GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

One of my favorite categories of literature is the travel narrative.  A lesser-known work of this type is Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan from the Lonely Planet series, which chronicles the author’s experiences living in Japan from the 1960s to the 1990s, paralleling the great bubble of the 1980s.  Many of us recall this period as a time when Japan rose to economic dominance on the world stage (see Shintaro Ishihara and Akio Morita’s 1989 essay The Japan That Can Say No).

Just as a stroll through a new place can inspire creative thinking on the part of the traveler, so, too, can a walk through Kerr’s fascinating set of experiences from Japan.  For the innovation practitioner, the most relevant ideas to explore are kanji, the shrine no one sees, how to explore a mandala, the sound of one hand clapping, the hossu brush, spilled tea, and the Mandate of Heaven.  My hope is that some of these ideas will resonate with innovators and help lead to creative thinking.

Kanji

Kanji symbols are the Chinese characters that serve as the foundation of the pictoral representation of numerous Asiatic languages.  Unlike English, where words are made up of a series of characters, a kanji character has multiple meanings wrapped up into a single symbol.  Kerr notes that as a native English speaker, the impact of kanji is particularly striking:

When you read a word made up of alphabetical letters, you must first line these up in the brain before you can understand what is being said.  But when you look at a kanji character, its meaning penetrates the brain directly.  As a result, one cannot ignore kanji signs, even if one wants to. I almost never read signs when I’m in America, but whenever I ride the Japanese subway I find myself unconsciously reading the advertisements hanging in the carriages.

The lesson of kanji is the value of a pictoral representation of a concept as opposed to the alphabetic interpretation of a concept.  This goes beyond the typical notion in presentations that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  Pictures are important, but something that I see frequently in innovation presentations is a complex image that combines multiple concepts in a way that triggers a sophisticated neurological response on the part of those looking at the image.  The goal of a complex image should be to achieve the effect that Kerr describes when he looks at a kanji character.  The complex image should “penetrate the brain directly” which means that it triggers a series of actions within the observer’s brain that can serve as the foundation of innovative thinking.

One great example of this is the prevalence in the innovation industry of slide presentations consisting mostly of images and few words.  When I first starting working in this space, I noticed that many of the presentations in the field consisted largely of pictures, with the innovation consultant speaking around the picture.  This ran counter to years of instruction in slide presentations that focused on headlines that strung together to tell a story, along with endless rules about bulleted lists and page layout.  Innovation consultants clearly see the power of a single picture as a way to penetrate the minds of the audience more effectively than would be the case with a black on white textual representation of the same content.

The Shrine No One Sees

Kerr notes that there is a fascination in Japan for secrecy, and this is manifested in the ancient Shinto tradition of ensconcing certain objects within a shrine and not revealing those objects to anyone, sometimes for hundreds of years.  Japan’s oldest Shinto shrine, at Izumo, contains an object that has not been seen for so long that no one remembers what the object is, simply referring to it as “the Object.”  There is a mirror at the Grand Shrine of Ise that has not been seen for over a thousand years.  In some sense, innovation may be the “shrine that no one sees” in today’s business environment.  It certainly warrants the designation of “shrine” to the extent that so much adulation is heaped upon innovation though very few people actually see innovation in action.  In a different sense, the power of innovation may in fact derive from the fact that it is not something easily seen, which, like the hidden Japanese shrines, adds to the mystique.

How to Explore a Mandala

Another aspect of Japanese life shrouded in secrecy is the Buddhist concept of a mandala, which Kerr defines as a diagram showing a path to spiritual truth.  According to Kerr, a mandala…

can be a painting made up of squares and circles with Buddhas at strategic corners; equally, it can be an arrangement of statues, the layout of a building or a temple circuit followed by pilgrims.  The largest mandala of all covers the whole island of Shikoku, which is made sacred by a ring of eighty-eight temples founded by the monk Kukai.  Iya Valley, as it happens, lies right at the heart of this great mandala – appropriately, since the heart of a mandala should be inaccessible and secret.

Kerr notes that one interesting aspect of the mandala is the particular way that one should approach and contemplate a mandala:

A Tibetan lama once gave me the following instructions about how to explore a mandala: never rush headlong to the center.  The proper way to contemplate a mandala is to first train your thoughts on the Buddhas guarding the gates along the periphery.  Having entered, you gradually work your way into the interior, going round and round in ever tighter circles until you arrive at the center.

This Tibetan advice should resonate with the innovation practitioner to the extent that it informs the way an innovation expert should approach a particular topic in a workshop or other discussion. When kicking off a session, the innovation practitioner should “never rush headlong to the center.”  Rather, he or she should spend time considering the equivalent of the Buddhas surrounding the concept at its periphery, then work his or her way into the interior on a step by step basis, moving in increasingly smaller circles until reaching the center.  This center is the core innovation idea that the practitioner is seeking to define in the session and, in addition to ensuring that proper due diligence has been applied to confirmation that the participants have indeed reached the correct core idea, there is also value to the exploratory steps along the way.

Sound of One Hand Clapping

Another aspect of Lost Japan is the well-known Zen parable, referred to as a koan, which asks “what is the sound of one hand clapping.”  According to one Zen master, who refused to tell Kerr the solution to the riddle, the “answer was not worth knowing, and the whole value of the koan lay in the process of figuring it out.”  Like a person who explores the mandala in a set of ever-shrinking circles, the value of the koan rests in the process of thinking involved in arriving at a decision.  This can serve as a reminder of the importance of the step by step effort of working through the solution to a problem and the importance of capturing the insights that occur along the way.

Hossu Brush and Pure Conversation

An implement that Kerr recalls fondly from Lost Japan is the hossu brush.  This brush, typically a long horse or yak tail attached to a wooden handle of red lacquer, bamboo, or a branch, was used by Chinese Taoist sages in the fourth century to swat away flies while the scholars were engaged in what was known as “seidan,” or pure conversation.  Over the passage of centuries, the hossu brush…

came to symbolize the brushing away the flies of care [… and h]anging one nearby meant that you were going to engage in ‘pure conversation.’  In a modern setting, a hossu brush displayed near a sofa indicates that space is reserved for a more esoteric conversation.

As innovation workshop leaders, we should consider how to establish a tone in our innovation workshops that aligns with the concept of “pure conversation.”  Although hanging a hossu brush on the wall may go over the heads of most of the participants, perhaps the innovation practitioner should consider other mechanisms to signal to his or her participants the significance of the conversation about to take place in the workshop.

This is why it is sometimes difficult to drive innovation discussions in a traditional corporate setting where a group of subject matter experts moves from one set of meetings to another and, when arriving in a meeting to brainstorm innovation topics, must immediately switch mental gears from line-item budget reviews to more esoteric topics such as how to transform an offering to develop a new product or service.  Perhaps a symbol like a hossu brush could help establish the proper mindset.

