GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

Black Friday has always struck me as an odd moniker for a major event during the typically cheerful holiday season.

In the last few years Black Friday (the huge shopping day after the annual Thursday holiday of the U.S. Thanksgiving Day) has seemingly become even more intensively publicized, with the new phenomena of Gray Thursday (stores opening early on Thanksgiving Day to get a head start of the shopping crush) and Cyber Monday (the surge in online shopping on the Monday after Thanksgiving where people return to their computers) and drive large amounts of traffic to shopping websites in search of bargains.

For the innovation practitioner observing or, indeed, participating in this frenzy of shopping, two aspects of this period are worthy of additional investigation and can provide insights into the art of new thinking.

The first insight is the power of a simple term to influence consumer behavior. While there are numerous factors that drive the surge in interest in shopping the day after Thanksgiving (such as the fact that many workers have that day off and there are only three to four weeks remaining until the Christmas holiday which means people need to start shopping for gifts), the intensity of devotion to Black Friday shopping suggests that something more than just a calendar attribute is driving shopping behavior.

Conventional wisdom asserts that the term “Black Friday” refers to the fact that in the highly competitive retail arena, the first day that a typical company becomes profitable (in the black, vs in the red), is on the heavy shopping day after the Thanksgiving holiday. However, in an article on the history of the holiday prepared by the Associated Press reporters Anne D’Innocenzio and Tom Krisher, the actual history of Black Friday is much more complex.

The first reference to Black Friday was related to the stock market panic of 1864, which had been influenced by legislation that tried to drive a reduction in the price of gold. The next manifestation of the term appeared in 1950 as factory managers noticed significant employee absenteeism on the Friday after Thanksgiving. A decade later, police in Philadelphia used the term to describe large crowds in retailers on the day after Thanksgiving. The term began to appear in newspapers in the 1970s as the official start of the holiday shopping season. The idea that Black Friday aligned to the profit and loss statements of the retailers did not emerge until the 1980s. In the 2000s, we began to see references to Cyber Monday and in 2012, the term Gray Thursday, whereby retailers open their doors before Black Friday, began to appear.

The insight for the innovator here is to think about the importance of a simple name as a unifying theme for an endeavor. The innovator should not underestimate the importance of the name of an initiative and the power of that phraseology to drive human behavior. Black Friday is a particularly powerful concept because of all the information it conveys in a short, simple phrase. Hearing that term gives one the day of the event and reminds the listener that the day is all about retail consumption, knowing that stores are focusing an intense amount of attention on the success of that day.

When we are brainstorming names for our initiatives, we should consider similarly powerful yet simple terms that can convey a great deal of information in only a couple of words. While there are caveats to this approach in the form of avoiding names that are too trivial (see my article on Pilgrim Innovation), the innovator should think about how perfectly Black Friday suits the post-Thanksgiving retail activity and try to find something similar for their initiatives.

A second innovative aspect of Black Friday stems from the creative, though somewhat deceptive, approach to pricing adopted by most retailers to enable them to drive significant discounts on Black Friday. Conventional wisdom suggests that retailers present dramatic discounts on their products for Black Friday and make money through a high volume of low-profit transactions. The reality, according to Suzanne Kapner from the Wall Street Journal, is that retailers carefully work with their suppliers to set manufacturer’s suggested retail prices at a point where they can provide significant discounts yet still make a decent profit on the sale. For instance, Kapner notes, a sweater that is priced originally at $68 then sold for $39.99 (a 40% discount), still makes a good profit margin for the retailer yet still gives the shopper a feeling of having achieved a hard-won bargain.

In the words of one 44-year-old shopper in New York at Macy’s recently interviewed by Kapner, “I don’t even get excited unless it’s 40% off.” The big sales of Black Friday, in some ways, can be seen as “manufactured” to the extent that significant adjustments to pricing take place prior to the actual sale day so that the retailer can create the impression of large discounts without having to take a big hit to its bottom line (otherwise Black Friday would be Red Friday).

For the innovation practitioner, we should study the tactics of the major retailers on Black Friday to determine if we can make use of their strategy to help move forward our own initiatives across an enterprise.

For example, if we are trying to convince our colleagues to adapt to a new transformation initiative that will improve the performance of a particular business process, we should think if there are ways that we can make subtle adjustments to various elements of the process prior to implementing the initiative so that performance improvements resulting from the new process are easier to see. It could be something as simple as increasing the precision of a metric so that changes in that metric are more apparent to observers.

Just as retailers are not trying to deceive their customers in their pricing strategies on Black Friday, the intent of my advice is not to deceive those around us in how we measure the results of our initiatives. Few of the people interviewed leaving a store on a Black Friday after obtaining a “bargain” seem displeased with the results of their effort. Likewise, we should think about how we can make those who participate in the roll out of our innovation initiatives “happy customers,” even if this requires some creativity in the way we measure those results, such as focusing on one data element more so than others. The innovation lesson here is to spend time thinking about the importance of measurements in driving the perception of an initiative’s success.

Sources:

Anne D’Innocenzio and Tom Krisher, “Thursday Shoppers Get a Jump on Black Friday,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (November 23, 2012), A2.

Suzanne Kapner, “The Dirty Secret of Black Friday ‘Discounts:’ How Retailers Concoct ‘Bargains’ for the Holidays and Beyond,” Wall Street Journal (November 25, 2013).

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

The Late Bronze Age was a period of human flourishing that ended rather abruptly in 1177 B.C.  In his book 1177 B.C. – The Year Civilization Collapsed, Eric Cline of George Washington University explores various theories that seek to explain why numerous societies in the Mediterranean region, with complex international trade patterns and sophisticated pathways for the exchange of ideas, disappeared in a relatively short period of time.  This destruction culminated in the year 1177 B.C., when the residents of this region succumbed to earthquakes, invasions, famine, and other calamitous events.  Although Cline’s archaeological exploration of this era makes for fascinating reading in and of itself, of greater relevance for the modern innovation practitioner are several anecdotes from Cline’s narrative of the ancient world.

Thinking about these stories can provide innovators with clever approaches to overcoming the challenges they face today in trying to come up with new and interesting solutions to the process and technology problems.

What’s Old is New

George Santayana’s famous dictum that those who do not study history are destined to repeat it is often cited in a negative context in that people who fail to adhere to the lessons of past mistakes are likely to make the same mistakes again. Yet as Cline observes, this concept can work with a slight twist to the extent that those who study history can sometimes benefit from repeating it. Cline relays the story of the Egyptian Pharoah Thutmose III who, in 1479 B.C., marched with his army northwards from Egypt to attack the fortified city of Megiddo in what is now Israel. Thutmose III stopped at the city of Yehem (just south of his target) and initiated a war council among his generals to determine the various ways to attack Megiddo. The most obvious paths were a northern or southern route, which consisted of wider valleys that were less subject to ambush. The third option, via the Wadi Ara, was a narrow pass that was highly vulnerable to attack but that led directly to Megiddo. Thutmose III chose the narrow pass, thinking that his enemy would never expect him to make such a foolish assault, and was rewarded with an undefended approach into the city and victory in the battle.

The success of the Egyptian ruler is not remarkable in and of itself.  After all, history is replete with examples of military leaders who took the non-obvious path in attacking a foe.  What is fascinating about Megiddo is that 3,400 years later, in 1918, the British General Edmund Allenby made the exact same decision in an assault he engineered against German and Turkish forces holding Megiddo as part of the Middle Eastern theatre of operations in World War I. Like Thutmose III, Allenby was also successful in his assault, taking hundreds of prisoners with minimal losses on his side. Allenby credited his success to the fact that he had read a translation of Thutmose III’s account of the assault in 1479 B.C. and replicated the strategy that worked thousands of years earlier.

For the innovation practitioner, there are several themes worth exploring related to the story of the two battles of Megiddo.

The first theme is the value of the non-obvious solution.  Although Thutmose III and Allenby had dramatically different military capabilities at their disposal, in the end their actions were defined by the timeless geography of the location. They faced the challenge of how to get a large group of troops from one spot to another and position them best to assault a well-fortified citadel. For an innovator, reducing a problem to its most basic elements can help drive valuable ideas to solve problems. A second theme is that the least obvious choice may sometimes be the best choice. The path taken by these military leaders was the most prone to ambush and therefore the least obvious for an attacker to take, but it yielded the best results. For the innovator, this thought process could be applied when assessing a set of solutions to a problem. The least obvious solution may be the one that is dismissed immediately, just as we can imagine that Thutmose III’s war council probably told him that the central route was definitely the worst path to take for the assault.

