The Case for Collaboration.

Henry Chesbrough’s  concept of  ‘Open Innovation’,  (IO) or collaboration, has been steadily gaining traction for the last ten years, but the necessities of the challenges of reducing costs and adding value and being more innovative, for both product service and process improvements means that it is a very bright spot on the radar for many public and private sector organisation, SME’s and academia. If not that its just a little fuzzy image.

For those of you who are aware of IO but are seeking some clarity and trying to get a handle on whether it might be time to take that leap, here are some Beautiful Questions that might help you decide.

Firstly, just to allay some misconceptions. What IO it isn’t?

It isn’t giving away the family silver

It isn’t about stealing or plagiarisation

It isn’t about commercial espionage

It might be about talent scouting and acquisition though ;)

Most of us start from the point of what we could call a 'Closed Innovation' position. The not invented here syndrome, the belief  that we have all the expertise we need to do what we need to do,  and that sharing knowledge is very risky, both at a personal and company level. The move to paddle on the shores of open Innovation requires that first we have to ask ourselves some searching and possibly painful questions, that change many assumptions.

So....

Do we really have all the smart people we need to deliver this?

…..Or do we need to get our smart people to work with other smart people?

To profit from our R&D do we really need to find, develop and distribute the product ourselves?  or…Does our internal R&D just claim part of the value of a much bigger pie?

Does it matter if, by doing do it all internally, that we are first to market?  Or do we have to originate the research to profit from it?

Do we know what are the real benefits of being first to market? Or ….  With a product or service is it better to have a business model that works better then the market first?

If we create tons of ideas, and have the most and the best will we really win? Or, if we make the best uses of external and internal ideas will that give us the best chance of success

Do we really need to control our IP? Or is it better for us to profit from others use of our IP and acquire others if it help us develop and improve our business model?

If you answer No to the first and Yes to the second then Open Innovation is your path.  If however you answer Yes to any of the first questions, then your competition will, in all likelihood, leave you behind sometime in the next 24 months, if they haven’t already.  Sorry!

Innovation is about not being small

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness which frightens us.

We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be so beautiful, talented, gorgeous, fabulous?" Actually, who are we NOT to be?

You are Child of God.

Your playing small does't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. This is not just in some of us, it is in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fears, our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela 1997

Innovation cultures, Are these a myth? The view from half way up

Which comes first, Innovation or culture, is an old question. Do you need to have an innovation culture inbuilt within an organisation for it to be innovative? Or do you have to have innovation first to establish a vibrant organisational culture?

The problem to start off with is that we use this phrase innovative ‘culture’ very loosely.  It seems many to, at least, allude to, a place that has that warm fuzzy feeling, where one we can wing it,  suggest wacky ideas, take risks. It's fab here, come i on the water's lovely. However the real experience is that, at the very best, this type culture, the one all the CEO's wish we had of  only applies to a few like minded souls in any organisation anyway. Just having a culture, any culture, that is overlaid on existing assumptions values and experiences is very, very hard to achieve.  Some may say it's unrealistic. We can’t all be Willy Wonk.


Because the simple and big problem we face in any multi-person environment is that not everyone will buy into it anyway. and worse, some become active antagonistics towards it.

So how do you get innovation embedded into your organisation? Can it be done.? Yes it can. Here is another view. Maybe its semantics but I'd like to replace the word 'Culture' with another one.

The idea that 'culture' begats innovation is missing a more fundamental point and it is a bit of a red herring. It firstly assumes  that ideas grow because they have a culture? I'm not sure that's a valid cause and effect. They do because, if you look at it more closely, they get access to a network.  A network that will trash, thrash or bash ideas about;  polish, tweak and improve, often over months or years, without necessarily any process or control and that network importantly isn't necessarily just internal.


There is absolutely nothing new in this idea at all. The coffee shops of C17th Britain, the Lunatics, Renaissance Italy, Silicon Valley,  were all simply networks connecting to both internal and external sources.  It's not so much of a culture, more of the access to a network that lets ideas grow. One very important side point is not all innovations are initially market lead, and they shouldn’t be.  These historical networks prove that beyond doubt. They came up with ideas just for the hell of it.  I don’t think Darwin was looking at the IP rights!  

Just to give you a real life example of what i mean by network rather than culture. For two years now I've have been working, helping small and new start businesses figure out how to tell their story. We have a network of over 200 businesses in our tribe now. Most of the time what we do is not provide practical help, like how to write the copy, or what their web site should actually be saying, which is what we do the rat of the week, but often simple sanity checking. People within that tribe contribute to simply help out, with no direct advantage to their own bottom line; but by doing so get energy and input for their own ideas to develop. We have, accidentally  I have to admit, created an environment,  a density of network connections and opportunities for ideas to grow and flourish, to reproduce, to be killed off, to replenish. We have in effect an ecosystem, not a culture. And the major benefit is that working for Free on Fridays has made a subtle but nevertheless huge difference in the way I personally look at how to improve my innovation skills and our own products and services.