Spilled Tea

It is well-known that tea occupies a prominent place in Japan, and Kerr cites one example of the importance of the tea ceremony, which is a highly-choreographed event laced with centuries of tradition.  Kerr relates a story of a tea ceremony training session that seemingly ended in disaster, but ultimately imparted an even greater lesson to the students:

The tea used in the ceremony is a finely powdered green tea, carried in a lacquered caddy called a natsume, which is shaped like an egg with a flat bottom and top.  One day, a student failed to support the body of the caddy, taking only the lid in his hands, and the caddy dropped from the height of about one meter directly into the tatami.  The powdered tea puffed up high into the air in a cloud, and tea settled in a green ring on the mat before our startled eyes.  Everyone was petrified.  In the silence, [the Tea Master] Sawada asked us, “What is the appropriate thing to say at a time like this?” Nobody could answer.  He said, “You should say, ‘How beautiful!’  And indeed, the ring of powdered green tea on the tatami was beautiful.  Sawada told us to gather around and look at it.  “You may never see this again in all your lives,” he said. “It’s almost impossible for the caddy to land perfectly on its bottom like that.  Look, and admire!”

The lesson for innovators from this anecdote is a constant reminder that we need to look in all areas for potential innovation, even in failures.  There is a well-established literature among innovation authors touting the importance of looking at failures as a source of inspiration for new thinking, and Kerr’s example provides a nice image of this.  This could even be a good story to use to kick off an innovation session because it forces the participants to transform their mindsets in the way that the tea master Sawada transforms the spilled tea (a seemingly devastating setback) into something amazing, beautiful, and even inspirational.

Mandate of Heaven

The final observation from Kerr that can be related to innovation practitioners relates to the Mandate of Heaven.  This concept represents the governing authority leveraged by Chinese dynasties over the centuries to rule their country (Kerr writes about China in his book on Japan because of the deep connections between then two countries in ancient times).  One interesting aspect of the Mandate of Heaven relates to an activity that occurred when there was a transition of power from one dynasty to another.  According to Kerr,

[i]n ancient China, when the Mandate of Heaven passed from one dynasty to the next, the very first task of the new dynasty was to record the history of the previous one.  Sung scholars wrote of T’ang, Yuan scholars wrote of Sung, and so on.  It is only when a culture has been superseded that it can be summed up.

The counter-intuitive aspects of this concept are instructive to the innovation practitioner because one would think that the last thing a “new” dynasty would want to do is spend any time focusing on the actions of its predecessor which it just defeated.  After all, if the previous dynasty had been so powerful, it would not have succumbed to the power of the new dynasty.  One would expect that the new dynasty would be focused on implementing and consolidating its newly-gained power rather than focusing on the past.  However, the lesson here from Chinese history is more than just respect for past institutions, but presumably there is value to be gained from a deep understanding of the past to the extent that it informs how the new dynasty should operate.  Lessons learned from the past can certainly help the new team proceed in the future.

Likewise, innovation leaders should not hesitate to absorb the institutional knowledge from a company.  Even the most radical reorganization of a firm, or a significant new product or service can benefit from understanding how that firm operated in the past, or how a product or service performed in the marketplace.  Kerr’s last comment is particularly relevant for an innovator working on a new product or service.  When looking at the previous version of a product or service, an innovator should think about how “[i]t is only when a has been superseded that it can be summed up.”  In other words, we can’t truly understand all the aspects of an older product until we have found a way to supersede it, but in looking back at an old product we may stumble upon observations that help us design the next generation of that product.  Looking backwards can sometimes improve our ability to look forward.

Sources: Alex Kerr, Lost Japan (Singapore: SNP Printing Pte Ltd, 1996); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Japan_That_Can_Say_No

image credit: lonelyplanet.com; alex-kerr.com

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

It is likely that many reading this article has, at some point in his or her life, stayed at a Marriott hotel. Although those of us in the consulting and innovation professions may hesitate to speak fondly on hotels in general (in the spirit of too much of a good thing being a bad thing for the seasoned traveler), my experience has been that Marriott hotels prove to be a consistent product throughout the world, delivering quality and value that is the result of a consistent dedication to operational excellence and ongoing innovation.

With this in mind, I read an article in The Salt Lake Tribune highlighting the key leadership principles espoused by the current Executive Chairman and former CEO of the Marriott Corporation, J.W. “Bill” Marriott Jr. Reviewing this list of leadership principles with an eye towards how these principles can foster improved innovation performance provides interesting insight for practitioners of innovation seeking ideas for implementing such a culture of new thinking for their internal and external clients.

Principle 1 “Listening – When you open your ears, open your mind, too. Listening is foremost an opportunity to learn.”

The concept of listening may seem intuitive for an innovation practitioner skilled in the art of facilitating workshop sessions designed to identify new ideas from a group of participants, but the notion is worth re-iterating because it is so crucial to the success of an innovation effort. In many cases, we launch into a session with an idea of where we think the discussions will go, and subconsciously we may end up steering the workshop towards a predetermined outcome that doesn’t truly reflect the consensus of the attendees. In other words, if the guy whose name is on the building can sit back and listen for a while in a meeting about how to run a hotel, then the innovation practitioner should be able to do so as well.

Principle 2 “Training – We can’t expect our [employees] to do their jobs well if we haven’t shown them how.”

I have spent a lot of time recently thinking about the topic of how to get participants ready for an innovation session. Too often we send a calendar invite with a subject line about innovation then expect participants to show up and generate great and novel thoughts without much preparation. This is one reason why a company’s overall culture is so important in fostering innovation, as employees who are accustomed to thinking of new ways of doing things on a daily basis are more likely to come up with new ideas during innovation sessions focused on solving a particular problem.

Principle 3 “Rewards – We [risk] fracturing the team by setting up a reward structure that distinguishes a few disproportionately.”

This can be a paradox for an innovation leader. On the one hand, we want to highlight those employees whose new thinking leads to improvements in how we operate our business, and we certainly want to reward them in terms of compensation for their efforts. However, as Marriott points out, putting too much emphasis on rewarding the success of a few can fracture a team and discourage those who are not receiving acclamation from investing their time in innovation work. An incentive model that rewards both small and large innovation contributions can foster the innovation culture and mindset that is needed across the board at a company, and an innovation that today may seem small could lead to something larger in the future, so both should be encouraged.

Principle 4 “Meetings – The less [the boss says], the less [he or she] sways the discussion. People [should] feel comfortable about raising red flags.”

This is similar to Principle 1 in terms of the importance of listening, but it serves notice to an innovation workshop facilitator running a session where the manager of a group of employees is in the room. In this environment, the employees may be hesitant to point out anomalies in the group’s performance or process gaps that they have identified previously to their management (and that the management likely rejected in the past). The participation of a manager in a brainstorming session may also corrupt the free flow of ideas as it brings into play competition among the participants (vying to see who can impress the boss the most) and hesitation to bring up topics that could upset the boss. If a manager insists on participating, then Marriott’s advice should be heeded to the extent that the boss should say as little as possible at the beginning to foster the right mindset for the session.

