I was explaining the value I've found in Twitter to a skeptical friend not long ago.  But when she asked how often I tweeted, I did have to honestly answer "not much".  It made me think about why I seem to have this love/hate relationship with this tool - and for me it is a tool.

Of course, I do have a Twitter account - @elldir, but I don't tweet much.  When I do, it tends to be in bursts that last a few weeks or months, and then I tend to take a long break from it.  Why? Because I would much rather talk to real, live human beings. For me there really isn't an equivalent online that can truly take the place of meeting people in person.

Also, the Twitter format, 140 characters, isn't really conducive to working out complex ideas.  If I'm going to write, I typically want to convey something I'm thinking about, explain ideas and ask others for feedback.  My online writing is about my work.  I really don't care what people are doing in their personal lives unless they are my personal friends, and i really don't care to broadcast my personal life, so Twitter doesn't really fit into my personal life in any way.

However, I cannot deny the benefits Twitter has brought to my professional life.  The greatest benefit to me is that it is an excellent way to find others like yourself.  I've been very pleasantly surprised to find so many like-minded individuals from all over the world who have given me excellent feedback, criticism, encouragement, and support over the years.  Yes, I get that from this blog, but many people have only found this blog because of the way Twitter makes it easy to be found. I also enjoy reading links that others post to interesting articles I may not have found.

Some people have done very creative things with their Twitter accounts.  I still smile when I think of Brent Spiner's (remember him as Data on Star Trek) suspense story he wrote in 140 character chunks. Brilliant.  But I'm not Brent Spiner, not even close.  For me, I have to sit down and interact with Twitter at the expense of anything else I could be doing in that moment.  Since I work on confidential projects, I can't tweet about what I'm thinking most of the time if it's directly work related.  My writing is about abstracted ideas and models I develop from aggregated work experiences. Tweeting regularly about specific experiences would require that I sanitize my thoughts to the point that I don't fine them particularly interesting or relevant.

And therein lies the rationale for why I both love and hate Twitter.  I love the ability to find people I wouldn't have found. The new connections are very valuable to me.  But I hate the fact that I have to actually sit down and interact with it.  I don't like to divert my attention from what I'm doing at the present moment, so you'll never catch me tweeting from a restaurant, a meeting, or even while I'm watching TV.  For that reason, I will miss things that pass by on the Twitter stream.  Once a woman I know was in town, and the only way she let me know was via Twitter.  I found the tweet a few days after she had come and gone.  So for me it will never replace email or even a text message.

But I do look forward to finding even more great people out there, so I'm going to try (again) to focus on tweeting for brief blocks of time during the week.  If you respond and don't hear from me right away, now you'll know why.

A friend of mine, Alicia Arnold, wrote a new book which will be published in August titled Creatively Ever After; A Path to Innovation. She sent me an advance copy, and there were several things about it that I felt were excellent.

Alicia makes very clever use of nursery rhymes as a non-threatening way to introduce commonly experienced business problems.  In the book, the main problem centers on Jack and Jill's desire to come up with an innovative way to get down the hill with a pail of water - without falling and tumbling down.  Many businesses encounter this type of challenge as they try to develop new solutions to achieve their goals. 

This simple analogy carries through the book in a very engaging way as Jack and Jill experience many of the common pitfalls that companies face during the innovation process.  It then introduces a structured process for creativity called the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process (CPS).  Personally, I'm not a fan of structured, facilitated, processes as a way to solve new problems.  However, I do understand that some people, (either very linear thinkers, or those in companies that do not reward deviation from the norm) will often need a structured process to break out of ingrained patterns of thinking.  In that sense, as long as the process focuses on exploring ways to identify the right problem before exploring solutions it can work.  CPS does that.

As Jack and Jill's journey to find a new solution continues, the problems identified and the ultimate solutions developed are ingenious.  It is a great example of how any challenge can be overcome by thinking differently.  While the book does follow the CPS process to achieve that goal, it can be clearly seen that the process alone is not what solves the problem. (This too is a common pitfall that many companies run into.) As new characters are brought in to assist, they are chosen for specific skills that are relevant to the task at hand - the task being to think differently.

They say "It ain't easy being easy", and this book, with it's engaging, entertaining story that can be read in about an hour surely couldn't have been easy to develop.  But it is this accessibility that makes it a great tool for anyone trying to get their organization unstuck. This is not one of those books that will be handed out that no one ever finds the time to read.  It's something that parents could enjoy with their kids, with each one getting tremendous value from it.

Well done Alicia!

Last week I gave a talk in a class called Organizing for Innovation and Design, taught by Siobhan O'Mahony at Boston University.  At the start of the class, I asked the students if there were any topics they wanted to cover specifically.  They had read my bio, and checked out this blog, and one of the students wanted to understand the "method to my madness" in terms of my diverse educational background.  They also were interested in my thoughts about continuing directly to grad school vs working before continuing their education.

