I stumbled upon IBM’s innovation stories from around the globe. Each story is insightful, interesting and some are also inspiring. They are all about applying technology to a real-world problem.

My favorite is the story of Teatro La Fenice and access to their performances on the Digital Sipario archives. I even love the name: Digital Sipario = Digital Curtain. As you enjoy the performances, please reflect: What is your innovation story?

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“The only winning move is not to play” is what WOPR concluded after playing endless drawn games of tic-tac-toe against itself in the movie WarGames. By recognizing the simple cause and effect relationship and learning that sometimes there are no winners, WOPR demonstrated its system thinking, its big picture thinking thereby saving the world.

While the traditional form of analysis focuses on taking apart the individual pieces of the whole to be studied, systems thinking focuses on the whole itself: interactions and interdependencies that takes place between what is being studied and the system it is part of. By expanding the view of the system, more interactions and interdependencies can be identified and analyzed. This expanded view could result in a different conclusion than anticipated through traditional forms of analysis, especially when the system is complex with numerous interactions, internal or external.

Perhaps the importance of systems thinking is best seen in nature. There are numerous case studies of introducing non-native species to new regions for one purpose or another. The Cane toad was introduced to Australia to control sugar cane pests, but instead are now declared as an invasive species in Australia, and are a serious threat to native biodiversity. Along the same lines, Scotch Broom was brought to Pacific Northwest to be used as a garden ornamental. Unfortunately, this bush has bloomed out of control and is now considered an invasive specie in Washington and other states.

Just like the environment, your firm is a complex organism and a living system. As with any system, you need to understand and manage the internal and external interactions and interdependencies to be successful. As I mentioned before in Innovation Process: 3 Things You Can Count On, innovation is an effect in economy and society. To avoid being referred to as an invasive species, you need to incorporate systems thinking, big picture perspective, into your innovation process. How you internally manage your innovation process, how you handle the interactions and interdependencies between your idea generation, strategic planning, resource allocation, competency development and more is just as important for your success. By managing your innovation as a system, internally and externally, you increase the chances of your success.

Below are some tools to help you sharpen your systems thinking. I would love to hear about your tools, and what works for you and your team.

• Apply the 5 Whys: As painful as it is at times, I do enjoy the Why? questions that my son asks. Asking Why? helps one to move from the immediate symptom to cover the underlying problem, and thereby identify potential resolutions to the issue at hand. Just make sure in the process, you are focusing on facts and not opinions, as your goal is to identify potential actions that you can take. Opinions, finger pointing and such are just explanations that do not lend themselves to solutions. If you do happen to get an explanation, ask again Why else could it be? Each Why? question will take you to a different perspective, different context and expand your system further, opening up new possibilities and potentials.
• Use scenario planning and stories: Write stories about the potential futures of your innovation. Then use these stories to capture relationships, interactions and interdependencies between various parts to build the view of the whole system. As you build your story, focus on the type of relationships: supportive, limiting, negative, unintended consequences, … Each of these could then feed into your risk management process, your assumption validation and other parts of your innovation management cycle as appropriate.
• Leverage the power of diversity: In order to uncover hidden relationships and capture the impact of interdependencies you need a diverse team of experts, skills, experiences and perspectives, i.e. a cross-functional team. Bear in mind that as your scenarios and stories expand, so should your team, including potentially suppliers, partners, customers, analysts, … Be flexible with your team structure and be open to signs when you need to reevaluate its membership.
• Stimulate your creativity: I enjoy shuffling through Roger von Oech’s Innovative Whack Pack. Regardless of which card I pick, it offers a new insight and wisdom that I need to incorporate into my thinking.
• Compile a portfolio of analysis tools: Porter’s 5 Forces,life cycle analysis tools, cause-and-effect diagrams, TRIZ, value chain analysis and others can help bring a systems perspective to your thinking.
• Improve your collaboration and change management skills: Systems thinking is about interactions and interdependencies, and how things behave within the whole, internally and externally. It is about recognizing these interactions and changing or managing them accordingly. So, sharpen your collaboration and change management skills to improve your overall effectiveness.

Finally, establish regular checkpoints. As I mentioned before, we are all part of a complex organism and a living system. As you launch your innovation, you will need to continuously monitor and examine the system and analyze if its behaving as expected. If the results are not what you anticipated, then review and adjust. In a way, it is all an experiment.

