Can Innovation be Departmentalized?

It has been an exceedingly dreary few days (weeks, months, years?), here in the USA, with the seeming inability of our government leaders to find solutions for significant issues like the national debt crisis, the ensuing downgrade of US Treasury debt, and the most recent and horrible loss of soldiers in Afghanistan. 

Unemployment remains unacceptably high, many large organizations while reporting strong profits, are choosing to sit on cash stockpiles, rather than increase or expand their labor forces. It is a very uncertain climate, and in this uncertainty it seems like for many companies, caution and restraint make a more prudent choice than more aggressive expansion. Sure, there are still (and always will be) exceptions to this rule, and we have seen several successful tech companies like Apple, Google, and Zynga (and more), continue to increase revenue, create new products, and expand hiring. But for all the high-flying tech successes, there are perhaps more news reports of organizational contraction and mass layoffs, (RIM, Cisco, HSBC, to choose just a few). Image - smithsonian.com

What marks the key difference that allows some companies to succeed and thrive in these tough economic times compared to ones that struggle to survive, or that hope to endure through this sustained period of economic malaise with exercises in cost-cutting, hiring freezes, and even workforce contraction?

Might one of your answers be 'The ability to innovate?'

It makes sense right? Apple wins because they created new and better ways to buy and enjoy music with the iPad, transformed the mobile phone experience with the iPhone, and re-invented and continue to dominate the tablet computing space with the iPad. They have simply out-innovated (and executed, and marketed, and managed), their way to success and dominance.  Heck, they might still have more cash on hand than the US government.

So the question is then, if 'innovation' is the prime cause or factor for sustained growth and success, can organizations and nations simply declare 'We are going to become more innovative', and set up a department, task force, blue-ribbon panel - whatever; and sit down and commence innovating?

I thought about this while reading some articles on a new blog on the Smithsonian.com site called 'Department of Innovation', a resource that describes itself as follows:

"...in the spirit of banging the drum for new ideas and fresh thinking, this blog will track all things innovative, not just in science and technology, but also in how we live, how we learn, how we entertain ourselves."

And while that sounds like a worthy and perhaps even productive undertaking, (there are already a few cool articles on the site), I can't help but think by (at least by name), compartmentalizing innovation into its own 'Department', might not be the right way to frame the discussion, and certainly not the right way to try to advance innovation inside organizations. 

My sense (and this is completely unresearched, so if I am off base, please feel free to bash me in the comments), is that the most truly innovative organizations don't try to box up or to departmentalize innovation. They realize that innovative concepts or even creative ideas can come from anywhere and at anytime in the organization. 

It seems to me that the pre-requisite for improving the chances for innovative ideas to spring up and take root in any kind of an organization is to create an environment where people feel free and safe to share ideas, explore new concepts, and have a real chance to see their work and effort impact the organization, their colleagues, their customers, and their communities. The first step to becoming more innovative might just be granting permission.

For real success today, I wonder if every department in the organization needs to be the 'Department of Innovation.'

Grind

Yesterday on his Blog Maverick blog, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban re-posted a piece he had orginally written in 2008 titled 'How to Get Rich'. While there isn't much in the way of specific or tactical advice in the piece - and as Cuban states in the article  - "This is not a short-term project. We aren’t talking days. We aren’t talking months. We are talking years. Lots of years and maybe decades. I didn’t say this was a get rich quick scheme. This is a get rich path." - the post does offer some solid advice not so much in the way of actually getting rich, but rather in positioning yourself to take advantage of opportunities by virtue of hard work and preparation. You should definitely pop over to Blog Maverick and check out the post.Patrick burning it late on a Friday night

For me, the money line was Cuban's take on how the commitment to outwork the other guy, and to grind away at night and on the weekends if need be to gain that critical edge that comes from better preparation, more complete study, and from simply knowing more about the industry, market, players - whatever than the competition. Again from the Cuban piece:

"Before or after work and on weekends, every single day, read everything there is to read about the business. Go to trade shows, read the trade magazines, spend a lot of time talking to the people you do business with about their business and the people they buy from."

Look, no one needs this blog to remind them of the obvious, that hard work and a real commitment to digging in, to putting in the long hours needed to achieve the kind of deep, and differentiating knowledge about whatever subject or line of work you're interested in truly is a prerequisite for sustained success these days. I think we all know it. But I also think sometimes we forget what it looks like, what it feels like to read white papers at 11PM on a Friday, or to cycle through thousands of unread posts in Google Reader on Saturday morning before the kids wake up, or to participate in industry events and online forums with energy and enthusiasm.

