Th e Innovation Process
Energizing values-centered innovation from start to fi nish
Energizing values-centered innovation from start to fi nish
Book 2*
Innovation Styles
®Stimulating innovative thinking throughout the entire innovation process
Book 3*
The Climate and Culture for Innovation
Fostering values-centered innovation in the everyday workplace
*To be released in 2008
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my wife Debra for hours of conversation, as well as her editing, which signifi cantly raised the clarity of my thought, insight and writing. My appreciation also goes to Alain Rostain for twelve years of productive collaboration, and Jatin Desai for helping to bring values-centered innovation into the world. Finally, I am grateful to Georgia Stelluto, my editor at IEEE-USA, for helping propel this book into being.
Published and Hosted by IEEE-USA.
Copyright © 2007 by William C. Miller. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Edited by Georgia C. Stelluto, IEEE-USA Publishing Manager
Cover design and layout by Josie Th ompson, Th ompson Design
IEEE-USA eBooks presents this special edition of William C. Miller’s book in collaboration with the IEEE-USA Innovation Institute and IEEE-USA’s Employment and Career Services Committee. It is made possible by a special dues assessment of IEEE members residing in the United States.
Copying this material in any form is not permitted without prior written approval from the IEEE-USA Publishing Manager; write to [email protected].
Creative JourneyTM and Values-Centered InnovationTM are trademarks of the Global
Creativity Corporation.
Introduction — The Art and Discipline of Innovation
. . . .5PART I — Starting Your Innovation Conversations
. . . 8Chapter 1 — What Is Innovation?
. . . .9Chapter 2 — Innovation and Values
. . . .16Chapter 3 — Models of the Innovation Process
. . . .22Chapter 4 — The Creative Journey
TM . . . .32Chapter 5 — Your Creative Journey
. . . .42PART II — Expanding Your Innovation Conversations
. . . .49Chapter 6 — Taking on a Challenge Together
. . . .51Chapter 7 — Focusing Together on What It Takes
. . . .61Chapter 8 — Finding Innovative Solutions Together
. . . .69Chapter 9 — Completing the Journey Together
. . . .79Chapter 10 — Being a SPIRITED Leader of Innovation
. . . .89Introduction
The Art and Discipline of Innovation
P
erhaps the most signifi cant epic journey of modern times is not found in literature, but in the real-time voyage of man into space — walking on the moon, seeing the earth against the backdrop of the universe, and bringing that extraordinary shift of perspective back to the planet.Edgar Mitchell, a member of the 1971 Apollo XIV crew, is one of those rare people who had the privilege of walking on the moon’s surface. He once related his adventure to me, including how his experience in space led to his returning to Earth as a very different person.
The idea of going to the moon was virtually an irresistible challenge. I characterize the space fl ight — of getting off the planet — as being an event as signifi cant as when the fi rst sea creatures crawled out onto land.
Preparation for the Apollo fl ight involved many skills, plus all the academic work. All that knowledge and skill had to be practiced to a point where it was automatic. To deal with unexpected events, however, is when our judgment would come into play.
The problem that posed the most potential for creativity was before we went down to the lunar surface. The automatic abort system had failed in such a way that if we tried to descend to the surface, it would automatically take us back into orbit. This was less than two hours before we were supposed to start down to the surface. We fi nally came up with a way to reprogram the computer, with just a few seconds to spare, only minutes before the engines were to be ignited.
This powerful experience of seeing Earth and our whole solar system against the background of the cosmos had a very profound effect — an overwhelming sense of being connected to all things. I recognized that our scientifi c description of the way the universe is put together was at best incomplete and perhaps in some ways inaccurate. The universe is more of a living organism than a set of discrete things.
What came out of that experience was an enormous sense of responsibility that goes with the power of creativity. We each have to accept, along with our creative potential, the responsibility that goes with it… to become proactive rather than just reactive. And that means letting go of fear. Automatically that brings this deeper sense of love and responsibility for one’s self, surroundings, environ-ment and planet.
He summed up his transformation, and that of many fellow space travelers, by saying, “We went to the moon as technicians. We returned as humanitarians.”
Man’s journey to the moon and back was not only an extraordinary achievement of technical and engineering innovation, but an indescribable hallmark in the history of mankind. For the fi rst time, we, as humanity, saw ourselves fl oating in space. It was, and still is, a transformative experience that illumines our continuing quest for innovation and progress. The question is: Do we undertake that quest for innovation as technicians or as humanitarians?
In one way, the history of mankind can be told as the epic story of man’s innovations in art, religion, science, business, technology and culture. Yet today, as the pace of innovation spirals in the context of the global economy, we can more readily see that innovation can have both positive and negative consequences.
On one hand, we have rid the world of smallpox and are on the brink of eliminating polio. On the other hand, the major causes of death today are lifestyle-related (such as cancer and heart disease), not viral or natural; and we often use our healthcare innovations, such as pharmaceuticals, to temporarily relieve physical maladies, so we can continue our unhealthy lifestyle habits with less discomfort.
As time progresses and we evolve as a community of species on this Spaceship
Earth (as Buckminster Fuller called it), we see that we are co-creating the course
of our planetary and cultural evolution through our innovations.
So the questions of the day have expanded from “What can we innovate?” and “How can we be more innovative?” to include “Why are we innovating?” and “How can we focus our innovative thinking on more positive, useful purposes?” The call is not just for more innovation, but for innovation that contributes to the well-being of all stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, society and the environment — innovation with a social conscience, innovation driven by our higher human values.
The Art and Discipline of Innovation
Innovation is both an art and a discipline. As an art, it’s a human endeavor that can be driven by values as we work collaboratively to create what is most meaningful to us. As a discipline, it has processes and principles that are actually quite simple, and can be learned and practiced.
The fi eld of innovation has the Total Quality movement to thank for establishing two important principles:
1. Innovation is an important part of every job.
2. Every person has the capacity to contribute to innovation.
When Edward Deming and Joseph Juran sparked the Total Quality Management move-ment in Japan in the 1950s, they taught the discipline of quality improvemove-ment: tech-niques to identify quality issues, fi nd and implement solutions, and follow through with continuous improvement. The Japanese culture supplied the all-important social struc-ture to implement those techniques by training everyday workers — those who were closest to the work processes that needed improvement — in the art of conducting
“Quality Circles.” As we all know, by the 1980s, the world was beating on the Japanese doors to learn how to manage quality as well as they were.
