A642.9.3.RB - The Innovation Experience

A642.9.3.RB - The Innovation Experience

Reflect on the entirety of this learning experience.

Identify the three elements that had the largest influence on your perspective on innovation.

            I think that innovating and the ideation process are much harder than I had initially thought. Having been part of process improvements and new process implementations I knew that innovation and change in general are not easy things but the whole creative thinking process that I’ve been accustomed to is just so much more within the innovation process. To narrow it down to three elements that had the largest influence on my perspective, I’d go with: building a bigger brain, Christensen’s disruptive innovation, and ideation skills.

Define the elements and why they are important.

            The first element is building a bigger brain. McKeown describes this as [e]ven a creative genius cannot have all the best solutions to all of the world’s problems. Everyone has something to offer to the process of innovation. (2014). I love this idea. It gives what has always made sense to me a name and a process within itself. Bringing a room full of the right people together to solve a problem collectively just makes the most sense. One person doesn’t build an airplane, it takes many people with many different backgrounds and skill sets to design, program, finance, support, and construct one single airplane. All of these people coming together to solve problems around this airplane just makes sense. Building a better brain isn’t just about involving more people. It can also be about developing the creative skills of people who become involved. (2014). I love that the innovation isn’t limited to just the product but can also be a part of the development of the product.

            The second element is Christensen’s disruptive innovation and how it actually has a place in the improvement of processes and products. Understanding the room for disruption is useful whether you are trying to disrupt an existing situation (to your advantage) or defending an existing situation (to your advantage) (McKeown, 2014). I relate to this by comparing it to the idea of Devil’s Advocate in a problem solving collaboration. By bringing productive dissent into a problem solving situation, we make sure that the entire room isn’t just agreeing to get out of the room. By bringing in the disruptor role, we check our ideas against realities and regulations; zooming out to make sure that we’re solving the right problems and not just building something cool because it’s…well…cool. Disruptive innovation makes sure that our resources and support is going to the right project and that the subsequent innovation is effective and meaningful to the organization for which it was created.

            The third element is ideation skills. Idea generating skills are crucial to an organization’s success. They are the stepping stones to decisions and support. Implemented well, these ideas are transformed into improved business performance (Canfield & Smith, 2011). The basis of any good innovation – or organizational change is the thought that goes into it. Generating ideas; brainstorming with colleagues helps to narrow the thoughts into ideas that will spawn the next new thing. This also flows into effective creative thinking skills. Effective process improvement is all about generating lots of good ideas about possible solutions, choosing and confirming the best, and implementing decisions that improve the target processes. Effective creative thinking skills are all about generating lots of good ideas about possible new products and services to add to the company revenues and profit. (2011).

Discuss how you will use them in the future.

            I will have an opportunity to use all of the above elements in the very near future. I was traveling for business this week as part of the newly formed supply chain culture council. We are a group of about 15 people from all levels: executive leadership, management, salary employee, and hourly employee. We are working toward coming up with and marketing our council to help educate and train our co-workers on the different cultures and tolerance at work and in life. We are in the process of building that bigger brain by bringing in all different people to develop a charter and structure for our council. In our meeting this week, I tried to implement productive disruptive innovation by asking questions and asking validation on some of the charter elements. We are all going to be constantly using our ideation and creative thinking skills to make this council effective, meaningful, productive, and different than other groups who have tried something similar. Culture takes generations to evolve and it’s not something we can just break down and infiltrate with new ideas overnight. Our ability to generate ideas is going to help us get our message out in a way that will be effective to as many people as possible.

References

Canfield. J. & Smith, G. (2011). Imagine: Ideation skills for improvement and innovation today. Holland, MI: Black Lake Press.

McKeown, M. (2014). The innovation book: How to manage ideas and execution for outstanding results. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, United Kingdom. Pearson Education Limited.

A642.8.3.RB - How dangerous are Lean Start-ups?

A642.8.3.RB - How dangerous are Lean Start-ups?

The implications of lean startups and why they can be so disruptive to well-established, older, industry giants.

