The Innovators DNA Summary

The Innovators DNA Summary
Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. Christensen

In a Tweet

Innovators think differently, but as Steve Jobs put it, they really just think different by connecting the unconnected. (click to tweet)

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In Two Minutes

If you want your company to succeed at innovation, your top management team must show excellent creativity skills.

Great Innovators use the five “skills that compose their Innovator’s DNA.”

1. Practice Associative Thinking by making connections of that which seems unconnected


2. Ask Questions: don't be afraid looking foolish.


3. Observe: what, how and why people do things


4. Network with people from diverse backgrounds.


5. Experiment: break things simulate and build new models

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The Innovators DNA Summary

The Essence of Innovation

Studying innovators reveals a pivotal lesson: While innovation comes more easily to some people than to others, innovation and creativity are not birthrights. Creativity is a learned skill. Since you generate innovation through your actions, you can learn to be more creative by focusing your time and efforts in that direction.

At the executive level, innovative entrepreneurial CEOs spend 50% more time engaged in “discovery activities” – such as experimentation – than entrepreneurs who do not innovate. Different stages in the life cycle of a business can foster this difference in emphasis: A start-up may need innovative thinking more than a mature firm. As an organization grows, its leaders may come to prefer the reliable delivery of known goods to the discovery of new ones, but innovation remains relevant to the growth of a company at any stage.

To enhance your ability to innovate and act creatively, use the same five “discovery skills” that compose the “DNA of disruptive innovators”: “associating, questioning, observing, networking and experimenting.” Associating – that is, connecting ideas from disparate arenas – is the most important; the other four skills “trigger associational thinking” and support creativity, which lead to innovative business ideas. Every innovator employs a different blend of these skills:

— Associating

Innovators combine elements of various ideas and practices that other people don’t put together. They draw connections that cross boundaries, linking concepts from one discipline or culture with those from another. Albert Einstein called this process “combinatorial play” and saw it as foundational for creative thinking. Innovators make odd combinations by seeing a finer level of detail than most people and by stepping back to view the big picture.

Build the habit of associational thinking through training, travel and exposure. Indra Nooyi, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, played sports (cricket) and music (rock guitar) when she was young. She studied math, physics and chemistry as an undergraduate, and she earned an MBA and a master’s of public and private management. She worked in the textile, consulting and energy industries. Her diverse résumé is the perfect foundation for an innovative mind-set. To build your associative skills, try “forced association,” linking objects that don’t logically fit together. Use metaphors to highlight associations. Assemble a “curiosity box” of random items and try to relate them to jump-start your creativity. Handle creativity-related problems with the “SCAMPER” method: “Substitute, combine, adapt, magnify, minimize, modify, put to other uses, eliminate, reverse and rearrange” the problem’s elements as you seek a solution.

— Questioning

Innovators ask questions. They challenge conventional wisdom by asking why the essential nature of something is what it is and what caused it to be that way. They follow-up with why and why-not questions: Why can’t we do this differently? Why isn’t this feature available? Why has no one tried this before? Never worry about looking foolish. If you don’t know something, ask.

Consider Edwin Land. His three-year-old daughter asked him why the picture he’d taken of her wasn’t available immediately. This led Land to wonder if developing photographs instantly was possible, a question that led to the invention of the Polaroid camera. Innovators ask hypothetical questions: What if X were true? Or they impose hypothetical constraints: What if we could not do Y? Such constraints drive creative solutions. To encourage team members to embark on a round of open-ended “QuestionStorming,” ask what-if questions such as, What if price were no object? Ask better questions through conscious practice. Look for patterns or categories of inquiry. Try to find obscure questions no one has asked.

— Observing

Innovators examine everything. They pay attention to how things work, to what doesn’t work and why. Innovators study how people solve problems. They find “common threads” in activities that may seem unconnected at first. Seeing a family crowded onto a scooter in the rain inspired Ratan Tata, chairman of India’s Tata Group, to manufacture the Tata Nano. He used futuristic auto building methods to create a groundbreaking, inexpensive car. Tata sent out an investigative team to learn how and why people bought scooters, seeking information that would help the firm introduce its new car. Based on these observations, Tata extended its operations to include car financing, insurance and driving instruction to meet the demands of this target audience.

