GUEST POST from Mitch Ditkoff

If you work in a big organization, small business, freelance, or eat cheese, there’s a good chance you’ve participated in at least a few brainstorming sessions in your life.

You’ve noodled, conjured, envisioned, ideated, piggybacked, and endured overly enthusiastic facilitators doing their facilitator thing.

You may have even gotten some results. Hallelujah!

But even the best run brainstorming sessions are based on a questionable assumption — that the origination of powerful, new ideas depend on the facilitated interaction between people.

You know, the “two heads are better than one” syndrome.

I’d like to propose an alternative for the moment: “two heads are better than one sometimes.”

For the moment, I invite you to consider the possibility that the origination of great, new ideas doesn’t take place in the storm, but in the calm before the storm… or the calm after the storm… or sometimes, even in the eye of the storm itself.

Every wonder why so many people get their best ideas during “down time” — the time just before they go to sleep… or just after waking… or in dreams… or in the shower… or in the car on the way home from work?

Those aren’t brainstorming sessions, folks. Those are braincalming sessions. Incubation time.

Those are time outs for the hyperactive child genius within us who is always on the go.

Methinks, in today’s over-caffeinated, late-for-a-very-important-date business world, we have become addicted to the storm.

“Look busy,” is the mantra, not “look deeply.”

We want high winds. We want lightning. We want proof that something is happening, even if the proof turns out to be nothing more than sound and fury.

High winds do not last all morning. Sometimes the storm has to stop.

That’s why some of your co-workers like to show up early at the office before anyone else has arrived. For many of us, that’s the only time we have to think.

“The best thinking has been done in solitude,” said Thomas Edison. “The worst has been done in turmoil.”

I’m not suggesting that you stop brainstorming (um… that’s 20% of our business). All I’m suggesting is you balance it out with some braincalming. The combination of the two can be very, very powerful.

HERE’S A FEW WAYS TO GET STARTED:

1. In the middle of your next brainstorming, session, restate the challenge — then ask everyone to sit, in silence, for five minutes, and write down whatever ideas come to mind. (Be ready for the inevitable joking that will immediately follow your request). Then, after five minutes are up, go “round robin” and ask everyone to state their most compelling idea.
2. Ask each member of your team to think about a specific business-related challenge before they go to bed tonight and write down their ideas when they wake up. Then, gather your team together for a morning coffee and see what you’ve got.
3. Conduct your next brainstorming session in total silence. Begin by having the brainstorming challenge written on a big flip chart before people enter the room. Then, after some initial schmoozing, explain the “silence ground rule” and the process: People will write their ideas on post-its or flip charts. Their co-workers, also in silence, will read what gets posted and piggyback. Nobody talks.

It’s your decision, at the end of the idea generating time, if you want the debrief to be spoken — or if you want people to come back the next day for a verbal debrief.

“Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

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GUEST POST from Stephen Shapiro

This past Friday I had 6 minutes to share a message about innovation with the world at TEDx NASA. It was a fantastic event with 29 speakers, authors, musicians, aerospace engineers, a neuroscientist and more. 1,700 people were in attendance and it is reported that nearly 100,000 people watched via video streaming on the internet.

Given that my typical speech is 45 minutes long, preparing a 6 minute presentation was a bit of a challenge and required me to script it out to make sure I did not go over my allotted time. Below is what I prepared. Within the next two weeks, I will be able to share the actual video footage – where I am sure I said something completely different.

It’s not rocket science.

We hear people use that expression to describe something that’s not that complex. And although I would never suggest that aerospace challenges are simple, sometimes, even rocket science isn’t rocket science. What I mean by that is sometimes the most creative solutions to aerospace challenges can be found outside the realm of rocket science.

The issue is, you are experts. And your expertise might be the very thing that is preventing you from finding the most creative solutions.

Let me explain why with a simple example.

Think about a time when you lost your keys. After searching everywhere, upon finding them, what did you inevitably say to yourself? “Can you believe it? They were in the last place I looked!” Well of course, who finds something and continues to look for it?

The same thing is true when looking for a solution to a problem. Once your brain finds a solution, it stops looking. And the greater the level of your expertise, the quicker you find a solution. Unfortunately, your idea may not be new, innovative, or the best solution.

The key is to look outside your domain of expertise and to assume that someone else has already solved your problem. Because the odds are, someone HAS solved your problem. So, if you are working on an aerospace challenge, the solution may in fact not be rocket science.

Let me give you a few simple examples.

A high margin item for office supply companies is selling refilled toner cartridges. The challenge is however, very few customers return the used cartridge. During a brainstorming session designed to find creative solutions to this dilemma, I asked the question, “Who else has solved this problem? Who sends you something and is guaranteed that you will send it back?” The first response was the IRS. But the next response was NetFlix. They send you a DVD. You can keep it as long as you want. When you are done you return it and get another one. We investigated and implemented a NetFlix style subscription model for toner cartridges. This worked out great for the company, because they had a 100% return rate on empty cartridges. And customers love it because they never run out of toner and they get great discounts.

It’s not rocket science. Someone else solved this problem.

Or consider engineers who have been searching for better ways to locate and seal cracks in gas pipelines. This is a pressing issue for the industry. Then, one day, while a Scottish engineer was working on this issue, he got a paper cut. Unlike most people who would be annoyed, he was thrilled. What he realized is that his finger is like a cracked gas pipeline. By making a connection between capillaries and a pipeline, he was able to quickly develop an inert coagulation ingredient that would seals these cracks.

The solution wasn’t rocket science. Someone else, in this case the human body, had already solved this problem.