Two principles have emerged from this movement essential to the fi eld of innovation. The fi rst is that TQM demonstrated that everyone has the capacity to generate and implement innovative ideas, if given the right tools. That’s the discipline. The second is that TQM spread the responsibility for quality so that “innovating improved work processes” became everyone’s job; it was no longer just the quality engineer’s job. That’s the art.
These principles apply not only to working on innovations in new products and work processes, but in marketing and sales, knowledge management, organization design, business models, and leadership practices.
The Journey of Innovation
To borrow a phrase, the art and discipline of innovation “is not rocket science.”But it is powerful enough to build and launch a spacecraft. It’s something we can all participate in, given the right understanding and framework. And when we are innovating skillfully, while practicing strong values, we will naturally contribute to others’ well being.
Innovation means much more than just coming up with creative ideas; those ideas have to be put to work to create a benefi t. Innovation can be seen as a journey that starts with setting a purpose or goal, and ends up with innovative achievement and new learning. All along the way, innovative thinking is required. So is knowledge. So are values.
In this book about the process of values-centered innovation, the name of the innovation model you’ll learn about is the Creative JourneyTM. It’s a model that I developed in
1987, just after I left my position as head of Innovation Management at SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute), and started my own consultancy, the Global Creativity Corporation.
For the past 20 years, I have applied this model with professionals in a wide range of scientifi c, technical, engineering and R&D organizations. And just as well, I have employed it whenever a situation called for an innovative solution in marketing, sales, fi nance, IT, manufacturing, operations, human resources, strategic planning, or
customer service. It has worked cross-culturally in more than a dozen countries around the world, with people as diverse as corporate executives, R&D scientists, and school bus drivers.
This book will be a simple one without being simplistic. Its aim is to provide a way to understand the process of innovation itself, and how people of any job can apply it to the challenges and opportunities they fi nd in their day-to-day work.
When you combine your own knowledge and skills with the perspectives and tools offered here, I have great trust that it will boost your ability to innovate, both alone and in a team, and make a positive difference in the lives of your colleagues, your customers, and the course of our future.
— William Miller
Part I
Starting Your Innovation Conversations
I
nnovation is rarely, if ever, a solitary effort. It takes people working together to devel-op a goal, focus on it, generate an innovative solution, and implement it. Sometimes, that’s as simple as working with one or two colleagues during a normal daily routine. At other times, an innovation project could be large in scope, involving people from R&D, engineering, production, marketing, fi nance, sales, customer service, IT and human resources.So, whether the scope of your innovative work is small or large, aligning and attuning your work together requires the art of good conversation. But what should that conver-sation be about? And how do we speak the same language, when we often come from so many functions and specialties?
The goal of this book is to provide a common framework for having the conversations that will enable innovation to fl ourish between you and those you work with, as well as between groups, departments and divisions — wherever and whenever people in your organization need to come together and innovate.
Part I of this book on the innovation process is to establish the basis for innovation conversations, on questions such as:
• What is innovation?
• What provides the meaning and motivation for innovation?
• What is meant by an innovation process?
• What innovation process can we follow no matter what job we have?
• What can people in any job, at any level, contribute to innovation?
To gain the most from any conversation, here are some guidelines I have found helpful:
• Speak sincerely and authentically
• Care enough to hear fully from everyone
• Encourage each person to express their own unique viewpoints
• Listen patiently, with an open mind
• Respect differences
• Avoid criticism of others
• Honor confi dentiality
In short, to have uplifting, rich conversations, focus on conversing rather than converting. That will go a long way towards energizing the innovation process from start to fi nish.
Chapter 1
What is Innovation?
W
hen Michael Dell was a 19-year-old college student at the University of Texas, he ran a dorm-room business selling random-access memory (RAM) chips and disk drives for IBM PCs with revenues of $80,000 per month. He left school, much to his father’s chagrin, and began assembling and selling IBM PC clones under the name PC Limited. He sold directly to customers, rather than using retail outlets. By eliminating the middle-man, his price was less than half of IBM’s for a comparable computer. When Michael started Dell Computers, and direct-to-consumer sales became the core of his business model, a revolution occurred in the industry. Every other computer manufacturer made its best estimate of how customers wanted their computers to be confi gured, and sold its inventory through retail stores. With Dell, each computer was built to the customer’s own specifi cations, and fully paid for before assembly — quite a nice fi nancial model. And the business model needed less overhead. Not only did Michael cut out the need for an inventory of fully-built machines, he also established a unique manufacturing system — one in which the inventory of parts should have, in his words, “the shelf-life of lettuce.”Dell Direct became not only the theme of the business model, but a cultural norm as
well. To facilitate the open sharing of information, ideas and intelligence, leaders in the company were actively encouraged to deal directly with each other, and avoid the kind of politics and turf wars so common in corporate life.
Today, Dell Inc. is the world’s largest PC manufacturer.
Would you say that the Dell’s direct-to-consumer business model was an innovation? Your answer depends on how you view and defi ne innovation.
Defi ning innovation
What exactly is innovation? It’s an obvious question to ask, and a tricky one. It’s tricky
because of the word exactly.
Take for example this variety of defi nitions developed over the years:
• Introducing new commodities or qualitatively better versions of existing
ones; fi nding new markets; new methods of production and distribution; or new sources of production for existing commodities; or introducing new forms of economic organization. (Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942)
• The act or process of innovating; something newly introduced, new
method, custom, device, etc; change in the way of doing things; renew, alter. (Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition, 1982)
• An idea, practice or object that is perceived as new by an individual or
other unit of adoption. (Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 1983 and1995)
• Change that creates a new dimension of performance. (Peter Drucker, in Hesselbein, Frances, Leading for Innovation and Organizing for Results, 2002)
• The capability of continuously realizing a desired future state. (John Kao, The Innovation Manifesto, 2005)
• The intersection of invention and insight, leading to the creation of
economic value. (U.S. National Innovation Initiative, 2005)
• Anything new that is actually used (enters the market place) - whether
major or minor. (Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation, 2005)
• The staging of value and/or the conservation of value. (Daniel Montano,
Innovation Strategies of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, 2006)
With this multiplicity of defi nitions, let’s bring it down to simple terms we can all use, day-to-day.
