 Commentary by Ellen Domb Subscribe via Email or RSS |  Biography |
January 27, 2009
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Innovation Is Good? |
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"How to persuade your boss that innovation is a good thing?" I was recently invited to speak at a conference on this topic—way outside my usual comfort zone of "What is TRIZ" or "How to merge TRIZ into your Lean Six Sigma System" or "Innovation for Everybody" speeches. This conference is focused on innovation in general, not specifically TRIZ. My initial reaction was pretty negative in several ways:
I brought my TRIZ experience to the analysis of the situation, but you don't need TRIZ to see what I did. One of the TRIZ techniques is to use all the available resources to solve a problem, and one variant is to include all the negative/harmful resources. This is the "Make your enemy be your friend" method. So I decided to use the negatives as the basis for the event. My first thought was that since knowledge of the particular "boss" and the corporate culture are essential; this should be a workshop, rather than a speech. That way, the person who is looking for help gets to contribute all the knowledge of the culture and the person, and the consultant acts as facilitator—giving structure to the event, but not trying to provide content. (Exercise for the reader: express this as a TRIZ Physical Contradiction, and demonstrate the use of the separation principles!) My second thought was the basic TRIZ concept that "Somebody, someplace has solved this problem, but for a different reason, in different circumstances…" This leads to the idea that one major structure in the workshop should be listing all the change initiatives that the company has pursued, and how management was persuaded to start them. Then a success path could be to look for similar arguments, if they were successful, OR look for opposite arguments if they were not. I've done this quite frequently, with companies that "piggyback" TRIZ onto Six Sigma initiatives, for example. Readers: this is your opportunity to help me help the audience at this conference. Please use the "comments" feature to tell me any stories you have (note whether I can use the name or not!) about how you persuaded somebody that innovation is a good thing. I'll do another column after the event, with the comments, how I used them, and what the participants contributed. THANKS! |
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Comments [13] | Permalink |
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| Categories: Conference, Leadership, Strategy | |
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| posted by Claude Meylan [ http://www.cm-consulting.ch ] | January 28, 2009 at 9:02 am |
Dear Ellen, Why would you like innovation to be good? Why would you like to convince a boss that innovation is a good think? Why do you need to argue with this boss who is not convinced that innovation is good? Why a speech? Why accept such a challenge? and Why not speak with a boss who thinks innovation is good? Kind regards, Claude |
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| posted by Ellen Domb [ http://www.trizpqrgroup.com ] | January 28, 2009 at 1:00 pm |
Hello, Claude: Thanks for the challenges! 1. Why accept the challenge? The organizers have already published the program and the original speaker withdrew, so I'm trying to help the organizers, and THEY think that their audiences want this topic. 2. Why should anyone try to persuade a boss that innovation is good? The reasons could range from seeing that the company will fail if they don't innovate in products or services, to a personal desire for more variety in work, to anything in between. One of my questions to the group will be "how do you know that your boss needs to be persuaded, and isn't already in favor of innovation?" I think that will get a lot of illustrations of negative behavior, but we'll see what happens. In my TRIZ work, I don't see this group at all--by the time they hire a TRIZ consultant, the decision has been made that innovation is good, and they just want help DOING it! |
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| posted by Ellen Domb [ http://trizpqrgroup.com ] | January 29, 2009 at 11:06 am |
Exactly what I had in mind--which questions are important are a strong function of the local organization's culture, so a large part of the workshop will be creating a list of the important questions--I have always found that answers are easy when you have the right questions, and answers are wasteful or even harmful if they address questions that the client isn't interested in. Thanks for the help! |
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| posted by Paul Hobcraft [ http://www.hocaconsulting.com ] | February 2, 2009 at 4:49 am |
As we are still going to be caught up in the 'eye' of the financial, downturn storm I'm sure still in April you need to make this talk positive, really positive. The question for many will be "Why should I invest in innovation at this moment of time?" What are the TRUE triggers to ensuring Innovation is high on the agenda? As we go through the different 'emotions' of recession we can relate these to ALL the ones that 'drive' innovation Survival, crisis, future growth desire, response to burning needs, competitive pressures, seeing new market space, discovery, external threats, new ideas and concepts, regeneration, ambition, fresh momentum, synergy. Just work through these in a positive way to provide the 'compelling' argument of why innovation is important through the business cycle of recession we are presently facing All are a REAL need (and cry) for innovative help |
