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Innovation Through Experimentation

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Strategies for Rapid Iteration

Innovation Through Experimentation

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In today’s fast-paced and constantly evolving business landscape, innovation is the key to staying ahead of the competition. However, traditional approaches to innovation may not be enough to keep up with rapidly changing customer needs and preferences. To foster innovation, organizations must embrace a culture of experimentation and adopt strategies for rapid iteration. In this article, we will explore the importance of experimentation in driving innovation and discuss two case study examples to illustrate successful implementation.

Case Study 1: Google’s “20% Time”

One of the most famous examples of fostering innovation through experimentation is Google’s “20% time.” This initiative allows employees to spend 20% of their workweek, or one day, working on projects that interest them outside of their core responsibilities. This flexible structure encourages employees to explore new ideas and experiment with innovative solutions.

One notable outcome of Google’s 20% time is the creation of Gmail. Originally developed as an experiment by a Google engineer, the project emerged from the employee’s personal interest in improving email communication. Through rapid iteration and continuous experimentation, Gmail was refined and eventually launched as one of Google’s most successful products. This case study demonstrates how giving employees the freedom to experiment can lead to significant innovation and long-term success.

Case Study 2: Amazon’s A/B Testing

Amazon, the e-commerce giant, is renowned for its customer-centric approach and its relentless pursuit of innovation. One of the strategies Amazon uses to continuously iterate and improve its offerings is A/B testing. By testing different variations of a webpage, product listing, or feature, Amazon gathers quantitative data to make informed decisions about which version performs better. This data-driven approach allows them to quickly adapt and optimize their offerings to meet customer expectations.

An example of Amazon’s A/B testing is its product recommendation engine. By experimenting with different algorithms and design variations, Amazon continuously refines its recommendation engine to provide highly personalized and relevant product suggestions. This iterative process has played a significant role in enhancing the customer experience, boosting sales, and establishing Amazon as an industry leader.

Key Strategies for Rapid Iteration

1. Embrace Failure as Learning: Encourage a culture where failure is seen as an opportunity to learn and improve. Failure should not be punished but celebrated as a stepping stone towards success. By fostering an environment that values experimentation and risk-taking, organizations can encourage employees to think creatively and push boundaries.

2. Establish Rapid Feedback Loops: Implement processes that allow for quick feedback and iteration. Regularly gather feedback from customers, employees, and other stakeholders to identify areas for improvement. This feedback loop enables organizations to make iterative changes based on real-world data and inputs, leading to more relevant and effective solutions.

3. Set Clear Goals and Metrics: Clearly define innovation goals and establish measurable metrics to track progress. By setting concrete objectives, organizations can evaluate the success of their experiments and measure the impact on key performance indicators. This data-driven approach helps focus efforts on what truly matters and ensures that innovation initiatives align with overall business objectives.

Conclusion

Innovation through experimentation is crucial for organizations aiming to thrive in today’s rapidly changing business landscape. By adopting strategies for rapid iteration, businesses can foster a culture that encourages and celebrates innovation. The case study examples of Google’s “20% time” and Amazon’s A/B testing demonstrate how organizations can drive significant innovation by allowing employees to experiment and by leveraging quantitative data to inform decision-making. By embracing failure, establishing feedback loops, and setting clear goals and metrics, organizations can unleash their creative potential, adapt to evolving market dynamics, and stay ahead of the competition.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Braden Kelley’s Experiment Canvas™ can be a super useful FREE tool for your innovation or human-centered design pursuits.

“The Experiment Canvas™ is designed to help people instrument for learning fast in iterative new product development (NPD) or service development activities. The canvas will help you create new innovation possibilities in a more visual and collaborative way for greater alignment, accountability, and more successful outcomes.”

Image credit: misterinnovation.com

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Google’s Insights into Successful Teams and Managers

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A little over five years ago I created an evolution of a Gary Hamel framework from The Future of Management that I titled The Innovator’s Framework and included in my popular first book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire.

