual, for these co-written things, John often had just the first verse, which was always enough:  it was the direction, it was the signpost and it was the inspiration for the whole song.  I hate the word but it was the template.” – Paul McCartney

Fifty years ago on Feb. 9, 1964, the Beatles made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” A record 73 million people watched that night. And the rest, of course, is history.

The Beatles were innovators, and they did it systematically using templates. The Beatles were corporate innovators who created immense fortunes for their shareholders. They used structured methods, experimentation, and technology the same way Fortune 500 companies create new products and services.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, The Beatles have sold more albums in the United States than any other artist. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked them number one in its list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, and four of their albums appeared in the top ten of the magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. The Beatles’ innovative music and cultural impact helped define the 1960s, and their influence on pop culture is still evident today. The Beatles were collectively included in Time magazine’s list of The Most Important People of the 20th Century.

How were they so effective?

The Beatles practiced team innovation. John Lennon and Paul McCartney are the most successful musical collaboration in history. One would sketch an idea or a song fragment and take it to the other to finish or improve; in some cases, two incomplete songs or song ideas that each had worked on individually would be combined into a complete song. Often one of the pair would add a middle eight or bridge section to the other’s verse and chorus. Lennon called it “Writing eyeball-to-eyeball” and “Playing into each other’s noses”. They applied these templates in a disciplined, structured way to create a stream of hit songs.

The Beatles were experimenters. David Thurmaier writes:

“Above all, the Beatles remained curious about all types of music, and they continually reinvented their own music by injecting it with fresh influences from multiple cultures. This experimentation adds a dimension to their work that separates it from their contemporaries’ music. In the second volume of his book The Beatles as Musicians, Walter Everett explains that ‘rock musicians’ interest in Indian sounds multiplied rapidly’ after George Harrison introduced the Indian sitar to the song ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).’ Also, the string quartet on 1965’s “Yesterday” would make its way into the music of other groups around the same time. This exchange of musical innovations worked both ways; for example, the Beatles were able to take elements from Bob Dylan’s music and meld them into their own. Their relentless experimentation and questing for the “new” is one strong element that makes the Beatles’ music attractive and rewarding for study and enjoyment.“

The Beatles loved technology. They innovated songs and the way they producedsongs.They used a wide range of techniques in the studio to differentiate their sound including guitar feedback, classical musicians on popular albums, artificial double tracking, close miking of acoustic instruments, sampling, direct injection, synchronizing tape machines, and backwards tapes. The recording process was summed up by Paul McCartney: “We would say, ‘Try it. Just try it for us. If it sounds crappy, OK, we’ll lose it. But it might just sound good.’ We were always pushing ahead: louder, further, longer, more, different.”

Oddly, McCartney seemed uncomfortable using templates to write songs. Perhaps using a template seemed like cheating, making him feel less creative. This is a fallacy about creativity and creative people. My sense is that creative people in any field use a template of some sort. How could creative people like Robert Frost, Shakespeare, da Vinci, and Disney continue to pour out masterful work over and over? Like the Beatles, they used templates. It gave them the direction, the signpost, and the inspiration to apply their creative mind in a structured, systematic way.

Many have studied and commented on the contributions of The Beatles and the lessons learned. And in the end, it was their prolific use of structured innovation templates that made their contributions possible.

