Innovation Strategy: Ten Faces of Innovation

1. Innovation Strategy:Ten Faces of Innovation Jonathan Weaver UDM Mechanical Engineering Department weaverjm@udmercy.edu

2. References • Ten Faces of Innovation, Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman, Currency Doubleday, 2005

3. The Ten Faces • The Anthropologist • The Experimenter • The Cross-Pollinator • The Hurdler • The Collaborator • The Director • The Experience Architect • The Set Designer • The Storyteller • The Caregiver

4. The Anthropologist • The most important of the personas • Great problem solvers are easy to come by; the hard part is knowing what problem to solve • Must look past tradition and preconceived notions and truly observe things • Ability to see what’s always been there but has gone unnoticed • Look in unusual places • IDEO has a Methods Deck set of cards with 51 suggestions • Example: fun intergenerational waffle making kit

5. The Experimenter • A passion for hard work, a curious mind, and an openness to serendipity • Strive for inspiration but never shy away from perspiration • Prototyping is basically experimenting • “Fail often, to succeed sooner” [IDEO axiom] • Wright Brothers, Edison, and da Vinci are examples

6. The Cross-Pollinator • This is essentially what we called bisociation • Cross-Pollinators create something new and better through the unexpected juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts

7. The Hurdler • Hurdlers do more with less • Don’t always have to attack a problem head-on if you can sidestep it • Obstacles sometimes inspire great achievements • A Hurdler sees beyond an initial failure • Goodman’s lost their only restaurant customer for their bagged lettuce and created a new industry

8. The Collaborator • Collaborators bring people together and get things done • These are the team builders, the ones who listen to everyone, and the ones who can navigate the political waters

9. The Director • Orchestrates a company’s innovation efforts • Gets people to take intelligent chances and gives them the opportunity to recover from failure • Gives center stage to others • Rise to tough challenges • Shoot for the moon • Ready to improvise with whatever is available • Every company should have one

10. The Experience Architect • Sets the stage for positive encounters with your organization through products, services, and interactions • Designs for customers and employees • Keep you from competing at a commodity level • Looks for negative or neutral elements in the status quo and looks for opportunities to refine them into the extraordinary (similar to our painstorming) • Examples: premixed antifreeze and Benjamin Moore’s 2 oz paint samples

11. The Set Designer • The workplace design affects productivity • Giving employees latitude in the shape and character of their workspace helps reinforce a company persona that is fun, welcoming and stimulating

12. The Caregiver • Take extra pains to understand each individual customer • Service innovations come in all sizes • Offer customers a safety net (such as California Pizza Kitchen’s guarantee)

13. The Storyteller • Creating and telling of stories is part of human nature • Brand-savvy modern businesses must know how to tell a good story • Stories make an emotional connection (much better than facts and data) • Storytelling builds credibility

14. Go Win at Innovation!