A starting point is to fi rst make a clear distinction between creativity and innovation:
Creativity is coming up with new, original ideas.
Innovation is putting those ideas to work and creating a benefi t.
Wayne Coyne, Senior VP for R&D at 3M, put it this way:
Creativity is thinking of new and appropriate ideas; whereas innovation is the successful implementation of those ideas within an organization. In other words, creativity is the concept and innovation is the process.1
Or, as John Emmerling — innovation consultant and former ad-agency creative director — once said:
Innovation is creativity with a job to do.2
The domains and aims of innovation
Many people think of innovation only in terms of producing new products or technolo-gies sold to make money — jobs that only a few of us might actually be working on. But that’s not all to the innovation scene. For example, the Clorox R&D group3 included
process innovation as equally important:
We defi ne innovation as the implementation of creative ideas to produce new or improved processes or products. We do not limit our view of pro-cesses and products to those that are related to goods sold to consumers. Instead, we also include better ways of doing our jobs and new tools that make us more productive. This broadened view allows us to fully engage all employees in our creativity/innovation program and to tap into the creativity that is in us all.
While new products and new processes are two very distinct domains where innovation can occur in an organization, so are two more equally important domains: knowledge and leadership. Knowledge innovations relate to how we create and manage knowl-edge so that an organization’s intellectual capital increases. Author Meg Wheatley4
described this domain of innovation:
Innovation arises from ongoing circles of exchange, where information is not just accumulated or stored, but created. Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren’t there before.
Innovations can also transpire in how the leadership of an organization develops new business models, designs the organization, fosters a culture, and manages its human resources. The aim of leadership innovation is to focus and inspire the organizational leadership and workforce. Michael Dell’s business model was an innovation that focused everyone on what and how to deliver their products and services. Innovative approaches to performance appraisal can actually inspire and encourage risk-taking and innovation, rather than squelch it (as we’ll explore in more detail later in this book). Organizations focus on four innovation domains, and each domain has its own specifi c aim. Chart 1 names these four domains as Top-Line, Mid-Line, Knowledge and Leadership (where Top-Line and Mid-Line refer to the intended impact on the balance sheet of the business).
Chart 1 — Domains and Aims of Innovation5
DOMAINS: (includes innovations in…)
AIMS:
An important point to note is that in many roll-outs of a major innovation, all four domains of innovation could be involved. For example, when a new product is being launched, new processes may be put into place, new knowledge of customer
segmentation may be created, and a new business model to make it all work together successfully. TOP-LINE New products and services, design, brand experiences, sales, market-ing, advertising and media Greater revenues and growth MID-LINE Re-engineering, TQM, Six-sigma, kaizen, process and productivity improvement, supply-chain management, distribution channels Greater productivity, reduced time and costs
KNOWLEDGE Knowledge creation and management, patents, market segmentation, communication channels, talent recruitment and retention Greater intellectual capital LEADERSHIP Business models and strategy, strategic partnerships, corporate culture, employee relations, organization design Greater focus, inspired leaders and work force
Robert Reich6 underscored this diverse set of domains and aims for innovation when he
spoke about entrepreneurs:
They innovate by creating better products at less cost; establishing more effi cient techniques of manufacture, distribution and sales; fi nding cheaper sources of materials; fi nding new markets and consumer needs; providing better training of employees; attention-getting advertising; speedier
consumer service and complaint handling; more reliable warranty coverage and repair.
The point is that innovation is part of everyone’s job — including yours, and everyone can participate in innovation — in at least one of these four domains. If you’re not producing the next new product or service, you might be improving productivity or quality, or sharing best practices across the organization, or improving employee relations.
Innovation, change, and impact
Invention is the creation of a new device or process…
Innovation is the introduction of change via something new.
— William B. Rouse, Strategies for Innovation, 1992 Every innovation introduces change — in what is being done, how it is being done, or even why it is being done. Classically, innovation can produce two distinct degrees of change: revolutionary-breakthrough change or evolutionary-incremental change, as shown in Chart 2.
Chart 2 — Sustainable Innovation7
To manage innovation over the sustainable long term, we need to foster both
breakthrough and incremental change. Focusing only on breakthrough change can lead to exhaustion, as we don’t take the time to integrate the change. And focusing only on incremental change can lead to extinction, as we don’t do what it takes to keep up with the times. Over time, both degrees of innovation are important for sustainable innovation.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether an innovation has produced a breakthrough or incremental change; it can all depend on one’s job perspective. For example, when electronic fuel injection (EFI) replaced carburetors in automobile engines, the engineers could very well consider it a major breakthrough in providing fuel effi ciently and
effectively. But from the perspective of actually selling an automobile, the salesperson might consider EFI to be an incremental improvement in the overall performance and perceived value of a car.
A very important distinction — not often made — is that the amount of change introduced by an innovation is not necessarily the same as the overall impact of that innovation. In fact, situations can arise in all four of the quadrants in Chart 3.
Chart 3 — Degrees of Change with Innovations8
High High Change High Change
Low Impact High Impact
Low Low Change Low Change
Low Impact High Impact
Low High IMPACT
When most people think about breakthrough change, they typically assume that it means a change that will have high impact (the upper-right quadrant); however, that is not always the case. An example of high change, low impact (upper left quadrant) is the Simplifi ed Keyboard, patented in 1936 by Dr. August Dvorak, an educational psychologist and professor at the University of Washington. He designed it to over-come the ineffi ciency and typist fatigue that was common with the standard QWERTY keyboard layout (which had been designed in 1860 for the fi rst commercially successful typewriter). It has seen an increase in popularity in recent years among computer programmers who do a great amount of typing, and is included with major operating systems such as Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux. Still, the impact of this innovation is extremely low, given the dominant preference market for the QWERTY keyboard.
Similarly, when most people think about incremental change, they usually assume that it means a change that will have a low impact (lower left quadrant). Again, this assumption is not always the case. An example of low change, high impact (lower right quadrant) is a story I heard while consulting with Ford Motor Company in 1994. A worker had come up with an idea that saved the seemingly insignifi cant amount of only $.10 (10 cents) on the cost of manufacturing a vehicle. However, it ultimately had the impact of contributing $500,000 to the company’s pre-tax profi ts.
So, you don’t have to measure the innovative contribution you make by the amount of change you instigate. Nor do you have to shoot for the big breakthrough to realize a big impact. The innovation cycle contains differing degrees of change as well as differing degrees of impact, to which everyone can contribute.