When you are observing, closely watch how people do a task to see if you could improve the process. Any job has “a functional, a social and an emotional dimension,” but the role of each aspect varies from job to job. Notice how different people do the same job in different contexts. Try to spot people who have developed creative “workarounds” to solve problems. A workaround is often an innovative way to resolve a particular frustration. Also, pay close attention to the way people buy your product. Note what frustrates your customers about purchasing or using it, where they need help and what makes them abandon it in favor of a competing product. Heighten your powers of observation by changing your environment. Shift your focus: Watch workers, then customers, then entire organizations. Enhance your observational skills by documenting the how and why of failed innovations.

— Networking

Many people network to advance their own careers or to increase their productivity. Innovators network for other reasons. Rather than targeting people like themselves and trying to reach them with tried and true methods, innovators network to learn new information and to draw lessons from other fields. Innovators make a point of meeting people whose lives and training give new and different perspectives. This is one way to “build a bridge into a different area of knowledge.” Innovators look at different disciplines that solved similar problems and borrow from their ideas.
Travel builds bridges to multiple perspectives; living abroad builds even more. Many innovators seek forums or events that promote interdisciplinary discussion and creativity, like the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conferences. These gatherings bring experts and interested thinkers together to discuss topics that intersect with several of the forum’s broad, complex fields. Attend a conference outside your field, or join a networking group for innovation. Eat lunch with new people, or invite outsiders to join your group to add new perspectives.

— Experimenting

When you say “experiment,” people imagine scientists in labs. But innovators use the entire world as their laboratory. They repeatedly test, develop and rework ideas, which is essential to bringing innovations to fruition. Experimentation is rarely the start of innovation. More often, innovators see a possibility or ask questions about why some process or device functions as it does, and then they experiment to test it. For example, in 1994 Jeff Bezos spent time considering the rapid growth of the Internet – 2,300% annually at that time. He followed up with questions about what sort of business would make best use of the Internet’s exploding commercial potential. Once he started Amazon, Bezos experimented with new ways to sell innovative products, such as the Kindle. This was a natural extension of his lifelong habits. As a child, he tried to take apart his crib. As he got older, he built toys and helped his grandfather with repairs at his family’s ranch.
Innovators can experiment in at least three ways: They can seek new experiences, like taking a class on an unfamiliar topic; they can take things apart to see if they can improve them, as Michael Dell did when he got his first computer; or they can build prototypes or models to test new ideas. People who conduct such experiments share a similar mind- set. Rather than embarking on experiments designed to reach a specific goal or outcome, they use open-ended testing and pursue its outcomes to see what else they can learn.

Experimentation is closely linked to the other discovery skills of innovation. If you ask more and better questions, pay close attention, and consult people from different fields, you will need fewer experiments to develop your product. To improve experimentation, cross the usual borders, both literally – through travel – and metaphorically – by exploring a new discipline or topic. Learn new skills. Build models and try simulations. Blend experimentation with observation by trying to spot new trends.

Innovative Organizations

“People, processes and philosophies” define innovative organizations. These three factors fit together in a “3P framework,” where each element supports and shapes the others:

1. People

For your firm to do well at innovation, your leading executives must be skilled in creativity, and offer a model of creative, “discovery-driven” behavior and hire like-minded people. These leaders are aware of the skills they have and the skills they lack. For example, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar knew he was stronger at discovery than at execution, so he brought Stanford MBA Jeff Skoll into the firm for balance. Innovative firms assemble teams with “complementary discovery skills” – for example, pairing an insightful observer with a talented experimenter. Team skill requirements vary according to the team’s stage in the innovation process: Some growth phases emphasize discovery, while others focus on delivery and implementation. The design firm IDEO hires people whose knowledge is “T-shaped” – deep in one area and extending across a broad range. When IDEO evaluates innovations, it brings three realms of ability to bear: business, to rate markets and profits; technological, to test feasibility; and professional, to offer knowledge-based services.

