Author Archives: Paul Sloane

About Paul Sloane

Speaker, author and consultant on lateral thinking and innovation topics. Paul Sloane is the author of many books including The Leader's Guide to Lateral Thinking Skills published by Kogan-Page and Think Like an Innovator published by Pearson. He speaks and run workshops on lateral thinking and innovation topics.

What Innovators can Learn from the Fidget Spinner Craze

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

The fidget spinner is a child’s toy which easily spins around a central bearing.  Because it is a type of gyroscope it can be used to perform various tricks involving balancing, throwing and catching.  It was originally developed as a device to help children suffering from ADHD or autism but it became a global phenomenon as a toy for all children.  It became so pervasive that many schools banned it.

There have been toy fashion rages before including yo-yos, hula hoops and loom-bands but nothing has spread so quickly as the adoption of fidget spinners.  They first appeared in America in February 2017 and by May all the 20 top-selling toys on Amazon were fidget spinners or their derivatives.  The contagion spread across the Atlantic in just three weeks according to the data analysis company NPD.  Some estimates put worldwide sales at over 50m in the first half of 2017.

None of the big toy retailers had anticipated or planned for such demand and they were initially caught completely off-guard.  There was no big marketing or advertising campaign.  The habit spread because kids posted pictures and videos of themselves on social media – in particular Youtube and Instagram.  Major toy retailers normally plan product promotions up to 18 months in advance with peaks in the summer and at Christmas.  Millions of dollars are poured into campaigns to promote a planned new product launch featuring say Lego, Star Wars, Spiderman or Barbie.  Manufacturing schedules and supply chains are aligned.  All of this was thrown into disarray by the craze for spinners.  Retailers had to react by ordering in huge supplies from China by air freight.

Lessons for marketers and innovators.

A product aimed at one market can become a success in another.  The fidget spinner was originally designed for hyperactive children only.  Viagra was originally promoted for men with high blood pressure – but it had an unexpected side effect!

In the world of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) it is often better to watch than to plan.  You have to monitor what consumers are sharing on social media and ride the wave.

Peer pressure beats promoter pressure.  People are much more influenced by what their friends says, like and do than by expensive marketing campaigns.  For adults Tripadvisor is critical for the choice (and so the success) of restaurants and hotels.  For young people Instagram, Youtube and Snapchat lead the way (until the next sites take over).  To generate demand for your new product influencing the influencers is more important than ever.

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Become an Intrapreneur at Work

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

Say you have a great idea for a new product or service in your field of expertise but you are reluctant to take the plunge, quit your job and start your own business. You know that launching this venture on your own would be risky, stressful and costly.

There is an alternative – stay with your current employer and become an ‘intrapreneur’ – someone who acts as an entrepreneur but inside an established organisation.

Most companies recognise the need for more innovation and actively encourage employees to suggest and develop new business ideas.

Here are eight key ways to help make your idea happen –

  1. Find out what suggestion schemes and innovation programmes are already in place inside the organisation. Could you harness one of these?
  2. Align your idea with corporate goals and direction. Your big idea will be easier to sell if it fits in with corporate mission, values and strategy.
  3. Solve a customer need. Look for a simpler, faster or better way to solve a problem for customers.  If you can show that this idea will cost less, sell more, save time, expand into new markets or increase profits then you are more likely to get the backing you need.
  4. Get your boss’s support. Sell the benefits.  Show that it will be good for him or her if this initiative succeeds.  Ask for their ideas and input.  Request time to devote to the project and suggest constructive ways in which some of your current tasks could be delegated.
  5. Gather a network of allies. Involve people from other departments and get their ideas, help and support. A high-level sponsor would be a great help too.  Watch out for turf wars, envy and internal politics so choose your crew carefully.
  6. Build a prototype. Make a mock-up of the product.  For an app show a series of screen layouts.  For a service develop a story board.  Unless the idea is so revolutionary that it can be patented, show the prototype to some customers and gather fast feedback.
  7. Prepare a killer presentation. Show that you have thought through the risks as well as the upsides. Fully cost your plan.  Present the feedback from clients (positive and negative).  Test your pitch with some colleagues before presenting to senior executives.  Clearly ask for the resources you need.  Don’t downplay the challenges you face.
  8. Don’t be too precious about your big idea. Seek advice.  Listen to criticisms and feedback.  Involve others and share any success or praise with your colleagues and your boss.

