creativity

3 Ways to Supercharge Your Creativity

Posted on 08.18.21

Watch the short video summary and then read on…

Creativity is kind of a loaded word. Everyone wants to be creative, but many people are hesitant to test their creativity. A lot of people conflate creativity with artistry. Yet, we need creativity to design and develop new products.

Innovation and creativity go hand-in-hand. Product solutions must be creative enough to offer alternatives to customers. Product innovation is not only a disciplined process but is also a creative one. Both innovation and creativity thrive within boundaries and constraints yet also need us to consider opportunities from new perspectives.

How can you improve innovation success at your firm? Consider the following three ways to supercharge your creativity.

Gratitude

Creative ideas often come to us when our minds have noodled on a problem for a while. We also design better solutions when we are in a positive frame of mind. Being grateful for what we have can increase our creativity.

A lot of executive coaches and time management experts advise making a list of three things for which we are grateful for at the end of each day. Gratitude reminds us of our blessings and that we are not alone. Often, these gratitude lists describe people and relationships instead of “stuff” and money.

So, instead of approaching your next product innovation project from a position of “what needs fixing,” I suggest you try figuring out what is already working. Be grateful for customer feedback that illuminates quality issues and show generosity to customers who highlight improvement opportunities. Ask your customers what they like about a product.

Practice gratitude to increase your creativity. Before you go to bed tonight, jot down three things for which you are grateful. Then, consider how you can enlarge and enhance opportunities tomorrow. Be creative!

Recharge

Because our subconscious mind does much of our “creative” work, we need to give our brains a rest. A lot of people say they get their best ideas in the shower. Why? In the shower, there is no television news, there are no housekeeping chores, and there are no looming work deadlines. Our brains are resting – and roaming.

I recently took a two-week vacation to go hiking in the desert southwest. We only turned on the television twice during that time, I rarely checked the “news” (or national debt) on my phone, and checked email only for urgent issues on weekdays. I totally unplugged (except for my presentation to a developer’s conference on the topic of … creativity).

Unplugging allows us to recharge. When you unplug, you can suddenly hear the birds and the wind. You see the world through fresh eyes. Colors are more vibrant, and your dreams are clearer. These are the elements of creativity. You must find the time to unplug and recharge to build your creative muscles.

Sleep

Of course, being on vacation means waking up without an alarm clock. Most adults need about eight hours of sleep, but we get only five or six due to work, family, and other commitments. My vacation allowed me to recharge by getting enough sleep. A long day of hiking with sun and fresh air (and sometimes rain and wind) made sleep a glorious respite. And on vacation (without an alarm clock), I woke up – fully rested – when the sun gently peeked through the window.

Everyone knows that getting enough sleep is important for health and well-being, but if you work in innovation, you also need enough sleep to be creative. The gray matter recharges with sleep and neuroscientists tell us that sleep allows new pathways to form between our brain cells. Again, our subconscious is at work while we sleep, generating new ideas to serve our customers.

One trick I use is to consider a big, hairy problem before I go to sleep. I have already put myself into a positive state of mind by considering different gratitudes for the day. Then, as I think about a problem and doze off, I can dream about solutions. More often than not, I wake up with a new idea, a new solution, or a better way to do things.

Supercharge Your Creativity

Creativity is a mental muscle that needs attention – just like our physical body needs good nutrition and exercise. Product innovation professionals must improve creativity to continue designing and developing interesting and valuable products and services. Three ways to supercharge your creativity are:

Practice daily gratitude,
Routinely unplug and recharge, and
Get enough quality sleep.

You can learn more about improving your skills for innovation and creativity at my presentation “Innovation Magic: Creativity in a Hybrid World” at the upcoming ACMP Texas conference on 17 September. Learn more about the conference and other great speakers that are Imagining the Future here. You might also be interested in a special two-hour creativity workshop I’m offering on 1 October. Learn more and register here.

Four Elements of Creativity

Posted on 07.22.21

Product innovation is a fabulous field in which to work. Innovation mixes several interesting ingredients – markets, technologies, creativity – to generate products that are valued by customers. In turn, companies generate profits when they deliver products and services to consumers that delight and inspire them.

Researching markets and technologies is deliberate and structured within product innovation. Product managers use inquiry tools and statistical analysis to understand categories of customers as well as to pinpoint areas of opportunity. R&D practitioners analyze experiments and data to design novel technical solutions. Market research and technology development both follow specific processes with known performance metrics.

Yet, creativity if often shrouded in mystery. Many people assume they are not creative because they don’t view themselves as “artists”. Others claim that only wild-eyed scientific geniuses are creative, coming up with ideas like a lightning strike. In truth, creativity for product innovation is also a structured process with four key elements.

Cross-Functional Teams

There are two elements to creativity from a people perspective – individual and team creativity. As individuals we all have different experiences and bring that diversity when generating ideas for new products. Individuals with various work skills and backgrounds “see” the problem differently. For example, a marketing specialist might define the problem in terms of product awareness while a technology specialist might see the problem as a set of puzzles and a technical code that will unlock the solution.