            Traditional start-ups generally include coming up with a business plan and pitching it to a bank or sponsor for financial backing. The life-span of a start-up is usually not very long, the exception are those start-ups that succeed. Recently, new “lean” start-ups have become more and more common. Blank describes these lean start-ups as a methodology [that] favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development (2013). When I look at this and how it could impact my organization, I think about a mouse (lean start-up) and an elephant (big companies like Boeing). The mouse is small and agile, it can get into spaces that an elephant can’t. It takes the elephant more time to move and maneuver. However, once the elephant gets moving, it can go fast and will trample the mouse that happens to get in the elephant’s path.

            The agility and flexibility of the lean start-up companies can be a benefit because it allows for the company to change the focus of a project. One of the critical differences is that while existing companies execute a business model, start-ups look for one. This distinction is at the heart of the lean start-up approach. It shapes the lean definition of a start-up: a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model (Blank, 2013). Instead of telling the public what it needs, a lean start-up looks for solutions they can come up with for problems they’ve found. If a lean start-up wants to get into the basket-weaving industry but upon talking to potential users of these baskets find out that what’s actually needed is wire baskets because they are less susceptible to rodents and mold issues – then they figure out how to manufacture the wire baskets instead. A traditional start-up would have already come up with a supplier of materials, a five-year business plan, and secured orders for their baskets. If the consumer changed their minds and wanted a wire basket at that point, the traditional start-up would have to scrap their plan and start over – or find new consumers. Although the methodology is just a few years old, its concepts—such as “minimum viable product” and “pivoting”—have quickly taken root in the start-up world, and business schools have already begun adapting their curricula to teach them (2013).

Identify in detail, the elements that provide a unique competitive position and how to combat such an adversary.

            One of the elements of a unique competitive position is timing. Being ahead of the main players allows you to shape the market for your idea…timing cannot be so early that it will not work... [o]r too late to capture attention (McKeown, 2014). Another element is effective creative thinking. These skills are all about generating good ideas about possible new products and services that add to company revenues and profit (Canfield & Smith, 2011).  Another element is to have solid funding for a product. In order to do that, a start-up needs to remove as much risk and the known unknowns of the investment. It’s also important that a start-up be aware of and have a plan for disrupters. [This plan] often requires an industry-defying approach to doing business and an extraordinary commitment to ensuring that customers gain the benefits they’re seeking (Mount, 2013).

            It’s impossible to plan for every single disrupter or challenge to each start-up but creative thinking, being flexible, and understanding the consumer’s true needs go a long way in paving the way to a promising future for a business.

References

Blank, S. (2013). Why lean start-ups change everything. Harvard Business Review.91.5.65-72

Canfield. J. & Smith, G. (2011). Imagine: Ideation skills for improvement and innovation today. Holland, MI: Black Lake Press.

McKeown, M. (2014). The innovation book: How to manage ideas and execution for outstanding results. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, United Kingdom. Pearson Education Limited.

Mount, M. (2013). Kiva the Disruptor. Harvard Business Revies.90.12.74-80.

A642.7.3.RB - Leading through Disruptive Times

A642.7.3.RB - Leading through Disruptive Times

Reflect on the relationship between innovation and disruptive innovation from the perspective of leadership.

What would you do to help navigate your organization through each of these situations?

            Innovation and disruptive innovation can almost be synonymous. Innovation itself is a disruption of the status quo. Disruptive innovation is less a single event than a process that plays out over time, sometimes quickly and completely, but other times slowly and incompletely (Wessel, 2012). Either way, something changes. Something about how we do business today will change. Innovation and disruptive innovation are ways that we try to control the changes so that we can see what’s coming.

