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Win: The Innovator's DNA

Today, my interview of Clayton Christensen, one of the leading authors on innovation, goes live as the cover story of the November Personal Branding Magazine (click for sample).  In the interview, I questioned Clayton about the qualities of an innovator, how people can learn to be more innovative, and how they can demonstrate their innovative skills to others.

The Innovator's DNA is a really interesting book.  The three authors - Clayton Christensen Jeffrey Dyer, and Hal Gregersen - studied innovative leaders and surveyed thousands of executives to identify what makes a person truly innovative. 

They discovered it came down to five activities that innovators do: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Experimenting, and Networking.  They also found that innovative skill isn't purely a result of talent - instead innovators spend an average of 50% more time on those activities than non-innovative people!

This is very important info! A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the “leadership competency” of the future.

That's really discouraging if you don't think of yourself as naturally creative.  BUT, if you view creativity as a learned skill... suddenly the future is wide open!

So, if you want to learn to be more creative, here's a chance to get your hands on a great resource! This week, I'm giving away a copy of The Innovator's DNA to one lucky reader.

How can you win it?

Simple, all you have to do is give me one idea. I'll even tell you how to get it!

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to use the associations you think of with a Random Word to come up with "fresh ways to improve cell phones".

It takes only four super quick steps to be entered to win...

1. Get a Random Word.
   Use the generator below.  The word you'll get will be completely unrelated to mobile phones. You have to use one of the words that comes up.
2. Think about what comes to mind when see that word?
   Don't worry if it doesn't feel related to the problem!  That's the idea!  For example, if your Random Word is Cat, you might think about how your cat purrs when she's happy.
    
3. Then, use that association to come up with an idea to improve a cell phone.  For example, just like your cat purrs when she is happy, perhaps your cell phone could make a soothing background noise to let you know how the person you're talking to is feeling.
   
   Note: You can't just combine your random word with a cell phone to have an idea. For example, if your Random Word is "Wine"...
   
   • Creative Idea: A cell phone that checks the alcohol content on my breath and tells me whether I can legally drive according to the rules of my geographic location.
   • Lazy Answer: A cell phone that has wine in it.
   
   Don't worry if your idea is funny, crazy or silly. The whole point of this contest is to push our thinking on cell phones so that we come up with ideas beyond faster, smaller or better connectivity. Let your random word bring you somewhere completely different.
   
   
4. Write your fresh idea in the comments (with the random word that got you there) and you're done!

Now, get started!  Close your eyes and point at one of the Random Words in the list below. (All the words are hard. Just go with the first one you get.)

Adult Airplane Airport Album Apple Army Baby Backpack Balloon Banana Bank Barbecue Bathroom Bathtub Bed Bee Bible Bird Bomb Book Boss Bottle Bowl Box Boy Brain Bridge Butterfly Button Cappuccino Car Carpet Carrot Cave Chair Chess Chief Chisel Chocolates Church Circle Circus Clock Clown Coffee Coffee-shop Comet Compass Computer Crystal Cup Cycle Desk Diamond Dress Drill Drink Drum Earth Egg Electricity Elephant Eraser Explosive Fan Feather Festival Film Finger Fire Floodlight Flower Fork Freeway Fruit Fungus Game Garden Gas Gate Gemstone Gloves Grapes Guitar Hammer Hat Hieroglyph Highway Horoscope Horse Hose Ice Ice-cream Insect Jet fighter Junk Kaleidoscope Kitchen Knife Leather jacket Library Magnet Map Maze Meat Meteor Microscope Milk Milkshake Mist Money  Monster Mosquito Mouth Nail Navy Necklace Needle Onion PaintBrush Parachute Passport Pebble Pendulum Pepper Perfume Pillow Plane Planet Pocket Pool Post-office Potato Printer Prison Pyramid Radar Rainbow Record Restaurant Rifle Ring Robot Rock Rocket Roof Rope Saddle Salt Sandpaper Sandwich Satellite School Ship Shoes Shop Shower Signature Skeleton Slave Snail Solid Space Shuttle Spectrum Sphere Spiral Spoon Sports-car Spot Light Square Staircase Star Stomach Sun Sunglasses Sword Table Tapestry Telescope Television Thermometer Tiger Torch Torpedo Train Treadmill Triangle Tunnel Typewriter Umbrella Vacuum Vampire Videotape Vulture Web Wheelchair Window  

Then use that Random Word to come up with new ideas for cell phones and leave your answer in the comments.

