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Richard Watson

March 11, 2008

Innovation For Beginners

In his classic 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn argued that the people who achieve “fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have either been very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.”(1).
In other words, when it comes to innovation, organisations can be disabled by experience and specialisation.

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Posted by Richard Watson at 6:45 PM

February 5, 2008

Growing Up In a Cotton Wool World

Do we need a commonsense revolution in education and elsewhere in society? I think we do and it needs to start now.

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Posted by Richard Watson at 6:05 PM

January 1, 2008

2008 Trends

Here is my list of top 10 trends for 2008. The list is neither exhaustive nor 100% serious. It is merely a list of a few emerging trends that could impact on our lives in 2008 and beyond. They are conversation starters - especially if you are involved in innovation and want your idea to make sense in the world in which it is finished rather than the world in which it was started (with thanks to Ray Kurzweil for that last thought).

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Posted by Richard Watson at 12:02 AM | 4 Comments

December 13, 2007

Innovation Lessons From 'The Big Apple'

Ten years or so ago Apple Computer was almost bankrupt. Fast forward and Apple (the company no longer uses the word computer) is now regularly cited as the most innovative company in the world. So what can we learn from the comeback kid?

Rule #1
Orchestrate and integrate. Ideas can come from anywhere, including outside the company. For example, the iPod was originally dreamt up by a consultant and most of its parts were off the shelf.

Rule #2
Build products around the needs of users. This may sound obvious but too many products are still designed by engineers or marketers for engineers or marketers.
Thus Apple places the emphasis on simplicity (such as design) rather than complexity. For example, the iPod wasn’t the first digital music player into the market but it was probably the first that was easy to use.

Rule #3
Trust your instinct. Don’t allow the customer to dictate what you do. This may seem contradictory to Rule #2 but customers can only tell you about what already exists.
As Akito Morita (the founder of Sony) once said: "The public doesn’t know what is possible but we do.” Also don’t forget that as well as measuring public opinion or tracking the latest trends you can create both.

Rule #4
There’s no success like failure. Fail often, fail fast and fail well. In other words, don’t be afraid to make a mistake but always learn from your mistakes – in Apple’s case products like the Apple Lisa and Newton.

Rule #5
Safe is risky. Develop products that define new categories and markets rather than products that compete in existing markets.

Posted by Richard Watson at 10:09 PM | 1 Comment

December 13, 2007

'Tis the season for attention-demanding tasks

I couldn't resist this...

If you're feeling 'humbuggy' this Christmas do something that demands intense concentration. Research by a Canadian professor of psychology has found that people have better focus and are better at attention-demanding tasks when they are in a sombre or miserable mood. Conversely, people that are joyous and happy are better at tasks that require a high level of creativity.

So does that mean that happy people are better at innovation? On the face of it you'd think so but history seems to suggest that the opposite is in fact the case.

Posted by Richard Watson at 9:40 PM

December 2, 2007

Six Sigma and innovation culture

There was an interesting story in Business Week a little while ago about 3M hiring a CEO called James McNerney, who imported the ‘Six Sigma’ process from his old employer, General Electric. Nothing remarkable about that you might think, after all, 82 out of the top 100 companies in the US use Six Sigma. However, 3M is known as something of an invention factory and Six Sigma is an efficiency and quality process designed to identify problems and remove errors.

Six Sigma is about consistency, sameness and control whereas innovation is about mutation, serendipity, difference, failure and disorder. One is a left-brain activity, the other is right-brain. So guess what? Morale at 3M dropped and the company sank from No 1 on the most innovative companies list in 2004 to No 7 in 2007. Much the same thing happened at Home Depot, where the retailer dropped from first to worst on customer satisfaction surveys following the use of Six Sigma.

So is Six Sigma a dead dead? No. The point here, I think, is that Six Sigma is great for process improvements, quality and general management. Research by management Professor Tom Davenport also suggests that the process might be good for incremental innovation. But when it comes to more radical blue-sky thinking Six Sigma does look like a very very bad idea indeed. This is clearly a problem because once companies have passed through the quality phase they tend to look for growth, and apart from M&A (which, according to one source, doesn't work in 70% of cases) one of the best ways of delivering rapid growth is radical innovation. I hope we hear more about this next year and I will certainly be following stories on this subject with great interest.

Posted by Richard Watson at 6:40 PM | 3 Comments

November 21, 2007

The New Rules of Innovation

Rule # 1 - None of us are as smart as all of us.
The image of a lone genius slaving away in a dimly lit basement or garage is the traditional image of the inventor. However, according to Andrew Hargadon (Assistant Professor of Technology Management at the University of California) this is largely a myth. Moreover, when it comes to innovation, a collective effort is more usually the norm. Andrew Hargadon's book (How Breakthroughs Happen) says that innovation is largely a result of networks. These are formal and informal collections of people and projects ranging from employees and suppliers to customers and even competitors. These networks are highly social in nature, which means that cultivating relationships is important. Another key observation is the thought that ideas are rarely new. New ideas are usually a recombination of old ideas and thus diversity in terms of people, ideas and experience is key for innovation. Having said all this, the best way to kill a good idea is to involve a committee, so ensure that there’s someone in charge to bang heads together and, if necessary, dislodge the gridlock.

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Posted by Richard Watson at 4:58 PM | 1 Comment