Technorati Tags: systems thinking, big picture thinking

The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in. —Harold Goddard

Storytelling is an art. It is powerful, expressive, and perhaps the quickest path to building deep connections. When you are in the presence of a good storyteller, words take you beyond their meanings where you are presented to the world of possibilities. Its like living Sheherazade and hearing her stories from One Thousand and One Nights. I had the pleasure of working for a General Manager that had an amazing storytelling ability. Stories of our customers, competitors, market changes, hopes and dreams were his way of expressing his experiences, his vision and exploring how we could jointly create a new shared reality. For a startup within a large company, these stories are crucial for building a common future and a culture that would sustain itself when the going gets tough.

I can go on and on about the importance of storytelling for the innovation process and the leadership. However, Steve Denning summarizes the power of storytelling quite eloquently in his blog: The Secret Language of Leadership. You can read his summary here.

If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life. —Siberian Elder

We are our stories. We tell ourselves stories about what we can and can’t do, how our world operates, and we use these stories to internalize what we experience daily through our clouded filters. If you like to know more about how our stories shapes our lives, take a look at Jim Loehr’s book The Power of Story: Rewrite Your Destiny in Business and in Life, and be ready to explore your own story.

I hope you can see the power of stories, their influence and impact in the innovation process as they shape and form our views of the world. I also hope that you recognize the importance of grounding ourselves when it comes to our stories, so that we are seeing them for what they really are. Before you read the rest of the post, take a moment and think about some of your own stories. Then, see if any of the ideas below can help ground them, so that they are more real.

Stories are a form of assumptions. However, before you take apart the whole plot piece by piece, step back and understand the overall theme, the key characters and the point of view needed for success. Evaluate each, and determine which ones need to be treated as assumptions and which ones are just flashbacks in your story that adds flavor and spice. Record each of these assumptions and start your validation and tracking process. Just as an example, an in depth understanding of your ecosystem is mandatory for a story that evolves around making your technology platform pervasive across the board. Some of those players within your ecosystem will be gatekeepers needing to be infiltrated, while others are accessory providers adding sugar and spice and something nice to your product. Make sure you are focusing on the right problems.

Get to know your storyteller. In the real world, our storytellers are a part of the human machinery that operates the thing called the corporate bureaucracy. The story might be great, and might even be true. But, if it doesn’t fit within the decision making structure of this bigger machine, it will never be a legend. So, get to know your storytellers, the structure and the decision making process they operate in. It will give you the opportunity to evolve your story, if it wasn’t quite right to begin with. Things such as, your firm’s hurdle rate, markets you operate in, revenue projections, type of customers you serve, resource and funding requirements will all play into your story somehow.

Everyone loves a good ending. So, understand your key metrics that you need to measure and track. Lets say that your story is referring to a target market size. Recognize that, it is actually talking about the addressable target market of your product, and put actions in place to grow that size overtime. Or, maybe your success truly depends on your customer connection. Then start building your customer relationship model and your brand where the customer is the keystone of your story from day one.

Every story has a point of view and a perspective that changes depending on the person involved. It is great to have different perspectives, angles and takeaways which will improve your creativity and innovativeness. However, you need common vocabulary, understanding and acknowledgement in order to execute “Ready all…Row” command properly. Take your customer knowledge as an example. Good analysis and understanding of your customer data is priceless. Yet, extracting this data unbiasedly, interpreting it appropriately and creating the right actions are your challenge. For more on this, check out How to Hear the Voice of Your Customers: Hone First-Person Intelligence From All Forms of Feedback by David Bean at MarketingProfs (registration might be required to access). So, use your stories well, and create the language and the vocabulary that your culture will understand and embrace.

Your stories have a structure (exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution), and so should your innovation process. Milestones, stage-gate process, iterations, … are great way to ground yourself in the story while it evolves. Whatever process you use, make sure you have frequent checkpoints along the path to keep you honest and accountable.

Finally, share your stories with others and allow them to make it their own. Otherwise, when story is over everyone just goes home. Yes, a meaningful story can be inspiring. But for it to ignite the change you are hoping, individuals will need to believe in the story and make it their own for it to be real. In other words, when you pass the baton, someone is there to take and continue from where you left off, because they believe.

And remember: “The answer is always in the entire story, not a piece of it.” (Jim Harrison)

Technorati Tags: stories, storytelling, grounding yourself

Inspired by David Letterman, here is my Top 10 Signs You Need Help With Innovation Management.

Number 10. Just like a neurotic dog chasing its tail, you seem to be caught chasing a tail. You just can’t tell whose tail you are chasing: yours or your competitor’s.