            Navigating through either one, innovation or disruptive innovation, would be complex and take well thought out strategies. For innovation, something that came out of a controlled environment like a workshop, I would navigate the changes by using creative thinking strategies such as Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. As I discussed last week, the six hats are: White Hat (Neutral/objective), Yellow Hat (Optimism/values/benefits), Black Hat (Judgement/Devil’s advocate), Green Hat (Possibilities/alternatives/new ideas), Red Hat (Feelings/hunches/intuition), and Blue Hat (Managing the thinking process/the control hat) (Canfield & Smith, 2011). This thinking strategy would allow the group to see the idea through the different lenses of the thinking hats. It enables discussion and collaboration. For disruptive innovation, which seems almost more aggressive, the thinking strategy would be just as important because when organizations look to disrupt their own products in an effort to beat the competition. According to Wessel, there are three things to do: identify the strengths of your disrupter’s business model; identify your own relative advantages; evaluate the conditions that would help or hinder the disrupter from co-opting your current advantages in the future (2012).

Now, consider the likelihood of both occurring at the same time; would this change the way you navigated or lead the organization through these scenarios?

            The likelihood of both innovation and disruptive innovation happening at the same time are actually more likely in my organization than not. This would change some of the ways I navigated or lead the organization through the scenarios. With the many organizations working their own innovation projects, we are all impacted when a disrupter hits. For example, in the tooling organization I worked in, our main innovation project was based on alloys and finding better ways to make tooling to build airplanes. We were all working and focused on our own projects when the lithium ion battery fires happened in the 787 program. We were all suddenly on the task of finding a way to fix this issue. Granted, that is more of a safety innovation but it changed the way we built the 787 and especially how we install and contain the batteries. The necessity for innovation in this case was the disrupter – as will all safety concerns. This makes me think that disrupter innovations aren’t always about new business but sometimes about saving an existing business. If we weren’t able to find a solution to the 787 battery issue, that program would have been a huge and costly aerospace failure for Boeing. [S]ome radical innovations have very little impact on the success of the people who made them work. It is also often the case that relatively small innovations have a hugely disruptive impact (McKeown, 2014).

References

Canfield. J. & Smith, G. (2011). Imagine: Ideation skills for improvement and innovation today. Holland, MI: Black Lake Press.

McKeown, M. (2014). The innovation book: How to manage ideas and execution for outstanding results. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, United Kingdom. Pearson Education Limited.

Wessel, M. & Christenson, C.M. (2012) Surviving disruption, Harvard Business Review.12.10. 56-64.

A642.6.3.RB - Practicing Creative Thinking Skills

A642.6.3.RB - Practicing Creative Thinking Skills

Reflect on the accumulated readings and exercises from this module:

Identify five strategies that can help you lead innovation projects.

The five strategies I think will help me lead innovation projects are:

·         Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats

·         DARPA’s Ambitious goals

·         DARPA’s Temporary project teams

·         DARPA’s Independence

·         Rie’s build-measure-learn wheel

Include in your discussion the reason these five elements are important and how you would apply them from your current position.

            Canfield and Smith explain that the Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats strategy consists of six types of thinking that we use subconsciously every day: White Hat (Neutral/objective), Yellow Hat (Optimism/values/benefits), Black Hat (Judgement/Devil’s advocate), Green Hat (Possibilities/alternatives/new ideas), Red Hat (Feelings/hunches/intuition), and Blue Hat (Managing the thinking process/the control hat). (2011) These six hats are important because when we are trying to come up with innovative ideas and think in a creative way, we need to access all six of these “hats” in an effort to give a sort of litmus test to each idea. The six hats allow us to compartmentalize each of our kinds of thinking so that we may examine them systematically. I could apply this in my current position on a daily basis when looking for ways for Boeing to save money on inventory and our restocking strategies. We sometimes think that inventory management isn’t about innovating but with the science of logistics changing, supply chain and inventory management has new opportunities too. Being able to look at new ideas through the lens of each hat would be extremely helpful.

            DARPA’s ambitious goals are important to innovation because we wouldn’t innovate anything without purposely pushing the boundaries of what we know into what we don’t know. When we have a problem that cannot be solved by the tools we have – we make new tools. Those tools wouldn’t be created without the need and the ambitious goals that are required for innovation to happen.  The presence of an urgent need for an application creates focus and inspires greater genius (Dugan & Kaigham, 2013). These big ideas and ambitious goals are exactly what Boeing is grown from. We face ambitious ideas from our leadership all the time. Tight schedules and budgets given to solve problems that at first seem impossible. This forces us to be creative and think outside the box for solutions.