So, I prefer the idea of 'developing the network' than a culture. It makes a bit more sense to me and I am a simple soul. In purely pragmatic considerations it has achievable, definable ( and measurable) goals which keeps the bean counters happy. Changing a company's culture is way more scary than building a network, and virtually impossible if you already have inherited any 'culture' embedded beaviours.  Like any Local Government or a Health Trust or any Quango. 25 years in Change Management have shown me that it is largely a myth anyway. ( I can hear the sound of an army of consultants spinning in their expense accounts)   Evolution is a much better description, and that is initiated only by improving the storytelling skills and opportunities (Networks) for people to communicate. Hiking up the bandwidth for all types of internal and external communication increases exponentially the level of innovation in any organisation, be it a one man band solotrepreneur or a government department.

For any organisation you can only expect a small proportion of your work force to buy into the innovative principles and actions anyway and win their willing collaboration. One alternative could be in establishing sub-cultures like Lockheed’s Skunkworks, which has to function almost as a separate entity within an organisation or it gets strangled at birth, largely by bureaucracy or people protecting their job descriptions. But on the whole, the innovative cultures we would like to be working in and strive for, such as Apple, Google, Ideo and I'd humbly suggest  my own company, were all developed from the luxury of the position of a blank price of  paper, on which active innovation was a watermark and people are recruited who fitted that persona.  None of us had any legacy of unionisation, hierarchical management, inconsistent management, and communications skills that don't actually communicate anything, and all those preconceived ideas which we first have to overcome before we can even talk about being ‘Innovative’.

So, look at your network of communication, on line, off line, internally, externally with your customers, with your suppliers. Make water coolers spaces bigger, with seats! Give people time to talk

It's not necessarily about the link between culture and innovation, but communication which leads to innovation.  It's not about risk free, 'can do' cultures. You just won’t get them, not matter how hard you try. The challenge we face is that 'Everyone wants to change but nobody wants to change themselves' But, build your network of sharing, internally and externally an then you get ideas and innovation, and the rest of the work force, at least those that  have something to contribute. get dragged in when they see how much fun it can be.

It’s just my view.

The problem with brainstorming

Brainstorming, the 'no idea is too wacko' process, used by many as the key and sometimes the only technique  in the drive to be ‘innovative', is no where near as productive as we think.

The problem is, that like a storm, it is finite in time and  has an effect only in a  localised area. After the storm we get the blue skies, and everybody feels good but forgets  what the storm did. All the ideas, like the rain, wash away, the energy dies down and every one goes back to a normal life, doing what they do and have done.

It is just the start. We need to collect the rain and the wind and put it in a place where others can see it and play with them.

Rarely does any great idea come up in Isolation, and great ideas can take months, even years to come to fruition. Tim Berners-Lee, actually took ten years from his first ‘Enquire‘  progamme, his first idea for information sharing, to turn this into what we all use now, the  www. and only then as his idea was put into an environment where it was allowed to be encouraged at CERN.

Ideas need to connect to other ideas , they need to be put into places where they can be played with or tweaked or indulged a little. 

That is innovation management.

Is your Marketing Working? 45 Beautiful Questions

Here are 45 beautiful questions questions  that may help you in figuring out if you are making any mistakes in marketing your business or organisation.  I got up to 26 yes's myself.

