Innovate or perish
October 20, 2003 | 12:00am
The theme of the 18 th advertising congress in Baguio City, "What’s the Big Idea?" revolves around the concept of innovation – in the way one thinks, the way one creates, the way one executes. Today, more than ever, ad industry leaders face the challenge of how to increase productivity and recognition of Filipino creativity through innovation. But merely sending mandatory guidelines to be more creative and innovative doesn’t bite. One needs a system to do it swiftly and effectively.
The culture of innovation accepts risk and failure. Research reveals that many innovations fail. To reduce all these debacles, a professional approach, a supportive work environment, a learning organization, and other components of a culture of excellence are needed to support innovation.
Innovations should be introduced in a timely manner, create value added, and pay communications dividends. With these expectations, supportive leadership and competent innovative creative staff are pre-requisites. The capacity to get the basics right is crucial – from effective program design, development and implementation
People fuel innovation. Certain values and skills must be imbibed to be successful at it. To efficiently produce innovation, and to produce it repeatedly, people need a process to guide the way they think. Robert Sutton in his book Weird Ideas That Work gives us a few practical guideposts in promoting, managing and sustaining innovations.
Creativity is in the eye of the beholder. As cases from The Beatles’ music to Bill Gates’ softwares show, no matter how wonderful something new is, it will only be accepted if the right people can be persuaded of its value. This challenges Ralph Waldo Emerson’s theory that says, "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." Too many innovations succeed because they are marketed better, not because they are objectively superior to those of competition.
An innovator must sell an idea, or should partner with someone who can do it. Otherwise the idea will not fly out of the inventor’s mind. This is why so many people practice bartering their ideas, analyze how others do it, pursue tutoring, and read books on peddling influence. Innovators especially need to know that judgments of them and their ideas are intertwined, perhaps inseparable. Some generally train their attention to the people who prepare a business plan than to the proposal itself. Research tells us that in any presentation of ideas, approvals or disapprovals, depend largely on who is saying what, the messenger and not the message.
Kimberley Elsbach and Roderick Kramer’s study on how movie scripts are pitched to Hollywood producers suggests that if you want people to believe your ideas are creative, persuading them that you are imaginative is more important than the ideas themselves. Being slick isn’t always important, and it can backfire if one is boring, stiff, recites a list of facts or come across as "just a guy in a suit." Such pitchers are seen as insincere and passionless, as dull people who lack inventiveness.
Conversely, being credulous or eccentric can convince others that a "pitcher" has fresh ideas and rejects conventional thinking. People also shouldn’t pitch a menu of ideas. One producer noted, "There’s not a buyer in the world you can convince that you have the same passion for five different projects. What you’re selling is your passion. You’re rarely selling your idea. You are selling you. You’re selling your commitment, your point of view."
The best pitchers spark creative thoughts in "catchers," who join them as creative collaborators rather than passive listeners The magic is the most important part of the spiel, it’s a seduction, and a promise of what lies ahead. Once buyers become excited enough to add their own creative touches, it means they are infected by the pitcher’s passion and commitment.
Flexibility and rigidity are hallmarks of innovation. Developing new ideas and combining old with new thoughts are things that can be done by people who can modify their beliefs and attitudes easily. Their adaptability often results in the discovery of great ideas that can make a difference on how requirements can be accomplished, plans can be written, or strategies can be executed. Rigidity is likewise necessary for generating successful innovations. It helps to define problems narrowly enough so they can be talked about in a constructive way, so people know what to focus on and what to ignore, and so ideas can be started, tested, nurtured and eventually implemented.
A useful guideline for striking a healthy balance between rigidity and flexibility is to hold either the solution or the problem constant, and to let the other vary. The most common strategy is to find a problem and then to search for and evaluate alternative solutions, to keep the problem rigid and the possible solutions flexible. This is the problem-driven search. The other way is to hold the solution constant and let the problems vary, or a solution-driven search.
Discomfort is an inevitable and desirable part of innovation. It isn’t much fun, but it helps people to avoid and break out of mindless action. Unfamiliar ideas and things generate negative feelings like irritation, anxiety, and disapproval, as do interruptions of routine action and challenges to taken-for-granted assumptions. If everyone likes your ideas, it probably means that you are not doing many original things.
Discomfort plays another role. Many successful ideas were invented because someone got upset about something and did something about it. Inventor David Levy uses the Curse Method. He says, "Whenever I hear someone curse, it’s a sign to invent something." Levy designed the Wedgie lock after he heard a co-worker cursing because a thief had stolen his bicycle seat. He noticed that the streets near his lab were filled with abandoned bikes without seats, suggesting there was a market for a good bicycle seat lock. Being uncomfortable or downright unhappy isn’t much fun, but it can be an innovator’s inspiration.
The organizing principles for routine work reflect the assumption that everything is a permanent condition; the organizing principles for innovative work reflect the opposite assumption. Both are useful fictions. After all, exploiting existing knowledge is only wise if what worked in the past will keep working. And bringing in varied ideas – seeing things in new ways, and breaking from the past – only makes sense when, even if old ways still work, they will soon be obsolete. Innovative leaders constantly create alarm and warn that just because things are working well now does not mean that they will work later.
