Great Innovators are like one of us. After their innovations attained commercial success these individuals got unprecedented recognition. Organizations powered by digitization will have to innovate at a speed of light in the 21st century. All this will be possible depending upon how they motivate their heart counts and help them inculcate innovation habits that propel an innovator in them.
Habit is a very interesting word, if you remove ‘H’ a bit remains & when you remove ‘ab’ still it remains. So, habits don’t die, they are immortal. BMGI have extensively researched on several successful innovations & their creators and have come up with 7 habits that every successful innovator exhibited in their quest to innovate. We conduct a workshop where we subtly seed each of this habit in the participant’s intellect with exercises, videos and live problem solving facilitation using select innovation tools.
Here are 7 Innovation Habits
- Habit 1: Develop Deep Empathy for Customers
- Habit 2: Transform the way the jobs get done
- Habit 3: Think beyond product innovation
- Habit 4: Imagine the impossible
- Habit 5: Be a contrarian
- Habit 6: Look beyond industry for ideas
- Habit 7: Move past idea killers
Habit 1: Develop Deep Empathy for Customers
Empathy is when you become one with the customer and live his life to understand his frustrations, anxiety, pains and moments of joy. Innovator through his innovations help overcome frustrations and/or magnify moments of joy.
Of many examples, one innovation that appeals me when Arunachalam Murugananthan (Reference 1) understood the pains poor women go through their menstrual cycle and unhealthy means they employ during this period. The main reason was affordability of existing means (sanitary napkins) and these women sacrificed their basic right to manage already miniscule family budget. He launched affordable ‘sanitary napkin’ that any women can buy. The campaign is launched with the help of village women thus also generating an employment for them. So, with one idea he solved two problems. A man imagining women’s problem and addressing it in an ingenious way is a best example of empathy.
Habit 2: Transform the way the jobs get done
Customers buy products and services because there is a job that arise in their life that they need to satisfy. If the new innovative solutions address the jobs better than the existing ones then customers just adopt these new solutions. See how UBER (Reference 2) has created a threat to an automotive industry so much so that people in future might prefer hiring cars than buying them. Uber seems to be doing 'jobs' that arise in customer's life like moving from place A to Place B, safely, comfortably, in shortest possible time without stress of driving through maze of cars and finding a parking place.
The jobs are categorized at four levels functional, personal, social and ancillary and primarily on attributes of access, cost, skill and convenience. BMGI's '7 Innovation Habits Workshop' fires participant’s imagination so that they see their current products and services from ‘jobs to be done’ point of view
Habit 3: Think beyond product innovations
Innovation is not about products alone; many successful organizations have won the ‘red ocean’ business battle with their competitors by simply ‘innovating’ on the value they provide through their products & services and processes they employ to execute them. Toyota is a great example of application of lean thinking across business processes, they haven’t limited ‘lean thinking’ to only manufacturing processes but have extended it to all spheres of business. Similarly, organizations achieved differentiation by innovating on various elements of their business models. (Reference 3)
Habit 4: Imagine the impossible
‘I’ m possible is what the word impossible is trying to tell us. There is a famous quote which reads ‘The tragedy of most innovation attempt is not failure, but low aim.’
We are conditioned to think in a way that defines success as achievable rather than the one which appears as ‘unachievable’. ‘Imagining the impossible’ is something that is ideal. In ideal situation, the results delivered by innovations are far greater than the cost to achieve it and harms they bring in by way of new set of problems. Ideal innovation thus describes solution to a problem independent of mechanism of the original problem and constraints of the original problem. For e.g. If we are innovating on a better washing machine then the ideal innovation here is to innovate on a fabric that does not require cleaning in other words it’s we need to think on how fabric might clean itself and put all the allied products out of business. This is in a way makes us counter disruption which is so rampant these days at an early stage.
Habit 5: Be a contrarian
A contrarian is a person who takes up a contrary position, especially a position that is opposed to that of the majority. Innovators are contrarian, business history has ample examples of innovators who defined industry in an unconventional way for e.g. Steve Jobs who insisted on building great products and create an equally great eco-system before even thinking of profits. Elon Musk founder of TESLA is doing the same with electric vehicle. They created new rules for already existing industries by venturing into areas that was ignored by the existing players.
Habit 6: Look beyond industry for ideas
Someone somewhere has solved a problem like mine or even worse than mine forms the premise to look outside one’s industry for ideas. Normally organizations look at their current competition and try to improve their products/services by ‘me too’ improvements. This doesn’t always lead to solutions that solve the existing problems or offer new solutions to enhance customer experience. BMGI’s course on TRIZ (Systematic Innovation) help participants implement solutions that are very unique and ingenious by using ideas from other industries (Some cross-industry examples Reference 4)
Habit 7: Move past idea killers
Idea killing is similar to an ‘abortion’. Even before an idea is taking its life, if it’s get rejected / killed means we are not even looking at its future potential. The ‘telephone’ was originally rejected and considered inferior to ‘telegraphy’ which was used as a means of long distance communication. When Bell offered his invention to Western Union they hastily evaluated the idea and prepared a memo which read like this
“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”
The rest is of course a history. Here are some more examples of ideas that were originally rejected (Reference 5), these cases will motivate us to consider all ideas equal when presented first time.
The way an innovator can put forward an idea to find an initial acceptance is to list all the potential customer value proposition and provider value proposition. This gives an assurance to the reviewers / approvers to realize that the idea is well thought and is not mere a fantasy.
References:
3) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5w-2h-innovation-prashant-joglekar see the section ’where to innovate