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If you need some help starting your thinking, go to Do You Have Trouble Being Creative? for examples about using this technique.

If you'd like to see the fantastic ideas people entered in my last Random Word contest about how to improve cars, go here:

• Ways to Improve Cars - Ideas from the Random Word Contest (Part 1)
• Ways to Improve Cars - Ideas from the Random Word Contest (Part 2)

Solving Problems the Soviet Way

Tonight I'm going to a PDMA event about the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), which is a Soviet method of systematic innovation.  And last night, I went salsa dancing. Believe it or not, those two very different events are connected through one of my favorite creative problem solving tactics!

First of all, what in the world is TRIZ?

In college, I was lucky enough to briefly study TRIZ in St Petersburg under a handful of the Russian masters.  It was January, the room was barely heated, I was wearing 5 layers of clothes to stay warm and we had class for 8 hours a day - and it was one of the coolest (and coldest) experiences of my life!

The whole premise of TRIZ is that by breaking a specific problem down into its underlying generic problem, you will be able to uncover solutions that would never have otherwise occurred to you.

TRIZ was developed in the Soviet Union over 2 decades by a man named Genrich Altshuller who studied 40,000+ patents in order to reveal how invention runs in patterns. And it really works.

Unfortunately, as TRIZ is geared for technical invention, many examples are hard to follow for non-engineers (like myself).  So it doesn't get a ton of buzz.

But I'm a huge fan, because it really pushes people to look at problems in different ways.

So, let me give an example of how I just used TRIZ in my everyday life.  This is about as non-engineering as you can get!  (And how I'm going to tie this post into salsa dancing.)

The Situation: Yesterday, a group of friends and I decided to go salsa dancing.  As you can imagine, salsa dancing requires a lot of twists and turns so I knew I'd need to have secure shoes that move with me.

The Problem: Egads - in reviewing my salsa-dancing wardrobe choices, I ran into a huge problem!  My sneakers simply wouldn't cut it with my sparkly-gold/black skirt.  And my cute heels wouldn't stay on if I move too fast.

Whatever is a gal to do in this terrible, terrible situation?  Compromise on fashion for the ability to enjoy myself spinning in circles?  Or grit my teeth and wear something that didn't make me feel like dancing?

Oh no! Not me!  Instead I decided to use TRIZ - the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving  to reveal a solution. (Isn't that what every innovator does in a crisis?)

Thinking like a TRIZ practitioner, I realized that I wasn't trying to find a way to hold my cute heels on while I dance. Oh no: I was actually trying to find a way to secure loose footwear.

Think those are the same thing? Not at all.

When your mind gets stuck thinking about holding on high heels, your brain automatically searches for things that are related to high heels only.  

But when you expand the parameters to securing footware, that opens up many new possibilities.

Some initial solutions I came up with:

• Glue (ouch)...
• Duct tape (ugly and inflexible)...
• Elastic bands around the arch of my foot (hard to create)...
• Shoe laces (don't work with the heels)... 

Then, as I thought of ways to secure footwear, I realized I had recently seen a solution for this exact same generic problem in another part of my life!

As a hobby, I play underwater hockey, which has a lot of quick changes in direction as the puck moves back and forth. So, even though my flippers fit well, I constantly lost them if I turned too fast.

The solution I learned about from my teammates: little rubber straps called "Fin Keepers" that hold your flippers more securely to your feet.  