Number 9. Your managements’ version of thriving on chaos feels more like the final hours on Titanic.

Number 8. Your company wrote the book on bureaucracy: the corporate barber offers volume discounts on pointy hairdos.

Number 7. You missed so many product launch windows that you are thinking about installing garage doors.

Number 6. Your product roadmap has taken its cue from NASA. You retired your core product without a replacement in the works, leaving your customers lost in space.

Number 5. Your data sheets read like John Kerry’s campaign speeches…

Number 4. Your employees refer to your idea management system as the roach motel. Ideas check in, and nothing checks out.

Number 3. Your strategic planning process resembles contestant elimination on a reality show.

Number 2. To reduce casualties, you erect a wall with security checkpoints between your R&D and marketing departments. Remember to use the buddy system: no one crosses the line alone!

And finally, Number 1. You are reading this blog

Happy weekend everyone!

I love the replicator technology from Star Trek. A replicator is a machine that can create and dispose of objects. Talk about easy meals and clean-up! Aside from food, the crew also used replicators to produce spare parts and everyday things.

Looks like theReplicating Rapid-prototyper (RepRap) team, which is an open source activity, has the objective to build a printer that can replicate and update itself. In that sense, RepRap is more like the Stargate Replicators, but hopefully not as deadly :). Using polylactic acid (PLA) the RepRap can duplicate itself, its own components, and other 3D objects. Though 3D printing technologies already exists, RepRap is unique as it is completely open source and can replicate itself. Just imagine the next generations’ science fair projects, or upcoming design meetings, or … Just as any innovation, it is the small steps that creates the giant leaps. Now, only if they came up with blog-writer.

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Our world is full of slogans, so why not use them for our customer-focused initiatives? Unfortunately, slogans are just words and they do not provide the essence of what is needed to build a customer-focused organization. Frankly, just saying something doesn’t make it so.

Every business wants happy customers and strives to turn them into best customers: ones that provide repeat business and becomes your biggest advocate. They work to ensure that the correct employees are in customer-facing positions, put in place reward systems to drive their customer-focused strategy and share customer feedback and stories with the organization.

In-depth customer knowledge is also a key requirement for innovation, commercialization and business success. It boils down to how you are contributing to the success and growth of your existing customers, and how you are positioning yourself for the success and growth of your new customers. So, what you share with your employees about your customers is crucial to your customer-focus strategy. Next time, spice up your team meetings with discussions on the following items.

Define your ‘value’ from the perspective of your customer

Businesses exist because they deliver value to customers through their products and services. Your customers do not buy your product; they buy what your product and firm offers them: a solution to a problem, improvement from their current solution, better performance and quality, feeling of comfort, security, image and overall value. The price premium that your brand commands and your competitive advantage is what your customers value and are willing to pay extra for. How are you incorporating that value into your product development process, your firms services and offerings?

Lifetime value of your customers

We are all human, and our natural tendency is to relate, personally and socially, and build lasting relationships. Your customers are not interested in one-time transactions: they want to know that they can trust you, that you will treat them fairly and that there is a mutual respect. At the same time, with globalization and the Internet, they also know that they have choices.

Lets say a new customer walked through your doors. Do you know the average lifetime value of that customer to your business? How about the cost of acquiring that new customer? Think about it, how many new customers has your business lost over few dollars, bad customer service experience, unintuitive website or misrepresentation of your product capabilities? More importantly, how do you share that knowledge with your employees?

Go beyond requirements

It is all too familiar: marketing requirements, functional requirements, architectural requirements, … But customers don’t buy requirements, they buy products and services to get a job done. They measure the benefits of your product and service against how well, how fast, how cheaply, how profitably and how reliably that job is done.

In What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services, Anthony W. Ulwick outlines that for an innovation process to be successful, firms must understand what jobs/activities/tasks are the customers’ pain point, what outcome they are wanting to achieve and the potential constraints that stop the customer from using your product and service. Aligning this knowledge with your firm’s brand value is the foundation for creating loyal customers. To obtain this intimate knowledge, one needs to go beyond the ‘voice of the customer’ and actually walk a mile in your customers’ shoes.

Know how your customers judge your value

Your development team needs to know your product and service’s performance measures to design and test the product against. Your customers may not be able to articulate this beyond some standard measures: Megapixels? I dunno, just want to take quality pictures with an easy to use camera. But, how do you define and measure image quality or ease of use?