            DARPA’s temporary project teams are important from the advantage of having subject matter experts from different backgrounds and experience come together with each other to collaborate. They are given a limited time to work together which – similar to the ambitious goals strategy forces new ideas to come out of necessity. Their intensity, sharp focus, and finite time frame make them attractive to the highest-caliber talent, and the nature of the challenge inspires unusual levels of collaboration. In other words, the projects get great people to tackle great problems with other great people (Dugan & Kaigham, 2013). The temporary project teams are something that we use in our organization regularly. We bring people together from the different areas because we each hold a piece of the puzzle. Separately, we only hold a little piece, but put together and given limits to time and budget, we figure out how to fit our pieces together in a new and innovative way in order to solve process issues and improve existing methods.

            DARPA’s Independence is important because when too many organizations and regulatory departments are involved, innovation can be delayed and hung up by red-tape and the overkill of “too many chefs” involved. By charter, DARPA has autonomy in selecting and running projects. Such independence allows the organization to move fast and take bold risks and helps it persuade the best and brightest to join (Dugan & Kaigham, 2013). This independence doesn’t happen as often as would be preferred in our organization. The realities of finance and schedule seem to choke some of the creative thinking into emergent thinking – putting out fires instead of being able to stop the fire in the first place. This independence is important and I could use more autonomy in my role. Currently, we are tasked with learning our new roles using old methodology. Once we learn the old way, we need the independence to bring our inventory management processes into the 21^st century.

            Ries’ build-measure-learn wheel is important to innovation because it helps move from the unknown value of a new idea to the known value of a successful organization, helping a new idea adapt until it can thrive long term (McKeown, 2014). I think that the Rie’s build-measure-learn tool is another litmus test of new technology and innovation. It allows you to keep the feedback loop of the build-measure-learn tool going so that we can innovate faster than the problems can develop. I think this is a very important tool for my organization to become more proactive and less reactive. It would help us learn to think about problems that need solving from a “how do we fix this” to “how do we avoid this in the first place” kind of mindset.

What does this tell you about the process innovation?

            All of this tells me that the process innovation is complicated and needs boundaries to break through, limits to force creative thinking, and the autonomy to make mistakes and try again. The process innovation is complicated but very necessary. When I think about what my childhood was like compared to how kids are growing up today, I think about the innovations that have created a need for children to know their letters and numbers and even simple math and how to read before kindergarten. I also think that with innovation comes new problems to solve. The better we get at thinking creatively about those problems the better we will get at avoiding these new problems altogether.  

References

Canfield. J. & Smith, G. (2011). Imagine: Ideation skills for improvement and innovation today. Holland, MI: Black Lake Press.

Dugan, R,E, & Kaigham, J. G. (2013) Special forces innovation: How DARPA attacks problems. Harvard Business Review.91.10.74-84.

McKeown, M. (2014). The innovation book: How to manage ideas and execution for outstanding results. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, United Kingdom. Pearson Education Limited.

A642.5.3.RB - Making Smart Groups

A642.5.3.RB - Making Smart Groups

Reflect on the Sunstein and Hastie article.

Can these concepts help promote innovation within an organization?

Sunstein and Hastie make the point that when a group of people is brought together to solve a problem, something happens to the individual within the dynamics of the group. People tend to listen to the leader of the group for direction and approval, they concur with a popular idea even if they don’t fully agree, and [t]hey focus on what everybody knows already—and thus don’t take into account critical information that only one or a few people have (Sunstein & Hastie, 2014). The individual is taken out by the larger voice of the group.

Sunstein and Hastie suggest the following six concepts to help avoid this group-think situation:

·         Silence the leader – once the leader of a group has given their opinion, it can sway the entire energy of the group.

