You are a manager, engineer, salesperson ... whatever your profession, it is important to surprise the mind in your profession. For a salesperson, customer has to be surprised to grab the attention, for a manager the team has to be surprised to show the extra organization takes care of engineers, for engineer the peers and boss has to surprised to show extra talent the engineer brings to the table.
There is constant struggle between mind smoothening out the environment in its perception and you as a creator of environment un-smoothening it. You do new things to environment, mind notices it, stays surprised for sometime and then smoothens it out. Good news is that we are talking mind of humans, which do not have infinite history stored or used for smoothening. So, in a party you can surprise others by wearing a 1960 style dress.
But, why would one need to surprise minds? Let me focus the discussion to a manager in Software organization. Firstly, if as a manager you do not surprise people, you give a perception of incompetitiveness. The problem with this is that others will take on the role of surprising and later it will turn out that everybody would be doing little bit of everybody's role and one would lose execution.
Secondly, by suprising minds you go into permanent memory. Bigger bang for buck!
Thridly, engineers will copy you and you will see innovation in their area too.
And then "Law of Unintended Consequences" will take you higher in the hierarchy.
Well many managers know this, but few of them implement in India. The first step is to imitate what managers in US have learnt and take courageous steps to repeat it india. It is a good idea to leave it to engineers at times so that they get to chose how to have fun, but at times manager has to do what no engineer would have thought. Here are some of the ideas.
Take your team to massage therapy or some relaxation therapy (Mind Body and Soul).
Buy a outstation trip ticket for engineer.
Buy a ticket to movie for enginner and his/her spouse.
Book a cinema hall for team offsite.
More on brain ... http://www.youramazingbrain.org.uk/
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Innovation: beyond initial phase
Most of new India development centers do good on innovation in first year. The new pair of eyes get adjusted to the environment and innovation dies. Most of the innovation is technology driven innovation. With less information about customers, customer driven innovation is rare. To go beyond "fresh pair of eyes" based innovation to more "disciplined" (conscious, regular) is a challenge.
Here is an article, "Key To High-Impact Innovation", that has few ideas on how to do it. Here are 4 principles mentioned there.
1• A clear challenge statement that expresses aspirations to a worthy goal without prescribing the means. This should be expressed in terms of a customer need, not a business need.
2• A well-designed, well-facilitated process that includes multidisciplinary participation and sources of cutting-edge ideas.
3• Emphasis on developing concepts that combine multiple elements of innovation (e.g., business model, IT platform, and channel) to increase impact and distinctiveness.
4• Techniques and structures that counterbalance the forces of risk aversion.
Here are some techniques to help with point 4.
Hold a high-stakes competition. In 1989, Mazda had two teams, one from the U.S. and one from Japan, compete to come up with a design for what was to become the Miata. This winner-take-all approach introduced a great amount of stress and unleashed the breakthrough thinking that resulted in one of the world's most popular sports car.
Fund exploration. Fluke Corp. creates new business opportunities through the use of "Phoenix teams," which are empowered to spend "$100k and 100 days," as they see fit, to develop and prototype a disruptive innovation. Senior executives have green-lighted enough projects to double Fluke's revenues in five years.
Remove the naysayers. Every organization has powerful people who immediately know three reasons why any new concept won't work. One company we studied simply removed two such execs from the leadership group that governs service innovation. The atmosphere changed immediately to focus on how to make unfamiliar concepts succeed.
Change your risk-analysis mindset. In lieu of a risk-adjusted return-on-investment approach, one company evaluates high-potential concepts by defining the worst-case outcome and asking the leadership team, "Can we survive it?" If the consensus is "yes," they charge ahead and work to make the successful outcome occur. This conversation often occurs at the board level.
Form a special petri-dish environment where new concepts can grow. Pitney Bowes (PBI) has a concept studio designed to explore opportunities far afield from its existing lines of business. IBM (IBM) has a similar unit, called "EBO" for Emerging Business Opportunities. This approach minimizes distraction to the ongoing business and permits concentration of special innovation skills. Successful projects are then sold back to the business units.
Here is an article, "Key To High-Impact Innovation", that has few ideas on how to do it. Here are 4 principles mentioned there.
1• A clear challenge statement that expresses aspirations to a worthy goal without prescribing the means. This should be expressed in terms of a customer need, not a business need.
2• A well-designed, well-facilitated process that includes multidisciplinary participation and sources of cutting-edge ideas.
3• Emphasis on developing concepts that combine multiple elements of innovation (e.g., business model, IT platform, and channel) to increase impact and distinctiveness.
4• Techniques and structures that counterbalance the forces of risk aversion.
Here are some techniques to help with point 4.
Hold a high-stakes competition. In 1989, Mazda had two teams, one from the U.S. and one from Japan, compete to come up with a design for what was to become the Miata. This winner-take-all approach introduced a great amount of stress and unleashed the breakthrough thinking that resulted in one of the world's most popular sports car.
Fund exploration. Fluke Corp. creates new business opportunities through the use of "Phoenix teams," which are empowered to spend "$100k and 100 days," as they see fit, to develop and prototype a disruptive innovation. Senior executives have green-lighted enough projects to double Fluke's revenues in five years.
Remove the naysayers. Every organization has powerful people who immediately know three reasons why any new concept won't work. One company we studied simply removed two such execs from the leadership group that governs service innovation. The atmosphere changed immediately to focus on how to make unfamiliar concepts succeed.
Change your risk-analysis mindset. In lieu of a risk-adjusted return-on-investment approach, one company evaluates high-potential concepts by defining the worst-case outcome and asking the leadership team, "Can we survive it?" If the consensus is "yes," they charge ahead and work to make the successful outcome occur. This conversation often occurs at the board level.
Form a special petri-dish environment where new concepts can grow. Pitney Bowes (PBI) has a concept studio designed to explore opportunities far afield from its existing lines of business. IBM (IBM) has a similar unit, called "EBO" for Emerging Business Opportunities. This approach minimizes distraction to the ongoing business and permits concentration of special innovation skills. Successful projects are then sold back to the business units.
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