A final lesson is the importance of understanding history, not matter how seemingly distant a previous innovation may be. Just as Allenby looked back across thousands of years of history to find a solution to his problem in 1918, so, too, should an innovation practitioner not limit himself or herself to analysis of very recent experiences concerning an innovative concept. In today’s fast-moving social media world of instant feedback and commentary, there may be value in stepping back from this fray and looking into history and the larger human experience to identify innovations.

The transformative iPhone, after all, was at its most basic essence a communications device to allow human 1 to communicate with human 2, though the primary means of communications may have evolved through different technologies (voice, text, social media).

Front Office/Back Office

Another anecdote from Cline’s study comes from a section of the book where Cline is examining the complex pathways of international trade and commerce between the ancient civilizations in the Mediterranean region. As an example of how primitive societies engage in complex exchanges that may not be apparent upon peripheral examination of the process is the gift exchange process of the Trobriand Islanders in the South Pacific.  Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, working in the 1920s, performed extensive research on the Kula Ring of exchanges in which tribal chiefs from different islands would meet and ceremonially trade shell armbands and necklaces with complex mechanisms for deriving the value of each item based on the history of the trinket.

Yet while the chiefs engaged in their elaborate ceremonies trading these shell items, the crew members from their canoes would busily trade with locals on the beach for food, water, and other necessities. The real reason for the visits from one island to another was for trade in these critical items to sustain life, but on the surface it might appear to the casual observer that the trinket exchange was more important.

For the innovator, the lesson from the Trobriand Islander exchange is to not be distracted by the elaborate, ostentatious aspects of a technology or process at the expense of the real underpinnings of the technology or process that better define the activity. Had the researcher Malinowski focused all of his efforts on deciphering the complicated shell patterns of the chiefs, he might have missed the more important commerce taking place on the beach between the crew members and the locals.

Bright, Shiny Objects

Just as visitors to the British Museum wonder why the Elgin Marbles from the Greek Parthenon are on display in London, so, too, might visitors to Berlin’s Neues Museum wonder why perhaps the most famous statue from Egyptian antiquity, the bust of Queen Nefertiti, is on display in the German capital. The answer, as relayed in Cline’s writings, lies in a clever, though deceptive, tactic used by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt who was leading the excavations at the Egyptian site of Amarna in 1912. Borchardt had an agreement with the Egyptian government to split equally any of the items he discovered in his work at the site, with Egypt given the first choice on any item.  When he found the bust of Nefertiti, he knew that this item would never be allowed to leave the country so he made sure not to clean off the dirt on the bust and placed it at the end of a long line of recovered artifacts. The Egyptians, as expected, ignored the dust-covered object and did not claim it for themselves. The Germans promptly transported it to Berlin and once it was cleaned up and placed on display in 1924, the Egyptian government began a futile effort to return it to Egypt that continues to this day.

The lesson in this story for the innovator is that when one is assessing a long list of items as potential innovation projects or ideas, one should avoid being drawn only to those projects or ideas that appear to be the most exciting, prominent, or shiny. Some projects that appear on the surface to be less exciting may, in fact, hold the greatest value for the innovator.

Right Beneath One’s Feet

One of the most famous Egyptian tomb discoveries in history occurred in 1922 when the English archaeologist Howard Carter opened King Tut’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.  Although gravediggers had robbed the tomb of its most magnificent treasures, the tomb was nonetheless a spectacular find.  What is interesting about the discovery of the tomb was the way in which Carter found it. Carter had been hired by the British Earl of Carnarvon to search for the tomb but had been unsuccessful in his excavations for six straight seasons. Carter pleaded with the Earl to allow him one more season of digging, and when the Earl agreed to fund the final endeavor, Carter had a realization about his excavation strategy that resulted in the great discovery.

In each of the six prior seasons, Carter placed his headquarters camp in exactly the same spot. On the seventh try, he decided that he would put his headquarters camp in a new location and conduct his digging on the spot where his camp had been situated all those previous years. After only three days of digging, his crew found steps that lead down to the tomb. Apparently the tomb had been covered by layers and layers of dirt that was used in the building of a nearby tomb and thus its location was not readily apparent, particularly when an entire headquarters camp was situated on top of it.

For the innovator, the story of Carter’s discovery shows the importance of self-awareness in how one approaches innovation.  If the practitioner follows the same process every time in searching for a new discovery, that person may be overlooking a simple solution that is not apparent because of the repetitive nature of the innovation discovery process. Putting his headquarters in the same spot each year was probably easier than thinking about a new location and addressing any challenges associated with moving his camp, but it was not a recipe for success. Changing methods and approaches is important for the innovation process.  An innovator who has a recurring innovation meeting or workshop may want to change up the content, approach, location, or cadence to make sure he or she is not missing something simple beneath his or her feet.

Archaeoseismology

Cline’s analysis of the fate that befell several cities in 1177 B.C. includes data gathered by researchers known as archaeoseismologists. As one might guess, these scientists combined the skills of archaeology (studying ancient civilizations through excavation) with the expertise of seismology (understanding how the planet’s plates move causing earthquakes) to develop observations about past civilizations. One example of this is the observation by Cline that Greece suffered from a series of earthquakes from 1225 B.C. to 1175 B.C.  Archaeoseismologists refer to this multi-year pattern of repeated quakes as an earthquake storm where a fault line unzips over time, releasing pressure each time and devastating the land above the fault.

Archaeoseismology provides the innovator with an example of how combining old and new thinking can yield interesting insights into solving a puzzle.  With the archaeologist digging carefully through the debris of a past civilization and the seismologist using modern techniques to analyze the plate tectonics of an area, the net result is a deeper understanding of what happened to the societies living in a certain location.  An innovator might want to combine old and new thinking when trying to solve a technical puzzle or when trying to develop a new innovation.

Diversified Portfolio

A final concept from Cline’s work that warrants investigation is the notion of systems collapse as it relates to the disappearance of so many civilizations at the same time around 1177 B.C.  Cline cites the work of the Italian scholar Mario Liverani who attributes the disasters of 1177 B.C. to the fact that so many of these societies had concentrated their power in the ruler’s palace. This concentration of power in the ruler’s palace was a significant attribute of the Late Bronze Age.  Because so many aspects of society were dependent on and flowed through the palace, a physical destruction of this part of the society could have systemic impacts and ripple through the entire civilization.  Cline notes that the situation faced by these societies at the end of the Late Bronze Age bears a resemblance to the modern concept of a diversified portfolio.

These societies concentrated their power in the palace and centralized their operations, which proved to lack resilience when faced with an invasion or natural disaster.  For the innovator, the diversified portfolio is a staple of survival, as he or she should always have a diverse set of bets in the innovation space so that if one approach or set of approaches proves to be unsuccessful, he or she has several other options to pursue.

Source:

Eric H. Cline, 1177 B.C. – The Year Civilization Collapsed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

When one thinks of the busiest stretches of railroad in the United States, the first locations that come to mind are usually New York or Chicago.  While those sections of track are indeed among the most congested in the country, in particular the massive switching yards in Chicago, one unheralded section of single track in the California desert consistently ranks near the top in terms of train traffic – the Tehachapi Loop.

For the innovation practitioner, the Tehachapi Loop is worth exploring as a set of guideposts for innovation.

At the end of the 19^th century, American railroad expansion was in full swing.  The Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads met in Promontory, Utah in 1869 to complete the first transcontinental railroad.  Construction continued at a frenetic pace in the subsequent years, and one particularly important line was the route out of the growing city of Los Angeles into the California Central Valley and beyond.

The biggest obstacle for the railroad builders on this route was the wall of the Tehachapi Mountains, rising nearly 3,000 feet above the town of Caliente in the Los Angeles Basin.  The Tehachapi Pass, which was used by the Native American Kitanemuk people as a trade route for ages, sat at the foot of the Sierra Nevada range and reached an elevation of 3,771 feet.  This rise from Caliente occurred in only a few miles of track, which posed a challenge for railroad engineers who had to keep the maximum grade of the track at 2.2 percent or below. Any steeper, and train engines could not pull their massive loads up over the pass.  At a lower grade, the locomotives could climb the pass but the amount of track required to create a gradual slope would be exorbitant.

The engineer faced with this challenge was Dartmouth-educated William Hood of the Central Pacific Railroad.  Hood laid out a series of curves and tunnels to allow the track to rise gradually out of the valley but the crowning achievement of Hood’s design was the Tehachapi Loop, a spiral-shaped track with a tunnel that winds around on top of itself in a distance of 0.73 miles, rising 77 feet in elevation in the process to position the train to cross the Tehachapi Summit a short distance later.  For longer trains (85 cars or longer), the design actually results in the engine crossing over the trailing cars in the course of traversing the loop, which makes for an interesting sight.