Higher levels of creativity occur, however, when we collaborate as a team. The marketer cannot successfully deliver innovation on his own by simply raising product awareness. The technologists cannot deliver a new product by simply designing a great piece of hardware. Instead, when we combine the viewpoints of a cross functional team, we can generate truly radical innovations. Sharing the different perspectives of a problem – from the customer’s viewpoint as well as from each team members standpoint – enhances creativity and the end solution.

Boundaries

While it seems counter-intuitive, creativity increases when we place reasonable constraints around the problem. You might dream about your weekend plans if you had infinite money and no restrictions on your time. Perhaps a trip to an exotic beach or taking in a Broadway show would be on the agenda? Yet our dreams of limitless wealth are not actionable.

Teams are most successful in identifying creative product solutions when there are some boundaries around the problem space. Having infinite funds or unlimited time opens every possibility and too many choices can be overwhelming. Instead, your weekend plans must be creative if you can only spend $100 and have two fixed time commitments. Maybe you take the kids to the zoo just after their Little League game. It’s a fun and unusual family activity while solving the problem within the given constraints.

Curiosity

It goes without saying that curiosity must be a key element of creativity. The status quo cannot serve to grow a business or to generate innovative products over the long-term. Creative curiosity is a desire – a passion – to figure out how things work. In new product development, the marketing representative is curious about the problems consumers face and the technical representative is curious about how to build a widget to solve that problem. Creative curiosity is always looking for ways to improve a system and searching for the “real” problem.

Are you curious? How do you approach a new opportunity? Creative curiosity involves jumping in to quickly learn the who, what, why, and how of a problem.

Learning

The final element of creativity is learning – learning from failure and learning from each other. Not every idea works out as we planned. Sometimes our ideas are too radical for an existing market. Oftentimes, we cannot find the cost-effective technology to scale for commercial application. These are “failures” by one definition, yet there are also opportunities for learning. Each piece of knowledge stacks up to help us solve the next problem, even if one particular approach didn’t work out perfectly.

Another aspect of creative learning regards quality. A lot of us are perfectionists because of our passion and love for our customers and career. Yet, sometimes, good enough is good enough. When a famous artist changes his style from realism to abstract, he might learn new techniques and learn to be satisfied with the quality of each new painting, even though it isn’t perfect. A mystery author can add new twists and turns to the story line, depth of characters to her text, but the book must be written in order to be read and appreciated. Learning to define “done” is an important feature for creativity within the bounds of product innovation.

Four Elements of Creativity

A lot of people I know claim they are not creative. This is troubling since I know a lot of people working in new product development. Everyone can be creative. I suggest you start with these four key elements of creativity.

Use a cross-functional team to build empathy across many different perspectives.
Place loose boundaries around the problem space to enhance creativity.
Encourage curiosity by offering new options and seeking to deeply understand the problem.
Practice continuous learning and accept failure by recognizing that good enough is good enough.

Creativity starts with leadership. Please join our best practices Master Class on Leadership for Project Managers starting 18 August. Register here.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Passion and Persistence

Posted on 07.07.21

Innovation is often conflated with creativity. While successful product innovation requires application of a new technology or developing new markets, creativity lends the new with the known. Both innovation and creativity hinge on passion and persistence.

Click here for the 30-second video summary and then read on.

What is Innovation?

Innovation is the introduction of something new. Sometimes we find a new technology that makes a task simpler or cheaper. There are product innovations that make the lives of consumers better and there are process innovations that make factories run more smoothly. Product and process innovations deliver value to the customer and value to the company (profit).

We also observe innovation in marketing when an existing product or technology is introduced to a new market. For example, using your smartphone to take a photograph is known technology. Using your phone to take a photo of a check and deposit it to your bank account is a new market application.

A third category of innovation is a new business model. Business models (read more here) are the narratives of how companies serve customers and create value for both he customer and themselves. Sometimes a business model innovation is simple, such as changing fast food pick-up from a drive-through window to curbside. Other times the business model transformation is huge – do banks need tellers anymore if we take photos for depositing checks and get cash from an ATM?

Thus, innovation can be small or large. Innovation can involve technology, markets, and products. And, innovation can encompass sales and delivery channels.

What is Creativity?

Dicationary.com defines creativity as “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns…” I often think of artists as creative people. I envy their talent in oil painting, woodworking, and jewelry-making. Interestingly, my friends and family have told me that I’m creative with my handmade greeting cards. As a chemical engineer by training, I’m pretty sure I’m not an artist – I think of myself as a nerd!

Yet, artists are just as dedicated to their craft as nerds are committed to engineering and coding. Artists study their subjects – people, landscapes, texture, and colors – just as engineers study math. And successful artists commit hours to perfecting their technique and media, just as engineers spend hours at university learning sophisticated calculus, statistics, and physical chemistry.

The Common Thread

So, innovation and creativity share the common idea of creating something new. To be successful at innovation, a company needs creative concepts, but creativity is not enough. Creative artists and innovation professionals share passion and persistence in their quest to create something new.

Passion

Passion is a desire for something that is so intense you cannot imagine not having it. Artists are passionate about their work. They talk about a necessity to paint so that a scene in their imagination can become real. Mystery writers have a passion to create a tension and they must write so they, too, can find out who-done-it.