The Innovator's Framework

Recently Google recently released some of its extensive research into the skills and character traits of good managers and effective teams, and surprisingly the secret to a high-performing team lies less in the individual team members and more in the broader team dynamics: “Who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.” High-performing teams, they found, almost always displayed five characteristics:

Google High Performing Teams

According to their research, by far the most important team dynamic is psychological safety – the ability to be bold and take risks without worrying that your team members will judge you. Now have a look at Google’s previous findings on the Eight Characteristics of Great Managers:

Google High Performing Managers

Eight Characteristics of Great Managers

When you compare the traits of a successful team, a successful manager, and the heirarchy in The Innovators’ Framework its interesting where the three overlap and where they diverge.

What do you see?

Sources: World Economic Forum
Image Credits: Google re:Work

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Can Windows 10 Disrupt Android and Get Microsoft Back in Handset Game?

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Microsoft Tries to Disrupt Mobile Phone Market

Can Windows 10 Disrupt Android and Get Microsoft Back in Handset Game?I came across an article on Mashable recently highlighting a new Microsoft experiment. It highlights something that Microsoft has prototyped to test as part of their strategy to regain momentum in the mobile phone market by focusing on markets outside the United States where the first generation of the smartphone adoption battle hasn’t already been decided.

The first Microsoft branded phones are now appearing in the market as the relevance of the Nokia brand in the mobile phone market has nearly completely disappeared. With a single digit market share, Microsoft has to do something disruptive to get back in the game and get some value out of their huge Nokia acquisition. Most people would say that doing something disruptive is outside of Microsoft’s comfort zone, but there are examples to the contrary where Microsoft has been more innovative than Google or Apple, so nothing is impossible.

So enough buildup. What exactly is Microsoft fooling around with as a potential strategy to get back in the global smartphone market?

It is this…

Microsoft is working with Xiaomi to prove that it is possible to bring Windows to Android hardware. The technical details aren’t all that important, the bigger question is whether Android handset owners would consider doing this or not.

The big value proposition highlighted in the Mashable article is that Windows is less hungry for resources than Android and so especially for people with older smartphones the switch could make their handset feel more responsive. Someone switching like this probably wouldn’t make Microsoft any immediate money, but of course the hope would be that when they upgraded that they would choose a Microsoft OS handset for their next smartphone.

As someone who ditched his Android phone for a Nokia Lumia phone running Windows Phone and never looked back, I can confirm that Windows Phone is better than Android (althought the App selection is much smaller).

Given that Windows Phone biggest weakness is probably App availability, Microsoft better do everything they can to convert phones over to their new Windows 10 OS, other way that gap will never close. Will this experiment be fully unleashed? Will it work? Could Microsoft disrupt the smartphone market and get back in the game with this approach?

I guess only time will tell.

In the meantime, if you want to see more, check out the video above and work on your Chinese at the same time.

If you’re not sure what I meant by seamless computing when I referred to it above, I encourage you to check out my previous article – Cloud Computing is Dead, Long Live the Cloud! (which is also available as a narrated audio file)


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Microsoft Stomps on Google Glass

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Microsoft Stomps on Google Glass

Wow!

I have to start that word, because I’m not sure how else to describe what has just emerged from Microsoft Research in the new Microsoft HoloLens.

And as I say in the title, if you watch the video below you’ll clearly see that Microsoft has just busted Google Glass – both lenses.

I said from the beginning that Google Glass would never catch on as a consumer product, because they look dumb, cost a lot of money, and don’t really fit into most people’s lives (or add much of anything to them). Recently Google shut down its consumer facing Google Glass program while they try to fix its shortcomings.

Microsoft’s HoloLens on the other hand, if you’ve ever read Innovation is All About Value (if not, follow the link) then you’ll quickly see after watching the video above that Microsoft’s new potential innovation ticks all three boxes in my innovation success prediction framework:

  • Value Creation – Takes 3D objects from your screen and brings them to your physical environment AND lets you interact with them (my mind races thinking about the possibilities).
  • Value Translation – Watch the video. If you don’t see how this might fit first into many professions out there and enable some amazing rapid prototyping without building anything (watch out 3D printing companies!), and possibly also into your personal life, I’ll be shocked.
  • Value Access – Microsoft is already engaging partners to add more value to what is essentially a platform, not a product.

