What They Are, Why They Matter

Discover creativity’s role in innovation. Learn why both are critical to your organization—and to you.

What is innovation?

The concepts of innovation and creativity together constitute the lifeblood of value creation. But they’re hard to
define. Because the terms are overused, they’re also riddled with misconceptions. What do we really mean by
“innovation” and “creativity”?
Innovation defined
Peter Drucker, the legendary management expert, once said: "Business has only two functions—marketing and
innovation." He called innovation “the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources
with a new capacity to create wealth.”
Innovation is: Conceiving and translating an idea or invention into a new product, service, business process, or
business model that creates value.
But coming up with a definition of innovation often depends on who you ask. Some experts and businesspeople
consider the word overused. In their view, what many people call an innovation is really just a very good
product or a process improvement that isn’t a game-changer.
Purists use the word innovation to refer only to inventions that alter civilization—things like electricity, the
printing press, the car, the telephone, and the internet.
But most other people recognize a spectrum of meanings. In their view, innovation can be:
 Inventing a product that has never existed—such as packing material that inflates around the packed goods
 Converting a byproduct or overlooked commodity into a profitable product—such as turning leftover
cranberry skins into a consumer snack food
 Extending a product’s scope and application—such as discovering that a vaccine developed for infants also
helps seniors
More than products
Innovations can take many different forms, including:
 Product innovation—such as teeth-whitening strips consumers buy in a store and use at home that enable
them to avoid expensive and inconvenient dentist visits
 Service innovation—such as personalized newsfeeds offered by an online publication, in which subscribers
receive only content that matches their special interests, at the frequency they choose
 Business process innovation—such as a new process for manufacturing plate glass that integrates, automates,
and accelerates production, thereby reducing cost and improving final quality
 Business model innovation—such as a short-term car reservation service that charges customers based on
time and mileage, and offers plenty of locations where customers can pick up their reserved cars
Varying degrees
Another way to categorize innovations is according to the degree of their impact. Some innovations are
incremental, while others are radical. Here are three common classifications: *
 Efficiency innovations produce the same product or service more cheaply; for example, a software
application that automates credit checks. Companies that focus entirely on efficiency innovations streamline
operations, wringing bottom-line savings and additional profits out of existing operations. Returns on
investments in such innovations can come in just 12 to 18 months.
 Sustaining innovations turn good products into better ones, such as the hybrid car, the continual development
of ever-faster microprocessors, and the creation of higher-powered, higher-resolution medical scanning
 devices. Sustaining innovations represent the majority of technological and business-model innovations in
most industries. Many, although not all, are considered incremental innovations. They help established players
sell more products and earn more profits from their most valued mainstream customers.
 Disruptive innovations transform expensive, complex products or services into affordable, simple, and more
convenient ones—and thus appeal to new or less-demanding customers. Examples include the shift from
chemical to digital photography, the development of inexpensive microprocessors used in many different
computing devices, and handheld ultrasound scanners for use in such settings as emergency rooms. Disruptive
innovations have the greatest potential to spur new growth. That’s because they reshape markets (often by
displacing existing technologies) or create entirely new ones. They’re called “disruptive” because they’re
typically first designed for a different set of consumers and later capture a broader market by forcing prices in
the existing market down.

The Explainer: Disruptive Innovation

To achieve growth in a fast-changing world, you want to be a disruptor.

Innovation triggers
Innovation can be triggered by a wide range of developments, problems, and opportunities—internal or external to
an organization.

Triggers Examples
Unexpected Events Political upheaval causes the loss of an overseas factory; in response, a company develops
a new set of business processes for managing its supply chain.

An upstart competitor emerges unexpectedly in an important market a company has

targeted for growth; the company develops a novel line of products to compete
successfully with the new entrant.
Process needs A new raw material becomes available, and a company overhauls its manufacturing
processes in order to use it.

Rising customer complaints prompt a company to reconfigure its order fulfillment and
after-sales service processes.
Organizational structure A company that makes radio frequency identification (RFID) devices acquires a firm that
changes offers engineering consulting services. The acquirer reconfigures its business model to
account for revenues from both product and consulting service sales.
Demographic shifts A financial services company recognizes rising demand for financial planning and long-
term care insurance as a large proportion of the population reaches retirement age. The
company develops an array of related offerings.
Changes in consumers’ A company’s cleaning-product line gains growing recognition among consumers. To take
perceptions advantage of this development, the company launches a new service line: a chain of car
washes featuring its well-known cleaning products.
New knowledge and A new technology halves manufacturing time for a product previously too costly to
technologies produce.
New Regulations An imminent regulation will ban the use of a chemical currently used in manufacturing;
the company develops an alternative ahead of its competitors
Long-term or irreversible A substantial and unforeseen hike in energy costs forces a company to redesign its
change in input costs products to reduce the cost of producing and shipping them.
Disruptive Innovation Explained
Clayton Christensen — Professor, Harvard Business School
What transforms a product that was once too expensive and complicated for most people to use? Disruptive innovation.

Why innovate?
Generating innovations in products, services, business processes, and business models has become more critical
than ever for organizations of all types. That’s because rapid changes are continually reshaping the world of
commerce:
 Product lifecycles are shorter than ever. To stay relevant to customers, businesses must generate new
offerings more quickly.
 New competitors are emerging from unexpected places. Unfamiliar rivals can crop up anywhere in the
world—in an emerging market halfway around the globe or in a tiny upstart just around the corner.
Organizations must constantly improve their business processes and models to survive.
 Technologies are always advancing. These advances are changing everything from how consumers shop to
how organizations collaborate with partners and how employees carry out their work. To get the most value
from their workforces, their business operations, and their customers, organizations must take advantage of
the many types of technology advances.
To fulfill their missions as well as achieve and sustain competitive advantage in the face of accelerating change,
organizations must keep innovating. Moreover, they can’t afford to wait passively for new ideas. They must foster
an environment conducive to innovation—by cultivating creativity.

Cashing in on Category Creation

Eddie Yoon — Principal, The Cambridge Group
Category creators combine breakthrough product and business model innovation—and generate stunning growth for their
companies. You can become a category creator using these three strategies.

Who instigates innovation?

The impulse to jump-start innovation to address challenges and seize opportunities can come from several
directions. In some cases, senior executives in your organization may ask all managers to identify and act on
innovation opportunities. In other cases, you and your team members might routinely spot opportunities for
innovation during the course of your everyday work and propose strategies for exploiting those opportunities.
Innovation is no longer just the responsibility of people in research and development (R&D) or product
development units. It’s the responsibility of all managers.

Think Like an Innovator

Jeff Dyer — Professor, Brigham Young University
Encourage your team to question, observe, network, and explore in order to be innovative at work.

What is creativity?

Creativity, managed effectively, can lead to innovation. To understand the role of creativity, consider what it
is—and is not.
Many people think creativity is a characteristic only of artists and inventors. Others mistakenly think it is simply
a talent; so to get your team to innovate, all you need to do is bring in a few “creative” types; then you rely on
them to deliver all the breakthrough ideas.
Neither of these pictures is accurate. Experience shows that such narrow views actually limit innovation.
Creativity defined
Creativity is:
The deliberate development and expression of novel ideas that are likely to be useful.
Creativity is a goal-oriented process designed to solve a particular problem or satisfy a specific need. When it’s
cultivated and managed well, creativity can lead to innovations in many different forms. These can include new
and valuable products and services, business processes, and business models.
As a manager, you’re responsible for cultivating and managing creativity in your group. Even if you didn't
have the opportunity to handpick members of your team, you can still shape how they interact and influence
their working environment in a way that fosters creativity. When you do this effectively, you unleash your
team's innovativeness.

Five myths about creativity

Myth Truth
The Smart you are, the Intelligence correlates with creativity only up to a point. Once you have enough
more creative you are intelligence to do your job, the relationship no longer holds.
Younger people are more It takes many years to build up deep expertise in a given field—the kind of expertise that
creative than older people helps you see meaning or patterns that are invisible to novices. Thus, people of any age
can be creative.
Only risk-takers can be The willingness to take calculated risks and the ability to think in nontraditional ways do
creative. play a role in creativity. But that doesn't mean creativity is restricted to high-impact,
high-risk endeavors. On rare occasions, innovations are visionary leaps forward that
revolutionize an industry. But more often, they’re small improvements that support an
organization’s growth and strategy.
The creative act is Many of the world's most important inventions resulted from the collaboration of a
essentially solitary. group of people with complementary skills, not from the work of one lone genius.
You can't manage As a manager, you can create the conditions that make creativity much more likely to
creativity. occur. By doing so, you increase the probability of innovation.

