CInP Course Workbook - V1.5 PDF

GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional COPYRIGHT GInI Certified Innovation Professional® Course Workbook Copyright – Global Innovation Institute. All Rights Reserved. No unauthorized copying or reproduction of any contents contained herein is permitted without the express written permission of GInI – Global Innovation Institute. Global Innovation Institute Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 2 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Course Introduction This course is designed for the working professional. It starts at the beginning, and teaches a practical, hands-on approach to business innovation – explaining clearly what it is, and how to go about pursuing it within a business enterprise. It also presents a number of key concepts relating to Innovation Management – the work that Innovation Project Leaders and Program Leaders do within the business to help drive and sustain a program of ongoing innovation therein. When finished, participants should walk away knowing exactly how to pursue and drive new innovation within their business, so that the business can produce a large number of new innovation outputs – and so that you can have the fun of defining, developing, and launching those innovations!. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 3 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Course Introduction (cont.) The course covers twelve (12) main topics: The Fundamentals of Business Innovation & Its Many Different Forms Innovator Profiles Creativity & Creativity Methods + Ideation & Brainstorming + The Breakthrough Innovation Method Running Innovation Projects in the Business Over Three Phases – FEI / MZI / BEI The Role of Research in Innovation Design Thinking & Human-Centered Design Innovation Managers & Their Different Roles Innovation Managers as Project Leader to Drive Focused Innovation Work Leading & Building Core Innovation Teams The Innovation Management Process for Driving Innovation Throughput in the Business Storytelling in Innovation Selecting Winning Ideas for the Business to Pursue You will be introduced to some new nomenclature that is unique to the practice of Innovation – the so-called “language of innovation”. It is important for you to learn this language so that your organization can use it effectively to bring everyone onto the same page. The course uses a series of intertwined lessons and exercises. For the exercises, you will be divided into teams. Each team is given a business challenge to work on. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 4 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional LESSON 1 The Innovation Professional World Changers of the Business World www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 5 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Innovation Professional Congratulations! You are beginning your journey to becoming an Innovation Professional! And potentially a Certified Innovation Professional – the formal recognition for those who have mastered a solid knowledge of business innovation. In your role as an innovation professional, you will be afforded many opportunities to identify both present and emerging market needs that represent windows of opportunity for your business to deliver new innovation, and to help define, develop, and deliver those new innovations. You may also be afforded the opportunity to serve as an Innovation Manager – either a Program Leader to drive the business’ innovation program, or a Project Leader to help lead individual innovation projects for the business. Throughout all of these roles, you will become a primary contributor to a program of sustained innovation output in your business, constantly feeding its Innovation Pipeline with new projects that allow it to achieve strategically important growth initiatives. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 6 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional What Does an Innovation Professional Do? So what exactly does an Innovation Professional do? Innovation Professionals serve businesses by carrying out a wide array of innovation tasks, including: Uncovering unmet or underserved needs in markets that represent potential opportunities for delivering new innovation. Undertaking focused research to qualify and quantify the scope and details of each new innovation opportunity. Developing informed hypotheses about these unmet or underserved needs. Conducting business experiments to test hypotheses and establish the most accurate hypothesis, resulting in a correct problem statement – a Point of View. Establishing core design principles for what a solution must do in order to solve for that need. Ideating and brainstorming potential solutions to the (correctly stated) need, in accordance with the established Design Principles. Prototyping and testing different potential solutions to a need in order to isolate the best solution. Developing commercialization strategies for each new innovation, including branding, marketing channels, sales channels, and distribution channels. Developing business plans to document each new opportunity, including their backstory, needs, proposed solution, commercialization strategy, and financial investment / payback. Actually carrying out the work of defining, designing, and developing detailed innovation solutions. Running pilot tests to validate each new opportunity. Implementing or commercializing the new innovations. Running various aspects of the business’ Innovation Management process, including driving bottom-up engagement and evaluation / selection processes. Leading innovation teams and innovation projects. Welcome to this brave new world of Innovation! www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 7 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Innovation Professional’s Roles Some of the formal roles that an Innovation Professional might hold include: As an Individual Contributor Team Member – Front End Innovation Team – research, qualification, quantification, initial definition. Team Member – Mid Zone Innovation Team – strategizing, modeling, justification, defense. Team Member – Back End Innovation Team – execution / implementation / commercialization – design, development, production, delivery, sales, marketing, service, etc. As a Manager Innovation Team / Project Leader – manages project and its teams from start to finish. Innovation Program Leader – drives and manages the business’ Innovation Management process. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 8 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Value of Certification as an Innovation Professional So as to be able to validate that you possess demonstrated knowledge, skill, and experience as an Innovation Professional, every Innovation Professional should seek and secure professional certification as such. The appropriate certification for this is the GInI Certified Innovation Professional®, or CInP®. This certification can be obtained by successfully completing this course and then completing the CInP® examination. Details of the examination will be presented at the end of Day 4. You can learn more about CInP® certification at: www.gini.org/cinp. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 9 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional LESSON 2 Fundamentals of Innovation Getting to Know Business Innovation www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 10 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Why Innovation? “The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive – and autonomy can be the antidote.” Tom Kelley, General Manager, IDEO The Purpose of a Business Why do businesses exist? What is their purpose? Is it to “make money”? Do we operate businesses purely for the sake of profits? NO! While profits are the necessary lifeblood of a business… The purpose of a business is to create value, and to do so for all stakeholders… Value for markets & customers (the ultimate stakeholders) – measured by the value they are able to extract from what we deliver and their experiences in using or receiving that. Value for its workers (who are investing their lives in the effort) – measured both by the extrinsic wages and benefits they receive and, just as importantly, the intrinsic sense of purpose and mission their work gives them. Value for investors / shareholders (who are investing their money in the effort) – measured both in terms of short-term dividends they earn and long-term capitalization growth the business accrues. And value for society at large – measured by how a business improves the quality of life for everyone it touches. This is the real purpose of a business! www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 11 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Real Point of Innovation Likewise, then… why do we pursue innovation? Is it to “be innovative”? Do we pursue innovation for the sake of innovation? NO! The real point – and purpose – of innovation is to enable our business to remain relevant to its markets – in terms of the value and experiences it delivers – so that it can constantly advance its cause in the marketplace and by so doing, remain resilient to the long-term changes that will inevitably take place. This “cause” can involve any of several strategic objectives… customer satisfaction, brand-building, revenue & profit growth, market cap growth, and so on. Our business must constantly remain relevant to each successive generation of the market so that it will be resilient to the long-term changes that it must inevitably weather. Innovation Defined What exactly is “innovation”? First off… there are different forms of innovation… there’s business innovation, there’s urban innovation, there’s social innovation, there’s workplace innovation, and so on. So, on a very philosophical level, innovation is really about… … Connecting two things on a deeper and a more meaningful level. Whether it’s a business and its markets (business innovation), a city and its people (urban innovation), a nation and its citizens (social innovation), or a workplace and its workers (workplace innovation), the end game is always the same… to connect the two in a deeper, more meaningful, more powerful, and more impactful way. What this means is that business organizations have to constantly strive to reconnect to their markets and customers in increasingly more meaningful ways. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 12 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Innovation Defined (cont.) As the image here depicts… over time markets evolve and their needs “escalate”, such that, over that same period of time, business organizations also have to evolve. Specifically… they have to evolve their capabilities so that they can also “escalate” the value they bring to the market. In this way, there is this successive progression of meeting points wherein the organization connects with the market through unique value offerings all along the way, following this diagonal line. Now… even though in practice these tend to happen in discrete spurts, that fact is that all along the way, market needs and organizational capabilities never actually stop evolving and increasing. It’s just that we can only meet at relatively discreet points along this trajectory. And that typically has to do with product development cycles. The shorter these cycles, the more often we intersect, and typically the faster we learn and evolve. Now… what we are really focused on here is business innovation. So, on a more practical level – but still keeping the preceding in mind – business innovation is defined as… Doing something in a new or novel way… that delivers more value and/or better experiences to customers and markets… in a way that is profitable to the business. That is the definition of business innovation, and that is what we’re here to work on in this course. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 13 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Is It an Innovation? The question of what constitutes an innovation, and whether or not an invention counts as innovation is one that goes back for many decades. In an attempt to answer this question, the Venn diagram shown here, first introduced by Peter Drucker, asks three important questions about the concept of interest… 1. Is it desirable to users? This is the Human element. 2. Is it viable to the business? This is the Business element. 3. Is it feasible technologically? This is the Technical element. In order for something to be considered a legitimate innovation, the answer to all three of these questions must be “yes”. If an idea is proposed but it is not desirable, then there is no point in pursuing it. If an idea is proposed but it is not technologically within the reach of the business and its network of partners, then it would be foolhardy to expend effort on it. And if an idea is proposed but no way can be found to make it financially viable for the business, then it would be imprudent to pursue it. Notwithstanding any of these, of course, is the ability to develop new technological capabilities and new business models that change these answers, as innovation often demands that we do. But otherwise, if the answer to any one of these questions is “no”, then the idea cannot be considered a business innovation, regardless of how novel it is otherwise. Finally, in order for a new idea to actually be an innovation, it must get executed. Otherwise, it is just an idea, and ideas are not innovations, only executed ideas meet the definition of an innovation. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 14 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Innovation Vs Invention The next question is, “what is the difference between an invention and an innovation?” To answer that, the following definition of the word “invention” is offered: Invention: The creation of something new (anything) that is capable of producing certain effects either in a new way, to a new extent, or with a new outcome, as compared to preceding means. As is perhaps apparent, the criteria for something to be counted as an invention are much less stringent than for something to be counted as an innovation. It need only do something new or in a new way or to a new extent to be considered an invention. This means that inventions need not have any particular value to users, businesses, or society. It is about what they do, rather than what value they create. This means the universe of inventions is far more vast than is the universe of innovations. An invention can become an innovation if – and only if – there is some way to put it into use to create more value for users, the business, or society. And it is a business innovation if – and only if – it can be put to use in a way that is profitable and beneficial to the business. That is the difference between an invention and an innovation, and is why not all inventions count as innovations. Is Innovation Absolute or Relative? Another important question is… “Is innovation absolute or relative?” The correct answer is that innovation is always relative to the customers and markets receiving it. If those customers and markets perceive an offering to be innovative relative to their needs and relative to whatever other solutions they can avail themselves to, then the offering is considered to be innovative in that context. This means that innovations can be recycled. Businesses should keep this mind when hunting for new innovation opportunities. The answer may lie in finding something already out there, but in a place or situation that it is currently not available to their markets. By making it available and accessible, they may be able to cash in on a market innovation that rewards them well, all with relatively little effort. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 15 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Four Types of Innovation + Examples Broadly speaking, there are four (4) general types of business innovation. Each of these has a particular scope associated with it. They are: Incremental Innovation Incremental improvements in existing offerings, whether in terms of performance, price, accessibility, or other key dimensions of value. These often result from things like new technologies being integrated, new features and capabilities being added, changes that reduce cost and thus enable price reductions, and new sales channels being leveraged. Example: Various generations of the Apple iPhone – perpetuating the platform. Breakthrough Innovation Completely new offerings, or new ways of offering – inside of existing categories – that substantially raise the bar on the value and/or experiences delivered. These often result from major changes in technology platforms, and new configurations that extend an offering into new market applications. Example: Apple Watch – additional value beyond the mobile, but no threat. Disruptive Innovation Entirely new categories of offerings that displace previous categories on account of a significant change in the value proposition. These often result from redefining customer needs, and often involve entirely new business models that rethink how capital is deployed to accomplish a particular end goal. They can also arise out of breakthrough new product technologies and service methods being applied to define solutions that work substantially better than previous solutions had, rendering the previous way of approaching a problem obsolete. Disruptive Innovation tends to disrupt entire industries and often results in the demise of certain organizations while preceding the rise of others. Example: Apple iPad – awakened the nascent tablet computing market, which disrupted the laptop market. Transformative Innovation Such radically new offerings and experiences that they transform society and how it operates. These often result from massive new capabilities. They often bring with them a major structural change in a market and in the relationships between society, government, and other institutions. They often create the need for new areas of government regulation. Example: The Internet. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 16 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Four Types of Innovation (cont.) Other Definitions In addition to these labels, one often hears references made to the following: Sustaining Innovation Derivative Innovation Moderate Innovation Radical Innovation These are simply alternative labels given to the different types of innovation. In general, Sustaining Innovation, Derivative Innovation, and Moderate Innovation, are all alternative names for Incremental Innovation, whereas Radical Innovation is a catchall phrase used to refer to either Breakthrough, Disruptive, or Transformative Innovation. One should thus be able to understand what is meant by each of these phrases. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 17 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Scales of Innovation There are three (3) Scales of Innovation: 1. Mega Innovation 2. Macro Innovation 3. Micro Innovation. Mega Innovation refers to innovation happening at the largest of scales – nations, regions, societies, and occasionally the world as a whole. It is usually used in a comparative context. It seeks to talk about how one nation, region, or society is more or less innovative than are other nations, regions, or societies. At other times, it is used in a more holistic, historical context to talk about how society at large in one particular era is more or less innovative than is (or was) society at large in a different era. See, for example, the Global Innovation Index at: www.globalinnovationindex.org. Macro Innovation refers to innovation happening at the strategic level within business organizations. It is where topics such as Innovation Strategy, Strategic Innovation Portfolios, and Enterprise Innovation Programs reside. Innovation at this level is concerned with how to make a given business increasingly more innovative with respect to its markets, and sometimes to discuss how one business is comparatively more or less innovative than is another business. Whenever one speaks of the world’s most innovative companies, they are talking of innovation at the macro innovation level. See, for example, Fast Company’s “World’s Most Innovative Companies”: http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies. Micro Innovation refers to the individual innovation projects and the many innovation activities that take place within those projects. When one speaks of things like needfinding, Design Thinking, and individual patents, they are typically speaking of innovation at the micro scale. Or if they are speaking of a particular innovation project, such as the work that went into developing FlyKnit fabric at the Nike Innovation Kitchen, then they are also speaking of innovation at the micro scale. Most of the time, whenever one brings up the subject of innovations, or of a particular innovation, they are thinking on this scale. See, for example, Nike (Corvalis, OR, USA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnWWHICvjl4. Innovation Professionals will find it helpful to understand all three of these Scales of Innovation. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 18 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Why Innovation? “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it. Innovation Distinguishes Between a Leader and a Follower.” Steve Jobs, former CEO, Apple www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 19 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional LESSON 3 The Three Phases of Innovation Project Work www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 20 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Three Phases of Innovation Project Work – Front End / Mid Zone / Back End Innovation Project Work is characteristically broken up into three (3) distinct phases, known commonly as: The Front End of Innovation, or FEI The Mid Zone of Innovation, or MZI The Back End of Innovation, or BEI. MZI This concept is a work categorization framework for how innovation projects are carried out. Each of these represents a certain phase, or segment, of the work associated with innovation projects. This concept has evolved over many years through the contributions of several different thought leaders in the innovation space. The Front End of Innovation The Front End of Innovation – originally called the fuzzy front end – refers to the early upfront discovery and observation needed to develop and test hypotheses so as to formulate correct problem statements, and also the early upfront ideation, prototyping, and experimentation required to validate the usefulness of proposed solutions. The point of the Front End is ultimately to: correctly understand problems and optimally generate viable solutions to those problems. It is innovation’s first mile. The Front End is where the creativity lives that so many associate with innovation, yet is only one-third of what it takes to innovate. Without the Mid Zone and Back End, no innovations will ever see the light of day. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 21 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Mid Zone of Innovation The Mid Zone of Innovation refers to the work that takes place in between the Front End and the Back End, and specifically deals with undertaking various types of market research studies, user studies, design studies, branding studies, and all of the strategic planning work associated with go-to-market (commercialization) strategies. MZI The point of the Mid Zone is to develop effective GTM strategies – including: design and branding themes sales and marketing strategies production strategies distribution strategies and so on …that all have associated with them a very high confidence in their ability to produce success in commercializing the offering. The Mid Zone exists specifically to increase the chances of commercial success with new types of offerings the business has never offered before. It is innovation’s second mile. The Back End of Innovation The Back End of Innovation – sometimes called the messy back end – is where one pulls the trigger and executes all of the steps required to actually take an offering to market. It includes: Designing and developing the product or service. Creating the branding, advertising, marketing, and sales collateral. Establishing supply chains and supplier partnerships. Establishing distribution channels and channel partnerships. Setting up / ramping up production. The point of the Back End is to be able to produce and sell an offering. It represents all of the hard work required to actually make a new innovation a real thing that can be sold and delivered to customers, bringing new value to them and to the business. It is innovation’s last mile. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 22 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Three Phases of Innovation Project Work – Front End / Mid Zone / Back End Those are the three phases of innovation project work – the Front End, the Mid Zone, and the Back End… innovation’s first, second, and last miles. Successfully understanding problems and market needs and ultimately producing and selling innovative new solutions to those needs and problems, with successful commercial results, requires executing all three phases with equal care and precision. Skimping on any of them will harm the outcome and the commercial success of the effort. Businesses must therefore learn how to master each one. MZI www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 23 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional LESSON 4 Innovation’s Design Outputs The Many Forms of “What’s New” www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 24 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Innovation's Design Outputs – The Many Forms of “What's New” Innovation can produce any number of Design Outputs, representing the various different forms of innovation… of “what’s new”. These are the ultimate synthesis aspect of a business’ innovation efforts. In this context, we define nine (9) forms of Innovation Design Output. These are: Technology Innovation Design Innovation Product Innovation Service Innovation Brand Innovation Marketing Innovation Package Innovation Customer Experience Innovation Business Model Innovation The next sections explore each of these in further detail. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 25 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Technology Innovation Technology Innovation is any new innovation in which the underlying value proposition derives from measurably improved technological capability, producing greater value and/or a better customer experience as a direct consequence of this change in technology. Generally speaking, Technology Innovation is the domain of Science, Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics, and is typically the work product of scientists, engineers, and technologists. It may involve physical hardware, software only, or – more often than not – a hybrid of both. With digitization and automation of so many products now, software has become an increasingly greater percentage of that content. Or as investor Marc Andreessen once famously remarked, “Software is eating the world!” The example shown here is that of a smart watch. Design Innovation Design Innovation is any new innovation in which the underlying value proposition derives from measurably changed design, producing greater value and/or a better customer experience as a direct consequence of this change in design. The new value is often expressed in the form of new visual and/or stylistic value. Generally speaking, Design Innovation is the domain of Industrial, Graphic, and Fashion Design, as well as sometimes Architecture, and is the work product of Designers trained in these fields. It typically involves some form of physical manifestation. There are several esteemed design awards given each year. The iF Design Award is awarded by iF International Forum Design GmbH (iF) – an organization providing design-related services based in Hanover, Germany. The Red Dot Design Award (an international product design and communication design prize) is awarded by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen based in Essen, Germany. The A Prime Design Award comes out of Italy. The example shown here is that of a fashion watch. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 26 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Product Innovation Product Innovation is any new innovation in which the underlying value proposition derives from a measurably improved product, producing greater value and/or a better customer experience as a direct consequence of this change in the physical product. Product Innovation often involves new levels of product performance being developed and delivered to the market, typically relating to the functional attributes of the product, and the value those produce for users. Generally speaking, Product Innovation is the combined domain of Product Designers, Product Engineers, and Manufacturing Engineers. Its core innovation may derive from any of these fields, but is at its zenith when it involves some combination of all of these, as do most new models of feature- dense consumer electronics products like smart phones. The example shown here is that of a flexible smartphone from Designer Jonas-Daehnert, and which are in development at LG and Samsung. Service Innovation Service Innovation is any new innovation in which the underlying value proposition derives from a measurably improved service, producing greater value and/or a better customer experience as a direct consequence of this change in the delivered service. Generally speaking, Service Innovation is the domain of Service and Customer Experience Designers. Service Innovation often involves new levels of service performance being developed and delivered to the market, typically relating to the service quality and other delivery attributes (speed, timeliness, cost, effort, etc.) that recipients value. Its core innovation will generally involve some new method for delivering a measurably better service, resulting in better customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and brand equity. The example referenced here is that of an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) service that BankDhofar (Oman) launched for its round-the-clock call center. Reference: http://www.muscatdaily.com/Archive/Oman/BankDhofar-launches-innovative-new-services-at-its-call-centre- 33e0#ixzz4Sm2U7wzK. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 27 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Brand Innovation Brand Innovation is the creation of a new brand, or application (leveraging) of an existing brand to bring new value and/or experiences to a market (or market segment) which the business was not previously in. It may involve an existing (repurposed) offering, or an entirely new offering appropriately suited for that market. Whichever is the case, it delivers better perceived value and/or experiences to that market than what it previously had access to, particularly given that certain values (brand promises) are generally associated with certain brands. Both cases (new brand and existing brand) therefore rely upon a combination of Marketing and actual Customer Experience to preserve that perceived value. Brand Innovation builds upon three important constituent elements: The Brand Promise – What does the brand promise? The Brand Message – How does the business message its brand promise? The Brand Language – What is the Descriptive BL / Visual BL / eXperiential BL? Generally speaking, Brand Innovation is often the domain of Brand Designers and/or Marketing Strategists. Its core innovation will generally involve a product or service that is new to the market of interest, though not necessarily new to the world or even new to the business (depending). It produces increased brand value and new sources of revenue (by taking share away from other incumbents and/or increasing the size of a market). The example shown here (left) is that of the Apple Titan smart/autonomous vehicle project. Also shown (right) is the KitchenAid black stainless steel kitchen set as an example of coherent print and visual brand language. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 28 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Marketing Innovation Marketing Innovation is an attempt to deliver new value and/or better experiences to a market the business is not currently in – not by leveraging a particular brand per se, and not by developing a new offering per se – but by developing and delivering a new message to that market capable of creating real or perceived new value in the market by making customers more aware than they previously were of the value of a particular offering. Such customer awareness often drives new customers to gain access to an innovation that they previously could not, or would not, have accessed. It results in an expanded market presence for a business using an existing value proposition. Note that the new message must be specifically tuned to resonate with the needs and motivations of this market. The example referenced here is that of Century 21 Global attempting to appeal to global real estate sellers such as those selling vacation properties to foreign buyers. Package Innovation Package Innovation is the use of a new package design to create perceived new value and appeal to certain consumer preferences. The package design plays a vital role in the brand messaging being conveyed to would-be consumers. It can sometimes create the so-called Zero Moment of Truth – the “surprise and delight” that occurs when seen for the very first time. There is a leading Package Design Award issued each year known as the Die-Line Awards. The examples shown here are those of bottling – both plastic and aluminum – a plastic dispenser box, and a display-case package arranging the contents in a compelling circular pattern. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 29 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Customer Experience Innovation Customer Experience Innovation is the staging of a purposefully-designed and orchestrated new customer experience for a particular market, producing a greater sense of value by those encountering it. CX Innovation relies heavily upon the field of Experience Psychology to understand the visceral, cognitive, and behavioral psychology of those consumers who will engage with the experience. CX Design uses CX Journey Mapping as the tool of choice for designing the execution of each touchpoint to have maximum impact (particularly at the most important touchpoints, where the level of expectation is highest) and to make the Moments of Truth come off as WOWs (and not BOOMS)… to make them “Moments of Magic”. The example referenced here is that of a digitally-enhanced retail environment to create a better overall shopping experience for the customer. Business Model Innovation Business Model Innovation employs a new business model in a particular market to change some combination of what it offers, how it offers it, to whom it offers, and where it offers, all in an effort to deliver more real or perceived value in that market. Very often it involves radically changing how the business leverages assets and monetizes what is being delivered. A key concept in BM Innovation is that of business ecosystems – how a business leverages its ecosystem of partners (and expands it where needed) to rebalance certain activities, particularly as they relate to the deployment of assets within that ecosystem. Business Model Innovation employs specific tools such as the GInI Business Model Innovation Framework, books with surveys of new business models, business model canvases, and so forth. The example referenced here is that of Sharing Economy business models – that of Airbnb and Uber. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 30 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Recap – Innovation's Design Outputs – The Many Forms of “What's New” To recap, these are all the different forms of Innovation’s Design Outputs… the real synthesis part of our innovation work. They can involve any of these nine (9) forms of innovation Technology Innovation Design Innovation Product Innovation Service Innovation Brand Innovation Marketing Innovation Package Innovation Customer Experience Innovation Business Model Innovation www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 31 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional LESSON 5 The Effective Innovator Einstein, Edison, Jobs, and You www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 32 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Why Innovation? You see things; and you say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?” - George Bernard Shaw What Makes One an Effective Innovator? We begin with the question of… What makes one an effective innovator? As will be seen in the numerous points made herein, there are many things that go into making an individual an effective innovator. These include: Having a sense of, and love for, innovation nurtured within us throughout our lives. Understanding our “Innovator Profile”… the specific propensities we have for experimentation, discovery, strategizing, and execution that make us the unique innovator we are. The mastery of the 5 key Discovery Skills, namely… Observing / Questioning / Experimenting / Networking / Associating. Our Imagination Skills and the Imagination Methods we have mastered. Our Creativity Skills and the Creativity Methods we have mastered. Our particular brain dominance pattern and personality type, including how best to leverage these and how to effectively compliment them with others’ patterns and types. A sense of entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship… the so-called entrepreneurial spirit. A compulsive drive for “The New”. An ability to work productively on Core Innovation (X-Works) Teams to deliver radical new innovations for the business. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 33 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Is Being Innovative Nature Or Nurture? Is Being Innovative Nature or Nurture? Innovation is an acquirable skillset and mentality, both at the individual level and the organizational level. Anyone can become an innovator. Being innovative at the individual level is therefore largely nurture, and less so nature. That being said however, just because anyone can become an innovator does not necessarily mean that everyone desires to become an innovator. Some people will desire to do so, and others will not. Some are predisposed to enjoying the exploration of the unknown while others are predisposed to retreating into the presumed safety of the known. The problem with the latter disposition is that our world has come to be changing at such a rapid pace that such a disposition has been slowly fading away, as there is simply less and less “known” to retreat back to… individuals are being increasingly forced to confront constant change in their worlds. This means, in turn, that most people are becoming increasingly comfortable with innovation and are increasingly having to adopt a disposition that is favorable to innovation. Therefore, most anyone who today is exposed to this sort of reality will find it not so difficult to step into an Innovation Professional role. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 34 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Innovators’ Profiles Innovation is not contingent upon certain personality types, physiological factors, or professional backgrounds. Innovators come in all shapes and sizes… men, women, introverts, extroverts, intellectuals, dreamers, and so on. What is true, however, is that certain dispositions and traits make one suitable for certain types of roles within innovation and for certain phases of innovation work. Overarching above these individual dispositions however is a general desire or willingness to be a part of something new… to willingly abandon the known and pursue the unknown. The series of lists that are to follow next attempt to explain: 1. Those characteristics which all Innovation Professionals need to possess. 2. Those characteristics which distinguish people as being suited for certain roles and activities. In the latter case, what one finds is that some roles are best suited for the Front End of Innovation, some for the Mid Zone of Innovation, and some for the Back End of Innovation. For each of those three zones of innovation work, therefore, there are several specific types of roles that will be explored. Some individuals, coincidentally, possess very broad characteristics that make them capable of spanning multiple roles, and are therefore able to “shift gears” and take on different roles at different times as needed in a given innovation project. The Innovators’ Profiles All – A Disdain for the Status Quo / A Hunger to Create the New / A Curiosity to Drive Questions Front-Enders – Maverick / Questioner / Experimenter / Socializer / Dreamer / Synthesizer Mid-Zoners – Researcher / Strategist / Analyst Back-Enders – Manager / Designer / Engineer / Producer / Marketer / Supporter Each of these are examined in further detail. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 35 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Innovators’ Profiles – All Innovators The following list attempts to explain those characteristics which all Innovation Professionals need to possess. Characteristics of All Good Innovation Professionals The following are characteristics (attitudes and propensities) of those predisposed to working in Innovation in general. 1. A realization that the world around us is constantly in a state of change and flux, and a willingness therefore to go off and wrestle with the unknowns that this forces us to confront. 2. An acceptance of the need – when the time is right – to abandon today’s value propositions and embrace different ones for tomorrow. Sometimes this means a genuine disdain for the status quo. 3. A general enjoyment of trying new things. A hunger to create the new and a curiosity to drive questions to that end. The more “experiential” one is, the more they will typically enjoy innovation. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 36 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Innovators’ Profiles – Front-Enders The following are characteristic profiles of types of professionals who are predisposed to (and valuable for) working in the Front End of Innovation, which involves exploring needs, challenging current situations, researching the “environment”, and conceiving new possibilities – the land of the imagination. Characteristic Profiles of Those Predisposed to the Front End of Innovation The Maverick – Generally dissatisfied with the current situation, this person is constantly challenging the status quo. They have a natural hunger to be a part of creating the new, and often tend to be very driven. The Questioner – This person has a natural curiosity about the world and/or particular situations. This drives them to step back and ask lots of probing questions about a situation and about the assumptions underlying it, often allowing them to uncover insights that others will have skimmed over. The Experimenter – This person is constantly experimenting and trying new things out to see how they will work and, just as importantly, how they will be received by users. This person may also be very driven. They also are very likely a highly experiential person. The Socializer – This person has a propensity to network broadly, comparing observations, questions, and ideas with countless other people having a wide variety of backgrounds in order to see how those observations, questions, and ideas square up against other people’s experiences and world views. The Dreamer – This person has an innate ability to conceptualize various ideal future states and articulate those to others. They may have a vivid imagination, but this is not necessary. This role is often very useful when attempting to conceive new solutions. The Synthesizer – This person is able to take the insights produced by all these other roles, together with a broadly-exposed world view, and synthesis something entirely new out of it all. This is called associating… connecting the dots. This is where many new innovations get their start. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 37 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Innovators’ Profiles – Mid-Zoners The following are characteristic profiles of types of professionals who are predisposed to (and valuable for) working in the Mid Zone of Innovation, which involves strategizing a plan for implementing or commercializing a new innovation. Characteristic Profiles of Those Predisposed to the Mid Zone of Innovation The Researcher – This person has a propensity to want to research all of the various possible options for taking something to market. They may be adept as Business Model Innovation – exploring different possibilities and gathering the intelligence they need to support a good strategy. The Strategist – This person is more driven and has a propensity to drive toward a defined strategy for taking a new innovation to market, or otherwise implementing it. They often are able to synthesize new strategies that bring innovations to life in much better ways than have been done in the past. They will need a lot of latitude with the strategies they develop, which may challenge the organization to stretch itself and develop new capabilities and/or new partnerships. The Analyst – Often a financial or strategy professional, this person will carry out the detailed analysis of the endeavor from a financial standpoint, including expected adoption models, sales models, cost models, profitability models, and all the associated P&L / Cash Flow statements associated with these. This is necessary to ensure there is high confidence in the financial return of the project. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 38 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Innovators’ Profiles – Back-Enders The following are characteristic profiles of types of professionals who are predisposed to (and valuable for) working in the Back End of Innovation, which largely involves a series of execution tasks, such as detailed design and development, documentation, and commercialization readiness, required to actually take a new innovation live and into the market. Characteristic Profiles of Those Predisposed to the Back End of Innovation The Manager – This person may be like a Product Manager or Project Manager, or both. They will champion the definition of the offering – its features, attributes, pricing, and so forth. The Designer – This person will spearhead the design of the offering – its configuration, proportions, aesthetics, etc. The Engineer – This person will spearhead the detailed development of the offering, using a variety of technical disciplines. The Planner – This person will plan and coordinate the production and delivery of the offering, getting everything and all parties required lined up prior to launch. The Marketer – This person will coordinate all of the marketing work and marketing communications required to drive awareness of the offering and engagement with the brand. The Supporter – This person will take on numerous different tasks that fill in the gaps between other roles. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 39 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Innovators’ Profiles With these different roles outlined – certain ones aligning to FEI, MZI, & BEI respectively – it becomes increasingly clear how that Innovation requires many different types of professionals to be successful. It cannot function on just one or two of these types of individuals; it requires all of them. This is often where organizations fall down. They may carry out the Front End quite well but then be incapable of executing on the Back End, and so none of their innovations ever see the light of day (sometimes common in very Marketing-oriented organizations). Or they may be quite capable at the Back End but incompetent on the Front End, meaning that they bring lots of new things to market, but most of them fail (sometimes common in very Engineering-oriented organizations). Or they may fail in the Mid Zone, meaning the idea is right and the offering is good, but how it is commercialized is wrong, and may in fact lose money. If a business is to succeed at innovation, it must develop competency in all these areas. Thus it takes all of these of professionals to make innovation happen, which is why almost any person can be a part of their business’ innovation effort. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 40 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Innovator’s DNA – Five Discovery Skills Every Successful Innovation Program Needs In 2011, Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen put forth a book reflecting an 8 year collaborative study they had conducted in which they made observations of leading, well-regarding innovation executives from around the United States. Published by Harvard Business School Publishing, The Innovator’s DNA was in search of the “secret sauce” that made these leaders such effective innovators and innovation leaders. Some of the well-known executives they studied included: A.G. Lafley of P&G Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Meg Whitman and Pierre Omidyar, both of eBay Orit Gadiesh of Bain & Company, and Mike Lazaridis of Research in Motion (RIM). After distilling their research down and subjecting it to careful analysis, these researchers concluded that there were five critical behavioral skills that made these individuals the effective innovation leaders they are. These Five Discovery Skills Are: 1. Observing 2. Questioning 3. Experimenting 4. Networking This is literally 5. Associating what is meant by connecting the dots! The last – associating – is what is meant by the phrase “connecting the dots”. For reference, these behavioral skills are referred to here as the 5 Discovery Skills, and are referenced numerous times throughout this course. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 41 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Innovator’s DNA – Five Discovery Skills (cont.) The following is a brief synopsis of the researchers’ findings and of these five behavioral skills. The Five Discovery Skills Observing – This is the natural tendency to spend time observing the world around us, looking for oddities, nonlinearities, contradictions, and often “what’s missing” (called Absence Thinking). It is the product of a very “absorptive” mind (as when people are called “sponges”… soaking up everything than can absorb). Probably the world’s best students are Observers. Questioning – This is the natural tendency to unabashedly question things… sometimes everything, all in the search for deeper truth and meaning. “Why is it this way?” “Why not that way?” “Why do people do this?” “Why not that?” “When?” “Where?” “How much?” And of course… “Why?” and “Why Not?” It is a natural curiosity given a deep mind. It often annoys those who do not understand from where it is coming. Experimenting – This is the natural tendency to want to try out new things… experiment… see what happens… look for reactions to novel things… test people’s responses… see what works and doesn’t work. It is a natural curiosity given hands and feet. Many of the world’s best inventors have been prolific experimenters (think of, for example, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison). Networking – This is the natural tendency to build up large networks of trusted peers whom one then engages to share observations, questions, and ideas to see what others think of them and to see if perhaps those others can somehow synergistically build on top of these observations, questions, and ideas to take them even further, advancing one’s innovations further ahead than they would have been otherwise. Many of the world’s greatest innovations have come about because two or three people networked with one another. Associating – This is the natural tendency to synthesize in one’s mind entirely new relationships between otherwise completely unrelated pieces of information and insight, resulting in some entirely new idea or concept that had never been conceived previously. It uses what has come to be known as Associative Thinking – associating unrelated things to create something new. It is also what has been referred to colloquially as “connecting the dots.” www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 42 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Innovator’s DNA – Five Discovery Skills (cont.) These five skills must be applied in a very intentional and focused manner to every new innovation challenge. There is a need, therefore, for good diversity in the skills, particularly within Innovation Teams, where members really need one another’s contributions. They must therefore strive to build out a mix of strengths in these skills within teams. Better Innovation Teams (specifically Front End teams) therefore tend to be made up of individuals having different innovator profiles, and thus a complimentary mix of skills. One may be a strong Observer, another a strong Questioner, another a strong Associator, and so on. In this way, as a team they are more likely to be able to leverage all five of the skills and reap the fruit in their team endeavor that generally only comes from being able to integrate all five skills. This research finding also has important implications for Innovation Professionals… 1. Most innovative individuals will possess a mix of all five of these, but be strongest in one or two of them – not an equal strength of all five. 2. Each professional should seek to ascertain which of these skills they are naturally stronger at. 3. Each professional should seek to strengthen their skills in all five of these areas (the authors speak to how to do that). 