How do you know when you’ve been innovative?
Here’s an interesting question to ponder: If an intended innovation fails to achieve its
aim and doesn’t get utilized, is it really an innovation? This question is a bit like the
old philosophical inquiry: If a tree fell in a forest and no one heard it fall, did the tree
make any sound? Here the question is, If something new is produced and no one is affected by it, is it an innovation?
Twenty years ago, Sumantra Ghoshal and Christopher A. Bartlett pointed out in an HBR article (“Innovation Processes in Multinational Corporations,” Harvard Business Review, 1987) that some people would say that innovation occurs, whether it is used or not:
(Innovation is…) the idea, practice, or material artifact that has been invented, or that is regarded as novel independent of its adoption or non-adoption.9
On the other hand, most others in the fi eld of innovation (as we’ve sampled in the quotes that began this chapter) would say that innovation occurs when there is some tangible impact:
(Innovation is…) a process which proceeds from the conceptualization of a new idea to a solution of the problem and then to the actual utilization of a new item of economic or social value.10
Another question often asked is whether an innovation has to be totally new — never before seen by the eyes of man — or can it just be the “fi rst time” within an organization. Everett Rogers11, a pioneer and expert in identifying the patterns
of product innovations as they diffuse through society, had this to say:
It matters little whether the idea is “objectively” new as measured by the lapse of time since its fi rst use or discovery. The perceived newness of the idea for the individual determines his or her reaction to it. If the idea seems new to the individual, it is an innovation.
While these philosophical questions can be interesting to debate, what it all comes down to in our real, day-to-day work life is that an innovation does not have to be some invention “never thought of in the history of mankind,” or some other earth-shattering idea brought to life. So long as it’s new for you and your organization, it’s
an innovation for you. It just has to be a new concept that gets implemented and
creates some benefi t for someone, somewhere. That’s what it takes for you to say that you’ve been innovative.
Having an innovation conversation
Before we move on, let’s focus on you for a moment. To help clarify and integrate your insights from this chapter, consider the following questions. Use them to start an innovation conversation with your colleagues at work, and see what you can learn from each other.
1. What is your own defi nition of innovation as it relates to your work?
2. Looking over the four domains of innovation, which have you participated in?
• Top-line / revenue producing innovation
• Mid-line / process improvement innovation
• Knowledge innovation
• Leadership and management innovation
3. How involved have you been with incremental or breakthrough change? How does this relate to the level of impact that you produced as a result?
Chapter 2
Innovation and Values
I
n my days as head of Innovation Management at SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute), I was convinced that values were an important driver of corporate innovation. I saw time and again that values provided the energy behind “product champions,” and “intrapreneurs.” After I left SRI, my understanding of the role of values grew to new heights upon meeting Frank Carrubba, one of the high-tech luminaries of the past 20 years.As Director of HP Laboratories, and later as Executive VP and Chief Technical Offi cer of Philips Electronics, Frank became one of my favorite consulting clients. At both companies, he was responsible for all corporate research and advanced development, and he once received the “Inventor of the Year” award from the U.S. Intellectual Property Owners Association for his RISC architecture work. When he spoke, I listened.
One day, Frank shared with me the results of a study he sponsored at HP Labs about the difference between product-development teams that failed, those that succeeded, and those that achieved extraordinary success. Ever since, I’ve enjoyed passing along what I learned from him about the relationship between innovation and the values held by individuals and teams.
As you might expect, the study found that teams that failed differed from those that succeeded in degrees of talent, motivation and commitment to succeed. However, there was no difference in these factors between the successful and extraordinarily successful teams. Instead, two other factors clearly stood out.
First, Frank found that Those teams that stood out had leaders and managers who
treated their customers as they themselves wanted to be treated. He said those teams
not only perceived that they had customers (a techie breakthrough in itself at the time), but also truly cared for those customers.
Second, Frank saw that Team members found in themselves the qualities of spirit
and truth… They were people who had no reason to wear a particular mask, because they were always what they were, every single hour of the day. He said they were
authentic, and didn’t have to pretend to be something that they weren’t, or know something they didn’t know.
There you have it — a remarkable fi nding that Frank also repeatedly observed as Executive VP at Philips: the difference between successful teams and extraordinary teams, in the ultimate high-tech world, was the presence of two sincerely-practiced values: caring and authenticity.
Frank made sense of this discovery by saying that a team of people with high levels of talent, motivation and commitment will naturally fi nd a way to achieve, let’s say, 75 percent of their potential. But extraordinary success demands more, and achieving 100 percent of their potential depends on the quality of relationships that they foster. And that’s where the values of caring plus authenticity come into play.
The role of values in the art and discipline of innovation
At this point you might be asking, “Why make such a big deal about values, when there are so many other important things to cover about the innovation process?” In the Introduction, I spoke about the art and discipline of innovation. As an art, it’s a collaborative human endeavor. As a discipline, it has processes and principles that can be learned and practiced. Values play a critical role in both.
When innovation is values-centered at all levels — individual, team and organization — we are conscious of creating what is truly important to us and benefi cial to others. And since innovation is more than just dreaming up a creative idea, and sometimes we have to work hard to actualize that idea, values are what motivate us to complete the full process, from start to fi nish. So to me, values are part-and-parcel of any discussion about innovation.
The word value comes from the Latin verb valere, which means to be worth and to be
strong. In our daily lives, values are feelings and convictions regarding what is of strong
worth (i.e., of importance) to us in what we think, say and do. Values shape what is meaningful and motivating for us.
Personal values have long been under-appreciated as a driver of innovation. People who are aware of their own values will naturally strive to fi nd a way to express them through their work. Having personal values as the driver of innovation raises the level of person-al investment, dedication and commitment it takes to innovate.
Research by Barry Posner and W. H. Schmidt has shown that clarity about our personal values is more important to our job commitment than clarity about our company’s values. In their research, people were asked to rate three things:
1. How well they understood their company’s values 2. How well they were aware of their own personal values 3. How committed they were to their work
Chart 4 shows a surprising result: the increase in commitment came only from an increase in self-knowledge about personal values, not from more understanding of company values!
