Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Innovation and Symbioscience
Place two ideas here. Then press “mash”.
What’s so hard about wheeled luggage? We’ve had wheels for thousands of years. We’ve had luggage for thousands of years. These are not exotic, leading-edge concepts. Yet it took us thousand of years to put wheels on luggage. I remember when it happened. I slapped my head and thought, “What took us so long?”
Part of the problem is that we think too big. When we want to think outside the box and get creative, we often aim for something truly revolutionary. We’re looking to change the world. We don’t think of mundane things like wheels and luggage. Yet, the people who did put wheels on luggage certainly made my world more convenient.
Putting wheels on luggage is generally known as mashup thinking. We mashup two or more things or ideas to get something new. As it happens, a significant portion – perhaps a majority – of our most important innovations result from mashing things up. If you mash up x-rays with computer processing, you get CT scans. Mashing up a mobile phone and a tablet yields a “phablet” like Samsung’s best-selling Galaxy series. Mashing up multiple (government sponsored) technologies yields the iPhone. Mashing up a flywheel and a bicycle yields the Copenhagen wheel. The wheel stores energy as you bike along and releases it when you need some extra power.
The problem is that we just don’t think about mashing stuff up. We’re too busy pushing the envelope. We want something shiny, bright, and new. Not something composed of old – perhaps very old – technologies.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter tells the story of a mashup that didn’t happen. Gillette owned Oral B, Braun, and Duracell. You might think that they would mash these up and produce a battery-powered toothbrush. But they weren’t the first to market. Other companies won the race while Gillette lagged behind.
I’ve been looking for companies that do a good job of mashing things up. Companies that are considered to be very innovative – Apple, Samsung, Google – may fit the bill but I’ve also been looking for “mere mortal” companies. In other words, companies that we might reasonably be able to emulate. Then one of my students alerted me to Mars.
I think of Mars as a chocolates and sweets company. It turns out they do a lot more. In fact they have six different brand clusters: Petcare, Chocolate, Wrigley, Food, Drinks, and Symbioscience. It was Symbioscience that caught my eye. According to its website, “Mars Symbioscience acts as an incubator for business ideas generated throughout our segments … “ Further, it’s “a technology-based health and life sciences business focused on evidence-based product development.”
Mars Symbioscience has already developed products (and brands) in three different segments: Petcare, Plant Care, and Human Healthcare. I’m not an expert on these categories but I’ve reviewed the products on the Mars website and I’m willing to bet that mashup thinking was part of the process.
Mars Symbioscience seems to be a good example of a company that dedicates resources to innovation and mashup thinking. How do they do it? More on that in the near future.
(By the way, I’ve never met the student who brought Mars Symbioscience to my attention. He lives in San Antonio and takes my online classes, which are a mash up of college education and the Internet.)
(By the way (2), I’m looking for other good examples of companies that do mashup thinking. Please pass along any examples you’re familiar with.)
Innovation: Signals and Processes
It’s a process.
Innovation is a two-part process. First, we need to create ideas. Second, we need to take those ideas and convert them into something practical and useful. In some ways, creating the idea is the easy part.
Too often, our efforts to innovate focus on one or the other but not both. We may develop lots of ideas on how to be more creative. Yet, creativity without discipline usually doesn’t produce innovation. The reverse is also true. Disciplined implementation processes don’t produce innovation unless we can feed creative ideas into the system.
One way to think about this is to understand the differences between signals and processes. To create innovative organizations, we’ll need both. Signals are about culture. Processes are about decisions.
Many organizations don’t actively foster innovation. They may talk about innovation but the culture doesn’t seek out and promote new ideas, new products, or new ways of doing business. The culture may be innovation resistant; it actively opposes change. Or it may simply be innovation neutral; it doesn’t oppose change but nor does it promote it. Change is hard. To succeed, the culture needs to actively foster change, not merely be neutral to it.
Let’s say we want to change our culture to actively promote change. That’s where signals come in. A signal lets our employees know that we’re changing our attitude toward change. Signals may be simple and obvious. It could be the way employees dress – Birkenstock Fridays! It could be the way work is organized – hackathons! It could be as simple as changing the seating chart or the lighting level or where the coffee stations are located.
