Innovation: time to move on

Okay, okay, we all know that innovation is important to the survival of companies and all that. We also know that customers, lead users, staff, academics, other industries, and -- oh yes -- other countries can be sources of great ideas. But what are we actually doing about this? Have we actually started moving from thinking about innovation to doing it -- from talk to action?

Starbucks gets into innovation hyperdrive
I was totally impressed when I read a recent Starbucks Taiwan press release the other day. Not because of the typical PR guff contained within the Web page, but thanks to the little "widget" (don't know exactly what to call this thing) on the right hand side of the Web page. You can see it here. It simply asks, "Got a great idea? Tell us." Now that is an honest and decent attempt at capturing ideas from a variety of sources and should be applauded. Less talking and more listening is also a good way to get ideas.

The challenge, of course, is knowing which ideas to pursue. Not easy.

As Joseph Schumpeter said ages ago, the biggest obstacle to innovation is a lack of will not intellect. Often, people just don't give a shit. Here, innovation takes a back seat to problem solving (reactive innovation). Without a genuine will on all fronts, you're basically playing at innovation.

Innovation requires a desire to transcend beyond mere problem solving. This is why innovation goes hand in hand with brands, which are also all about transcending the material.

In the case of Starbucks, the attitude has very rapidly gone from one of hubris -- when times were good -- to "sit up, pay attention or your arse is out the door," as one of my high school teachers used to tell us.

Image thanks to Topleftpixel.

Copyright Protection: What would Loleatta Holloway say?

There is much discussion nowadays on how much protection should be granted to the holders of Intellectual Property (IP). Most of the discussion focuses on balancing the public good (the progress of humanity) and individual financial reward. In the context of music, the most vocal critics of IP theft are those artists that are currently at the top of their game. The ones who are in the charts this year and the ones who have the most chance of having people pay through the big channels of distribution, whether this be Wal-Mart, Amazon or iTunes.

We hear much less complaining from those artists who are just starting out and those artists whose time in the charts ended decades ago. For this last group, illegal downloading, peer-to-peer sharing, illegal sampling and remixing are often blessings in disguise.

One artist that has had her career sustained for many years after her peak is Loleatta Holloway. I had never even heard her until I was in a record shop in Glasgow, Scotland, a few years ago and heard a dance track with, what I thought, was an amazing vocal. Now the beat was great and I asked, "Who's the vocalist?" I later found out that it was Loleatta Holloway, a singer that was quite successful in the 70s and 80s.


Loleatta gets a career boost from unexpected sources

So the big question is, did illegal use of her vocals negatively impact her career or contribute to it and, in later years, sustain it? I guess one of the best ways to answer this question would be to ask her.

PS. For more on this type of stuff, check out The Pirate's Dilemma.

China under scrutiny

One of the disadvantages of success is the often-unwanted attention that it garners. Excluding the USA, no country has received as much public scrutiny in recent years, both from people inside its borders and outside, as China. With the Beijing Olympics coming up, there have been many articles and commentaries on China. A byproduct of all this media attention for non-Chinese businesspeople and investors is a clearer view of the business landscape in China. What once appeared chaotic is now starting to become clearer. With this clarity comes predictability, a good thing.

The Financial Times has just started a series entitled "China Beyond the Games."

In Part 1, there is an interesting audio slideshow that is well worth checking out.

Innovative hobbies

I'd never heard of Philippe Petit until tonight. In 1974, this guy strung a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center and walked across it. Here's the trailer to a documentary about the whole crazy escapade. Imagine asking this guy what he got up to at the weekend!



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A Whack on the Side of the Head

Roger van Oech has been writing about creativity for decades and I'm sure when he first started, it must have been quite difficult to get people to pay much attention. Not any more. Ears are pricked. The prevailing attitude now is ignore creativity and innovation at your peril.

I've been reading Roger's book, A Whack on the Side of the Head, and thoroughly enjoyed its lighthearted approach to creativity and its many examples from everyday life. The book emphasizes that everybody has the potential to be creative and that one of the biggest challenges facing us is reducing the limiting effects of our mental locks. Mental locks can be viewed as our default ways of thinking -- fine when we were running around as cavemen: "Look! Saber tooth tiger. Danger! Run!" 

Not so good in other environments: stock markets for one, where following default emotions can be very costly.

Though Roger doesn't talk much about this, I'd imagine that these mental locks are vice like in cultures whose education systems emphasize being "right." Cultures that emphasize 100% test scores. Cultures that emphasize rote learning. Cultures that condemn failure and having a go. 

Joseph Campbell distinguishes between cultures that emphasize "following the guru" and those that lean towards taking the path untrodden. Essentially, Campbell's discussing Asian and European approaches to life.

Back to the book.

One exercise (p. 21) on mental locks is really fun. Try it out on your friends to demonstrate how our thinking can be so limiting.

VII

Draw a line and turn this into an eight. Easy enough, I'm sure.

IX

How about turing this one into a six? Some people will draw a horizontal line, turn it upside down and cover the bottom half. Sure enough, it's a VI.

Better yet: How about drawing a squiggly line in the form of an "S" in front of the Roman numeral? Didn't think of that one, did ya? 

Want another solution?

How about writing "6" to the right of the "X," turning the numeral X into a multiplication sign?

Once again, we have a solution -- another right answer.

Of course, these are obvious if you've seen them before. If these mental locks affected you with this simple puzzle, you can imagine how limiting our mental locks can be when we're faced with really complex problems. This is especially true in business when just about every student around the world has studied the same syllabus using the same business books.