Andrew Grove of Intel is famous for being paranoid that a disruptive change – a new technology that makes their technology or business model obsolete – will appear. Sustaining innovation requires treating everything from procedures and product lines to teams and organizations as things that might be useful now but will need to be discontinued at some point. The goal at birth would be planned and graceful death, with disbanding done once the company had completed a project or intertwined set of projects.
Making everything simple – focusing on what matters most and ignoring the rest results to innovation, the sustainability of which as applied in organizations, is dependent on how the law of parsimony is effected. Simple messages travel faster, simpler designs reach the market faster, and the elimination of clutter allows faster decision-making.
A simple philosophy about what an innovation will be, and will not be, reduces unnecessary distraction and effort. If everyone follows a simple vision, it speeds development, focuses effort, and results in simpler products or services, which will be easier to build or implement.
Innovation is truly a pair of attitudes: the ability to switch emotional gears between cynicism and belief, or between deep doubt and unshakeable confidence. Unleash its power to reinforce the latent power of creativity in ourselves and the people we get to work with.
In the ad industry, innovations in whatever form is most welcome. The 18th Philippine Advertising Congress hopes to provide the impetus for disruptions that can allow creative growth.
E-mail bongo@vasia.com or bongo@campaignsandgrey.net for comments/questions.
The culture of innovation accepts risk and failure. Research reveals that many innovations fail. To reduce all these debacles, a professional approach, a supportive work environment, a learning organization, and other components of a culture of excellence are needed to support innovation.
Innovations should be introduced in a timely manner, create value added, and pay communications dividends. With these expectations, supportive leadership and competent innovative creative staff are pre-requisites. The capacity to get the basics right is crucial – from effective program design, development and implementation
People fuel innovation. Certain values and skills must be imbibed to be successful at it. To efficiently produce innovation, and to produce it repeatedly, people need a process to guide the way they think. Robert Sutton in his book Weird Ideas That Work gives us a few practical guideposts in promoting, managing and sustaining innovations.
An innovator must sell an idea, or should partner with someone who can do it. Otherwise the idea will not fly out of the inventor’s mind. This is why so many people practice bartering their ideas, analyze how others do it, pursue tutoring, and read books on peddling influence. Innovators especially need to know that judgments of them and their ideas are intertwined, perhaps inseparable. Some generally train their attention to the people who prepare a business plan than to the proposal itself. Research tells us that in any presentation of ideas, approvals or disapprovals, depend largely on who is saying what, the messenger and not the message.
Kimberley Elsbach and Roderick Kramer’s study on how movie scripts are pitched to Hollywood producers suggests that if you want people to believe your ideas are creative, persuading them that you are imaginative is more important than the ideas themselves. Being slick isn’t always important, and it can backfire if one is boring, stiff, recites a list of facts or come across as "just a guy in a suit." Such pitchers are seen as insincere and passionless, as dull people who lack inventiveness.
Conversely, being credulous or eccentric can convince others that a "pitcher" has fresh ideas and rejects conventional thinking. People also shouldn’t pitch a menu of ideas. One producer noted, "There’s not a buyer in the world you can convince that you have the same passion for five different projects. What you’re selling is your passion. You’re rarely selling your idea. You are selling you. You’re selling your commitment, your point of view."
The best pitchers spark creative thoughts in "catchers," who join them as creative collaborators rather than passive listeners The magic is the most important part of the spiel, it’s a seduction, and a promise of what lies ahead. Once buyers become excited enough to add their own creative touches, it means they are infected by the pitcher’s passion and commitment.
A useful guideline for striking a healthy balance between rigidity and flexibility is to hold either the solution or the problem constant, and to let the other vary. The most common strategy is to find a problem and then to search for and evaluate alternative solutions, to keep the problem rigid and the possible solutions flexible. This is the problem-driven search. The other way is to hold the solution constant and let the problems vary, or a solution-driven search.
Discomfort plays another role. Many successful ideas were invented because someone got upset about something and did something about it. Inventor David Levy uses the Curse Method. He says, "Whenever I hear someone curse, it’s a sign to invent something." Levy designed the Wedgie lock after he heard a co-worker cursing because a thief had stolen his bicycle seat. He noticed that the streets near his lab were filled with abandoned bikes without seats, suggesting there was a market for a good bicycle seat lock. Being uncomfortable or downright unhappy isn’t much fun, but it can be an innovator’s inspiration.
Andrew Grove of Intel is famous for being paranoid that a disruptive change – a new technology that makes their technology or business model obsolete – will appear. Sustaining innovation requires treating everything from procedures and product lines to teams and organizations as things that might be useful now but will need to be discontinued at some point. The goal at birth would be planned and graceful death, with disbanding done once the company had completed a project or intertwined set of projects.
A simple philosophy about what an innovation will be, and will not be, reduces unnecessary distraction and effort. If everyone follows a simple vision, it speeds development, focuses effort, and results in simpler products or services, which will be easier to build or implement.
Innovation is truly a pair of attitudes: the ability to switch emotional gears between cynicism and belief, or between deep doubt and unshakeable confidence. Unleash its power to reinforce the latent power of creativity in ourselves and the people we get to work with.
In the ad industry, innovations in whatever form is most welcome. The 18th Philippine Advertising Congress hopes to provide the impetus for disruptions that can allow creative growth.
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