4. That information should be shared with one’s managers (if not already evident or known) such that the Professional can be teamed with others having complimentary Discovery Skills. This will maximize teams’ effectiveness at leveraging each Professional’s particular Discovery Skill mix. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 43 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Imagination & Imagination Skills The Innovation Professional, in the course of his or her innovation career, will be called upon to use their imagination. Hopefully this should come as no major surprise. The primary context in which the Innovation Professional will engage their imagination is in the Front End of Innovation – prior to ever starting to tear apart a problem or ideate specific solutions around it – to imagine Ideal Future States relating to the problem. This has nothing whatsoever to do with being able to arrange existing things to get to that point (that’s what Creativity is for); it is purely about fixing these points in one’s mind without concern for how one is to get there Being able to conceive in one’s mind an Ideal Future State – whether believed to be possible or not – is a key skill and capability for the Front End Innovator. Professionals who work in this area must strive to master this skill and capability. Interestingly, those who have been formally trained in Design by and large have had to learn this skill (however gradually), as they will have been asked many times over to picture the end arrangement of how things are to be before having a plan yet for getting there. This is why a Designer will tend to have more of a solution- focused approach to problem-solving as opposed to the problem-focused approach that most Scientists and Engineers will have. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 44 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Imagination & Imagination Skills (cont.) There are numerous methods and exercises for “sparking the imagination” while engaged in an innovation project. One approach requires the Professional to remove themselves from the situation (though their subconscious mind will continue to “work the problem”), immerse themselves into a radically different environment or experience – perhaps read a fiction book, watch a science fiction movie, go to a concert, go to an ideas festival even, or go for a walk or bike ride – and let the various stimuli see if they can spark some connection back to what the subconscious mind is doing. Often, without even being aware of it, the lightbulb will go on and an “a-ha!” moment will happen. Another approach has one spend time intentionally imagining all manner of unrealistic scenarios (generally positive ones) in order to get one’s mind in that rhythm and mode, and then to switch over to imagining different scenarios about the challenge at hand. This will often help to start coalescing a new Ideal Future State in one’s mind – often quite a different one than the mind might have produced under more stressful conditions. Yet another approach has one spend time asking a series of questions about a situation… questions like “Why?”, “Why Not?”, What if… ?”, and “What would it look like if… ?”. These questions – particularly the absence thinking ones like “Why not?” – can be incredibly powerful for opening up new insights about a situation. With any of these exercises, the trick with imagination is to stimulate the mind and then to let the subconscious mind do its share of the heavy lifting. Imagination is not an activity that can be driven solely out of the rational conscious mind. When used properly, imagination can be the key to unlocking all manner of hidden insights and ideas. Imagination is particularly powerful when used in the Problem Reframing phase of Design Thinking. Here, different Ideal Future States will be conceived as ways of generating different hypotheses about the problem at hand (a divergent exercise). Each unique Ideal Future State will say something different about what the real problem is, thus leading to a certain hypothesis about the problem. These hypotheses can then be tested via business experimentation to converge on the one best hypothesis. After one has converged on the right hypothesis and from this established their Point of View and Design Principles, they will largely be leaving imagination behind to move on to creativity. Creativity is used to synthesize new solutions. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 45 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Creativity & Creativity Skills Unlike Imagination, creativity is largely about being able to arrange existing things in order to arrive at a desired end point. It is akin to resourcefulness… how one can use and arrange the resources at their disposal to best accomplish a particular aim. But like imagination, creativity is an incredibly important and powerful aspect of effective innovation. Thus, just as with imagination, the Innovation Professional will be called upon to apply creativity in the course of their career. Hopefully this also should come as no surprise. The contexts in which the Innovation Professional will be called upon to use creativity actually span the entire spectrum of innovation work… from the Front End to the Mid Zone to the Back End. In the Front End, they will be using creativity to conceive as many different solutions to a problem as they can possibly come up with (a divergent exercise). This will require an incredible amount of creativity amongst a team to think up so many different ways to tackle the problem. These potential solutions can then be tested via prototyping and user testing to converge on the one best solution. In the Mid Zone, they will be using creativity to conceive a large number of potential business models and go- to-market strategies that they can then consider and analyze against the relevant external realities. And in the Back End, they will be using creativity to come up with all sorts of new pieces to the puzzle they need to build in order to bring the innovation to life – new manufacturing processes, new supply chain models, new customer service models, and so forth. Thus, being able to engage one’s creativity for these productive uses is a key skill and capability for the Innovation Professional regardless of where in the process they happen to work. Therefore all Innovation Professionals must strive to master this skill and capability if they are to help their business’ innovation projects be successful. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 46 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Creativity & Creativity Skills (cont.) There are numerous methods for stimulating creativity while engaged in an innovation project. Creativity methods include those such as Lateral Thinking, Question Storming, Hypothesis Forming, Hypothesis Testing, Brainstorming, and more. They also include a long list of methods that fall under the heading of Design Methods, covered in The GInI Handbook of Applied Innovation. This would include, for example, methods such as Personas, Empathy Maps, 5 Whys, Piggybacking, Brandcasting, Backcasting, Customer Co-Creation, “How Might We… ? questions, and so forth… literally scores of different methods, all of which are capable of engaging creativity in quite unique ways (some ways are more useful for certain purposes, while other ways are more useful for yet other purposes). The Innovation Professional needs to learn and master as broad of a portfolio of creativity methods as possible, including where each method is best used and why. This will allow them to have a complete toolbox to draw from and the ability to know which tool to use in a particular situation, so that they can always have confidence in using the most effective tool(s) for whatever situation they are presented with. In addition to Creativity Methods like those mentioned above, which get used for actually doing work, there are also exercises which the Innovation Professional can engage in that will help them to build their “creativity muscle”. This includes any constructive play like puzzle-building, LEGO® building, or similar building game, including digital games like Minecraft where one gets to use their creativity to build whole new worlds. It also includes more artistic pursuits such as creative writing, painting, “adult-coloring”, and woodwork. Essentially any activity that challenges one to take basic building blocks and create something “whole” out of it can be used to build and sharpen one’s creative capabilities. Innovation Professionals are usually well-served therefore to spend time doing these things as they can fit them in to their lives. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 47 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Creativity & Creativity Skills (cont.) When used effectively, creativity can be the key to coming up with incredibly novel new ways of solving problems, whether they be a Front End problem (what), a Mid Zone problem (when, where, and who), or a Back End problem (how). All of these situations benefit from the effective use of creativity. Creativity, therefore, plays an incredibly important supporting role in any and all innovation work. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 48 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Role of Brain Dominance There was a growing interest throughout much of the latter half of the Twentieth Century in the concepts of thinking styles and brain dominance, particularly as they related to creativity. Two important models came out of this. The original and simplest models was that of left-brain versus right-brain dominance. In this model, people with a left-brain dominance were purportedly more logical, objective, and analytical in their thinking, while people with a right-brain dominance were purportedly more intuitive, subjective, and artistic in their thinking. This construct is based on the Lateralization of Brain Function Theory, originated by American neuroscientist Dr. Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913 – 1994) while a professor at California Institute of Technology in the 1950s and 60s. Today, much of this theory has been debunked, with more contemporary research in neuroscience showing that the two halves of the brain very much work in concert with one another in order to accomplish tasks with a high degree of quality. They do not work in a dichotomous fashion. A similar model was published by Dr. Paul McLean while head of the Laboratory for Brain Evolution and Behavior at the National Institute for Mental Health. McLean’s model was known as the Triune Brain Theory, and involved an ancient brain (primitive, reptilian), a limbic brain (mammalian), and a neocortex (the so-called “thinking cap”). McLean’s Triune Brain Theory did not see any practical use inside of business. The next model that came along – and which has managed to stick – was developed by Ned Hermann (1922 – 1999) while helping to lead the Management Education program at General Electric in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Hermann’s model, which he came to call Whole Brain Thinking, was based purely on psychological observation and did not involve physiological experimentation as did Sperry’s. Hermann was fascinated with the workings of the brain and how this related to thinking styles and to creativity. While at GE, he assessed numerous subjects’ thinking patterns in order to build the foundation for the model, and in 1978 created the Hermann Participant Survey Form to profile subjects’ thinking styles and learning preference in accordance with the prevailing brain dominance thinking of the day (largely influenced by Sperry’s work). From this emerged Hermann’s concept of four stable quadrants of the brain, each with its own particular “genius”. This model was purely conceptual and had no relationship whatsoever with the physiology of the brain. Hermann’s assessment instrument evolved into what is today known as the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument®, or HBDI, which can be used to assess individuals’ thinking styles. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 49 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Role of Brain Dominance (cont.) The Whole Brain / Four Quadrant Model divides the brain in the following way: Cerebral Half Upper Left – Colored Blue – Logical, analytical, technical, quantitative, problem-solving. Lower Left – Colored Green – Controlled, organized, planned, detailed, sequential, conservative, administrative. Limbic Half Lower Right – Colored Red – Interpersonal, emotional, intuitive, team-oriented, communicative, spiritual. Upper Right – Colored Yellow – Imaginative, creative, conceptual, synthesizing, artistic, holistic. When one takes the HBDI, it reveals a certain profile showing how strong and weak one is in each of these areas. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 50 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Role of Brain Dominance (cont.) So, how does such a model relate to business innovation and to the Innovation Professional? The answer is that there are certain ways in which a brain dominance model relates, and other ways in which it does not. Each quadrant of this model has something to say about how people like to work, how they like to communicate (and be communicated to), how they approach teamwork, and their management style in general. That being the case, there are four (4) relevant points the Innovation Professional needs to be aware of. Those are: 1. Individuals with a certain brain dominance profile are not inherently “better innovators” than those with some other profile. Stated otherwise, there is no one “ideal” brain dominance profile for innovators. 2. Individuals with a Limbic orientation may be well suited to the very early Front End of Innovation (conceptual work). 3. Individuals with a Cerebral orientation may be well suited to the Back End of Innovation (execution work). 4. All in all, being able to innovate successfully within a business requires its teams to have a balance of brain- dominance styles, with certain styles assigned to certain roles. The business will likely not succeed at innovation without this balance. Thus teams should be built with this in mind. Whole Brain® and The Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument® (HBDI) are registered trademarks of Herrmann Global, LLC. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 51 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional The Role of Personality Type Just as with the existence of brain dominance models, there are also similar models of personality types. Perhaps the two most common of these are: 1. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBT) based on the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875 – 1961). 2. The DiSC profile based on the work of American psychologist William Moulton Marston (1893 – 1947) (with the assessment tool being developed by industrial psychologist Walter Vernon Clarke). The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator defines 16 unique personality types, denoted by four identifying letters – E-I / S-N / T-F / J-P. The DiSC profile defines four predominant personality types – Dominance / Influence / Steadiness / Conscientiousness. A third model similar to these was the Keirsey Temperaments model developed by American psychologist David Keirsey (1921 – 2013). The Keirsey model never saw the commercial success that the other two experienced. Both the MBT and DISC remain in widespread usage today. In relation to personality profiles, the same four points can largely be made as were made in relation to brain-dominance profiles. Namely… 1. Individuals with a certain personality type are not inherently “better innovators” than those with some other type. Stated otherwise, there is no one “ideal” personality type for innovators. 2. Individuals with a more subjective orientation may be well suited to the early Front End of Innovation (though not always). 3. Individuals with a more objective orientation may be well suited to the Back End of Innovation (though, again, not always). 4. All in all, being able to innovate successfully within a business requires its teams to have a balance of personality types, however in the case of personality types, there is no one-to-one correlation with specific roles. Teams should thus be built with this in mind. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 52 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Intrapreneur vs. Entrepreneur Most are familiar with the concept of the entrepreneur as being someone who launches a new business venture. These individuals are often required to be driven, visionary people with tremendous persistence, as starting a new business is always such a demanding undertaking, one that typically brings with it a high level of risk. It can, however, be an equally rewarding one, particularly for people who place a high value on independence and autonomy in their lives. Given today’s level of new venture activity, it is not uncommon for the Innovation Professional to personally know entrepreneurs, or to have even been one themselves at one point. Certainly having an entrepreneurial spirit is a major aid in carrying out any innovation work. A very similar concept to that of entrepreneurship has come to be used inside of larger, established businesses. It is the concept of the intrapreneur and of intrapreneurship. This typically refers to individuals within an established business who demonstrate the entrepreneurial spirit to, of their own initiative, take hands-on responsibility for creating and driving a new innovation through the business. In contrast to one who passively follows instructions regarding what to do, this is one who actively and assertively engages in their own level of risk-taking and sometimes unsanctioned efforts to make a new innovation come to life. The archetypal intrapreneur is one who toils away in a secret garage or skunkworks lab somewhere in the business to develop a new innovation for the business which they are passionate about. This generally requires a very “actuated” person… thus someone with very high EQ. The central essence of intrapreneurship is that the Intrapreneur chooses to act more or less independently in order to pursue a particular innovation in the business that they are passionate about, whether or not they have formal sanction and resources from the business for doing so. Sometimes it even involves pursuing endeavors in secrecy and using a certain level of resourcefulness and relationships to get access to what is needed to move the project forward. This can require a lot of informal leadership. It can also happen at any level in the organization, with executives sometimes setting up secret skunkworks operations away from the rest of the business. Generally speaking, the larger the organization, the easier it is to hide such a secret endeavor away somewhere. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 53 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Intrapreneur vs. Entrepreneur (cont.) At some point, perhaps after a proof-of-concept prototype has demonstrated the technical feasibility of an idea, or an alpha customer has been signed up to prove the commercial viability of a concept, the endeavor will have to come to light and become integrated into the formal portfolio of business activities the organization is formally managing. The benefit to businesses of allowing and even encouraging intrapreneurship is that they often end up with breakthrough new innovations that they would never have otherwise had. This tends to have a significant financial impact on the business that far outweighs the cost of people’s time that gets invested into the endeavors. Thus, most businesses would do well to encourage intrapreneurialism within their ranks. Depending on the culture of the business – whether it is more open and forward-thinking or more closed and anchored – intrapreneuring may or may not be welcomed there. Where it is welcomed, the experience will generally be much more positive, rewarding, and potentially career-enhancing. Where it is not welcomed… where there are numerous corporate antibodies trying to kill if off at every turn (perhaps because it is seen as a threat to the current business), then the experience will generally be much more difficult, challenging, and likely frustrating. It can, in some cases, even become career-limiting. The Innovation Professional should therefore seek to find out where their business lies on this spectrum and then engage accordingly. Businesses that are open to this will often have formal programs of engagement designed to drive bottom-up innovation, including the driven, sometimes maverick-like, behavior that intrapreneurs demonstrate. Historically the term intrapreneur was first introduced in a 1978 paper by husband and wife Gifford Pinchot III and Elizabeth Pinchot, where they defined intrapreneurs as “dreamers who do”. The term saw expanded usage in the early 1980s with a 1982 article in The Economist and the well-read 1985 TIME magazine article “Here come the Intrapreneurs”. Also in 1985 a Newsweek article credited Steve Jobs with using the term in relation to Apple’s Macintosh team. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 54 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Compulsive Innovators – What Drives Them? Within the world of innovation, there is a certain subculture of individuals who one might refer to as “compulsive innovators”. They feel incessantly compelled to pursue innovation… to be constantly driving things forward… an insatiable appetite for always being a part of “the new”. This is the same incessant compulsion that has driven many inventors and entrepreneurs over the centuries – individuals like Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Nikola Tesla, Charles Babbage, James Watt, and Thomas Edison. These people developed transformative innovations, built lucrative new businesses around them, and left behind a legacy of innovation that the world remembers to this day. Even today, we find individuals whom we refer to as “serial entrepreneurs”. They start a business, scale it to a certain point, and then sell it. Then they go out and do it all over again – repeatedly time after time. This perhaps raises a question in some people’s minds as to why this is. What is it about these people that drives them to compulsively be always pursuing something new? While no exhaustive study has been made of these individual’s particular psychological, physiological, or lifestyle profiles (the closest this is perhaps The Innovator’s DNA), what has been observed are two things. First, most of these individuals have – either as a product of birth, circumstances, or both – an insatiable curiosity about the world and a desire to not only know it better, but to unlock its secrets for the sake of advancement. Their inherent curiosity and desire drives them to study, experiment, and learn, and then to apply these things to the new and novel. There is a certain “rush” they get from successfully bringing new things to life, and sometimes a significant financial payback. Second, many of these individuals have – perhaps mostly as a product of their circumstances and upbringing – an inherent drive to change the world and to make it a better place. For many of them even, this arises out of a sense of spiritual purpose – why they were put here on Earth, and what they are supposed to do with their lives while here. Certainly this has been the case with many social innovators and with certain business innovators who saw a deeper purpose to business than simply converting goods and services into revenue and profit. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 55 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Compulsive Innovators (cont.) Consider the following quotes from these famous innovators: The Greek philosopher and epistemology innovator Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The Hindu social innovator Mahatma Gandhi: “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” The Christian social innovator Mother Teresa: “We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.” The Zen practitioner and business innovator Steve Jobs: “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?” These individuals seem to have heard a certain “drumbeat” that drove them forward in trying to change the world, typically in quite an innovative or unconventional fashion for the challenge they were dealing with. One thing that many of them have in common is that they have had a particular life-changing experience… often something dramatic, traumatic even, that has forced them to step back and develop a deeper, more spiritual perspective on their lives and then conclude that they had to pursue a deeper and more meaningful purpose while here on Earth. One might conclude then that several possible things potentially conspire to transform certain individuals into compulsive innovators. Perhaps it was being born with a natural curiosity of the world. Perhaps it was a childhood influence to constantly experience new things and learn, or to constantly experiment. Perhaps it was a traumatic life-changing experience that forced them to take a deeper and more spiritual perspective on life, which in turn led them to pursue some means of impacting the world. Or perhaps it was some combination of all three of these. Either way, it will always be true that, for whatever reason, the world will continue to have those individuals who are compulsively driven to change things and to make them better – to deliver new innovation to the world. They are, in the words of the now-famous 1984 Apple ad conceived by Rob Siltanen while working at ad agency Chiat-Day… “the crazy ones… the misfits… the rebels… the troublemakers… the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently.” These people still exist, and probably forever will. If a business is able to find people who fit this mold, they would do well to put them in a role where they have the freedom, latitude, and resources to pursue bold new innovations for the business, perhaps breakthrough, disruptive, or even transformative innovations. This will allow the individual to flourish and the business to potentially realize a substantial return on their investment. The caveat, however, is that these individuals are not always the easiest to work with. They are, as Siltanen’s copy went on to remind us… “not fond of rules”… they have “no respect for the status quo.” This should be taken into consideration when making a place for them. They will likely not fit well within established business units. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 56 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Becoming an Innovator In order to become an innovator and fulfill the role of Innovation Professional, an individual must embrace: a disdain for stasis and the status quo an openness to change a sense of entrepreneurialism an eagerness for exploration, experimenting, and experiencing. They must also master the 5 Discovery Skills – observing / questioning / experimenting / networking / associating. Finally they must be in touch with their personality type and brain dominance pattern, and know both how to best leverage these and how to compliment them with their teammates’ own skills, so that together they can discover bold new opportunities and deliver radical new innovations that move their business and their markets meaningfully forward. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 57 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Working on Core Innovation Teams The concept of the Core Innovation Team involves all of those individuals who are either assigned full-time to a centralized innovation function within the business, or who are assigned full-time to executing only innovation projects within decentralized innovation groups of various functions or business units. The key point for these individuals is that they are focused exclusively on carrying out innovation projects and endeavors for the business. Collectively they make up the business’ Core Innovation Team. With their shared focus, even when they are assigned to a decentralized group, they often still have a matrix- style report-in relationship to a centralized innovation function, typically led by a Chief Innovation Officer (or equivalent). This ensures they all remain in sync with one another and with the business’ overarching Innovation Strategy. For the Innovation Professional, the primary team role will typically be serving on what are called X-Works Innovation Teams, or just “Innovation Teams” for short. The name “X-Works” denotes the fact that these teams are focused on true innovation endeavors, and not simply extensions of current products and services. This distinguishes such a team from a standard New Product Development (NPD) team who may be developing an iteration of an existing product platform, according to a product roadmap established by a Product Manager. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 58 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Working on Core Innovation Teams (cont.) Innovation Teams are typically in search of bold new opportunities to deliver real innovation that can have a major impact on the business and the market, which means that what they are pursuing may in fact be a departure from what the business is currently doing, or at least a major extension to what it is doing in some area. The work of these teams is therefore much more exploratory, experimental, and fuzzy in nature, and much of their efforts will be aimed at longer term opportunities for the business. The members of these teams need to be highly creative and entrepreneurial, which is precisely why that are staffed with Innovation Professionals. The Innovation Professional will want to learn how to operate most effectively and productively within these teams. Thus, while they may view themselves as a maverick of sort, they will still require good interpersonal and teamwork skills so that they can help their teams be as effective as possible at achieving new innovations. While invention is something that can be done by the lone genius, innovation rarely can. Innovation almost always requires a carefully coordinated team effort in order to succeed. The Innovation Professional must therefore understand that they will be expected to be a team player and do everything they can to make their teams successful and not just themselves. They will not realize overall success until they learn to pursue true team successes. The mantra they should keep in mind therefore is: “nobody wins until we all win.” If they do this, then they are sure to help their teams achieve great success and generate numerous new innovations that make it all the way through to implementation, which is always the ultimate reward. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 59 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional LESSON 6 Creativity & Creativity Methods Tapping into Innovation’s Source of Life www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 60 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Professional Creativity – What Is It? Creativity is the use of the human mental faculty to conceive new solutions to specific challenges – arranging existing things in novel new ways to arrive at a particular desired end point. As mentioned previously, it is akin to resourcefulness… how one can use and arrange the resources at their disposal to best accomplish a particular aim. The more unique and novel the way one arranges these things, the more creative is said to be their concept. As also noted previously, creativity is used through innovation projects… In the Front End of Innovation to conceive as many different solutions to a problem as possible – solutions that will subsequently be prototyped and tested. In the Mid Zone of Innovation to conceive a large number of potential business models and go-to-market strategies to consider. In the Back End of Innovation to come up with all the many pieces needed to bring the innovation to life. www.gini.org CInP® Course Workbook 61 / 441 GInI │ Global Innovation Institute CInP® │ Certified Innovation Pr

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