I enjoy working with customers throughout the development process. Alpha and beta tests are also great way to collect and understand what customers value, how they use and interact with your product. However, they are late in the development cycle and can be a challenge on schedules. With that, how you incorporate and learn from your customer research is even more important for your learning organization.

Know all your customers

Do you know all your customers? How well do you understand their jobs, pain points and what keeps them up at night? Just think back to the last time you were at Staples looking at purchasing a printer. Even though those products are targeted to consumers, the distribution channel partner is also a customer. The lack of readily available information about these products in the store is amazing, considering how much this literature will help make a sale. Yet, the store should be concerned about making quick sales and providing good customer service without increases in staff or training costs.

The distribution channel partner is an obvious example. Your customers may vary between obvious, unobvious and opportunistic ones. Examples could include the kids that are buying products for their elderly parents or companies that want to utilize your services for their promotional needs, such as advertisement placements on buses. Think about all customers of your products and services, and address and balance their needs and pain points.

Grow with your customers

Life is about change. Stay connected with your customers and continue to deliver value as their needs, desires, values and tasks change and evolve. If you don’t, your competitors will.

Technorati Tags: customer knowledge, innovation

Previously I wrote about Gary Hamel and Lowell Bryan’s comments on innovation and how it will impact management practices and organizational design.

Now you can visit HBS Working Knowledge to read and comment about how you see the future of management changing: Where Will Management Innovation Take Us?

It is no doubt that innovation and the drive to continuously innovate is changing the way work is done and where it is done, how groups are led and organized, and how creativity is encouraged and tapped. Technology is also playing a key role in facilitating this situation, whether it is through social networks, forums, virtual meetings, development environments or knowledge management tools.

However, perhaps the biggest challenge to the future of management will be big corporations and all their bureaucratic bloated supporting departments. As important as the management process itself is to innovation, the alignment of the supporting organizational structures, such as the HR department, is just as vital in order to succeed.

Brought to you by the “Rambling Blogs” department of Kitetail.com.

Technorati Tags: future of management, HBS

One advantage of working for a large company is that they have all the resources, including a technology group that handles all the licensing activities. An advantage of self-employment is that I have the ability to dive into different interesting areas that I did not have the opportunity to before.

I talked about intangible assets before. Patents are one of the most quantifiable and perhaps most controversial forms of intangible assets. IBM is famous for its patent portfolio, and for maintaining the top slot for the number of patents issued year after year. Not to forget, their technology licensing revenue generates over $1B annually. If you are interested, check out IFI’s latest report on 2007 top patent owners.

Technology licensing can be a great revenue model for a small firm that does not have the resources to enter or effectively compete in its target markets, or where their technology is applicable to a number of industries. Technology licensing can also enable firms to derive additional revenues through their intangible assets, such as in the case with IBM, ARM, etc. Such licensing agreements can enable a firm to enter a new market quickly and/or reduce potential risks, such as with going into a foreign market. Technology licensing also plays a role in the establishment of industry standards, such as with Qualcomm and CDMA technologies. Through cross-licensing, firms can also gain greater freedom to develop new products and compete in new markets without worrying about potential litigation.

In simple terms, technology licensing is an agreement where one party (the licensor) owns valuable intangible asset(s), and gives another party (the licensee) the legal right to use, modify and/or potentially resell that intangible asset in exchange for some form of compensation. These valuable intangible assets, or intellectual properties (IP), could be patents, copyrighted materials, expertise/know-how, trade secrets, trademarks, and more. There are also many different types of IP licensing: patents, technology licenses, copyrights, trademarks to name a few. In summary, for an effective licensing agreement one needs:

• A licensor, who must have the ownership of the IP, and IP must be protected (or eligible for protection) by law.
• A license that indicates what rights are granted to the licensee.
• A compensation method (lump sum, royalty, cross licensing, …) that is clearly stated and agreed upon.

Technology licensing is certainly an untapped potential for many firms. It is a high margin business that can bring recurring revenue after the initial investment is made and development activity is completed. From a business perspective, building a technology licensing program should be strategically planned, carefully managed, aggressively marketed and legally protected. Below are some of the key building blocks relating to challenges of establishing a technology licensing program. In future articles I will get into some these in more detail. As always, drop me a note if any topics rings an interest with you.