Chart 4 — Values and Commitment12
Low 4.9/7.0 6.3/7.0 CLARITY OF COMPANY VALUES High 4.9/7.0 6.1/7.0 Low High
Of course, the ideal is an alignment between company values and personal values. It seems like every organization today has a set of values it wants its employees to embrace and practice. These values are part of the mission-vision-values that align and attune employees to a common direction and are intended to guide decisions at all levels and provide cohesion.
According to former World Bank Values Coordinator Richard Barrett, consultant and author of Liberating the Corporate Soul: Building a Visionary Organization:
Research shows that when the values of employees are in alignment with the values of the organization (the leaders of the organization), the organization is more successful and more focused on customer satisfaction and community service. Organizations that don’t have this alignment tend to be more inward looking, bureaucratic and stressful to work in. They may be fi nancially successful, but fi nd it diffi cult to hire and keep self-actualized individuals and talented people.
The alignment between organization values and personal values often comes when people come together in teams. The Hewlett Packard Corporation once conducted an internal study to discover the best practices of their highest-performing managers. One fi nding was that their best 200 managers consistently worked with their people to defi ne a set of group values that everyone was committed to. They then posted these group values as “guiding principles” for all decisions and actions. Through these discussions, these managers fostered the linkage between personal and organizational values.
Whether you and your team or organization are trying to achieve realistic, practical, bold or exciting results with your innovative work, values are the key. They help individuals to tap into their greatest sources of energy and inspiration as they more fully invest themselves in what they are doing. They help teams to work collaboratively toward goals based on common priorities. And they help organizations foster a
positive culture.
Who benefi ts from innovation?
It’s not hard to see the positive and the negative impact that the human propensity for innovation has had on our quality of life. On one hand, we have an electronic global network. On the other hand, we have the accelerating effects of global warming. On one hand, we have innovated with job design and job enrichment, in white collar jobs as well as manufacturing, to empower people with more complex and self-affi rming jobs. On the other hand, with the allure, power and demands of these jobs, we have fostered a new breed of workaholics who choose to work rather than spend time with their families, leading to an epidemic of work-life imbalance.
While this list could go on and on, it is an important reminder that what we do daily in our work has an impact on the people and environment around us, for better or for worse. Sometimes that impact is with just a few colleagues at work, sometimes it’s with our many customers, and sometimes it’s with our whole community or country, or more. Whether we focus our innovation impacts on our own sphere of life — work colleagues, customers, friends and family — or a larger picture of society, what we
do today co-authors the story of the future. Marshall McLuhan coined the term Global
Village to communicate that we’re all neighbors, and the actions of people 10,000 miles
away can have a huge impact on us. And vice-versa.
This point of view raises some provocative questions for every person and organization: Thus far, we’ve focused on the domains and aims of innovation from the point of
view of the organization that is producing them. But what about the people outside the organization — such as customers, suppliers, society, shareholders, even the environment? Where do they fi t in to the picture? Are our innovation activities fueled only by self-serving motives? Or are they energized by our wish to contribute to the well-being of others? Can we afford to do both?
More than most people expect, when values are the driver of innovation, both are possible at the same time. An example of this dual choice for supporting “fellow villagers” while growing a successful enterprise comes from the Planters Development Bank in the Philippines. Floy Aguenza is its President, and the story she shared with me demonstrates what can happen when people in an organization integrate their values with the art and discipline of innovation.
Originally, the bank’s Chair wanted the bank to join the top tier of big banks in that country, but as Floy stated:
Somewhere along the way, this bank found a new calling. During the times when it was starting out as a small bank in a provincial town, it had no choice but to cater to the small businessmen of the area. We worked closely with them, giving them the proper guidance, and their businesses started to fl ourish. We became a part of their lives, helping their business as fi nancial advisors and even more than that; we became friends.
We saw the impact our bank was making within this small community, and it touched our hearts in a special way. From then on, we made a decision that we would continue to serve this niche, no matter how big we would become.
The bank was innovative in the way it attracted new customers and developed relationships with them, deliberately including their customers’ values in their credit approval process:
When talking to new customers, an important part of our credit process is fi nding out about the character and lifestyle of the principal. We go to their place of business to observe how they run their business and treat their employees. We want to lend to companies and businesses which are anchored on the right values.
They even developed a unique approach and philosophy to growing the bank fi nancially.
This bank has been set up by the shareholders and they expect a good return. However, equally clear to us is that it is not profi t at all costs. This must be balanced with all of the other concerns of the organization, and its role in society. In our case, profi tability and social impact are fundamentally intertwined.
We are the only development bank that is partly owned by multi-laterals such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). They invested in our bank because they saw our developmental impact and how we are
serving as a catalyst for economic growth by our work with the small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
And what has actually been their growth?
In terms of ROE, Planters Bank is the seventh most profi table private domestic bank in the country. Although we are larger than half of the commercial banks, we have resisted converting our license to such. The impact that we have made to the lives of the many small businessmen we have dealt with has inspired us to continue to deal with this sector.
What is Floy’s message to the rest of us about the role of business in society?
Businesses have a role to play in nation building and in building the character of the people. If we all do something, we can all gain. Businesses must live by the right values, not just strive to be number one while sacrifi cing all else.
It’s clear that we can target our innovative efforts to contribute to the well-being of others — customers, suppliers and employees; society as a whole; shareholders; and the environment — even as our own organization thrives. It’s all a question of values.
What is Values-Centered InnovationTM?
A discussion about innovation would not be complete without acknowledging the link between innovation and learning. In the form of information and knowledge, learning stimulates innovation. And in return, innovation gives birth to new learning and knowledge. One way to experience the relationship between learning and innovating is to tune into our own breathing rhythms. Learning and innovating go together just like inhaling and exhaling:
• Inhaling = learning: acquiring, creating and sharing new knowledge; converting knowledge to wisdom
• Exhaling = innovating: generating, deciding upon, implementing and celebrating innovative responses to opportunities and challenges
Values play the key role of asking, “Why are we breathing in the fi rst place?” — and providing the meaning and motivation for this “breathing process.” In quick review, we could say that learning provides new levels of Know-what? Innovation produces new levels of Now what? And values pose the question, So what?
When we put our values into practice, we also strengthen our emotional intelligence (EI) — our ability to perceive, use, understand and manage our emotions. Daniel Goleman’s model of EI and management effectiveness13 emphasizes the importance
of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. In Frank Carrubba’s story at the beginning of this chapter, the key value of caring is part of social awareness and the value of authenticity is part of relationship management. Integrating all that we’ve covered thus far, we can now revisit and expand our original defi nition of innovation to include learning and values. We can conclude that...