image credit: en.wikipedia.org

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

Philips North America announced Fosmo Med, developer of the Maji Intravenous (IV) saline bag, as the grand prize winner of the first-ever Philips Innovation Fellows competition, revealing the technology as the next big, meaningful innovation in health and well-being. The new IV solution technology has the potential to save millions of lives worldwide from dehydration-related diseases, such as cholera. Maji is a revolutionary field hydration system for IV use that is shipped without water. Once on site, forward osmosis technology converts local water — even if it’s not clean — to a sterile solution without requiring any electrical power. An estimated 16 Maji bags can be shipped for the same cost as one traditional IV saline bag, saving up to $500 for every 14 units shipped. Maji is an example of the Task Unification Technique, one of five in the SIT innovation method. Task Unification works by assigning an additional task to an existing resource. In this example, the Maji bag has the additional job of filtering water. “We’re very excited to be named the winner of the Philips Innovation Fellows Competition,” said Ben Park, chief executive officer and founder of Fosmo Med. “Maji will enable many more IV bags to be shipped for the same cost, stored safely and transported to remote sites. The potential life savings could be in the millions annually.” “We are thrilled to name Fosmo Med as the grand prize winner and to support them as they work to take Maji to the market,” said Greg Sebasky, chairman of Philips North America. “As a company committed to meaningful innovation, it is gratifying to find a social enterprise that has the potential to revolutionize the medical device industry with a simple, forward-thinking solution.” Philips practices what it preaches. It is featured in Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results for its use of the Subtraction Technique in creating the Slimline DVD player. “Maji shows Fosmo Med’s commitment to providing affordable healthcare and well-being above all else,” added Sebasky. Fosmo Med was selected from among hundreds of entries to the Innovation Fellows Competition. The company secured funding from the public through the crowd funding portion of the competition on Indiegogo, global web-based crowd funding site, and, once named a finalist, the Maji IV saline bag was named the “most meaningful” innovation by Philips employees. In addition to $60,000 in prize money, Fosmo Med will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Philips’ USA headquarters to meet with Philips leadership for mentor and whiteboard sessions to support development of the Maji IV.

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

The Subtraction Technique is amazing because of its simplicity and power. It is one of five techniques that form the core of Systematic Inventive Thinking, a method of innovating new products and services.

Here is a classic example of how it can completely reframe how we see one of the most familiar of institutions – the Library.

To get the most out of the Subtraction technique, you follow five basic steps:

1. List the product’s or service’s internal components.

2. Select an essential component and imagine removing it. There are two ways: a. Full Subtraction. The entire component is removed. b. Partial Subtraction. Take one of the features or functions of the component away or diminish it in some way.

3. Visualize the resulting concept (no matter how strange it seems).

4. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values? Who would want this new product or service, and why would they find it valuable? If you are trying to solve a specific problem, how can it help address that particular challenge? After you’ve considered the concept “as is” (without that essential component), try replacing the function with something from the Closed World (but not with the original component). You can replace the component with either an internal or external component. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values of the revised concept?

5. If you decide that this new product or service is valuable, then ask: Is it feasible? Can you actually create these new products? Perform these new services? Why or why not? Is there any way to refine or adapt the idea to make it more viable?

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

Ninety percent of companies do not ‘as of yet’ have a formal mechanism for incentivizing and rewarding innovation but believe “it’s something we should be doing better”. That is one of the many conclusions in SIT’s latest Insight Paper, How Companies Incentivize Innovation (April 2013).

The Tel Aviv-based innovation consulting company interviewed more than twenty companies from around the world, ranging in size from 200 to 200,000 employees.  They covered a variety of sectors including finance, healthcare, consumer goods, marketing, agriculture, food, hardware and more. They interviewed people in roles across the organizations including senior management, innovation managers, engineers, marketers, and others. The one common denominator was: Innovation is important to the organization and they want to see more of it.

The research explores how companies incentivize their employees to engage more actively in innovation. How do you get staff to move out of their comfort zone when sticking to regular things on one’s plate seems like a safer bet? And most innovation efforts never see the light of day?

Other key issues addressed by the report:

• Barriers to rewarding: What’s keeping companies from using rewards for innovation?
• Rewards versus recognition: What is the difference and how do they relate to each other?
• Reward-worthy: What does an employee need to do to get rewarded?
• Types of rewards: What kinds of rewards do employees receive?
• Choice in the matter: Do employees get to choose what they receive?
• Public or private: Does it make a difference if the reward is broadcast to others?
• Time to reward: What stage in the product development process will rewards do the most good?
• Who to reward: The inventor? Implementor? Individually or team-based?
• Who decides who gets rewarded: Is this an HR function, division head, or third-party?