Microsoft HoloLens

Microsoft is being intentionally coy about saying when it will be releasing the Microsoft HoloLens, but some people are predicting it will be available in the Windows 10 launch timeframe, which Microsoft is also being vague about saying only “later in the year” – which for my money usually means Q4 (or maybe Q3) depending on how the preview version does in the wild.

So what do you think of Microsoft’s new HoloLens?

I for one will be reaching out to my friends at Microsoft (you know who you are) to get a personal preview for a further write-up in Innovation Excellence (the world’s most popular innovation web site), so stay tuned!


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Is Amazon Echo the Answer to Google?

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Is Amazon Echo Answer to Google?

Today Amazon launched the Echo – an internet appliance with voice recognition and response designed to be to your living room what Siri and Cortana are to your pocket (you ask, it answers).

It is a bold move for Amazon in the wake of their disastrous market entry into the phone market with the Amazon Fire phone, and whether by luck or by design represents more of what customers are likely to give Amazon permission to do in the marketplace. And even though the Amazon Fire phone may be a failure, Amazon no doubt has learned a lot from the experience and from their experience with the Kindle e-reader and Kindle Fire tablets that will help them with the Echo.

The Echo is one reason that Google is worried about Amazon in the search market, because what would do Echo (Amazon), Siri (Apple) and Cortana (Microsoft) truly represent for Google but a direction in the search business that represents a huge revenue threat for Google.

When you ask Echo, Siri, or Cortana a question instead of typing it into a Google (or Bing) search box, Google (or Microsoft) make zero dollars, not even a single cent.

People may forget (or not even know) that Amazon has a search engine company, and owns other search related assets like iMDb and Alexa. Don’t think Amazon sees search as a new frontier for them?

Check out the A9 web site (which years ago used to look just like Google with a simple search box) to get a better sense of how Amazon thinks about search,

So what does nirvana look like in a world with Echo in the center?

Check out Amazon’s promotional video, which has already received 500,000 views at the time I wrote this article:

So, does echo fit into your life? Do you want it to?

I for one have signed up for an invitation to buy one (though it is not actually worth $99 to me – the Amazon Prime member discounted price – down from $199) hoping that Amazon in its infinite wisdom will send me one for free so that I can check it out and report back on it here on the world’s most popular innovation web site.

Oh, and by the way, if you didn’t already know Google now lets you search with your voice on your desktop too, but of course that it’s in the browser so they can still show you ads and make money.

I can’t help thinking that Amazon is behind schedule with this product though. I’m sure they probably wanted to be by invitation only over the summer and shipping in volume for the Christmas, Chanukkah and Kwanza gift giving season, but what are you going to do, invention is hard, unpredictable work. Whether this invention will turn into an innovation, only the consumer market can decide.


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No Time to Innovate

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Take an Innovation Vacation

Innovation VacationA popular set of questions that I get asked repeatedly by clients and audience members includes the following:

We know we need to innovate, but who has time?

How do companies balance the day to day operations with the need to innovate?

Without a budget to allocate people to innovation, how can I make innovation part of people’s day jobs?

We all know that when it comes to business, and life in general, that there are two major constraints we all face – and often trade off one against the other – those two constraints are time and money.

Every organization may understand the need for innovation, but it is difficult to execute in a repeatable way because so many of our organizations are set up to maximize the extraction of value from today’s operations and do a poor job of balancing this admirable and necessary goal with the need to develop tomorrow’s revenue and profit-generating operations.

Some organizations set up research and development departments, new product development departments, corporate venturing arms, incubators, or skunkworks to try and address the needs for future revenue and profit streams, but this limits the number of people that can potentially contribute to the potential innovation process and success of the organization – and isolates the efforts from other valuable perspectives and inputs.

Other organizations like Google and 3M also have some of these structures, but in addition try and say to employees that they can spend up to a certain percentage of their time on innovation projects (or whatever work-related pursuit they might want). In 3M’s case the figure is 15% and in Google’s case it is 20%.

There is only one problem with percent time.

The day-to-day deadline pressures and fire drills never disappear in any organization (even an innovative one), and so often the joke goes – sure Google employees get 20% time, but only if it’s on Saturday or Sunday.

So what’s the solution?

