What was Current Last Week?
This is where you can browse the archives of the latest news and articles on Creativity and Innovation, from the IF Creativity and Innovation Experts here at Impact Factory.
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No Such Thing as Failure?...
Here at Impact Factory we don't talk about failure. But if part of creativity is 'breaking the rules' here goes...FAILURE! What is it? What does it mean? What's the big fear?
So what does it officially mean?
Definition of Failure:
1. An act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful; lack of success: His effort ended in failure. The campaign was a failure.
2. Nonperformance of something due, required, or expected: a failure to do what one has promised; a failure to appear.
3. A subnormal quantity or quality; an insufficiency: the failure of crops.
Not great! No wonder it scares us. But let's challenge the definition we know and hate so well:
Project Idea or Venture Failure?
At what point do you consider a project, an idea or a venture a failure?
At its inception when someone says it's a bad idea?
Halfway through when things aren't going well?
At the end when you didn't get the results you wanted?
At the end when the results are different and infinitely LESS or WORSE than you expected?
At the end when the results are different and infinitely MORE or BETTER than you'd expected?
When you scrap an idea and start a new one?
When you learn from a less successful idea to build and create a new one? When you ended up with a whole new reality that looks nothing like the idea youd originally conceived?
You might argue that failure is only failure if there's an end point. And when is there truly an end point?
* A new idea can come from the end of a rejected idea.
* A new project can come from the end of an unfulfilled project.
* A new company can come from the winding down of a former company.
When is the End Point?
So when is the end point? There probably isn't one. So could one argue then that failure doesnt exist? Only diversions, bumps, offers, surprises, stimulation on the continuing path of creativity.
Brilliance and genius can of course come out of supposed failure. As Fleming's discovery of Penicillin came out of his mistakenly leaving a petri dish open over night. Similarly, whole new pieces of art have arisen out of supposed failure such as the 2002 documentary film Lost In La Mancha.
Film maker Terry Gilliam attempted to shoot a feature film of Don Quixote with Johnny Depp, Vannessa Paradis and Jean Rochefort. Once on location in Spain everything that could go wrong went wrong supersonic jets tore overhead during takes, devastating flash floods swept away thousands of pounds of movie equipment, Jean Rochefort was taken ill and flown home to France.
Day by day the production deteriorated until it consisted of nothing but a lonely and bemused Terry Gilliam standing with his head in his hands wondering what just happened. What DID happen was that by chance a documentary film making team were attached to the production making a chronicle of Terry Gillingham making a film. What they ended up with was an award winning and wonderful piece of cinema Lost in La Mancha.
The film is the fascinating and utterly compelling story of a creative project fighting to stay alive against all the odds. Lost in La Mancha enjoyed global success but would never have existed had it not been for the chaos and ultimate abandonment of Don Quixote. So at what point did this entire enterprise fail?
Your own Creativity?
Because one would never have existed without the other taking an unexpected turn. So could it be that having 'bad' ideas, experiencing 'disappointments', facing 'disagreements', opting for 'reassessment' or accepting total 'abandonment' are not in fact 'FAILURE' but an important, essential and expansive part of a continuing creative process? And if you'd like to find out more about your own creativity why not take our take our Creativity quiz?
What's Current for July 2009?
The Great Brainstorming Success
by Dannie Carr
Chris Heatherly and Len Mazzocco used to work separately at Disney, one in charge of consumer electronics and the other overseeing the toy division. Then one sunny day three years ago the management decided to combine their departments and put the two of them jointly in charge of leading a revamped operation. Since 2006, the new department has doubled its revenue, mainly due to the time that these two have been at the helm using key brainstorming as the answer to the generation of new ideas and products.
This systematic brainstorming process supports the constant innovative thinking needed to revise and revamp toy lines twice a year. It couples Mazzocco's skills around toy designing, his awareness and understanding of child psychology and play patterns with Heatherlys technological expertise.
Brainstorming groups meet up 20 to 30 times a year for a 2-3 day brainstorming session at hotels all around the world. The people are from diverse areas both inside Disney and from outside companies. Their roles are those of designers, engineers, artists, salesmen, marketers, theme park employees, among many more. The people are handpicked by Heatherly and Mazzocco and then split into teams. This development is said to be democratic and is designed so that there are around 50 great ideas generated by the end of the day, which can then be taken forward commercially.
