futurethink

Is brainstorming a tool in your innovation arsenal? If so, make sure you move beyond the freewheeling, no-criticism-allowed model and introduce a little argument into the mix.

Brainstorms create a safe place for people to propose unconventional ideas without judgment. That’s a great start—but truly disruptive innovation won’t happen when opposition is stifled. Openness to new ideas is paramount, but so is the freedom to argue in a productive manner. Evaluating what doesn’t work about an idea often sparks an even better solution. As Jonah Lehrer writes in a recent New Yorker article: “…dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reassess our viewpoints.” In fact, many studies have shown that exposure to contradicting ideas enhances individual creativity.

At futurethink, we support structured “arguments” as part of the innovation process. To introduce frameworks for healthy dissent in your organization, follow these four key tips:

1. If your team isn’t accustomed to open dissent, put people at ease by introducing it slowly and methodically.
2. Ensure arguments are directed toward ideas—not people.
3. Make it fun. Framing disagreement as a debate, with a clear structure for forming arguments and counterarguments, can appeal to peoples’ competitive sides.
4. Once teams get comfortable, loosen the guidelines around dissent. A supportive culture will naturally sustain disagreements that lead to important developments.

How do you support dissent in your organization? Share with us below.

Remember, breakthrough innovation is worth fighting for.

Scott Laningham, Producer and Host of IBM's developerWorks podcast show, interviewed futurethink CEO Lisa Bodell at SXSWi this past weekend.

This Innovation QuickWin is called “Problem Swap.” How many times do we find ourselves trying to solve a problem in our own silos? Why not get another perspective on it?

This tip is easy. Research has shown that when we solve problems on behalf of others, we come up with better solutions faster. So “Problem Swap” is simple—find someone who also has a work-related problem, share your problems with each other, and together brainstorm ideas and solutions. You’re going to come up with something that you wouldn’t have thought of on your own, and those solutions will come faster.

For other tips like this, please go to futurethink.com and check out our e-learning course on encouraging teams to better collaborate and share.

Within, Adjacent, and Beyond is about partnering: something that’s very critical to success with innovation today, to mitigate your risk and to share the reward.

Partnering is something that everyone talks about doing, but rarely gets creative about. We use a technique at futurethink called “Within, Adjacent , and Beyond,” and here’s how it works when it comes to partnering:

Sit down with your team and think about a product or service that could really use a partnership from the outside to really take it to the next level, and then think about “Within”. Who are the partners within your industry, even your competitors, that could take you to the next level?

In the last few decades, collaboration and brainstorming have reigned supreme. Private offices were redesigned as open workplans with zero privacy. Lingo like “teamwork” and “team player” moved from the locker room into the conference room. The prevailing belief was that to promote a culture of innovation and creativity, you must create a collaborative environment.

Not-So-Perfect Brainstorm
However, recent compelling research suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And, according to a handful of prominent psychologists, the most creative people in many fields are often introverted. Several studies show that group brainstorming can actually block the brain’s ability to solve problems and generate novel ideas.

Do Not Disturb
These studies were cited in author Susan Cain's article in the New York Times challenging the “groupthink” mentality. Privacy, she claims, makes us more productive, more creative, and even helps us learn. Decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups, and figures like Apple’s engineering genius Steve Wozniak are advising people to “work alone...not on a committee. Not on a team.”

Make It a Hybrid

This Innovation QuickWin is designed to help teams reverse the assumptions that they have around existing products or services and get them out of the mindset of what can’t happen and start to think about what can.

Next time, before a brainstorm, try this as a warm-up exercise. Get people into a room and maybe pair them up in teams of two or three. Give them everyday objects that they interact with all the time e.g. a paperclip, or a pair of scissors, or a marker; you get the idea.

Give them this challenge: let them know that the R&D group has just presented them with this new product and that it’s their job in the next 10 minutes to name it, come up with its benefits, and the audience that they would sell it to.

Three dimensional printers are moving from the lab to the marketplace using technology that could redefine the very concepts of craftsmanship, engineering, and accessibility. As with any emerging technology, 3D printing comes with its share of controversy: the potential to infringe on patented designs or “print” weapon components has raised serious legal and ethical questions. Should certain applications of 3D printing be restricted?