1. Are you The Guy(s)in your market place.
2. Are you remarkable?
3. Are you blogging yet?
4. Are you marketing daily?5. Are you focused at ALL?
6. Are you using Google Alerts?
7. Are you word of mouth worthy?
8. Are you building a permission asset?
9. Are you reading Seth Godin’s books or any books?
10. Are you giving enough away for free?
11. Are you building a timeline of credibility?
12. Are you the original; Are you just the echo of someone else’s idea.
13. Are you leveraging your channel appearances in every possible way?
14. You ARE getting talked about, but you don’t know who’s doing the talking?
15. You ARE remarkable, but are you relevant? Or worthwhile? Or marketable?
16. You ARE blogging, but are you disciplining yourself blog every single day?
17. You ARE blogging every day, but your posts are too long, too safe, uninteresting, unfocused and written with poor architecture and ZERO Call to Action.
18. Are you saying WAY too much?
19. Are you creating noise, not music?
20. Are you trying to force word of mouth.
21. Are you the observer, not the observed.
22. Are you trying to hard to convince people.
23. Are you trying to be the arrow instead of the target.
24. Are you worried about marketshare, not mindshare.
25. Are you interrupting people, not interacting with them.
26. Are you relying on your customers to connect the dots.
27. Are you marketing efforts cause customers to hear from  you, not about you.
28. Are you trying too hard to be authentic, which results in you NOT being authentic.
29. Are you sitting around waiting for your annoying, low-rent YouTube video to “go viral.”
30. Are you using WAY too much text on EVERYTHING.
31. Are you(still) calling it “marketing.”
32. Are you(still) calling them “customers.”
33. Are you(still) wasting your money on advertising.
34. Are you(still) using Papyrus as your company’s primary font.
35. Do you think people care.
36. Do you think people have time.
37. Do you think customers aren’t smart.
38. Do you think putting up a MySpace page is (actually) going to help grow your business.
39. Do you know who you are.
40. Do you have enough samples out there.
41. Are you  take too long to return calls and emails.
42. Are you stopping marketing when you become successful.
43. Do you  have a strong web-SITE, but a weak web-PRESENCE.
44. Does your marketing looks like marketing.
45. Is you goal is to make money, not create positive change.

Any to add? Please add a comment or join our mailing list back up on the right

Internal communication and innovation

Internal communication is inseparably linked to the development of any innovative culture. Whether this is improving the quality of service, delivering competitive difference, delight for the customer, better business processes, reduced marketing costs. The list goes on and on. All of this great, good stuff, which we all strive for, comes at some cost in energy and investment in skills but success is fundamentally limited by the ability to communicate effectively up, down, sideways, inside outside. The CEO’s moaning frustration of ‘Why don’t they just get it, can’t they see that this is not just good for the company and them too’, misses the big point. That it is up to them, and them alone, to communicate and to lead that communication effectively. This is their first and most important job, because without that ability no process, no initiative, no change, no improvement that needs to work will work. It’s that simple.

Yet many senior managers still persevere with the shouting louder, quickly followed by the placating ‘its fun to work here’ gesture. People are way smarter than most managers give them credit for. And, it has to be said, that the human condition often makes us all way too smart for our own good sometimes. We, largely anyway, have a disproportionate capacity for creating our own misery from the most tenuous of reasons. From one instance of inconsistency, one poorly used word, one miss-timed email we come up with an infinite number of possibilities that puts us on the road to the Valley of Despond and the recruitment web sites.

It’s an inbuilt survival mechanism. We are the only animal that imagines the future. On a personnel and organisational level this can be both a blessing and a curse. While we may look at future where the taking of risk, or the success of some personal initiative could be met with praise and prizes, equally, if we fail it means embarrassment, the loss of respect from our peers and managers. So why should we take any risks at all? The response is, in most cases, that we don’t. Unless we are motivated to do so. And motivation does not come from a snappy Power Point presentation, an email, a rousing speech but from one simple belief. Trust. 

Trust that you have the freedom and power to act without reprisal or criticism. 

Trust that what the management says the management actually means. 

Trust that they are making the right decisions for the good of the organisation and you as individuals.

And the killer of trust comes down to one thing. Inconsistency. You don’t have to be a great orator, a great writer or storyteller, although that helps enormously to inspire trust. Just applying consistent messages and the demonstration of management walking the walk works. It just does. But, one piece of hanging thread, if pulled - which it will undoubtedly will be - can unravel any strategy, any good intention and kill the momentum for change.

Effective communication is the be all and end all of any organisation. The worst of it is that most managers feel that they are great communicators. No doubt their intentions are good and their heart is in the right place. But in the thousands I have worked with over the years there are only a handful who actually get it. They are the true innovators who know that it is not just about having that great idea, or clarity of vision but know how to sell their idea, to tell the story, who use their passion and are above all know that its about being consistent.

Innovation Handbook for CFO's

With over 25 years experience of throwing myself at brick walls of various heights and thickness, trying to develop a culture of innovation and creativity in a wide range or organisations, I can say, without any shred of doubt, that the biggest barrier to establishing an innovation culture is convincing senior management of its value, and showing them ways to measure its impact to justify investment. Sometimes these are innovations in themselves.

Less than 3% of companies have any innovation performance metrics and reporting systems in place and, those that do, are in the top 5% of top performers in their sectors. A coincidence maybe? Are you mad?

The Word cloud below illustrates some of the key  considerations and serves as a memory jogger for senior management when they are not just giving lip service into their annual company report or sales blurb that they are being 'innovative'. Most really haven't a clue what that really means. Although they would all like to be like Apple. Mmmm!