·         “Prime” critical thinking – provide a thought-provoking environment for critical and creative thinking to take place. When a leader structures the activity around information disclosure, they open the path for an open minded conversation.

·         Reward group success – structuring groups with rewarding group success and identification with the group’s success is more likely to ensure that people will say what they know.

·         Assign roles – when everyone knows what each expertise each person brings to the table, this information can be tapped into for group success.

·         Appoint a devil’s advocate – if everyone agrees on something without debate or dissent, then that decision is only half of the potential decision. Even if a group comes to the same consensus after discussion, it still makes the understanding of the solution more robust and therefore more meaningful. Assigning someone to ask productive dissenting questions is imperative to good group decision making.

·         Establish contrarian teams – this goes back to debate as well, Sunstein and Hastie describe having “Red teams” those that try to defeat the primary team in a simulated mission, and those that construct the strongest possible case against a proposal or a plan. This allows for a broader understanding of what they are trying to accomplish.

All six of these concepts lean to the idea that we should ensure that groups aggregate the information their members actually have and don’t let faulty informational signals and reputational pressures get in the way (2014).

How do they compare and contrast with the other readings from this module?

            The six concepts above can all work in tandem with the other readings from this module. It’s all been about creating innovative thinking skills and making a smarter team by giving their problem solving processes structure and guidance. Whether Canfield and Smith’s mind mapping or 6-3-5 brainstorming ideas or and of the strategies hat McKeown described are used, they are all about structuring our creative thinking skills around better problem solving and successful innovation.

            For example, the concept of silencing the leader can be seen in the brainstorming techniques from Canfield & Smith. In their 6-3-5 brainstorming, there are groups of people who have to come up with three ideas in five minutes. This removes the leader from the equation and allows the smaller groups to have their own conversation and brainstorm.

            The mind-mapping is an example of “priming” the creative thinking by having a leader start with the group’s established goals in the center and allowing the group to go up to the board and start relating individual ideas and solutions to that overall goal. While the leader is involved, their role is less commanding and more about guiding the group.

Can they be combined into a process that can be used to promote innovation across the entire organization?

            The concepts that Sunstein and Hastie discussed in their article, McKeown’s strategies, and Canfield & Smith’s creative thinking techniques should all be used together in a meaningful way to promote innovation across an entire organization. Naturally enough, people learn from one another; the problem is that groups often go wrong when some members receive incorrect signals from other members (Sunstein & Hastie, 2014). In every organization resides many different personalities and backgrounds, life experiences and passions. As leaders, utilizing the techniques, strategies, and concepts we’ve learned this week allows us a plethora of ways to pull genius out of groups. It’s when these ideas aren’t used that there are wasteful processes put in place and a disgruntled workforce that has to contend with the fallout from poorly thought out solutions to problems.

References

Canfield. J. & Smith, G. (2011). Imagine: Ideation skills for improvement and innovation today. Holland, MI: Black Lake Press.

McKeown, M. (2014). The innovation book: How to manage ideas and execution for outstanding results. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, United Kingdom. Pearson Education Limited.

Sunstein, C.R. & Hastie, R. (2014). Making dumb groups smarter. Harvard Business Review. 92.12.91-98.

A642.4.3.RB - The End of Innovation

A642.4.3.RB - The End of Innovation

Robert Gordon talks about the Death of Innovation and the End of Growth.

Reflect on this presentation and compare and contrast it to your experience and the readings from this module.

            Robert Gordon paints a scary picture of what the future of innovation looks like. [M]aybe economic growth is almost over. There are four headwinds that are just hitting the American economy in the face. They're demographics, education, debt and inequality. (Gordon, 2013). Gordon says we need to offset these headwinds with innovation. A lot of innovation. This TED Talk was 5 years ago though. In five years, it seems that our economy is coming out of the pain of the recession of 2008-9. We have a booming aerospace industry, auto makers are improving safety features and fuel efficiencies on their vehicles, giving us the ability to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

            The readings from this week’s modules emphasize the ability of people to innovate by using creative thinking skills. [E]ffective problem solving will have you more efficiently identify and modify the causes of a process to generate the results you prefer. (Canfield & Smith, 2011). The innovations we need for our future are getting harder and harder to see – as in, they are less tangible and less obvious to everyone. We have to think harder and be more creative than past inventors. They helped us with solid stepping stones of inventions but the next generation of inventions won’t be as obvious. Innovation is fundamentally fast productive learning and implementing. Fast productive learning will happen best when it honors how the brain likes to learn. (2011).

