The Art of Innovation

by Tom Kelley

The more we work in strategic account management, the more we believe that account planning is essentially a creative endeavor--that figuring our new ways to co-create value is a task more imaginative than analytical. There are some who might dispute this but when I look back at truly breakthrough ways to differentiate value, they always seemed to me to come from left field, from somewhere outside the business context from which they started. If you accept that premise, then I think you have to believe that whatever enhances our creativity offers us greater opportunities to create new ways to add value to critical customers.

Which brings us to one of those books that somehow sneaked past me that I am only now catching up with. Tom Kelley's The Art of Innovation, published by Doubleday Currency in 2001. Kelley works at IDEO, a world-class creator and developer of products from software to fishing rods. He is the brother of David Kelley, who founded IDEO in 1978 and who developed a workplace where people could create new products and services in the least amount of time. To give one example: In 2000 several IDEO executives appeared on Ted Koppel's Nightline. They talked about creating products and Koppel issued them a challenge: develop an entirely new grocery cart in exactly five days. One of the executives on the show said it was "insane" to make a commitment like that but IDEO ran with the insanity and, while the tv cameras rolled at IDEO, created an entirely new grocery cart-in exactly five days, leading to one of the most watched Nightlines ever.

You open the book expecting a methodology-a way to be creative-and Kelley provides several. But Kelley makes clear from the beginning that his real focus is about nothing less than how to create a culture of innovation. He criticizes many of the "creative" product development approaches many firms use. As he says, "(W)e believe you have to go beyond putting yourself in your customer's shoes. Indeed, we believe it's not even enough to ask people what they think about a product or idea....Kelley continues, "customers in most cases won't be able to tell you what you need to know. "(Y)our customers may lack the vocabulary to explain what's wrong, and especially what's missing. Companies shouldn't ask them to....Customers mean well-and they're trying to be helpful-but it's not their job to be visionaries...." "We're not big fans of focus groups. We don't care much for traditional market research either. We go to the source. Not the "experts" inside a company but the actual people who use the product."

While Kelley's primary message is about building a creative culture, there are some very specific methodological suggestions that can easily be applied to strategic account management. For example, brainstorming is one of those areas where IDEO leads the way to creativity and, while it is an approach, Kelley suggests to companies that they ought to be doing more brainstorming, "weaving it into the cultural fabric of your organization." Kelley quotes a survey that says 70% of businesspeople say that they brainstorm. On the same survey, 76% said that they brainstorm less than once a month. Kelley says that "(i)f you want to keep in shape, you have to exercise your brainstorming muscles more than once a month." Keep in mind that in an average IDEO brainstorming session, which lasts around 60 minutes, the average number of ideas generated is somewhere between 100 and 200.

Kelley then provides the seven secrets for better brainstorming, an approach that can be directly applied to strategic account planning:

1. Sharpen the Focus: Good brainstorming starts with a well-honed statement of the problem. A brainstormer without a clear problem statement is like a company without a clear strategy. The best clear problem statements focus outward on a specific customer need or service enhancement rather than focusing inward on some organizational goal.

2. Playful Rules: Don't start to critique or debate ideas. At IDEO many of our conference rooms have brainstorming rules stenciled in six-inch letters on the walls-- "Go For Quantity" and "Encourage Wild Ideas."

3. Number Your Ideas: Numbering is a way to motivate the participants ("let's get a hundred ideas in the next hour") and it allows you to move back and forth from idea to idea without losing your place.

4. Build and Jump: Initially a great many ideas can be generated but then energy levels-and ideas-start to plateau. The best facilitators will have different ways of phrasing the problem being addressed so as to generate more idea creation. The following is from an IDEO brainstorming session on how to create a better water bottle for bicyclists: "OK let's switch gears and consider some totally hands-free solutions that allow the cyclist to keep both hands on the handlebar at all times. What might those solutions look like?"

5. Stretch Your Mental Muscles: In some cases a warm-up exercise is needed before a brainstorming session:

• When the group has not worked together before
• When most of the group hasn't brainstormed frequently
• When the group seems distracted by pressing but unrelated issues

You might use a fast-paced word game or content-related homework, something that gets the juices flowing for the session to come.

6. Get Physical: Good brainstorms are exceedingly visual. They include sketching, mind mapping, diagrams and stick figures. IDEO likes to have pipes and bottles and blocks to help the brainstormers make rough prototypes explaining their ideas.

I do not want to leave the idea that brainstorming is the central focus of the book. Kelley, as I said, is focusing on how to create a culture of innovation. Because of that, this book applies to you whether you are a manufacturing or service company, a for-profit or public company. The advantage this book has is that it is first based on real-world experience, listing dozens of examples of applied creativity. But it is also one of the few business books that are just flat-out fun to read. You shake your head and sometimes laugh out loud at some of the dozens of products that IDEO folks have developed for their customers. And there are many many ideas to improve creativity. But what sticks with you is the sort of culture IDEO has created to enhance the creativity of all its employees--and how those ideas might be applied at almost any organization.

David Kelley had attention deficit disorder and was a non-linear thinker who thrived on creative problem solving. So the business he created had to accept and respect first, his personality, and second, the personalities of the other creative people from various disciplines he would be hiring.

Reviewed by S4 Consulting

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