Innovation professionals also have deep passions. We want to make a product work and to solve a customer’s problem. We must create a better way for our customers to access information or to perform daily tasks. Sometimes an innovator’s passion is the technology – knowing that if people can use a new device, it will make their lives better. Creating the new technology is work of love.

In Bridging Communication Gaps (Chapter 6 in PDMA Essentials Volume 3), I recommend hiring for passion over other qualifications. Team members with passion will support your mission and strive for excellence. Passion resulting in a work well done is a reward by itself.

Persistence

I saw a quote the other day that success only comes before work in the dictionary. This is definitely what my parents taught me. I also observe artists and creative people working with persistence. Great writers and painters spend dedicated time every day working to master their technique. We don’t see their mistakes and errors from practice. What we are treated to is the result of creative persistence and hard work.

Successful innovation professionals are also persistent. We cannot design and develop a new product just because we have an idea. We must carefully (and ploddingly) analyze the data from potential customers and market segments. We must be persistent in the questions we ask and to whom we ask. Innovation doesn’t happen overnight, and we must be persistent in carrying a project through the long, boring times to achieve success. You’ve probably heard of the entrepreneur who became an overnight success – after 10 years of hard work and persistence!

Innovation and Creative Leadership

Passion and persistence. Goal-setting. Managing schedules and budgets. Creativity and innovation. Leaders need all these skills (and more). So, I’m really excited to offer you a chance to develop your passions for innovation through our new Leadership Master Class, starting 18 August (online). This course was created from years of experience in building innovation leaders and incorporates many of the tools from the popular Life Design Master Mind. Learn more and register here.

In the meantime, do what you love (passion) and do it well (persistence).

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

On Waiting, Wisdom, and Creativity

Posted on 06.30.21

Watch the short video summary and then read the full post below.

I saw a statistic that the longest that people would wait to be seated at a restaurant was 20 minutes. I suppose it depends on how good the food is in how large your group is. Recently, at a Meridian, MS, chain restaurant, my husband and I were given an estimate of 1-1/2 hours to wait to be seated. We went somewhere else to eat but a large family was already into their second hour of waiting.

Most of us don’t like waiting. Waiting is the one time that we recognize that time is precious. It is a commodity with no price and no limit yet is more valuable than anything else in life. We cannot recover lost time – once we have spent a second, a minute, and hour – it is gone forever.

Waiting is an Opportunity

Today when we are faced with a 20-minute wait for seating at a restaurant, we whip out our cellphones. Some people read news stories of their favorite movie stars. Others check scores from last night’s basketball game. My husband checks stock prices and I run through email.

Unfortunately, I’ve watched families continue this pantomime after they are seated. Mom, Dad, and kids continue to look at Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok while they have dinner “together”. The opportunity to share a meal together goes beyond eating (in my opinion) and is a time to talk about your day, your dreams, your challenges. This time gives people a chance to build relationships and to create memories.

Waiting time can be an opportunity. I was called to jury duty the other day and the facility had a “no cell phones” policy. A sheriff stood at the entrance demanding people leave their phones in their cars. There is a lot of waiting while the judge and lawyers go through their processes of negotiating jury selection

Knowing I could not have a cell phone to check email or read the news, I brought a book to read. Of 91 potential jurors, I was the only person who recognized an opportunity in the waiting. Maybe the other potential jurors were making mental plans or daydreaming – also worthwhile uses of our time . But, unless you are prepared to take advantage of waiting, you could just waste your time.

Wisdom in Waiting

The book I was reading during the jury duty waiting is called “Off the Clock” by Laura Vanderkam. It is also about focus so that we use our limited time to the greatest purpose. We all know that glorious feeling when it feels like the clock stopped because we are enjoying time with our work, our colleagues, or our hobbies. These are precious times of engagement that we remember and recall as “good times”.

Waiting time, however, can give us wisdom. When we pause to put down our phones and focus on our plans for the day (versus what meetings are on the schedule), we “think”. Deep thinking helps us apply wisdom to a situation. These interludes of unoccupied time give us wisdom in creative problem-solving. By turning a problem over and over in our minds, we can see new angles and new approaches for solutions.

In the research for “Off the Clock,” Ms. Vanderkam found that people with the highest perception of time are the same people who intentionally scheduled periods of open time. Instead of running from meeting to meeting, high performers use this time for strategic thinking and responding as leaders. Innovation professionals can use waiting time to build creative wisdom.

Waiting, Wisdom, and What Else?

I believe our lifelong satisfaction comes from working hard at what we love and loving those in our relationship circles. We build wisdom, memories, and creativity through our engagements with people and by thinking and planning what’s next. King Solomon didn’t ask for wealth or possessions. Instead, he asked for wisdom and he waited for his prayer to be answered.

What can you do to increase wisdom through waiting? First, put your cell phone down and be fully present. Brendon Burchard advises busy people to pause at the door, take a deep breath, and focus on how they can be fully present as they pass through the door to what lays beyond. This increases our wisdom as leaders, our creativity as the innovation professionals, and our happiness in relationships.

Next, I recommend taking time to build your professional wisdom as a leader. I’m offering a new opportunity for project, product, and engineering managers to grow in their careers through disciplined focus, strategic goal-setting, and functional skill-building. Learn more here.

