Foresight 20/20

According to a recent Business Week article, your company can find it's true innovative thinkers by encouraging fun and games, papering the walls, and having contests to solve challenges that are posted.  And everyone should be included.  That way you find out who the truly creative, innovative thinkers are, because they may not currently have the most creative, innovative jobs.

This is great, but it's missing one thing.  Who should define the challenges?  What should people be brainstorming about?  And really, how will we know someone has provided the best solution to a challenge?  How can we tell?

Innovation and Creativity go hand-in-hand, but they are different from each other.  Innovation is doing something different that adds value to a company.  Creativity is the ability to envision something original.  Unless creativity is guided toward the right direction, we may end up with many original ideas that will not add value to the company.

How do we guide creativity in the right direction?  We need to figure out what problems, if solved, would add value to the company.  Value to the company is created by making products and services that your consumers will want to buy, and developing the offering in a way that is consistent with the corporate strategy.

It takes much more than drawing on walls for that to happen.

I get a "Tip of the Day" email from Harvard Business Publishing.  Here's today's tip:

Despite millions invested in innovation, 40%-90% of new products fail. That's because consumers are more comfortable staying with familiar products they already know how to use. Meanwhile, companies overvalue a new innovation's benefits, wrongly assuming consumers will leap at the chance to buy. Result? A gaping mismatch between what innovators think consumers want -- and what consumers really want.  

To get new products adopted, manage consumers' resistance to the changes your innovations will require. For example, Toyota enhanced the appeal of its hybrid Prius by outfitting the vehicle with internal-combustion and self-charging electric engines, reducing required behavioral changes. The resulting driving experience virtually matched that offered by gas-only cars.

Today's Management Tip was adapted from the Harvard Business Review article,
"Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers: Understanding the Psychology of New-Production Adoption," by John T. Gourville.
(Publication date: June 2006)

Usually they are very good, and I highly recommend them, but today's made me chuckle.  Not because it's wrong, but because it fails to mention that if you have to do this, it's too late.

By too late I mean that it's too late to find out that the millions you invested in innovation may not have been spent on the right things.  Too late because if you don't know what your consumers value, you are trying to find out by putting products into the market in a trial and error fashion.  Too late because if you're worried about how to change your consumer's behavior, then you haven't worried enough about whether or not your product is satisfying deep fundamental needs - the real drivers behind why they buy anything in your category.

Most companies don't do those things.  They work hard to predict which new technologies will become hottest, which types of products can utilize their production capacity, and which types of work can get done within their existing processes.  If that's how your company invests in innovation, then I suggest you read the full text of the article that the tip came from.  It will help you out a lot.

The rest of you won't need it.

Here is an unfortunate truth about consumer research.  No matter how useful the results are, it is very difficult to translate what the research results mean for your next product or service offering.  You may learn something that clearly defines a direction for your business.  But then there is a person who has to design the website, or make the widget, or decide the pricing for the service plan. 

Somewhere in the organization, the original intent often gets lost.  The problem is that it often gets lost for many good reasons.  "Consumers won't understand this."  "Our organization can't do that yet."  "I'll get fired if it doesn't work, so I don't want to be the first to try."  The result is often a baby step toward the right direction that causes so much organizational agita for very little gain that it is determined that it was a waste of time.

The reason the decision process often goes this way is that it is difficult to translate good consumer insight into an actionable result.  Next time, try articulating exactly what tangible criteria will satisfy the consumers' needs.  And then define the product or service that satisfies the criteria.  Many of these "good reasons" go away when a clear vision of the result is presented.  Try it.

Otherwise, consumer research is relegated to informing ad campaigns and marketing messages aimed at convincing consumers to buy what we want to make for them.  Don't let that happen to you.

If you think the key to innovation is infusing your organization with creativity, and that creativity manifests itself through successful ideation sessions, please think again.

Additional creativity is a good thing.  Ideation sessions certainly have their place, and can be very good tools.  But they are just that - tools.  If you were going to build a house, would you start the process by buying the best tools?  Of course not.  You would first figure out what type of house you should build.  And if you couldn't do that by yourself you would hire a designer, architect, or both.  And if they proceeded to do their work without talking to you about your lifestyle, you wouldn't get the house that was right for you.

 Starting the innovation process by trying to boost creativity or having ideation sessions, is like trying to build a house by starting with buying the hammer, nails and other materials.  You need to know where you are going before you start.  You need to have a corporate strategy, or at least some solid business goals.  You need to understand the needs of the people who will buy your offering.  And you need to make sure the two are connected.  When the criteria for successful innovation is defined, you can then get creative and have successful ideation sessions.  They will work because you will know how to judge the outcomes.

Innovation is not random.  Neither is ideation if it's done at the right point in the process.  If you're having an ideation session and you look at all the "new ideas" being discussed, yet you have no idea of which ones will be right for your business, then you probably weren't ready for the session in the first place.

Go back, do the rest of the work, and then try again.

Great article in Forbes that illustrates the fact that social networking sites are finally catching up with the idea that intimate knowledge of your consumer will serve your business well.  Smaller niche-enthusiast sites are gaining members at a surprising rate.  People are shunning Facebook and MySpace as a place where they can find others that share specific interests.