Here are a few ways that companies have “pushed the envelope” on 3D printing capabilities: 

3D Gets Medical
An early-stage experiment at the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine is addressing the shortage of organ donors with a 3D printer that uses living cells to output a transplantable kidney. Using scanners and a small tissue sample, a 3D image of a patient’s kidney is created and a computerized process “prints” layers of living tissue that can be fused together. While patients will benefit from more immediate access, how will doctors and insurance companies accommodate this new realm of medicine?

3D Gets Edible
The French Culinary Institute and Cornell University are experimenting with a 3D food printer that brings an unparalleled level of precision into the kitchen. Upload a blueprint for a cake design, fill the cartridges with icing, and hit print. The result is an intricate and delicious piece of technology that could be available to consumers in the near future. Will self-printed cakes become the fad, making pastry chefs a thing of the past?

3D Gets Mass-Market

In the face of an accelerating pace of change and complexity, how do you keep your business relevant for years to come?

As complacency becomes increasingly dangerous to your business and stakeholders, reinventing your business model can help stave off competition. This reinvention can mean changing the business you are currently in, making a drastic change in the way business is currently done, or even finding new ways to add value to your customer.

For inspiration, consider the following approaches to transforming your business:

1. Create a Paradigm Busting Revenue Model:  Launched in 2008, MileMeter was the first company in America to offer pay-by-the-mile auto insurance without a vehicle-tracking device. This system was created in response to customers’ increased cost sensitivity and a perception that the industry was overcharging for insurance. By redefining the standard for calculating insurance, MileMeter provides peace of mind and coverage that is based on customers’ actual usage. How can you reinvent the way your business makes money?
   

If you are looking for an innovation kingpin, Apple might just be it.

In its 30+ years of existence, the company has transformed entire industries and business models. They may have gotten their start in computers, but as everyone knows, Apple's success truly exploded with the iPod in 2001. With its launch, the company broke into music, then audiobooks, movies, and telecommunications. And now their newest innovation, the iPad tablet computer, has kicked off the revolution for smaller portable devices.

The common thread found in all of these groundbreaking innovations is Apple's intense focus on improving the consumer experience. They dig deep and assess latent needs before customers—or competitors—can even imagine them. The iPhone, for example, was certainly not the first smartphone, but it delivered a user experience unlike anything else in the mobile phone market. Apple designs products around the consumer's daily life, creating intuitive devices that stand out from the crowd. Furthermore, they continually build complete experiences to support their sleek devices (iTunes, the App Store, and even the Genius Bar).

Consider their latest release, the iPad 2, out just a year after unveiling their first touch screen tablet. From front and back cameras to its lightweight size, it is a vast improvement on the original iPad. Again, the device stands to define its category and turn at least one other industry—publishing, from books to magazines—completely on its head. At this rate, imagining the next round of improvements on the iPad 3 is almost unfathomable.

How can you design for the user experience to improve your own products and services?

What do your customers really think? What do they really need?

To answer this, many organizations often rely on packaged research reports and focus groups to gain customer insights. However, the former limits you to customer reactions on something you've already created; the latter can often be too broad for your specific market. While such data can be valuable, they also keep you at a distance when it comes to truly understanding your customers' latent needs.

Make a point of regularly interacting with your customers firsthand. You can do this by instituting ethnographic studies, in which you "shadow" your customers in specific situations to observe how they behave. By doing this, you may discover new uses for your product or uncover new solutions.
 
You can also hold “Voice of the Customer” sessions or individual customer interviews. Both are useful ways to learn about your customers and help you define what you can do to better serve them. The key is to avoid structuring your interactions too much. You don’t want to “lead the witness” and drive the conversation to particular conclusions—you want to hear your customers talk freely, openly, and honestly about certain situations so that you can apply your expertise to make that situation better.

Work with your team to identify the existing barriers between you and your customers, and then make a point of scheduling at least a few opportunities each year to break down these barriers and really listen to your customers for the sake of innovation.