Most new product initiatives fail so try your best but do not be down-hearted if your first project flops. Try again. Whatever happens you will have raised your profile, learnt a lot and made some handy contacts. You will now be seen as a real go-getter.  It could be the start of something great.

 dezignwithaz.com

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The Benefits of Being Unpredictable

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

Frederick Arthur Montague Browning (1896 – 1965) was known as ‘Boy’ Browning. He served in the British Army with distinction in the First World War.  He was promoted to Adjutant at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.  During the Sovereign’s Parade of 1926, he did something unexpected by the large audience who came to see the closely choreographed and well-rehearsed parade of cadets.  At the end of the ceremony he rode his horse up the steps and into the Old College.  No-one had ever done this before. It confounded, amazed and delighted the gathering.  It became a tradition which endures to this day.

Boy Browning married the author Daphne du Maurier in 1932. He was the leader of the British Airborne forces at the battle of Arnhem in 1944 which he famously described as ‘a bridge too far.’   He was portrayed by Dirk Bogarde in the film with that name.

At the Sovereign’s Parade he did something unpredictable and daring; it paid off.  In warfare, in business and in many other walks of life being predictable can be a weakness.  Sometimes it pays to try something unforeseen by your opponents.  Hannibal did something unexpected by the Romans when he took his army across the Alps.  Nelson surprised the French with his line of attack at Trafalgar.  On the other hand Napoleon’s tactics at Waterloo were exactly what Wellington expected after his battles in the Peninsula War.  He later said, ‘They came on in the same old way and we defeated them in the same old way.’

Phil Romano is an entrepreneur who founded Romano’s Macaroni Grill in San Antonio, Texas. The restaurant was busy at weekends but there was very little traffic in the early part of the week.  So he decided that one Monday or Tuesday every month all the food would be free but he did not announce which day.  People constantly called to ask, ‘Is tonight the night?’  They found out when they arrived.  Word spread and the business increased dramatically.

A study by four researchers at INSEAD found that being emotionally unpredictable could yield significant advantages in negotiations. They say that emotional inconsistency and unpredictability make recipients comply in negotiation and to concede more than express anger.  This effect occurs because recipients feel less control.

In 2013 Beyoncé surprised her fans and the music industry by releasing a new album without warning, delivering 14 new songs and 17 videos as part of what she called her first “visual album.”  The shock release generated a storm of media coverage. Reuters dubbed her “the queen of surprise releases.”

The general rule in business is to offer a consistent high-quality product to customers so that they know what to expect.  It would be most unwise for a company making parachutes, ejector seats or defibrillators to suddenly do something capricious or random. However, if you are dealing with consumers it can occasionally pay to break the rule. It is a risky strategy and will not always succeed but as Burger King found when they launched their spoof ‘left-handed hamburger’ it can surprise and delight customers, catch competitors off-guard and garner great publicity and good will.

image credits: betterhealthworx.com

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Innovate with a Nudge?

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

Behavioural nudges are clever policy tweaks often used by governments to influence the choices that people make. They are often found to be more effective and less costly than direct actions such as quotas, taxes or subsidies. Here are some simple examples:

  • Putting calorie counts on menus encourages people to make healthier choices – salads instead of french fries.
  • Changing the default position – e.g. so that everyone is enrolled into a pension scheme unless they deliberately opt out.
  • Showing peer reviews e.g. for companies, products, hotels or restaurants

The concept was popularised in the influential book, Nudge, by economists, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, published in 2008. In 2010 the British Government set up a Behavioral Insights Team (BIT), which became known as the ‘Nudge Unit’. Its aim was to save at least ten times its running cost. In fact its innovative actions have saved over 20 times its cost and the approach has been copied in many other countries.

