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How is Your Innovation Health?

Posted on 06.10.19

Recently, a family friend underwent a total hip replacement surgery – at the age of 87! He said he had no pain, but his mobility was becoming severely limited. My friend said he was a “very healthy 87” and after just a few weeks, he is again walking and driving with no apparent restrictions.

What does healthy mean? To my family’s friend, healthy meant mobility since that equated to staying in his home without intrusive care. To me, healthy means I can participate in 5K runs, ride my bicycle as far and as long as I desire, and that I maintain the same weight I was in college. (Thank goodness I don’t wear all the same clothes though!)

Innovation Health

A healthy innovation system is one that produces repeatable new products and services, delivers continuous profitability, and maintains a competitive advantage for the firm. That’s a great list, but it’s not measurable.

Global NP Solutions has designed the Innovation Health Assessment benchmarking tool. By using the short survey, you can quickly assess the strength of your innovation system on seven key measures. These include strategy, portfolio management, processes, life cycle, teams and leadership, tools and metrics, and customer insights.

What is Your Innovation Health?

You can benchmark your organization’s innovation health at https://simple-pdh.com/courses/innovation-health-assessment/. Registering at Simple-PDH.com will allow you to receive a customized copy of your Innovation Health Assessment, delivered to your inbox within 24-48 hours. We ask you to register as a user to participate in this unique benchmarking survey so we can preserve data integrity and continue to build our large database. Contact me at area code 281 phone 280-8717 or info@globalnpsolutions.com for any questions. We build innovation leaders!

Building Innovation Leaders

This was first published on the blog at www.GlobalNPSolutions.com.

Product Development Fundamentals

Posted on 06.06.19

New product development (NPD) is a set of processes and systems that convert ideas into saleable products and services. Successful NPD means that those processes are simple, repeatable, and lead to profit. Nearly every organization – big or small – creates new products and services in order to stay competitive. But, to win the competition, the business must be successful at continuous NPD. As Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Simple

NPD processes and systems must be simple to lead to repetitive success in innovation. As an engineer, I appreciate simplicity. The most elegant systems that humans have ever created are truly the least complicated. And as an engineer, I know that when a system breaks down, it is much quicker and easier to troubleshoot a simple system then a complex one.

Simple NPD processes include traditional staged-and-gated systems as well as emerging agile processes, like Scrum. A typical staged-and-gated system for innovation requires the NPD team to lay out goals and action plans for the next stage of work. A set of gatekeepers, will approve the course of work along with an appropriate budget and by assigning adequate resources. In this way, each stage of work is evaluated for risk and the gate reviews ensure progress on the project as the new product moves from idea to concept to prototype and, finally, to commercialization.

Scrum processes are also simple systems to develop new products. In this case, flexibility in design is valued and product specifications are varied to ensure customer satisfaction. Risk is managed via frequent customer feedback, and prototypes are created in parallel while the NPD team scopes the remainder of the project.

Repeatable

Regardless of whether an organization chooses to follow traditional staged-and-gated NPD systems or more flexible Scrum project management frameworks, innovation processes must be repeatable. Processes should repeatedly eliminate poor concepts early and rapidly advance the most promising ideas. Project advancement decisions are made on a consistent and predictable basis. As a result of repeatable innovation, investment in design and marketing is steady while new products grow in contribution to the overall product portfolio.

Profitability

I recently heard someone say that if you’re not making sales, you are just playing with a hobby. New product development must lead to business profits or the business will suffer. Of course, there is an expected time period in which the investment in design and development will exceed sales, but at some point, every successful product or service turns a profit.

As a kid, I really loved doing plastic canvas needlepoint. I made all kinds of cool items from coasters to tissue box covers and tic-tac-toe games. During the course of a summer, I completely saturated my mom, sisters, and grandmothers with my clever crafts. So, I put the rest up for sale at the shop of a family friend. After Christmas, half of my “wonderful” products came back to me. I made a teensy, tiny profit and learned the difference between a hobby and a business.

Fundamentals of Product Development

New product development requires three facets to be successful: simple processes, repeatable systems, and profitable endeavors. Without these three fundamentals an idea might be converted into a reality but not a commercial, saleable product.

To learn more about product development fundamentals, join our easy online course at www.simple-pdh.com. Learning about Product Development Fundamentals is the first step in your journey to becoming an innovation leader. Contact me for more information!

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How Does Capital Impact Innovation?

Posted on 05.30.19

I am usually an optimistic person and I truly believe everything will work out okay in the end. Deadlines are always met, even if the team leader has to exert herculean effort. What we worry about today rarely matters in a year’s time.

Yet, I have to admit that I’m often pessimistic when I hear that the economy is different. To me, economic forces (without government intervention) are natural laws, just as are physical laws and the rules of thermodynamics. People “in-the-know” are telling us that the economy is different now, though, so let’s look at how that impacts innovation.

Loose Capital

Interest rates remain very low, so capital is easy to come by. What’s puzzling – and perhaps different – is that many large corporations are choosing to spend their capital on stock buybacks instead of investing in future growth.

