Innovation versus Ideation
By
Suresh Madhavan, Ph.D.
PointCross Inc.
Companies are now waking up and realizing that “It’s the lack of Innovation – stupid!” And so the business pundits give their 12 step program to nurture innovation. Vendors began selling solutions for ideation – a mash up of idea generation and maturation – for product development projects, Six Sigma continuous improvement programs, or employee involvement programs. Many get into the act because this appears to be “low hanging fruit” – some forms for collecting metadata, some workflow, some charting and reporting, and call it a solution for innovation. This does not make any sense to me. Innovation is not the result of following a formula or process blindly. While ideation is certainly a matter of steadily progressing ideas through criteria laden process. Let me share some thoughts about ideation and innovation and how they differ, and how they fit in a corporate environment.
Ideation and innovation are different. Ideation is used to qualify, give shape, and possibly develop, incoming ideas so they can serve a specific purpose. There is a pull that encourages people to offer their ideas with a certain amount of relevance to the objective, or purpose, of the Ideation process. The objective of the ideation process sets the context for the ideas. There should be no ambiguity about the purpose for which the ideas are being gathered. A few companies even have very broad ideation goals that cover everything from finding and solving safety, environment, operation or other HR issues, in a time warp to the days of the “suggestion” box.
Innovation, on the other hand, occurs in an environment that fosters a culture of invention, and new ways of doing things or conducting business. Innovation requires that ideas, or a combination of ideas, must spark yet other ideas and concepts until new ideas or concepts emerge that can be contextualized in terms of an Ideation process that might be in place. The nature and the type of thinking is different. To set this in context, let us consider how two great companies – Microsoft and Apple. Irrespective of how one feels about each, there is no question that both are very powerful models to learn from. And their founders provided the DNA for their cultures and have maintained that culture over the decades. This is what Bill Gates had to say after he sat through an Apple design review:
“You know, we sat in Mac product reviews where there were questions about software choices, how things would be done, that I viewed as an engineering question. That's just how my mind works. And I'd see Steve make the decision based on a sense of people and product that is even hard for me to explain. The way he does things is just different, and you know, I think it's magical.“ – Bill Gates about Steve Jobs, Apple. (Jun 7, 2007, Time)
Apple has always been an innovation company and it has maintained its leadership position in product ideas and technical perfection. Microsoft has always successfully managed and built its markets and executed with perfection and purpose. Perhaps now, Apple is on track to parallel Microsoft with a broad footprint that covers hardware and software technology, media, content, and consumer. But this note is not about whether innovation trumps execution or the other way around. This is about the differences.
Innovation Characteristics
Institution: Environment & Culture driven
Behavioral: Right brained – holistic, insights,
intuitive, creativity, people, feeling, art
Expectations: Recursive goals, Surprises, “Aha!",
“Oops”, No short term or specific goals
Thinking: Eclectic, non-linear, lateral, recursive,
flitting
Results: Retain failures, bad ideas, create
game changing concepts from combining ideas
– good or bad
Organizational: Broaden, Discover, Invent, learning organization
Incoming Ideas: Raw, disparate levels and maturity,
unattributed and not contextualized,
counter-intuitive (e.g.: how about a
glue that does not stick well)
Idea Processing:Create a growing idea store,
and Usage Use idea-store to build new ideas and concepts,
Look for criteria match
Viewing & : Doodles, unstructured, technical
Reporting graphics
Characteristics of an Ideation Process
Institution: Process driven
Behavioral: Left brained – analytical, logical, rational,
scientific, purpose driven
Expectations: No Surprises, Plan the Work, Work the Plan
Thinking: Linear, incremental, layered, focused, angular,
specialized
Results: Distill good ideas that comply with criteria,
throw out bad, or failed, ideas
Organizational: Find, Capture, Build, Strengthen, Learning
knowledgeable organization
Incoming Ideas: Contextualized to Ideation purpose or criteria dimensions
Idea Processing: Filter based on evaluations of how well
idea matches criteria; minimum idea to idea
combinatorial analysis; mean and std. deviation
of evaluations
Viewing & : Tabulated reports and business graphics
Reporting
3M was noted to have been one of the leaders of innovation. Their transition from a (3M – Mining & Minerals of Minnesota) mining company to a modern consumer technology products company is remarkable. They make glue, among many things. One would assume that the “good” criteria for glue includes (a) the ability to stick fast, (b) to stick hard, (c) to stay stuck for a long time, (d) to be able to unstuck it with a safe reagent. An ideation process would make sure that all products have these basic characteristics. An innovative environment will take a glue that failed to stick hard, and make it into Post-IT Notes which is a whole business for 3M.