View your technology licensing program as a business
IP, once viewed as a cost center, is now the focus of many firms as a potential revenue stream. However, to maximize their value, these intellectual assets need to be managed to become a profitable business. This process could be handled by establishing a licensing team (a combination of individuals who are intimately knowledgeable with the technologies, business people, product managers) that would have the responsibility to determine potential exploitation mechanisms for the technology. In addition to providing the IP rights, you may be required to develop a service business to support your customers. After all, if your customer is not successful, you are not successful. Whatever your strategy, make sure you establish a strategic intellectual property plan and process to maximize the value of your intangible assets.

Establish an effective organization structure to manage IP
Your organization structure will influence how effectively you can manage your IP. Smaller companies usually delegate the intellectual property asset management function to outside experts. Larger companies usually have their own departments for handling intellectual property asset management related functions, such as IP development, licensing and litigation. However, unless there is an integrated strategic plan and/or centralized management of all IP, it will be a challenge to maximize their potential value due to conflict of long-term vs. short-term focus. In addition to your organization structure, your organizational incentives will also determine how effectively you can build, support and grow your licensing business.

Utilize IP expertise
Licensing strategies differs from technology to technology, market to market, prospect to prospect, as well as US vs. foreign markets. In addition, your success depends on the successful outcome of the licensing negotiation. License terms capture conflicting interests between the licensee and licensor that require careful negotiation and trade-offs. So, get an expert to successfully navigate the unknown waters.

Know your legal protection rights
For your technology licensing business to be viable, you need to have technology that is legally protectable by law. So, whether you are utilizing patents, copyrights, trademarks or other methods, know how to protect them and what the process is in case of infringement. Also realize that litigation is quite expensive and takes time. So, do your homework and manage the risk.

Recognize you are in a marathon
You can’t just build your patent portfolio and stop. Technologies and markets move too fast. You need to build your innovation culture to keep churning new ideas and to build on existing ones to further improve their protection. Otherwise, it will be a short-lived business.

Remember to get paid
Licensing revenue leakage is lost revenue.Your license management program is the key part of your process to ensure you collect your royalties on-time. In addition, your program also needs to ensure that licensees are complying with the terms of the license and operating within the boundaries agreed upon.

Learn to value your intangibles
Putting a $ amount on your intangibles is perhaps the most challenging part of the process. How do you determine what the licensee would be willing to pay and under what payment terms? Understanding how your technology will benefit the potential licensee (cost reduction, competitive positioning, new markets, …) both financially and strategically, is an important starting point. Also, continuously evaluate your strategic market position and maintain your leadership status in the market to maximize your value.

Technorati Tags: technology management, intangible assets, intellectual property

I recently had the pleasure of experiencing Apple’s customer service. Think about it, what percentage of the population would actually use pleasure and customer service in the same sentence?

For their customer support and service, Apple has created multiple venues. One of which is their Genius Bar at an Apple Store. Ok, referring to something as ‘genius’ is a little presumptuous, but what are the other options, “Geek Squad?” My experience at the Genius Bar for diagnosing/acknowledging my MacBook issue was straightforward. First, you make an appointment online. Second, as soon as you walk in the door, they check you in to your appointment. At the Bar, they have large flat-screen monitors that regularly shows the names and the schedules of customers waiting for service. And if that’s not enough, someone will shout out your name when you get to the top of the list. So, I was in-and-out of the store within 30 minutes.

Since they weren’t able to resolve my issue at the Apple Store (lack of parts), I opted for Apple’s Mail-In Service. What an amazing experience! Less than 24 hours after calling Apple, DHL dropped off my Mail-In Service Box. Over the weekend, I packaged my laptop and called DHL for a pick-up, which went out Monday mid-afternoon. Tuesday morning, I received two emails. First one was the notification that they received my laptop. The second email, which came late in the evening, indicated that my laptop was fixed, shipped and that I should receive it in 2 workdays. Next morning, Wednesday, FedEx dropped off my laptop at 10:30am. In another words, within 2 days of leaving my house, my laptop arrived back at home.

Unfortunately such customer delight stories are rare in the industry. Yet, there are so many opportunities and touch points that are available to create value and competitive differentiation for the firm. Value in this sense refers to the amount the customers are willing to pay for what a firm provides them. A firm/product is profitable if the value it delivers exceeds the cost of developing and delivering the product.

Lets take a look at some of the generic models for examining various touch points for exploiting value for a firm. For a firm that revolves around delivering value to its customers, they will find innovative ways to create value in all aspects of these models.

Porter’s Generic Value Chain

Michael Porter introduced the concept of generic value chain model that describes a sequence of activities that are common to a wide range of firms. As shown in the figure, a value chain includes all the activities a product goes through, which also adds value to the product.