Components of individual creativity *

Creativity within the individual has several components:
  Expertise. Expertise is the technical, procedural, and intellectual knowledge that takes years to accumulate.
People gain this knowledge by looking at problems or possibilities from many different angles, mulling them
over, and actively seeking more information and knowledge about them.
 Creative thinking skills. These skills reflect how people approach problems. Such skills stem from an
individual’s personality and work style. For example, someone might disassemble something to examine the
component parts and see if it could be simplified.
 Motivation. Data from a research project involving more than 50,000 managers from 20 different countries
shows that the more imaginative and inquisitive people are, the more they’re driven by sheer scientific
curiosity or recognition rather than by commercial needs. *

Creativity takes many forms

 Individual creativity. An individual gets the first spark of an idea and begins to imagine what it could become. He
senses that the idea may have value.
 Collective creativity. Individuals who are coming together to develop creative ideas bring diverse expertise, ways of
thinking, perspectives, and backgrounds to the gathering. Their diversity helps them generate a broader array of ideas.
They also respect one another’s different skills, expertise, and viewpoints. This respect encourages them to freely share
ideas and build on each other’s thinking.
 Process creativity. Someone leading a team that’s striving to generate new ideas provides parameters or structure to
help.
EXAMPLE

Your team is brainstorming ideas for redesigning grocery-shopping carts. Members have thought up hundreds of ideas and
they’re starting to feel confused and overwhelmed. You help the team focus by identifying “areas of need” that a redesigned
shopping cart must address—such as ergonomics, capacity, safety, and security
It’s your job as manager to cultivate the first two types of creativity—individual and collective—by applying the third, process
creativity.

Team thinking
The creative process entails two kinds of team thinking:
 Divergent. To start the creative process, your team first aims for divergent thinking. Members break away
from familiar or conventional ways of seeing and doing things. They find unique connections between
seemingly unrelated things and ideas. Variety of ideas counts most at this stage, not similarity or practical
application of ideas.
When you encourage divergent thinking in your team, you get the broadest swath of ideas on the table. That’s
because you’re promoting individual andcollective creativity—the clash of highly diverse ideas presented by
the different individuals on the team.
 Convergent. After a team has generated lots of ideas through divergent thinking, members move
to convergent thinking: They evaluate the ideas they generated, determine which ones are really new and
worth pursuing, and bring together the best of their ideas to find the optimum solution to addressing a problem
or exploiting an opportunity.
With convergent thinking, you help your team members put their heads together to look at the ideas from a
different vantage point—determining which have the most potential to be viable and valuable. It’s process
creativity in action.

Fostering the right conditions

Fostering the conditions needed for creativity and innovation in your team is one important way that managers are
creative. And it can be a challenge. But it’s well worth the effort. To do this, you need to:
 Shape a creative team by selecting and managing group members specifically to maximize creativity
 Set the psychological environment by productively channeling differences and by making it safe for people to
take risks
 Enrich the physical environment in ways that encourage play, creativity, and idea generation
 Provide outside stimulation to your team by exposing them to events and people who can spur their thinking
on changes in the business arena and new possibilities
 Spark ideas by helping group members identify problems or opportunities that call for creativity and
innovation and by helping them generate options
 Help your group converge on the best option for solving a problem or capitalizing on an opportunity

Harnessing Creativity
Karim Lakani — Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School
By actively involving the customer, organizations can give momentum to the innovation process.

The real problem? Identify the problem.

Creativity expert Robert Austin offers this perspective on creativity in business:

Whether you are designing a new product or running a business in volatile conditions, the journey involves exploration,
improvisation, and adjustment, and in many cases, you can’t know your destination in advance. With this kind of work, time
spent planning is better spent actually doing—trying things you haven’t thought out in detail and quickly incorporating what
you learn into your next attempt...

[The] traditional business problem-solving paradigm gets it wrong in that it acts as if the problem is just “there.” And that
there’s no interpretation or reframing required. But...it is often quite a creative act to figure out what the problem is.

Lesson 2 of 6.
Shape a Creative Team
Whether you’re building an entirely new team or working with an existing team, you can shape your team in ways
that maximize its creativity. Find out how innovation-minded managers master this critical skill.

Value of creative teams

A creative team is:

A group in which different members contribute complementary thinking and skills to produce something of value.

Creative work is fueled by a blend of talents and personal attributes that rarely exist in one person. It requires the ability to see
problems through fresh eyes, along with the skills to transform a promising idea into a profitable innovation.

A creative team delivers output that’s better than anyone working alone could achieve. And because of the speed and reach of
business today, along with the intensity of global competition, creative teams have become increasingly important sources of
innovation.

Characteristics of creative teams

A creative team has a paradoxical blend of characteristics:

A creative team must demonstrate... While also demonstrating

A beginner’s mind Experience & Knowledge
Freedom Discipline
Play Professional & Practicality
Improvisation Planning

Take the “beginner’s mind” versus experience and knowledge. To do its best work, your group needs deep
experience and knowledge related to problems that it’s trying to solve. But at the same time, it requires fresh
perspectives—ones that aren’t constrained by the prevailing wisdom or established ways of doing things.
This beginner’s mind is the perspective of a newcomer: someone who is curious, even playful, and willing to ask
anything, because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Catalyzing Innovation in Your Team

Frank Barrett — Professor, Management and Global Public Policy, Naval Postgraduate School
Sometimes the best way to generate innovations is to force yourself and your team out of your comfort zones.

Intellectual diversity
In addition to demonstrating paradoxical characteristics, a creative team has intellectual diversity.
Intellectual diversity manifests itself in two ways:
 Different areas of expertise and deep knowledge of a range of disciplines brought by the different team
members, such as people who are close to customers, along with those who are aware of new technologies
 A variety of ways of thinking (thinking styles) embodied in team members, such as people who consider the
big picture, along with those who pay attention to detail
Note: Intellectual diversity is not the same as ethnic and gender diversity. Those forms of diversity often enhance a
group’s range of thought, but they don’t guarantee it.

One person can be intellectually diverse

Intellectual diversity can reside within one individual, enhancing his or her personal creativity. In fact, people who have
multiple “social identities”—for example, Asian American/female/engineer—show greater creativity when problems require
them to tap their different spheres of knowledge and experience.

Diverse expertise and knowledge

Creativity in a team arises from the intersection of different disciplines. Team members who bring expertise and
knowledge about different disciplines enhance the group’s creativity.
EXAMPLE

A genetic researcher has brought together team members from different disciplines, including biotechnology and organic
chemistry, to pursue breakthroughs that are advancing the field. Scientists in a given field, she believes, tend to be steeped in the
same literature, absorbing the same biases. The peer-review and grant-making systems reinforce the prevailing views and filter
out creative ideas. This makes it important to hire people from other scientific fields who can bring fresh perspectives. *
Some 60% of innovations in diverse fields were made by outsiders. Consider these innovations—all of which
came from so-called outsiders in the first year they entered their field:

 Diet soft drinks, light beers

 Electronic cash registers
 Running shoes
 Disposable diapers
 Overnight package delivery
 Designer jeans *
Different thinking styles
When the people within a group have different thinking styles, the group as a whole becomes more creative and
thus more likely to generate innovative products, services, and ways of doing business.
A person’s thinking style is the unconscious way he or she looks at and interacts with the world. When facing a
problem or opportunity, an individual will usually approach it by thinking in the way he or she is most
comfortable with. And although each style has particular advantages, no one style is better than another.
You can’t make people adopt a thinking style other than the one they tend to use. But you can mix thinking
styles in your group so that the group as a whole conceives ideas and solutions that reflect a variety of
perspectives.
As a manager, it’s also important that you recognize your own thinking style. Doing so will help you keep your
own cognitive or intellectual biases in check. It will also help you fill your team with people who think
differently than you do—further fostering diversity in your team.
POLL

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

There are many different ways to describe how people think. But to ensure that your group has all the
characteristics necessary for creative work, it’s most important that you learn to recognize and describe different
thinking styles.
One model for describing how people differ in their approach, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, breaks down
thinking styles into four categories, with two contrasting tendencies in each category.

