by John Brooker | Mar 28, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Innovate
How using different styles effectively can enhance innovation… One of the activities I use at the start of innovation workshops or team workshops, is the cane activity (or “Get Caned” as I call it). This involves having two equal size teams either side of a long cane (I use a foldable tent pole) with the cane resting on each person’s index fingers. They must lower the cane to the floor from waist height, keeping their fingers on the cane at all times. This sounds very easy; if I say that groups usually take “five minutes plus” on their first run and are often standing on tip toes at times, you can sense it might not be. I give teams three attempts at it and usually they can reduce the time to less than a minute (the record being 25 seconds in my classes). Apart from being a useful team building exercise, I use it to bring out lessons about creativity and innovation. In the debriefing, one key lesson that emerges is about the different styles people have to tackle the challenge. Some are obvious; those who focus completely on the outcome and go for it, immediately shouting instructions seeking to use their intuition to work it out. Others want to break the rules “just drop it!” Some people are more experimental, “Let’s try this… that didn’t work, try this…” The rest observe how others do it and replicate what works. There is often frustration and the biggest lesson is that people tackle challenges in different ways (their style) and the team must listen and collaborate if they going to achieve the required...
by John Brooker | Feb 21, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 52 Could the predominant style in an organisation influence the type of innovation that it develops? “Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics.” Coco Chanel Could the predominant style of innovation in your organisation influence the type of innovation it develops? This weekend, I was a co-tutor at an Open University (OU) MBA Alumni Masterclass weekend on People, Innovation and Change. We had a brilliant time (I love this job!), the group were great and all the speakers were first class. One speaker, James Fleck, (Dean & Professor of Innovation Dynamics at the OU Business School, UK) distinguished between three types of innovation (with thanks to Wikipedia): Incremental Innovation ~ making minor changes over time to sustain the growth of a company without making sweeping changes to product lines, services or markets in which competition currently exists (source: Boston Consulting Group) Radical Innovation ~ a new product or service that is based on a substantially superior technology than the dominant one used by products or services in the market and offers substantially superior benefits than existing products or services in the market (source: Chandy, Rajesh and Gerard J. Tellis (1998), “Organizing For Radical Product Innovation,” Journal of Marketing Research, 35 (November), pp 474-487) Disruptive Innovation ~ a technological innovation, product or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or product in the market e.g. the compact disk replacing the vinyl record (please click here for a good overview of disruptive innovation) Apart from wondering whether a Dyson cleaner is a form of “radical incrementalism” the Professor set me...