In your opinion, what fallacies do you see in this presentation? Can you match what we have achieved?

            I think that some of the fallacies in his presentation form around Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to the website Simply Psychology, Maslow stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and that some needs take precedence over others. Our most basic need is for physical survival, and this will be the first thing that motivates our behavior. Once that level is fulfilled the next level up is what motivates us, and so on. (McLeod, 2017). In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, we were able to achieve so much because before the onset of electricity and the internal combustion engine, we were limited in what we could accomplish. Gordon’s examples included the historical facts that if you wanted to read in 1875 at night, you needed to have an oil or a gas lamp. They created pollution, they created odors, they were hard to control, the light was dim, and they were a fire hazard. He also mentioned that women, back in the late 19th century, spent two days a week doing the laundry. They did it on a scrub board. Then they had to hang the clothes out to dry. Then they had to bring them in. The whole thing took two days out of the seven-day week, and finally, the only source of heat in most homes was a big fireplace in the kitchen that was used for cooking and heating. The bedrooms were cold. They were unheated. But by 1929, certainly by 1950, we had central heating everywhere. (Gordon, 2013). The need for physical survival is part of the first levels of the hierarchy – basic needs. This includes a warm place to live and sleep, food and security. (2017).

            In general, people were still struggling with the first two levels of the hierarchy and once electricity and other technological advancements were made, once we were able to have warm and secure homes, refrigerated foods, and electrically washed clothes, we were able to kind of take a look around and realize that we had come a long way since we had to cart the whole family into town on a horse and buggy. We don’t need to invent the car anymore, we just have to improve on it to the point where we aren’t relying on oil or other pollutants. We don’t need to invent electricity anymore, we just need to find an alternative power source that doesn’t need coal to run it. We are in the place where we are looking at being able to reach the third level of the hierarchy, self-actualization. (2017). We are looking at what was invented and how to make them cleaner, leaner, and readily accessible to everyone. Disruptive innovation doesn’t always need to be very new…each level of the innovation pyramid offers new opportunities[.] (McKeown, 2014)

            My point is that we are not failing to innovate. Gordon assumes that the innovations and inventions need to be as tangible as they were 100+ years ago. I think that we are just on the next level of the hierarchy. Things that will change our lives for the better aren’t going to be huge skyscrapers and noisy engines. They will be things that aren’t always tangible. Medicinal innovations will be on a nanoscopic level rather than microscopic. The way we travel will become cleaner and faster.

            Gordon said that [t]he problem we face is that all these great inventions, we have to match them in the future[.] I completely agree with that – we have to match and surpass those of the past. We wouldn’t be where we are today without the innovations of the past. But I don’t think that we’re incapable of climbing up that pyramid of needs and finding new and better inventions in the future. New generation brings new insight into the whole system rather than simply a part of the system…something like 0.24% of new ideas have that capacity to deliver a new generation of an existing system. (McKeown, 2014). I do think that we need to figure out how to not be as reliant on the things that Mother Nature can just take away from us with a forceful shove. Maybe that’s the problem we need to work on – that this generation needs to solve.

References

Canfield. J. & Smith, G. (2011). Imagine: Ideation skills for improvement and innovation today. Holland, MI: Black Lake Press.

Gordon, R. (2013). Death of innovation and the end of growth. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_gordon_the_death_of_innovation_the_end_of_growth

McKeown, M. (2014). The innovation book: How to manage ideas and execution for outstanding results. Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, United Kingdom. Pearson Education Limited.