During the course of my talk and Q&A, I managed to cover most of my thoughts on the multidisciplinary background - we were calling it the "patchwork education."  In short, I feel that it is important to understand how different disciplines need to work together, and I felt I needed to learn about several of them in order to make better connections between them.  My fields of study were engineering, design, and business, and rather than jumping between them, I fuse them together every day.  Don't get me wrong, subject matter expertise is important, but innovation is not very successful when attempted by groups that live in isolated silos.  Innovation requires making connections between seemingly disconnected disciplines.

By the end of the talk, I realized that I hadn't covered all the questions, so I sent Prof. O'Mahony an email with my follow-up responses, which included these thoughts on the multidisciplinary education question. 

Also, in terms of learning to combine creative problem solving and critical thinking skills, I would be remiss if I didn’t recommend taking a course or two in English Literature and/or Social Anthropology.  My undergraduate minor was in English Literature, and in terms of learning how to discern what consumers mean from what they say, it was invaluable.  In courses where you are expected to critically analyze the literature, you are learning to articulate the motivations of the characters beyond what is written, and to understand how the author is using language to create a mood or feeling.  With Social Anthropology you are doing the same thing in terms of understanding cultures through their artifacts.  The most important thing we can do through in-depth consumer interviewing is to develop an understanding that is deep enough that we can anticipate a consumer’s likely response to stimulus. (By stimulus I mean a new feature or product introduction, a competitor’s likely action, etc)  You just don’t learn that in traditional Market Research – sorry!

I would love to hear from others who have pursued similar paths.  One thing I know we will all have in common is that our experience in creating our own educational path serves us well as we connect seemingly disconnected silos in our careers!

A couple of weeks ago I was reading Gillian Tett's column in the Financial Times. She typically writes about the financial industry, and I enjoy the way she is able to make complicated ideas clear and understandable.

As I started reading this particular column I was surprised to see that the first two paragraphs described some work I led with P&G as a client. This was some excellent emerging markets work, and P&G is a great client to have as they are usually willing to explore directions that will shake up their categories. The bulk of the article, however, discussed a more important point which is how companies need to learn to understand new cultures before they try to expand current product offerings into new markets. It then goes on to suggest that the rewards, in addition to success in entering the new market, can include "reverse innovation" opportunities. The term "reverse innovation" is used to describe innovations developed for an emerging market, that can then be used in existing markets.  Two things struck me as I read the article.

First, useful innovation is not achieved by solely understanding a culture, but by translating that understanding into meaningful products and services that will benefit the culture. Tett identified that this type of understanding is important, stating that she draws from her background in social anthropology to understand the financial industry she writes about so well. She is correct in that social anthropology tools and thought processes are important.  I have also seen people make similar analogies to the design industry.  In my opinion, both types of skills are important - yet both alone are insufficient to create meaningful innovation.  From my experience, the particular tools used to make sense of a new culture are less important than the ability to translate what is learned into their implications in a different domain. In the example in the article, understanding what motivated people with little means in Brazil was only the first step. The most important step was to translate what this meant for a specific type of product to be useful in their lives. Because it is difficult to observe and often intuitivey accomplished, this step is often overlooked by those who study innovation and market research processes from the outside.

Second, it's important to note that this project was very similar to many innovation projects, regardless of the specific culture in question. It's important to understand that a company has its own culture which is different from the culture of its market. As such, every innovation project requires a study of the culture of the market, even in a market that's within the company's native geographic region. Sure, the outcomes from studying what's important in a Brazilian culture of little means will be different from the outcomes from a different culture. But the bigger difference is between the culture of the company and the culture of a market in general. Companies are great at understanding their current products. They often confuse this expertise with their ability to understand how anyone would perceive their products. This is the real reason behind the success or failure of any new product, regardless of the location of the market.

I was happy to see that these issues and the results of the work are getting noticed. However, there is still great confusion about what it takes to achieve innovation success. It's important to observe behaviors, point to tools from various fields of study, and glean critical thinking skills from successful innovation efforts. But let's not forget that the magic happens in the translation of what is learned into a relevant new offering. I'm sure Tett possesses excellent intuitive translation skills as she studies and writes about the financial industry. There's not a rule book for how to do that, but I'm working on it.

I teach a multidisciplinary product development course at Boston University. For their semester project, the students have to develop a new product that incorporates what they are learning in Marketing, Operations Management, Finance, and Information Systems. At this point in the class it is beginning to dawn on the students that there are no fixed, prescriptive answers for what they should be doing, or how they should be doing it relative to their specific projects. Up until this point, there were clear guidelines for what was expected of them. In terms of course material, there still are clear guidelines for what they should study and how they will be tested on the material. However, the project is different. Some students who performed well in fact-based classes find themselves at a loss for what to do - the project is terrifying. Others find the project to be a platform in which they can exercise leadership skills that didn't have an outlet previously, and thrive in the ambiguous, autonomous environment - the project is liberating. All of them come away with a much better sense of how work needs to be done when they enter the workforce.