Mazzocco and Heatherly say that there are three elements of the brainstorming sessions that are crucial to success. Icebreaker activities are first, involving the likes of fun contests that last anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes. For example, when working on Club Penguin products, the teams held an igloo-building competition; for Disney Princess, they put on a fashion show. These icebreakers are set to get employees out of the workplace mind-set and to help team members create a sense of identity outside of their defined work roles.
45-60 minute brainstorming sessions follow the icebreakers. Parameters are set under which to come up with ideas around design of new products, usually linked to the latest Disney film or concept. Teams will list as many ideas as they can and then the favourites within the group will be decided on. Disney artists then set about to draw detailed concepts of what these ideas might look like. They end up with a cartoon-style storyboard which can later act as an immediate creative brief for the design team.
To end this process, teams present their ideas as a fully realized product pitch. This is set to force the teams to think about the practical and marketing elements related to the product. The claim is that 50% of Disneys merchandise originated in this brainstorming.
The important part of the thinking in this whole process is that everyone has something to offer in the development of the ideas, irrelevant of whether they consider themselves a creative as such. Time is of the essence and is something Mazzocco and Heatherly take seriously: 
You really have to commit to the process. You have to have some decompression time to be creative. The system, it seems, is results driven and it works because it is given time, space and energy.
This ethos mirrors that which exists here at Impact Factory. On a Creativity Open Course, the processes are also very similar. Delegates might expect to go through a series of activities around identifying their own brand of creativity and innovation, delaying the impulse to leap to solutions straight away, thinking laterally, brainstorming techniques and anything else that may come up in the room. With an emphasis, of course, of having a whole heap of fun!
Reckitt Benckiser - Innovation In the Press
This extract has been taken from: The Wall Street Journal June 22 2009 - on Innovation!
In Search of Innovation
When companies try to come up with new ideas, they too often look only where they always look. That wont get them anywhere.
Mobilise the Staff
By engaging more of its own workers in the search for innovation, a company can broaden its vision. For example, the duties of procurement, sales or finance groups can be expanded to include learning about trends they encounter that ordinarily might be considered not of primary interest to the company.
Reckitt Benckiser PLC, the U.K.-based maker of household-cleaning and personal-hygiene products, has mobilized a large number of its agents in purchasing, marketing and customer relations to be on the lookout for relevant new market trends. A small in-house team attempts to verify reported insights and to build on them. The team reports regularly to senior managers, who decide which concepts to pursue further. A company spokeswoman adds that 40% of revenue in 2007 resulted from innovations launched in the prior three years.
For more information, read the Reckitt Benckiser PLC Creativity and Innovation Client Snack.
What's Current for June 2009?
So What's New? - Update: June 30th 2009
People are beginning to wake up to the idea that theres a lot more creativity available in their organisations than they might have previously thought.
Exciting conversations have started on the back of our highly successful free seminars where we revealed a totally new approach to managing creativity in the workplace.
We would like to continue the conversation and bring our message to a wider audience.
So thats why we are now offering a 60 minute seminar on How to tap into to the creativity of your people.
We can deliver this interactive seminar at your workplace or as part of a conference or away day.
During the seminar we will introduce our latest findings on the subject of facilitating creativity within your company and offer our idea generating tool The Five Windows to get your people started on the road to creative thinking and innovation.
The cost for the introductory 60 minute seminar is 1500.00 for up to 100 people. Contact Dannie for further information.
When and why traditional Brainstorming fails
XWhy Traditional Brainstorming Fails
We often hear from people that attend our open course Creativity and Innovation programme that in their experience brainstorming sessions rarely produce anything tangible or meaningful in terms of new concepts for innovations. Rather they often tend to be dominated by a few confident individuals who dictate the range and quality of ideas produced or the sessions are too long, badly managed and just lose energy as people eventually become apathetic.
Of course the reason we hear people say this is because, having had this experience time after time, they have come to us for a solution.
So we thought we should start to research and investigate the issue in detail.
We discovered a substantial amount of evidence revealing that most people believe that brainstorming sessions held within organisations are a waste of people's time and energy. Some tend to be little more than an energised meeting with the only difference that there are some bits of giant Lego alongside the bottles of water, chunky tumblers and horrible little boiled sweets and mints on the table.
We also discovered that the fundamental reason why creative brainstorming sessions seem to fail is lack of leadership or expert facilitation. Though this seems obvious it continues to be the case regardless of people's experiences which supports the research.