2. Processes

Innovative organizations are systematic about developing and following discovery processes. Organizational discovery procedures generally mirror the steps people take: groups observe, question, associate, and so on. This often starts with the leader’s behavior. For instance, Steve Jobs repeatedly asked why and what-if questions and led others at Apple to do the same. Innovative organizations systematically seek people who have already developed new discoveries and are eager to continue to innovate. Virgin and Google both explicitly recruit people who think differently, and both need job applicants to display creativity. Innovative organizations extend their discovery processes to an institutional level. For example, instead of just hoping that their employees network, Google and Procter & Gamble swapped staff members for a few weeks so they could see how the other company worked and experience each other’s processes. Some firms have contests or tournaments in which people outside the organization give or build ideas, sometimes in response to specific challenges. Innovative companies offer materials, time and funding for prototyping.

3. Philosophies

Forward-looking firms believe “innovation is everyone’s job.”While most companies focus on incremental change, these firms invest heavily in “disruptive innovation.” They set up project teams that mobilize a range of talents and training to strike out in new directions. And they understand the importance of taking the “smart risks” that lead to innovative discoveries. Innovative firms communicate the necessity of innovation throughout their organizations by actions, reward systems and educational campaigns. Innovative leaders encourage people to experiment and give staffers a “safe space” to explore ideas. They probe for questions, praise employees for using discovery skills and provide time for people to innovate. Google’s policy of allowing employees to spend 20% of their time on their own projects is a well-known example of this policy.

The innovation process can be scary. You set out to disrupt the status quo with no guarantee that you’ll get the results you want. But the benefits of innovation are undeniable. Start today by assessing whether your discovery skills are strong or weak. Then, “identify a compelling innovation challenge that matters.” Practice your skills and find a coach to support your efforts. Develop your creative abilities by helping others develop theirs.

 Featured Image is property of Tam School of Scandal

The Elegant Solution - Book Summary

Toyota’s Formula for Mastering Innovation 

The Elegant Solution in a Tweet!

To Master and De Risk Innovation make Lean-Little-Bets with IDEA loops (Investigate/Design/Execute/Adjust).

In Two Minutes

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300"] The Elegant Solution[/caption]

Toyota uses specific methods to innovate constantly, consistently and productively, allowing it to solve a problem better than anyone else in its category.

For Toyota, the best to innovate is by producing tons of small improvements, instead of seeking a single game-changing solution. Use your business's craft until you perfect your design to fit its social context.

Innovate by employing methodically a series of IDEA loops: "Investigate/Design/ Execute/Adjust."

Give people specific constraints to ensure creative solutions to challenges. Base all your creative process to hard data and direct insights from your customers. Make sure you get workers and consumers emotionally involved.

Take advantage of standards to make the Innovation processes easier to learn. Innovate via "systems thinking." and make all the elements your product and experience play well together. Thrive for perfection by cutting out all complexity and excess*.

Make it lean!

*You Might want to take a look at Laws of Simplicity

The Elegant Solution In Ten Minutes

Toyota’s Principles of Innovation

Innovation is crucial for any business, but it can get tricky. Toyota rises to the challenge, coming up with more than a million ideas per year that its employees can apply to their process.

How do they do it? Toyota Innovates at all level, and so should you. Get everyone in your organisation devoted to think of new ways to do things and improve your customers life's. Think like Toyota: don't seek a single game-changing solution. Instead, produce tons of small improvements, look for 'the elegant solution – the singular and deceptively simple idea with huge impact.' Such ideas cut through the complexities that distract people from new opportunities, reframing problems in new, productive ways.

Toyota’s quest for elegant solutions started in the nineteenth century when Japan’s Sakichi Toyoda found ways to improve the weaving process. His work led to Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, which eventually became the Toyota Motor Company. Toyoda did not seek new 'toys' nor technological frills. Instead, he researched for 'ingenuity in craft', so he could manufacture things that people wanted by looking for better ways to perfect his work and make his innovations fit their social context. That is ultimate elegance, and to get it right you have to understand innovation. Start by defining it. Don’t get caught up in false distinctions like the one between 'incremental and breakthrough innovation.' Innovation means 'solving the problem of how to do something better than before.' Your challenge is to Innovate until you reach perfection – and then to keep improving.