Or, you can simply carry on as you are, and watch as your competitors harness their innovation and creative talent and burst out of the recession first, leaving you trailing in their wake.  Like a dinosaur looking up at that big round thing in the sky wondering why it's getting bigger.

Innovation Management Top 20 tips

1. Don't always question.
I know it is what most of us do, and what the Gurus told you do in the old days of last year. They implored us to 'Question everything. Challenge every assumption'. You still do that, just don't get obsessed with it. Instead, revitalise the casual conversations and information sharing as a normal business practice. And devote as much as half of your time to developing that dialogue. You can't expect to learn a lot just by challenging your staff. They will, more often than not, give you the answer they think you want, especially if they have to give answers off the cuff. Welcome, unreservedly, one another's thoughts and opinions and give them time to respond.

2. Establish a nil tolerance for Mediocre Practice but don't polarise the process and focus too much effort on establishing Best Practice.
Instead focus on ways to eliminate worse practice. When is best good enough anyway? A Best practice will invariably come out in the end if you are initiating the other 19 ( or so) principles. Well a few of them anyway. Incrementally it is a much quicker fix, for both you and the customer. In any case the question you should be asking is 'Are you benchmarking yourself against the mediocre, the safe, and the obsolete? Is it a 'me to' action. Do you want to give Karaoke performance of Britney Spears or Ella Fiztgerald. For a lot of people Britney is good enough. But for some....

3. Actions SHOUT.
I'd like to introduce you to the CASER principle, with apologies to Gordon Gould, the first man to use the word, laser, whose acronym I have blatantly hijacked. (Laser actually stands for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation for all you pub quizzers out there, which is why you shouldn't really spell it with a 'z'.)
I have made up my own version. CASER which stands for Creativity Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Results.

If you can vividly show the effect, good or bad that results from the implementation of their ideas you reinforce the feed back of the original signal. Or, as Spiderman puts it to Dr Octopus, you get 'harmonic reinforcement'. Show them that you take their ideas seriously, and they will trust you more seriously to share their ideas.

3. Actively Look Out.
Scan the horizon, not just through the myopia of market analysis or the telescope of your marketing or sales department. That is an awfully narrow field of view. And, have regard not just for at the usual suspects, the competitors in your field or your own market. Navel fluff picking isn't pleasant to look at and you eventually look silly or deranged.

Most of the good ideas don't come from your own staff (Or you for that matter). You are not the stewards of all things 'magnificent'. Humbleness is truly attractive and inspiring. Acknowledgement of others contribution wins friends and accomplices.

4. Experiment Persistently.
Assume nothing. Enlightened trial and error outperforms any planning of intellects however flawless their rationale.You can, and must, plan ahead to know where you want to go, and what steps you will have to make to get there. But then put the plan aside and focus on the first steps. Regularly stop to reflect on the action and repeat the process.

3. Let go of the need to be right. It's OK to make mistakes as long as you learn from them.
Your mistakes are your experience. Pass it on. If you malign failure, you destroy entrepreneurship, snuff out innovation and in the end you harm the company. If you "forgive and forget" because you want to be that great boss you always wanted to work for, that same mistake will be repeated twice or a dozen times. Failure is normal, accept it, move on but demand that lessons be learned and communicated through the entire organisation.

Expect no less from everyone in your organisation.

4. Empower but support
It is absolutely all right, positively, to give assignments to people who have never done it before. The codicil is that, if you do, then it is your responsibility as a manager to provide them with a network of expert advisors whom you trust. Legitimacy lies in competence as much as position in the organisation chart. Position without competence results in disaster. Competence without position results in helplessness.

5. Don't refer to the 'Internal organisation'.
Talk about specific people. Referring to other organisations of the company as "them" is laying the ground for future excuses about the lack of results for everyone.
Organisations are almost inevitably impersonal, complex, and change every 24 months anyway. People and communities however are far more stable, resilient and trustworthy.

7. Kill off internal client-supplier relationships.
The internal market approach is the very worst possible form of internal collaboration. A client-supplier relationship in a monopolistic environment is the epitome of bureaucracy. It damages the social network and value of the company and paralyses its ability to solve problems for the customer. If you want to reinforce the silo mentality that is the next best way of doing it.

8. Before deciding on a plan, always ask with whom the plan was discussed.
The raison d'etre of the corporate manager is not to come up with the bright ideas, but with ideas shared with other stakeholders. Reject all proposals and action plans bearing only the signatures of your staff.