McLeod, S. (2017). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Simply Psychology. Retrieved from:   https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

A642.3.3.RB - Lessons Learned

A642.3.3.RB - Lessons Learned

Given the innovative individuals you have read about in this week's readings

Detail three lessons learned and how they impact your view of innovation and leadership.

One of the things Steve Ells, the CEO of Chipotle said about culture was a very interesting lesson. When asked if the more traditional fast-food chains started changing their practices to compete with Chipotle’s success, would he see that as a good thing overall…[o]r would he view it as a threat? “It’s a joke,” he replies. “You know those guys, right? They can’t change. The culture is just too ingrained. Which bodes very well for Chipotle.” (Safian, 2014). He said…the culture is too ingrained…they can’t change. Think about certain companies who have created not only a brand but a cultural icon: McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and even Hostess when they took Twinkies off the shelf. New Coke was a serious misstep, McDonalds is known for fast food – not gourmet burgers and salads. I honestly thought some of my friends were going to start a “Bring Back the Twinkie” revolution! As a culture, we get so used to certain things, we like knowing that there are some things we can always count on. But when a brand gets so ingrained into a cultural norm that it can’t change – innovation is a hard thing to find motivation for. I think there is a fine line between a strong brand and a cultural icon. Being able to innovate means that company can grow. Without growth, the company runs the risk of stagnating.

Another lesson is from Jennifer Aaker at Stanford University, she challenges the very notion that a pursuit of happiness is what drives us most…that people’s satisfaction with life is higher, and of greater duration, when meaning–rather than happiness–is their primary motivation. (Safian, 2014). I think this is somewhat idealistic – not everyone can afford to wait until they are in love with what they do. However, my interpretation of this idea is that you have to find something that you are passionate about in order to motivate yourself. If your passion is collating documents and taking notes in a meeting then lucky you – corporate America is waiting for you! But if your passion is following Phish around the world, you have to find a way to fund that passion – and that is how you motivate yourself to get up every morning to work a job that you aren’t in love with. You find what you are passionate about, what makes you happy, and you work to feed that passion and that job becomes something you do to make you happy. I have a friend of mine who never finished college but is this prodigy programmer who at 30 years old, sold his company to Disney and came on to work there as some senior manager with a title he called “ridiculous.” He’s recently left Disney and has joined a league of programmers that far surpasses my limits of understanding. He is happy and fulfilled, he writes fantasy/fiction on his off time. He has a great family and they live in a nice house overlooking the San Diego valley. He loves what he does, he knows so much about his industry but is constantly scouring this industry for new things, new ideas, and new trends. He was fortunate to find his passions early. Not everyone is, but knowing that the search for what makes us happy – satisfied with our lives – is what will help motivate us helps.

Eileen Fisher is committed to continually fine-tuning the culture of her business. “We have purpose programs for our leaders. We’re looking at getting participation from all of our employees. We’re setting up a learning lab. I really believe that business is going to have to think this way.” (Safian, 2014). This commitment to fine-tuning the culture of her business – despite being financially successful – shows that it takes more than financial success to actually feel like success for some leaders. We all measure success differently and for Fisher, it’s about being constantly changing and looking for new ways to ground her staff and bring them not only cash bonuses but peace of mind. Speaking from a point of innovation, motivated employees who have that autonomy and room to think about their contribution from many angles, starts with a leadership culture that is supportive.

Discuss your innovative skills and detail three ways you can make a "useful" contribution to your organization

My innovative skills are that I listen, and I can see the big picture as well as the smaller steps needed to get there. In my organization, making a useful contribution means being productive and keeping parts coming in to support production. The ways my innovative skills can help me with this are when suppliers need help getting parts to us on time, I listen to their concerns and try to help them problem solve to a mutually beneficial outcome. I also listen to my customers and take their concerns to the suppliers so we can try to mitigate any revisions or new schedules before it becomes a problem. My ability to try and see the big picture as well as how each part of the build is impacted by issues can help production prioritize and problem solve in a meaningful way.

References:

Safian, R. (2014) Generation flux’s secret weapon. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/3035975/find-your-mission