Creativity isn’t a mystery. You can generate 'applied creativity,' a core principle of innovation, by engaging in your situation – that is, connecting emotionally – and exploring it. What are you really trying to do? Don’t be trapped by job titles. Instead, focus on who you are and who you are to your organisation. Do you generate new ideas? Do you apply others’ ideas? Are you at your best improving existing processes? Or do you focus on relationships and help people get along? Hone in on the focus that suits you until you get to the bottom of your organisation, your job and your immediate tasks, while continuing to seek your ultimate goals.

Examine what you do everyday. Ask difficult and challenging questions: How do I serve people? Why is my work important? Can this be done better? How can I improve this job, process, company or product? Use your answers step by step. Both history and Toyota show that seeking a single idea that will turn the world upside-down is not the best way to achieve radical improvements that can revolutionise your business and lead you toward perfection. A big breakthrough idea sounds glamorous, but it is risky and not the best way to Innovate. Instead, seek evolutionary, small changes that make your product a bit better each time. Generate innovation by reversing standard questions. Instead of asking what you can improve, ask what is keeping you from perfection. Now, eliminate those obstacles.

That is how Toyota’s experts designed the Lexus. First, they established a clear, ambitious goal: Create a luxury car better than a Mercedes or a BMW. Then, each core member of the design team rented a better luxury car and drove it almost 150 miles, tracking performance and the experience of the ride, until they identified the 'Mercedes S class and BMW 7 series' as targets to beat. Wicked isn it?

They studied U.S. luxury car owners, examining everything from where they ate to how they worked. Toyota used direct observation, focus groups, academic studies and reverse engineering of BMW and Mercedes cars to establish criteria for the car that would become the Lexus. The team set and pursued impossibly high standards. The crucial final steps included acts of elimination: the team cut weight, noise and other obstacles to achieve perfection.

Toyota's design team Innovated on its goals. To do the same, you need to think in terms of the bigger picture. Make sure your changes work with the way your entire solution fits together and functions. This isn’t easy, since "System" nor 'solutions thinking' are natural, but you can learn to do it. Look ahead to see how your changes will move through the solution. Seek each problem’s 'root cause,' which is often hidden behind what seems to be the source. You can’t do this alone. Your entire organisation has to be devoted to this kind of thinking. This is easier in small companies, especially start-ups, but it can be done anywhere. Everyone should examine how suggested changes will fit into the larger whole.

10 Rules to Guide Innovation
& Building The Elegant Solution

As you apply Toyota’s principles for innovation, let these practical rules provide direction:

1. Let Learning Lead

Many potential innovations fail because those involved failed to really understand the situation, which can happen when people don’t value or understand learning. To avoid this, make learning everyone’s first responsibility. Give people time to observe, and teach them how. Many conceptual tools or learning models can help your organisation learn. Toyota uses the 'Deming Wheel,' a sequence of Plan/Do/Check/Act (PDCA). Adapting such a standard model of learning leads to other crucial components of gathering information, such as developing standardised vocabularies and methods. A more generalised, applicable four-step learning model, is called 'IDEA Loops' (investigate, design, execute and adjust)'. To use it, investigate what is going on. Design solutions. Execute experiments to see if the solutions work. Adjust your actions, incorporating what you’ve learned. Then start over again with an investigation. Record the results of each IDEA loop in a standardised document, so your organisation has access to what you discovered in a known format. To build reflection into your process, take the time after you’ve acted to examine your actions.

2. Learn to See

As you Innovate, things won’t always work out as you planned. Some new product or item might function but still not solve your real problem. This happens when you don’t understand the situation deeply. To solve this, 'learn to see' the problem in full context; understand how, when, where, and why it happens, and what impact it has on people. First, get the facts. Build your perceptions until you see things as the customer does. Use three general tools. Initially, note what customers do. Watch them in context. Make your focus groups and lab experiments as realistic as possible. Then 'become the customer.' Go where the customers go. Do what they do. Future Toyota managers become mystery car shoppers, so they experience the purchasing process. Next, 'collaborate' with customers, involve them. Ask what they want and need. Now give it to them.

3. Design for Today

Often something you try just doesn’t work as well as you hoped. This can happen when you get addicted to invention for its own sake or to an idea just because it’s yours. To prevent this, design for a need that actually exists now. This doesn’t mean you can’t develop new products if they demand a long lead time, but begin by solving problems that are impediments in the present, not ones you anticipate in the future. Hybrid cars are a good example. It took Toyota a long time to develop them, but they met a real need. Focusing on existing needs also grounds your development process in the real world; it allows you to master, as Sakichi Toyoda suggested, every inch of the production process. Incorporate your understanding of trends into the design process, but stay anchored in today’s market.