In 2013 the BIT sent out thousands of letters to school students from poor backgrounds, who typically did not apply to top universities. The letter was from a student named Ben at Bristol University and he explained that the top universities often had more financial aid for poorer students and gave better job prospects. The students who received the letter were found to be more likely to apply to and attend prestigious universities.

Ideas42.org is a non-profit group founded at Harvard University whose mission is to use the power of behavioral science to design scalable solutions to some of society’s most difficult problems. You can see examples of their various projects on their website.  In 2015 the World Bank established a group to help developing countries use nudge policies.

The behavioral psychology behind nudges can be summed up in a mnemonic used by BIT – EAST.  Make things Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely and that will change behavior.  As reported in the Economist, in the USA the filling of university application forms for poor students was made easier by pre-filling the forms with data from other sources.

This simple action increased applications from the target group by 25%. The social side is important. Stressing that most other people in their neighborhood paid their taxes on time encourages people to do the same.

Timing the offer can make a big difference. People should not eat before a diabetes test. A medical center in Qatar found that it increased participation rates by offering diabetes screening during Ramadan when people were fasting anyway.

Critics say that nudge policies are patronising or manipulative. But all citizens, customers and employees have to make choices.  Why not incentivize them to make better choices? Go east. Encourage people by making the offer easy, attractive, social and timely.

image credits: ideas42.org; penguin.com

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As Robots Take Over We Will Need More Innovators

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

The Hadrian X robot is made by Fastbrick Robotics from Australia. It can lay 1000 house bricks in an hour (video below). The average bricklayer lays around 500 bricks a day. We will soon see robots doing much of the standard work in building assembly with a small number of skilled craftsmen supervising them, applying finishing touches or completing tricky tasks. McDonald’s is trialing a “Create Your Taste” kiosk – an automatic system that lets customers order and collect their own configuration of burger meal with no assistant needed.

But it is not just manual labour which will be affected by the inexorable roll out of robots, automation and artificial intelligence. The impact will be felt widely across skilled middle class jobs including lawyers, accountants, analysts and technicians. In many financial trading centres traders have already been replaced by algorithms.  The world’s first ‘robot lawyer’ is now available in 50 states.

The World Economic Forum predicts that robotic automation will result in the net loss of more than 5m jobs across 15 developed nations by 2020. Many think the numbers will be much higher. A report by the consultancy firm PWC found that 30% of jobs were potentially under threat from breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. In some sectors half the jobs could go.

The rise of the robots will lead to an increase in the demand for those with the skills to program, maintain and supervise the machines. Most companies will have a Chief Robotics Officer and a department dedicated to automation. However, the human jobs created will be small fraction of the jobs which the robots will replace.

Any job that involves the use of knowledge, analysis and systematic decision making is at risk. Robots can not only absorb a large body of knowledge and rules. They can also adapt and learn on the job.

Where does that leave the displaced humans? The standard answer is education.  Policy makers advise that people should retrain into higher skilled professions. The problem is most training simply provides more knowledge and skills which can also be replaced by automation.

So what jobs can robots not do?  Einstein said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ It is in the application of imagination that humans have the clear advantage.

Here are some things which robots do not do well:

  1. Ask searching questions.
  2. Challenge assumptions about how things are done.
  3. Conceive new business models and approaches.
  4. Understand and appeal to people’s feelings and emotions
  5. Design humorous, provocative or eye-catching marketing campaigns.
  6. Deliberately break the rules.
  7. Inspire and motivate people.
  8. Set a novel strategy or direction.
  9. Do anything spontaneous, entertaining or unexpected.
  10. Anticipate future trends and needs.
  11. Approach problems from entirely new directions
  12. Imagine a better future.