Signals are useful but not sufficient. We also need processes that are baked into the culture. Let’s assume, for instance, that our new culture (with its new signals) creates lots of good ideas. Now we need a set of decision processes for evaluating new ideas and deciding which ones to invest in. As Rosabeth Moss Kanter points out classic financial metrics (ROI etc.) probably don’t apply. Classic financial metrics require predictability. Innovations aren’t predictable. We’ll need new processes.
Processes are useful but also not sufficient. You need processes to make the decisions to get the innovative work done. But you need signals to let people know that innovative work is acceptable and encouraged – and that new processes are emerging. As always, it’s the balance that counts.
We’re Doomed!
Republican or Democrat?
As I survey the American political scene, I’m encouraged to find one topic that both the left and the right agree on: We’re doomed!
The right seems to think we’re doomed because of a looming debtpocalypse. We’re guilty of living high on the hog and now it’s payback time. We’re in over our heads, the economy is about to crash, inflation is about to skyrocket, and oh by the way, our foreign policy provides clear signs that the end times are nigh. All the more reason not to strengthen our gun laws; we’re going to need all the guns we can get to fight off moochers and looters.
The solution (apparently) is to vote for Republicans to balance the budget and avert catastrophe. However, the last Republican president to balance the budget was Dwight Eisenhower so I’m not sure how much expertise the GOP can claim in the matter.
The left seems to think that the world will end (soon apparently) in an ecotastrophe. We’ve eaten all the low-hanging fruit, lived off the fat of the land, and now we’re going to have to pay the piper. We’re guilty of living high on the hog and now it’s payback time. And, oh by the way, the growing inequality in wealth is a sure sign that the end times are nigh.
The solution seems to be to vote for Democrats who will make us healthier, happier, and more equal. However, Democrats have dominated the federal government for much of my life and, though we’ve gotten much richer, we’ve also gotten fatter and less equal. So I’m not sure that Democrats can claim much expertise either.
I suspect that all this doomsaying is the reason that zombie books and movies are so popular recently. Clearly the world is ending, so let’s imagine how it might happen. We also love being scared. The Russians are coming! No, the Chinese are coming! No, the secular humanists are coming! No, the zombies are coming! Annie, get your gun!
Traditionally, churches were the primary producers of guilt. We were sinners in the hands of an angry God. Recently, our political parties have stepped into the breach as the leading guilt creators. You eat too much! You spend too much! You pollute too much! You whine too much!
Frankly, I’m not buying it. Here’s why:
The purpose of political parties is to make people angry – anger is the one emotion that promotes action. Action creates votes and votes create power. Just as bad news sells newspapers, it also creates votes. Political parties have always predicted doom and gloom. It’s how they win elections. Both parties are doing a very good job of making people angry now. So what? That’s what they do.
Things have gotten better – since 1960 per capita wealth in the United States has tripled. Sexism and racism – though still evident – have abated dramatically. Our rivers no longer catch fire. Our air is breathable. Violent crime has dropped significantly, especially since 1990. Even those things that threaten us have gotten less awful. The Soviet Union could have wiped us out. Terrorists can’t.
Do we have problems? Of course, we do. We always have and we always will. So let’s calm down a bit. The way forward requires thinking, not screaming. If you want to be scared, don’t listen to politicians. Just go to a zombie movie.
Digitizing The Enterprise
McKinsey recently published a survey of 850 C-level executives regarding their views on digitizing the enterprise. McKinsey asked about five major trends: 1) big data and analytics; 2) digital engagement of customers; 3) digital engagement of employees and partners; 4) business-process automation; 5) digital innovation.
What do C-level executives think? Of the five trends, customer engagement is clearly top of mind today. Over half the respondents (56%) say that engaging customers and finding new customers through digital channels is at least a top ten priority.
Indeed, digital engagement is accelerating. Compared to the same report in 2012, companies are increasingly using digital techniques to: maintain brand consistency across channels, identify and advertise to target customers, make personalized offers, engage in social media, and create branded applications (and games) for mobile devices.
Big data and analytic initiatives are also growing. Executives report they are especially focused on analyses that help improve forecasts and planning processes. In general, big data activities focus mainly on growth and enhancements – growing revenue, for instance, or enhancing customer service. Using big data to reduce costs is much lower on the priority list.