From an innovation standpoint, these companies are signaling that they don’t have any good ideas. That is a really troubling thought. But I bet if the executives at these firms asked their R&D, operations, and marketing folks for ideas, they would learn about some great investment opportunities in new product development.

Production vs. Development

When capital is tight, companies focus – as they should – on productivity and efficiency. Investments during economic downturns keep the factories running and will improve bottom-line growth on their income statements.

Yet, it’s not bottom-line growth that gives a company longevity. Top-line growth – which means finding new sources of revenue – is what sustains a firm through both good and bad times. Investing in new product development (NPD) on a disciplined basis allows a firm to access top-line growth and to sustain a business over the long term.

Learning

At the heart of the matter, innovation is about learning: learning customer needs, learning new technologies, learning about relationships. Many executives forego innovation projects, especially in economic downturns, that are inherently risky. Yet, risk and failure support learning.

In a period of loose capital, investments in learning and innovation are tremendously valuable. Many studies have shown that firms with continuous R&D outperform their competitors. Moreover, companies that work on next generation products during an economic downturn are the best positioned for success when the stock markets recover. An investment in innovation will create an environment of long-term learning that contributes to top line growth period

Capital Investment for Innovation

As firms plan for a predicted, cyclical downturn in the next few years, senior leaders should consider their approach to capital investment in R&D. Stock buybacks signal you have run out of ideas for new products and services. Instead of propping up the stock price by shrinking the number of shares, invest in innovation to grow revenues. New customers in new markets create new opportunities. Your stakeholders will embrace the learning and growth that arises from innovative thinking!

Are you struggling with innovation investment decisions? Call me now at area code 281 phone 280-8717 to schedule a free, 30-minute innovation coaching session through Gold Level Leadership Coaching program. Chief Innovation Officers (CIO) and New Product Development Professionals (NPDP) can learn strategic innovation practices in the Innovation Master Mind (IMM) group. Click here to register for the next innovation Q&A webinar and Join the IMM Now!

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Design Thinking Tools

Posted on 05.16.19

Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting to the South Texas Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (STS AIChE) for the professional development hour. I love to help people learn how to solve problems more creatively, so we discussed and practiced several different design thinking tools for innovation. My thanks to Babak Rafienia (pictured here with me) for his high-level organizational skills, despite torrential rains and flooding in Houston on the night of the event.

Design Thinking Model

Design thinking is a collaborative and creative problem-solving methodology that helps individuals and teams find the best solutions by focusing on customer empathy. The model is simple – two steps – identify the problem and solve the problem.

However, we do iterate between a Discovery Stage and Define Stage to correctly identify the problem, and we cycle between creating multiple solution alternatives and evaluating them in the solving phase. No new product development (NPD) team should ever go to the lab without clarifying a customer’s problem. It is fun to invent new things, yet unless there is a market need for the technical solution, developers are just playing.

Discovery

In the discovery stage we use tools like a customer journey map and a customer empathy map. These design thinking tools help us to understand how consumers know that they have a problem, what they think and feel about the problem, and how they identify product and service solutions. The customer journey map also involves following end-users past the point of purchase to understand how they feel about the product during use and at the end of its life cycle.

Define

The define stage of design thinking clarifies the customer’s needs into a simple statement. At the STS AIChE meeting, we practiced defining problems using noun/verb matching. This tool increases collaboration and also encourages creative solutions. It’s important to differentiate between complaints and problem statements. You may never make a whiner happy, but you can design product solutions that address clear and simple problem statements.

Create

A fun and useful design thinking activity for an NPD team is to collect the problem statements from the define phase and categorize them using a mind map or affinity diagram. In our practice exercise at STS AIChE, we used the example of disrupting airline travel by employing a variety of design thinking tools, including customer journey maps and noun/verb matching. Our affinity diagram showed some key categories of improving the waiting areas before boarding a flight and enhancing seating on the airplane itself. The next step (Evaluate Phase) would be to generate and test simple prototypes of say, larger and lighter standing seats (one idea from our session).

Design Thinking Tools

You can use design thinking tools to address a lot of different situations and problems. The benefit of design thinking tools is that they are fast and easy to use, they build collaboration, and enhance creativity. You focus on the end-user’s needs from a qualitative perspective ensuring that you build empathy for the customer.

Act now

Our discount rate for Life Design Master Mind ends on 17 May 2019. In Life Design Master Mind, you will learn how to apply design thinking tools to your own situation – whether that is growing the skills of your NPD team or to making a decision to go back to school or change jobs. Give me a call at area code 281 phone 280-8717 if you want to review the Life Design Master Mind Q&A webinar recording from April. Sign up here for Life Design Master Mind 17 May 2019 to get the upfront discount!

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Job Crafting to Increase Creativity

Posted on 05.02.19

Working as product, project, and engineering managers, we often balance quality with deadlines. Product concept tests must be completed before the engineer designs for the plant can be locked in. Customer testing – while ongoing – must be limited by budgets and workforce availability.

These trade-offs are frustrating to both managers and new product development (NPD) team members alike. Too many project boundaries can constrain innovation, yet infrequent or fuzzy milestones can delay a market launch. NPD managers ask their team members for both rigorous adherence to schedules and budgets and creative, out-of-the-box problem-solving.