9. Involve people collectively in your thinking.
If you merely want compliance (at best) rather than real commitment then use managerial authority to deploy programs and plans from the top-down. Then sit back and watch it all unravel. If you want people to adopt your views and act accordingly, you must engage in meaningful conversations with them, and not "cascade down" or "communicate messages". If you have a teenager you will l know exactly what I mean.
Think about the power of stories. No-one is won over by a PowerPoint slide, a chart, other peoples quotations, or an Excel spread sheet. Well they shouldn't be. Nor will they ever adopt for themselves another's goals. Intellectually in the short term it may possibly- short term in this case being the five minutes after the Ra-Ra speech until the next problem hits them as they get back to their desk. For medium or long-term participation you need to connect emotionally (How to do that? Well that is the tricky part and the reason why 99.999% of all managers, including you and me are not Steve Jobs. See The Beautiful Question Part 11 posting for a possible answer)

10. Management is not so much about delegating to individuals than about organising and empowering groups.
Effective action ("execution") in any organisation is all about coordination and synchronization. Speed of execution is best achieved by self-synchronisation of competent people who understand and trust each other. The first job of a manager is to detect who these people are and make sure they work together in the right setting (working group, project team, community of practice...) Or separate them if they or in a dysfunctional group. .

11. It's not about giving objectives.
It's about making sure they understand your intent.If they really understand your goals and if it makes sense to them, they will figure out what to do by themselves. It is by far more difficult to articulate a clear intent than to give objectives. Those that figure out that particular trick are the true leaders. Remember the power of the story.

12. Never give targets without negotiating them first.
Giving measurable quantitative targets without negotiating them with those responsible for making it happen is just bad management. But negotiate hard and if you do shift their comfort zone, give them the support to deliver. Not an excuse to fail.

13. Don't Squirrel knowledge
Don't think that you always know what information is 'good' for your staff. Let them know what you know, give them access to every document you have, unless it is explicitly confidential or for a damn good reason. Don't work on a "need to know" basis. No one ever said 'Oh, that Barry bloke, he communicated too much'. Let them sort out the information overload. There are plenty of tools and tricks to help them. Even if you do cocoon them they will always find out but via half-truths, conjecture, second-guessing, the water cooler whispers and arrive completely at the wrong picture. Paranoia is a part of almost every human activity so don't give it more oxygen. It is far easier to manage any fallout than motivate the disenchanted.

14. History is good- Look back.
Encourage the promotion of the myths and legends. Balance market studies, action plans, specifications etc. With case studies, lessons learned, good practices. Spend some time reflecting on past experiences. And ingrain all new employees and stakeholders with the story. Commitment to the past reaffirms the company's culture and the brand.

15. Don't promote people that sound smart, but those who make sure that smart things happen.
The company's promotion process is the primary driver of employees' emotional positivity. It isn't money, or perks or glory. It can build or destroy confidence or simply reinforce the CGAS attitude.

16. Don't expect dedication from someone who fears for his job.
All efforts are stalled by the fear of job loss. If you need to fire people, do it at warp speed, and make sure it appears to all as an exceptional event.

17. Never manipulate your staff. You actually can't!
Employees are hypersensitive to inconsistencies and incoherence across an organisation. They immediately detect every ripple of manipulation when they hear conflicting messages. Largely, because they are looking for them and we come circling right back to the paranoia thing again. Establish trusted relations with your peers first. Trust is the bandwidth of communication

18. Get yourself a knowledge technology coach.
Communication and collaboration technologies are dramatically changing. E-mail for collaboration is becoming extinct. You need to up your game.

Facebook Questions. Is this the biggest thing in our (IT) lives?

The launch of the beta version of Facebook’s Questions sees a paradigm shift in the potential for true global knowledge exchange and innovative collaboration.


Facebook has now overtaken Google as the most visited web site Google, and as such is probably the biggest single untapped repository of knowledge in the world. It carries within it billions of fragments of information, reviews, opinions and small snippets that the Google bots just can’t simply access. Questions, in theory, provides a method of tapping into that tumult of ideas and gives direct access to potential customers, partners, stakeholders and just passers by in numbers and in targeted segments, demographic or geographic, that has been previously undreamed of. You will, if they get it right, have the ability to ask anyone who can fog up a mirror what they really want from your product, service or business ethics.


Watch this space. I believe that this could be the biggest and most significant single event in our lives since Sir Tim Berners Lee woke up that morning in Switzerland with his idea for sharing knowledge.

But- like any truly ‘Beautiful Question’, sometimes we may not get the answers we like or expect.

Beautiful Questions for Innovation NO 98

Beautiful Questions 98


What do I not want to do? What do I want to avoid doing?

Ask these questions rather than "What do I want to do? " or "What do I want this product, service or process to do?"