Myers-Briggs contrasting tendencies

Tendency – A Tendency – B
Extroverted Introverted

Looks to other people as the primary means of processing Processes information internally first before presenting
information the results to others
Sensing Intuitive

Prefers hard data and concrete facts—information closely Comfortable with ideas and concepts, with the big
tied to the senses picture
Thinking Feeling

Prefers logical processes and orderly ways of approaching Attuned to emotional cues
problems
Makes decisions based on the values or relationships
involved
Judging Perceiving

Prefers closure—having all the loose ends resolved Likes things open

Comfortable with ambiguity

Wants to collect more data before reaching a decision

Everyone exhibits all of the tendencies in the Myers-Briggs model. But they do so in varying degrees. For
example, if you have a strong tendency toward “feeling,” it doesn’t mean you’re incapable of logical thought.
Rather, when you make decisions, you also consider how they might affect key relationships.
How would you characterize your own thinking style? Knowing your own style helps you appreciate other
thinking styles: You start understanding how different perspectives can complement or round out your own.
Let’s say you’re particularly good at generating unusual ideas. To turn those ideas into something productive,
you’ll need people on your team who have strong analytical skills. They can assess whether your novel ideas
will help serve customers’ needs. You’ll also need people who can translate your idea into a profitable product
or service.
Build intellectual diversity into your team
To build intellectual diversity into your team, you need to hire for diversity, strike a balance between types of
people and integrate diverse members.
Hire for diversity
If your team lacks diverse expertise, knowledge, and thinking styles, look outside your group to find what you
need.
First, look elsewhere within your organization. Are there people with different thinking styles or experience
who could temporarily take part in your team’s work? If not, go outside your organization—maybe even outside
your industry.
EXAMPLE

Engineers working at a ceramics manufacturer are having difficulty getting the ceramics to release from their molds. They
realize that their problem has to do with quick-freezing, not with ceramics. So instead of seeking out other ceramics experts,
they turn to experts in quick-freezing: the food industry.
Whenever you are in a position to recruit new employees into your team, hire for creativity. Look for:

 People whose intellectual perspectives complement your own thinking style and skills and those of others in
your group
 Individuals who are able and willing to work across functional boundaries
 Mavericks and misfits who are challenging, outspoken, * and subversive
 People who have seemingly irrelevant skills
EXAMPLE

A design firm hires engineers who have also worked in side jobs as sculptors, carpenters, graffiti artists, and rock musicians.
Their diverse and unusual backgrounds provide a broad palette of product-design ideas to try in new ways. *
 Experts in some unrelated area
EXAMPLE

A power systems company hires a chemistry professor to develop batteries, even though he lacks related experience. He
proceeds to generate fuel-cell technology breakthroughs that have the potential to replace internal combustion. *
When you define hiring criteria, don’t simply list a standard set of skills. Put a premium on increasing your
group’s intellectual diversity and on finding skills that the group needs but currently lacks.
Beyond your company’s human resources department, consider nontraditional hiring channels as well, such as:
 Colleagues who can offer referrals
 Friends outside your industry who can recommend people whose thinking styles and skill sets match your
needs
 Interns who’ve spent a summer or semester with your company
Remember: Your goal is to build a creative group. So avoid hiring just one person who has a different
perspective. This person will soon feel isolated and could become marginalized. For diverse thinking styles to
make a difference, you need to assemble a critical mass of newcomers who bring fresh perspectives.

Tips of managing creative but difficult people

Some creative people can seem moody, erratic, eccentric, and even arrogant. But if you avoid hiring them because of these
traits—or if you get rid of those already on your team—your group’s creativity could suffer.
Instead, consider these practices to keep such people happy—and get the best ideas from them:
1. Spoil them and let them fail. Show your creative but difficult people unconditional support. And let them try and test
and play—they’re natural experimenters.
2. Surround them with conventional people. Support your creative types with colleagues who are too conventional to
challenge their ideas, but unconventional enough to collaborate with them. These colleagues will excel at paying
attention to details and carrying out executional processes that creative people find dull.
3. Involve them only in meaningful work. Creative people perform well only when they’re inspired. And inspiration is
fueled by work that they see as meaningful. Work is meaningful when it taps into a compelling vision and when people
can see how the work matters.
4. Don’t pressure them. Creativity is enhanced by freedom and flexibility at work. So resist any urge to force your
creative team members to follow processes or to ask them where they are or what they’re doing. Let them work remotely
and outside normal hours.
5. Pay them fairly, but don’t overpay them. Some experts believe that the more you pay people to do what they love,
they less they will love it. That’s because they may feel undue pressure to “perform.”
6. Surprise them. Creative people seek constant change and feel comfortable with ambiguity. So give them surprising,
complex problems to solve. And let them create enough chaos to make their work lives unpredictable.
7. Make them feel important. Creative types love to be recognized for their potential. So let them know how much you
value them.

Strike a balance

*
In bringing people into your team, strike a balance between types of people. The most creative and innovative
groups have a large measure of general thinkers plus the right mix of creative people, detail-oriented individuals,
and conformists. Conformists can support the rule-breaking radicals while strengthening group cohesion.

Type Pros Cons Ideal Percentage of

Team
General Provide Balance Potentially less 40%-50%
receptive to radical
ideas

Possibly more risk-

averse

For both reasons have

greater power to
resist the new
Creative Generate radical Not always attentive 20%-30%
innovation ideas to ideas’ usefulness

Might initiate conflict

Don’t care much

about rules
Detail-oriented Strengthen functions Skittish about taking Up to 10%
like budgetary risks
 control, legal risk-
taking
Conformist Support creatives Not likely to generate 10% to 20%
radical innovation
Boost cooperation, ideas
team cohesion

Improve team’s
confidence

Get Comfortable with Team Conflict

Mark De Rond — Reader, Judge Business School, Cambridge University
If you avoid getting to the root of every conflict, your team could miss out on the benefits that conflict creates. You have to
learn to become comfortable with conflict, so that you can capitalize on it.

Integrate diverse members

Ensure that new members are thoroughly integrated into your team. These tactics can help:
 Discuss with group members why it’s valuable to have people with different knowledge, expertise, and
thinking styles.
 Set the stage for respect by introducing each new member to the team. Tell the team about the person’s
background, skills, and accomplishments. Do it in a way that shows off the new member’s talent and excites
the others—without stirring up competitive jealousies.
 Match newcomers up with other team members who can mentor them and help them acclimate quickly.
 Make sure that group members who represent different knowledge, expertise, and thinking styles can
demonstrate their value to the group—even if it’s only in small ways.
 Meet regularly with new members to discuss their experience with the group and to address any difficulties.
It takes time and careful thought to shape a creative team. But the investment will pay big dividends. You’ll end up
with a group that can generate fresh ideas. Equally important, your team will be able to translate those ideas into
new forms of value for customers and your overall organization.

LESSON 3 of 6

Set the Psychological Environment

The most creative groups operate with a decidedly different mindset. Learn potent tactics for fostering this
mindset—and boosting your team’s creative power.

Manage “creative abrasion”

When you put people with different thinking styles together on one team, you can expect to have disagreements
and clashes. This is actually a good thing.
EXAMPLE

You head up a product development team that specializes in accessories for pets. Your team is brainstorming ideas for creating
a chew toy so resilient that even the most powerful set of canine jaws won’t be able to destroy it. Armen is convinced that the
best way to design such a toy is to manufacture it using a new kind of material. Tova insists that how the toy is shaped will
matter much more than what materials are used. They start arguing over whose idea is better.
Your job is to make sure that such “abrasion” is creative. With creative abrasion, team members interact, listen
to each other's points of view, and question each other's assumptions. They challenge each other’s thinking. As
a result, their interaction leads to even better ideas.
Such intellectual conflict is good—but not if it turns personal, where people attack one another’s character.
EXAMPLE

Armen says to Tova, “Oh, come on, don’t be ridiculous! Shape has nothing to do with resilience!” Tova shoots back, “Armen,
stop being so stubborn. You need to get over your obsession with materials.”
When the people who are involved in a conflict over ideas start attacking each other on a personal level, the
group will splinter. And that will hurt its creativity and productivity.
To encourage and manage creative abrasion in your team, you need to establish operating rules, help the team
depersonalize conflict, and surface hidden conflict.
Establish operating rules
To make sure the abrasion arising in your group is creative and not destructive, establish rules for interacting,
such as:
 Respect all members’ viewpoints.
 Commit to active listening. For example, avoid interrupting others; instead, ask questions to clarify that
everyone understands what someone has just said.
 Accept that each person on the team is entitled to disagree with anyone else on the team.
 Agree that conflicts will be addressed promptly and through agreed-upon means; for instance, through
consensus or through your final authority as arbiter.
 Follow the rules you establish so that team members can see that the operating rules are for real.
 Define consequences for violating the operating rules.
EXAMPLE

You and your team get a big jar and put it in the office. Anytime someone interrupts someone else when a conflict over ideas
arises, the person who interrupted has to put a dollar in the “Interruption Jar.” When team members have shown that they’re not
interrupting as often as before, the team uses the money in the jar to fund a celebratory lunch. Consider a different consequence
for remote team members who interrupt.
F R O M T H E C OL L EC T I ON

How to Embed Innovation into Your Organizational Culture

Innovation doesn't happen by accident. Learn how to cultivate it—including new ways to manage talent and allocate resources.