One solution to improve the trade-offs that are inherent in a complex innovation project is to increase the role of job crafting. Job crafting is a set of tools that allows team members to frame their work to capitalize on their most important skills, to increase learning and engagement.

Job Enhancement

Enhancing a job typically means adding horizontal tasks to improve the skill sets of the worker. To a point, job enhancement will improve employee motivation. But job enhancement sometimes means just adding more tasks without re-balancing the staff’s existing job responsibilities. Managers have good intentions in expanding a team member’s work, including learning and growth, increased exposure, and skill development.

Years ago, in one of my earlier assignments as an engineering manager, I specifically sought job enhancement for a star employee. Darcy, as I’ll call her, was a smart engineer, had great interpersonal skills, and was dedicated to her work. Knowing that the performance ranking system at the corporation was treating her (and many others) unfairly, I wanted to improve her potential and give a new opportunity to showcase her competency as an engineer. To that end, I assigned Darcy to lead a small, customer-focused research study. As the project lead, she would gain visibility with senior management and would be able to demonstrate skills in which I knew she excelled. Compared to her peers, Darcy was best positioned to successfully deliver the results of the research study.

To my chagrin, Darcy responded negatively when I offered her the opportunity to lead the research project. What I thought was a job enhancement, she interpreted simply as “more work”. At the time, I didn’t know she was attending night school to get an MBA and was also trying to start a family. Of course, any “job enhancement” in those circumstances would be viewed as “more work.”

Job Crafting

A better alternative to job enhancement is job crafting. Job crafting allows team members to select the majority of their work tasks based on their likes and dislikes, anticipated learning opportunities, personal career trajectories. When you allow your team members to work on what they like and what they choose, creativity and motivation skyrocket.

At first, many managers think that job crafting will leave them with no one to do the steady, boring work like printing and sending invoices, conducting sales calls, or bookkeeping. Yet, everyone is different and while a Type A personality team member wants to press ahead on a new technical product design, a quiet detail-oriented team member is happy to immerse herself in the statistical analysis of big data. Together, these team members can tackle all the necessary tasks for an innovation project to reach completion, on-time and on-budget.

Agile Teams

This collaborative approach to NPD is precisely called out in the agile philosophy. Working as generalist-specialists, the agile NPD team will take on product development projects with a high degree of motivation that is driven from within themselves. The generalist-specialist on an agile NPD team will work on whatever tasks are necessary to complete a sprint and will do the “heads-down” work of his or her specialty to ensure overall team success. Collaboration among team members wand with the customer is easy because the generalist-specialist desires to learn new skills and is inspired by the project rather a self-serving ego.

It is natural for an agile team to craft their jobs according to skills and competencies and to do tasks that give them joy. These types of teams have higher rates of output and their work is more creative as a result of the deep trust and collaboration.

Another characteristic of agile teams is the determination to complete a project for the benefit of the customer. An agile NPD project is continually driven by customer needs which are tested and validated throughout the product development life cycle. Rapid concept and prototype testing is used to weed out bad ideas and to ensure customer needs are properly incorporated into the product design requirements. Frequent customer interaction leads to better designs, faster time-to-market, and higher market share upon product launch.

Job Crafting for Innovation

Successful innovations require a clear understanding of customer needs, good market timing, and excellent design of product and service features. To generate successful innovation, NPD teams must be motivated, creative, and collaborative. Allowing team members to craft their work assignments within the NPD project boundaries leads to greater success.

Job crafting is different than job enhancement (as I learned the hard way). In the latter case, managers try to motivate and engage team members by expanding their roles and responsibilities. And while job enhancement can increase team engagement, the most motivated and inspired workers are ones that craft their daily work to use skills that they value most. Team members that craft their own jobs, as in an agile project management environment, are more creative and inspired. Project work is balanced among team members with different skills and desires.

Learn More

To learn more about job crafting and agile NPD, please join me and other inspired and creative innovation workers in a master mind group where we exchange ideas and hold each other accountable to achieve the highest level innovation goals. We are currently accepting new applicants to the Life Design Master Mind group with a new cohort starting 21 May 2019. The discounted upfront payment ends soon, so you’ll want to join soon to learn how to apply Design Thinking tools to craft your own best job! Contact me at area code (281) plus 280-8717 or at info@simple-pdh.com for more information.

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Continuous Learning for Innovation Leadership

Posted on 04.25.19

Learning today takes very different forms than it did 10 or 20 years ago. In the past, learning was primarily delivered in a classroom and was delivered based on a schedule given an employee’s tenure with the firm. Skills transfer occurred from an expert teaching novices.

Today, learning materials are delivered in short cell phone video clips, on-line, via webinar, and yes, even in a classroom. Skills transfer occurs both vertically and horizontally, and training can be driven from an expert teaching a novice technical skills or from a new employee to experienced staff teaching market approaches. Importantly, training is delivered more on-demand, when the learning is needed and job skills need performance enhancement.

On-Line Training

There are a lot of benefits to on-line training period participants can access courses anytime and anywhere using practically any device. (iPhones still have some format limitations to deliver video learning content.) This means a person can access training during regular work hours or choose to learn new skills at home in evenings for weekends. On-line training is very flexible.