Or consider a snack food manufacturer that wanted to find a way of reducing the amount of fat in their potato chips. The best solution wasn’t found in their laboratory. In fact, the solution wasn’t found in any laboratory. The person who discovered the best solution had no experience with food production. He was a musician. He knew that sound vibrations travel through solid objects and that if an object is light enough it, too, will vibrate. The solution was to place speakers above the conveyor belt and use loud music to literally shake the fat out of chips.

Clearly, this was not rocket science.

Quite often the most creative solutions arise when you assume that someone else has already found a solution. When you look outside your domain of expertise.

Or, as Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc, once said, “Creativity is just having enough dots to connect… connect experiences and synthesize new things. The reason creative people are able to do that is that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people.”

When you become masterful at connecting dots you find new and creative solutions.

That’s the wonderful thing about this conference. They could have put 20 aerospace engineers on the stage. But instead they brought in artists, musicians, authors and neuroscientists. This is a chance for you to connect the dots. To learn from unrelated disciplines. If you have 100 aerospace engineers working on a challenge, the value of adding the 101st would be incremental. But adding a biologist, a neurologist, a nano-technologist, or a musician, may lead to a breakthrough.

[at this point I show a picture and tell a funny story…but you’ll have to wait for the video for that]

It is about making connections. It is about connecting the dots. It is about looking outside of your domain of expertise.

You are all experts. And you are admired for your deep understanding of complex technical issues. Having said that, sometimes, the key to creative thinking is to recognize the best solutions aren’t always rocket science.

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GUEST POST from Stephen Shapiro

In an earlier blog entry on content, readers provided a number of interesting comments. If you haven’t already read that article (and the comments), you may want to do so in order to understand this new article.

Many did not agree with my point of view. And that is great. I only wanted to stimulate some conversation.

Let me first address some of the comments (and I appreciate the time that everyone took in writing comments). The comment is in italics with my response following.

“I wonder if the Kindle model requires a subsidy to offset the upfront cost of technology development and/or design manufacturing.” Two thoughts come to mind. 1) No one has an issue paying $150 for an iPod even though the cost of the music is pretty much the same. 2) As new generations of eBook readers hit the market, prices will drop. Several are now on the market for under $200.

“The reason distribution appears to be the source of value isn’t distribution itself but the monopolistic nature of new distribution channels.” Indeed. And that’s my point. Those who aggregate are the ones who create positions of power. The content creators are not the power players. And the individual publishers certainly aren’t.

“If content was truly losing its ability to create value, Comcast would not try to purchase NBC – they might instead bid for Netflix or for a content delivery device company like Roku.” Great point. The reason why I mentioned Comcast’s acquisition of NBC was not to say that it was a good or bad move. I was only trying to point out that a few years ago, the networks were the ones doing the acquiring. Now the distributors are in a position to buy the content creators. It will be interesting to see what this Comcast deal does to Hulu.

“It’s the publisher that is not essential anymore – the content creators are also becoming content publishers due to technology.” Indeed, the publisher is now playing the role of middleman and is going away in many respects – or needs to play a very different role. As you suggest, content creators do have the option to go straight to the consumer now. And we are seeing a democratization of content. Having said that, content creators will still want to push their content to content aggregators – the source of the eyeballs. The reason why Google is so successful is that they are currently a significant player in how content is found.

Some interesting things have evolved in the past week since I wrote the first article. It appears that the big innovations are being developed by the content aggregators (not that that is surprising).

Google Digital Books: Google is offering eBooks on out of print books that are no longer subject to copyright restrictions. They scanned nearly 2 million books and will be offering them in digital form for about $8.

HP/Amazon paperback books: Soon after Google’s announcement, HP and Amazon.com indicated that they will offer print on demand paperback books for these out of print books. A 250 page book from their library of 500,000 can be purchased for about $15. A single copy can be printed in a few minutes.

Book Pricing War: Wal-mart, in an effort to crush Amazon.com, is offering 10 new release books for $10. Well, that was until Amazon said they would offer those same books for $10, at which point Wal-Mart dropped the price to $9. Target joined the price-war, dropping the price to $8.99. This caused Wal-Mart to drop the price to $8.98. According to the WSJ, “The publishing industry is also watching warily to see if the price war will have lasting impact on book pricing and the contracts that publishers sign with authors.”

BN Nook eBook Reader: Barnes and Noble, announced the release of their ‘Nook’ eBook, intended to take on Amazon.com’s Kindle. One account says that the Nook is “closer to a printed book than its precursors in some respects, (in that it) allows users to lend their copies of electronic books to any friend who has installed Barnes & Noble’s e-reader application on a mobile device or personal computer.”

Comcast Premium Channel Streaming: Comcast announced that by end of the year, you will be able to watch popular cable television series such as HBO’s “Entourage” and AMC’s “Mad Men” on your computer without paying extra. They are reported to be the first cable TV operator to “unlock online access to a slate of valuable cable shows and movies, aiming to replicate what’s available on television through video on demand.”

Please don’t get me wrong. Content is necessary. As an author, I sure hope there is value in what I do. Amazon.com, iTunes, Wal-Mart, Barnes and Noble, and Comcast would not exist without content. So yes, content is important. I just wonder if it is still king.

P.S. As an aside, Andrew Odlyzko published an article entitled “Content is Not King” where he contends (according to Wikipedia) that “1) the entertainment industry is a small industry compared with other industries, notably the telecommunications industry; 2) people are more interested in communication than entertainment; and 3) therefore that entertainment content is not the killer app for the Internet.” I realize it is a different topic altogether, but it is interesting nonetheless.

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