STRATEGY CENTRAL

One of the cool takeaways from The Ten Faces of Innovation has been the exposure to a whole world of possibilities in innovation.  I love the section on The Experience Architect.  Of the ten faces, I’m more of a cross-pollinator and a collaborator, but I love to be around Experience Architects.  They are the people "who set the stage for positive encounters with your organization."  And they are absolutely essential!

One part of the role that I really love being part of is looking at every aspect of what we’re doing and asking this great question: "Is this ordinary, or at least slightly extraordinary?"  According to Tom Kelley, "Experience Architects fend off the ordinary wherever they find it, fighting against the forces of entropy and commoditization (p. 169)."  I love it!

Are we doing that?  Are we empowering people who are gifted this way, who are actually sizing up what is happening and then creating a ruckus when there needs to be?  Or are we shutting them down?

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Thanks to Brand Autopsy for the link to a great post by Dustin Staiger on the difference between ideas and opinions.  What do you think?

Which American company spent the most on R&D over the last 25 years?  Give up?  According to Tom Peters General Motors spent the most.  That is an incredible statistic.  Can you see it in their results?  I don’t think so.  That explains what Seth Godin was getting at in his comment on GM’s R&D spending.  He said, "you can’t measure a company’s desire to innovate by their R&D spending."  You measure it "by having the will to go to the edges."

Question: We say we want to be innovative.  Do our actions demonstrate our intention?  Or is it just smoke?

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If you haven’t seen it, YOU HAVE GOT TO SEE THIS Amazing Honda Accord Commercial.  Thanks Bill Mead for the link!!!

Official Disclaimer:  There are NO computer graphics or digital tricks in the film you  are about to see. Everything you see really happened in real time, exactly as  you see it. The film required 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something,  usually very minor, didn’t work. They would then have to set the whole thing  up again. The crew spent weeks shooting night and day. By the time it was  over, they were ready to change professions.

The film cost 6 million dollars and took three months to complete,  including a full engineering of the sequence. In addition, it’s two minutes  long so every time Honda airs the film on British television, they’re shelling  out enough dough to keep any one of us in clover for a lifetime. However, it  is fast becoming the most downloaded advertisement in Internet history.
Honda executives figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in  "free" viewings. (Honda isn’t paying a dime to have you watch this  commercial!) When the ad was pitched to senior executives, they signed off on  it immediately without any hesitation — including the costs.

There are six and only six hand-made Accords in the world. To the  horror of Honda engineers, the filmmakers disassembled two of them to make the  film. Everything you see in the film (aside from the walls, floor, ramp, and  complete Honda Accord) is parts from those two cars.

The voiceover is Garrison Keillor.

When the ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented on  how amazing computer graphics have gotten. They fell off their chairs when  they found out it was for real. Oh. … about those funky windshield  wipers:

On the new Accords, the windshield wipers have water sensors and are  designed to start functioning automatically as soon as they become wet It  looks a bit odd in the commercial.

As amazing as this is, ! the commercial is actually based on an  earlier film from the 1970s called "How Things Move" by two Swiss  self-destructing artifacts artists.

P.S. Some sharp-eyed folks claim that tires rolling UPHILL necessarily  require computer-generated effects. Not so. The sequence where the tires roll  up a slope looks particularly impressive but is very simple. There is a weight  [in each] tire and when the tire is knocked, the weight is displaced and in an attempt to rebalance itself,  the tire rolls up the slope.

Henry Ford said, "If I had asked my customers what they wanted they’d have said a faster horse."  Isn’t that interesting?  What is that saying about how we determine what services we ought to offer?  What does it say about changes we should consider?

According to Tom Kelley and The Ten Faces of Innovation "Ford had a point.  Don’t expect customers to help you envision the future.  Make that mistake and you’re likely to get lots of suggestions for ‘faster horses.’"

One of the great challenges in any organization is to determine who to listen to and what to do with what you hear.  I’m remembering conversations where constituents wanted to tell me how what we were doing could be improved and thinking to myself, "yes, but that doesn’t take us in the direction that will really get us somewhere."  They were wanting only a faster horse…not a Model T.

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I’m reading a new book called The Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley, general manager of IDEO.  It’s a very interesting take on combatting "the devil’s advocate" cold water on every new idea strategy.

Came across a great podcast today featuring Tom Kelley talking about the book.  Very helpful.  Take a listen.

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How does your organization innovate?  Is that part of who you are?  Or maybe who you want to be?  If you want to develop a culture of innovation you can’t allow the devil’s advocate to smother your fragile new ideas.  But what do you do?

Check out this great excerpt from Tom Kelley’s book, The Ten Faces of Innovation in the October Fast Company.

Which of the faces are you? 

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