Hood’s spiral became a standard for the railroad construction industry in the years following its construction.  According to Hood, “[t]he essence of engineering consists not so much in the mere construction of the spectacular layouts or developments, but in the invention required—the analysis of the problem, the design, the solution by the mind which directs it all.”

The entire construction of the track around Tehachapi consists of 18 tunnels, 10 bridges, and the eponymous Loop.  The line was built from 1874 to 1876 and is still in use today with very few modifications.  In fact, this section of track is known as one of the busiest single track areas in the entire country, with an average of 36 freight trains passing every day.

As innovators, we can take to heart a couple of key lessons from Hood’s design for the Tehachapi Loop.  First, we should remember that sometimes to move forward we have to cross over old terrain.  In other words, even doing something very innovative sometimes requires going back over old ground in order to better position ourselves for the ultimate climb to the summit.

When developing a new product or service, it may be worthwhile to spend time looking back on the development process followed when the original product or service was created, as ideas from those sessions may yield insights into innovative ways to address a new product.  An innovator may want to remember the importance of the foundation of a product or service in terms of generating new ideas about where to take a product or service in the future.

The innovator should remember that going backwards is not necessarily a bad thing.  Although the term “retro” sometimes has negative connotations, the retro-aspects of the Tehachapi Loop are critical to its successful function.

A final lesson to consider from William Hood’s engineering marvel is the concept of “built to last.”  In the frenetic world of innovation we tend to focus on ideas that are short-lived and readily replaced with a new concept.  Although civil engineering is a field that often creates lasting edifices (e.g., Brooklyn Bridge, Hoover Dam), a lesson of the Tehachapi Loop is that something truly innovative can span generations and prove useful over a hundred years after its creation and has been declared a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, so an innovator should always design for the long term.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehachapi_Pass

https://engineering.dartmouth.edu/magazine/inventions-tehachapi-loop/

https://www.letsgoseeit.com/index/county/kern/tehachapi/loc01/loop.htm

https://www.visittehachapi.com/play/555-tehachapi-loop.html

Walter R. Borneman, Iron Horses: America’s Race to Bring the Railroads West (New York: Back Bay Books, 2010).

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

The great astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus revolutionized our thinking about the cosmos.  Prior to Copernicus, the prevailing theory of astronomy, first articulated by Artistotle in 5^th century B.C., postulated that the sun, stars, and planets all revolved around the Earth.  The Greek scholar Ptolemy expanded upon this concept in the 2^nd century A.D. and documented the concentric spheres that made up the orbits of the various celestial bodies around the Earth.  The heliocentric view of our solar system that emerged from calculations and observations by Copernicus, upended the geocentric view and serves as the foundation of modern astronomy.

Yet at the time Copernicus formulated his theory in 1510, the geocentric view of the universe was strongly supported by the Ecclesiastical authorities and anyone daring to diverge from that theory faced persecution or worse.  As such, Copernicus hid his findings from the public at large for nearly thirty years, afraid of the response he might receive from publicizing such information.  Without some sort of intervention, it is possible that Copernicus would have passed away without ever sharing his revelations with the world and the Copernican revolution in astronomy might have never occurred.  The modern innovation practitioner can benefit from studying this episode and deriving lessons from the episode.

This intervention occurred in 1539 when the Professor of Mathematics at Wittenberg University, Georg Joachim Rheticus, made a dangerous, unsolicited 700 mile journey into northern Poland to study with Copernicus.  In addition to facing the threat of bandits and illness in his long journey, Rheticus also had to be wary of the fact that his presence in northern Poland as a Lutheran Protestant in a Catholic Diocese was particularly risky.  Despite these challenges, Rheticus found his way to Frauenburg, Poland and spent two years convincing Copernicus to publish his manuscript.  Rheticus helped Copernicus prepare the document and later carried it to Nuremburg to the leading printer of scientific works in Europe.  The result was the publication and dissemination of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, perhaps the most important book on astronomy in history.  Without Rheticus, the book might have never been discovered and the name of Copernicus would have faded into obscurity.

It is not entirely clear why Rheticus chose to make this journey to Frauenburg.  The author Dava Sobel, an expert on the history of astronomy, speculates that Rheticus was dedicated as a professor to transforming the ancient study of astrology, which focused on mundane elements of daily life (such as horoscopes), into a serious field focused on a person’s place in the world and overall fate.  Moreover, Rheticus believed that understanding the cosmos could “predict the emergence of religious prophets and the rise and fall of secular empires.”  To drive this transformation, Rheticus left Wittenburg and traveled around Germany for several months, seeking out the leading scholars of astronomy to absorb their views in order to inform his own thinking on the topic.  A breakthrough occurred in Nuremberg where Rheticus found out that a scholar in Poland named Copernicus had proposed a theory in which celestial bodies rotated around the Sun rather than the Earth, and Rheticus immediately saw the transformative nature of this idea and set out on his journey to find the person who had articulated this concept.

For the innovation practitioner, several lessons can be gleaned from this story.  First, one should remember the importance of teamwork in delivering new thinking.  In some cases, it may not be enough for an individual to develop insights about how to solve a problem without someone else helping to drive those ideas forward.  No matter how brilliant an idea might be, if that idea stagnates and is not publicized properly, that information might never reach the outside world.  In the case of Copernicus, it seems possible that his manuscript would have not gone anywhere without intervention from Rheticus.

A second lesson, which builds on the concept of teamwork in driving innovation, lies in the notion that having team members focused on solving similar problems can sometimes lead to serendipitous outcomes.  Although a diversity of thought is important in an innovation effort, sometimes it is crucial to have team members focused on similar goals in order for those individuals to synthesize their efforts to achieve an even greater, hybrid goal.  In the case of Copernicus, his work focused on transforming how people viewed the cosmos to better predict the location and occurrence of astronomical phenomena, while Rheticus focused on using the cosmos to make predictions about significant human actions on the ground.  The serendipitous confluence of these two concepts helped lead to the publication of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.

Another lesson is the importance of passion in any innovation endeavor.  Rheticus clearly was driven by some overwhelming instinct to seek out a greater understanding of the cosmos and this force motivated him to travel great distances during his quest, resulting almost certainly in great physical discomfort as well as potential peril in the insecure areas between towns.  Yet it took this kind of dedication to an objective for Rheticus to seek out Copernicus.  In our day-to-day interactions in the corporate world, we rarely see passion like that which motivated Rheticus, but we should always remember the power of motivation in driving towards an objective and when we find an individual who is extremely passionate about an idea, we should value that passion, even if it ends up driving our innovation in a slightly different direction.  After all, where Rheticus ended up from an intellectual standpoint (helping Copernicus publish the seminal work on astronomy) is very different from where he began his search (trying to find better ideas about astrology).

A final lesson from the story of Rheticus and Copernicus is the importance of freedom and time.  When Rheticus set out to pursue larger truths about the cosmos, he had the luxury of both the freedom to pursue these truths as well as the time to do so.  Rheticus had time to leave his hometown and travel to Nuremburg where he found the information that ultimately led him to Copernicus.  He then had the ability to travel even further to find Copernicus and to spend two years convincing him to publish his manuscript as well as helping him prepare the document.  In the hyper-connected world of 2015, the notion of even blocking off an hour a day to disconnect to think about new ideas seems unsustainable.

A decade ago we heralded Bill Gates and his twice a year “think weeks” in which he would disconnect from everyone and immerse himself in reading materials.  Before that we thought of a sabbatical as something that lasts months or even a year.  Nowadays such a sabbatical seems impossible to even consider, given how quickly the marketplace moves and the importance that some people place on staying constantly connected with the prevalence of social media.  Whether this is right or wrong in terms of driving innovation remains to be seen, but the story of Rheticus should remind us that sometimes taking time away from one’s day-to-day responsibilities can lead to great discoveries.

Sources:

Dava Sobel, A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos (New York: Walker & Company, 2011).

Robert Guth, “In Secret Hideaway, Bill Gates Ponders Microsoft’s Future,” Wall Street Journal (March 28, 2005).

Mark Archer, “The Miracle of the Heavens,” Wall Street Journal (April 4, 2015).

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

Now that the winter of 2015 is officially over, I feel it is safe to write something positive about shoveling snow without incurring the wrath of my fellow Americans who dealt with record snowfalls in 2015 in parts of the country.  This positive aspect of snow shoveling lies not in its reputed cardiovascular and muscular benefits.  Rather, when I think of snow shoveling, I think of a counter-intuitive path to innovation that struck me decades ago when I lived in Arlington, Virginia and faced the challenge of digging out my car after a snowstorm.  Seeing reports from New England this winter, as well as the article below from the Chicago Tribune about “dibs” on parking spots in Chicago, reminded me of an idea I stumbled across in Arlington in the mid-90s which led me to think about the “snow shoveling game.”