SIT advises companies to “invest the proper time to determine which reward would work in your company, if at all. This is not a case of one size fits all, whether between companies or even within the same company. If you choose rewards as tokens of appreciation, that could provide more flexibility in the terms and criteria in which it is given. However – if it is to act as a motivator, ensure that it will match up, otherwise you won’t see the benefits you had hoped it would achieve.”

You can download the full report here.

image credit: in hands image from bigstock

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

Struggling retailer JC Penny hired former Apple executive Ron Johnson as the CEO to save the company. Seventeen months later, he was ousted in what many consider a colossal failure. Why? Not because he failed to take action, but rather because he tried taking the same actions that worked for him at Apple. He was guilty of a managerial bias called stereotypy – the tendency to believe that what worked for you in the past will work for you in the future. From Time:

“Johnson pictured coffee bars and rows of boutiques inside JC Penney stores. He wanted a bazaar-like feel to the shopping experience, and for JC Penney to be ‘America’s favorite place to shop.’ He thought that people would show up in stores because they were fun places to hang out, and that they would buy things listed at full-but-fair price. Essentially, Johnson wanted JC Penney and its shoppers to be something that they’re not. He wanted them to be more like the scene at Apple Stores, or even Target, when in reality, there was probably more overlap with Macy’s, or even Walmart.”

“And why didn’t Johnson understand what JC Penney’s core customers enjoyed? Well, one reason is that he didn’t really ask them. When Johnson floated plans for the chain’s radical makeover, he was asked about the possibility of trying the new pricing strategies on a limited test basis. Johnson reportedly shot down the idea, responding, ‘We didn’t test at Apple.'”

In medical terms, stereotypy is a repetitive or ritualistic movement, posture, or utterance. Stereotypies may be simple movements such as body rocking, or complex, such as self-caressing, crossing and uncrossing of legs, and marching in place. In managerial terms, it is a blind spot caused by force fitting your current situation into past situations, causing you to believe that what worked before will work again. Consider research by Posavac, Kardes, & Brakus (2005):

“MBAs were asked to consider four marketing strategies for increasing market share for an established product: increasing advertising, cutting prices, hiring more sales representatives, and investing in research and development. The MBAs were told that, to save time, they would be asked to focus on one randomly selected strategy and to judge how likely it was that this was the best strategy. In addition to overestimating the likelihood that this randomly selected strategy was the best, they predicted that the majority of the executive board would also prefer this strategy.”

People focus too quickly on a single option, even when the option is selected randomly and there is no a priori reason for preferring this option. Worse, when we actively evaluate the situation using pseudo-diagnostic information, we make erroneous choices. We get into a new situation like Ron Johnson did. We look at the current situation to see what elements are the same or similar. Despite the differences between then and now, we convince ourselves that the new situation is close enough. We embrace a single option and fail to appreciate how different the new situation is.

For innovation practitioners, the message is clear: ignore what you have done in the past. Innovate systematically around the new situation to create combinations of strategies you never would have come up with on your own. To do that, apply a method like Systematic Inventive Thinking to give yourself strategy options that are right for the moment. Forget the business model that worked well for you in the past. Create new business models that capitalize on the situation at hand.

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

The airline, Samoa Air, sparked outrage with a new pricing policy of charging passengers based on how much they weigh.

Chris Langton, the airline’s CEO explained its controversial decision: “People have always traveled on the basis of their seat but as many airline operators, know airlines don’t run on seats – they run on weight,” he said.

“We have worked out a figure per kilo. This is the fairest way of you travelling with your family or yourself. You can put your baggage on, there are no separate fees because of excess baggage – a kilo is a kilo is a kilo.” Rates start at $1 per kilo (about 2.2 pounds), which includes the weight of both the passenger and his or her baggage. For longer routes, rates run as high as $4.16 per kilo.

