Principle 8: Learning, innovation and continual improvement (Item 3)
Continual improvement and innovation depends on continual learning.
You should use tools and techniques to generate new concepts.
Because of the large number of iterations possible and to help you
break out of your current thinking, it is a very good idea to use tools
and techniques to guide your process of idea generation and reduce the
number of failed iterations.
Here is a list of tools in common use. [We will not explain these further.
If you need more information about them, check out the reference given
after each.]
- Brainstorming (a Memory Jogger tool)
- Affinity diagram (a Memory Jogger tool)
- Lateral Thinking (a de Bono tool)
- Mindmapping (a Tony Buzan tool)
Now, a glimpse at four more sophisticated tools.
Your innovation and continual improvement must be aimed at providing
better products and services to your customers/stakeholders.
Most companies are caught up in the technological chase of their industry.
Consequently, most think that the only innovation worth thinking about
is a technical change to the product or service. Or, a clever change
to the process design to make it more efficient. Although these are
without doubt important (and often receive the most publicity), they
are not where the most successful innovations come from.
The innovations the have the most leverage are those that directly
address your customers' dissatisfiers. Recall from Principle 3 (`Customers')
that what your customer sees as your product and service offering is
much broader than the physical product or that actual service. Your
customer sees things about your product and service that they do not
like – especially those things that inconvenience them, cause them
extra work or how payment is made. Dissatisfiers.
Very high leverage innovations can come from addressing these dissatisfiers.
High leverage because they can often be achieved with little cost or
inconvenience to you and at the same time give you a much more satisfied
customer.
For example, here is a common set of customer dissatisfiers. You can
often get a considerable increase in customer satisfaction by addressing
them.
- payment terms and conditions
- access to be able to purchase
- advice on how to use the product
- how the product is delivered
- response time
- perceived status from using your product or service
- reliability
- accuracy
- the number of times they have to contact you to be able to get the
product to work to their satisfaction
It takes a lot of courage to associate innovation with the words "exact
science" as we have done above in the TRIZ discussion. Nobel Laureate
Murray Gell-mann used to demonstrate the thinking process of his colleague
and fellow Nobel Laureate, the late Richard Feynman, by writing a problem
on the board, posing for a few minutes as if in deep thought, and then
writing down the answer. Gell-mann's anecdote is telling. Brilliantly
creative ideas are rarely, if ever, a result of an exact, scientific
procedure.
- Most revolutionary inventions and great ideas were thought up while
sleeping or in the shower.
- Many adaptations are planned as we described above.
- Many adaptations are what we call serendipity (making desirable
but unsought for changes), and we will discuss where serendipity fits
in.
- Other adaptations are very puzzling. The macaques of Japan wash
their rice in the sea. They all do it. Washing separates rice from
stones and adds a bit of salt for flavor. How did they adapt to do
this? It is certainly learned. Where did this invention come from?
Was this serendipity?
- Some adaptations look as though they happen by good luck:
- Art Fry's invention of the 3M Post-it® note (Art Fry was looking
for a way to hold his book marks in place. At about the same time
a colleague had developed a glue that did not stick too well. The
eventual result was the Post-it © note.)
- the invention of `NOTwax' for skis. (NOTwax was first developed
by Dupont who were looking at extensions of Teflon. In doing so they
found a liquid that is totally chemically inert and would not stick
to anything. It was declared "useless" and sat in drums
on a car park for while. Someone was looking for improved waterproofing
for ski skins and tried it. It did not work as waterproofing but made
the skis very slippery. Hence a new product NOTwax.)
There is often the impression of "good luck" about these
innovations. Isn't "good luck" the intersection of preparation
and opportunity?
To be creative and innovative, you need creative people, right? Principle
7 ('Enthusiastic People') described how you get people to volunteer
their enthusiasm, etc. Most people are creative – if you let them
be. However, some people are clearly more creative than others are.
What is a creative person?
Creativity usually has the following traits:
- high energy
- persistence
- independence of judgment
- autonomy
- intuition
- self-confidence
- ability to see and resolve apparent contradictions
- a firm sense of self as `creative'
- internal locus of control
- a large knowledge base
- ability to put together knowledge from different sources.
Guilford in his Presidential address to the American Psychological
Association 11750 cited Eight Primary Abilities of the creative person:
- Sensitivity to problems - related to curiosity (ie sees the implications
associated with situations - the implied problems and opportunities)
- Fluency - ability to produce large numbers of ideas
- Novelty - ability to produce unusual but apt ideas
- Flexibility - ability to change frames
- Synthesis and Analysis - to deal with larger sets of information
- to construct them
- Complexity - to deal with many factors
- Evaluation - to produce valued difference from ideas
|