Of course, with the prevalence of on-line training, many organizations have observed the disadvantages, too. A lot of on-line courses for leadership and innovation performance enhancement go unfinished. Mandatory on-line training courses (e.g. for safety or regulatory requirements) must include constraints on screen advancing because participants tend to skip to the test in order to avoid dry, boring content but the training hours can be audited. And while people have the best intention to do an on-line training class at night or on the weekend, there are lots of things that can get in the way such as sports, family, friends, yard chores, and so on.

Classroom Training

A recent Harvard Business Review article (Mar/Apr 2019) notes the classroom training is essentially a thing of the past. For all the benefits and flexibility of on-line training, classroom learning is not competitive. And so goes the case against facilitated courses. The argument is that classroom training is expensive, not only for the instructor and facilities but also because people are pulled away from their “regular” jobs. Some employees will need to travel to the training center, resulting in added costs due to airfare, hotel, and rental cars.

Yet, with all the expenses of classroom training, many organizations are missing the key benefit of face-to-face learning. Networking. Especially as employees climb career ladders, internal and external networks become a crucial resource for learning as well. Leadership development and soft skills growth are best delivered in face-to-face format to allow a diverse cohort of young leaders opportunities to network.

Kenny Smith, former Houston Rocket and ESPN basketball commentator, noted that the team was laser-focused on the game, especially during playoffs, when they traveled. The team ate meals together, practiced together, and spent their free time together. Home games always had distractions. Classroom learning built this same camaraderie for an up-and-coming leadership cohort.

Master Mind Groups

in the best of both worlds, people will get the training they need when they need it and are given a chance to build a reliance network for learning later on. A master mind group offers a hybrid for learning and practicing leadership development skills. Advantages of both on-line learning and the networking effects of classroom training are enhanced. And because master mind groups are largely self-directed by the cohort, learning is on-demand and delivered just-in-time. Training is delivered via live webinars, on-line video modules, podcasts, and through collaboration with your cohort advisory board. In between live webinars, master mind members communicate on private discussion boards and complete required activities to develop and practice their leadership skills.

Continuous Learning

As the March/April 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review emphasizes, leaders need continuous learning. Successful innovation leaders don’t limit themselves to required corporate training courses or wait for nomination to an executive training session. Smart, growing leaders are passionate about trying new skills how to improve their current situation. They are as excited and proud to place a new certification on their Linked In profile as they are to share the development opportunity with their teams. This is continuous learning.

Contact Me

I am passionate about learning, especially for innovation and leadership. I want to help you and I’m sure I can learn from you, too. A great opportunity to engage in continuous learning is the Life Design Master Mind group where we apply tools of Design Thinking to career, professional, or personal challenges. The next open cohort meeting is 21 May 2019. Click here to register for your six-month transformation and learning journey. Based on your feedback, this master mind group is extremely affordable. You’ll also be interested to learn about the Flagship Innovation Leader program. Join us for a free webinar in June. Contact me at area code (281) plus 280-8717 or at info@simple-pdh.com for more information.

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Why You Need Creativity for Creative Problem-Solving

Posted on 04.18.19

A lot of people say they are not creative. I guess we are afraid that if we share our imaginations and dreams, we might be ridiculed or criticized. Yet, every day, an artist opens a new gallery. She is proud and excited to share her creations with others.

Creativity is defined by Dictionary.com as “the state or quality of being creative,” which in turn means original thought or expression. So, an artist creates original oil paintings and we admire them at an art gallery or museum. An architect designs a modern symphony hall and we praise his work with the unique building style fitting into the skyline of the community. My personal creative outlet is in scrapbooking and making greeting cards. Someone who is a “real” artist might criticize the simplicity of my cards, but others find joy in receiving a handmade card on their birthday or anniversary. I am not afraid of what others think because my creativity is my own and I relax while I am creating.

Creativity, then, takes many forms. It can be the creation of an original work of art or it can be the piecing together of various parts. Dictionary.com also defines creativity as “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns … to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods …” This is the precise definition we should keep in mind as innovators applying Design Thinking to our life challenges. Leaders can increase creativity in their new product development (NPD) teams by using tools that help team members capitalize on their individual strengths in a collaborative, sharing environment. It is often the assembly of these various individual ideas into a larger whole that “transcends traditional thinking.“ And when we come up with new ideas and concepts, we can apply them to situations that improve customer satisfaction and product quality.

Creative Problem-Solving

Problem-solving typically involves at least 5 steps to be successful period to be successful period

Identify the problem
Define the problem statement
Generate potential solutions
Test solutions
Review and select the best solution

A standard problem-solving procedure is methodical and simple. It should lead you to the best solution and in the shortest time possible. Yet, I observe innovation teams marching through these steps, marking them “complete“ without a full consideration of really addressing the problem. This is where creative problem-solving enters the picture.

Creative problem-solving doesn’t grab the first or the easiest or the cheapest solution. Instead, creative problem-solving is a bit messy and it’s iterative, yet it will generate a better solution in the end. For example, when you identify a problem that challenges your customers, is it a closed discussion in the problem statement such as “improve product reliability by 10%“. Open-ended problem statements can lead to more creative solutions since there are not assumptions built in. “Improving customer satisfaction” is a more open-ended problem statement than including a specific reliability improvement metric.