Similarly, the next wave of business-process automation focuses primarily on efforts to improve quality or create new digital capabilities. Relatively few process automation projects are targeted at reducing cost or replacing labor.
Digital innovation activities revolve around improvements rather than entirely new product categories. Some 40% of respondents say they are adding digital capabilities to existing products or enhancing their technology stacks – by adding cloud computing, for instance.
Of the five key trends, digital employee engagement seems to be the least well developed. Executives report that they use digital tools for employee evaluation and feedback. By and large, however, they’re not engaging in more advanced applications like collaborative design and knowledge sharing.
CEOs are also becoming more involved in digital initiatives. In the 2012 survey, both the CIO (26%) and the CMO (25%) were more likely to be leading digital initiatives than was the CEO (23%). In 2013, the tables turned with CEOs (31%) leading the way while CIOs and CMOs stayed about the same (both at 26%). CFOs lagged far behind – 12% in 2012 and 13% in 2013.
There’s also a new C-level executive at the table – the Chief Digital Officer or CDO. Some 30% of the respondents say that their companies now have CDOs, often with “cross-cutting responsibilities for all digital activities”. Those companies with CDOs claim to have implemented more of their digital vision than those without.
Overall, the executives are quite optimistic about their digital initiatives. Nearly two-thirds (65%) expect that their digital projects will improve operating income over the next three years. Interestingly, B2B executives are more optimistic about growth potential than their B2C counterparts.
While two-thirds of executives foresee growth in income due to digitization, one-third don’t. The more pessimistic executives fear that they won’t be able “to adequately respond to changing customer behavior and expectations”.
Executives admit that they’re only roughly one-fourth of the way toward their ultimate objectives. Still, they’re quite bullish on digital initiatives as ways to transform their companies and their markets. If they can manage three key obstacles: leadership, expectations, and talent management – they see a bright future for their digital enterprises.
Don’t Call Me Surely
Surely, this isn’t happening
I’ve written before about mental shortcuts called heuristics – rules of thumb that help us make a great majority of our decisions. Most of the time they work brilliantly. We recognize patterns subconsciously and make smart decisions automatically. Our conscious brain is free to deal with more difficult tasks. It’s like automatic pilot or highway hypnosis.
While heuristics help us get through the day, they can also make serious mistakes. (For a catalog of mistakes, click here, here, here, and here). It’s a fairly long list and surely most of us have made most of them. The more we’re aware of our heuristics, the more we can teach ourselves to avoid the errors inherent in automatic thinking. We can learn how to not trick ourselves.
But what about when someone else tries to trick us? Just like heuristics, the tools of disputation can lead us to believe things that just aren’t true (or disbelieve things that are true). You can always look to the evidence but you may be presented with evidence that’s biased or simply wrong. However, just as you can learn to recognize the ways that you deceive yourself, you can also learn to recognize the ways others deceive you.
Peter Facione can identify 17 ways in which our own heuristics can deceive us. On the other hand, Richard Paul and Linda Elder can identify 44 “foul ways to win an argument”. Surely the fact that there are so many more ways to deceive others (as opposed to ourselves) indicates that humans are innately devious. We’re not to be trusted.
Over time, I plan to catalog all 44 methods of deception so we can compare the ways we trick others to the ways we trick ourselves. I wonder which causes which. Do others deceive us or do they simply confirm our own self-deceptions?
So, where to start? Well, I’ve already slipped the first one by you. It’s what I call the handily hidden assumption and is often preceded by the word “surely”. When a person says, “Surely you believe…” or “Surely we can agree…”, it’s time to suspect trickery. The person is trying to hide an assumption so you won’t question it. The conclusion may flow logically from the assumption, but the assumption may be fatally flawed. If you ignore the assumption, the argument may sound logical and convincing.
In logic, this is known as begging the question. In common parlance, we often use begging the question to mean raising the question. In fact, however, it means exactly the opposite. It really means that the question goes begging. The question of whether the assumption is correct goes begging. Nobody pays it the respect it deserves.
So be careful when you’re debating a point with a slippery sophist. Or, for that matter, when you’re reading my website. And don’t call me surely.
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