Read More

Depersonalize conflict
If a conflict in your team takes a personal turn, that’s destructive, not constructive, abrasion. To make it
constructive, remind team members of the agreed-upon operating rules, such as “No interrupting” and “Ask
each other about your viewpoints.” Ask them to apply the rules.
EXAMPLE

Armen and Tova have been generating ideas for making an indestructible chew toy for dogs. Armen’s advocating for use of a
new material. Tova’s insisting that the shape of the toy matters most. They’ve traded a few veiled insults. You remind them of
the rules. Armen takes a deep breath and then says, “Okay, Tova, I understand that you and I think very differently about this.
Can you tell me more about how the shape of the toy might improve its resilience?” This question takes their exchange in a
more productive direction. And Tova’s response may prompt Armen to think up more ideas.
Here are some additional tips for depersonalizing conflict:
 Encourage team members to assume the best about each other. Tell your group, “Let’s assume that we’re
all trying to do the right thing and that we each may see things that others miss. And let’s consider conflicting
 views an important source of learning.” Remind team members of the variety of accomplishments and skills
each member brings to the table. This can help reinforce mutual respect.
 Give all parties in a conflict a chance to speak. Let everyone who’s involved in a conflict describe the data
supporting their viewpoints, such as observations or reports they’ve read. Encourage them to use their own
words to describe what they saw or heard. And let them explain why they decided on the action they’re
recommending.
 Encourage all members to seek to understand differences in their viewpoints.Advise team members to
ask others to comment on the various interpretations of data and then to identify alternative interpretations.
And consider teaming up an individual with someone who has an opposing viewpoint—and having them
solve a specific problem together.
 Reconcile conflicting viewpoints. Taking into account all the data and interpretations uncovered, work with
your group to reconcile conflicting viewpoints and arrive at an agreed-upon course of action.
Surface hidden conflict
Surfacing hidden conflict is critical for fostering creative abrasion in your group. Conflict goes underground
when an issue seems sufficiently taboo or controversial that no one on the team brings it up. Hidden conflicts
can derail creative collaboration in your team because they discourage the open exchange of opinions and ideas
that’s so crucial to creativity.
EXAMPLE

You head a team that includes people from different generations. A younger member, Vincent, is worried that older members
may find it harder to “think outside the box.” He thinks their discomfort with iPads, Facebook, and other technologies means
they are out of touch with youth culture.
Vincent wonders whether they can provide fresh ideas and holds back from engaging with them during brainstorming sessions.
The discussions are less lively than they would be if he participated more fully. Vincent also worries that stating his concerns
would offend his older teammates and make him seem prejudiced. So he keeps silent about his concerns and the subject never
gets raised in the group.
To surface hidden conflicts in your team, create a climate that helps people discuss difficult issues:
 Make it clear that you want difficult issues to be raised. Say, “Even though a subject may seem taboo, no
one will be punished for pointing it out.” Explain that anyone can point out a difficult issue—not just people
with higher rank. And lead by example. For instance, bring up a thorny issue that you find hard, personally, to
air with the team. Or tell a story from your own professional experience that will resonate with your team.
 Provide another outlet for raising issues. Establish an alternative way for people to raise difficult issues. For
example, you can let team members know that it’s okay for them to come to you privately to air concerns
about difficult issues; then you can bring up issues at a meeting without naming who brought them to you.
That way, you protect their identity and relationships.
 Encourage humor. Humor can help people avoid becoming defensive over discussions of difficult issues.
Come up with a funny expression to acknowledge these issues. Encourage team members to use the funny
expression to signal that something difficult needs to be discussed.
EXAMPLE

You suggest that your team use “There’s an elephant in the room” to let others know that they’re struggling with a difficult
issue. At the next team meeting, Vincent says, “Okay, I see an elephant in the room. It’s about what to do if we think our
teammates might not have what it takes to get the job done. My concern is that the older members of the team may find it harder
to think up fresh ideas. But this seems like a taboo subject to bring up.”
 Facilitate discussion about difficult issues. If someone points out a difficult issue, acknowledge it
immediately, even if you don’t agree that an issue exists. Otherwise, group members won’t feel safe bringing
up such matters. Also encourage the person who identified the issue to be specific about his or her concerns
and to provide some examples.
EXAMPLE

When you ask Vincent to be more specific, he says. “Well, during last week’s brainstorming session, several of the older team
members didn’t contribute as many ideas as some of the younger people did.”
 Discuss why the topic seems taboo. Exploring with individuals in your group why the topic seems taboo can
help you understand the assumptions behind reluctance to discuss it.
EXAMPLE

You meet with Vincent one-on-one and ask him, “Why does this seem taboo to talk about?” He says, “Well, it feels like if any
of us raise a concern like this, we’ll hurt our colleagues’ feelings and we’ll come across as prejudiced against them.”
 Identify possible solutions. With your team, explore suggestions for dealing with the issue.
EXAMPLE

You say to your team, “What does everyone think about how we might address concerns about age differences on the team and
what they imply for our collaboration?” People offer different comments. One person says, “Let’s take the question of age out
of the equation. If any of us believes that others aren’t contributing during a brainstorming session, no matter what the possible
reason, let’s agree that it’s okay to express that concern and invite the quieter team members to respond.” Another person says,
“Let’s revisit the creativity resources that older people bring to the table—like deeper and broader life and work experiences
that can spark good ideas. That could help ease concerns about older members’ being out of touch with new tools and trends.”

Foster “intelligent failure”

Creative ideas aren’t born perfect. Most of them, when they’re new, are flawed and need refining. Resist any urge
to criticize team members for coming up with flawed ideas. Instead, encourage “intelligent failure”—failure that
team members can learn from.

To do so, encourage rapid testing and analysis of ideas; for example, use prototypes to test and challenge one
another’s ideas; then use feedback to refine ideas.

To foster “intelligent failure” in your team, encourage members to: *

 Adopt a “good-enough” mindset when presenting ideas. A near-perfect prototype, simulation, or sketch of
an idea says to others, “This idea is so great it doesn’t need anyone’s help.” By contrast, a good-enough
description of a new idea invites people to participate. They not only make the idea better; they also feel
committed to seeing it through.
 Welcome criticism. Invite team members to ask each other questions about their ideas and to clarify critical
feedback on ideas. Reassure them that criticism isn’t personal and is for the good of the cause—so they don’t
become defensive. Help establish candor and cooperation by presenting one of your own ideas with a
statement like, “I know this is still in very rough form, but I’m hoping we can play with it. I need your help to
build it out.”
 Conduct low-cost experiments with the team’s ideas. Have team members find inexpensive ways to get
feedback on their ideas and then use the feedback to keep refining their ideas.
EXAMPLE

Before presenting an idea at the next team meeting, a member makes a few quick phone calls the night before to several
friends. He describes his idea to them, and asks for their thoughts. Then he uses their comments to refine it. At work, he also
builds a cheap mock-up of his idea and shows it to colleagues to get their thoughts.
 Sneak under the organization’s radar. If you and your team are in a large organization, the company may
have a formal process for evaluating new ideas. That process can kill an idea that’s in its early stages because
ideas that don’t meet established criteria often don’t get supported. To avoid this scenario, encourage your
people to use informal networks to get feedback on their ideas.
EXAMPLE

For instance, team members can make rough models or sketches of a new product idea and cover their desks with them. Their
colleagues will be sure to comment as they pass by. As they refine and improve their concepts, they’ll win more advocates and
gain confidence. Eventually, when the right time comes, they can insert their idea into the company’s formal approval
channels.
 Actively learn from failures. Make it standard operating procedure to document failed ideas and
experiments. That way, the team can learn from their mistakes. This is true whether the mistakes relate to the
idea development, assumptions, testing, research, or some other part of the process.