Finally, be prepared for the wait. Have a plan ready in case you must wait. Keep a real book in your bag to read when the opportunity arises. Ask your spouse about their day – and really listen. Laugh and tell jokes. Waiting is an opportunity for creative wisdom.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Separating Wheat from Weeds

Posted on 05.06.21

There is a parable in the Bible (Matthew 13: 24-30) speaking of a farmer who bought good seed and planted it. But, when small shoots first came through the ground, there were weeds mixed among the wheat. Knowing that if he pulled the weeds, he would also uproot the wheat, he let the weeds grow with the good plants until harvest. At the final harvest, the weeds were separated from the wheat and burned.

Aside from the eternal lesson, this parable teaches us something about creativity and innovation. Not every idea is a good one. But if we try to kill all the bad ideas, we might also uproot some good ones at the same time. Instead, if we let ideas grow, we can harvest creativity and separate innovation ideas for further processing while we discard the poor ones.

Creativity

We often judge creative ideas after the harvest – when a new product is delivering profit and customers express satisfaction with service and functionality. Likewise, we often “kill” ideas early in new product development (NPD) process when they do not appear to bear fruit – profitability or competitive advantage. From a business perspective, I totally agree with separating the “weeds” from the “wheat” early in the product development effort. From a leadership perspective, we do have to be careful to not tamp down the team’s creativity.

Leaders must nurture creativity, just as a farmer nurtures young shoots. Apparently, the leaves of a weed called “darnel” are indistinguishable from wheat – even by experts – until the plants mature. Similarly, we do not know if an idea is good or bad until we test it with customers.

One strategy to improve creativity, and to encourage customer feedback on all ideas, is to let the biggest naysayer try to prove an idea is bad. Within constraints of time, budget, and scope, a team member who doubts the success of an idea can try to demonstrate it is a bad idea. Either they are correct, or they become the biggest champion for the concept. Either way, the team wins, and customers are best served with creative, innovative ideas.

Tools

In innovation, we have several tools at our disposal to separate the wheat from the weeds. First, a rigorous NPD process compares the goals of an individual idea with the strategic objectives of the organization. A company’s vision might be to grow a specific product line or brand. Or the firm may have goals to cut costs. New product development projects must align with these goals to advance.

Another tool that product development professionals use to promote good ideas is Product Portfolio Management (PPM). Within the framework of PPM, organizational leaders rank and prioritize all projects and ideas. Decision criteria vary from firm to firm but generally include strategic alignment, profit potential, and customer satisfaction. PPM balances risk of short-term and long-term innovation investments as well.

Quality

Finally, innovation is mixed with quality just as the farmer’s field was mixed of weeds and wheat. Successful product development only occurs when we deliver quality products and services to our customers. Quality includes elements of reliability, functionality, and maintainability.

Quality in new product development encompasses the product design and the project management process. In the former case, we test ideas and concepts with customers and ensure that QC standards guide manufacturing. In the latter case, we work to constantly improve the system in which a project moves through various development phases and gates.

Separating Wheat and Weeds

Today’s technology is very different than in Biblical times. Robots patrol fields taking photos of young shoots to classify them as weeds or wheat. Ultra-accurate machines then spray precisely on the weed leaves to kill them or exactly on the wheat leaves to fertilize them . However, the risk is the same – if you mistake wheat for a weed you can kill your entire crop.

As product innovation leaders, we must be careful not to kill good ideas along with the bad ones. Maintaining creativity is important to continue designing and developing new products and services to satisfy customer needs. We need to let ideas mature to test concepts with potential customers. On the other hand, limited investment reduces the risk of failed products.

Tools like an NPD process (we recommend WAGILE product development) and PPM help to sort the “weeds” “wheat”. Organizational strategy and growth goals help to differentiate good ideas from poor ones. PPM, in particular, ensures the best ideas are ranked the highest.

Finally, quality is what the farmer sought – wheat provides quality food while weeds are mostly inedible. Likewise, positive innovation quality metrics include customer satisfaction, market share, and market penetration. Having QA and QC in place throughout the product design and development process.

Learn More

If you want to learn how to separate the wheat from the weeds, please join me for an in-depth Innovation Best Practices Workshop starting 2 June March 2021. Special discounts for multiple attendees and the unemployed. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com for more information.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Regaining Creativity

Posted on 03.03.21

It’s sometimes difficult to remember while we are filling out forms, responding to bureaucracy, and going about our daily routine, but we are all creative and innovative beings. Each of us has good ideas, sometimes great ideas. And each of us can generate unique and novel ways to address customer needs and to troubleshoot problems.

Why is Creativity Lost?

Kids have lots of creativity. They color outside the lines and make cats purple. They imagine themselves as swash-buckling pirates and as famous movie stars. My friend, Karen, and I used to act out our favorite books in our backyards with no props at all. The walnut tree served as the deserted island and our dolls were the orphaned children. We understood the story and, well, we just had fun!

Then, our parents and teachers taught us that we needed to stay inside the lines, cats are never purple, and it was more important to do chores then pretend to be surviving on coconuts and palm leaves in a snow-covered backyard in Idaho.

Learning is very, very important and without understanding how mathematics and science work, we cannot become engineers, scientists, or project managers. We must learn the right way to solve an algebra problem and we need to know the correct answers. As chemical engineers, the safety of our co-workers and communities relies on us calculating the right answers and using the right formulas.