Creative problem-solving instead investigates the drivers and customer emotions that require product development work. What percentage of customers complain about reliability? How does our product reliability compare to competitors? Where are failures in product reliability occurring?

Again, we return to the tools of Design Thinking to guide creative problem-solving. Design Thinking allows us to empathize with customers to truly identify the problems they face. We shadow and observe how, when, and where they use the product. What is the reliability issue – does it occur immediately upon product usage or after 10 or 100 uses of the product? And importantly, as NPD practitioners, we must ask why is product reliability important to the customer? The food and drug industry will have different answers then companies that specialize in software-as-a-service.

Divergent Thinking

When we’re satisfied that we’ve identified the right customer problem, and we can clearly and concisely define it with a problem statement, we generate potential solutions with creative ideation. Ideation is just a fancy word that means creating ideas and concepts. During ideation, functional NPD team members work with customers to combine, modify, and substitute pieces and parts to generate new ideas and concepts. Ideation is a divergent thinking activity where even wild and seemingly illogical ideas are created. Sometimes, there is a gold nugget within a crazy, impractical idea that leads to a creative product solution.

For example, after an oil spill in the ocean, a large drilling company was stuck on how to clean it up. Using the traditional problem-solving steps, they were only coming up with ho-hum, incremental ideas. But, when they stepped back, applied the ideas of Design Thinking and creative problem-solving, they generated a unique solution to clean-up. It started with the crazy idea that seals absorb a lot of oil into their fur. Yet that innovation materialized in a rotating vessel equipped with oil-capturing brushes and a collection tank that facilitated removal of oil from the water surface.

Design Thinking tools like analogies, role playing, interviewing, and SCAMPER all help teams generate potential creative solutions. Matching, A/B testing, and card sorting are tools that provide insight to customer needs and whether we have defined the right problem to solve. Design Thinking also lets us test prototype solutions for functionality and customer acceptance with a low-cost commitment during product development.

Creativity for Creative Problem-Solving

Creativity is generating new ideas with the ability to transcend existing thinking about a problem. All of us can be creative, even though we might not be famous artists or architects. We can combine colors, textures, and functions to generate novel ideas. Importantly, we can be creative problem-solvers using deep listening with customers to empathize with their problems. Understanding the many different facets of a problem leads to a better, more creative solution.

Design Thinking tools are great to apply as NPD teams create lots of potential ideas and concepts. Lots of ideas is an expected outcome of divergent thinking and supports customer collaboration. Creativity in problem-solving yields superior results and allows an organization to get to market faster with new products that satisfy customer needs. Many of these tools and techniques also serve individuals well as they seek to make balance personal and professional decisions to find joy and purpose in life. Join us on Thursday, 18 April 2019 at 3:30pm to learn about the Life Design Master Mind group. The webinar is FREE and, based on your feedback, we have redesigned the online workshops to make it extremely affordable! Click here to register. Contact me at info@globalnpsolutions.com or area code 281, 280-8717 for more information or questions.

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Think Tanks and Advisory Boards

Posted on 04.04.19

I am still super excited about the publication of PDMA Essentials Volume 3. My chapter on virtual teams (Chapter 6) describes a model of five elements and 16 practices. The virtual team model (VTM) helps new product development (NPD) teams improve communication and effectiveness when team members are geographically dispersed. You can learn more about the VTM here or by taking an online course that helps NPD project teams and leaders apply each element to their real-world situation.

It is also really exciting to read and learn from the other authors who contributed to PDMA Essentials 3. The book offers descriptions of common innovation constraints (like dispersed teams) and offers practical solutions to overcome these barriers to productive NPD deployment. Part 1 describes individual and consumer constraints in NPD. You can read a related blog post that shares information from Chapter 1 of PDMA Essentials 3 (Increasing Creativity by Creating Boundaries). Part 2 covers organizational constraints, like virtual teams, and Chapter 4 offers advice on using a think tank to overcome internal NPD barriers. Finally, Part 3 describes market constraints that inhibit acceptance of new products and services.

Organizational Constraints to Innovation

Innovators often face barriers to creativity and acceptance of failure within their organizations due to limited processes, structures, and resources. For example, an organizational constraint to innovation within an organization includes limited training and the lack of enabling processes for NPD. Successful firms and NPD project leaders embrace the inherently risky nature of innovation while simultaneously allowing teams to determine success criteria.

Symptoms of Innovation Barriers

in Chapter 4 of PDMA Essentials 3, the authors describe five symptoms of innovation constraints within organizations. These symptoms can be observed by project sponsors, executives, and even the team members themselves. As an innovation process improvement consultant, I have noted these observable behaviors at client companies that are struggling to convert ideas into successful commercial products. Symptoms of innovation constraints within or organization are (Chapter 2, PDMA Essentials 3, pg. 64):

Lack of internal cooperation,
Lack of external cooperation,
Shortcomings in goal-setting,
Lack of adequate infrastructure, and
Restriction of innovation action.

