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.