By way of background, the snow shoveling game refers to the issue of losing one’s parking space after shoveling out one’s car after a snowstorm.  After expending a great deal of effort to extract one’s car, when one returns a little while later the spot is usually occupied by another car, forcing the original shoveler to go find a new spot which may even require digging out an empty spot from scratch.  The Chicago “dibs” system consists of informally reserving a parking spot with chairs or other items.  This happens frequently in neighborhoods where residents do not have driveways and are forced to park on city streets.  One might spend hours digging one’s car out in a prime spot in front of one’s house, only to return later to find that space occupied by another car, perhaps someone who lives nowhere near that spot but who needed to park and was happy to take a newly-dug out parking space.

To solve this problem, residents resorted to placing a veritable yard sale of items in “their” parking spaces to reserve the spot, though the Chicago Sanitation Department soon after snow removal declares that they will discard these items on city streets, thus ending the “dibs” system.  Interestingly, “dibs” does sometimes spontaneously generate order from disorder.  As University of Chicago professor Richard Epstein notes, “[d]ibs is spontaneous, with little clout associated with it. … Dibs gets the snow dug quickly and efficiently. It works because people respect it. They don’t abuse the system. Once the snow turns to slush, dibs ends, by common understanding.”

I encountered this issue when I lived in a large apartment complex in Arlington with an open parking lot (no reserved spaces).  After shoveling out my car and departing for a while, I would return to the parking lot and inevitably my spot would be taken along with all other available spots, which meant that I had to carry my shovel with me to clean out a new spot or else I wouldn’t be able to park my car.  Although no one in our apartment complex resorted to placing furniture items in parking spaces in an attempt to implement the “dibs” system, the problem was nevertheless perplexing and frustrating.

At the time I was a graduate student searching constantly for new ideas for articles in my field of international relations theory, and the innovation that struck me at the time was not related to how to design a better snow shovel that would free a car more quickly from a bank of snow.  Rather, I applied the concept of the snow shoveling game to international relations theory to demonstrate a model in which all parties could be better off by cooperating (i.e.,  not taking an empty spot because the next time you might be the one stuck digging out a new spot farther away in the parking lot) but the incentives of the system, and the lack of a centralized enforcement authority, direct individuals to maximize their interests and results in suboptimal outcomes.  This concept is at the core of Game Theory which is one of the dominant paradigms in use in political science and, more specifically, in international relations (e.g., the Prisoners’ Dilemma in which self interests override cooperation even though the result is a worse outcome than cooperation would have yielded).

As a graduate student I sought out a more seasoned Professor to co-author the paper and spent several brainstorming sessions expanding on the idea to try to work it into a paper worth publishing.  Alas, other priorities soon consumed our time and the idea was shelved and never resulted in a paper, but anytime I hear about shoveling out a car I think back to the snow shoveling game.

For the innovation practitioner there are two lessons in this story.  First, we are often told to find inspiration for innovation in the challenges we face in everyday life.  Something that frustrates us on a daily basis, such as a pothole on a roadway that we hit again and again, can push us to think of a new way to report that pothole to the highway department (a faster way for a highway department to repair a pothole).  While this is a viable source for innovation, we should also think beyond the immediate problem to look at the challenge from a systemic perspective.  Are there larger questions surrounding the individual issue that speaks to an even greater innovation challenge (thousands of citizens with smartphone applications using GPS and vibration sensors to automatically report potholes)?  A second lesson is to trust oneself in pushing forward with an idea.  While it is important to seek out advice and counsel from more experienced colleagues in working on an innovative idea, sometimes relying too much on others can slow down or even derail an initiative.  One’s instincts are often right, and my guess is that in the last 20 years no one has written an article linking the snow shoveling game to international relations theory, so perhaps there is no time like the present to launch a new train of thought.

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PrisonersDilemma.html

John Kass, “Dibs on parking spaces after snow is the Chicago Way,” Chicago Tribune (February 5, 2015).

“No more ‘dibs’ on Chicago streets,” WLS-TV Chicago (February 13, 2015).

image credit: DVIDSHUB

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

Students of military history and the Revolutionary War recall the legend of the Swamp Fox, Brigadier General Francis Marion.  Marion helped protect the low country of South Carolina (near Charleston) for the nascent American nation and fought against British Redcoats, Hessian mercenaries, Loyalist, and Tory forces.  Marion received his nickname from the British General Banastre Tarleton who unsuccessfully pursued Marion across low country terrain for 26 miles.  In 1781, Marion’s small band of fighters represented the only resistance to British power in the area, and Marion had to rely solely on good news from the north and future promises of support from the Continental Congress to keep his faith up in the fighting effort.  Francis Marion was able to fight successfully against the most dominant military on Earth at the time through his cleverness, his ability to operate with minimal resources, and his knowledge of the local terrain.  In the new book The Swamp Fox: Lessons in Leadership from the Partisan Campaigns of Francis Marion, Scott Aiken highlights many of the techniques used by Marion in his dogged battle against the British.  The lessons below, recounted in an informative interview with Scott Aiken on the John Batchelor radio program, can be highly instructive for modern students of innovation.

Marion was a student of the concept of the “Culminating Point” in military affairs.  The Culminating Point was the point at which a military force no longer has the ability to continue its form of operations, whether on defense or offense.  Marion was exceptionally talented at knowing precisely when to increase his operational tempo.  Op tempo consists of moving more quickly or attacking more ferociously in response to an adversary, and Marion excelled at adjusting his op tempo to change the culminating point, either in the form of taking an enemy’s held position, or attacking an enemy at a vulnerable location, or convincing a pursuing enemy that he should give up the hunt and allow Marion to escape.

For the innovator, one should consider one’s own culminating point in working on a new idea, which can occur when the innovator realizes that he or she can no longer continue to invest in a new idea.  This is often a painful moment, the intensity of which varies based on the amount of time and money one has invested in the idea.  However, being able to identify this culminating point is critical to ensuring that an idea that no longer will bear fruit is stopped so resources can be shifted to other endeavors.  Likewise, one should think about Marion’s use of increasing his op tempo to drive towards a culminating point.  Perhaps an innovator is working on an innovation that has been lingering for a while for various reasons.  By increasing the op tempo, the innovator can determine more quickly if the idea will sink or swim.

In another innovation, Marion was particularly skilled at taking advantage of the terrain to give his forces a superior fighting position.  In the Battle of Lower Bridge near Williamsburg, South Carolina in March 1781, Marion placed his soldiers at both upper and lower portions of the terrain, focusing their firepower on a point where the British forces would have to slow down to pass over a bridge.  Marion wanted to be sure to engage the enemy in a place where his troops would have the advantage.  He employed the same tactic at the Battle of Sampit River, where Marion was pursuing a British contingent and  used his knowledge of the local terrain to identify a shortcut so he could send troops out ahead of the British and meet them at a crossing point.  Simultaneously, he kept a small group of troops following behind the British to harass their rear guard units to keep their forces spread out.

In these two engagements, Marion teaches the lesson of occupying the spot where one wants to engage the enemy rather than the other way around.  In other words, meet the enemy on your preferred turf, not his.  Although we as innovators don’t consider anyone to be enemies, we do face adversaries sometimes in the form of colleagues entrenched within the status quo and unwilling to consider alternative approaches.  Marion’s lesson for us is to think about where we and our competitors are headed and make sure any encounter occurs on terms that are favorable to us.  For example, if it turns out that we need to gain customer experience or usability data for a prototype because we know one of the senior executives who must sign off on our project will ask for that data, then we need to make sure that we don’t encounter that executive before the testing is complete, even if it means that we have to adjust our process to accommodate this.

Students of military history spend a great deal of time discussing the various types of formations used by armies over the centuries, from the infantry square to the echelon to the wedge.  According to Aiken, Marion leveraged an interesting arrangement of his soldiers as part of his fighting style.  Marion elected to place his sharpshooters at the center of firing line and his muskets at the flanks.  He did this because the sharpshooters took longer to reload their rifles than the soldiers with muskets and therefore needed protection on their flanks while reloading.  This formation protected the valuable rifles in the middle while still leveraging the powerful but less accurate muskets on the wings.

For the innovator, this reinforces the concept of making sure one understands the more valuable aspects of a new idea and focusing efforts to protect those aspects even if that protection comes at the expense of other attributes.  For instance, in a new idea to transform a process, there might be some steps in the process where a change will generate a lot of friction with the legacy organization but not yield much in terms of improved performance, while other parts of the process will result in dramatic improvements but may also cause friction.  In this scenario, Marion’s counsel would be to be willing to sacrifice the less important process changes to protect the core improvements one needs to be successful overall.