VALUES-CENTERED INNOVATIONTM IS:
• the application of learning and knowledge
• to develop and implement
• breakthrough and incremental improvements
• in products/services, processes, knowledge and leadership/management practices
• to contribute to the well-being of stakeholders (customers, suppliers, employees, society, shareholders and the environment)
• while generating new revenues, reducing time and costs, increasing intellectual capital, inspiring the work force, and focusing the leadership
• in alignment with personal, team and organizational values
Having an innovation conversation
To help clarify and integrate your insights from this chapter, consider the following questions. Use them to start an innovation conversation with your colleagues at work, and see what you can all learn from each other.
Consider:
1. What personal values do you hold as most important in your own work? 2. How are those personal values refl ected in what and how you innovate? 3. How aligned are your personal values with your organization’s values?
How does this impact how and why you innovate?
4. When you add the dimension of values, how does it change your defi nition of innovation from Chapter 1?
Chapter 3
The Process of Innovation
O
n May 25, 1961, just 43 days after cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union became the fi rst human in space, U.S. President John F. Kennedy spoke to a joint session of Congress to paint a vision and request the funds for the United States to “take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold thekey to our future on earth.”10
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so diffi cult or expensive to accomplish.
Let if be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a fi rm commitment to a new course of action — a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs. There is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affi rmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful.
The commitment from Congress and the nation came, and Kennedy’s vision was achieved on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong stepped off the Apollo Lunar Module’s ladder and onto the Moon’s surface. But what did it actually take to achieve this monumental task? President Kennedy was quite clear in his May 25, 1961 speech about what he foresaw:
In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon. If we make this judgment affi rmatively, it will be an entire nation, for all of us must work to put him there. This decision demands a major national commitment of scientifi c and technical manpower, material and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, infl ated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel.
NASA took up the charge to foster a degree of dedication, organization and discipline that had not existed before. It adopted new ways of managing and developing all the innovations it would take to land men on the moon and bring them back safely. One tool NASA used was what has become known as a fi rst generation model of the product or technology innovation process, called a phase-review-process. It was used as a management tool to systematize and control work with contractors and suppliers on space projects. The NASA model showed development in sequential phases, as shown in Chart 5.
Chart 5 — Phase-Review-Process Model14
Concept Defi nition Implementation Manufacturing Phase Phase Phase Phase
Phase 0 1 2 3
Management Management Management
Go-No-Go Go-No-Go Go-No-Go
This phase-review model drew from the 1930s pioneering of Joseph Schumpeter, the so-called godfather of the study of innovation, who believed that the process begins with inventions and ends up with innovations that make money — a view that became the basis for a linear, technology-push or science-push model. By the 1960s,
insights about market-pull or demand-pull innovation — driven by consumer demand rather then scientifi c discovery — produced a different form of this linear model as shown in Chart 6.
Chart 6 — Technology Push/Demand Pull Model15
Technology Push
Basic Science Technological Manufacturing Marketing Sales
Demand Pull
Market Needs Development Manufacturing Sales
Since then, models of the innovation process for new products and technologies have been expanded, evolved, modifi ed and morphed into perhaps an overabundance of possibilities to choose from.
In my study of innovation processes at SRI and afterwards, I didn’t want to limit myself to product innovations. I wanted to review innovation process models across every domain of innovation: revenue producing innovation, process innovation, knowledge innovation and leadership innovation.
In this chapter, I don’t intend to give an exhaustive — and exhausting — review of all the models, which could make your eyes glaze over. Instead, I’ll walk you through a brief sampling of the research which led me to initially develop and later confi rm a model of the innovation process that could be used across all four domains, no matter what the innovative challenge was.
Innovation process models for top-line innovation
By the 1970s and early ‘80s, models that mapped the process for top-line, revenue producing innovations had morphed from the phase review model into stage-gate models, such as this one from Coopers in Chart 7.
Chart 7 — Stage-Gate-Process Model16
But these models faced criticism because of their apparent linearity:
Models that depict innovation as a smooth, well-behaved linear process badly misspecify the nature and direction of the causal factors at work. Innovation is complex, uncertain, somewhat disorderly, and subject to changes of many sorts. Innovation is also diffi cult to measure and demands close coordination of adequate technical knowledge and excellent market judgment to satisfy economic, technological and other types of constraints — all simultaneously.17
Ulrich offered a modifi ed stage-gate model, in which the roles of various functions are described and woven into an overall process. Such models (shown in Chart 8) brought closer attention to the process innovations needed to support product/technology in-novations, such as quality control and improvement, responsive cycle times, and faster time-to-market.
Chart 8 — Ulrich Normative Process18
The most recent network models aim at showing the complexity and uncertainty involved in the innovation process. One such model by Trott, shown in Chart 9, identifi es marketing, research and technology, and business planning as the three most infl uential functions involved with innovation.
Chart 9 — Network Model19
As researchers continue to integrate the best of models, they give more detail to the complexity by mapping all the variables, such as this model in Chart 10 of the technology innovation process developed by Vargonen.
There have been many other innovation process models for new product and technol-ogy development. If you want to study them further, the internet provides a wealth of resources.
Innovation process models for mid-line innovation
These two historically-important process improvement processes were an inspiration for the later Total Quality processes. The fi rst was invented by W.A. Shewhart in 1939, and made popular through Edward Deming. Their Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) process was very useful in solving quality issues, and mapping a repeated cycle of continuous improvement, as shown in Chart 11.
Chart 11 — Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Model21
The second was Value Analysis, developed by Larry Miles at GE during World War II, whereby cross-functional teams from design, engineering, purchasing and quality employed a formal protocol to improve the manufacturing process and reduce costs. That protocol had eight basic steps as shown in Chart 12.
Chart 12 — Values Analysis Model22
Step 1: Information Phase — analyze data
Step 2: Function Analysis Phase — identify and cost functions Step 3: Creative Phase — brainstorm ideas
Step 4: Evaluation Phase — rank then develop ideas
Step 5: Development Phase — quantify benefi ts and plan actions Step 6: Presentation — make oral report and prepare written reports Step 7: Implement changes
This model was the precursor to the Measure, Analyze, Improve process that is the basis of the Six Sigma improvement process — though Six Sigma adds a Control step.