Let’s leave the routine knowledge jobs to the robots and focus on developing our creative skills. The most successful organisations will be those that combine automation efficiency with ingenious and appealing new initiatives. We will need more imaginative theorists, more lateral thinkers, more people who can question and challenge. We will need more innovators.

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Seven Good Reasons Not to Innovate

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

If you want to stop your organisation from trying to develop significant new products or services then here are seven solid arguments you can rely on.

  1. We are successful. We are growing and making a modest profit.  Innovations absorb resources and cost money. Why should we distract ourselves and mess with success?
  2. Everyone is very busy. All staff are working hard on urgent tasks sorting out today’s problems.  They do not have spare bandwidth to experiment with new ideas.
  3. Innovation is risky. Most radical innovations fail so let’s just keep making our current products and services better.
  4. We don’t like failure. It would be bad for morale if we launched a new product which flopped and it would be bad for the careers of those who were responsible for failure.
  5. We tried it before and it did not work. Last year we spent a lot of time and money on a major new venture which never made a profit and had to be discontinued.  It was a painful and costly experience.
  6. Customers are not asking for it. We have surveyed our customers and they like our current offerings.  They have indicated some incremental improvements which we are working on.  No customers have asked for a radical new approach.
  7. There is a still a lot of scope to improve our current business model. Let’s just get the existing operation working really well and smooth out all the issues.  Then later when everything is going well we can try some experiments.

All of the statements above are probably true to a greater or lesser extent. This is why getting real momentum behind significant innovation is difficult. The leader has to combat these arguments and instil a sense of urgency. He or she must sell the need for innovation. Let’s look at the counter arguments.

  1. We are successful and that is something we can be proud of. But current success is no guarantee of success or even survival in the future.  Just look at Kodak.  If we do not innovate our competitors will find ways to overtake us.  We cannot afford to be complacent.
  2. Everyone is busy but we have to find time and resources for innovation. Highly innovative companies like Google allocate up to 20% of employees’ time for exploration of new initiatives.  We have to free up some key people for innovation projects.  We can do that by setting priorities and eliminating lower value tasks.
  3. Innovation is risky but so is standing still. If we want to succeed we have to play in the game and take some risks.
  4. We have to change our attitude to failure and see it as a learning opportunity and a step on the road to success. We have to accept a level of failure.  All innovative companies have failures – look at the Amazon Fire.  That does not stop them from constantly trying new things.
  5. Yes we had a failed initiative but what did we learn from it? If we gained some important insights then we can use those to do better next time.  We need to improve our gating process so that we can identify problems early and preferably before launch.
  6. Customers are notoriously poor at indicating radical innovations which is one reason why Steve Jobs disdained focus groups. Blackberry users loved their Blackberries but eventually they all melted away to Apple or Samsung.
  7. There is plenty of scope for improvement in current operations and it is important that we fix the problems and keep making incremental improvements. However, that does not preclude major creative initiatives.  We can do both simultaneously.  We can improve our current products and at the same time plan to replace them with innovative new designs.

Business, success, complacency and risk aversion are major enemies of innovation. It is the task of the leader and the executive team to communicate the need for innovation with the vision of a better and different future for the organisation.

@wweays

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Don’t Focus on the Problem, Innovate past it

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

Two groups of engineering students were given a similar task – to design a bicycle rack for a car. The first group was shown an existing but poorly designed roof rack for bicycles. They looked at all the issues with the current design and then set out to come up with something better. The second group was not shown the ineffective roof rack; they were simply told to design a really good bicycle rack.

The second group came up with much more elegant and effective designs. The first group focused on the problems with the existing design and that constrained their thinking.

The study was carried out by researchers David Jansson and Steven Smith and is mentioned in David Niven’s book, It’s Not About the Shark. The title of the book refers to the problem which the then unknown director Steven Spielberg had in 1974 while shooting Jaws. The movie script involved many scenes showing a monster shark but the mechanical model shark they used had recurring technical faults and kept failing. The movie was running well behind schedule and ahead of budget. The problem was the shark which just would not work.

