Bleow is a xemapel of sjut hwo pweorflu the uhman nmid is

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The Real Paragraph

I couldn’t believe that I could actually understand what I was reading. Using the incredible power of the human brain, according to research at Cambridge University, it doesn’t matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be in the right place. The rest can be a total, mess and you can read it without a problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole. Amazing, huh? Yeah and I always thought spelling was important! See if your friends can read this too!

Tihs bcaeme vrial troghuh eiaml a cueolp of yreas bcak. Aodccring to caimbgdre uinseitvry it wsnat prat of tiehr atcual recraesh but was a good haox. Its a vrey ientestnirg ccenopt and hihgtlgihs jsut how flexlibe our midns can be.

We learn the idea of being better early in life and it is continually re-enforced. Getting to the top by not doing something better but doing something new goes against so many core beliefs that is is difficult to except. We learn competition through sports. And the way you reach the championship is by being the best. So we try to reach the top by simply being better than everyone else. When we try to bring that understanding of competition to business and human nature it has limited success. We offer higher quality, faster deliver, greater variety, lower price. I mean, who would not want those things. But it is the first to market who grabs the mind share of the customer. That’s the law of leadership. But you can modify that law by defining a category or sector you are first in. You can gain a sizable market share by following the leader. And you can make a profit. There are companies who business plan is to always be a close follower. But if your goal is number 1 you need to innovate.

All of this begs the question what is creativity Creativity is seeing old things in a new ways. It is putting things or ideas together in a way they had not be put together before. As Solomon said there is nothing new under the sun. But we can re-arrange the old things in new ways. That leads us to our next law. The law of Categories.

The law of leadership is modified by the law of category or as some refer to is a the niche. Let’s start off by re-examining a question I asked last week. Do you know who was first person to fly non-stop across the Atlantic ocean? Most people do. Charles Lindberg. And the second question is, do you know the name of the second person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean? You probably do not unless you listened to the last podcast. That person was Bert Hinkler. As you may remember Hinkler was a better pilot and navigator. He made the crossing in less time and used less fuel. But being better did not put him in the history books. No one knows who he is. Next question. Do you know who the third person was to fly across the Atlantic Ocean? I bet you do. But you don’t not them at the third person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. You know her as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Amelia Earhart. Amelia Earhart was still a first. She was first in a category she created. Being first in a category can be just as good as being first over all. You are still an original. This works well even if it is a made up category. For example Tito’s Handmade Vodka. Tito did not invent vodka. But prior to Titos there was no such category as handmade vodka. It simply did not exist! It was a made up category. They made it up simply to be number one in that category. Marketing genius! Any one who wants to compete with Titos in that category will be an also ran.

Innovation is not simply creating a new product or service. It is creating a new way to look at that new product or service. When Apple came out with the iPod, it created great stir in the electronics community. Why? It was simply a mp3 player. Mp3 players had been around for a long time. Apple created a new category itunes. None of the technology was new. The technologies of e-commerce and downloading content had been around a long time. Apple was not first in any of those technologies. Apple created a new category. A category that provided secure, trusted, legal method to distribution music and other mp3 content. While today mp3 stores are all over the internet. No one has even comes close to what Apple is doing. Apple owns the mp3 player market because the created a category of mp3 distribution. Of course there are other laws at play here but those are for another time.

If you want to be more than average avoid industry best practices and continually re-invent your own.

All this is not to say you should not learn the lessons experience is teaching you. By all means, learn what experience has to teach you. But don’t rely on experience along. Utilized all the other methods of learning first. Experience is perhaps the most inefficient and dangerous method of learning.

Innovation can be approached from several sides. It can be approached as a process, a strategy view, and an organizational structure or even as a toolkit. Each approach can be a little different.  What works for one organization may not work for another. Creating a culture that encourages and promotes innovation is easier said than done. Developing a culture within an organization that encourages innovation takes time and many organizations have the will but lack the time. Those organizations need to look externally for help. Bringing an organization together overnight in order to translate product and service initiatives into sustained results is tricky. But here are 5 quick tips:

1. Challenging Assumptions.

This is a very difficult thing to do. Why? Because we make so many assumptions and they are so ingrained in our psyche we do not even recognize them as assumptions. We believe them to be facts. Most of them are correct but a great many are incorrect. The problem is we do not know which ones are right and which ones are incorrect. If we knew which ones were incorrect we would change them immediately. So the first step to effectively challenging assumptions is to identify them. Start with the question, “What else would have to be true for this to be true.” More often then not you will discover that your idea is not a fact but an assumption and therefore something to be challenged. No good ideas will be seriously looked at without overcoming the assumptions that are held by an organization or industry. These exist in service industries such as banking, health care and hospitality as well as products industries such as, consumer electronics and personal care products. It is usually easier to start challenging your own assumptions by looking at industry level dogmas. Challenge everything!