Principle 5 “Visits – If I see smiling faces and well-scrubbed surfaces behind the scenes, I know the rest of the hotel more than likely is doing just fine.”

This principle works for innovation in the inverse form of what Marriott intends for leadership. Just as an attention to detail in terms of cleanliness and satisfied employees point towards a well-managed operation, so, too, does the inverse apply that unhappy employees and a sense of disorder indicate that there are larger problems involved in an operation. For the innovation practitioner, these areas of dissatisfaction and disorder represent logical starting points for investigations into areas of opportunity for applying innovation to improve performance. For instance, a dissatisfied employee could be someone whose work process requires numerous unnecessary steps that bog down the process and deliver little value, and in having to repeat that process day after day the employee loses trust in the organization overall. This reminds me of a consultant who said that when he visits a large manufacturing plant, he judges the relative efficiency of the operation by looking at the number of bikes used by parts expediters who have to hustle parts across the plant to meet the manufacturing schedule. Like a hotel with dirty hallways or an unkempt appearance, a factory with lots of bikes may be a sign of a need for innovation to address a lack of performance.

Principle 6 “Managers – Does she radiate energy and enthusiasm? Does he know every inch of the hotel and grounds? How does the staff react to her?”

This is good advice for the innovation workshop leader in the sense that there is a value to radiating energy and enthusiasm, similar to how a hotel manager sets the tone for his or her property through his or her interactions with employees or guests. While I’m not advocating excessive ebullience on the part of the workshop leader in the form of cheering and shouting, a positive attitude can go a long way in inspiring the participants to have a free-flowing, engaging dialog on the topic at hand. In terms of knowing every inch of the property, an innovation workshop leader needs to know the subject matter of the session with a surprising amount of detail. Although there are limits to how quickly an innovation practitioner can absorb information when dealing with a new client or new business unit within a company, this research is critically important to the success of the session. One yardstick should be the goal of finding an idea or making an observation that the people in the room have not previously identified. This can be an anomaly, a different way of looking at a process, or a counter-intuitive fact about a topic. The counter-intuitive element is important, as it will inspire the workshop participants to start thinking in new and open ways right at the outset. A final aspect of this principle is ensuring that the innovation workshop leader has a good rapport with the participants and should be constantly on alert for non-verbal indicators of how well the participants are reacting to the performance of the workshop leader.

Principle 7 “Decisions – Make a decision and get on with it. If significant new information comes in, be willing to listen and adjust accordingly.”

This principle is important for innovation practitioners in the sense that a workshop needs to maintain a certain, relatively quick pace in order to be able to cover a number of topics and to keep the participants engaged in the dialog. All of us have been in meetings where a single participant throttles the conversation to focus on a topic that is of interest to that individual but not to others in the session. This slowdown can also be attributed to the concept of “analysis paralysis,” in which a group of individuals becomes bogged down analyzing the details of a particular topic to the point where they prove unable to make a decision to proceed to the next logical topic of discussion or make a decision to proceed with a certain action. The innovation workshop leader must strive constantly to see a balance between diving into enough details on a discussion topic to develop innovative ideas without spending too much time on a single topic at the expense of others.

Principle 8 “Employees – When [they] are willing to give a guest the clothes off their backs, doesn’t taking good care of [them] make good sense?”

Just as Marriott tries to take good care of his employees so they will take good care of hotel guests, so, too should the innovation workshop leader take good care of workshop participants to improve their performance during the session. In an era of corporate spending constraints, it’s not always easy to take care of workshop participants with food and beverages, but simple things like that can go a long way towards engendering goodwill on the part of the participants. The presence of food and drinks allows participants to focus on the workshop discussion instead of hunger, thirst, or other needs. It also triggers that basic human instinct of gratefulness for the generosity of others, as is the case when a traveler in a distant land reaches an inhabited area and breaks bread with strangers. In the category of other needs, of course, a workshop leader should also consider fixed breaks that are called out upfront so the participants have some certainty about their schedules. Although the advice varies from one expert to another, my general rule is that 90 minutes is the maximum time a group should go before taking a break that gets people out of the room and refreshed to continue the discussion.

Principle 9 “CEOs – Companies that get into trouble are the ones where the CEO never budges from the executive suite and makes decisions without knowing [what’s] going on.”

There are two ways to view this principle from an innovation standpoint. The first way, in which the value of direct CEO or senior executive participation in a workshop is good as a means of helping that executive have a deeper understand of how the company is operating, runs counter to Principle 4, which states that the discussions may flow more smoothly if the boss is not in the room. The significance of this can depend on the attitude of the executive and that executive’s previous ubiquity around the company. An executive who is frequently engaging with employees at all levels, and whose participation in a session would not be a stunning development, could be a great asset to the innovation session. Likewise, an executive who is never seen outside of the executive suite of offices who suddenly appears in a session could set the wrong tone for participants. A second way to consider this principle is to consider the value that a CEO could obtain from reviewing the results of innovation sessions across the company, preferably in a way where the actual, raw discussions and ideas are presented rather than filtered through multiple layers of management as they move up the reporting chain. While time constraints may prevent the CEO from reviewing every minute of every session, there is something to be said for the importance of exposing the CEO to direct insights and observations from lower level members of the team, as it may help the CEO develop a solution to a problem he or she is trying to solve, perhaps even in an entirely different area from the topic of the workshop.

Perhaps the most important principle espoused by Bill Marriott that resonates for innovation practitioners is the inherent value of those around you, whether they are hotel employees, workshop participants, or fellow innovation consultants. In the Salt Lake Tribune interview, Marriott cites an anecdote from a visit by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1954 to the Marriott family home in Virginia. The group of dignitaries was trying to decide whether to go outside in bitter cold temperatures to go hunting or to stay indoors by the fireplace, and rather than making an executive decision for something that was obvious to everyone in the room (stay by the warm fireplace), President Eisenhower turned to the young Bill Marriott, who at that time was a Navy ensign, and sought his advice on what to do. Marriott learned that day the importance of seeking the engagement of others in decisions large and small, and that guided him throughout his career. The innovation practitioner, whose success is in the hands of the participants in his or her workshop, should follow a similar strategy.