Spielberg did some lateral thinking. He removed the shark from all the initial scenes and inferred its presence with the brilliant musical theme written by John Williams. Moviegoers found that what they imagined beneath the water was remarkably frightening. Critics and audiences raved about the film which kick-started Spielberg’s rise to stardom.

When we are confronted with a problem we tend to focus all our efforts on the features of the problem rather looking at the entire situation and the opportunities it offers. Focusing on the problem limits our possibilities for conceiving more radical ideas.

When Travis Kalanick could not get a taxi in Paris in 2009 he thought about the issue. Most of us would have asked, ‘How can we get more taxis?’ He ignored the taxi shortage, looked at the bigger picture and asked a different question. ‘What if we could harness the capacity of all the drivers in Paris who would give me a lift for payment?’ He founded Uber.

Every problem is an opportunity for innovation. Don’t get sucked into the detail of the problem. Think laterally and bypass the problem altogether.

 bigstockphoto.com

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Try the Gestures Icebreaker for More Creative Ideas

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

It is well known that our physical attitude can affect our mental attitude.  If our posture is more positive then our thinking is more positive.  Researchers Slepian and Ambady report an experiment in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.  They had some subjects move their arms in big fluid movements and other subjects moved their arms in short, precise movements.  Then everyone took a creativity test.  The people in the first group with the fluid movements scored 24% higher in their creativity scores.

So before your next idea generation session try this gestures exercise.  Get everyone to stand up and move away from each other.  They then make gestures following your instructions:

  1. “We will be open to ideas.”  Everyone raises their arms and gathers them in as though receiving large bundles.
  2. “We want big ideas.” People stretch out their arms as far as they can.
  3.  “We want many ideas.” People wave their arms around.
  4.  “We want funny ideas.”  Everyone laughs out loud.
  5.  “We want wild ideas.”  People show their wildest expressions.
  6.  ” We will break the rules.”  People mime snapping a long stick.
  7.  ” We will look in different directions.”  Everyone stares at the front of the room, then everyone turns to view the left side, the right side and then the back of the room.
  8.  “Thank you.  Please sit down.”

This little icebreaker should be short, energetic and fun.  It will raise energy levels and affect how people think and behave.  You can refer back to it later as you run the brainstorm sessions.  You can use the gestures as you encourage people to be open to ideas or look in fresh directions.  I am sure that you will get more and better ideas.

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Government has a big Role to play in Innovation

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

Steve Jobs announced the iPhone to the world on 9 January 2007.  This iconic product became a sensational success and propelled Apple to become the most valuable company on Earth.  It created a new product category, the smartphone, which has become the must-have item for people in all nations.  It launched a platform for secondary markets in apps, music and videos.  Steve Jobs, Sir Jonathan Ive and the design team at Apple deserve the tremendous credit they get for this seismic innovation. But as the economists, Marianna Mazzucato and Tim Harford, have shown, the iPhone could not have been a success without at least 12 technology innovations on which it is dependent.

These include:

  1. Tiny microprocessors
  2. Memory chips
  3. Solid state hard drives
  4. Liquid Crystal displays
  5. Lithium based batteries
  6. Fast Fourier transform algorithms
  7. The Internet
  8. Http and Html
  9. Cellular networks
  10. Global positioning systems (GPS)
  11. Touch Screen
  12. Siri

The remarkable thing which Mazzucato points out is that all these technologies were initially funded partly or wholly by government (and usually defence) agencies.