Yet, another piece of finding the right answer uses our creative problem-solving skills. And many of us have relegated creativity to the back burner. We don’t have time to “play” and we don’t want to look dumb by not coming up with “the right” answer.

Build Creativity through Experimentation

Edison is famous for saying he didn’t discover how to make a light bulb. He had, instead, found 10,000 ways to not make a light bulb. As innovation and engineering professionals, we strive for creativity through experimentation. We learn, just as Edison did, by failing. Each failure tells us what won’t work, but each failure also frames a hypothesis for the next experiment.

We often go about experimentation by changing one variable at a time. This can take a long time to find a novel answer to a problem, yet it provides accurate and detailed data and information about the problem. We should also experiment with “outside the box” solutions. These are problem solutions that come from other industries or analogies from radically different systems.

Legend has it that the inventor of Velcro watched a lizard climb the side of the building and wondered about its sticky feet. Another industry legend illustrates that rotating vessels with brushes used for oil spill clean-ups came from the observation that sea otters’ fur was highly absorptive. Applying a biological analogy to a static process can unleash creative hypotheses. And we can test these ideas in a controlled way to learn from failure.

Creativity Exercises

it’s hard to be creative by ourselves. We need to share ideas – sometimes crazy ideas – with others to generate better ideas. Often, just looking at a problem from a different perspective can stimulate creativity. A simple exercise to help you focus on new concepts is to drive to work by a different route. You will observe different landmarks and patterns. Strike up a conversation with a stranger in the queue at the supermarket. Who knows? You might leave with a new recipe.

At work, seek out the opinions and impressions with those you don’t normally share assignments. Learn what challenges face the structural and electrical engineers, IT and HR professionals, and supply chain specialists. Talk to technicians about their workflows. All of these unusual conversations will give you creative fodder for solving the next problem when it arises. Download a handout on creativity here.

Creativity is Lifelong Learning

Anyone who has followed my blog for any time knows that I’m a huge believer in lifelong learning. Of course, as an experienced and safety conscious process engineer, I know that there are “right” answers. We cannot defy the laws of gravity or of thermodynamics. We know that a material balance is fixed by the laws of nature.

However, when we experiment and lose our fear of judgment, we can test hypotheses to find better and more creative ways to solve problems. We can share a stream between systems that need heating and cooling in a plant to save water and energy. We can push chemical reactions to increase efficiency and reduce material usage with the clever application of temperature, pressure, or catalyst. Whatever your field of expertise, look for new ways to do things, especially by trying an approach that comes from a biological system or another industry.

What can you do, today, to create a novel hypothesis and test it to learn?

Learn More

Check out my presentation on creativity and design thinking with the Houston ATD chapter here. Register for our online workshop 29 and 30 March 2021 here. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com if you want to implement effective tools for innovation team communications.

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

Questioning for Creative Leadership

Posted on 11.28.19

We are always told to be good listeners. Our moms and grade school teachers often told us to “shush and listen.” And as adults, as many of us think we are good listeners as we think are good drivers. (By the way, that’s a lot more than 50%, leading to an irrational conclusion.)

Active listening is more than just hearing what someone says. Listening involves silencing our own thoughts and opinions, connecting empathetically with the speaker, and providing feedback. The best way to provide feedback and to gauge if you really, truly understand what someone has said is through questioning. I’ve observed that there are two general forms of questions: transactional queries and questions for reflection.

Transactional Questions

In a market economy, we exchange money for a product. Just as in a commercial exchange, conversation and dialogue can be transactional. If there are multiple product choices with comparable features and functions, a rational consumer selects the least expensive product. The decision is based on logic and the transaction is designed to minimize time, effort, and resources.

Some conversations are transactional in nature and should be. “What time does the meeting start?” and “Where is the restaurant?” are responsible transactional questions that allow us to increase our efficiency and productivity. The responses are typically used to complete the exchange, just as handing money to a cashier completes the purchase. “The meeting starts at 10 am” and “The restaurant is at 123 Main Street”.

We use transactional queries to obtain data. Remember that data and information are different. Information allows us to make decisions, create opportunities, and to expand our knowledge of a given situation. In a transactional conversation, we exchange impersonal data and the individuals may translate that data to information on their own.

For example, if I know that the meeting starts at 10 am and is held at a restaurant on Main Street (data), I will plan to leave my office at 9 am since I also know it is a one-hour drive. Converting the transactional conversation to information also tells me that I need to take dimes and quarters with me to put in the parking meters on Main Street.

Reflection

While my decision to leave at 9 am and carry small change with me is not necessarily creative, it does explain another level of communication. Questions for reflection use “right-brain” thinking to analyze the conversational feedback, to draw conclusions, and to offer alternatives. For instance, I could have countered the restaurant location with a suggestion to meet at a different place that allows me to take a shorter drive.

It is through questions for reflection that we build creativity. Innovation is enhanced when we look at things from a different perspective and try to envision a unique outcome. Transactional queries normally limit the participants from seeing alternatives but can support incremental improvements and operational efficiencies.