Source: Dawn House, “A Life with No Reservations,” The Salt Lake Tribune (February 24, 2013), p, E1.

image credit: hospitalitynet.org

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

When reading about archaeology, the term “midden” appears with great frequency.  For lack of a better term, a midden is a trash heap that contains a vast assortment of the debris or spoils of civilization, and it is astounding the amount of information that archaeologists can discern from these discarded items.  Kitchen middens, for instance, contain evidence of the food consumed by an ancient civilization (bones, shells, excrement) and, through the use of carbon dating technology, archaeologists can identify shifts in the diet of human beings in a certain area, permitting the scientist to discern climate patterns.  For civilizations that remained in place over extended periods of time, the content of the middens builds up over time, layer upon layer, which can show the evolution of diets, such as a shift from one crop to another as growing conditions changed due to changes in climate.

The concept of innovators as archaeologists digging into corporate middens first appeared to me when a friend at dinner lamented about how recent negative developments at his company seemed to be a repeat of previous instances where the company went through a downturn and engaged in restructuring to fix the problem.  In other words, this mid-sized company operated in a way that started to drive poor performance results, which lead to a need for major changes, and the process continued to repeat itself every few years.  As we were talking, I started to wonder how innovation could come into play in these types of situations.  I thought about the concept of “shelfware,” which is a pejorative term that is used to describe a detailed consulting report that costs a lot of money and is read by executives then ends up on a shelf, never to be reviewed again as the company continues to operate in the same way as before.

If you combine the notion that companies typically repeat past behaviors with the realization that any good-sized firm is likely to have a historical record of assessments of its previous issues in the form of old consulting reports or shelfware, then a possible source for innovation inspiration could be an examination of that shelfware.  Like the archaeologist sifting through the detritus of a past civilization, the innovator reviewing past consulting reports may identify patterns or themes that are worthy of additional investigation in trying to help a company find new, more efficient ways of operating or develop new products and services.  The shelfware assessment will represent a snapshot in time of where that company was headed, and by comparing that information with a quick scan of current operations, the innovator might be able to identify areas worth pursuing that could yield valuable insights.  It is counter-intuitive to think that someone focused on innovation would spend time reading through a years-old assessment and set of recommendations for organizational improvement, but my guess is that such an activity could help  a company break the cycle of repeating past mistakes.

image credit: elliecrocker.com

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

On a bike ride through a nearby university campus I noticed a sign in a recently re-planted area asking students to stay off the new grass. Elsewhere on campus and, indeed across any area with regular pedestrian traffic, one can see worn paths in grassy areas indicating that people had elected to take a shortcut to reach a destination rather than staying on the sidewalk or pavement. When landscapers see these paths through their previously immaculate turf, they groan. When I see these paths, I think of Immanuel Kant and innovation.

Immanuel Kant was a great German philosopher of the late 18^th century. Kant is perhaps best known for the Categorical Imperative, which is a philosophical approach to moral duty presented in Kant’s 1785 essay titled “The Metaphysical Foundations of Morals.” Kant expressed the Categorical Imperative using the following statement: “I am never to act in any way other than so I could want my maxim also to become a general law.” In other words, the true test of the morality of a given action can be determined by assuming that particular action were to be carried out by all individuals in similar situations, then assessing the impact of that action. For example, a person in a grocery store who picks a fresh grape from the produce display to try a sample may think that such an action is harmless because of its insignificance. After all, there are hundreds and hundreds of grapes on the display table and one missing grape will not be noticed. Kant’s Categorical Imperative suggests that one should consider the action of taking a grape from the context of assuming every person walking into the store takes a grape. Instead of one or two missing grapes, there would be hundreds of missing grapes and a bare produce display at the store. Thus the individual action of taking a single grape is immoral (and, indeed, is typically viewed as theft), beyond the more practical issue of the pesticides or bacteria that could be on the unwashed fruit.

Another practical demonstration of the Categorical Imperative in action is the footpath worn through a grassy area that previously was untouched turf. If one person cuts across a courtyard to save a few seconds traversing an area, then the damage is minimal and, in fact, one might praise the pedestrian for creativity in moving from point A to point B in the shortest path possible. However, once that single action becomes a universal action and hundreds of people are crossing via the shortest path possible, the damage becomes readily apparent and thus the action is less praiseworthy.

This concept appears as an architectural innovation concerning how to lay out pedestrian areas in landscaped areas, as documented by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein in their classic treatise on architectural design, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Faced with the realization that an elegant design with geometric shapes could end up trampled under the feet of shortcut-seeking pedestrians, architects are faced with the choice of putting up obstacles (such as ornamental fences, which reduce the utility of the area), or trying the innovative approach of not defining footpaths upfront but installing some of the features then letting people define the footpaths by their actions over a period of time, followed by formalizing those footpaths with pavement or brickwork. In recent years we have a new tool to do this in terms of tracking cell phone devices using GPS signals or using cameras to track the motion of individuals across a given area. However, there is still value to thinking about how to translate universal behavior into innovative design.

In some ways, the notion of using unintentional behavior to identify innovative approaches to problem solving is similar to the current trend of crowdsourcing, though the actions of the crowd are inadvertent rather than intentional. In other words, a crowdsourcing innovation results from the collective intelligence of a set of individuals knowingly attacking a problem, whereas the approach inspired by the pedestrian footpaths suggests innovation can be derived from the unintentional actions of a crowd. A good example is application design, particularly in the field of website or IVR design. By looking at traffic patterns for old applications (or by running a pilot of a new application to a subset of users), a developer can come up with a new design that aligns with the paths of highest frequency user as defined by the users themselves, as opposed to trying to build around a company’s organizational structure. The users do not know that their behavior is being used to devise a better menu structure for their successors, but the net result of their actions is often a better application for all users.

This concept can be used for any project where innovative ideas are needed. When facing a problem, the innovator should think in terms of the categorical imperative. If everyone were to follow the same steps, would the outcome be significantly different than would be the case if only one or two individuals followed those steps? In some cases, this can yield insights that could not be gained if the innovator remained focus on the smaller scale usage of a product or service, even if the product or service is never intended for large-scale use. In its simplest terms, a landscape design for a courtyard at a private house should be different than a quadrangle on a campus between buildings, but the designer in each case can benefit from thinking about the smaller-scale and larger-scale design. The next time you cut across the grass to shave a few seconds off your overall trip time, you can assuage your temporary pang of guilt by knowing that you might be contributing a data point to an architect preparing an innovative design for an outdoor space.

Sources: Carl J. Friedrich, The Philosophy of Kant (New York: The Modern Library, 1993), pp. 164-165. Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).image credit: footpath image from bigstock

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

Are our colleagues susceptible to the Bystander Effect when working on innovation initiatives? In the field of social psychology, the Bystander Effect refers to the phenomenon in which a person in a crowd is less likely to take direct action in a difficult situation than would be the case if that same person were to encounter the situation alone or in a much smaller group.

Researchers Bibb Latane and John Darley observe that the impetus to action for an individual confronting such a situation varies based on the number of observers in the room. In other words, the greater the number of people present to witness an incident, the lower the likelihood that that someone will help a person in distress. Presumably, this is due to the fact that each individual assumes that some other person will come to the aid of the person in need, so he or she can continue on without taking the time to become involved in the situation.