For example the internet was based on the Arpanet developed by US military sites in the 1970s.  The worldwide web owes its existence to the work of Tim Berners-Lee who developed the idea of hyperlinks while at the CERN research centre which is funded by European governments.  GPS was developed by the military for the military.  Fast Fourier transform routines enable analogue signals such as sound and video to be quickly digitised.  They were originally developed by the American mathematician John Tukey while he was working in Defence applications at the height of the cold war when Kennedy was President.  Touch Screens were first researched by E A Johnson, a British Scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment.  In 2000 the US Defence advanced research agency DARPA commissioned Stanford to work on a voice activated artificial intelligence agent, the predecessor to Siri, to help military personnel.  Similarly tiny microprocessors, memory chips, sold state hard drives, lithium batteries and liquid crystal displays all enjoyed a large element of government funding – often with military uses in mind.

No-one is claiming that governments or defence agencies created the iPhone.  We have private enterprise to thank for that.  But governments funded the essential underlying research and initial developments of just about all the key components.  And governments carried the risk of that research and development.

We tend to underplay the role that government decisions and government dollars have played in the success of many of today’s technology product and companies.  We should recognise that government has been an important sponsor in furthering innovation in the past and will continue to be in the future.  We need continued government support for fundamental scientific research to underpin future innovations from a future Steve Jobs.

References

  1. Mariana Mazzucato – The Entrepreneurial State
  2. Tim Harford – 50 Things that made the Modern Economy – BBC podcast

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Clayton Christensen: Competing Against Luck [Case Studies]

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GUEST POST from Paul Sloane

 

Innovation ExcellenceCompeting Against Luck is the rather curious title of a new book by the eminent innovation guru, Clayton Christensen, ably assisted by three acolytes, Hall, Dillon, and Duncan. It is an important work which makes some big claims. The authors expound on and develop the theory of Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) and they assert that for the first time this gives a roadmap for where and how a company should innovate to undermine established leaders or create new markets. The Jobs-to-be-Done idea has been around for a while but this book puts it into an academic framework, gives many examples of how it has been used and advises methods for how to harness this approach.

The authors argue that managers focus mainly on product features, customer characteristics, trends, market data and competitive offerings. They should instead focus on the job that the customer ‘hires’ their product or service to do. A ‘job’ is defined as the progress that a person is trying to make in a particular circumstance. For example, when a smoker takes a smoke break they are superficially meeting a need for nicotine. But the smoker is also hiring the cigarette to calm and relax him. And in a work environment, he will go outside for some social contact and gossip with fellow smokers. So in some ways, Facebook competes with smoking as Facebook is hired for a similar job to be done!

One of the most valuable parts of the book is the chapter on Job Hunting – how do you find the jobs that customers want done? They recommend five methods:

  1. Close to home – look for your own problems and pain points for jobs that you and other people need.
  2. Competing with nothing – you can learn more from the people who are not hiring any product or service than from those who are. There might be a huge opportunity for people who find all current offerings inconvenient in some way.
  3. Workarounds – Try to spot consumers who are struggling to resolve a job to be done by cobbling together a workaround or compensating behaviour.
  4. Look for things that people don’t want to do. CVS pharmacy stores were founded to give instant advice and meet the medication needs of people who do not want to wait in line to see a doctor.
  5. Unusual uses. Observe how your customers use your products – especially in ways that you had never envisioned.

Another important insight is that hiring a new product usually involves firing an old one. Managers focus on the great new features in their product but neglect to consider the emotional and practical inconveniences of moving away from the client’s current solution.

Uncovering a job to be done is just the start. New products succeed not because of the features they offer but because of the experiences they enable. The book goes on to show how you can develop functional, emotional and social dimensions of the progress that the customer wants.

There are many well-documented case studies in the book including American Girl dolls, IKEA furniture, Kimberley-Clark incontinence pads, Medtronic pacemakers, P&G diapers and Intuit Quickbooks. Sometimes the examples seem a little forced to fit the theory but they are valuable none the less.

The book is written in a very solid, academic and workman-like style so it is not an exciting read. If you are familiar with Jobs-to-be-Done theory then you may be disappointed that the book contains no major new insights or revelations. Nevertheless, this volume covers the concept thoroughly and is an important addition to the bookshelf of any innovation advisor or practitioner.

harperbusiness.com

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