Innovation process models for knowledge innovation
Another domain of innovation is knowledge. Nonaka conceived of a model for knowledge creation that incorporated both tacit knowledge (resident in individuals and groups as personal experience or intuitive knowing) and explicit knowledge (formulated, captured concepts), as shown in Chart 13.
Chart 13 — Knowledge Creation Model23
IMPLICIT EXPLICIT
KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE PERSONAL Personal Personal
KNOWLEDGE experience concepts
GROUP Integrated Combined
KNOWLEDGE experience concepts
(socialization)
The resulting knowledge creation process has fi ve key steps, where the end result can be knowledge innovations in any fi eld of human endeavor — impactful to the degree that the concepts are employed and then integrated into day-to-day experience:
1. Enlarging individual knowledge 2. Sharing tacit knowledge 3. Creating concepts 4. Justifying concepts 5. Networking knowledge
Innovation process models for leadership innovation
The domain of leadership innovation also has identifi able processes associated with it for us to consider. According to Gary McLean, author of Organization Development
Principles, Processes, Performance in 2005, the action research model that is deeply
embedded in the practice of Organization Development has a similarity to the
Deming/Shewhart PDCA model, through a commitment to continuous improvement:
• At the Plan stage, decisions are made about what might be done to improve the organization and its processes, using a variety of decision making tools.
• At the Do stage, those plans are carried out in a pilot or trial implementation.
• At the Check stage, measurements are taken to determine whether the pilot implementation did, in fact, result in the changes desired.
• At the Act stage, the process, if successful, is implemented.
But because of the critique that models like this appear too linear and don’t portray overlapping stages, he offered a modifi cation of the PDCA model that he called the
organization development process (ODP) model. Each of the eight components or
phases interacts with the other phases, as shown in Chart 14.
Chart 14 — Organization Development Model24
We’re almost fi nished with this review of innovation process models — just one last step to take: a quick review of creative problem-solving models that is an important part of the innovation scene.
Creative problem-solving processes
There’s a fi ne line between models of innovation and those of creative problem-solving. For example, consider the classic Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem-Solving (CPS)
model invented by Alex Osborn, executive vice-president at the huge BBDO advertising agency, and researched by academician Sidney Parnes. Their model has six steps as shown in Chart 15.
Environment Organization or Suborganization
Organization-wide Community and National
Implementation Evaluation Adoption Separation Individual Team Process Global Entry Start-up Assessment and Feedback Action Planning
Chart 15 — Creative Problem-Solving (CPS) Model25
Step Description
1. Objective Finding Discuss the situation and set a goal the group is committed to
2. Fact Finding Search for all the facts that could be related to the situation and objective
3. Problem Finding Focus on a clear defi nition of the real problem that needs a creative solution
4. Idea Finding Brainstorm a set of options that might solve the problem and achieve the goal
5. Solution Finding Assess which ideas have the most potential and select the best solution
6. Acceptance Finding Consider what it will take for the idea to be accepted and implemented, and develop a plan to take action
Showing the parallels between the CPS model and models of the product innovation process is not diffi cult. For example, in 1988, Donald G. Marquis26 described a six-step
innovation process:
1. Recognition (technical feasibility and potential market demand) 2. Idea Formulation (fusion into design concept and evaluation) 3. Problem-Solving (search, experimentation and calculation; readily
available information)
4. Solution (solution through invention; solution through adoption) 5. Development (work out the bugs and scale up)
6. Utilization and Diffusion (implementation and use)
Chart 16 — Comparison of Marquis and Osborn-Parnes Models27
Marquis Osborn-Parnes
Recognition Objective Finding
Fact Finding
Idea Formulation Problem Finding Problem-Solving Idea Finding
Solution Solution Finding Development Acceptance Finding Utilization and Diffusion
By 1987, overlaps like this were no longer new to me. During my years at SRI in the 1980s, I reviewed various corporate models, academic models and scientifi c models of the innovation process. I discovered then, and have reconfi rmed over and over since then, that a common, conceptual territory shared by the innovation models from different domains of innovation exists — revenue producing innovation, process innovation, knowledge innovation and leadership innovation — as well as the
CPS model.
Seeing that common territory led me to formulate a simple, but not simplistic, model of the innovation process that people could use across every domain of innovation, no mat-ter what function they were in. I’ll present that model in the next chapmat-ter, along with three key insights about what was missing in all the models I had previously reviewed.
Having an innovation conversation
To help clarify and integrate your insights from this chapter, consider the following questions. Use them to start an innovation conversation with your colleagues at work, and see what you can all learn from each other.
Looking back on your past projects:
1. Have you used one or more specifi c innovation process models to guide your innovative efforts?
2. If more than one, did they have a common set of stages or tasks? If so, how would you describe them?
3. How effective was the model, or models, in helping you achieve your goals?
4. Did the model, or models, seem to miss anything that you felt was important? If so, what was that?
Chapter 4
The Creative Journey
TMM
any years ago, a VP of Engineering from the Brunswick Corporation’s Bowling Division — one of the two leading makers of bowling equipment — called on me at SRI for help with a challenge he faced. They had been selling the same mechanical pinsetter for more than 25 years. At one point, while the U.S. market lagged, a big bowling craze developed in Japan, and Brunswick had sold a huge number of those pinsetters. But when the bowling boom there went bust, all those pinsetters went onto the used market. Brunswick sales were way down. The VP of Engineering thought he saw a solution: reinvent the pinsetter with up-to-date technologies, and have something totally new to sell.How that project unfolded fi lled in a lot of the missing pieces I had seen in the innovation process models I had studied up to that point.
The fi rst thing we did was to look closely at the goal the VP had laid out: was the task at hand really to reinvent the pinsetter, or was it something else? We realized his real goal was to rejuvenate the entire bowling industry — to bring people back to bowling through a totally new experience of what it meant to play that sport.
We began to select the kinds of people who could come together in a multi-day, cross-functional innovation search — an idea-generation session that would focus on the entire experience of bowling, not just pinsetters. We ended up involving specialists in robotics, software engineering, digital detection equipment, and other technologies. We also invited a wide variety of other specialists, such as an expert from the luxury cruise industry, who knew about the entertainment experiences that people were looking for.