Think Tanks

In their research, the authors found that innovation constraint symptoms were driven by four primary causes. These include lack of skills or motivation, and operational or strategic limitations within the organization. As a solution, the authors describe a think tank to open the organization to creative problem-solving.

An innovation think tank involves several elements. First, a neutral, reserved space must be provided for the team members to practice their craft. The space should provide appropriate resources, such as literature references and materials for experimentation, as well as individual desks for “heads-down” quiet time. Often with today’s focus on collaboration, open office plans neglect the opportunity for quiet time that technical experts need to study and analyze complex problems. A think tank can provide both reserved and collaborative spaces for expert team members working on an innovation project.

Collaboration is a crucial element of success for any NPD endeavor. However, while open office spaces encourage trust-building and social interactions, a project focus can be lacking. The think tank model instead encourages facilitated networking to “foster communication and exchange” (Chapter 4, PDMA Essentials 3, pg. 72). Networking and collaboration in the think tank are focused on problem-solving more than just establishing new relationships.

In their extensive in practical research, the authors found that the think tank was a valuable tool for managing challenging innovation work, especially in the early stages of NPD projects.

Advisory Boards

An advisory board is a little different than a think tank. The think tank is focused on internal processes and expanding the idea set of staff solving specific innovation challenges. Advisory boards, on the other hand, look externally to identify customer needs and to seek collaboration for individual problems.

In a customer advisory board, a panel of lead users convene on a regular basis to offer feedback to a company regarding its products and services. The lead users and customers who either purchase large volumes or who use the products in unique ways. The key to a successful customer advisory board is trust among the users and the firm. NPD teams expect to gain insights on customer needs and to gain understanding of feature improvements through the dialogue of a customer advisory board.

Professional advisory boards convene to help individuals advance their own goals. There are a lot of examples of industry advisory boards and small business development advisory boards. An industry advisory board is typically composed of company executives who lead and manage firms that manufacture or service products within the given category. For example, a housing advisory board might meet regularly to discuss future needs based on the current labor market, and environmental issues. Companies participate in industry advisory boards to learn what the future might hold, and to share common industry concerns. Sometimes these industry advisory boards endorse or lobby for government regulations to benefit their industry.

Small business advisory boards are usually run by a trained facilitator who guides the members through the formation and growth steps for a business. The benefit of the facilitator of the facilitation is that the participants, who are newbies, can utilize the facilitator’s experience and guidance to frame their own decisions. Another advantage of the small business advisory board is that all of the members are facing similar challenges at the same time, so they can share and learn from one another. Knowing where to find an affordable web designer and which local financial institutions are friendly to small businesses is invaluable to these participants.

Master Mind

A master mind group is another category of think tanks or advisory boards and is founded for similar reasons: to share industry knowledge, to brainstorm solutions to specific challenges, and to grow a business. The key difference between a master mind group and a general advisory board is that each member of the master mind group is expected to actively participate in each session. Master mind group members will be in the so-called “hot seat” for about 10 to 15 minutes during each meeting to share their challenges, much like a customer advisory board. However, in the master mind group, the other members will immediately share ideas from their own experiences to address the issue, like is done in an industry or small business advisory board. Thus, master mind groups have the benefit of members both giving and receiving help to achieve goals.

Using a Think Tank or Advisory Board

Both think tanks and advisory boards offer a lot of advantages and benefits for innovation professionals. Increased collaboration is a key outcome of the shared knowledge and experiences that group members bring. Support and accountability to achieve goals is another important result. And, finally, enhanced customer interactions to understand needs and challenges drive success.

If you plan to implement a think tank or advisory board, be prepared to spend significant time planning the structure and necessary participation of group members. If not, a single failure can doom the effort for all time. You may want to hire a trained facilitator that can coach and support team members on their journey. Be you sure that everyone involved treats this space and time for innovation as sacred without disruption of day-to-day activities.

Learn More

To learn more about a specific think take example, please read Chapter 4 of PDMA Essentials 3. There is a lot of information on the internet (of course) about industry advisory boards and small business development groups as well. And if you are interested in accelerating your innovation success please join our open master mind group utilizing Design Thinking tools to tackle life’s biggest challenges. You can learn more about the Life Design Master Mind in a free webinar held on 16 or 18 April 2019. Register here for the webinar and click here to learn more about the Life Design Master Mind group.

For other questions about building successful teams for product development, I can be reached at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281, 280-8717. I love helping individuals, teams, and organizations achieve their highest innovation goals!

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

What Does Diversity Mean for Innovation?

Posted on 03.28.19

Innovation often means success or failure for a company. Organizations need to create new products and services to maintain relevance in the marketplace. Customers and other stakeholders view innovation as driving new features and functionalities that ultimately support profitability for a firm.

Just as customers and clients are diverse, innovation teams need to be diverse. An interesting paper in the Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM, Vol. 35, 2018) describes four different categories of diversity related to new product development (NPD). And it may surprise you that what we typically consider as measures of diversity can actually hinder innovation team effectiveness.

Job-Related Diversity

in their paper, Weiss et al., define “job-related” and “not job-related diversity”. In the first category are team member differences regarding education, work experience, and organizational functions. In contrast, not job-related diversity includes demographics, geographies, and value systems. Much of the general literature on teamwork has focused on not job-related diversity; however, research on creativity and innovation has examined job-related diversity to a greater degree.