Failing to Success
Doug Rauch — Former President, Trader Joe's
Any company that strives to be innovative must allow for failure. Making mistakes means you're taking risks—which is critical
to innovation.

Establish rewards
Creativity flourishes when organizations have reward systems that encourage people to play with ideas, try new
approaches, and push beyond the bounds of normal work processes. The right rewards can motivate people to do
all this. They can also refresh creative energy in your group.
Rewards can be based on:
 Recognition—for example, acknowledging an individual or group with a plaque, a public announcement, or
an award
 Control—letting an individual or group take part in making a decision that affects them or giving a group the
resources it needs to carry out a project
 Celebration—for instance, acknowledging a successful new-product launch by throwing a party
 Rejuvenation—providing time off or away from the task
Another way to think about rewards is in terms of how they motivate. A reward can be:
 Intrinsic. These kinds of rewards appeal to a person's desire for self-actualization or challenge, interest and
involvement in the work, and curiosity or sense of enjoyment. Activities that enhance intrinsic motivation
include providing challenging work, freedom, resources, encouragement, and opportunities to work with
interesting people.
 Extrinsic. These kinds of rewards appeal to a person's desire to attain a goal that is distinct from the work
itself. Some examples: bonuses or special recognition for coming up with an idea that turns into a successful
product, or tickets to a coveted sports event or concert given as a reward for generating the most ideas.
Intrinsic motivation can help spur creative thought. Extrinsic rewards in the form of extra funding can give team
members the freedom to experiment with ideas or to take risks that they wouldn't have had the means to do
otherwise. Special recognition can get their competitive juices flowing, leading to even more creative ideas.
You probably don’t have the leeway to create a compensation plan for your team. But you can work within the
existing system to better suit your team's situation.
To increase motivation, consider these ideas:
 Ask a high-level executive to visit the team to express his or her appreciation of what the team is doing or to
recognize the team’s work.
 Give a reward for the craziest idea produced during a brainstorming session.
 Recognize a person who has worked outside his or her preferred style or function.
 Award a prize for excellent collaboration.
 Give out small, visible symbols of recognition, such as plaques, T-shirts, hats, and toys.
Tips for activating intrinsic motivation

 Challenge your team members. Give people assignments that intrigue and challenge them but that don’t stretch them
too thin.
 Give people freedom to meet goals. Tell them what the objective is—but not how to achieve it. And keep the objective
stable for a meaningful period of time, so team members have a chance of reaching it.
 Define the right deadlines. Avoid fake deadlines, which can cause team members to mistrust future deadlines. Also
steer clear of impossibly tight deadlines; they’ll only lead to exhaustion in your team.
 Let your employees know that what they do matters. Knowing that their work is meaningful will help them sustain
their passion for the ongoing effort.

Protect creative types

Keep especially creative team members away from customers, critics, and anyone else focused only on
money. * Such powerful constituencies in an organization often want to modify new ideas so they conform to
existing business models or success criteria. Protect people who are doing creative work from such intrusions in the
early stages, by clearing paths for them around obstacles.
EXAMPLE

One creative group within a hardware computing company was sequestered in basement offices. There, they were able to
design a minicomputer better and faster than if they had worked under critics’ eyes.

Managing Creative People

Lisa Judson — IPTV Consultant, AMC Networks
How to get exceptional work from your creative team? Hire the best people, clarify project expectations upfront, and provide
concise feedback.

Create constraints
*

Though it may seem counterintuitive, constraints can sometimes enhance creativity. That’s because constraints
prompt people to find clever solutions in limited time. Parameters help focus people’s thinking, too. So consider
how you might apply constraints to stimulate creativity in your team.
EXAMPLE

The principal of an architectural firm gives employees very restrictive zoning laws and challenges them to design around them.
For an area with a ban on full-size billboards, they come up with a series of small signs that add up to a larger message.

Know when to impose controls

The early stages of thinking up fresh ideas are inherently disorganized and inefficient. So when your people are
in these stages, avoid imposing controls aimed at achieving efficiencies, such as “Reject all product ideas that
will take more than six months to break even.”
The time to impose efficiency-minded controls is later, when ideas have been confirmed as feasible and when
it’s time to propose them for commercialization.

Three ways to kills your’s team creativity

 What are the three behaviors by managers that are most damaging to team creativity? Diary entries made by members of
high-powered project teams revealed the following:
 Micromanaging the details of high-level subordinates’ work
 Failing to address difficult technical or interpersonal problems
 Assigning work without sufficient regard for the capabilities or other responsibilities of the person receiving the
assignments

LESSON 4 of 6

Enrich the Physical Environment

The right physical surroundings can supercharge your team’s creativity. Discover some simple but potent
strategies for crafting a creativity-enhancing setting.

Provide varied stimuli

To encourage creativity in the physical space where your team works, fill the setting—including meeting rooms—
with lots of different kinds of stimuli. These can include:
 Artwork
 Toys
 Reading materials on diverse subjects
 Paper, markers, and other tools for drawing and doodling
 Games
 Puzzles
A variety of stimuli encourages people to make new connections and to think in new ways. That boosts their ability
to come up with creative ideas.
EXAMPLE

During his lunch break, an IT systems engineer flips through an illustrated book on architectural design left in the employees’
lounge. One of the illustrations he looks at shows a unique system of foundational and support structures used in a large
building. The image gets him thinking about a new way to design a network he’s developing. He picks up one of the markers
and some scrap paper that have been scattered on the coffee table and starts sketching out his idea.

Turn Your Office into a Creative Space

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg — Partner, The Innovation Architects, and Coauthor, “Innovation as Usual”
Don’t forget about the influence that the physical workplace has on employee creativity.

Offer outside stimulation

Creativity—and the innovation that results from it—is a bit like a puzzle whose pieces are distributed across
vast physical and virtual terrains. Ideas take shape when people combine existing bits of unrelated knowledge in
new ways. *
To promote this process among your team members, expose them to diverse pieces of knowledge by connecting
them with outside input. Try these tips:

 Bring in paid or unpaid interns and temporary group members, such as people on sabbatical from other
organizations or universities, to participate in brainstorming or other activities with your group.
 Arrange reciprocal visits with groups in other organizations.
 Swap employees with partnering companies.
 Bring in speakers from another industry or consultants to present a unique perspective or expertise.
 Arrange a field trip to a customer or competitor site, or to an organization that’s outside your industry, to
observe best practices.
 Meet with independent inventors or entrepreneurs in your field.
 Send your people to conferences on diverse topics.
 Scour the internet to view competitors' sites and to see how people in other industries are using the Web to
fulfill the same functions your team performs.
Providing outside stimulation through these and other means can trigger creative ideas among your team
members.
EXAMPLE

You manage a team at a furniture company. You organize a field trip for your team to visit a customer site, a company that
makes wax and battery-operated candles. During the visit, Tomas, a member of your team, chats with Sonya, a representative
from the customer organization. She tells him, “Our wax sales have been skyrocketing! It’s funny—even though most people
have access to electricity, they seem to want the ambience that real candles provide.” Tomas mulls this over and starts getting
ideas for new products, such as vintage-era lighting, that might appeal to consumers’ desire for ambience.

Encourage casual interaction

Casual interactions can lead to creative ideas. Such interactions often occur around water coolers and vending
machines and in other public areas such as kitchens, employee lounges, or outdoor spaces.
To encourage your team members to engage in casual, spontaneous conversations:
 Put water coolers and vending machines in locations where more people will walk by and gather naturally.
 Install whiteboards, chalkboards, or flip charts that anyone can use in public areas and in meeting rooms, so
people can document and play with ideas as they occur.
 Have at least one electronic whiteboard from which you can make printouts of documented ideas and
drawings.
 Provide comfortable, casual places for people to sit and chat, such as placing beanbag chairs in conference
rooms.
  Ensure that some conference or meeting rooms are easily accessible on short notice.
Make sure you can easily draw into casual conversations those team members who are working remotely: Use
videoconferencing technology to link up with people who aren’t in your office. And have electronic discussion
databases or threaded discussion capabilities, as well as email, to foster ongoing discussion of key issues among
co-located and remote team members.

Break down organizational silos

Create opportunities for your team members to interact with colleagues who work in other parts of the
organization. You’ll further foster the lively exchange of ideas and creative problem solving.
Sometimes a simple, seemingly unrelated policy change can do the trick.
EXAMPLE

A major TV broadcaster instituted a no-smoking policy in its offices. Smokers from different departments gathered in
designated smoking areas and began chatting about their own business issues. Their conversations led to new ideas. One such
idea was a new technology that would enable TV viewers to upload photos from their cellphones directly onto their TV screen.
The idea turned into a profitable service for the company. *

Crowdsourcing Inside Your Company

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg — Partner, The Innovation Architects, and Coauthor, “Innovation as Usual”
Some of the best ideas can come from unexpected internal sources.