Leadership Questioning Skills

How do you know if you’re asking transactional or reflective questions? As an innovation leader, you want to drive creativity and encourage alternatives in new product development (NPD). You want to empower your team to listen and to learn.

Transactional questions, potentially hindering radical innovation, are easily rephrased to “yes” or “no” inquiries. We could easily have said “Is the meeting at 10 am?” instead of asking what time the meeting is scheduled. This gives us a strong clue that the question is purely transactional.

Another indication is that the response to a transactional query is quick. The meeting time is known so there’s no hesitation in providing the answer to the question. At most, people will need to check their calendars to confirm the data.

On the other hand, reflective questions introduce a pause in the pace of the conversation. A person has to stop and think about how s/he might respond. The response provides information and not just data. And, information allows us to take on different perspectives and to generate alternative solutions. An indication that a question is designed for reflection is that a “yes” or “no” answer would be totally inappropriate.

Creativity is driven by viewing problems from different perspectives. Those viewpoints should include all potential stakeholders, including designers and developers, functional organizational representatives, customers, and end-users. Understanding the entire ecosystem of innovation lays out the scope of a new product development effort.

Customers and Open Innovation

When customers are involved in innovation, we call it open innovation. While customers cannot tell us what features and specifications they want in a new product, they can answer our questions and we gather both data and information. It’s important, however, to focus customer interactions on qualitative data, such as that gathered through reflective questions. Market research and open innovation are driven by understanding and empathizing with customer needs. And only when this information is collated, can a development team go into the labs and pilot plants to design a new product or service.

While questions for reflections are best used in gathering customer impressions and feedback, there is a place in innovation for transactional questions. Of course, these are often limited to setting pricing parameters and in A/B market testing. You’ll also want to collect and analyze demographic and geographic data about potential customers since this can frame future marketing efforts.

Questioning for Innovation Leaders

Leaders set the tone for the culture and climate of an organization. Restrictive, distrustful environments hamper creativity and are often characterized by strict boundaries and constraints. In these situations, questions are largely transactional. Managers are tracking directives for scope, budget, and schedule metrics.

In open, creative cultures, leaders provide freedom and autonomy for innovation teams. Questions seek knowledge building and deeper understanding. Open-ended questions without right or wrong answers can stimulate perspective-taking and novel approaches to solving problems. Involving customers and end-users in creative questioning can improve innovation exponentially.

Summary and Learn More

Learning to ask good questions and to fully listen to the response are skills that can be honed and grown through training and coaching. We can each practice creative leadership questioning by converting transactional queries into questions for reflection.

Learn more at our complimentary webinar on 13 December 2019 at noon CST (1 pm EST, 10 am PST). We will discuss the Transition from a Technical Role to Leadership. Register here.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching to build innovation leaders. I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith. I am an experienced professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making. My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator. Contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Increasing Creativity by Creating Boundaries

Posted on 11.29.18

Everyone talks about creativity today. Businesses want to increase creativity to generate new products and services, to solve problems, and to remain ahead of the competition. Yet, creativity is often elusive.

Why are We Not Creative?

Most adults say they are not all that creative. Why? We were creative and imaginative as children. My friend Karen and I used to read novels and then play-act the stories in our backyards. We didn’t say whether we were creative, but our imaginations took us well beyond the authors’ original content.

Often, we blame the school system for the diminishing creativity people experience as they advance from childhood to adulthood. There are certain materials we all must learn, though, to become successful participants in a society – reading, writing, and arithmetic. These subjects have certain rules that we do need to learn and without testing, a teacher cannot know if a student has mastered the information.

My family encouraged mastery of school, and luckily, learning the topics came easy to me. But just because I was good at school did not mean I could not be creative. I also took music lessons during my school years and learned to appreciate music as a creative expression from dozens of composers. Karen’s mom was constantly helping her with various art projects – building, painting, and gluing.

Yet when we reach the workplace, we often limit our creative expressions. Perhaps because I am not a good performance musician, I have never shred with my work colleagues that I can play an instrument. I am afraid they would find out that even though I excel at management and engineering, I’m not very good at music.

These are reasons we limit our creative thinking in the workplace – fear, ego, and feelings of inadequacy. However, many studies have shown that simply embracing our own vulnerabilities allows us to view situations from a new perspective. And when we see situations from a fresh viewpoint, we can generate novel and unique solutions to problems.

Good Boundaries to Creativity

While fear, ego, and feelings of inadequacy hold us back from generating creative ideas for new products and services, some boundaries are important to framing and constraining a problem space. For example, in PDMA Essentials Volume 3 (Chapter 1) Calic and Ghasemaghaei describe studies in which chefs are more creative when constrained to only a few ingredients. (Perhaps this explains the popularity of a number of television shows in which chefs compete for various prizes?)

Another famous study demonstrated that shoppers were less likely to purchase a jar of jam when presented with many flavor options rather than fewer. When there are too many choices, we fall back on what we already know; thus, limiting creativity.

Constraints to Increase Creativity

Teams are found to improve the novelty of solutions when given a few boundaries or constraints to an innovation problem. Consider the difference between improving plant throughput vs. improving plan throughput by 10% without purchasing new equipment.