We collected research on market trends in related industries and technology trends that might impact our search. To “experience the marketplace for this kind of entertain-ment,” my partner in running this project and I even bowled at a Saturday night Rock
‘n Bowl center in San Francisco, where every lane had monitors with rock videos, the
music was loud, and scoring was optional. Based on this background, we selected specifi c focus areas, including topics such as new scoring systems and technology-based feedback-coaching systems. Then, we asked a few key specialists to deliver stimulating talks on those subjects to spur our idea generation.
Over the fi rst two days of the innovation search, we generated hundreds of ideas and clustered them in a variety of ways. As a sampling, here are a few of the ideas that were voiced:
• A pinsetter that sets whatever pins a bowler wants set for practice purposes
• A “smart card” that “remembers” who a bowler is, his averages, and how he did on different pin combinations, etc.
• A computer system that analyzes a bowler’s performance and
recommends ways to improve technique, depending on what mistakes were being made
• Feedback on speed, accuracy, and so on, as the ball travels down the bowling lane
• Put bumpers into the side gullies so that the bowling ball always bounces to hit pins — important for people new to bowling (including kids and adults)
• Changing the normal scoring system by allowing a person to “bet” one’s pins on the odds of an opponent picking up on a particular spare, etc. (changing scoring methods)
Then, it came time to narrow down the ideas and select the most promising ones for technical and market feasibility studies. Certain ideas made it, such as:
• A pinsetter that sets whatever pins a bowler wants set for practice purposes
• A computer system that analyzes a bowler’s performance and recommends ways to improve technique, depending on what mistakes were being made
• Feedback on speed, accuracy, and so on, as the ball travels down the bowling lane
• Putting bumpers in the side gullies
It took a couple of months to complete the feasibility studies and return to Brunswick to help make a fi nal decision about what to take to the Board as priorities for development funding. Even then, the fi nal decision wouldn’t come until after prototypes were tested in their labs and in actual facilities.
Finally, they began to install and do fi nal testing of new products in company-owned bowling centers within a few hundred miles of their headquarters. As the Engineering VP later told me, one of the early hits was putting in a ball-speed indicator — using a radar gun (like highway police use) — which gave bowlers feedback, so they could determine if they needed to speed up or slow down their ball delivery to hit the pins better.
One key to the renewal of Brunswick’s bowling business was the new GS pinsetter, which led the way to being able to reset a previous pin combination when pins were inadvertently knocked down after a fi rst ball was bowled. Today, the latest generation of pinsetter, the GS-X, is the #1 selling new pinsetter in the world, with more than 10,000 installed worldwide. The side-gulley idea (for people new to bowling) has turned into their Pinball Wizard bumper bowling system.
Even the San Francisco ‘Rock n’ Bowl’ concepts we discussed during the innovation search have now become major hits in the bowling industry, through Brunswick’s products known as Cosmic Bowling® Light and Sound Systems and Lightworx®
The beginning of a new model
This Brunswick project occurred when I was just beginning to formulate my version of the innovation process. It wasn’t that I needed my own process model — but I had seen the potential for a robust yet simple model that could apply to projects in any domain of innovation, and my professional curiosity got the best of me. What could I invent that might contribute to the fi eld of innovation?
Looking back, my initial “map” of the innovation process for that bowling project contained fi ve steps, with some very fuzzy boundaries between them, indicating overlapping and simultaneous stages:
1. They set a purpose and direction (goal).
2. They gathered and analyzed data, and prioritized the issues that needed creative ideas.
3. They generated a wide array of potential ideas and concepts. 4. They did the feasibility studies, development and prototyping
necessary to make a fi nal decision of what to implement. 5. They scaled up and commercialized the new products — and
continued to refi ne, add to, and produce new generations of those product lines.
As shown in Chart 17, those stages corresponded well with the product innovation models I had been studying.
Chart 17 — Comparison of Miller Observations with Other Innovation Process Models28
Miller NASA Various Stage-Gate Ulrich Marquis
Set the Goal (Moon Vision) Tech Push / Mission Recognition
Market Pull Statement
Analyze Issues Concept Idea Formulation
Concept Idea/Concept Development
Generate Ideas System Design Problem-Solving
Develop Feasibility Study Detail Design
and Decide Development 1st — 2nd screens Testing/Refi ning Solution
Decision to develop
Implement Implementation Development Production
Solution Manufacturing Validation Ramp Up Development
Commercialization
Even though I saw the Brunswick project as unfolding in stages, those stages played themselves out non-linearly, in keeping with the more concurrent, interactive innovation models; overlap often occurred in accomplishing the tasks of each stage.
But the more I thought about it, something important seemed to be missing in this way of conceptualizing the innovation process. So, I kept searching…
The innovation process models I had come across clearly focused on the mental side of innovation: setting a goal, performing analysis, eliciting ideas, making a decision, and implementing it. Yet, I had observed that during the course of developing an innovation, often great periods of uncertainty existed, even discouragement — not knowing what to do next, or where the fi nal innovative solution was going to come from. Innovators had to face many risks along the way, invoking the need for courage and determination.
Finding what was missing
Many times when I conducted Innovation Searches with clients, I would bring in a person who was great at generating ideas, but who was from a fi eld that had little relation to the topic at hand. That person could bring an entirely new perspective to stimulate our innovative thinking. In the same way, I expanded my quest to understand the innovation process to a totally different fi eld — cultural mythology.
A breakthrough in my understanding of the innovation process occurred after I read The
Way to Shambhala by Edwin Bernbaum. I realized that virtually all cultures have stories
about heroic journeys — from the Tibetans’ search for Shambhala to the mythical jour-ney of Odysseus — and typically they have the following plot:
• You’re on a quest, and you come to an impassable river (or some other obstacle), guarded by a demon.
• The instructions are clear: Withdraw to gather strength — identify with a power (the Divine) so its energies merge in you; then call forth the demon to see exactly what you have to deal with.
• Do battle until you are victorious in defeating, befriending, or taming the demon.
• Engage the subdued/tamed demon as an ally to get you across the impass-able river. On the other side, take an account, with gratitude, of what you’ve gained to assist you on the next stage of your journey.
Then, in 1987, Lorna Catford and I co-taught a course called Creativity in Business at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. She helped me see the link be-tween this heroic journey plot and the innovation process. From there, I could perceive four basic stages that describe that process, each with specifi c tasks to accomplish, as shown in Chart 18.