Waking up your Creativity Mojo

To Julia, who reminded me...

Creativity IS the best therapy. Tell your therapist that you won’t be coming in today. Next time you feel anxious, sick, frustrated (insert negative emotion here), don’t TAKE something,– go MAKE something. Anything. Doesn’t matter what. Bake a cake, make a snowman, blow upa balloon and paint a face on it. When you channel your energy into the creative process and enter into flow state, you’ll forget all about that feeling of hanging on the edge.

Try it. Every single day, spend at least fifteen minutes making something out of nothing. I absolutely guarantee you will feel better. And if you don’t, draw a picture of how stupid I am, then send it to me. What are you turning your problems into?

Wisdom without distribution is selfish and soul-less. What you scatter is more important than what you gather. And hording wisdom without circulation is a dangerous act of selfishness. Now, that doesn’t mean you need to publish or share every single thought you’ve ever had.

But if you’re debating whether or not to tell the world, ask yourself, “What’s the worst thing that could happen if I distribute this idea?” Odds are, the answer won’t be as detrimental as you think. Are you being selfish with your exeriences?

Brainstorming sucks,… mostly. You don’t need another meeting. You don’t need another conference call. And you don’t need to spend another afternoon talking the life out of your idea. You need to take massive action. Today.

Otherwise you’ll get hooked on the addictive power of brainstorming – when what you REALLY need is to slide down hill in the plastic sack of execution. That is what is truly exhilarating

Creativity without innovation is useless.Sure, creativity is fun and cool and healthy for the soul, but there comes a point when you need to stop thinking and start executing.

Because there’s a HUGE distinction between creativity and innovation: One is a state of being – the other is a practice of doing. Both are essential, but neither can sustain you alone. Are you an “idea guy” or an “execution girl”?

Inspiration isn’t a Pow thing.If you sit around waiting for inspiration, the only thing that will ever come to you is lower back pain. That’s not the way creativity works. You can’t force inspiration.

You can only live your life in a conscious, creative and adventurous way – listen carefully to everything that happens to you through the filter of your Theory of the Universe – and then render what wants to be written or accomplished in a disciplined, structured way.

You’ll soon discover that reckless brain engagement truly is the best idea-generator. And you’ll never have a creative block again. When was the last time you made the choice to be inspired?

Lack of discipline dulls the blade of creativity. Inspiration is overrated. If you want to make Idea Lightning strike, you need to make yourself into an earthing rod. The best way of doing this for doing so is to cultivate creative discipline. To make yourself sit down at the workbench at the same time, every day, ready to create.

As a writer, I call this being “due at the page.” That way, every morning at 7AM when I sit down to work, lightning strikes. Because everything yields to diligence. What is about to hit yo uin the face if you let it?

Fail Like You Really Mean it

Innovation is all about risk and failure so....

Fail quick, fail fast, give yourself room to fail. Then write it up, learn from it. Share it put it where others can easily find it and move on.

Apart from keeping you fast on your feet it simply helps undermine the emotional baggage that failure implies and allows you to move on and take more risks. Prevarication wastes more money than any aspect of innovation management and we keep throwing good money and time after something which isn’t working. Risk and failure happen. Most things fail- get over it and move on to the next opportunity.

But the crucial factor learn from it, don’t repeat the same thing. Know what failure looks like and trust your gut instincts along with the metrics. Don’t rely on just the numbers.

And if you want to change innovation into stagnation, don’t bonus your management on individual project successes. They will just keep persevering and spend too much of their energy to find something to blame when it does go pear shaped. You end up paying twice. At least.

30 Email tips for Innovation Amplification

Love it or curse it, email provides either the super-lubricating oil or the over boiled jam in the gears of any organisation, depending on the skill of the writers and the culture of the organisation. How the hell did we manage to communicate before Outlook, or put a man on the moon, or organise Live Aid? The fact is we did and, some would say, communicate a whole lot better in the process. Certainly we wasted far less time, and had less 'noise' to deal with.

Following are 30 tips which will reduce the time we all spend wrapped up in our mail mess and hopefully gives us more time for productive and creative thinking and... er...work:

Email tips

1. Use subject lines and titles that mean something, precisely. It gives people a clue about what they have to do with it. And helps retrieving information from the fossil record of their in-box at some late date.

2. Switch off email incoming warnings. There is nothing that important that can't wait an hour or so. If it is mission critical then use telephone! They still work.

3. If you really have to write a long email put a 'contents' at the top and tell people what’s in the rest. And what they need to do, if anything.If nothing then tell them that too.