Try it yourself. Take out a sheet of paper – right now! – and list five places you’d like to visit. [Imagine the must from Jeopardy playing…] Now, right down five places you’d like to take vacation within the next year and that are within a $5,000 travel budget. [More Jeopardy music…]

Which list is more creative? Now, try the exercise with your spouse, family, or friends who will join you on the vacation. My bet is your first vacation list has a lot of traditional travel destinations without much detail – maybe Rome, Paris, or New York City. And, I’m guessing that the list of vacation destinations generated with constraints and using the power of your team is more adventurous – whitewater rafting in the Grand Canyon, renting a houseboat in Alaska, or spending a week at a dude ranch. [Please share your ideas in the comments!]

Using Constraints to Generate New Ideas

We’ve all herd of writer’s block from famous novelists like Stephen King. Yet, when they have boundaries of characters’ personalities and story locations, these same authors tell us that the story writes itself. This is the epitome of creativity!

So, the next time you are faced with a new innovation challenge, don’t pull out a clean white sheet of paper. Draw some boundaries that force the team to increase creativity. In new product development (NPD), you may constrain the problem with market demographics, product size and shape, or service category. And, put aside fear, ego, and feelings of inadequacy. We can all be creative in the workplace!

For More Information

I recommend PDMA Essentials Volume 3 as a great resource to learn about innovation constraints in several categories, including managing virtual teams for NPD. You might also like a companion blog post on Innovation, Curiosity, and Questions.

Then, to continue building your creativity and leadership skills to address your toughest innovation challenges, please contact me about membership in the Innovation Master Mind (IMM) group. IMM is a 6-month peer coaching group that allows you to extend your NPD knowledge beyond NPDP certification and to collaborate with other CIOs and innovation managers. I also offer one-on-one coaching and New Product Development Professional (NPDP) training to help you target specific innovation knowledge areas. So, feel free to contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or 281-280-8717 to learn more. I love helping individuals, teams, and organizations reach higher strategic innovation goals!

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

Design Thinking is NOT Creativity

Posted on 09.06.18

The new cell phone is a sleek, thin device with a beautiful metallic case. The new car has sexy lines and a wide, open grill. The new kitchen appliance is smooth with only one start/stop button to preserve its modern look.

We often consider design as the element that brings form to product function. In times past, designers were called into projects after all the technical specifications were completed. Designers were told to make the product “pretty”, maybe put it into a nicer box or color it according to current fashion trends.

Design thinking, however, is not the same as design. Design has largely been the purvey of graphic artists and specialists who create shells to surround products so that the ugly, functional guts are concealed from the user. In contrast, design thinking is a human-centered activity that translates customer needs into product or service offerings within business constraints. In other words, design thinking is more than just creative design.

What is Creativity?

Creativity is defined by dictionary.com as “the state or quality of being creative,” and “the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns…” We view an artist’s interpretation of a landscape in an oil painting at “creative”. When kids act out stories and make up games, we say they are “creative”. My family and friends love my handmade greeting cards and tell me that I am “creative”.

In innovation, we seek creativity to generate alternative problem solutions. We intentionally practice divergent thinking exercises for creativity these include things like brainstorming, brainwriting, and role-playing. Our goal is to generate a lot of ideas, quickly.

In divergent thinking, we accept crazy ideas, even ones that defy known scientific boundaries and constraints. It is possible to convert a nugget of a wild idea into a true product solution. For example, most of us know the famous story of how a worker at 3M tested a not-so-sticky adhesive on slips of paper in his Sunday hymnal. Form a nugget of an idea (a not-so-sticky adhesive) was born a billion-dollar brand for a mining firm.

Yet, the problem with divergent thinking is that it limits innovators to only making lists of creative ideas. Brainstorming sessions end with flip chart paper covering the walls, hundreds of ideas written down, and the new product development (NPD) team feeling pretty darn good about the quantity of ideas generated.

Unfortunately, many, many firms stop at this point.

Convergent Thinking

Divergent thinking must be followed with a convergent thinking exercise. Long lists of ideas are useless to an innovation team unless they know which ones to develop further. Convergent thinking draws together similar ideas and concepts so that the NPD team can test assumptions. Methods used in convergent thinking include mind-mapping, multi-voting, and affinity diagramming.

Results of convergent thinking provide a set of new product or service concepts that can be developed and tested.

Design Thinking

Both divergent and convergent thinking are subsets of design thinking. Yet, design thinking is more collaborative and human-centered than simply generating prioritized lists of good ideas. Design thinking is based on customer empathy and seeks first to understand a customer’s need.

Successful innovators use design thinking tools throughout the product development process. First to identify customer needs, then to generate potential solutions, and finally to prototype and test functionality. Companies embracing design thinking bring customers into the product development process by observing them and questioning their emotional engagement with a given problem and existing solutions. As Clayton Christensen says, people don’t buy drills because they want a drill; they buy drills because they need a hole.

Innovators use design thinking tools to dig beyond the surface of a problem and then continue the conversation with a customer well beyond the idea generation stage. The product functionality is tested with prototypes and customers validate the form of the packaging as well. Usability tests dictate the inclusion of only a minimum number of functions so that the product is simple and attractive.

Design Thinking is More than Creativity

Successful innovators recognize the need to generate lots and lots of creative ideas during the product development process. However, creativity often ends when a team brainstorms a bunch of potential solution ideas.