Note that each of the activities in the value chain is also linked. High quality assurance processes during technology development reduces the support/service costs in the field. This is also true from the perspective of procurement, where high quality assurance processes eliminate faulty parts, reducing the costs associated with debugging and maintenance later in the value cycle.

Note that no two firms, even in the same industry, making the same products, have identical value chains. So, how well a firm manages its value chain and its linkages determines the value they deliver and competitive advantage they gain in the industry.

Value Delivery System

Porter’s value chain concept can be extended beyond just an organization to describe the value systems. A value system includes the value chains of all the ecosystem players that collaborates to deliver value to the customers.

Think about the challenges of working with other internal groups in your company, and project it to your ecosystem of partners, suppliers, alliances and all. Don’t forget to factor in the cultural and value differences as well as conflicting priorities and goals. However, a firm’s position in this value delivery system will again differentiate it from the rest of the pack.

Customer Life Cycle

Customer life cycle describes the steps a customer goes through when selecting, purchasing, using, and all the way through disposing of a product or a service. As simple as it sounds, getting a potential customer’s attention in these days is quite a challenge. Given the availability of competing options and transparency of product information/reviews, firms need to pay extra attention to capturing the potential customers and turning them into paying and loyal customers.

Recently my husband discovered that Office Depot offers pre-paid electronics recycling boxes. You buy an empty box at the store (small, medium or large), fill it with old electronic devices, then bring it back to the store for environmentally friendly disposal. This service is certainly unusual, but for an eco-friendly person with too many old electronic gadgets and gizmos, it is certainly something worthy of TWO 40-minute drives.

Technorati Tags: value creation, Porter’s value chain, customer life cycle

Amazing! Yet another year is done, when does it end? Wait, don’t answer that… Frankly, if it wasn’t for the calendar telling me otherwise, to me it is still 2007. Normally about this time of the year, I reflect on the past, wonder and plan for the future. Since every part of my senses still believe I am still in 2007, I have to manually kick start the reflection and pondering process. After all, it is part of the rejuvenation and renewal cycle.

Looking back, in my early years, I almost felt proud of the fact my brain was constantly on. Something about the phrase “I think therefore I am”… However, when I started meditating regularly, I became aware of how noisy and cluttered my thoughts are. Zen teachers often refer to this as having the monkey brain. Quite appropriate…

Is our mind our worst enemy? Think about it. What we see, observe and think is shaped by our life experiences and by our environment. How we respond to life changes and events is based on what we already consciously or unconsciously learned, know or intuitively observed. Our mind is our vessel for all of that knowledge and experience. It can move mountains or cause us to lose wars before the battle even begins.

Our brain is an amazing machine… Can I really, confidently define what is real and what is not? “If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business has a quote from Francis Crick:

“What you see is not really there; it is what your brain believes is there… Seeing is an active construction process. Your brain makes the best interpretation it can according to its previous experience and the limited and ambiguous information provided by your eye.”

The authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip and Dan Heath, talk about the curse of knowledge. This is the paradox (or pair of ducks, as hubby would say ) where the increased knowledge and expertise creates an undetectable containment field that interferes with our ability to create and innovate, and break out of the rut. (Quack, quack, quack…)

It is in our nature to classify and generalize. As a matter of fact, our economy is built on our ability to identify the target market and customer, and then exploit it to its fullest. Don’t get me wrong. This ability to classify and generalize is an important function of our survival. Through this amazing skill, which we fine tune through our life experiences, we can problem solve and intuitively deduce how to behave, respond and communicate. Yet, this amazing ability can also create invisible walls that can take a lifetime to break, if then…

Zen teachers talk about the importance of having a beginner’s mind. It is this openness, the attitude of possibility, curiosity and childlike brevity to question, wonder and doubt that enables us to see things as fresh and new. Next time you have the opportunity, just follow a child through his day, you may be amazed at the possibilities.

So, how is all this tied to innovation and technology management? Quite simple actually. Thru self-awareness and realization it is possible to reinvent oneself. And, I truly hope reinvention is not just limited to near-death experiences as the Forrester blog highlights. The reinvention, rejuvenation and renewal are all necessary aspects of innovation and creativity. Through persistence it is possible to move mountains, where we can even put a man on the moon.

As departing thoughts, also take a look at Think Simple Now’s article on 7 habits of highly innovative people. If some of the items make into this years resolutions, be sure to make them SMART.

Happy New Year everyone!

Technorati Tags: beginner’s mind, reinvention, rejuvenation