Don't get me wrong, Facebook and MySpace are great communities, but they focus on volume.  Finding another person who is absolutely passionate about your interests is like finding a needle in a haystack.  Niche communities solve this problem for consumers. 

My question to you is, do you know what your consumers are passionate about?  Are you providing it?  Can they find you?

Listen to how people talk at your company.  If your company is like most, there will be many people talking about how consumer oriented they are, or how customer focused, or how they strive to provide a great consumer experience. 

Then listen to what gets said at any product team meeting.  Why the end product may not be delivered when, or how, it was originally intended.  Why that will be OK because "people will get it because I'm going to implement it like Facebook. Everyone knows what that is."  Why it's better to change the product so that the development pipeline won't be overtaxed. 

And just for fun, try to raise a "constructive consumer oriented concern" like, "We can't do it like Facebook because if people wanted it that way, they'd go to Facebook.  We need to differentiate.  I would like to discuss what it would take to make it like it was defined in the beginning."  See what type of answer you get.

You will then know whether or not your company is consumer oriented. 

I recently attended a reunion event for a company I worked for a long time ago.  It's one of those big companies that has several decentralized divisions, and people would often move between them, resulting in  some very intertwined networks.  Having worked at three of the divisions, it was fun for me to see how many of us knew the same people, never knowing that we had them in common. 

We all have access to networking tools like LinkedIn (and this was definitely more of a LinkedIn crowd than a Facebook crowd), and I had online connections with many of the people I saw there.  But there was nothing like getting a group of former coworkers together to nostalgically remember the old times, and catch up on the new times.  Something else happens that you can't quite capture online.  Coworkers get a good sense of who you are professionally.  But this view somehow stays frozen in time.  When you catch up in person, you have a chance to readjust your mental image of what this person does.  Of course some things never change, like basic fundamental values.  The people who were trustworthy will always be that way.  But along the way we all collect new skills, and it's fun to see how we have grown.

So we reconnect again, and hopefully use the online tools to facilitate the maintenance of these connections.  But it's just not the same as the face-to-face.  Everyone approaches these events with a bit of trepidation.  My suggestion is that you should always go to them if you have a chance.  If nothing else, it's good for the ego.  You realize that you had many more fans than you ever knew at the time.

Mobile advertising, the availability of mobile web apps, and mobile phone services that allow you to know the location of others.  There is a lot of buzz going on about who is going to crack the "let me do everything on my mobile phone" code.  Who will come up with the killer app that will allow this to happen?  Who will define and own the market?  Michael Arrington of TechCrunch had a great post about one such app.

It appears that the introduction of the iPhone has everyone convinced that the iPhone will provide the technical platform upon which these ideas could work.  Makes me wonder.  Is this the only way?  So much of what I'm reading is about companies trying to find ways to port the current paradigm and experience onto the mobile platform.  The iPhone certainly does lend itself to doing that better than most phones out there.  But what would happen if we had no iPhone?  What if we had to find a way to "go mobile" without all the apps, ads, and services that were originally designed to be delivered via another medium?

I don't have an answer, but I will pose the problem.  How can people have access to information from wherever they are?  If I were to focus purely on this question would I say, "well, we have to start with a phone-like device, and apps like facebook..." 

I'm not sure I would.

Seth Godin made an interesting reference to the usage of the words friend and google this weekend.  He talks about how they have become valid verbs.  "I'll friend you", on Facebook , for example. 

He makes a good point, but what I found interesting is that this usage depersonalizes the meaning of the word.  Typically, you "make friends" with someone because you share interests, circumstances, or you just genuinely like them.  When you "friend" someone, what is the nature of that relationship?  It signifies that you are willing to share information with them that is consistent with the nature of the website.  For example, on LinkedIn, you "connect" with people who want to network for professional purposes.  There is no question about the nature of the relationship.  But on Facebook it's a little different.  Are all your "friends" truly friends?  Do you have any friends in real life that you have yet to "friend"? 

I have met several people who are experiencing a backlash against making "friends" through websites.  One young woman from a consumer interview said, "This friend thing is getting out of hand.  I'll be your friend in real life.  That's what freinds are about.  Don't bother me online.  That's different."  Yet another consumer reconciled this question with "It's just a word.  It doesn't really mean anything."

And they are right.  "Friending" doesn't really mean anything.  Hopefully being friends still does.

You've got to hand it to Christian Lander, the guy who started the popular blog Stuff White People Like.  In less than three months, he went from anonymous copywriter to running one of the most heavily-trafficked blogs on the web, with a new book deal to top it all off.  It's funny, witty, and pokes fun at our predominantly white culture.  It never hurts to have someone hold a mirror to all the funny little things that make you tick.  Some people may hate it, but you can't argue that it has prompted reaction.

I hope Christian's idea translates as well in the book.  It works well as a blog because blogs tend to feel more personal.  When I read it, I feel like I'm being told a joke.  And as with funny jokes, you pass them around.  It's fun to do even if you think the joke is bad.  Books feel more formal.  They are tangible and less easy to pass around.  It will be fun to see how this unfolds.

Whoever said there is nothing new to be found in the crowded internet space was wrong.  There is always room for talent, and as they say "the cream rises to the top".  Love it or hate it, Christian makes you think, and you don't have to wait for the book to come out.

This is what I love about the web.