Researchers refer to this phenomenon as the diffusion of responsibility. The most infamous example of this is the murder of Kitty Genovese in Brooklyn in 1964, in which initial police reports suggested that dozens of neighbors heard her cries for help but no one intervened to help, though subsequent analysis of the case suggests that these reports of dozens of witnesses were exaggerated.

In the field of innovation, the Bystander Effect is of interest in the context of a large-scale innovation effort, such as an enterprise-wide, web-based collaborative innovation session. In this type of session, employees are invited to propose innovative ideas around particular themes or problem areas, such as finding ways to improve operational efficiencies or coming up with new product offerings. The innovation session lasts for a distinct period of time, usually just a few days, with intense participation and interaction requested of the employees. Some individuals perform amazingly well in this type of engagement, offering up new ideas as they are able to unleash their inner creativity and share their thoughts with a broader audience than their typical interactions around the proverbial office water cooler. These interactive sessions can yield a large number of actionable ideas, and are often a great way to inspire many employees to become more involved in improving the performance of their company.

Participation rates in these large innovation exercises vary by company, as some employees prove eager to express their ideas while others remain more introverted or find their work schedules to be misaligned to the short duration of the web session. An innovation leader seeking to improve the participation rate for an innovation program should consider the Bystander Effect in setting up such an initiative. Just as the individual walking along a crowded street is less likely to intervene to help a person needing assistance, so, too, could the typical employee be less likely to intervene in an innovation session when he or she sees that dozens of others are offering up ideas and participating intensively in the web session. Rather than the expected outcome where peer pressure, in the form of seeing lots of colleagues present their ideas in the session, the diffusion of responsibility may lead some employees to forego participation, seeing that others are already engaged. Likewise, some individuals may prefer to avoid the spotlight of publicity, particularly on a controversial, but nonetheless valuable, idea. An argument could be made that it does not make sense to force anyone to participate who does not want to be involved in the effort, but one of the key precepts of innovation is that new and creative thinking requires consideration of a broad range of ideas, and the more diverse the population of participants in an innovation effort, the wider the range of ideas that will be injected into the discussion.

To accomplish this objective, we may want to consider a corollary to the company-wide innovation sessions. Running alongside the enterprise web innovation session, we should consider the introduction of innovation pods, in which a smaller group of individuals (perhaps as small as two to three people) is tasked with delivering new thinking to the larger group. By allowing participation at the pod level, we inspire innovation in several ways.

First, we provide relative anonymity to the participants by grouping the ideas of several individuals and presenting them under a single moniker. We can still trace the ideas back to the originating team, which is important for following up on topics, but we also engender more freedom in expression on the part of the team members.

Second, we break down the diffusion of responsibility because the pod members realize that they must contribute something to the conversation as a way of representing their pod. The effect of the pod would be to grab the bystander and pull that person into the situation, rather than letting the person walk on by the scene. Finally, the use of a small group simplifies the dynamics of interaction. For some employees, sharing ideas will be easier in a group of three to four people than it would be presenting an idea to be viewed and possibly scrutinized by thousands of colleagues.

By understanding the potential impact of the Bystander Effect on large-scale innovation efforts, and innovation program leader can maximize the input of all types of employees in identifying new solutions to challenging problems.

Sources: John Darley and Bibb Latané, “Bystander ‘apathy,’” American Scientist (57-1969), pp. 244-268, https://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/a/bystandereffect.htm,
https://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/02/northampton_police_bystanders.html image credit: busweek

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

When we reach out to our colleagues seeking their involvement in an innovation initiative, innovation practitioners typically do not put much thought into how to craft the invitation.  Whether we are seeking participants for an open innovation effort such as a Jam session, or are bringing a specific set of individuals into a workshop setting, we usually spend most of our time thinking about the actual innovation event rather than the wording of the notifications to potential participants.

A recent article on Bloomberg.com suggests that we might want to pay more attention to our email invitations.  In “Obama Campaign’s Chummy E-Mails Reveal Science in Fundraising,” Joshua Green provides some interesting perspective on the power of language in email solicitations by articulating the strategies used by the Obama 2012 campaign team in their highly successful email fundraising efforts.  Since fundraising is one of the most challenging endeavors for email communications (asking for money is even more difficult than sales because the donor does not receive a product in return for the payment), we as innovation practitioners can benefit from the insights gleaned from the Obama 2012 team.

The Obama 2012 campaign raised an astounding $690 million online, and much of that was the result of direct email solicitations to targeted campaign supporters.  While campaign fundraising by targeted email is by no means innovative, what is interesting about the Obama 2012 campaign is the scientific approach the team took in crafting what has perhaps become the most important aspect of a solicitation in this short attention-span world of constant digital communications is the email subject line.   According to Amelia Showalter, the campaign’s director of digital analytics, the email team used extensive “A-B” testing of their messaging to ensure they had the message crafted just right before they blasted out electronic communications to their huge donor list.

The team found that the messages that struck a casual tone were the most profitable for the campaign.  As campaign email director Toby Fallsgraff notes, “[t]he subject lines that worked best were things that you might see in your in-box from other people [… and] ‘Hey’ was probably the best one we had over the duration.”  Some other effective subject lines included “Join me for dinner[,]” “It’s officially over,” “It doesn’t have to be this way,” and “Wow.”  Fallsgraff also mentions another simple yet poignant subject line, “I will be outspent,” as particularly effective in fundraising.

Showalter also notes that aesthetically ugly messaging body text, such as large fonts for links and yellow highlighting on key text, proved effective at capturing the reader’s eye.  Variety was important as well, for an approach that worked once had a fleeting utility requiring creative new approaches and testing for the next missive.  Interestingly, Showalter notes, the team often placed bets on their different A-B scenarios and were stunned by how often they were wrong about which approach would obtain the best results.  One sign that this more colloquial approach to email subject lines is working is the prevalence of such lines in spam email, making it harder to differentiate an email from a friend from that of a spammer.

For the innovation practitioner, the more casual approach to soliciting participation in an innovation effort could bear fruit.  For instance, we traditionally would send a formal invitation to innovation workshop participants that covers the topic of the meeting, accompanied by detailed text with logistics for the meeting as well as topics and prep work.  Instead of this approach, we should consider sending a notification as if we were engaging with friends to work on an effort that could even be viewed as “fun.”  We chuckle at the notion that we would be invited to an innovation meeting by a manager with the directive along with a set timeframe (“be innovative between 4 and 5PM today in the windowless conference room 104”).

A better approach might be to write “Hey! We’ve got a problem to solve” followed by striking, non-intuitive text providing some details about the problem but still leaving some of the details to the imagination of the reader.  The same philosophy could be applied to a broader invitation across the company to solicit participation in an open innovation virtual session.  More colloquial communications, while still respecting basic corporate propriety, could result in more engaged participation from colleagues.