Encouraging two types of “innovation brokers” to interact with each other can also help: *
 “Idea scouts.” These individuals are tuned in to emerging developments from around the world. They use
information about those developments to generate creative ideas for new products, services, business
processes, and business models. Unfortunately, these idea scouts generally lack strong connections with others
in their organization, and the opportunities they identify rarely get considered.
 “Idea connectors.” These individuals have extensive networks within the organization. They also possess the
know-how needed to distribute information gathered by idea scouts. Idea connectors know who’s doing what;
they’re the go-to people that others consult when they want to get something done. And when these
connectors find out about an innovation opportunity, they know who in the organization is best equipped to
exploit the idea. They also have the influence needed to swiftly deploy their network to follow up on exciting
new ideas.
When you connect idea scouts with idea connectors, you help foster creativity not only within your team but
also throughout your entire organization.
EXAMPLE

Mike, an idea scout in your team, has learned of a new development in ultrasonics that’s being used in the aerospace industry.
You encourage him to talk about the technology with several idea connectors who work in other parts of the organization. One
of them, Helen, describes the technology to two other colleagues. She knows they are trying to solve a problem involving
bonding medical plastics without using traditional methods of heat or adhesives. These colleagues think of a way to use a
modified version of the new technology to develop a solution to their plastics-bonding problem.
POLL

How often do you discuss ideas with colleagues from other departments?
 All the time
 Sometimes
 Rarely
 Never
Promote play
Studies have shown that fresh ideas arise during play. That’s because:
 Play frees people from the requirement to follow established behaviors. This is true whether people are
engaging in diversionary play (such as taking a break from work to play a video game) or play that’s related to
their regular job (such as doodling pictures of how a new product design might look).
 Play helps incubate ideas. When employees take a play break, their conscious minds forget about the
problem at hand. When they turn their attention back to work, their minds are refreshed. While they were
playing, they may have unconsciously processed and recombined ideas. When they transition back to their
current problem, they may have new insights about it. And because they’re refreshed, they can transition
easily to other challenges too.
 Play breaks down boundaries. A moment of fun with colleagues helps team members break down
hierarchical boundaries and relate to one another in a personal way. That makes them feel safe to explore and
discuss new ideas with colleagues without fear that their ideas will be criticized.
To provide time and space for play in your team:
 Scatter toys, games, and puzzles in common areas in the workspace.
 Encourage people to take breaks.
 Organize off-sites, birthday parties, and other social gatherings that let people have fun together
 Encourage team members to take advantage of in-house gyms or relaxation rooms available in your
organization.
 Let people spend some of their work time freely experimenting with new ideas they’re curious about,
regardless of an idea’s potential profitability or marketability.
EXAMPLE

At a chemicals company, a team played with an idea for a virtually indestructible fiber during their allocated “free time” over a
six-month period. Their play led to the creation of one of the company’s most successful and profitable innovations.

What is Play?

In case you didn’t know, you’re engaging in play if:

 You’re aware that the activity you’re doing is somehow distinct from ordinary life
 You have the freedom to manipulate processes and assume new and even unrealistic identities and roles
 You have flexibility in how you handle the means and ends of the play, such as spontaneous expression of a fantasy or
deliberate experimentation with an idea
 You experience positive emotions from doing the activity, including relaxation, joy, a sense of fun, or a feeling that
tension has been relieved
 The activity has time and space limits
 The outcomes of the activity are unpredictable

Enable reflection
Some people find a lively discussion the most effective means of generating new ideas. But others do their best
creative thinking when they have quiet time alone. In fact, in one survey of adults living in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan, 70% of respondents said that they prefer to work by themselves
versus collaborating with others when they’re being creative. *
So provide time and space where your more introverted employees can be reflective and explore ideas quietly on
their own. This can mean letting them work outside the office, at home, or in some other setting that’s conducive
to contemplation—where interruptions will be minimal.
EXAMPLE

You and your team come up with recognized and accepted signals that communicate when someone wants uninterrupted
time to reflect by themselves. Employees who have offices with doors post a sign on the door that reads “Go away—genius at
work!” Those who work in cubicles are given movable partitions that they can slide across their cube entrance. And because
cubes are often noisy places, the people who work in them are allowed to roam to quieter places to do their creative thinking.

LESSON 5 of 6

Spark Ideas
The best innovations spring from a wealth of fresh—even wild—ideas. Find out how the most creative
individuals and teams get the idea pipeline flowing fast and hard.

Understand divergent versus convergent thinking

Divergent thinking is critical to creativity and innovation. That’s because it enables you and your team to quickly
generate a wide variety of options.

Through divergent thinking, you and your team:

 See connections between facts or events that others have missed

 Ask questions that haven't been asked before
 Ask questions from different perspectives
The most divergent thinkers apply five skills for discovering new ideas: *

 Associating—discovering new directions by making connections across seemingly unrelated questions,

problems, or ideas from different fields
  Questioning—asking questions that challenge conventional wisdom and the status quo to understand how
things are today, why they are that way, and how they might be changed. Questions are framed as: “If we did
X, what would happen?” or “Why do X at all?” and “Why not do Y?”
 Observing—carefully watching the surrounding world, including customers, products, services, technologies,
and companies, and gaining insights from the observations about new ways of doing things
 Experimenting—actively trying out new experiences and piloting new ideas, such as visiting new places,
trying new things, and seeking new information, while suspending current beliefs and testing hypotheses
along the way
 Networking—actively searching for new ideas by talking with people who vary wildly in their backgrounds
and perspectives
Divergent thinking differs from convergent thinking: You use divergent thinking to increase your options, and
then convergent thinking to select the best options to pursue.
T O OL

Worksheet to Encourage Divergent Thinking

Download Tool

F R O M T H E C OL L EC T I ON

Using the Crowd as an Innovation Partner

Can strangers solve your trickiest business problem? Learn when—and how—to use crowdsourcing.

Read More

Encourage brainstorming
Brainstorming can stimulate divergent thought. Brainstorming builds:
 Fluency—producing many original ideas easily
 Flexibility—coming up with many different kinds of ideas
Brainstorming techniques fall into four broad categories: visioning, exploring, modifying, and experimenting.
Each category relies on different thought processes, such as intuition and data gathering, at different points.
Brainstorming can be done in a group, or alone by individuals.
To get the most from both group or solo brainstorming sessions:
 Focus the session on defining the problem that needs solving or coming up with ideas for solving just one
identified problem.
 Suspend judgment of ideas as they’re being generated: Welcome even seemingly wild ideas. The more ideas a
team or person can generate, the higher the quality of the final choice.
 Consider including some outsiders in a brainstorming session—such as customers, suppliers, or business
partners.
 Provide tools—flip charts, paper and markers for doodling and note taking, an electronic whiteboard.
 Make ideas as concrete and visual as possible; for example, by sketching them out.
 Don’t assume the problem you’re focusing on is similar to ones that have come before.
 Resist any urge to fall in love with the first appealing idea that gets generated.

How to “think in new boxes”

Brainstorming is all about “thinking outside the box”—stepping out of your current mental models and frameworks, right?
Wrong. Thinking outside the box isn’t enough. That’s because the space outside your current box is infinitely huge. So there’s
no guarantee you’ll find a solution to your problem through brainstorming.
 That’s why you need to build or choose a new box to structure your thinking during a brainstorming session. To create a new
box, describe your business without mentioning the words you most often use to describe it. Use the resulting words to
brainstorm ideas.
EXAMPLE

A champagne manufacturer wanted to grow sales. During brainstorming sessions, executives talked about their business
without using words like liquor, drink, champagne, alcohol, and bottle. The exercise helped them see that their business was,
at heart, about contributing to the success of parties and celebrations.
Once they had created this new box, they brainstormed ideas including:
 Making a plastic bag sturdy enough to carry a champagne bottle plus a few pounds of ice, for people who bring
champagne to a party as a gift during a hot summer day
 Attaching a “How to Write a Speech” booklet to champagne bottles, to help party-goers who are called on to give a toast
or speech
 Modifying the wooden crates that contain the company’s champagne bottles so they could be recycled as boards for
party games, like chess, checkers, and backgammon

Innovations That are Long Overdue

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg — Partner, The Innovation Architects, and Coauthor, “Innovation as Usual”
Technology isn’t always the key to innovation. Sometimes a look into the past shows you the future.