It's a grind to do those things for sure.

The picture on the right of this piece is my son Patrick, age 10. In what can possibly be seen as a testament to shoddy parenting, it was taken at about 11PM on a recent Friday night, as he was diligently battling away to get a post written for his 'Patrick's Investigations' blog, (stop by and drop him a comment if you like). Eleven at night, in the dark, grinding over a post because he wants his blog to succeed, he wants to be a good writer, and he has figured out (on his own), that those things are not at all easy.  Achieving those goals will be lots of hard work. 

Cuban re-ran his 'How to Get Rich' piece in response to the recent economic news in the US as a reminder that no matter how bad conditions get, that buckling in and simply out-working the competition still gives anyone the chance to perhaps not get rich, but to at least get ahead. I ran this piece today to share a small image of what the grind looks like, played out late on a Friday night, by a little kid.

Have a Great Weekend!

I want my MTV, I mean my workforce apps

MTV was in the news this week, as the venerable network of 'Video Killed the Radio Star', 'Beavis and Butt-head', and more recently 'Jersey Shore' celebrated its 30th anniversary. Over the 30-year run MTV has certainly changed its focus, direction, and strategy, and as many observers are quick to note, the network doesn't really have that much to do with music anymore as it has long since morphed into a more general entertainment property.

But even noting these changes in MTV's purpose, it was kind of surprising to me when I received an email Press Release pitch with the title - 'Latitude and MTV Networks Uncover the Meaning Behind Our Addiction to Apps', referencing the results of a recent study on mobile application usage conducted by the research firm Latitude on behalf of MTV Networks.  Since (shockingly, I know), I am old enough to remember when MTV was stil about playing bad Journey videos, I had to check out the press release and some of the study's findings about mobile application uptake and the important app value propositions - after all what workplace or HR technology solution is not making a move (or already has arrived), in the mobile and app space?  And as smartphones and tablets are taking over on the consumer side as gateways to the web, there's no doubt the same will (or is already) happening inside the enterprise.

For context here are some details on the purpose and the methodology of the study from the Latitude release:

The study investigated the underlying psychology and current behaviors surrounding app adoption, use, and abandonment for heavy app users, and ultimately uncovered top characteristics and features of a successful app. The study included a round of initial qualitative interviews, a deprivation phase (normal app users were asked to go app-free for three days), and a quantitative survey of more than 1300 app-engaged smartphone owners between the ages of 13 and 64.

So what did the study show the main benefits are of app usage and therefore are the primary drivers of longer-term adoption and reduced the chances of app 'abandonment?', (again, from the Latitude Press Release):

• Apps Create Me Moments: Apps allow intense personalization and hyper-focus, filling our idle moments with “me time” on-demand. This expectation for powerful, instantaneous “me focus” is making its way into desired in-app entertainment and ad experiences. Personal context is king!87% of participants said: “Apps let me have fun no matter where I am or what I’m doing.”

Implication for designers of 'workplace' apps: Smartphones and tablets are really personal devices, much more so than the standard-issue company PC or laptop. Apps therefore need to maintain and leverage this personalization of experience, app users like to see their apps as almost personal tools, and not just extensions of a bland or generic enterprise solution. 

• Apps Make Everyday Life Better: Apps are enhancing our day-to-day experiences directly by enabling productivity, achievement of our personal goals, and so on—and indirectly through the resulting creation of free time, improved mental well-being, opportunities for positive discovery, and more. 

Implication for designers of 'workplace' apps: Sort of obvious, but the main point of emphasis is that the enterprise apps, particularly ones that might be transaction driven, need to do more than just replicate processes typically performed on PCs in corporate systems. They need to make the experience and process better - more efficient, simpler, more enjoyable. If the staff hate the process and the tool while using it in the office, simply porting it to an iPad won't make them feel any better about it. In fact, they might rebel, wondering why they can't seem to escape from it.

• Apps Open Us to New Worlds: Whether it’s learning new languages or gazing at the stars, the possibilities seem endless as apps open people’s imaginations to the new and “magical.” As mobile technology rapidly innovates, people increasingly envision apps as complementing and transforming traditional media experiences into “something new.” 91% of participants said: “Apps expose me to new things.”

Implication for designers of 'workplace' apps: How about approaching your app strategy beyond simply taking what you have in the office and porting it to a mobile app and think about what you can deliver that is brand new? What value can you add to the employee experience that they can only get via your new app? Whether it is new learning content, a tool that mashes up data in your CRM with social web content, or simply a syndicated feed of news and events about your company or industry - consider building something brand new and exclusive to app ecosystem.