2. Involve the End User.
The purpose for any business or organization is the customer. If an innovation fails eventually to provide value to the end customer then the innovation fails. Any organization that believes it can provide value to a customer without involving the customer in the process is deceiving itself. Most consumers are intelligent and can contribute much to the creative process. While it is true that often times people may not be able to verbalize their needs and desires in a manner that makes sense to you, your job is find creative ways to understand their needs, values and behaviors. The best and easiest way to figure figure out the customers needs is to involve them.

3. Be willing to Take a Risk.
At the executive level innovation requires guts. Not everyone is cut out for it. But without executive support the needed resources will never materialize. Businesses that are vibrant yesterday may not be vibrant tomorrow. So the executive must be courageous enough to take dollars away from yesterday’s businesses and give them to tomorrow’s businesses even though they are as yet untested. That takes guts. The majority of executive just are not capable of making innovation happen.

4. Build an Innovation Team
The innovation team needs to be made up of people from across different functions and business units. The team needs people not only with a range of skill sets and temperaments. In addition to the natural instinct to put people on the innovation team who are idea people i.e. those who are abstract thinkers, the team will need those who study the facts carefully, people who are strong organizers, and finally those who have strong people skills. Start with a small team and gradually expand to add more people.

5. Innovation is a Business Process
As with any business process innovation efforts should be managed. It cannot be done in a box. Develop metrics to tack the activities that make sense. I would warn against metrics that measure only results. Innovation is a process and as such you want to insure the process is active. The effectiveness of the process can be measured by the desired results. When you do get either a big or small win, ensure you communicate it across the organization. Innovation is a team sport. And every team needs it cheering fans.

6. Utilize Techniques to Improve Success Rate

It is not uncommon to hear people claim that innovation projects have a failure rate of about 98%. That is most likely because they are not approaching it in a systematically. Define a system that is sustainable with in your organization. Should involve problem identification and definition, and early communication. Utilizing techniques and tools such as open innovation and your success rate should be much higher. It is true that failure is part of any innovation process, but improving the chances of success is also part of an innovation strategy.

Your customers, employees, and co-workers often will misdirect or confuse you. Unlike the magician their misdirection is usually not intended. The misdirection is the result of mistrust. They believe that if they are open and honest with you, you will cheat them. So they believes they must be cautious. The obvious solution is to build trust. But that occurs over time. So what do you do in the mean time? You can easily misjudge the importance of a thing. So how do you guard against misdirection?  How can you tell what is truly important rather than simply interesting? Waiting until the trick is over or the contract is signed is too late. Because what is thought to be unimportant it is not remembered. Why should it be? You thought it was unimportant.

During a magic trick the magician moves relentlessly through the routine making your mind both process what just happened and at the same time trying to keep up with what is currently happening. All that information is difficult to process. Unlike a magic trick, we can stop an customer, employee or co-worker and test what we believe is important. This allows us to identify potential problem areas before they are agreed to

The best tool I found for stopping the misdirection is to simply rephrasing what the person said, in your words, with your inflection, and your understanding. Then asking the simple question “Is that correct?”

Try it I think you will find it works magic for you.

1. Only certain people or types of people are creativity. This is absolutely untrue. We are most likely to think there certain jobs attract creativity types and certain jobs do not.  Jobs like product development, marketing and advertising have creative people while accounting does not.  The reality is, nearly all of the research in this area agrees, anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing creative work. Creativity depends on things like: experience, knowledge and technical skills; and intrinsic motivation i.e.  people who are excited by their work are often creative.
2. Money Motivates Creativity. Experiments show that bonuses and pay for performance can actually have a negative impact on creativity. The reason is that when people believe that ever move they make is being watched and will impact their paycheck they be more risk averse. But money can be a de-motivater. If people feel they are not being fairly compensated they will also have reduced creativity. Again the research indicates that people put far more value on an environment were creativity is supported, valued and recognized.
3. Time Pressure Increase Creativity. Often people will say they are more creative when they are under pressure. The research indicates just the opposite. They only think they are more creative. They are not. In fact the research indicates not only are they not more creative while under the time pressure. Creativity is reduced for the next two days.
4. Fears Force Breakthroughs Again the research indicate that the emotional state we are in effects our creativity. In fact it can often be a predictor. If someone is happy, joyful, feeling loved etc. The next day they will be more creative.  If that person feels anxiety, sadness, anger, etc. The next day they will be less creative.
5. Competition Enhances Creativity. It is widely held that competition between 2 of more teams will produce more creative results. The facts are that it is collaboration not competition that increase creativity. Once the competition begins information is no longer shared. And without the sharing of information ideas are not debated and refined.
6. Streamlining or Right Sizing Forces the Organization to be Creativity. There are some concrete reasons why creativity is reduced. Line of communication between organizations have be severed and need to be rebuilt. Teams have been destroyed. And need to be regenerated. But there are also the less tangible areas. When people feel fear they are less creativity and less productive. The worse of all situation is knowing the cuts are coming but not knowing how each individual is effected prolongs the anxiety.