So it is possible that in the grab bag or idea-mart there will be the notion of “Glue must stick” as a criteria, but there can also be a criteria that goes “Glue that does not stick”. Therein is the notion of networking multiple ideas, which are attributed with raw criteria such as these four, to create a new product concept. Quite possibly these raw criteria may appear very trite or mundane to the professional practioners of the craft, or the scientist in 3M. But someone was able to ask the question “What if?”; “Why Not?” which led to the proposition – “what if we could stick a piece of paper to anything and be able to pull it off without leaving a mark anytime in the future – Wouldn’t it be neat to leave notes for people? Notes that we can write down in a list to remember and stick it to the refrigerator door……?”
Ideation would have required that all glue ideas be processed through the same criteria – and the prototype glue that wouldn’t stick would have been rejected. In a poor innovation culture the idea along with the poor scientist might even be ridiculed for creating an oxymoron. But 3M had a culture that allowed people to look for what is not expected or being asked. The rest is a very profitable history.
Now taking a more prescriptive approach, I would venture that to be effective and to create an innovative company that is able to consistently build depth and breadth in its product offerings; while having the strategic energy to show up with the range needed to go the distance in a highly competitive market place; it must have:
An idea mart that accumulates all incoming ideas with ultra simple interfaces for anyone to find them, and think of other ones; and sponsors to help with creativity
An idea incubator attached to the idea mart for people to combine or refine ideas into potential concepts that can feed an ideation process; with sponsors to help with creativity
An ideation process for idea, or concept authors to articulate concepts and product ideas that have business value; and for evaluators to systematically mature them, filter them, and distill those ideas and concepts that should be funded.
Watch for a follow on blog where I would like to prescribe a number of treatments in each of these three stages. These are meant to encourage and foster innovation and best evolve a culture of innovation.
By
Suresh Madhavan, Ph.D.
PointCross Inc.
Companies are now waking up and realizing that “It’s the lack of Innovation – stupid!” And so the business pundits give their 12 step program to nurture innovation. Vendors began selling solutions for ideation – a mash up of idea generation and maturation – for product development projects, Six Sigma continuous improvement programs, or employee involvement programs. Many get into the act because this appears to be “low hanging fruit” – some forms for collecting metadata, some workflow, some charting and reporting, and call it a solution for innovation. This does not make any sense to me. Innovation is not the result of following a formula or process blindly. While ideation is certainly a matter of steadily progressing ideas through criteria laden process. Let me share some thoughts about ideation and innovation and how they differ, and how they fit in a corporate environment.
Ideation and innovation are different. Ideation is used to qualify, give shape, and possibly develop, incoming ideas so they can serve a specific purpose. There is a pull that encourages people to offer their ideas with a certain amount of relevance to the objective, or purpose, of the Ideation process. The objective of the ideation process sets the context for the ideas. There should be no ambiguity about the purpose for which the ideas are being gathered. A few companies even have very broad ideation goals that cover everything from finding and solving safety, environment, operation or other HR issues, in a time warp to the days of the “suggestion” box.
Innovation, on the other hand, occurs in an environment that fosters a culture of invention, and new ways of doing things or conducting business. Innovation requires that ideas, or a combination of ideas, must spark yet other ideas and concepts until new ideas or concepts emerge that can be contextualized in terms of an Ideation process that might be in place. The nature and the type of thinking is different. To set this in context, let us consider how two great companies – Microsoft and Apple. Irrespective of how one feels about each, there is no question that both are very powerful models to learn from. And their founders provided the DNA for their cultures and have maintained that culture over the decades. This is what Bill Gates had to say after he sat through an Apple design review:
“You know, we sat in Mac product reviews where there were questions about software choices, how things would be done, that I viewed as an engineering question. That's just how my mind works. And I'd see Steve make the decision based on a sense of people and product that is even hard for me to explain. The way he does things is just different, and you know, I think it's magical.“ – Bill Gates about Steve Jobs, Apple. (Jun 7, 2007, Time)
Apple has always been an innovation company and it has maintained its leadership position in product ideas and technical perfection. Microsoft has always successfully managed and built its markets and executed with perfection and purpose. Perhaps now, Apple is on track to parallel Microsoft with a broad footprint that covers hardware and software technology, media, content, and consumer. But this note is not about whether innovation trumps execution or the other way around. This is about the differences.