4. Think in Pictures

You’ve involved people in your innovation project by telling an engaging story, but to really explain it, use pictures. Draw or diagram the problem (and solution) or use photos to bring the dream alive through images. You don’t have to be an artist; you can use stick figures, clay models, collages, or existing graphic or software tools to evoke your dream. You can do this in words, like thinkers from Walt Disney to Martin Luther King Jr. As they ask and answer questions, people can literally visualise solutions to the immediate challenge. This process allows participants to connect thoughts their own way, and shatters logjams created by enforcing linear processes.

5. Capture the Intangible

Sometimes you know what the goal is, but something is missing. This can happen when the people focus too narrowly on the specific object being created and miss its larger purpose. To illuminate your vision, try to explain that intangible missing essence. If you buy a Cadillac, you aren’t buying just the transportation function. You’re also buying the feeling, the meaning, the personal connection – the intangibles that come with the car. The most common intangible need is the desire to avoid risk. People who might buy your product fear that you’ll waste their money, that it will fail or hurt them, or that they’ll look bad. If you can show them these things won’t happen, you’ll come closer to selling the intangible. Moving up, you want people to love your product, and to have a sense of collaboration, to feel that when they buy it they are part of creating something great.

6. Leverage the Limits

If Innovation is essentially dead at your company, the organisation may have gotten too comfortable. To reignite its start-up spirit, use limits as Toyota does (and as artists do) to force more creative solutions. Set 'stretch goals' to push beyond the current level of performance. Align these bold, but specific, goals with the organisation’s core function. Jane Beseda set such stretch goals to revolutionise Toyota’s North American Parts Operation. She set a target: cut $100 million from distribution costs and eliminate $100 million worth of inventory from the supply chain. At the same time, she wanted to improve customer service by 50%.

While you might be able to improve your results by 10% just through working harder, you have to change how you work to improve by 50%. Beseda found that better departments worked at cross-purposes. To solve that problem, Toyota adopted a new planning approach called, 'Vertical-Horizontal-Vertical.' Each unit’s team planned on its own, met with teams from other units to plan integrated efforts, and then updated its unit-specific plans.

7. Master the Tension

If your team is solving problems, but in a flat, uninspired boring fashion, try to 'work through creative tension.' Toyota applies 'dynamic tension' that is, establishing goals that pull the organisation in two opposite directions, and then finding a solution that balances both. Use each half of these paired forces to frame your efforts to resolve the opposite challenge. Then reverse. Using paired challenges can push your teams past the mental blocks and lazy thinking.

8. Run the Numbers

Often teams come up with solutions that simply don’t work. This happens when you treat innovation as an art. Instead, balance your vision with hard data. Re-examine the challenge. Measure your process. Keep analysing it until you can articulate the issue in ways that lead to new solutions. Toyota pushes its engineers to refrain from 'immediate action,' because the first action is always along overly familiar lines. It emphasises the need to move past hearsay and even experience.

9. Make Kaizen Mandatory

If your company Innovates, but does so erratically, it is not managing creativity correctly. To solve this, integrate the 'kaizen ethic' throughout your organisation. In kaizen, you engage in an ongoing process of developing a standard, following it, and then developing even better methods, which become the new standard. Many creative people run away from standards, thinking it restricts creativity. That’s false. A standard is simply the best way known to do something, but you should adhere to it only until you find a better way. When you set a standard, make sure it is the best method. Document it completely. Distribute the information companywide, and shape your training programs so people live the standard. Kaizen accents quality over the long haul. If crunch times pull on you abandon your standards, fight that temptation.

10. Keep It Lean

Many companies assume that 'more is better.' They add options and features, making products hard to use and burying their core functions. Instead, keep solutions lean. Focus on fulfilling customer desires and refuse to add anything else. This isn’t easy. Complexity is the opposite of lean. Complexity stems from inconsistency, overload and waste. Seek the sources of these problems solution-wide and fix them.