Aiken relays an interesting aspect of Marion’s personality that runs counter to what was typical of other military leaders in the late 18^th Century.  Many generals of that era possessed a “martial” air and seemed eager to send their soldiers headlong into battle with little concern for loss of life as long as the larger objective was attained.  This was seen as a sign of bravery and wisdom on the part of the military leader.  Marion, on the other hand, was diminutive in stature (but fierce in battle) and had a reputation as someone who did not needlessly waste his soldiers’ lives or time.  Marion eschewed frontal assaults and always looked for flanks or unusual weapons to attack the enemy.

The first lesson from this example for the innovator is an easy one – don’t be afraid to operate in a way that is different from those around you.  As innovators we strive to think differently from our colleagues, but Marion’s approach would take this one step further in that we should think differently even from other innovators, just as Marion thought differently from other generals.  A second aspect to consider is the idea of garnering the respect of one’s troops.  Although the innovator is rarely someone in an organizational leadership role vis-à-vis the participants in an innovation workshop or working group, the innovator should think about making sure he or she neither needlessly sends those individuals headlong in a frontal assault on the status quo (risking their future success at the company) nor acts in a way that makes those individuals think that the innovator is wasting their time.  If Marion can be cognizant of the fact that he might be wasting the time of his ragtag militia in a time of war, then we can be considerate of the time investment we are requesting of our colleagues.

One story from Marion’s experiences as a war leader resonates well with the modern innovator – focusing on early wins.  On August 16, 1780, the British won the Battle of Camden and took a large number of prisoners.  Just a few days later, Marion led his first attack as a commander on the very forces who had won at Camden and was able to free 150 prisoners.  This not only enhanced the fighting strength of Marion’s small band of partisans but also sent a message that Marion was a serious fighting force.  Early wins mattered then just as much as we all know they matter now.

Like an innovator, Marion had to operate in a complex environment where it was not always clear where individuals fell in terms of supporting him.  While it was clear that the British Redcoats would oppose him at every turn, Marion also had to deal with local Tories and Loyalists – many of whom would just as soon stay under British rule as support the Revolutionaries in their midst.  According to Aiken, the Tories initially despised Marion and saw him as prolonging the war and disrupting their lives.  Yet, over time, as they recognized his abilities, they saw that his goal was to help them resume their normal lives after the war ended.

As innovators, our colleagues sometimes waver in terms of their support for our initiatives, and many will behave more like Loyalists (in terms of fealty to the current corporate leadership) than Revolutionaries.  The innovator may want to think about how to ensure these individuals that after the disruption their lives can return to some sense of normalcy but with the benefits that would come from the transformation.

Since he was isolated in South Carolina, Marion had to operate over a broad area with a small band of troops.  He practiced the concept of economy of force due to his limited manpower and supplies, but he did it in a way that had the maximum impact on the British forces.  The British had superior troop strength compared to Marion but because he was able to attack them effectively and quickly in different locations the British had to spread their forces out for protection.  As a result of numerous successful small attacks, Marion’s legend grew and he didn’t have to be everywhere at once to have an impact on the British,  Marion forced the British to think about him at all times and change their behavior as though his forces were nearby.  Writing in The Smithsonian, Amy Crawford observes that since “the British never knew where Marion was or where he might strike, they had to divide their forces, weakening them.”

According to Sean Busick, a professor of American history at Athens State University in Alabama, Marion “helped make South Carolina an inhospitable place for the British […and] Marion and his followers played the role of David to the British Goliath.”  The lesson for the innovator is that even though he or she may be small in number, by being active and demonstrating small successes across a broad area the innovator’s overall effectiveness can be magnified.  Just as Marion was constantly on the mind of the British, the innovator should seek ways to be on the mind of his colleagues to help unearth new innovation opportunities or to implement innovation initiatives.

In April of 1781, Marion unleashed one of his unique technical innovations in an attack on Fort Watson.  The British fort was situated on an Indian mound and, when its walls were combined with the natural elevation of the mound, Fort Watson sat over 40 feet above the ground level of any attackers.  The fort had water supply from a natural well and the British were well-armed and could fend off any conventional frontal assault.  Marion devised a solution known as the mayhem tower, which was a prefabricated wooden tower that rose higher than the walls of the British fort.  Marion’s troops built the pieces for the tower in secret and on a dark night they quietly assembled the tower within firing range of the fort and Marion’s sharpshooters climbed to the top of the tower.  As the sun rose, the British realized that they were now within range of Marion’s troops and quickly surrendered to the partisans.

What is instructive for the innovator is the concept of remote prefabrication of a solution.  Sometimes, when faced with a problem, the solution must be broken into smaller pieces and worked on separately (and even quietly) then when the pieces come together the true innovation can be seen.  A direct attack on a problem isn’t always the only way to solve it.

Marion demonstrated a similar cunning in the attack on Fort Motte in May of 1781.  Fort Motte was a private home that the British had fortified to protect one of the approaches to Charleston.  The British were well-armed and Marion had his troops dig trenches so they could get closer to the house then, instead of launching a frontal assault as would be a typical military tactic of the era, he had his troops shoot flaming arrows with burning pitch towards the roof of the house.  The British were unable to put out the fire and the resulting conflagration cleared out the home forced the British to surrender.  As was the case with the mayhem tower, Marion sought an innovative solution to achieving a military victory.

This contrasts sharply with Marion’s assault at the Battle of Quinby Bridge in July 1781.  In this confrontation, American General Thomas Sumter ordered Marion’s troops to assault a well-protected British position in a way that Marion knew would be ineffective, given the position of the various forces across the terrain and the lack of American artillery for the assault.  As expected, Marion’s forces were repulsed by the British and had to retreat.  As Aiken observes, irregulars do not perform well when they are used as traditional troops.  Marion would not have fought this battle without his field artillery or would have set up an attack when the enemy decamped.

For the innovator, the lesson here is that while it may be tempting to follow the advice and strategy of someone else in pursuing an innovation objective, the path to success is more likely to be achieved when following one’s own plan of attack.  Innovators may be less likely to succeed when operating with traditional methods.

A final lesson from Marion’s life reflects the dictum that sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.  In a story relayed by Amy Crawford, Marion’s career as a militia leader almost never even started.  In March 1780, Marion was attending a dinner party at the home of a fellow officer in Charleston and found himself locked in the house while his host and colleagues engaged in toast after toast to the American forces.  As a teetotaler, Marion felt trapped in the house and decided to escape by leaping from a second story window.  When he landed, he broke his ankle and decided to head to the countryside for rest and recuperation.  This was a lucky coincidence because in May, 1780, British troops captured Charleston and Marion would likely have been taken prisoner at that point, thus preventing the legend of the Swamp Fox from ever beginning.

As innovators, we should not discount the importance of luck in our calculations and always look for fortuitous outcomes even from seemingly bad events.  Disappointments and even failures occur more often than not in the work of an innovator, and in the case of Marion he could have seen his broken ankle as a sign he wasn’t suited to play the role of pursuing and eluding British troops all across South Carolina.  However, this injury was precisely what positioned him to achieve greatness, and his resilience, and cunning, are attributes that all innovators should embrace.

Sources:

– Scott D. Aiken, The Swamp Fox: Lessons in Leadership from the Partisan Campaigns of Francis Marion (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2012).
– Amy Crawford, “The Swamp Fox: Elusive and crafty, Francis Marion outwitted British troops during the American Revolution,” The Smithsonian (June 30, 2007).
– https://johnbatchelorshow.com/podcasts/2014/11/28/fourth-hour
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Marion
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banastre_Tarleton
– https://www.smithsonianmag.com/biography/the-swamp-fox-157330429
– https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=33219
– https://www.francismariontrail.com/
– https://www.francismariontrail.com/MarionData.htm
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_formation
– https://www.revolutionarywar101.com/battles/810717-quinby-bridge/

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

When I first started working in the innovation space many years ago, the novelty of the profession ensured that I approached each exercise with a smile on my face and an eagerness to dive more deeply into topic after topic. As is the case with almost any human endeavor, over time this excitement waxes and wanes and an innovation practitioner needs a mechanism to refresh one’s enthusiasm about the subject matter.

As I read an article recently about how to rekindle excitement for competitive sports, I immediately noticed parallels between what the author, Arianne Brown, was facing and what we in the innovation world face in terms of maintaining our energy levels in pursuit of innovation goals. The author’s five key points for re-injecting fun into competitive sports are definitely instructive for the innovation practitioner faced with the challenge of maintaining intensity over the course of time.