Either way, innovation should take heed of the lesson from the Obama 2012 campaign email team and focus on the importance of the email subject line, and content, and the need to test and retest to maintain positive results.

Source: Joshua Green, “Obama Campaign’s Chummy E-Mails Reveal Science in Fundraising,” Bloomberg.com (November 29, 2012).

image credit: thedigitalyogi.com

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

One of the greatest modern architects is Daniel Libeskind, whose masterprieces range from the bold angles of the Denver Art Museum to the stunning alignment of old and new in the Dresden Military History Museum to the creative master plan for One World Trade Center in New York.

In a recent interview with Elmear Lynch in Conde Nast Traveler, Libeskind reflects on some of the great innovation themes that instructed his previous work and speculates on several new trends that will drive architectural innovation in the coming years. By parsing each of the ideas identified by Libeskind, we can derive useful insights into our work as practitioners of innovation. Libeskind’s themes can be useful tools for innovation workshops and can assist in brainstorming exercises.

Themes from Past Architectural Innovation

“Living Rooms Moved Outside”

In this theme, Libeskind explores the trend in urban living where living spaces became smaller while public green spaces grew in size. Libeskind factored this into his building designs by paying particular attention to room for outdoor seating and greenspace, which would be easily accessible by large entryway doors, such as his World Trade Center design.

Innovation Theme – For the innovator, we should think about turning concepts inside-out. For example, when thinking about a problem to solve, we should consider removing the problem from its current environs and flipping it to the opposite space to generate new ideas. A simple example would be a team designing a new leaf blower. The tool is designed to be used outside, but as a thought exercise the team should consider what it would be like to operate the tool indoors and think about the types of capabilities that would be needed operating in this new environment (noise reduction, adjustable speeds, smoke reduction, etc.). Thinking about these capabilities could provide insights for outdoor operation or identify a new concept that the team might have missed by its limited focus.

“Substance Became One with Style”

Libeskind’s theme here envisions matching form and function by conceptualizing not just how a building looks but also how it functions for the people who use the facility. In this architectural approach, conservation of water and energy carries the same importance as stunning exterior and interior design.

Innovation Theme – An innovator leading a product development team could trigger an interesting thought experiment by transposing the roles of team members. Engineers could focus on style, while marketers could focus on substance. By forcing individuals outside of their comfort zones, the innovation leader could generate some interesting new concepts to consider for the product. Another idea would be for an innovation leader to make sure that his or her requirements are not solely focused on form or function but, rather, represent a mix of the two.

“Nations Declined as Cities Rose Up”

According to Libeskind, the city has evolved into a much more important entity than in the past, almost the point of the city-states of the past that are all-encompassing in their pluralism and power. Cities reinvented themselves from declining relics into powerhouses of creativity and growth.

Innovation Theme – The re-emergence of cities in terms of prominence vis-a-vis the nation is a classic case of Mark Twain’s famous assertion that the reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated. There was a time where cities were seen as over-tired remnants of a time gone by and that they could not compete with the growing suburbs and exurbs because of infrastructure and space limitations. Some of the great cities of the world have fought this migration and transformed themselves to the point where the migration is reversed and cities are once again the land of opportunity. For the innovator, this theme indicates the importance of focusing intensively on the inherent value of an entity rather than the outward appearance. During the period of their supposed decline, cities still maintained at their essence an energy and vitality that the suburbs and exurbs would never be able to match. The job of the innovator working on a new concept is to identify that core essence of an entity and find ways to drive it to the surface.

Themes from Future Architectural Innovation

“Everyone will be an Architect”

Software, Libeskind notes, will enable individuals to design their own architectural solutions and be less dependent on experts.  People will be able to generate their own blueprints for complex designs without incurring the large costs of traditional architectural services.

Innovation Theme – An innovation team could focus on where some task, process, or technology is complex and costly today but could be rendered simple and more user-friendly in the future.  The team could then consider the implications of that transformation and identify new products and services that would flow from that newly-enabled simplicity.

“Individualization will Reign”

In this innovation theme, Libeskind observes that the era of mass production is nearing an end and mass-customization will insert itself into the manufacturing process.  Architecture will become more of an extension of the individual and less of a statement of the masses.

Innovation Theme – An innovator could look at a product from the perspective of the end user or customer and think about the different attributes of that product that the end user would want to customize if given the opportunity prior to the manufacturing process.  For instance, who would have imagined years ago that so much attention would be paid to the color of interior and exterior lighting in an automobile interior?

“Rooms will Change in the Blink of an Eye”

According to Libeskind, architecture will evolve away from its current static nature.  Windows that can become opaque by sensing the light of the sun, along with floors that change appearance at the flip of a switch, will drive instant transformation to spaces that were once considered static.

Innovation Theme – This theme focuses on the size and rapidity of transformation.  By size we mean something more than just a picture frame on a desk.  Rather, we mean to target an entire wall of windows, or a floor for an entire room, with transformative capabilities.  By rapidity, we mean the speed of the transformation.  We are all familiar with transformation by re-arranging furniture or painting a room a new color.  This innovation would focus on that change happening instantaneously.  For an innovation workshop, we could look at a product, process, or technology and ask ourselves what value could be derived from large-scale, rapid changes to the target concept.

“Small Spaces will Make Us Smarter”

It is well-known that the increasing interactions of individuals in cities result in an innovation premium derived from certain urban locations (New York, London, Shanghai, etc.).  Libeskind sees increasing urbanization trends continuing to drive innovation and greater intelligence, as larger number of people must be creative about organizing their lives in smaller spaces.

Innovation Theme – Two of the driving forces behind the increasing innovation activity occurring in cities are friction and doing more with less.  Friction is the greater interaction between human beings that is facilitated by a city.  The more people packed into a smaller space, the greater the frequency and intensity of interactions among those people.  Over the course of time, these increased interactions lead to a greater likelihood of sharing ideas.  Likewise, doing more with less is a typical requirement for urban dwellers who know they will have limited space for their daily lives, thus forcing them to think about how to get more out of their living spaces.  For an innovator, this theme could mean increasing the quantity of participants in a workshop to obtain a greater variety of ideas and thinking about a problem from the standpoint of how to do more with less.

“Historic Cities will get Modern”

Libeskind’s final theme is magnificently demonstrated in his design for the Dresden Military History Museum.  In this theme, old and new must co-exist in historic cities by leveraging the power of contemporary architecture to bring out the eminence of the relics of the past.

Innovation Theme – This theme emphasizes the surprising value of a juxtaposition of old and new.  For an innovator working on a new product or service, a thought exercise could be to juxtapose that new concept with some themes from the past, looking for inspiration or ideas in the way that past innovators solved a problem.