Surface versus Deep Levels of Diversity

Diversity traits are also categorized by the ease with which another individual can view or discern them. For example, demographic diversity is a surface characteristic since we can usually discern age, gender, or race easily. Likewise, education and organizational function are readily determined for most team members and is often part of socialization, forming a team, or standard team-building activities.

Deep diversity traits, on the other hand, require interaction in relationship with another party to be fully revealed. And in some work situations, a person’s closely held values may be strictly guarded and not revealed to others. These characteristics include personality and preferred working styles such as openness to experience, degree of introversion/extroversion, or level of power and achievement. Deep personal values are not job-related yet strongly impact how an individual behaves and interacts with other team members.

Deep job-related traits include cognitive diversity and interaction styles such as knowledge, skills, and thinking and communication styles. A brief encounter or low-level working relationship cannot reveal deep job-related diversity characteristics. However, on an innovation team with open and honest dialogue, these deep diversity traits, such as thinking and communication styles, may be revealed over time.

Which Traits Lead to Innovation

According to the review by Weiss et al., surface level, not job-related diversity traits can hinder innovation productivity. People may immediately form stereotypes when thrown together into a team composed of people based on demographics alone, for example. Here, the differences outweigh the benefits and people will drift toward others more like themselves. This can lead to intra-team conflicts since there may be a lack of goal or purpose for the diversity of the team toward a working relationship.

For benefits of diversity to be captured, innovation teams need to build on job-related diversity more than just surface characteristics. While geographic diversity (a surface trait that is not job-related) can enhance local market understanding for an innovation team, job-related diversity plays a larger role in team productivity. Cross-functional teams face challenges in communication due to jargon, terminology, and norms. If not addressed properly, diversity in function can actually harm the efficiency and productivity of an innovation team. However, when team purpose, knowledge sharing, and conflict management processes are established through training and application, team collaboration is supported.

Of course, this doesn’t surprise me. In my chapter on Virtual Team Models in PDMA Essentials 3, I describe key practices for the team leader to reinforce the common purpose of the team, communication methodologies, and tools for knowledge sharing that enhance gaps for dispersed teams. It is only with deliberate attention to, and understanding of, individual and cultural differences that a team can build a cohesive group working style to achieve innovation success.

Working Styles

Finally, much work has been done to help individuals raise their self-awareness in working styles. The DiSC® assessment, for instance, allows people to learn about their preferred working style and to test interactions with team members of different working styles. Of course, when dealing with a deep, job-related diversity trait, team members must learn to trust one another, compromise, and forgive mistakes. Another great starting point for innovation teams is the Team Dimensions Profile which looks at the team members’ focus on possibility versus reality and the desire to interact or analyze. The Team Dimensions Profile then shows the distribution of working styles to build communication, collaboration, and conflict management strategies that improve innovation outcomes.

Why is Diversity Important to Innovation?

Innovation relies on satisfying customers with different wants and needs. Marketing messages must balance functional characteristics of a product with the emotional needs of end-users. An NPD team with diverse perspectives can best identify with the broadest set of customer needs and is well-suited to designing and developing products for the highest levels of customer satisfaction.

Yet, as researchers have learned, team diversity is not just an observable surface trait. An effective innovation team must tackle diversity from a deep level of job-related traits such as knowledge, skills, and working styles. Understanding our differences allows us to generate communication patterns that yield improved efficiency and productivity for innovation.

Learn More

I love to help innovation team succeed. If you want to learn more about the Team Dimensions Profile, view a sample report, or learn more about Workplace DiSC, please contact me at info@globalnpsolutions.com. I’m also offering a 15% discount on a standard bundle of Design Thinking and Agile NPD courses for the 22nd to 24th of April 2019. Use code “bundle” at checkout. Design Thinking provides a fabulous set of tools to increase diversity in communication with your end customer in mind.

If you want to learn more about developing a strong virtual team, you need to register for one of the Virtual Team Model courses right away! Some other tools for leaders of innovation teams include the Situational Team Leadership group activity and assessing the creativity of your team with a Team Dimensions Profile. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or 281-280-8717 for more information on innovation, project management, and leadership training or coaching. I love helping individuals, teams, and organizations achieve their highest innovation goals!

Stop by and Say “Hi”

Are you attending the Texas Open Innovation Conference in Houston on 28 March? I’d love to chat with you. Also, I am speaking on open innovation and design thinking at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Spring Meeting in New Orleans on 1 April (Management Division). And, I’ll be at the Bay Area SHRM Conference on 4 April 2019 in Friendswood, Texas. And, get ready for the PDMA conference in Orlando in November! I’ll be sponsoring a booth at the conference and would love to meet you in person!

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

This was first published on the blog at www.Simple-PDH.com. o

What Dogs Teach Us About Leadership

Posted on 03.21.19

Joey is a dog. Not just any dog, but an elite sled dog who participates in the famous Iditarod race across Alaska. The race covers 1,000 miles and commemorates an historic sled dog run to bring medicine to the people of Alaska. Mushers, the humans who drive the sled, win both fame and fortune at the Iditarod.

