“Innovation is hard because ‘solving problems no one knew they had’ and ‘building something no one needs’ look identical at first.”
— Aaron Levine, CEO at Box
In meeting after meeting, we hear the refrain and chorus, a call and response of favorite hymns between management and the executives: innovation. More and more, innovation is something you want to highlight on your résumé, whether you’re in the corporate world, manufacturing, or services. If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s the price of admission to get you into a fully functioning business. In the corporate world, the successful companies expect an innovation mindset from anyone in a leadership position, and this is increasingly the norm. The pressure isn’t necessarily that you’re expected to put in more hours, but that you’d have to get more out of those hours. However you define the ultimate goal; a better product, a better service, better customer outreach, lower operating costs, it doesn’t matter: the road is paved with innovation.
We live in a time of unprecedented change, invention, and innovation. It’s no longer something to edge out the competition; it is a survival imperative in the current business climate. Sometimes it’s called “improvement” or “efficiency,” or in Japanese companies a specific type of improvement may be called “kaizen.” The number of words we use to talk about innovation speaks to the high importance we give it in our society. But the specific names are more cultural artifacts than unique concepts; strip away the bells and whistles, and they all come down to problem-solving. It’s useful and instructive to think of innovation as problem-solving for both practical and political reasons. Don’t be distracted by how “big” or “new” your idea is; for this discussion, size matters not. Today, we’re focused on the process of how to approach your innovation initiative.
There’s a strong consensus developing around the idea presented in The Innovator’s DNA that successful innovation in companies requires innovators at the top of the organization. If you’re not getting strong guidance from your leadership on the innovation process, that’s probably a signal that they’re struggling to understand it themselves. There has been a lot of good work published to better define and clarify the process, difficulties, and costs associated with innovation.
You’ll Need a System
Even though it might seem counter-intuitive, a methodical problem-solving approach to your innovation initiative will provide some valuable navigation. There is a wealth of problem-solving systems and methodologies and you can achieve good results using any of them. When you wear multiple hats on a project, doing development and design, management and marketing, it can be challenging to switch gears between those mental spaces. The creative thinking you need for design and development is very different from the analytical thinking that you’ll need to evaluate a project status or analyze a potential problem. Writing code is often very linear and logical, whereas the output of that code may be a visual design. If you plan to perform more than one role in a project, tracking your work separately for each of these roles will help smooth those transitions. There are project tracking systems to explore such as kanban systems, gate systems, and the more task-oriented GTD can easily be structured to be more project-oriented. Systems innovation in this arena is lifehacker’s bread-and-butter. Whichever method you decide to pursue, your commitment and follow-through will be the major deciding factor in your success.
And that’s where we can see some light at the end of the tunnel. This is all just problem-solving, and there are many problem-solving systems to choose from. Whether you choose Six Sigma, Demming System, PDCA, 8-Step, or any of the others, the important thing is having a repeatable model. Solving big problems really means solving numerous small problems, and this approach pairs very well with an iterative agile project management methodology. And anyway, do you want to be a one-hit wonder or do you want to be able to crank out solutions regularly? If you want to be that innovation machine, agile project management and problem solving will help you do it.
In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries emphasizes the Minimum Viable Product, and I would suggest that as you are managing yourself or your team towards some innovation, you consider identifying your Minimum Viable Problem to solve. What is least problem that you can solve that will prove your concept? Be willing to take the time later to polish your solution, but most importantly, be willing to accept that maybe you don’t yet have all the information you need to make your idea the success that it can be. By going through small agile development cycles and constant testing, both in-house and with people who would benefit from your solution, you’re going to gain insight, you’re going to have breakthroughs, you’re going to understand better the problem and your solution, and you’re going to find inspiration for pushing the solution further.
“There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.”
— Brené Brown
One of the main benefits of working on small elements in an agile methodology is that it gives you room for failure. In a waterfall model where everything is on the line, failure can be devastating. But if some smaller element fails, it is much less expensive, both psychically and financially to learn the critical lessons and take the next evolutionary steps. Make no mistake: failure is necessary to not only understand what doesn’t work, but also gain insight into why it doesn’t work and what can make it succeed. This is Experimentation.
“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”
— Steve Jobs
Approaching your initiative in this way can provide a political advantage too. Management may not understand the time requirements, the resource requirements, or have enough patience with the necessary failures to see the project through all the way to the goal that they’ve set for themselves.It’s critically important that your leadership understand what to expect out of your initiative. If you can explain this approach, and quickly show some small wins and progress, you may start persuading some key people.