The research sited here was conducted in 2004 by Teresa Amabile at Harvard Business School

There is a great debate as to rather or not creativity can be taught. If something has been done then there should be no doubt it can be done. I believe creativity can be taught because it has been taught, thus proving the thesis. The debate is really over rather some people are naturally more creative than others. It is the classic nature versus nurture debate.

Creativity is an art but that does not mean that it does not have rules and guidelines to follow that allow us to be better at it just as all other forms of art do. There are technique and tools can be taught to allow people to be better than they were before. And some people learning the skill is easier that with other people. But the skill can still be and has been taught.

There is some innovation training available but after learning how you will not suddenly be creative. After being taught how to play the clarinet, I could actually make music with the instrument rather than just annoying squawking noises. But it was only through practice I became any good at it. Practice also plays a important role in being creativity. Like other art forms you improve the more you try. I was never, what you would call really good at playing the clarinet. I was just too lazy to practice the amount of time that being good required. But I was pretty good. Today, however, I can barely play the instrument at all. Why? I have not practiced in a very long time. Playing a musical instrument is a perishable skill. I lost the skill of playing the clarinet by not continuing to practice the clarinet. I still know what to do, I just can’t do it. I have the knowledge but not the skill.

When you start practicing being creative, the probability is you will not be good at it. That’s ok! When you start playing a musical instrument you aren’t any good at it either. The only way to become good is to stay at it. It is work but I believe you will find it the most fun work you will ever do.

The educational system is too slow to respond to today’s world. It is attempting to do the impossible. It attempts to train students for be able to perform specific jobs in the real world and by the time the student graduates, the real world has changed. The reason for this is very simple. Colleges and universities see themselves as trade schools. They teach you to be a computer programmer. They teach you how to be a marketeer. They teach how to be an accountant. They teach you a skill. They do not educate. With the availability of today’s technology skill development can be done online. No one needs the type of  four year program we have today to learn job skills. Our education system does not understand that. They keep trying to turn out students with a specific skill set. And by the time the student graduates the skills are out dated.

But part of the problem is businesses do not know what to ask for.  They ask for someone who can do task X. Not realizing that by the time they get that person out of the educational system task X no longer needs to be accomplished. Rather, they now need task Y completed.

How to solve the dilemma? Stop having colleges and universities trying to be trade schools. With web 2.0 people can self educate themselves in skill development.  Colleges and universities need to get back to a liberal arts education and teaching students to think critically.

I think it is thoughtful of Apple to protect dumb kids, senile old people, and all the rest of us from ourselves. After all we are all just too stupid to make our own decisions. My mother recently fell and hurt herself very badly. It was life threatening. So to continue with this line of thought we need to ban all ladders, and rugs (tripping hazards)  We need to shut down Home Depot these guys actually sell high-powered welding machines, bandsaws, nailguns, great big heavy pieces of lumber, bottles of sulfuric acid, pesticides, and many other scary dangerous products it anyone that can pay for it. That’s right, anyone could walk in off the street and purchase literal truckloads of lethal implements and chemicals. It’s a good thing none of the titans of tech own the hardware stores.

The argument then comes back to intellectual property rights. What I find amusing is these same Titans of Technology got to be titians by doing exactly what they don’t want anyone else to do. Taking apart devices and figuring out how they work and then (hopefully) improving them. Are we to believe products like the Apple/Mac, the PC, among many other examples just “popped” into their heads one day and sprang into being without ever a backward glance at what came before them!?

With the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1997. Many of our rights disappeared and much of our future innovation went over seas. Innovation is not dead but we are trying really hard to kill it.