Visioning
Through the brainstorming technique of visioning, you imagine a long-term, ideal future and generate ideas for
achieving it. At this stage, ignore constraints like money, time, and resources.
As you try to imagine the ideal future, follow what intrigues you. A breakthrough idea often comes from a
seemingly irrelevant place.
Use these steps to imagine an ideal future and generate ideas related to the problem you’re trying to solve:
1. “Wish List.” Imagine a future where you’re granted any wish you wanted.
EXAMPLE

You work in a consultancy that manages large-scale capital infrastructure projects for clients such as utilities, airports, and
high-speed rail companies. You and your team want to brainstorm ideas for managing these projects more effectively for
clients. Using the “wish list” technique, you imagine a future where even the biggest, most complex, and most expensive
capital projects are completed on time, within budget, and at the desired level of quality, including perfect safety
performance.
2. “Ideal Scenario.” Use words or images to depict what the ideal future would look like.
EXAMPLE

You and your team pull together images of complex capital infrastructure projects—nuclear power plants, railroads, a bustling
airport, power lines, people working on and using the infrastructure—and put them all together to make a collage.
3. “Time Machine.” Pretend you can time-travel 10 years into the future. Imagine what the situation could
look like. Brainstorm ideas for making the situation real.
EXAMPLE

You and your team think up ideas for realizing the future ideal scenario. Ideas include helping clients to set up a central capital
project management office, use new project management technologies, and explore public-private partnerships and consortia
to bring new funding sources and expertise to large projects.

Position for future markets

Tamar Elkeles — Vice President & Creator, The Learning Center, QUALCOMM
Innovations that may not benefit customers today could meet their needs tomorrow.

Exploring
Through the brainstorming technique known as exploring, you use symbols, analogies, or metaphors to
describe an ideal scenario and to challenge assumptions.
EXAMPLE

Suppose your group is trying to create more innovative customer service. Ask:
“If customer service were music, what music comes to mind when we think of best-practice customer
service?”
 “What feelings do we want our ideal level of service to generate in customers?”
 “What images come to mind when we envision the perfect service?”
Also try reversing the assumptions you've been working under. This can generate fruitful new possibilities.
EXAMPLE

You and your team have been assuming that what customers care most about is getting their order shipped to them on time. You
reverse this assumption: “Customers don’t care at all about whether their order gets to them on time.” This sparks other ideas
about what customers might care about—such as getting the right product, reaching a real person quickly who can answer their
questions, and knowing that if something goes wrong with the product, the company will either fix it or refund their money
right away. By doing this, you’ve broadened the possibilities for how to create the best customer service.
Modifying
Through the brainstorming technique of modifying, you start with the status quo and seek to adapt some aspect
of it. Try modifying a current product, service, business process, or business model by imagining it from the
perspective of someone else, such as a customer.
EXAMPLE

You work for a company that operates premium cinemas. For a ticket price that’s two-thirds higher than at traditional cinemas,
customers can have hot meals delivered to their seats. You imagine yourself as a moviegoer who wants maximum value for a
high-priced ticket. Taking this perspective helps you envision additional services the company might provide.
For instance, you’d love it if the company allowed you to reserve your favorite seats ahead of time or have cocktails delivered
with your hot meal. You’d be willing to pay even more if the company offered one showing when no one under 18 was allowed
in the theater, so you wouldn’t have to see the glow of smartphones as teenagers texted their friends.
Here are some additional ideas for modifying: *
1. Subtract. Remove seemingly essential elements of an existing product or service. Consider what new
innovation might result. For example, removing a bicycle’s rear wheel led to invention of the exercise cycle.
Removing the frame from a pair of eyeglasses resulted in creation of the contact lens. And taking the bank
employee out of a cash transaction led to innovation of the automated teller machine (ATM).
2. Add. Combine unrelated tasks or functions to generate fresh ideas.
EXAMPLE

A travel-bag company used this approach to expand into the college backpack market. Backpacks, especially for college
students, cause back and neck strain because of the weight of their contents (heavy textbooks, laptops, beverages). Instead of
padding the straps like other backpack designs, the company shaped them so they press gently into wearers’ shoulders at shiatsu
points. Result: a soothing massage sensation. The heavier the contents, the deeper the sensation and the more stress relief for
users.
3. Multiply. Alter a product or service component by copying one of its features.
EXAMPLE

A consumer products company developed a razor with two blades. The device gave a closer shave because the blades perform
different functions: The first pulls up and holds the hair so it can’t retract into the skin. The second cuts the hair off. Bifocal
lenses, double-sided tape, and three-way light bulbs are additional examples of successful innovations that resulted from
multiplication.
4. Divide. Separate and rearrange product or service components.
EXAMPLE

A pharmaceutical company redesigned the medical-sales training program in one of its business units. It divided the course
content—anatomy, surgical procedures, medical devices—into smaller chunks. Then it rearranged the content around relevant
diseases and conditions. This cut the time required to train sales reps. The redesign also enabled them to better target their sales
pitch to each product’s applications. And it made it much easier to roll out training on new products to the company’s existing
sales force.
5. Depend. Make the attributes of a product change in response to changes in another attribute or in the
surrounding environment. Examples include eyewear with transition lenses that change from light to dark in the
sunlight and windshield wipers that speed up as it rains harder.
T O OL

Brainstorming Techniques

F R O M T H E C OL L EC T I ON

Customers as Innovators: A New Way to Create Value

Some companies give customers innovation toolkits to get new ideas for their products. Get tips for trying this at your organization.

Read More

Experimenting
Through the brainstorming technique of experimenting, you systematically combine elements in various ways
and then test the combinations. One experimenting approach involves creating a matrix.
EXAMPLE

You own a car-wash company, and you want to expand into new markets. You think of as many parameters as possible that
could relate to your business—such as washing methods, items to be washed, equipment used, and products sold. For each
parameter, you brainstorm as many variations as possible, even ideas that seem wild. You create the following matrix to show
your ideas:

Washing Method Item Washed Equipment Used Product Sold

Dry cleaning Cars Sprays Detergents

Detergent and water Houses Conveyors Brushes

Enzyme cleaning Boats Tubs Sponges

Irradiation Clothes Stalls Gifts

Dogs Dryers Pet accessories

Brushes

The matrix gives you ideas for new business possibilities—such as a service that lets pet owners wash their
dogs using stalls and brushes and buy needed accessories such as collars and toys.
Get ideas from customers
*

Customers can be a great source of ideas—if you listen to what they say and probe for more information about
their needs.
Hear customers’ complaints
Customers can comment on the weaknesses of current products or services. Their complaints can spark ideas
for improving an offering or creating an entirely new one. You can gather feedback from customers from a wide
variety of touch points—such as phone calls, comments that customers post on your organization’s Facebook
page, and customer tweets about the organization.
EXAMPLE

You head up a team at a company that makes fashion accessories. A customer calls to place an order. Mikhail, a member of
your team, starts chatting with her about what she likes and doesn’t like about the handbags she has. She says, “I like having
different bags for different occasions. But it’s a hassle to move my stuff from one bag to another. I wish there was a convenient
way to change handbags.” This gets Mikhail thinking about producing a line of handbags with changeable exteriors. Women
could keep their supplies in the same interior pockets, but easily attach a different cover to change the look of the bag.
Help customers perform jobs
*
People “hire” products and services to get jobs done. By understanding what jobs consumers are trying to get
done, you can generate ideas for new or refined offerings. And by breaking jobs into steps, you can think of
additional innovations.