The y-configuration holds the bottom and heels of the shoe securely to the top of my feet, and makes them basically impossible to lose or have slip out of place.  

Doesn't that sounds exactly like the result I was looking for with my heels?  Hmmm....

So off I run to grab the fin keepers from my gym bag so I could figure out how to mimic their success with my heels.  As an experiment, I slipped them onto my heels - and (what do you know!) they held my footware securely to my feet! Problem-solved!

The trial...

To make it even better - the black rubber almost exactly matched the black of my shoes!  In fact, from more than 2 feet away, you couldn't even tell that the fin keepers weren't actually part of the shoe!  So, instead of trying to recreate the same functionality with other materials, I just wore my Fin Keepers salsa dancing.

The Result: The Fin Keepers worked perfectly!  My shoes didn't slip an inch all night, no matter how fast I spun! (And the only reason my friends noticed I was wearing snorkeling equipment on my feet was because I insisted on showing them.)

All because I went beyond thinking about how to keep my heels on when I danced to thinking more generically about the problem...!

Now, I can't wait for the PDMA event tonight to refresh what I do know about TRIZ, and to open my eyes to how I can use it more ways in creativity.  I'll be looking for more things to share for sure.

Never Stop Learning

Photo by Paleontour

One of the blogs I read, Think Simple Now, just wrote a great post about watching a man in his late 70's learn to use a brand new computer.

The Apple rep is showing him how to browse the web and set-up his first email account. The elderly man is diligently taking notes as the Apple rep gives him a tour of the fresh and foreign, online world with his newly purchased laptop...

...As the rep carefully dictates the process, the elderly man numbers “1, 2, 3” on a yellow pad, followed by step-by-step, detailed instructions.... Once finished, the elderly man articulately asks for advice on what other websites people would usually bookmark....

...[The elderly man says to the author after noticing her attention] in a polished, humbled tone, “Ahh… to be young again. I feel like I’m exploring in a desert…I’ve been here for 4 hours.” He smiles gently, his eyes gleaming.

The author writes about how inspiring it was to see someone so clearly out of his comfort zone taking on the challenge of learning a new thing - especially at an age where no one expects you to learn anything new.  And she's right - it is super inspiring!

And it's also a fact: if you want to keep having great ideas throughout your life, you MUST keep pushing yourself to learn new things!

Think about it.  New ideas come from making new connections between points of innovation in your brain.  Each new point of information that goes into your brain creates the possibility to connect with everything already in there.  And, as a result, your possibility for creativity grows exponentially every time you learn something new.

If you stop learning, you stop expanding your creative potential. 

All the possibilities you will ever come up with are already inside you.  You might still putter along for a long time, spitting out ideas based on sheer talent, but eventually that well will run dry.

So if you want ideas, go learn something.  It doesn't matter what it is - you could be learning about using a new technology or about the astronomical impact that salt has had on the development of empires.  All those things push the boundaries of your thinking, and give you that many more possible ideas.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go!

Where Innovation Is Not Welcome

Not long ago, I highlighted a school district in Minnesota that is flipping the typical educational approach around.  Students learn their lessons as "homework" and then do their assignments in class under the instruction of the teacher.

Reactions were mixed, as they always are for radical new ideas, but I was particularly intrigued by one commentator who declared vehemently:

I can't lie. I think this model is horrible. I'm not convinced that the content and difficulty level of the lessons aren't suffering. If the goal is to provide kids with extra help in mathematics a teacher can always offer extra help sessions. Parents can become more responsible in offering help as well. We need to make sure that math is taught and drilled live in a classroom so that any nuances or problems can be addressed on the spot.

Furthermore, to rely on children to watch videos at home and then "work together" to solve problems is to take a huge gamble on an educational system whose math skills are already lagging alarmingly behind much of the rest of the world's. I mean, most Americans who come out of public schools are basically mathematically illiterate compared to Chinese and Indian students of a comparable socioeconomic level.