Nicolas Petit is one of the world’s top mushers. Unfortunately, he got stuck in a blizzard last year and came in second. This year, he was several miles ahead of all other competitors – a huge lead in this sport with legendary and vigorous competition to win. But, then, something happened and Petit watched his 5-hour lead evaporate.

Teamwork

Sled dogs are trained to work as part of an integrated team. Each dog has an assigned role whether it is in the lead or it is a power role to pull. The dogs are trained to work in pairs and with the dogs ahead and behind them as well. When you witness a dog sled race or demonstration, you see cooperation and companionship.

High-performing teams also demonstrate cooperation and companionship. In the business world, we call this “collaboration”. Collaboration allows a team to produce more than the sum of its individual parts. Creativity and innovation accelerate in collaborative environments because each idea builds and expands on those concepts that came before it. Most people report increased job satisfaction when working in a collaborative team setting.

Collaboration for Virtual Teams

Virtual teams are a special subset of working teams. In a dispersed team, most group members are located at different places, sometimes in different countries and often in different time zones. Virtual team members communicate primarily through electronic means and have little, if any, contact.

Innovation is believed to be enhanced by face-to-face collaboration. The speed of new ideas coming to the table can be accelerated in a F2F environment, and co-located team members have an easier time building trust among themselves. Yet, dispersed teams can outperform co-located teams when they are structured appropriately.

In the virtual team model (VTM, PDMA Essentials Volume 3), we present six elements of team structure that are critically important for innovation success with dispersed team members. Of these elements, setting and reinforcing the common purpose is a priority for team leaders. The common purpose unites team members with different individual personalities, work styles, and cultural norms. Purpose explains the mission, vision, and values of the team and leads to improved cohesion.

With new product development (NPD), the purpose to improve customer’s lives and increase the quality of products is a unifying message. Virtual teams bring an advantage to NPD in that local representation on the team yields a globally-attractive product. Moreover, because team members bring varied cultural perspectives to the innovation work, creativity can be higher than in a F2F team. You can learn more about the virtual team model here (training tools) or you can download a paper on the VTM here.

Leadership

Sled dog teams have more than one leader. And of course, this complicates matters significantly. We all know that working in a matrix organization introduces challenges that are not present in functional or project-oriented structures. A matrix organization is defined by staff members of having more than one boss; typically, a functional supervisor and a project director. A sled dog follows the musher’s direction and also follows the lead dog, for example.

Leaders motivate and inspire team members. I love to help leaders become more effective so that their teams can innovate at a higher level. It is important for leaders to recognize the varied working styles of each individual team member, and to match responsibilities and roles with people’s capacities and performance. Situational Team Leadership model is a tool that managers can use to improve teamwork and output for NPD teams. Contact me at teresa@globalnpsolutions.com if you want to learn more about adapting teams and leadership styles with a Situational Team Leadership activity.

Situational team leadership focuses on an individual’s demonstrated skills and pairs these competencies with motivation and willingness to learn. Early in a team member’s assignment, s/he may be new to the task and lack confidence in an ability to complete certain activities. The team leader offers a directive style to manage this team member’s work, to support and encourage learning and growth.

As people’s skill sets grow and their confidence in task completion increases, the leader will offer different styles to encourage continued learning. These include coaching, supporting, and delegating. It is important for leaders to accurately assess – through conversation and observation – how well an individual is adopting new practices to build higher performance skills. Above all, a leader must be encouraging and tolerant, especially in innovation where failure often leads directly to knowledge creation.

Back to Joey

So, you’re probably still wondering about Joey and his musher, Nicolas Petit. In this story, we observe a demonstration of poor leadership and in act of solidarity or team cohesion. Petit yelled at Joey. And then, the whole team stopped. The dogs were well-fed and healthy but refused to go on after Petit yelled at Joey. I don’t know the entire set of circumstances that led to the musher scolding his dog, but I do understand the consequences.

When leaders scold team members with negative verbiage in public or in private, the employee loses trust and confidence. This is even worse in a virtual team were cultures and norms of communication vary widely. Broken trust is extremely difficult to repair, even more so for complex human team members.

A better approach (as compared to public shouting) is to offer private coaching to the team member whose performance is suffering. A leader can offer a Performance Improvement Plan that focuses on short-term goals, commitment to the team’s purpose, and shared responsibility to change behaviors and learning patterns. A leader cannot impose these objectives on another team member because self-awareness is key to lasting transformation.

People cannot be bought with a handful of tasty biscuits or raw meat. Hard work is required for a lagging team member to get back up and race again. But, when one team member shows his commitment to improving team performance, the others will also come along, just like sled dogs at the Iditarod.

Learn More

Stop by and Say “Hi”

Finally, successful leadership depends on a variety of perspectives for the team, the product, and the customer. We are holding a special workshop on Agile NPD on 23 & 24 April 2019 in Houston, Texas, USA. Register here for the 2-day Agile NPD workshop and save on a full 3-day experience including a one-day pre-workshop course on Design Thinking. Use code “bundle” at checkout and save 15% on both courses (standard registration).

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.