View
226
Download
4
Category
Tags:
Preview:
Citation preview
Innovation/Creativity
Innovation/Creativity
• Sources of new product ideas
• Creativity: can it be learned?
• Techniques for fostering group creativity
• Increasing personal creativity
Importance of Innovation to Companies*
20%
80%
Companies say it is important... ...But Few Feel Good at itFind innovation unimportant
Find innovation important to their business
4%
96%
Good at innovation
Think they are bad at innovation
* Based on 1993 study of American Companies
Sources of New Product Ideas
Sources of new ideas
Suppliers
Employees
Management
Distribution
ChannelsGovernment Regulations
Maverick
Competitors
Customers
Technology
Economy
Rapidly Changing
Environment
Japanese Industrial Sector Spend on R&D Outside its Core Sector 1980-86
70
50 50
35 35 35
Textiles Fabricated Metals
Iron & Steel
Commun-ications equipment
Electronics Precision Machinery
Regulatory Changes
Change Product Area
Fire retardant foam
Financial Services Act
New infills for sofas, mattresses, etc
Insurance salesmen had to declare whether ‘tied’ or ‘independent’. leading to new selling techniques
Economic Changes
Economic Change Product Example
Recession
High interest rates
Negative equity
High unemployment
Multiple savings products
New lower-cost foods
Special loans
Home brewing (!)
Environmental/Demographic Changes
Environmental
- Health consciousness leads to Kraft’s ‘fat free’ ice-cream
- ‘Green’ consciousness leads to change in solvent based to water based paints
- Increase in crime leads to new security devices (e.g. remote control security systems)
Demographic
- Ageing of population leads to residential care insurance
- Both parents working leads to new types of convenience foods
- Baby boomers having their own children leads to new types of family car (e.g. Renault Espace)
Technology
Technology New Product/Service/Process
EPOS Revolutionised stock holding at retailers
Genetic Engineering Human ears grown on a mouse’s back
Customers: Product Innovation From Market Needs vs Technological
Opportunities
100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
90%
10% 22%
78%
25%
75%
31%
69%
34%
66%
34%
61%
5%
Materials Computers, railway, housing
Instruments Winners of the Industrial Research Award
British innovators
Weapons systems
Type of innovation
Sample size 10 439 33 108 84 710
Market needs
Technological opportunities
Source: Utterbach
Dangers of using Customers’ Ideas (In The USA!)
If unsolicited idea not handled properly, a subsequent product may be claimed by the person whose idea it was
67%
13%
20%
Evaluation Procedures by Company*
Used legally dangerous evaluation procedures
Rejected all outside suggestions
Used legally sound procedures
* Based on an evaluation of 166 companies Source: U&H
Management
Product Source
Walkman Akio Morita
D.O.S Bill Gates
Savoy’s purchase Lord Forte
Louvre pyramid Mitterand
Body Shop Anita Roddick
Employees: Examples of Companies Where Employee Suggestions Valued
3M
Toyota
Kodak
McKinsey
John Lewis
Manufacturing
Study done by Myers and Marquis (admittedly in 1969) showed 20% of ideas came from manufacturing
- Intimate product knowledge
- Constant efficiency drive
- Boredom factor
- Good for product improvements vs totally new concept
Distribution ChannelsChannel Example
Marks and Spencer Controls most of its suppliers very closely and is key idea-source in developing new sectors (e.g. ready meals)
Doctors Provide constant feedback to pharmaceutical companies
Car Dealerships Regular flow of ideas regarding existing and potential products, back to manufacturer
Suppliers
It benefits suppliers of chemicals and materials to have their products used more widely
Supplier Example
DuPont Invented Teflon for use on cookware
DuPont Invented Lycra for use in clothing
ALCOA Invented aluminium truck trailers (Truck manufacturers were originally reluctant to use them)
Competitors
Competitor Comment
Direct All organisations within a sector watch each others’ moves regarding innovation, to: - stay apace
- simply copy
- improve an idea
Indirect Successful firms also watch organisations outside their direct area for ideas
- in other sectors (e.g. software for newspaper layouts used in desktop publishing)
- in other countries (e.g. Body Shop based many of its product formulations on third world/tribal recipes)
Creativity Can Be Learned
“Inventing is a skill that some people have and some don’t. But you can learn how to invent. You have to have the will not to jump at the first solution because the elegant solution might be around the corner. An inventor is someone who says, ‘Yes, that’s one way to do it but it doesn’t seem to be an optimum solution.’ Then he keeps on thinking”.