What's utterly fascinating to me is that this commentator flat-out admits that our schools are not currently doing a good job of educating students - but then goes on to insist that if we all just put more effort into the status quo, the problems will be solved.

So what's going on here?  Why insist that it's better to continue doing something that isn't working without even giving a new idea a fair chance?  If educating our children is so important, why don't we want to push for a more effective system?

Perhaps it's because educating our children is... well... so important! 

If that makes no sense to you, consider another critically important decision people have to make: whether or not to be organ donors.

In the excellent book Predictably Irrational, behavioral economist Dan Ariely writes about organ donation rates in different countries. He points out that the overwhelming indicator of whether a country has high or low organ donation rates is not based on how organ donation is viewed in the country.  Actually, the main factor is whether the default organ donation option is to opt-in or opt-out on the form:

You might think that people do this because they don’t care. That the decision about donating their organs is so trivial that they can’t be bothered to lift up the pencil and check the box. But in fact the opposite is true. This is a hard emotional decision about what will happen to our bodies after we die and what effect it will have on our those close to us. It is because of the difficulty and the emotionality of these decisions that they just don’t know what to do so they adopt the default option.

And consequently, the vast majority of people are so overwhelmed by the immensity of their decision that they shy away from making the "wrong choice" and pick whatever is the default. 

To me, it seems like this happens too with our educational system.  Educating children is incredibly important and nearly everyone cares about it.  Yet, we are still teaching in the same way we taught children to be good factory workers 50 years ago - even thought the world is a completely different place today.

It is absolutely true that educators today face incredible challenges - such as parents who are less engaged, children with more behavioral issues, increased distractions, more children coming from poverty (and all the attendant problems), etc, etc.  All of those things make it harder for teachers to do their job and teach well.

But those challenges aren't going to go away, and it's naive to think that they will if everyone just tries a little harder.  That ship has sailed, and the world is changed.  Now it's time to design an educational system that does work for the needs of students today.

Yet instead of pushing to radically reform our school system, we instead just glop on more tests and accountability standards - without pushing for innovative changes in how people teach.

The fact is, it might be an awful idea to turn the school day around by having students learn at home and do their work/synthesize information in class.  But, it is an idea and shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand. Otherwise, what we're doing is creating a stagnant educational culture in America and making it a place where innovation is not welcome.

And that, I fear, is the worst travesty of all!

Education 2.0

A local Minnesotan school district is experimenting with a novel way of educating students. Instead of teaching math to kids while they're at school, and expecting them to complete the assignment at home, the school flipped things around.

Lessons are pre-recorded and students are expected to watch the lessons at home. Then during the regularily-scheduled class time, students work on their math assignments individually or in small groups with the teacher standing by to help.

So far, the approach seems to be working extremely well. Teachers quickly learned how to teach to the camera, dvds are available for students without home internet access. And (unsurprisingly) it's dramatically increased the amount of time teachers are able to focus on helping students!

To me, it's shocking that more schools aren't doing things like this. In today's world, the knowledge-dispensing aspect of what teachers do has become a commodity.

The whole model of students quietly learning while a teacher instructs is a relic of a bygone time when that was a student's only way to learn. Teachers were the gatekeepers and they held the keys to knowledge in a world where only a few were truly educated.

But today, acquiring information is not the hard part. Students can spend 20 minutes online and learn how to solve a math problem, or learn about the history of the United States or even dive into the latest scientific breakthroughs.

What the web doesn't offer (yet) is help understanding and synthesizing the knowledge out there. A Wikipedia entry can't sit down with a student, find out why they're struggling and ask the questions that help the student solve the problem on their own. Nor can Google provide encouragement when a student hits a wall or push an outstanding student to challenge themselves.

Those are why teachers are so valuable to schools - not because they can dutifully show a class how to solve a multiplication problem!

Bravo to the Stillwater Area Schools for taking this fresh approach to teaching that takes the realities of the modern world into consideration!