1. Don’t focus on the “W.”

In this recommendation, Brown encourages the competitive athlete to focus more on the “fun” of the athletic pursuit than on the winning and losing of the activity. According to Brown, “[i]f you love what you’re doing and have fun doing it, things will fall into place … [a]nd when the win happens, it will be that much more enjoyable.” Although accountants and minders of ROI models from innovation investment may cringe when they read this, an innovation practitioner should not solely focus on the winning and losing of an initiative. This is important for two reasons. First, innovation by its very nature leads to a lot of failures, and innovators often learn more from the failures than from a handful of successes. Second, by focusing on making innovation an enjoyable activity for the practitioner and the participants in an innovation initiative, the odds are that the team will deliver more creative, free-thinking outcomes. A group of smiling, though serious innovators, will probably generate new ideas at a faster rate than a group of dour individuals.

2. Take a break.

Brown, citing her own experience as a runner, observes that there are times when an athlete simply needs to take a break from a sport in order to rekindle one’s love for the activity. Powering through a low period in one’s enthusiasm for an activity, she notes, can sometimes make the downturn even worse. For the innovation practitioner, the break can apply to one’s individual efforts or to an innovation team or workshop. If the word “grind” appears in discussions about an innovation topic, such as “grinding out an idea” or “powering through a session,” then perhaps one should step away and recharge one’s batteries before continuing. Walking around the building and getting some fresh air can do wonders in terms of improving creative thinking.

3. Run at the back of the pack.

This piece of advice from Brown is a corollary to the concept of taking a break. Running at the back of the pack, she notes, is a good strategy for an athlete on a recovery day but who still is engaged in activity and not taking a break.  In the business world, this may be more relevant as few bosses would take kindly to a group of innovation workers taking a lot of breaks. Sometimes one has to keep working, but by operating at the back of the pack, one can maintain a decent pace and still make progress towards the finish line without the intense exertion required to run at the front of the pack. For an innovation team, this could mean spacing out workshops or innovation sessions to avoid the “grind” but still keep momentum going towards the ultimate objective.

4. Remember where it all began.

In this example, Brown recommends that the athlete think about where he or she first experienced true excitement and joy from participating in an athletic endeavor. Focusing on the first time one really had fun at an activity, even if it was many years ago, can ignite the spark that brings one closer to those feelings of happiness about the activity in the present. Thinking about the past forces a person to zero in on the specific feelings that appeared at the time and reminds the person why this activity is so important. For the innovator, it could be the first time one’s idea went from a whiteboard to an actual process change or new product or service. The innovator may not think about the hours, days, weeks, or years that it took to develop that idea, but the moment when the epiphany struck or when the new product went to market is definitely worth revisiting as a form of inspiration for future innovation work.

5. Smile … a lot.

This last piece of advice from Brown may be the most important. Brown harkens back to a race in which she decided to smile as much as possible and noticed that her posture, breathing, and performance was much better and she won the race. For the innovator, a smile is as powerful as a set of brilliant ideas. After all, if an innovator constantly says great things but presents them with a sour disposition, buy-in to those ideas from elsewhere in the organization will be more difficult. Innovation by its very nature is forward-thinking and positive in nature, so smiling should be a key attribute of innovation activities. That does not mean that innovation is not a serious activity, but it does highlight how important it is to make sure that innovation is seen as something worthy of generating happiness for its practitioners.

Brown suggests that every athlete ask the question of whether he or she is having fun in an activity. If the answer is no, then something needs to change. For the innovation practitioner, that advice is definitely worthy of consideration.

Source: Arianne Brown, “Make fun a key ingredient in competitive sports,” Deseret News (August 13, 2014), C6.
image credit: running image from bigstock

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

As innovation practitioners, we must to approach the topic of innovation in warfare with great trepidation, as some would argue that it is difficult to consider resources invested in fighting wars as a positive development for humanity, given that warfare is almost always a tragic occurrence for combatants and non-combatants alike.

The traditional view of innovation in warfare focuses on the role that armed conflict plays in providing an extreme incentive for warring parties to think of new offensive and defensive technologies. In the latest iteration of conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system has received a great deal of attention as a key innovation due to its efficacy in defending Israeli cities from Hamas rocket attacks.

Much has been written in the media about the technology behind the Iron Dome and its evolution over the years, but instead of focusing on the intricacies of the missile defense system (which consists of a radar and interceptor missile that can be launched and kinetically strike incoming enemy missiles, knocking them off course), I would like to focus on two attributes of the Iron Dome system in operation that can yield additional insights for innovation practitioners.

The first insight concerns a general attribute of missile defense that dates from the first Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991 in which an interceptor system similar to Iron Dome, the Patriot missile system, was used in several cities the defend against SCUD tactical ballistic missiles launched from Iraq.  At the time, the technology was not as sophisticated and advanced as the current Iron Dome system, with hit rates on incoming missiles as low as 9 percent, compared to the current Iron Dome success rate of 90 percent.

What is of interest to the innovation practitioner is how the Patriot missile battery was deemed “successful” despite its relatively low interception rate.  The reason for this is the fact that the residents of the cities being protected by the Patriot batteries received significant psychological benefits from the defensive aspects of the weapon.  Rather than simply huddling in a bomb shelter awaiting the next, highly random, incoming missile strike, the resident of a city protected by the Patriot would hear or see the defending missile rising noisily and dramatically towards the sky in an attempt to intercept the incoming SCUD.  This mere act of defiance in the face of attack certainly lifted the spirits of the residents.  Being defenseless in the face of random attacks adds even more terror to the populace than having a sense of being able to respond to the incoming assault.

While the work we do as innovators in a business environment is in no way comparable to the life or death tragedy of warfare, the concept of attack/defense is worth exploring from an innovation standpoint.  In the age of disruptive innovation, companies often find themselves under attack in the marketplace. A company with a leading product or service, no matter how strong its sales or how positive its customer feedback, can suddenly find itself disrupted by a new competitor. In this scenario, the innovation practitioner should consider the psychological impact of the disruption on the employees of the formerly leading firm.

The innovation team could then assume a role similar to the Iron Dome in that it represents the defensive mechanism rising to resist the incoming attack.  Rather than sitting back and allowing itself to be disrupted, a company could fight back with innovation applied to its products and services. This fighting spirit can spread across the entire company and energize a workforce that previously was at its nadir of despair.  A company may want to place its innovation team in an even more prominent role than usual to show that it is responding to the marketplace assault.

In applying innovation to counter-attack a competitor, the innovation practitioner should consider another innovation insight from the Iron Dome system. The fundamental financials of the Iron Dome are not well-suited for a typical business model.  Each rocket launched by Hamas is estimated to cost a few thousand dollars to make, but each interceptor rocket costs Israel $50,000 to create, not to mention the time needed to manufacture the weapons. Trying to launch an interceptor against every incoming missile would prove to be an expensive endeavor and, presumably, Israel could even deplete its overall supply of interceptor missiles rather quickly.

To address this concern, an algorithm in the Iron Dome system makes a rapid triage-type decision when it detects a rocket launched by Hamas. The Iron Dome system analyzes the trajectory of the rocket and, if the rocket is likely to fall into an unpopulated area, the system does not waste an interceptor missile on that rocket. Only the rockets headed towards populated areas are targeted by the system, which increases its cost-effectiveness.

The same thought process can apply to the innovation team’s efforts to respond to competitive forays in the marketplace. A competitor may develop numerous new features for its products and services but innovation resources cannot be applied to respond to each and every attack. A company should assess each of these new attacks and determine which ones make the most sense to address and which ones, while still relevant in the marketplace, are not worth the investment of time and money to answer. At the same time, the lesson of the psychological impact of demonstrating a defensive capability suggests that it is important to make an attempt to repel attacks rather than standing idly by and allowing an opponent to seize market share.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War#Scud_and_Patriot_missiles

https://news.nationalpost.com/2014/07/11/how-israels-iron-dome-defence-system-has-an-almost-90-success-rate-amid-deluge-of-hamas-rockets/

Cirincione, Joseph (October 1992). “The Performance of the Patriot Missile in the War,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

image credit: quartertothree.com

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

Although World Cup football/soccer fever has dissipated in the United States after our team’s loss to Belgium in the Round of 16, the rest of the world continues to be enthralled by the World Cup tournament in Brazil.  As I watched the matches over the last few weeks, I found myself thinking about how innovation practitioners could benefit from examining their work efforts using examples from soccer.  From the start to the end of a match, soccer is rife with lessons learned for the innovator.