4. Think! Do I have another way of distributing this information; Intranet, Blog, or bless us, by getting off our behinds and walking over to the individual or using the phone. Word of mouth - that works too.

5. One sentence paragraphs are fine, absolutely.

6. Use Headings.

7. Use Bullet points.

8. Put the main information you want to convey at the top of the message. And work down in descending importance - Mission critical to, why am I actually writing this at all?

9. Ask continually 'Why am I writing this at all'.

10. Write warmly, not like a robot, which is a bit jerky and boring.

11. Bring your personality to work.

12. Remember the Three Tee’s

Clarity - Brevity - Personality.

13. Make sure the links you may put in actually work.

14. Don’t attach whole documents, just paste the relevant bits into the message. A 20 page PDF that you have to read through just to get to the with one relevant paragraph is worse than useless?

15. Use the spill chacker.

16. Don’t use texteese unless it’s for a colleague (you actually know)

17. Don’t send ‘thank you’ replies.

18. Don’t abuse the priority buttons.

19. One subject per email… or find another way of doing it.

20. Always bear in mind that you are, in general, asking somebody to put your email on their to-do list and they may be up to their eyeballs in their own to-do’s. Virtually every email is a sales letter to get somebody to do something, even if it is just to read the damn thing.

21. Wait 5 hours before replying to emails that wrankle. DO NOT hit the reply button immediately. Email is the fastest way to unintentionally upset people known to man. 80% of communication is non-verbal and it is very easy not to see or appreciate the smile or irony behind the phrase somebody may think was very clever when they wrote it. And if they are being a bit tart,.......... then a short pause helps everyone to cool down a bit.

22. If you can’t reply fully immediately tell them when you can and then do it. Under promise over deliver.

23. Your colleague is a customer too. Teatr them as if they were your best customer.

24. 90% of emails are persuading somebody to do something.

25. 80 % of emails travel less than 50 meters. Why not get off your ...... and go to see them and have a chat. Guess what? That works too. Probably better and it certainly helps for the next time you need some help.

26. Emails are not 'buck passers' or 'insurance policies'.

27. Think, before you CC, do the c-ceed really, really need to see this.

28. Use CC only when absolutely necessary. If they aren’t the prime recipient why are you CC’ing them at all?

29. Use the Intranet more. If you can’t, then fix it quickly. Spending £50K on a great intranet will save at least in less than a month in productivity for any organisation of over 100 people - FACT!

30. Try using other technology. Twitter, SMS, anything that works; If you don't know how then get a technology coach

Communication is the fuel for innovation - it shouldn't be the brake

Pic of the week

When all the world around you seems to be crumbling, it's nice to see an eternal optimist.

Idea filter tool

OK, you have a room full of post it notes, , a blizzard of flip charts, a list of product or service  ideas. You have brainstormed until your  grey matter is dry and wrung out like a window washers rag. 

How do you know which idea  is going to work and is worth pursuing?

If you can't answer yes to any of these three questions the answer is simple, bin it. Somewhere where you can find it later though - The present may just not be ready for it yet.

Here you go.

1. Does this idea fundamentally change the value chain of the client. Are they getting something that they would perceive as having added value?

2. Will this idea fundamentally change the expectations of the customers.

3. Will this  change the competitive landscape of the industry.

If you answer YES to any of these then move on to two more questions ..

4. Will you be making a contribution

3. Can you make money from this idea?

If the answer is Yes to the last two then congratulations.  You have an idea that stands some chance of success.

That was the easy part. Next comes the hard part. Innovation. How you get that idea out there.

Visualisation demi-God

I'm a great fan of napkins and  pencils. 

I think I'm on my 167th   little Black notebook. It serves as my idea engine and data capture system.  Not just words but doodles and  images ,  clouds and mind maps.  I find for me and I know not everyone is the same, that visualising a process or route cause helps enormously.   My office is a blizzard of post it notes, on all four walls.  Its amazing what you can  achieve with just four colours and some electricians tape to give you the lines.

Anyway  I came across this by Paul Hughes and  I just love this approach and would just like to lick this off the screen. It looks so good. 

 

Follow this for the full presentation at flckr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulhughes/sets/72157603312387650/show/

Questions about questions

Types of Questions and Why They Work


Asking The Beautiful Question is essential to creativity. Ask the right question and people will move into different places in their head and help them to see the same landscape but with new eyes.

In innovation and creativity there are a whole slew of questions based around the principles of TRIZ that I use to enable people with the opportunity to shift their preconceived ideas. But even at its most basic level a brainstorming session will only be productive if the questions the participants are asked to throw their energies into are refined enough paradoxically to open up the horizons. Creativity loves constraint.