Design thinking goes deeper through creativity with customer empathy to understand the true problem. Then, we use design thinking tools to test and validate solutions with those same customers. Following a customer’s needs and emotional engagement with a potential solution leads to faster time-to-market and better long-term profitability. You can’t afford to ignore your customers!

To Learn More

To learn how to apply design thinking to enrich innovation, please join us in Life Design Master Mind (LDMM), Innovation Master Mind (IMM), or New Product Development Professional (NPDP) certification. LDMM is designed for your personal growth by applying design thinking tools to finding the next step in life. IMM is a 6-month peer coaching group that allows you to extend your NPD knowledge beyond NPDP certification and to collaborate with other CIOs and innovation managers. You will realize improved efficiency and growth from LDMM, IMM, or through NPDP certification which entails a deep dive into strategy and NPD processes, including design thinking. Feel free to contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or 281-280-8717. At Simple-PDH.com where we want to help you gain and maintain your professional certifications. You can study, learn, and earn – it’s simple!

Speaking on Design Thinking

7 September 2018 at Texas Association of Change Management Professionals Conference

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC

A Culture of Creativity

Posted on 08.23.18

Many organizations today seek to improve their innovation project efforts to bring fresh ideas to their most valued customers. Creativity is the engine that drive new product development (NPD) with opportunities to increase revenues and market share. Companies today rely on ideas to generate new product commercialization.

But, what is creativity? Can organizations create cultures that stimulate good ideas? Or do corporate cultures just stifle innovation?

A creative culture thrives at the intersection of searching, collaboration, and experimentation. Each of these characteristics must be nurtured by managers, team leaders, and project directors in order to cultivate a culture of creativity. Let’s take a look at each creative trait in turn.

Searching

Organizations that are successful in innovation and NPD know their customers. Technology and marketing capabilities are important, but developing the greatest insights of your customer needs, wants, and desires leads to the highest rates of success.

Customer insights don’t come from simply analyzing survey data in your office. Instead, new product development practitioners learn how people interact with product solutions through observation. We must shadow consumers to understand their challenges and how they use products today. The most successful new products are designed to meet customer needs that are visible but unarticulated. Thus, highly effective innovators build creativity by searching and exploring the customer’s environment.

Collaboration

Once an appropriate customer problem is identified, the NPD team must work to find the most creative and value-added solution that will address that need. The most impactful new products are designed and developed by cross-functional teams collaborating across business lines. Collaboration means working with people different than ourselves.

For example, most products today exist within an ecosystem of auxiliary and complementary products and services. A software tool requires compatible hardware and business models to deliver upgrades throughout its life cycle. Diverse departments must interact to create a holistic product solution addressing customer and end-user needs as well as corporate HR, IT, finance, and legal requirements.

Moreover, collaboration among diverse team members leads to better product solutions at a lower cost and with quicker time to market. Creativity increases when a group of people with varied experiences work together to design a common outcome. Collaboration among unlikely partners and team members yields interesting approaches to addressing customer needs.

Experimentation

Finally, a culture of creativity is enhanced by an ability to experiment and not fear failure. I recently read about a study in which engineering students are challenged to build structures to protect an egg as it is dropped from ever increasing heights. Two groups of students were given the same materials and same amount of time to devise a solution. However, the first group was given only one egg while the second group was given a dozen eggs. The first group of students used their development time collaborating and designing the best protective structure they could imagine. The second group tried stuff – they experimented. Yes, they cracked a lot of eggs but, ultimately, the second group of students were able to double the dropping distance (about 6 feet) as compared to the first group (about 3 feet). We did a similar exercise during my presentation on “Wagile for NPD” at the Houston PMI Conference (brief clip here).

Hands-on learning clearly enhances creativity and problem-solving. Combined with a diverse team of developers, a culture of creativity is built upon rapid experimentation to learn what customers really need and to ensure you’re solving the right problem.

A Culture of Creativity

Organizations can stifle creativity with overly bureaucratic policies and procedures. Functional reporting systems and divisional silos can prevent diverse NPD team members from communicating with one another and with the customer. A culture of creativity is supported by organizational practices that drive gathering of customer insights by searching for the customer need, even when the end-user cannot state his/her challenge.

Collaboration among diverse team members allows varied experiences and tacit knowledge to come together and allows the team to identify unique solutions. This diversity of experiences generates new product concepts around a full ecosystem of services and auxiliaries that increase the revenue of a product line. Finally, NPD teams must be free to conduct rapid experimentation without organization retribution if they fail. Cracking a lot of eggs led to the most successful engineering solution and highly effective innovation organizations recognize the value of learning from failure.

To Learn More

To learn more about innovation processes, please check out our self-study and other NPDP Workshops. In particular, the Agile NPD course builds on the idea of fast failure. Check out our on-line tutorial on Design Thinking, also, to learn more about rapid experimentation. Feel free to contact me at info@simple-pdh.com or 281-280-8717. At Simple-PDH.com where we want to help you gain and maintain your professional certifications. You can study, learn, and earn – it’s simple!

Speaking on Design Thinking

7 September 2018 at Texas Association of Change Management Professionals Conference

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

A division of Global NP Solutions, LLC