By using these different themes from Libeskind’s observations on past and present architectural innovations, the innovation practitioner can inject new thinking into his or her efforts.  If the innovator is not inspired by thinking through these different themes, then perhaps a trip to visit one of Libeskind’s architectural creations is in order.

Source: Eimear Lynch, “The Future of Design: Architect Daniel Libeskind’s Predictions,” Conde Nast Traveler (December 2012), p. 40.

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

Could we deliver better innovation results from our workshops by appealing to the inherent selfishness of our participants? This question comes to mind for the innovator reviewing the results of new research in neuroscience concerning human behavior in the activity of self-expression. The research concludes that there is a strong human drive towards selfishness, with a powerful reward mechanism, that could provide an interesting motivational approach for innovation workshop leaders.

In a recent article in The Atlantic titled “The Selfish Meme,” Frank Rose delves into the fascinating implications of neuroscience investigations into the fundamental human behavior of selfishness. In functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery (MRI) scans of 212 research subjects, Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell from Harvard observed activity in the brain’s reward mechanism (the mesolimbic dopamine system) that was triggered more intensively when the subject spoke about his or her own opinions as opposed to speaking about the opinions of others. Tamir and Mitchell likened this act of “self-disclosure” to other, more familiar, brain reward-triggering events, such as food, reproduction, and money.

From a survival standpoint, this attribute does not seem to make sense. As Rose notes, “[i]f all we did was prattle on about ourselves, we’d soon bore one another to extinction.” However, Rose does observe potential benefits from selfish storytelling that may confer evolutionary advantages on loquaciousness:

“[B]y telling stories effectively, we gain status, obtain social feedback, and strengthen our bonds with other people. And on the flip side, all of this nattering—­or tweeting—by our fellow humans ensures that we don’t have to discover everything on our own. We have no end of people competing to tell us what’s what. Hence the real paradox of sharing: what feels good for me probably ends up benefiting us all.”

Rose continues by stating that this rewards mechanism explains human storytelling behavior ranging from the talkative neighborhood gossip to the power of new social media. People love to talk about themselves, he concludes, and social media makes this even more prevalent because it lacks the real-time feedback mechanism (rolled eyes or turning away from the speaker) that permeates face-to-face interactions.

For the practitioner of innovation, the “Selfish Meme” offers an alternative approach to innovation brainstorming sessions or workshops. Typically the facilitator will propose a theme or pose a problem and solicit feedback from the participants. A workshop participant could trigger the brain reward mechanism by offering his or her opinion on the items posed by the facilitator, but the workshop will inevitably trend towards more detailed definition of a particular concept, and if that idea was generated by one of the participants, the others may be less engaged than they would with a deep dive on their own idea. The facilitator should think about the importance of a participant expressing an opinion as opposed to just engaging in an ongoing dialog on the ideas expressed by others. The facilitator may want to pose questions in a way that ensures that he or she is looking for the opinion of the participant as opposed to just asking for factual details in a deep dive on a particular concept.

What often happens in workshops is that a team will latch on to a promising idea and spend a great deal of time on it, which engages the person or people most closely tied to that idea but this focus comes at the expense of the inattention of other, less-involved participants. The facilitator should be cognizant of this potential issue and try to make sure that he or she maintains proper engagement with all of the participants, and leveraging the “Selfish Meme” may be a great way to do this. It should be noted that not all participants will have opinions of equal value in the workshop. For instance, a marketing expert may not have much to say in a discussion of engineering concerns, but this is something the facilitator should consider beforehand when setting up the participant list for the workshop. However, it is important to have a cross-section of the company represented in a brainstorming workshop so we are not limited to narrow thinking in trying to solve a problem. Nonetheless, we do need to be aware of the “Selfish Meme” when we set up these types of sessions with diverse participants.

Another technique could be for the facilitator to start the workshop with opinion-expressing exercises that trigger the reward mechanism in the brain and acclimate the participant to the type of behavior that the innovation practitioner is seeking for his or her workshop. We want participants to feel comfortable with expressing their opinions and ideas in the workshop setting and the one great way to do that is to use the brain reward mechanism to drive behavior. This type of behavior can vary by different kinds of personalities (shy individuals may not be willing to express opinions as frequently as more outgoing individuals), but Tamir and Mitchell’s research points to the possibility that this may be a powerful motivator that we should not ignore in our innovation work.

Source: Frank Rose, “The Selfish Meme: Twitter, dopamine, and the evolutionary advantages of talking about oneself,” The Atlantic (October 2012). image credit: tog of war image from bigstock

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

In my recent post, “Bus Driver Innovation,” I compared the work of the innovation practitioner to that of a bus driver in terms of leading a team to a destination without necessarily being involved in every aspect of the innovation dialogue.

Another form of public transportation also serves as an interesting metaphor for the work of the innovation leader – the streetcar. However, for this analysis I’ll turn to the field of international relations where the term “streetcar” appears in the form of two well-known anecdotes. By deconstructing these examples, we can reveal some potent observations for the innovation practitioner.

The first “streetcar” anecdote is the most striking and can be evoked by most students of international relations with the simple statement of “Pleikus are streetcars.” This statement, uttered by National Security Adviser MacGeorge Bundy during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, referred to the central Vietnamese city of Pleiku. In 1965, a US Army base near Pleiku was attacked by Viet Cong soldiers, killing 8 soldiers and wounding another 126. The incident led Bundy to advise President Johnson to launch air strikes against North Vietnam, resulting in a significant escalation of the fighting. Pleiku is viewed as one of the critical points of no return in terms of increasing the US involvement in the Vietnam War. The curious aspect of Pleiku is why that particular incident, rather than numerous other incidents, ended up being the key incident that led to escalation of the war. In his masterpiece The Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam provides the following explanation of the statement, cementing it in the historical record of the period:

A few days later, after the bombing campaign had begun, a White House reporter came across Bundy in the White House barbershop. Bundy was sitting there being lathered, and since he could not easily escape, the reporter thought it was a good time to ask Bundy something that had been bothering him since the incident. “Mac,” he said, “what was the difference between Pleiku and the other incidents?”

Bundy paused and then answered, “Pleikus are like streetcars” (i.e., there’s one along every ten minutes).

I don’t intend to revisit the debate about whether Bundy’s statement indicates that the Administration wanted to ramp up the war all along and just used Pleiku as an excuse. Looking back over the course of events, the White House reporter wanted to parse the details of Pleiku to understand why that incident was unique. Bundy, on the other hand, took the long view that if Pleiku hadn’t occurred, another streetcar would have rumbled along to lead to the same outcome.

The second well-known streetcar analogy in international relations comes from the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan, in office since 2003, has demonstrated a mixed record on supporting reforms on his country’s path to democratization. In one interview, Erdogan spelled out his philosophy by saying:

Democracy is a tool to bring people happiness. […] Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.