Ray Dolby, inventor
“Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework within which the problems werecreated”
Albert Einstein
Left and Right Brain in Creativity
Left Brain
Symbols
Words
Logic
Judgement
Mathematics
Speaking
Right Brain
Sensory Images
Dreaming
Feeling
Intuition
Visualisation
Creative Thinking
Creativity Exercise
Ping pong ball
Tube with diameter 2mm wider than ball
Tube cemented into ground
Objective: Remove the ball from the bottom of the tube without damaging the tube, ball or ground
Creativity Exercise: Implements
- Chisel
- File
- Hammer
- 100ft of clothes line
- Light bulb
- Wire coat hanger
- Box of cornflakes
Techniques for eliciting group creativity
Techniques for Eliciting Group Creativity
Technique Description
Attribute listing - List major attributes and consider how to modify each one
- Stimulate ideas in a group of 6 to 10 people in a non evaluative way
Brainstorming
- Elicit ideas, using tools which by-pass “vertical,” rational logic
Lateral thinking
- Based on asking people about the needs & problems they have with existing products
Need/Problem identification
Needs/Problem Identification
Based on consumer, not “creative brainpower”
Process
Consumers are asked about needs, problems and ideas, either:-
- quantitatively - Hundreds are asked to rank whether satisfied or unsatisfied with particular attributes
- qualitatively - through discussion in focus groups
Evaluation
1. Can be expensive (need hundreds of responses or detailed interviews)
2. Good for making product improvements
3. Rarely effective in finding entirely novel ideas
Attribute Listing
1. List attributes of product
2. Take each attribute in turn. (No more than 7 at a time)
3. Consider how each can be modified
4. Evaluate best ideas
- Produces solutions directly pertinent to the problem
- Need to concentrate on attributes related to primary functions, otherwise it’s easy to become irrelevant
- Unlikely to produce true novelty or richness in problem solution
Process Evaluation
Attribute Listing: Toothbrush Example
1. List attributes
- Made of plastic
- Manually operated
- Needs supply of toothpaste and water
2. Take each attribute (e.g. made of plastic)
- Could it be made of other materials?
- Could it be made more cheaply in other materials?
- Could it be made more fashionably in other materials?
- Could there be a disposable version?
- Could there be a ‘green’ version?
3. Evaluate best ideas
- Suggest full costing of aluminium toothbrush
- Examine technicalities of biodegradable bristles
Definition of Brainstorming
“To practice a conference technique by which a group attempts to find a solution for a specific problem by amassing all the ideas spontaneously contributed by its members”
Osborn (inventor of brainstorming), 1953
Basic Rules of Brainstorming
• No criticism whatsoever
• Free-wheeling is welcome. The whackier the idea, the better
• The more ideas, the better
• Building on others’ ideas is encouraged
Brainstorming: Warning
PREMATURE EVALUATION WILL PREVENT CONCEPTION !
Brainstorming : Problems Solved And Group Composition
GROUP COMPOSITION
Open minded individuals
Few vested interests
Avoid extremes - dominant or insecure personalities
Variation in age
Variation in background
TYPICAL PROBLEMS ADDRESSED
Suggestions for new research
New concepts for products or markets
Managerial problems (eg how to make work more fulfilling)
Improvements to processes
Brainstorming : Evaluation
• Frequently used technique
• Easy to implement
• Time efficient
• Prone to inaccurate usage
• Research findings on usefulness are contradictory (both positive and negative)
• Inconclusive
Lateral thinking
NB: Please see separate pack of slides
Synectics
Etymology : Made up of “Syn” and “ectors” which together suggest “the bringing together of diversity”
Synectics involves “making the familiar strange” to gain new insights. It is a process for a group of individuals working in a group using nonrational approaches
Synectics : Process And Requirements
PROCESS: Example
1. State the problem
2. Select the metaphor
3. Use the metaphor to generate new ideas
GROUP REQUIREMENTS
Needs experienced, trained and uninvolved facilitator
Groups used to dealing with metaphors
Emotional maturity
Willingness to experiment
Ideal group size : 6-8 people
Session runs for 3 days
Examples of Metaphors
Analogy Description Example
Personal
Direct
Fantasy
Put yourself in the shoes of the object
Describe how it feels to use a particular object
Make comparisons with similar facts, information or technology
Based on Freud’s notion that creative thinking and wish fulfilment are related. Does away with bounds of reality
Think how tired a door hinge becomes from opening and shutting
Imagine the sensations of being in an open top sports car
Compare a problem of irregular paper flow in an office with the flow of a river
How in our wildest fantasies would a new alcoholic drink look and taste
Synectics : Evaluation
• Dependent on trained facilitator and receptive group members
• Good at generating novel solutions
• Used less than brainstorming due to need for facilitator and general risk-aversion associated with ‘wild thinking’