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| posted by Claude Meylan [ http://www.cm-consulting.ch ] | February 2, 2009 at 5:22 am |
Dear Ellen, As ice breaker, I usually do use the following questions (or the like): What are the past trends of evolution? Which product features have been improved? What are the difficulties/ problems/ needs for improvements/ harmful effects of the current products? What relevant new knowledge has surfaced recently? I prefer to get written answers before starting with a discussion. Kind regards, Claude |
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| posted by Richard Platt [ http://www.intel.com ] | February 2, 2009 at 9:17 am |
Well Ellen I will put this as succinctly as possible for your readers, and this coming from someone who has done the convincing in one of the more aggressive corporate environments. INNOVATION is GROWTH for the Enterprise. Any tools that enable that are tools for achieving the" GOODNESS" are and should be fully evaluated if the manager has any fiduciary responsibility to the company. (Legally this is any appointed senior VP or CEO, the President and the CFO of a company - this is who you address, not middle level managers, they have no real authority or more specifically fiduciary responsibility). The next, and more appropriate question is what is the Economic Engine of the Enterprise? - Simply put it is the PEOPLE USING TOOLS and METHODS to achieve that economic GROWTH. TRIZ tools and other Systematic Innovation methods are the TOOLS of INNOVATION and enterprise GROWTH. I have NEVER lost a corporate fight about innovation. Suffice to say I most certainly do have my detractors but they do not sit on the executive boards of company's. If you believe that you MUST work with your boss on this, and I do recommend that you attempt to do so, at least initially. Then use the same approach, however be advised that you can potentially expect push back from them. Why you ask? No one likes being told that they're incompetent and that is what is implied by you telling them this. Now you know -- "Use it or lose it" |
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| posted by Ellen Domb [ http://www.trizpqrgroup.com ] | February 2, 2009 at 6:38 pm |
Thanks, everybody--great ideas for making this a positive workshop. I'm trying to avoid the syndrome I call "If only your CEO..."--that's where the speaker on (Quality, Innovation, Corporate Change...) says "If only your CEO were here..." The people who are a the seminar are not CEO's, and many times are several layers away from the CEO's, and they need what they can use in their own environments. I appreciate all the suggestions, and I'll write another "Commentary" after the conference. See Business Week Feb. 9,2009 issue for a nice graph showing that the companies that increased spending on R&D in previous recessions had almost double the market value of those that didn't. This is language CEO's will appreciate, but I'm not sure if it will help my audience. http://feedroom.businessweek.com/?fr_story=8492b1260d8d934376924412b38a1e92cb17e319&popupWidth=400&popupHeight=400 |
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| posted by xdb@nathema.com [ http://www.nathema.com ] | February 4, 2009 at 9:01 am |
Hi Ellen and all! long time and i resurface after a few med pbs... your problem is common to many people... We all know that innovation is the soruce of future wealth and gains towards competitions, figures prove it, aso... BUT... but innovation is still seen as a Eureka moment done by a few guys that many times failed to deliver, went over budget, missed the points, aso. Basically... innovation is risky... CEO hates risky business as they may lose the confidence of share holders who like security and short term profits... so if you can demonstrate innovation is not a risky business if you use a proven systematic rigourous method, then you will win... You may use subjective arguments like " CNN showed it, or Business Weeks..." but the facts are that innovation= complex process and failures... so risk... As for me, i simply say that innovation is just a problem to solve and as CEO, managers or MD aso, we are all paid to solve problems... Now... how do you solve problems? do you have a specific rigourous method to solve pb? aka do your job? if not, you should get one... if yes but not always work, you should enhance it... if yes and you solve all problems, than solve your problems as doing so you will surely innovate... tell me if this was useful or not... and good luck! |
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| posted by Jayesh [ http://collaboratetoinnovate.blogspot.com/ ] | May 7, 2009 at 2:05 am |
Innovation is as good as the change, and the change always faces mindset hurdles. Everything we use, do or consume is outcome of some kind of innovation. So convincing that innovation is good is no big deal, the challenge is to convince "how good" - and the answer depends on the given circumstances you or anybody else will face. I do lot of research on collaborative innovation and my findings are at http://collaboratetoinnovate.blogspot.com/ Best Regards Jayesh |
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