Questions and what to ask when are essential in any communication, building engagement, rapport and trust. We don't ask enough or use their power to anything like their full potential

So here is a whistle stop tour of some questions I use, how and why they work.

1. Are you saying…?
Identifies someone’s language patterns.

2. Are you willing to…?
Tests someone’s limits.

3. Can you give me…?
Encourages examples and specifics.

4. Can you remember…?
Taps into someone’s memory.

5. Did you ask…?
Questions someone’s questions.

6. Have you considered…?
Non-threatening proposal of options.

7. Have you given any thought to…?
Suggestive, yet doesn’t sound like advice.

8. Have you thought about…?
Forces someone to think!

9. How are you constantly…?
Promotes consistency of action.

10. How are you creating…?
Proves that someone has a choice.

11. How can you become…?
Future oriented, motivational.

12. How can you make…?
Enlists someone’s creativity.

13. How could you have…?
Focused on past performance improvement.

14. How do you feel…?
Feelings are good.

15. How do you measure…?
Clarifies and specifies someone’s statement.

16. How do you plan to…?
Future oriented, process oriented, action oriented.

17. How do you want…?
Visualises ideal conditions.

18. How does this relate to…?
Keeps someone on point, uncovers connections between things.

19. How else could this be…?
Encourages open, option-oriented and leverage-based thinking.

20. How long will it take to…?
Clarifies time specifics.

21. How many different ways…?
Enlists someone’s creativity, explores various options.

22. How many people…?
Clarifies and specifies.

23. How might you…?
All about potential and possibility.

24. How much energy…?
Identifies patterns of energy investment.

25. How much money…?
Identifies patterns of financial investment.

26. How much time each day…?
Identifies patterns of (daily) time investment.

27. How much time…?
Identifies patterns of energy investment.

28. How often do you…?
Gets an idea of someone’s frequency.

29. How well do you…?
Uncovers abilities.

30. How will you know when/if…?
Predicts outcomes of ideal situations.

31. If you could change…?
Visualizes improvement.

32. If you had to…?
Possibility thinking.

33. If you showed your…?
Imagining what others would say.

34. If you stopped…?
Cause-effect question.

35. If you were…?
Ideal situation.

36. In what areas…?
Searching for multiple answers.

37. Is anybody going to…?
Deciding if something even matters.

38. Is there any other…?
Challenges someone to find ONE more answer.

39. Is there anything else…?
Yep, there probably is. Answers are rarely absolute.

40. Is your idea…?
Forces someone to think objectively.

41. On a scale from 1 to 10…?
Putting a number to an emotion clarifies it.

42. What are some of the…?
Encourages list making.

43. What are the biggest mistakes…?
Negative based for preventative measures.

44. What are the keys to…?
Searching for best practices.

45. What are the patterns of…?
Uncovering commonalities.

46. What are the things that…?
Because there’s probably more than one answer.

47. What are the ways…?
Freedom (not) to resign to one solution.

48. What are you currently...?
Assesses present situations.

49. What are you doing that…?
Assesses present actions.

50. What are you willing to…?
Explores limits.

51. What can I do to…?
Demonstrates a desire to serve.

52. What can WE do to…?
Partnership-oriented.

53. What can you do right now…?
Focuses on immediate action being taken.

54. What can you do today…?
Focuses on daily action being taken.

55. What causes your…?
Uncovering true motives without the dreaded, "Why?"

56. What challenges are…?
Identifies barriers.

57. What did you learn…?
Because people don’t care what you know; only what you learned.

58. What do you need to…?
Needs assessment.

59. What does that tell you about…?
Encourages someone to figure out the answer individually.

60. What else can you…?
Because there’s always options.

61. What evidence…?
Because specificity is persuasion.

idea kick start

My friend Scott came up with the following which I’d like to share about how to capture and kick start new ideas and get some momentum.

He is such a smart guy

1. As soon as you get the idea WRITE IT DOWN
Because if you don’t write it down, it never happened.

2. ASKING yourself, “What’s the next action?”
Because ultimately, that’s the only question that really matters.

3. LISTING all the steps you need to take to leverage an opportunity.
Because listing is the quickest, most efficient way to organise all of your thoughts.

4. GOOGLING various elements of your idea as soon you get it.
Because you need to find out if someone else is already doing it.

5. ASKING for feedback from smart people right away.
Because they can ask questions and see things you can’t.

6. REGISTERING domains as soon as you get the name of the idea.
Because he owns the domain owns the idea.

7. EMAILING someone right away with a action-oriented question.
Because initiative is attractive.

8. SCANNING your opportunity radar constantly.
Because now that your mind is fixated, related ideas will be attracted to you.