While not popular, it is a classic example of the Attribute Dependency technique. Attribute Dependency is one of five techniques of the innovation method called SIT (Systematic Inventive Thinking). It differs from the other techniques in that it uses attributes (variables) of the situation rather than components. Start with an attribute list, then construct a matrix of these, pairing each against the others. Each cell represents a potential dependency (or potential break in an existing dependency) that forms a Virtual Product. Using Function Follows Form, we work backwards and envision a potential benefit or problem that this hypothetical solution solves.

The essence of Attribute Dependency is “as one thing changes, another thing changes.” Setting prices for products and services is largely an exercise of using Attribute Dependency. The price of a product changes as its value changes. But value is not the only variable that you can link to changes in price. Consider these examples:

• Price changes as age of the customer changes: senior citizen discounts
• Price changes as quantity changes: quantity purchase discounts
• Price changes as risk changes: this is how insurance and warranty policies are priced
• Price changes as time changes: charging lower prices for drinks at a bar is typically called Happy Hour
• Price changes as gender changes: while it may seem discriminatory, men don’t complain when bars let women in for free
• Price changes as need changes: this one usually gets people mad because it takes unfair advantage of a situation. Charging more for bottled water on hot days is an example.

The beauty of Attribute Dependency is you can define the way two variables are correlated, either positively or negatively. Air Somoa, for example, might want to consider flipping the dependency to make it more acceptable. Everybody pays the same amount, but if you are under a certain weight, you accumlate “weight credits” that you can apply to later flights.

You can also break a dependency that already exists. Restaurants do this when they offer a buffet at one price. You can eat all you want for the same price. The typical link between price and quantity of food has been broken. Of course, if you eat too much, you’ll pay for it later if other airlines adopt the Samao Air approach.

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

How we judge a creative idea is affected by how we perceive its inventor. Without realizing it, we may overvalue or undervalue a new concept and make poor choices in the product development process as a result.

Researchers Izabela Lebuda and Maciej Karwowski¹ studied how gender of the inventor and the uniqueness of the inventor’s name affect one’s perception of the invention itself. They divided 119 participants into five groups to evaluate creative products in four domains (poetry, science, music, and art). Each group evaluated the same, identical products, but the products were signed by different fictional names – a unique male name, a common male name, a unique female name, and a common female name. The fifth group evaluated the products with no names (control group).

The highest creativity score was earned by a painting signed with a unique female name, while the lowest went to that same painting with a common female name. For the science-related products, works signed by any male name scored much higher than the same products signed by women. In fact, the science product signed by a common female name scored even lower than the anonymous control group. In the area of music, any piece signed by a unique male name was rated highest. Poems, on the other hand, got the best scores when signed by a unique female name and the lowest from a common male name.

For practitioners, this systematic bias caused by gender and other factors can lead us astray. For example, science is still perceived as male-dominated, and we may have a tendency to downgrade new science concepts generated by women.  In other domains, literary and artistic, we may put too much of a premium on works generated by women with unique names.

To avoid this bias, consider the following advice:

• When creating new concepts, use a facilitated approach that puts people into groups of two or three. Make sure participants don’t give credit for an idea to a particular person. When an idea emerges from a group (as opposed to one individual), our minds have a difficult time attaching attributes of any one person to that idea.

• Have teams share their ideas outside of the workshop room. Set up a collaboration tool such as Google Docs where teams can enter their ideas in real time. Make sure the idea collection software does not track who entered it. Use team numbers instead of people’s names.

• Finally, have all ideas evaluated by a different team than the one that generated them. Use a weighted decision model to assess the ideas. Use scoring criteria that are relevant to the issue the team is facing. Assign a weighting to these criteria based on the importance of that criteria. Be sure to test the model not only on past successful ventures, but also on past unsuccessful ventures.

credit: ¹Izabela Lebuda and Maciej Karwowski, “Tell Me Your Name and I’ll Tell You How Creative Your Work Is: Author’s Name and Gender as Factors Influencing Assessment of Products’ Creativity in Four Different Domains,”Creativity Research Journal, Vol. 25, Iss. 1, (2013), 137-142.