Innovation Characteristics
Institution: Environment & Culture driven
Behavioral: Right brained – holistic, insights,
intuitive, creativity, people, feeling, art
Expectations: Recursive goals, Surprises, “Aha!",
“Oops”, No short term or specific goals
Thinking: Eclectic, non-linear, lateral, recursive,
flitting
Results: Retain failures, bad ideas, create
game changing concepts from combining ideas
– good or bad
Organizational: Broaden, Discover, Invent, learning organization
Incoming Ideas: Raw, disparate levels and maturity,
unattributed and not contextualized,
counter-intuitive (e.g.: how about a
glue that does not stick well)
Idea Processing:Create a growing idea store,
and Usage Use idea-store to build new ideas and concepts,
Look for criteria match
Viewing & : Doodles, unstructured, technical
Reporting graphics
Characteristics of an Ideation Process
Institution: Process driven
Behavioral: Left brained – analytical, logical, rational,
scientific, purpose driven
Expectations: No Surprises, Plan the Work, Work the Plan
Thinking: Linear, incremental, layered, focused, angular,
specialized
Results: Distill good ideas that comply with criteria,
throw out bad, or failed, ideas
Organizational: Find, Capture, Build, Strengthen, Learning
knowledgeable organization
Incoming Ideas: Contextualized to Ideation purpose or criteria dimensions
Idea Processing: Filter based on evaluations of how well
idea matches criteria; minimum idea to idea
combinatorial analysis; mean and std. deviation
of evaluations
Viewing & : Tabulated reports and business graphics
Reporting
3M was noted to have been one of the leaders of innovation. Their transition from a (3M – Mining & Minerals of Minnesota) mining company to a modern consumer technology products company is remarkable. They make glue, among many things. One would assume that the “good” criteria for glue includes (a) the ability to stick fast, (b) to stick hard, (c) to stay stuck for a long time, (d) to be able to unstuck it with a safe reagent. An ideation process would make sure that all products have these basic characteristics. An innovative environment will take a glue that failed to stick hard, and make it into Post-IT Notes which is a whole business for 3M.
So it is possible that in the grab bag or idea-mart there will be the notion of “Glue must stick” as a criteria, but there can also be a criteria that goes “Glue that does not stick”. Therein is the notion of networking multiple ideas, which are attributed with raw criteria such as these four, to create a new product concept. Quite possibly these raw criteria may appear very trite or mundane to the professional practioners of the craft, or the scientist in 3M. But someone was able to ask the question “What if?”; “Why Not?” which led to the proposition – “what if we could stick a piece of paper to anything and be able to pull it off without leaving a mark anytime in the future – Wouldn’t it be neat to leave notes for people? Notes that we can write down in a list to remember and stick it to the refrigerator door……?”
Ideation would have required that all glue ideas be processed through the same criteria – and the prototype glue that wouldn’t stick would have been rejected. In a poor innovation culture the idea along with the poor scientist might even be ridiculed for creating an oxymoron. But 3M had a culture that allowed people to look for what is not expected or being asked. The rest is a very profitable history.
Now taking a more prescriptive approach, I would venture that to be effective and to create an innovative company that is able to consistently build depth and breadth in its product offerings; while having the strategic energy to show up with the range needed to go the distance in a highly competitive market place; it must have:
An idea mart that accumulates all incoming ideas with ultra simple interfaces for anyone to find them, and think of other ones; and sponsors to help with creativity
An idea incubator attached to the idea mart for people to combine or refine ideas into potential concepts that can feed an ideation process; with sponsors to help with creativity
An ideation process for idea, or concept authors to articulate concepts and product ideas that have business value; and for evaluators to systematically mature them, filter them, and distill those ideas and concepts that should be funded.
Watch for a follow on blog where I would like to prescribe a number of treatments in each of these three stages. These are meant to encourage and foster innovation and best evolve a culture of innovation.