What's your take - can the designers and workforce technology experts learn from the MTV crowd?

Or perhaps a better question - will you be watching the retrurn of Beavis and Butt-head to MTV this Fall?

How Cities Outlast Companies

Last week on the Fast Company site, a piece titled 'How Short-Lived, Slow-Moving Companies Can Become More Like Fast, Creative Cities' , a review of some of the research of physicist Geoffrey West on the growth and development of cities, caught my attention. It was a familiar read since I had previously blogged about West and his research in December 2010 in a post called 'Physics, Cities, and Corporations'.

By way of review, West describes a theory, based on extensive research of world cities and over 23,000 companies, that cities tend to follow a pattern found in other complex ecosystems; most often, they grow in stability, success, and creativity as they increase in size and grow more diverse. With rare exceptions, cities tend not to disappear. In contrast companies tend to look more like mammals, getting slower as they increase in size and bureaucracy, and then growing old and fading away entirely.

Why did I want to essentially re-post on the same topic once more? Well, the original piece ran a few days before Christmas 2010, and somehow I get the feeling that physics and demographics were not really all that compelling for most readers who might have had visions of sugarplums and all that going on. And second, last month a talk given by Professor West about his theories and presented at the TedGlobal2011 event was posted on the Ted site. A copy of the 17-minute talk is embedded below, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through to see the video).

While West's theories are highly provocative, they don't really start to offer organizations, particularly large ones (or ones that aspire to grow large), ideas on how to prevent that inevitable slide into the kind of growth stagnation and slow decline of vibrancy, creativity, and energy that seem to ensnare so many large and mature organizations. Why does it have to be that with increased size, organizations seem to be destined to slower rates of growth, and eventual disruption at the hands of smaller, faster, more agile competitors? While cities, on the other hand, seem to thrive with growth, and when you dig into West's data, see increases in efficiency in many measures - energy use, infrastructure requirements, creativity, etc.

Obviously this topic is interesting to me, since I've posted on it twice, (and watched the TED video a couple of times), so hopefully this will resonate with some of you that might be inside organizations that seemed to have lost a step as they have grown larger. 

What are some of the ways that you can help instill some of that energy and agility that most of your smaller competitors are using against you? What, if anything can you take from the growth of urban areas and city ecosystems that might apply? 

Career advice for kids? Learn how to build robots

By now you probably have caught the story of the latest step in what some might see as the inevitable 'Terminator'-like march towards the complete and total domination of the human race by our robot overlords - Foxconn Planning To Hire 1 Million Robots.I'll be back - with your iPad

You know Foxconn right? According to Wikipedia, they are the largest maker of electronic components in the world. Foxconn is probably where that little iPhone or iPad that you are so attached to was assembled. Apple, like so many tech hardware organizations has long realized that design, development, and writing software were the keys to success and competitive advantage, but the actual manufacturing and assembly of its gadgets was better positioned elsewhere, with a company like Foxconn that has clear labor cost (and likely other) advantages over domestic manufacturing.

It is an old story, chase less expensive manufacturing labor and capacity offshore, while keeping the essential elements of the organization stateside. As long as the good ideas keep coming, and the manufacturing operation can keep up with demand, maintain quality standards, and hold the line on costs, well, you have the Apple story essentially.

But as we see from the Foxconn/Robots story, even a seemingly inexhaustible supply of lower-cost labor might not provide the competitive edge forever, and whether it is labor cost pressure, difficulty in meeting the insatiable demand for Apple toys, or internally driven profit motives, even a company like Foxconn is looking to aggressively manage labor costs via automation.

We have all heard, and have advised students and others for ages - if your job can be replaced by a computer, or a robot, or an offshore worker willing to do the same job at half the cost, then you probably ought to have a backup plan in the works. Now it seems like we might have to start giving that same advice to the proverbial 'half the cost offshore worker'. When the robots start replacing the low-cost labor at Foxconn, well it is probably time to think about a new career in robot design. Or landscaping.

So kid, what do you want to be when you grow up? (Hint: say 'Robot Designer').

Until of course the robots figure out how to design and build themselves...

Aside: I like in the TechCrunch piece about the Foxconn story, they refer to the acquisition of the robots using the term 'hire'.  Makes me think about the questions the recruiter would ask the robot during the interview.

'So tell me your biggest weakness?'  

'Well, people say I am a workaholic, and I don't know how to unwind. I say that is silly. I had 30 minutes off for maintenance and a software upgrade last year.'