So here are some of the key things we discovered that often lead to brainstorm hell:
Working on the Wrong Issue Not asking the right questions about an issue and then spending time working on an irrelevant aspect of the product or service innovation challenge.
Why am I here? - Sometimes people are randomly asked to attend a session with no clear idea of what is expected of them or how they are qualified to help.
Ineffective Facilitation Often individuals who are asked or expected to run brainstorming sessions lack expertise in facilitation skills, knowledge of the process of innovation and a basic understanding of the psychology of 'How people are creative in a group' Blocking - People who criticise ideas before theyve had a chance to breathe can make people feel vulnerable and disengaged.
The Loudest voices - Or the most senior people holding the marker pens can tend to dominate the group with their ideas.
Quality vs. Quantity - Studies have found that though larger groups produced much more material than a lone individual, groups generated fewer usable ideas, unless they were expertly facilitated.
Groupthink - When people who know each other come together they tend to converge around specific ways of thinking and doing things. It then becomes difficult to break with convention and introduce radical ideas that may lead to unique innovations.
Lack of effective evaluation criteria - Once ideas have been generated there is often confusion about which ideas should be taken forward. Research has suggested that the key is in employing highly trained facilitators or training in house 'Creativity and Innovation Coaches' to orchestrate the sessions.
The other clear trend we are discovering is that creativity and innovation is increasingly becoming a social rather than solo process. The most radical innovations are emerging from networks of individuals co-creating together around a shared commitment and networks of trust.
A recent article in Business Week highlights some co-creation initiatives by Nokia.
"Beta Labs is part of a broader push by Nokia to harness customers and partners in the service of innovation. At Nokia.com the company allows users to share and rate applications they have created such as screen-savers or games. And over the past year, Nokia designers have traveled to the developing world to ask users to sketch their own dream cell phones. By year end, more than half the world's population is expected to live in urban areas, so to exploit this mega-trend Nokia's researchers visited shantytowns in Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, and Accra in Ghana. One person's design included a sensor to test water qualitya potentially useful application in some emerging marketswhile another person wanted a handset that flashed the word "Peace" to help defuse conflicts. "Our fear was people would come up with ideas that already existed, like a phone with a camera. But people's suggestions were much more creative," says London-based Younghee Jung, a Nokia senior design manager."
When people meet together at the intersection of different cultures some truly remarkable innovations can emerge. For example an American architect teamed up with a Zimbabwean expert in insect life and natural eco systems and designed a building with air conditioning based on the structure of termite mounds.
When diverse groups of people come together around an issue more ideas are generated. Although a person on their own can solve a problem or come up with a new idea around an issue they are either expert or experienced in, it may not be the most unique or innovative.
So the evidence suggests that to develop a culture of innovation it is vital to not only have a process for harnessing group creativity but to also have trained facilitators who are able to orchestrate a diverse mix of thinking and behavioural styles. These individuals should have the skills to support a group and guide them towards generating ideas that lead to tangible concepts for innovation.
The True Cost of Innovation
Its no longer headline news that we're in a recession and that budgets are tight. But are the first things being cut by many companies the most business-savvy decisions?
Some organisations are finding their innovation budgets are often first in the firing line. Of course, there is no guaranteed return when investing in Research and Development. On the whole, companies tend to be cautious about taking risks for fear of failure in tricky times. But those companies within Business Week's 25 Most Innovative Companies are resisting this fearful knee-jerk response by continuing to invest.
Some organisations have simply changed the shape of the investments to those projects which are shorter-term and lower-risk. For the likes of Proctor & Gamble and Vodafone it makes sense for them to team up with other companies to share costs. For the Tata Group in India, advantage is wisely being taken of an already existing team of in-house experts. For Research in Motion, the makers of Blackberry, caution is being thrown completely to the wind as they work to actually increase their research and development staff. In all cases, the companies are feeling confident with their results so far.
Chief Executive of IBM, Samuel Palmisano suggests, "Some may be tempted to hunker down, to scale back their investment in innovation. While that might make sense during a cyclical downturn, it's a mistake when you're going through a major shift in the global economy."
So it seems that it pays to follow these highly innovative companies by looking this climate in the face, being brave and taking some risks... however creative one might have to be with a newly limited budget.
by Dannie Carr - IF Creativity and Innovation Team 