Well, after talking with the folks at Intuit as part of the research for my next book project, I’ve come to discover that they approach the time for innovation problem slightly differently.

Instead of just allowing people to spend up to a blanket 10% of their time on innovation projects, instead they allow employees to accumulate that time and then schedule time off to pursue a specific innovation project, often doing so at the same time with 3-4 other employees so they can collaborate on the project idea and push it forward.

I like to call it taking an innovation vacation.

I think this is the best approach I’ve heard so far to balancing the needs of the day to day business and its need for predictable resourcing, with the desire to invest in innovation to sustain the business into the future.

Allowing employees to schedule a collaborative innovation vacation achieves SEVERAL key business goals:

  1. Predictability – It allows managers to do capacity planning and schedule around the employee’s absence

  2. Retention – Allowing employees to take a week or two here or there to pursue an innovation project they are interested in, is likely to lead to higher job satisfaction and retention

  3. Collaboration – If you encourage people to take their time off as cross-functional groups, we know that not only do diverse teams solve problems better, but we also know from EMC’s data on innovation submissions and finalists that projects pursued as teams instead of by individuals are 33% more likely to make the final cut

  4. Increased Organizational Performance – Organizations that have deeper networks and stronger cross-functional knowledge (more T people) are more likely to work together more efficiently, have fewer blind spots, have higher employee engagement, and just have more fun

Time out for a sanity check. 10% time equates to about five weeks a year, and 20% time would equate to about ten weeks a year. So, if you choose to pursue an innovation investment strategy like innovation vacations, you must plan accordingly in terms of staffing (factoring in of course that most employees won’t make full use of it), but I believe it can be done and should be done – for the long-term health of the business.

We try and convince people to allocate 10-15% of their income towards retirement so that they have money to provide for themselves when they grow old and retire, why shouldn’t an organization allocate a similar percentage?

What do you think, could you establish something like this in your organization?

What would you do with an innovation vacation?

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Can Microsoft win the Android and iPhone Haters?

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Can Microsoft win the Android and iPhone Haters?Nobody, including people inside Microsoft, would argue with the fact that Microsoft beat Google and Apple to the Mobile OS marketplace, but lags them both in terms of market share.

According to Wikipedia, the IBM Simon was the world’s first smartphone and was released to the world nearly twenty years ago. This means that the smartphone market is yet another example of a market where mass adoption has lagged behind initial product introduction by 20-30 years. For the inventor audience this is important to note, because it shows that #1 – innovation takes time – and #2 – that being first is no guarantee of being number one in the market when mass adoption arrives.

Well, mass adoption in the smartphone market is now upon us.

The only question is – which operating system maker will dominate the golden years of the smartphone market?

Will it be Apple or Google?

Or do Microsoft and RIM have a change to counterattack and make themselves relevant again?

Invention does not guarantee innovation. Innovation requires that you create value above every existing alternative and that you achieve wide adoption. The reason we often see changes in the leadership of the marketplace of an emerging innovation is that often the market creator does a worse job than new entrants of adapting their solution offering for the evolving desires of the customers. New entrants generally see an opportunity to solve problems that the incumbents don’t, and an create new value that the incumbent solutions don’t deliver.

But can an incumbent react to newer entrants and rebuild momentum in the marketplace?

Motorola’s revitalization in mobile handsets shows that a competitive response focused on leadership instead of reaction can in fact get you back in the game.

So can Microsoft do the same thing and steal share from Apple and Google in the smartphone OS market?

The answer lies in whether Microsoft can do a better job than Apple or Google (or even RIM) of understanding why people hate their current smartphones, while also anticipating:

  1. What the needs of customers will be in 6-12 months
  2. What customers will want in 6-12 months
  3. What emerging technologies will make possible in 6-12 months

Timing is one of the key components to successful innovation. You can invent things at any time, but you can only turn an invention into an innovation when customers and other parts of the value chain can see the value and are ready to accept it. Whether customers and the value chain can see the value is of course dependent on how well you translate for them how a potential innovation will fit into their lives.

Can Microsoft and Nokia come up with the answers that the marketplace will accept in 6-12 months? Are their existing phones the right answer for customers now?