Set Piece – This is a play that occurs when a team has a free kick (after a penalty) or a corner kick after the opponent sends the ball past its own end line in trying to defend its goal.  A team will typically have numerous set pieces defined in practice then will execute them during the game.  In the Round of 16 match between France and Nigeria, the French team scored both of its goals on set pieces from corner kicks.  On two occasions, the French started their corner kick play the same way, with a tap to a nearby player instead of a booming cross, but on the second play the attacker pretended to head away from the goal then quickly turned and raced into the goal area, which lead to an effective cross and an own-goal by Nigeria.

Innovation Lesson – When an innovation leader is preparing for a session with colleagues or clients, he or she should have a number of “set pieces” at the ready to facilitate various parts of the discussion.  For instance, the leader should have a set piece for cases where the discussion gets sidetracked (e.g. down the rabbit hole) or where there is a lot of silence and the leader is having trouble getting participants to speak up and voice their contributions to the session.  These set pieces often need to be exceptionally creative to keep the audience engaged and, just like France did against Nigeria, the innovation leader may want to hint at taking a conversation in one direction then abruptly switch to keep the audience on its toes.

Counter-Attack – This occurs when a team is defending its goal against the opponent but is able to steal the ball and rushes back up the field, trying to seize the advantage while most of the opponent’s players were downfield in attack mode and not defending their goal.  Brazil’s national team is exceptionally good at the counter-attack.

Innovation Lesson – If an innovation team is struggling to come up with a new product or service, one area to consider would be to counter-attack a competitor’s area of strength.  Just when one’s own company seems the most vulnerable, an innovator can strike back at the heart of the competitor’s attack and, sometimes, find success.

Kicking Backwards to go Forward – This occurs frequently in soccer when a team will be trying to advance the ball up one side of the field but runs into opposition and becomes concerned they will lose possession of the ball, so they turn around and kick the ball back to a player behind them, sometimes even to their own goalie who then can reset the play and send the ball to another, more open player, to advance up the field.  Germany’s possession-oriented, methodical approach to managing the game takes advantage of this technique as much or more than any of the other semi-finalists in the tournament.

Innovation Lesson – This innovation lesson runs contrary to the counter-attack but is also a valuable component in one’s innovation toolset.  In an innovation session, a leader might try to push a team to focus on attacking one particular area of opportunity repeatedly but might not be successful.  After repeated failed attempts, the leader may want to consider backing out of that approach and trying a different tactic to address that area of inquiry.

Celebrate a Goal – Because there are so few goals in a typical soccer match, the celebration that occurs when a player scores a goal is dramatic, often involving the entire team.  It never ceases to amaze me how many soccer matches end with a score of 1-0, which shows just how valuable a single goal can be.  Some players have unique styles of celebration, but the duration and intensity of these moments surpasses those of many other sports.

Innovation Lesson – For the vast majority of innovation teams, my assumption is that a lot of work results in a relatively small number of innovations.  This is not due to the lack of skill on the part of the participants but, rather, is related to the incredible complexity of the driving innovation across complex organizations.  After all, if innovations were easy to generate, they probably would not be considered “innovative” and would be viewed as basic insights.  With this in mind, the innovator should celebrate successful innovation efforts in the same way that a soccer player celebrates a single goal.  It may be a while before an innovation team sees another win, so to maximize positive reinforcement mechanisms the team should celebrate intensely when they are successful.

Give and Go – This is the most prevalent play in soccer, in which one player passes the ball to a teammate and immediately sprints forward to receive a pass back from that same player, who usually just touches the ball (the “touch pass”) to return it to his teammate.  The reason this play works is because the defender reacts to the pass and tends to ignore the player who kicked the ball, only to find that the ball ends up back at the first player who races forward with a head of steam.

Innovation Lesson – An innovation leader should have a partner lined up in a workshop who can help drive home a point in a discussion using a “give and go” mechanism in which the leader tees up a concept, hands it off to another workshop participant, then swoops back in to pick up the idea and take it forward.

Head Instead of Hands – Other than goalies, soccer players must remember not to use their hands while on the field, even to the point where a ball flying towards them at chest level must be trapped with the chest, headed with the forehead, or avoided altogether.  Since hands are so critical to everyday life for the typical person, this behavior is indeed counter-intuitive.

Innovation Lesson – One of the many definitions of innovation is thinking about old things in a new way.  After all, if we kept thinking about things the same way over and over, we’d be unlikely to come up with new ideas and new ways of thinking.  One mechanism to drive new thinking is the use of counter-intuitive scenarios.  Just as in soccer the player must think about using his head or chest instead of hands to direct the ball, an innovation leader should think about how to get his or her workshop participants to think outside their comfort zones to stimulate fresh, new thinking.

Stoppage Time – At the end of each period of play the referee adds stoppage time to the game, representing time where the game clock was running but play was stopped due to injury or penalty.  This ensures that the amount of action in a game is consistent whether there were a lot of times where the game was stopped (a game with a lot of injuries) or only a few times.  While the fact that no one on the field truly knows the exact time the game will end, I have found this element to add to the intensity and excitement of the match.

Innovation Lesson – In previous writings I have addressed the importance of set schedules for sessions to ensure the participants are focused on the discussion rather than other compelling needs, such as when the next break will be.  However, despite the best intentions and plans of the innovation leader, it is sometimes difficult to ensure sufficient time is devoted to various topics.  As such, the leader, like the soccer Referee, should keep track of where diversions had led to a short-changing of various topics to ensure that by the end of the session all the key topics have been addressed, even if it means extra time is needed.

Water Break – In some of the games in Brazil, despite the fact that the tournament occurred in the Southern Hemispheric winter, the referees stopped the match for water breaks when the temperature and humidity exceeded a certain point.  Soccer players are some of the best-conditioned athletes in the world and individual tracking data shows that they can run the equivalent of a 10K road race during the course of a soccer match.  Yet even these great athletes have their limits, so the forced water breaks, while resulting in a brief stoppage in intensity of play, nonetheless proved critical to ensuring the highest level of competition in the match.

Innovation Lesson – Even the most energetic and focused participants in an innovation session need a break.  The debate for the innovation leader is whether to adhere to a fixed schedule for these breaks (using objective criteria such as a certain amount of time or reaching a certain topic….similar to the temperature and humidity readings in the World Cup), or subjective criteria based on how the leader senses the workshop is progressing against its goals.  My preference is to stick to a specific timeline, with some discretion left for a leader who wants to go past a certain stopping point to allow a team to complete a particularly important discussion on a topic.

Position of “Striker” – Besides the Goalie, perhaps the most prominent position on a soccer team is that of the Striker.  This moniker is appropriate given the Striker’s penchant for fast attacks on the opponent’s goal and aggressive moves.

Innovation Lesson – There are two potential lessons from the concept of the Striker for the innovator.  First, an innovation team may want to have a person who plays the role of the Striker in the workshop, aggressively pursuing ideas and pushing the team forward relentlessly.  Second, in coming up with names for innovation efforts, consideration should be given to naming the effort to match the actions it is taking.  For example, a project to clean up, standardize, and simplify a large data set of customer information named “Customer Master Data 2014” will have less impact that “Data Accelerator 2014.”

Yellow Card – The Referee can award a Yellow Card to a player who commits multiple fouls in a game or one particularly egregious foul.  The beauty of the Yellow Card is that it serves as a warning to the player to “cool off” or face a second Yellow Card, which results in a Red Card and immediate expulsion from the match (as well as the next match).  A Yellow Card two games in a row also results in an expulsion from the next match.

Innovation Lesson – Something like a yellow card would be a useful tool for facilitating an innovation session, particularly when one participant engages in behavior that proves deleterious to the continued progress of the session.  A yellow card would be a fun, light-hearted way of giving that person a warning while maintaining the positive mood of the session.

Vanishing Spray Paint – In the 2014 World Cup some of the Referees are using small cans of vanishing spray paint to mark lines for penalty kicks. When there is a penalty kick in the field (outside of the penalty box), the Referee paces off 10 yards from the spot of the kick to the location where the defending team can set up a wall of players to block the kicker’s direct route to the goal.  In the past, the Referee would mark this spot but the players could slowly move towards the kicker in a sly manner as the Referee walked away.  Armed with vanishing spray, Referees now mark a line where the blockers can stand, which eliminates their ability to sneak forward.  Although the spray has been used in the US and Canada before, 2014 marks its first introduction into World Cup play.

Innovation Lesson – The US and Canada are often viewed as inferior to Europe and South America from a Soccer standpoint.  The best players in the world rarely play in the US Major Soccer League.  However, that did not prevent the innovation of vanishing spray paint from emerging in the US/Canada marketplace and ultimately making its way onto the world stage in the 2014 World Cup.  This serves as a reminder that innovation can come from the most unlikely places, and even areas of a company or organization that receive little attention or under-perform may still be a good source of new ideas.