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

The Unification Tool is a tricky but effective advertising tool. Unification recruits an existing resource and forces it to carry the advertising message. That resource can come from within the medium itself or within the environment of the medium. In other words, the tool uses an existing component of the medium or of its environment in a way that demonstrates the problem or the promise to be delivered.

The tool is one of eight patterns embedded in most innovative commercials. Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues describe these simple, well-defined design structures in their book, “Cracking the Ad Code,” and provide a step-by-step approach to using them. The tools are:

1. Unification
2. Activation
3. Metaphor
4. Subtraction
5. Extreme Consequence
6. Absurd Alternative
7. Inversion
8. Extreme Effort

There are two ways to use Unification. First, take the medium (television, billboard, radio, and so on) and manipulate it so that some feature or aspect of the medium carries the message in a unique way. The second approach works in the other direction – start with the message, then look at the components in the consumer’s environment and recruit one to carry the message in a clever way.

Here is an example of manipulating the medium:

Here are two examples of starting with the message and recruiting a component into carrying that message. What is very innovative about these commercials is how they have “fused” the message with the product itself – the avocado.

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

Where does your marketing department fit when it comes to innovation? In their article¹, “Improving Marketing’s Contribution to New Product Development,” these author’s offer a dismal view:
“The prevailing view in most companies is that marketing is not a distinct function, and therefore, everyone can do marketing. As a result, the status of the marketing department is in a steep decline, which is especially observable within the NPD process. This development is surprising because it seems that top innovators strongly involve the marketing department in the NPD process. Hence, strengthening the marketing department’s position with respect to NPD should be a priority to improve innovation performance.”
I agree. But I believe the authors fall way short of what is needed to do that. Their research points to two recommendations. First, marketing departments need to excel at market research skills and tools to translate customer needs into product specifications.  Second, marketers should have strong market knowledge and a good understanding of the firms product portfolio.

Seen this way, marketing becomes nothing more than a market research department in support of R&D. This grossly underwhelms the potential of a strong marketing mindset within an organization and the potential for great innovation.

For marketing to lead the innovation effort, I recommend the following:

1. Develop an Innovation Competency: Innovation is a skill, not a gift. It can be learned by anyone and applied systematic. Innovative companies treat it as just another core skill by creating a well-defined set of innovation competencies and embedding them into employee’s competency model along with other required behaviors such as ethics and leadership. A innovation method such as SIT, for example, gives a marketing employee the ability to “innovate on demand.”

2. Link Innovation to Strategy: Marketing is the battle arm of any company, and it should lead the development of strategy. When it links strategy with the innovation efforts inside an R&D department, it becomes more influential in what gets put through the NPD process.

3. Drive Innovation as a Process: Defining innovation as just the NPD process is too limiting. Marketing needs to sponsor cross-functional teams using systematic innovation tools that feed concepts into the NPD process. Marketing needs to eliminate the “fuzzy” in the front end and make it crystal clear with a routine, sustainable process of generating new opportunities.

4. Innovate Under the Radar: In this month’s Harvard Business Review, Paddy Miller and Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg make a great point in their article,“The Case for Stealth Innovation.“ Savvy marketers know how to operate under the radar and nurture innovation programs through complex bureaucracy. Thomas Bonoma’s classic HBR article from 1986, “Marketing Subversives,”said something similar:

“I found that under conditions of marketplace change, success depended heavily on the presence of marketing subversives in a company. Subversive marketers undermined their organizations’ structures to implement new marketing practices….And no matter what higher management had decided to allocate to various marketing projects, the subversives found ways to work around the official budget. They bootlegged the resources they needed to implement new, more appropriate marketing practices.”

The same can be said about innovation.

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