Customer jobs lead to innovations

Job steps Innovative examples
Planned resources A weight-loss company streamlines meal planning by offering a system that
doesn’t require counting calories.
 Gather items or information A moving company provides prepackaged moving kits containing the number
and types of boxes required for a move.
Prepare to carry out the job A power-tool manufacturer adds adjustable levers to its circular saw to
accommodate common bevel angles used by roofers to cut wood.
Verify readiness An enterprise software company develops merchandising optimization
software that confirms the optimal timing for and level of a retailer’s
markdowns for each product.
Carry out the job A health-care product company’s creates a system that automatically
circulates heated water through thermal pads placed on surgery patients to
maintain their normal body temperature during the procedure.
Monitor the job A sports-apparel company makes a running shoe with a built-in sensor that
communicates audio feedback to the runner’s iPod about time, distance, pace,
and calories burned.
Improve execution A software company’s operating system automatically downloads and installs
updates, removing hassle for computer users.
Finish the Job A materials manufacturer makes a wound dressing that stretches and adheres
only to itself—not to patients’ skin or sutures—allowing medical personnel to
easily secure, then remove, dressings

Watch “lead users”

Lead users are customers whose needs are far ahead of market trends. Such customers often modify existing
products or services or use them in unexpected ways to suit their unique requirements. The innovations they
develop for themselves can ultimately interest many other users, too. By studying what lead users are doing, you
can get ideas about how to improve existing offerings or develop entirely new ones. The Web and open-source
software are two innovations created by lead users to solve their own problems.
Lead users are at the cutting edge of your target market. Consult with your company’s customer service people or
account people who serve the most sophisticated of your customers. They’re best positioned to know lead users—
and may even be familiar with some users’ problems and the solutions these users have invented.

Distributed Innovation
Karim Lakhani — Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School
Many innovations come from outside sources, not just from internal research and development.

Conduct open innovation

Through open innovation, companies look outside their organizational boundaries for creative ideas. They seek
out a broad range of sources, including suppliers, customers, competitors, scientists, and entrepreneurs. These
sources can be found anywhere in the world.

But because information is sensitive, such efforts generally require coordination at a higher level in the
organization. Raise this idea with those in your organization who are directly or indirectly involved with
corporate strategy.

Open innovation practices include: *

 Identifying consumer needs. Companies clarify what kinds of ideas they’re looking for.
EXAMPLE

A consumer products company identifies a need for laundry detergent that cleans effectively in cold water. It decided to look for
innovations that enable products to work well at low temperatures in chemistry and biotech industries that had faced similar
problems.
 Using networks. Organizations cultivate proprietary and open networks whose members may have promising
ideas.
EXAMPLE

A large organization’s proprietary networks include its top 15 suppliers, who collectively have 50,000 research and
development employees. The company creates a secure IT platform to share problem briefs with these suppliers—who can’t see
others’ responses to the briefs. The company’s open networks include an organization that connects interested businesses with
universities, government and private laboratories, and consultants who can develop solutions to science and technology
problems.
 Using IT to crowdsource. * Organizations set up a website or mobile app to engage the external digital
community in generating creative ideas. They then use a Wiki to gather, store, and disperse the ideas within
their organization.
EXAMPLE

A municipality wrestling with transportation infrastructure and housing challenges sets up a website that lets citizens contribute
ideas and weigh in on decisions regarding the city’s future.
 Distributing ideas. Organizations circulate ideas for refining or further commercializing existing products to
others in the organization. They might also share ideas on using technology solutions. They ask people to
comment on the ideas’ potential.
EXAMPLE

A global company logs product ideas on an online catalog using a template that documents pertinent facts—such as current
sales of existing products or patent availability for a new technology. The document goes to managers and research and
development teams worldwide, who weigh in on the ideas’ potential.

Reverse innovate
*

Many innovations are designed for an emerging market. Often, to make products more accessible to more
people, they are designed to be cheaper, be simpler to operate, or require less energy. These new products have
potential in other markets, either for the same or a more specialized use. The same is true of services, business
processes, and even business models.
EXAMPLE

When a large U.S. big-box retailer entered emerging markets, it created smaller, cozier stores. Shoppers in those markets
generally lacked the liquidity to buy in bulk. And many shoppers rode bicycles, used buses, or walked and couldn’t carry too
many items.
The company then brought the small-store concept back to the U.S., where many consumers had grown tired of big-box stores.
The small-store format worked well in dense urban environments, which had constrained spaces and ultrahigh rents. By
drawing on its economies of scale in purchasing and supply-chain management, the retailer became a rival to other small-box
retailers.

Bring a Flexible Mindset to Innovation

Simone Ahuja — Founder and Principal, Blood Orange
A clay refrigerator that doesn’t use electricity? A washing machine designed to clean vegetables? These are just a few
examples of successful innovations developed by flexible minds.

LESSON 6 of 6

Converge on the Best Option

You and your team have worked hard to brainstorm exciting new ideas. Now figure out which idea might
deliver maximum value if you made it real.

Move to convergent thinking

Once you and your team have generated many creative ideas through divergent thinking, it’s time to move to
convergent thinking. At this point, you stop emphasizing what’s novel and start emphasizing what’s useful.
Your goal: to zero in on the best idea.
Narrow the options
In convergent thinking, you and your team narrow the field of ideas. To do so, you set limits to help you
identify ideas that lie beyond the boundaries. You can then rule those options out.
Suppose your team’s creative effort centers on coming up with an idea for a new product. You can narrow the
list of options your team generated by asking some basic questions:
 Does the product have to be compatible with our company’s existing products or services? If so, in what
ways?
 What functions and features are “must-haves” for the product from our customers’ point of view? What
functions and features are “nice-to-haves”?
 What product criteria are determined by our company’s values? For example, will the product have to work
flawlessly every time? Will it need to meet certain safety standards or environmental regulations?
 What are our cost constraints? Which of our options will fit within those constraints?
 When does the product need to break even financially? How much of a profit margin will it have to generate?
 What are the size or shape constraints for the new product?
 By when do we need to launch the product to capitalize on market demand for it?
Answers to these questions will help you and your team identify which option on your list of ideas has the best
potential to become a valuable innovation.
Answers to these questions can also help you determine whether you need to move back to divergent thinking to
generate more ideas. If none of the ideas on your list meets the criteria you’ve defined for pursuing
implementation, you may need another round of divergent thinking.

Create a filtering mechanism

For every product or service idea with real commercial promise, there are many that aren’t worth pursuing. And for
every idea for a new business process or business model, there are many that just don’t make sense. To winnow
out the bad ideas from your list, you need a filtering mechanism.

Ideas have a high mortality rate

By one estimate, only one in 3,000 raw ideas results in a commercial success. So innovative companies know that they need
plenty of ideas in the pipeline if they hope to maintain a modest degree of growth.
Research on consumer goods companies has found that to achieve 3% annual growth, a $10 billion company must maintain a
pipeline of innovation projects worth $5 billion.
Bring in diverse perspectives
To evaluate your list of ideas and weed out the unpromising ones, have people from a variety of disciplines,
functions, and viewpoints act as filters. When it comes to new product or service ideas, consider using “business
accelerators”—outside companies that test promising ideas to gauge their commercial potential. *
Funnel ideas
*
Think of your huge collection of ideas from your divergent thinking sessions as moving through an idea funnel:

“Early Tests of Business Potential: Stage-Gates and Quick Kills.” The Innovator's Toolkit: 10 Practical
Strategies to Help You Develop and Implement Innovation. Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009.
Process your undeveloped and roughly screened ideas through the funnel. If they don't meet relatively low
criteria, such as broad cost ranges or fairly flexible deadlines for production, eliminate them. As the funnel
narrows, the criteria become stricter. Keep weeding out ideas that don’t meet your more rigorous limits—until
you’re left with the best ones.
Use stage-gates
The stage-gate system consists of an alternating series of development stages and assessment “gates” that helps
you eliminate weak ideas early and get potential winners to market faster. Stages and gates are organized
around issues of feasibility, development, and launch.
 Stages. These are phases of the development process of a new idea. Examples of phases include development
of the raw idea, creation of technical specifications, prototyping, and commercialization.
 Gates. These are checkpoints where people with decision-making authority decide whether the project should
be killed, sent back for more work, or advanced to the next development stage. You can use gates to determine
whether an idea still supports strategic objectives, whether it passes technical and financial hurdles, or whether
it’s ready for prototyping.
 “Early Tests of Business Potential: Stage-Gates and Quick Kills.” The Innovator's Toolkit: 10 Practical
Strategies to Help You Develop and Implement Innovation. Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009.
Plan for implementation
Innovation is an outcome of a team’s creative process. It’s the implementation of the best option the team
selects from its list of possible options. Through implementation, you turn that great idea for a new product or
service into an actual offering that’s launched in the marketplace. Or you put into action that brilliant new
business process or business model you envisioned.
Once your team has narrowed down its list of ideas to the most promising one, it’s time to think about how this
idea can be proposed internally—and successfully implemented.

Escape from Brainstorm Island

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg — Partner, The Innovation Architects, and Coauthor, “Innovation as Usual”
Two-day brainstorming sessions won’t encourage your people to innovate, because when they go back to work, nothing will
have changed. Instead, make innovation part of their everyday work lives, using these five tactics.