Shootout to Decide Ending – Several of the games in the knockout round of this Work Cup have been decided by Penalty Kicks, in which each side gets 5 shots on goal from close range in an attempt to determine a winner after 90 minutes of regular play plus 30 minutes of extra time have resulted in a tied score.  The penalty kicks are exciting to watch and quite useful in ferreting out a winner.

Innovation Lesson – While we hope that the result of a discussion on an innovation topic results in consensus with every member of an innovation team one-hundred percent in agreement on how to proceed, it is likely that innovation practitioners will find themselves faced with a divided team, with some favoring one approach while others favor a different approach.  The same can also happen when a team is ranking ideas in order to prioritize follow-up efforts around a particular concept.  In these cases, the innovation leader may want to rely on a tie-breaking mechanism just as is used in soccer to decide the final outcome.  It may not make sense for the workshop participants to head outdoors to find the nearest soccer field and lace up cleats for a shootout, some form of resolution, defined in advance of the workshop, might be nice to have.  An example could be the involvement of a Senior Executive as someone who can cast the tie-breaking vote, or a more complex scoring system that could further differentiate the ideas under consideration.

Friendly at the End – One surprising aspect of World Cup play is the extent to which the competitors are amicable with each other at the end of the match no matter what the outcome or how intense the play on the field has been.  This may be due to the fact that a lot of the players are teammates on elite professional teams in Europe or elsewhere, and may also be due to the fact that in the run-up to the World Cup the national teams play a lot of preparatory matches against each other.  In fact, these matchers are referred to as “friendlies.”

Innovation Lesson – A final reminder for any innovation leader is that no matter how heated the discussion in the workshop becomes, it is important for the participants to arrive as friends and depart as friends, just as occurs in soccer matches.  Some participants may be particularly passionate about their ideas in a session and may find themselves in intense conflict with other participants who are equally vociferous about another approach.  However, in the end, the innovation leader will need the help of all of the participants to help push an idea forward to see it implemented as a new process, product, or service, and he or she cannot afford to lose the support of anyone on the team, as we all know that implementation is often the most difficult aspect of an innovation project.

image credit: mlssoccer.com

Source:

https://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/world-cup-what-is-the-spray-foam-used-by-refs-140618.htm

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

Many of us possess fond memories of warm spring or early summer days when instead of sitting in a stale, cold classroom we were given the opportunity by a cooperative teacher to escape the confines of the building and enjoy a class outside. My favorite occurred when I was teaching a university course outdoors in Washington, DC and, by sheer coincidence, President Clinton walked by to greet students in the courtyard after giving a speech nearby.

My students probably remembered shaking the President’s hand more than the content of my outdoor lecture that day, which points to the most common criticism of holding sessions outdoors – the fact that all the distractions outdoors impede the learning experience. Students who are hearing birds chirping, watching other students walk by, feeling the sun on their faces, or shaking the President’s hand (though this is a rare occurrence) are not immersed in the topic at hand in a class.

However, a lot can change in 20 years and the notion of allowing individuals to be outside to inspire creativity and productivity is becoming increasingly prevalent in the workplace. For the innovation practitioner, this is particularly important as the most important thing we can do in our innovation sessions is open the eyes and minds of our colleagues to drive new thinking.

Two recent articles highlight this phenomenon and point to the benefits of departing from the stale environment of the traditional workplace. An emerging trend in workplace aesthetics is the greater choice school of office design, which stipulates that employees should have a wide variety of areas in which to work. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Rachel Emma Silverman identifies the increasing importance of integrating outdoor space into office design, and points to the productivity benefits that can accrue to companies that give their employees great choice in workspaces. For those of us who spend time thinking about the logistics of getting groups of individuals into a room to develop creative approaches to solving big problems, Silverman’s observations pose some interesting questions.

Silverman identifies numerous examples of companies that have added outdoor space to their office plans to improve worker productivity. Twitter, for instance, included a 20,000 square foot deck at their new San Francisco headquarters building, giving employees the opportunity to take their meetings outside. The trend is not limited to the free-wheeling dot com firms, as manufacturer BASF and advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather in the New York area both have integrated outdoor spaces into their offices in the New York area. Silverman notes that these workspaces are part of the school of thought where “workers do better when given a variety of spaces—such as cafe tables and lounge areas along with regular desks— in which to do their work.”

Gone (hopefully) are the days of a cubicle farm surrounded by a handful of overbooked, windowless conference rooms and a small kitchen/break area. Workers are demanding more and varied spaces for their workplaces and do not want to be limited to a single work area.

The benefits, while mostly subjective in nature, can be striking, as relayed by Ogilvy and Mather executive Cynthia Lindberg, who, speaking about the roof deck in New York, states that “[y]ou go up there for an hour, and you really feel like you’ve gotten out of the office, but you really haven’t left the building.”

Although there are challenges to working outdoors (humidity, bright sunlight, wind, distractions, rain), the hope is that the benefits outweigh the costs for most workers. Industrial Designer Jonathan Olivares, author of a recent exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago on outdoor work spaces, offers the following advice to those who are trying to create the right outdoor space:

• Make outdoor work areas appear as business-like as possible, not leisure-settings

• Ensure there are enough shaded areas to allow for the use of laptops and tablets in bright light

• Use rectangular tables with sufficient power outlets and seating

• Provide some privacy for workers in outdoor meetings.

With the right setting, an outdoor workspace can enhance worker satisfaction and, presumably, improve productivity and creativity.

Another assessment of outdoor productivity appears in Gretchen Reynolds’ article on the value of brief strolls. Although the benefits of strolling accrue to a person walking inside or outside, when we think of a stroll we usually envision leaving the confines of a building and immersing ourselves in the world that surrounds us.

Stanford professor Marily Oppezzo, writing in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, designed a study in which participants sat in a dull room with a treadmill and performed a series of creativity tests. The subjects who performed the creativity tests while walking on the treadmill performed much better on the creativity test than did the subjects who sat at a desk to complete the test. In fact, the walkers came up with 60 percent more uses for an object than the idle test group.

Oppezzo also set up a test in which the participants went for an indoor walk before the session and were given the test while seated (noting the impracticability of the treadmill for a work environment). In this scenario, the walkers again outperformed the sedentary subjects on the creativity test. Oppezzo’s third test case involved having the subjects walk outside prior to the test. Interestingly, while the walkers still outperformed the non-walking subjects, the benefits from being outdoors were no greater than walking indoors.

Oppezzo hypothesizes that walking improves the mood of the subject, which may increase productivity. Likewise, she also notes that walking could divert energy from processes that the brain normally engages to limit creativity, and thus the activity leads to a breakthrough in terms of freeing the mind from these typical confines to allow for freer, more open, thought processes.

For the innovation practitioner, several lessons can be gleaned from these articles. First, although Oppezzo’s study did not find a discernible benefit from walking outdoors versus indoors, the increasing trend of designers incorporating outdoor spaces into new work areas suggests that there is value to giving workers a variety of areas in which to work, both inside and outside. Moreover, anecdotal evidence abounds from any person who has escaped the confines of a stale, climate-controlled work space to spend a little time outdoors.

The phrase “clearing the mind” is often associated with getting outside and taking a walk, and this is not something that would happen in the typical stroll indoors. From a creativity standpoint, the larger number of stimuli from a walk outdoors (sun, grass, smells, trees, leaves, birds, wind, clouds, etc.) far exceeds the typical list of stimuli from a walk inside the office, where the most prevalent smell is typically burnt popcorn from the microwave.

A second lesson learned from these articles is that when we are choosing a work area outdoors, we should be cognizant of the key attributes that Designer Jonathan Olivares highlights as necessary for a functional outdoor work space: a business-like setting, shaded areas, rectangular tables with power outlets, and privacy. While sitting on the grass may be free-spirited and fun, it may not be conducive to the productivity we need to demonstrate in our innovation sessions.

Finally, the results of Marily Oppezzo’s research highlight the importance of exercise and motion to spurring creativity in workshop participants. It may not be sufficient simply to take a team to an outdoor area and expect the great ideas to start flowing. Going from one sedentary locale to another is not enough. Rather, the innovation practitioner may need to have the team go for a short stroll before the session, whether indoors or outdoors, in order to free up the thought processes that will enable them to generate creative thoughts.

If we are trying to inspire participants in our innovation sessions to think outside the box, we may want to begin by getting them outside the office.

Sources:
Rachel Emma Silverman, “Bringing Work to the Great Outdoors: Forget Free Snacks, Companies Are Installing Roof Decks, Patios; a Faux Skylight to Fight Winter Blues,” Wall Street Journal (November 20, 2012).
Gretchen Reynolds, “Take a Walk, Boost Talent,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (May 5, 2014).

image credit: acidcow.com

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