John Hagel recently posted a review of his colleague's new book "A New Culture of Learning". According to Hagel's review, the book discusses the need for new models of learning that will embrace tension and ambiguity, and stress the development of new ideas by encouraging imagination and play.  I couldn't agree more.

What's interesting to me is that what I'm seeing in the classroom is exactly what I see happening with my clients. In the past, their success was clearly defined and measured. However, it is no longer possible to compete by using static metrics that encourage static behaviors in our increasingly dynamic economy. The industrial revolution has had a good run, but it has run its course.

People resist change because it's scary, and one of the things I think is most scary is not knowing whether or not you're on the right track. When I work with both students and clients, I spend most of my time creating appropriate evaluation methods and metrics. For students I help them to think through whether or not they are solving the right problem, and then I help them to figure out how to know that their solutions are working.  It's the same with clients, but to a much more detailed, in-depth degree which often takes the form of innovation strategy and process development.  It's also what I often find missing in much of the writing out there on innovation. There are lots of thoughts on how to come up with new ideas. There are far fewer thoughts on how to identify a successful idea. I look forward to continuing to develop new learning models that do not tell people what to think and do, but help people to think through the implications of what they do.

I was recently asked to contribute a short piece to the blog section of a new website - OnInnovation.  It's sponsored by the Henry Ford Foundation, and is intended to collect insights from innovators and thought leaders, and enable people to connect with their ideas.  I thought it was a great idea, and one worth supporting.  Below is an intro and link to my post:

Preserving Dignity to Drive Creativity
Posted August 10, 2010
We’ve all had the nightmares in one form or another.  You find yourself at a podium and you forgot what your speech was about.  Or you are at the office and realize that you aren’t wearing any pants.  These nightmares are powerful reminders of our deep seated fear of exposing ourselves to the judgment of [...]  Read Complete Post

I'd love to know what you think of the site.  Does it have legs?

I was recently reminded of the "hit rate" for investment in innovation (I'm also including entrepreneurial ventures here).  Most companies, VC's and others use estimates as rules of thumb.  An optimistic one is something like 1/3 of their investments will be winners, 1/3 will break even, and 1/3 will fail.  Others are more like 1% will be wild successes, 2 - 3% will do OK, and the rest will fail.

What's interesting to me is that most people accept these rules of thumb.  The reason why this is interesting is because this means that for the most part, people buy into the idea that the likely success of a new venture is largely random.  And yet there is a lot of money being spent on market research, market testing, basic due diligence, etc. before deciding to pursue a new opportunity. 

Clearly, there are forces at work that the current business community and education system do not yet recognize, let alone support and develop.  Steve Jobs' success at identifying and developing winning ideas may be intuitive, but it is not as if he is a magic person with a crystal ball.  He is just an example of someone who naturally has the ability to connect underlying market motivations with new and different offerings to satisfy them.  I'm sure there are others who have this natural ability, but if they do not also have the desire or skill to be the CEO of a large company, then the output of this ability will not be as apparent. 

There is a lot of talk about the "new economy", and how the skills that got us through the industrial age will not work to take us forward.  And yet we are so entrenched in nurturing the skills necessary for success in the industrial age, that we no longer remember the fact that it took a lot to get people to focus less holistically so they could work more efficiently within the required corporate silos. 

Success in the future will require that we recognize, develop, and nurture the ability to think holistically; to be able to see similarities in ideas and objects that appear dissimilar on the surface.  This is what is necessary to make a connection between an underlying motivation, and developing a new solution to satisfy that motivation.  In my opinion, the current "rules of thumb" tolerate a lot of waste in the system.  I think we can do better.  Until then I'll continue my work in helping to build a linear path for organizations to reduce the random nature of their innovation investments.  It seems that it's currently the only way for the people who can think like Steve Jobs, but are not Steve Jobs, to make their ideas heard.

This all makes me wonder about two things.  Will we ever get to the point where most of us can spot the difference between a good creative idea and a bad creative idea before we invest in developing a product to see real market results?  And will we ever get to a point where people will recognize the limitations of linear logic, and use it in good balance with more holistic logic?

There's no question that truly innovative people are creative.  But creativity alone is not enough.  True innovators, those people who can deliver new ideas and offerings that are relevant to the market, possess something in addition to creativity.  I've been doing a lot of work in this area lately, and will be working with PDMA and with a consortium at the Steven's Institute to help identify best practices and build a body of knowledge in this area, especially as it relates to enterpreneurship and new venture creation.