• Used more in the USA than here
Increasing Personal Creativity
Ways of Enhancing Personal Creativity
1. Accept there’s no right answer
2. Don’t follow the rules
3. Be foolish
4. Ask ‘What if?’
5. Think outside your area
6. Go for ambiguity
7. Believe in yourself
1. No Right Answer
• The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas
• Change your question (eg IBM should have thought in terms of solutions to problems, not computing hardware)
• Avoid workplaces with a culture of uniformity
2. Don’t Follow The Rules
• We make rules based on reasons that make sense
• We follow these rules
• Time passes, things change
• The original reasons for the rules no longer exist, but because the rules are still in place, we continue to follow them
Don’t Follow The Rules : Example
Q W E R T Y U I O P
Examples of Rule-Breaking Creativity
Who How?
Columbus
Copernicus
Einstein
General Motors
Butterfly Stroke
Henry VIII
Bell Labs
Broke the rule that to travel East you cannot go West
Broke the rule that the universe is anthropocentric
Broke the rules of Newtonian physics by equating mass and energy as different forms of the same phenomenon
Broke Ford’s rule of any colour, as long as it’s black
Broke the rules of ‘arm recovery’ in breaststroke
Broke the rule that the Pope should hold sway in England
Broke the rule that electrons need to travel in a vacuum for signal processing
3. Be Fool-ish: Examples
Think against the conventional flow, like the fool in Shakespearean times
Case Area
19th century physician Edward Jenner in looking for a small pox cure, looked not at those with small pox, but those without
Alfred Sloan and his disapproval of “groupthink”, retabled motions where everyone agreed
1334 siege of Hocharterwitz castle in Austria
Small pox vaccinations
Car industry
Survival
Twelfth NightAct 1 scene 5
Clown Good madonna, why mournest thou?
OLIVIA Good fool, for my brother's death.
Clown I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
OLIVIA I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
Clown The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. Take away the
fool, gentlemen
4. Ask “What If?”• Ask “what if” someone else were solving your
problem for you, eg– Churchill
– Machiavelli
– Freud
– Ghandi
– Mozart
• 5 minute exercise : ‘What if’ someone else were running this session on creativity. How would they organise/structure it?
5. Think outside your area: Examples
Who? How?
World War I military designers
John von Neumann (Mathematician)
Japanese industry
Borrowed ideas from cubist art to create more efficient camouflage patterns for tanks and guns
Used knowledge from poker playing to develop the “game theory” model of economics
Collaborations between entirely unconnected industries actively encouraged to make R&D breakthroughs
Think Outside Your Area : Suggestions
1. Read fiction and stimulate your imagination
2. Go to places you wouldn’t normally go (eg a junk yard, a fairground)
3. Develop the explorer’s attitude : the outlook that wherever you go, there are ideas out there
(4. When you hit on an idea, write it down)
6. Go For Ambiguity
“If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results”
George S Patton (American General)
Ambiguity As Found In The Workplace
• Non hierarchical organisation
• Tolerance (or even encouragement) of different approaches
• Broad goals defined, but little else
Believe in Yourself
Lack of creativity is a self-fulfilling prophecy (as substantiated by research!)
Innovation/creativity: conclusions
• Creativity CAN be learned . If your organisation/group doesn’t make use of specific creative techniques, why not introduce them?
• Be willing to think ‘whacky’ thoughts - collectively these can spark excellent ideas.
• Be constantly receptive – creativity comes from the most unlikely sources!
Recommended