Since uttering those words, Erdogan has been permanently associated with the phrase “democracy is like a streetcar.” As the journalist Michael Kaminski notes, to Erdogan, “democracy is just a tool, not the aim.” For the Prime Minister, democracy was a concept that he used to achieve certain objectives, but he did not view it as an overarching idea that would consume his every thought. At the appropriate time, Erdogan would step off the streetcar of democracy and continue on to a different destination, grateful for what democracy had done to get him to that point but not eternally wed to the concept.

In both of these examples, the notion that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good rings true and is instructive for practitioners of innovation. From an innovation perspective we should think about Pleiku as an example of why we shouldn’t be held captive to waiting for the perfect event to trigger our work in innovation. In innovation workshops we sometimes are dissuaded from looking more in-depth at certain ideas because we’re missing a critical piece of the solution, such as an organization sponsor to drive the innovation or the perfect technology to solve a problem. We may have identified a real challenge facing our organization or client, but we back away from the challenge when we sense that the technology needed to solve the problem is far away. We may even abandon the pursuit of the challenge altogether for such a concern. My contention is that we should take the long view like Bundy and recognize that the missing piece will rumble along like a streetcar. We might even find in the course of the investigation that a different technology solution can address our original problem.

The streetcar aphorism from Prime Minister Erdogan is likewise instructive for the innovator in the sense that we must not become so focused on the mechanism of our journey that we lose sight of the overall destination. For Erdogan, perhaps the destination was a transformation of his country that stopped short of full democratization, given his country’s history and current challenges. Democracy was a useful tool along the pathway to his goal, but at the appropriate time he understood that focusing too much on the tool, at the expense of the destination, could lead to a less optimal outcome. Innovators who spend too much time thinking about a specific technology and not enough about the problem they are trying to solve could end up being unsuccessful in their endeavors. The lessons of Erdogan’s and Bundy’s streetcars can serve to remind us of the importance of the long view.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Camp_Holloway, David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), pp. 532 -533., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdogan, Matthew Kaminski, “Turkey’s ‘Good Dictator’,” Wall Street Journal (June 10, 2011). image credit: making tracks image from bigstock

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GUEST POST from Scott Bowden

I had not intended to establish a menagerie of innovation (see my recent posting – “Innovate like a Squirrel”) but I stumbled across a fascinating Chinese myth that carries interesting implications for innovators.

Sarah Rose’s For All the Tea in China tells the story of the Englishman Robert Fortune, who engaged in an early form of intellectual property theft in the mid-nineteenth century by journeying to China to obtain tea plants and seeds to transport to Indian farms to break the Chinese monopoly on tea production.

During one of his last trips in search of tea plants, Fortune ventured to the Wuyi mountains in the Fujian Province in search of the Da Hong Pao, or Big Red Robe, tea, said to be among the best and most expensive tea in all of China. These tea shoots sell for a price of several thousands dollars per ounce, thus making them more expensive than gold. The Da Hong Pao grows in highly inaccessible portions of the mountains, which posed a problem for locals seeking to harvest the delicate tea shoots from the plant. Fortune heard a myth that the locals believed that the tea was at its best when not picked by humans, so rather than sending people up the treacherous slopes to pick the shoots from the plants, the locals devised an innovative solution to the problem.

The hills were alive with numerous monkeys who easily maneuvered across the slopes so, according to local lore, when the harvest time arrived the locals would throw rocks at the monkeys. The monkeys would retaliate by grabbing whatever objects were available within reach and hurling them back at the humans. As it turns out, the monkeys’ small hands were well-suited to the careful task of plucking just the right amount of leaves and shoots from the tea plant and hurling it down at their attackers. Given the prevalence of tea plants on the slopes of the Wuyi, the locals would soon be able to fill their harvest baskets with ample supplies of the precious Da Hong Pao tea leaves.

To explore the innovation implications of this myth, I imagine myself as the innovation consultant brought in to work with the locals to solve the problem of how to obtain the Da Hong Pao leaves from the cliffs of the Wuyi mountains. Burdened by the thought patterns of a mind familiar with 21^st century technological capabilities, the innovation workshop I would lead would focus on building elaborate, lightweight scaffolding made of high strength plastic or aluminum on the mountainside to facilitate human picking of the leaves or designing a tractor with a long and agile mechanical picking arm with laser positioning to ensure the grappling device cuts the tea shoots in precisely the right location. While both these solutions would probably work, they would be expensive and pale in comparison to the simplicity of the monkey myth. The intriguing element of this exercise to me is trying to imagine how to facilitate the type of discussion that could lead to the suggestion of a local workshop participant that perhaps would lead one of them to blurt out the idea “what if we throw rocks at the monkeys so they will throw the tea shoots back at us?”

Would the right process be one that looks at all the attributes of the mountainside to identify the monkeys as ubiquitous in the area and thus warrant consideration as part of the solution? Would we spend time thinking about the delicate process of picking the tea shoots and note that monkey hands are small and delicate? Or would we rely on the combining of serendipitous observations made by two locals about monkeys: 1 – they like to grab tea shoots, and 2 – if you throw a rock at a monkey they usually throw something nearby back at you. This latter scenario seems plausible, as both are likely observations that locals could make in their daily interactions with monkeys. As a facilitator, I would try to think about the kinds of questions that would elicit this information from workshop participants. One idea would be that we should not limit ourselves in innovation workshops to thinking statically about solutions.

Rather, we should think dynamically and consider the process of action-reaction in assessing new ideas and approaches to solving problems. The easiest analogy is a chess match, in which one move sets the stage for a future move. In other words, we should not limit ourselves to static steps in obtaining the tea shoots from the mountainside (build platform, get leaves). Rather, we should consider dynamic solutions in which we consider responses from actors within the process (throw rock, anger monkey, monkey returns fire).

Another way of looking at this problem comes from Rose’s observation about gardening.  Writing about Fortune’s early work tending London’s Chelsea Physic Gardens before his surreptitious mission to China, Rose notes that a gardener:

[w]orks in a three-dimensional world, taking into account the relative heights of trees and depths of borders, the slopes of a hillside, and the views to be “borrowed” or enhanced. But he works in a fourth dimension as well: time. A gardener plants for seasons: which trees will bloom in spring […] and which will reach their peak of color in autumn […].

What struck me about Rose’s commentary on the gardener as artist was the idea of working in a fourth dimension, and the importance of considering the dimension of time in our innovation work, as an idea that may not be well-suited for pursuit at the present may become something more powerful at the convergence of other events at a later date. As innovation practitioners, we should approach idea generation or problem-solving without the constraints of static assessment (i.e., we should consider action-reaction in our approaches) and, likewise, we should think about the fourth dimension of time in our assessment of innovation potential.

Source: Sarah Rose, For All the Tea in China (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), pp. 37-38, 164-168. image credit: natgeo

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