I don’t know. But I can tell you that I hate, absolutely hate, the Google Android operating system on my Samsung Galaxy S. The Samsung device itself seems relatively well-designed but the Google Android OS is always crashing, doesn’t make smart use of the SD Card (the internal memory is always filling up), and leaves me constantly frustrated.

I bought two Samsung Galaxy S phones on T-Mobile over two iPhones on Verizon or AT&T for my wife and I, because they will cost me $1,000 less over the two-year commitment.

I can tell you with certainty that my next smartphone when I’m eligible for an upgrade will NOT be a Google Android phone. At the same time I know people who hate their iPhones and their Blackberries as well, so this represents an opportunity for Microsoft to convert disgruntled iOS, Android and Blackberry customers. Plus, there are a still a lot of people without a smartphone that will buy one in the next 6-12 months.

These two market dynamics represent a huge opportunity for Microsoft to get back in the smartphone OS market. The only question is:

Will they take advantage of this opportunity?

Article first published as ‘An Opening for Microsoft and Nokia?’ on Technorati.

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Who is in Your Social Media Band?

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Who is in Your Social Media Band?It used to be that when you formed a rock band to seek fame and fortune, all you had to do was find a lead singer, a guitarist, a bass player, a drummer, and maybe another guitarist or a keyboard player if you wanted a richer sound. But the digital age presents a level of complexity and opportunity that John, Paul, and Ringo never had to deal with.

If video killed the radio star, or tried to, then YouTube will certainly finish the job.

In the old days (come on, rock music is less than 100 years old), bands played at their local high school, then maybe the local club circuit, recorded a demo and sent off demo tapes, and finally if they were lucky they were ‘discovered’ by a record exec and signed to a record deal.

In the digital age, aspiring rock stars need to consider the social media and marketing skills of potential band mates as much as they scrutinize their skill with a particular musical instrument. In the digital age your skills with YouTube are almost more likely to make you a rock star then your skills with a guitar.

Just look at Pomplamoose – nearly 80 million video views and 340,000 subscribers. They have more YouTube subscribers than mega-stars Coldplay.

If we look at a new song as an invention and at my Innovation is All About Value framework through a music lens, you will quickly see why social media and creativity are so important in the music business and why new singers and bands can seemingly come from nowhere on the Internet.

1. Value Creation

  • A new song (Is the song any good?)

2. Value Access

  • How easy do you make it for people to find this new song, listen to it and buy it?

3. Value Translation

  • Do you do a good job of making people want to add the song to their playlists and to share the song with others? Do you engage them and make the song a part of them?

The power of #3 is magnified on the Internet (both if you do it well or poorly). Just look at the fact that Gotye created an AWESOME song ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ and the video for it has received 600,000 page views, but a little known Canadian band Walk Off The Earth released a YouTube video covering the song and their cover has generated 83 million page views and an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Why?

More passion, and a better, more engaging story (ultimately better value translation that was worth sharing).

So all you teenyboppers out there putting together the next great rock band, beware. In this new digital reality we all live in, you can’t think just about guitar, vocals, bass, drums, and keyboards. You must also think about who in the band you are considering putting together (unless you actually have money to pay someone) will make you look awesome on:

1. YouTube
2. MySpace Music
3. Twitter
4. Facebook
5. Band Web Site
6. Other places (Spotify, iTunes, etc.)

Yes, I said MySpace. The site remains incredibly relevant despite being eclipsed by Facebook thanks to its understanding of how to help bands create valuable pages for fans. Facebook still sucks at this. If I were Google and didn’t want Google+ to die a slow death, I would buy MySpace and incorporate the Music capabilities into Google+. It would make a great pairing with YouTube. They might want to buy Spotify while they are at it to bolster their unfortunately pathetic Google Play offering.

One other interesting contrast to draw between the successful bands spawned by YouTube versus the successful bands spawned by the old guard. YouTube successes tend to be very human and engaging in their approach, while old guard bands tend to be very aloof, distant, and well-packaged.

What kind of musical band and social media band will you be?

Here are the two different ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ videos, starting with the original by Gotye:

Followed by the Walk Off the Earth cover:

Image Credit: Foxhound Studio

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