However, before we can build a credible body of knowledge in this area, we must first be able to identify what "it" is that successful innovators have that others - even highly creative people - may not have.  I've written about this briefly where I've metaphorically described this skill as the ability to make synesthesia-like connections between seemingly unrelated ideas or observations.  But ultimately, I think this is just one way to describe the way they perceive the world and make connections within it. 

What's interesting to me is that we currently don't have a good way to talk about the way people perceive relative to how it may help or hinder them in doing specific jobs.  Is there anything on your resume that talks about the way you perceive the world?  I would guess not.  And if there was, would it be even remotely helpful to the person reading your resume?  Again, probably not. And yet this is the one area where I see people either succeed or fail in their ability to perform as early stage entrepreneurs, investors, and innovation managers in large companies.

I'm also not sure if it's the actual perceptual skills that are different, or the way our brains process what we are perceiving.  For example, if a person who sees the similar in the dissimilar looks at a block of ice, a puddle of water, and a cloud of steam, they would describe them all as similar - they are all composed of H2O.  Others would look at the surface details and describe them as three different structures.  Is that perceiving, or processing?  I hope to collect different points of view on this question as part of the body of knowledge. 

What I do know now is that when you are assessing someone's ability to successfully innovate, it might be useful to stop and think about how they perceive the world.  Are they able to see similarities in dissimilar things?  Do the similarities make sense?  Is the person assessing them able to tell the difference?  As John Hagel states in many different ways in his blog, we are about to enter a Great Shift in how our world works.  It might be time to figure out how to define perceptual skills that could go easily unrecognized in the old economy, yet will be absolutely necessary for success in the new economy. 

We hear a lot about the need to break down silos, to look outside of the usual venues for innovative ideas, and to embrace new points of view. In this day and age, we have access to more information from more sources than ever before. At first glance, it would seem that the task of collecting different ideas and points of view would be easier than ever.

Unfortunately it doesn't always play out that way. Because there is so much information out there, the new challenge is in filtering out what is relevant from what is not, and this task is as daunting as finding new information used to be. Think about this the next time you search for information. How are you determining the relevance?  What are your filters? I do believe that people need filters to help them to cut through all the daunting information out there.  However, what I'm finding is that it is now the filters that are limiting the diversity of the ideas and points of view, rather than the desire to seek out what is new.

Filters are useful to the extent that they are used to focus the mind to recognize relevant information. But how often do you notice when people are using irrelevant filters? For example, if a certain author or expert provided useful information in the past, their point of view may be less likely to be questioned in the future. It becomes a shortcut that is intended to save time, but can result in blind following and group think. As I've said before, there is no excuse for not thinking about what you are doing. Especially in the realm of innovation, every problem is unique and a new filter must be created for every query for new information. This doesn't need to take a lot of time, but it does require that you stop and think before blindly accepting or dismissing new information or sources.

What filters are you using as you make decisions about new ideas or points of view? If you ask yourself if they are relevant to your current task at hand, you may be surprised at your answer.

This weekend I read a fascinating article by Columbia professor Dr. Robert Jervis in the Boston Globe.  He wrote about the way our brains make connections, how these connections inform our decisions, and how this process could have contributed to the incorrect decisions the CIA has made when drawing conclusions about terrorist threats.  He made two points that were of particular interest to me.

The first point is his assertion that humans are very good at recognizing patterns and making connections that are relevant to our world view.  In the work I've been doing, I would call this a linear connection.  The second point is that once humans reach a conclusion, they are not very good at questioning their initial assumptions.  They tend to disregard or manipulate data that could call their conclusions into question. (I'm sure we've all had frustrating experiences with this human trait.)

After reading the article, I was struck by the similarities between the problems the CIA is experienceing, and th eproblems many companies have when trying to innovate.  And as is often the case with companies it became clear that, while I'm sure the CIA has plenty of good problem solvers among their ranks, I would bet they are lacking people with good problem-posing skills.  Successful innovators are very good at questioning assumptions, making non-linear, synesthesia-like connections, and posing new problems.  These people are more open to finding the path that reconciles the data they have, rather than paying attention only to the data that reconciles the path they have chosen.  Sound familiar?

All of this then made me question one of my own assumptions.  I believe that people who can make relevant (as opposed to random) connections between seemingly disparate ideas have a heightened ability to make cognitive connections.  I have imagined this very physically, as a brain with more physical connections being made. But is it really this way?  Maybe these people lack the ability to make the well worn connections that others make, resulting in the need to make new connections more often.  Or maybe it's not physical at all.  Is it due to a difference in the way we perceive information, or a tendency to suspend judgment until all data is reconciled?

I don't have an answer as to why this happens, but as I work to build models to objectively select people with good problem posing abilities I'm realizing that the need to identify and nurture their skills is broader than I had anticipated.