
“The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.”
-- Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852)
Recently in Seven Habits of Highly Innovative People, I wrote that highly innovative people are always on when it comes to innovation. This is something I have observed time and time again. Yet, some have asked what I meant by that.
Whether by design or happenstance, it seems that world-class innovators don’t put on their innovation game face only when a big challenge comes across their desk. For these people, innovation is not a task; innovation is a way of being. They don’t talk about being innovative; they just do it at every turn. Let me present two examples of what I mean by practicing innovation thinking in every day life.
Mansour Ashtiani is a top inventor at Delphi Corporation, a first rate TRIZ practitioner, and someone I am fortunate to call a friend. One day Mansour was telling about how TRIZ was a discipline that was helpful in daily life. He told me about a challenge he had been faced with at home. It seems he had to move a piano into his house by himself. The piano was in a truck and he knew that getting it down the ramp at the back of the truck was going to be a big problem.
Mansour looked at the system of resources available to help him move the piano easily. There were several elements in the system, the piano, the truck, the ramp, the ground, and himself. Through his analysis, he came to realize that he could use the incline of his driveway to help move the piano. He was able to position the truck so that the ramp was almost level. This made getting the piano down the ramp a simple task for one person.
My second example is closer to home. My wife is in the habit of dissolving aspirin before she takes it. In the past, she did this by taking some tea in her teaspoon, balancing the spoon on the rim of the cup, and placing the aspirin in the bowl of the spoon. This worked well except for one problem. If anything jarred the cup, the spoon would fall into the cup, and her tea would be ruined. Seeing that sequence play out one too many times, I asked her if she would like to me fix the problem for her.
The solution as you can see from the picture above was very simple. I modified her spoon so that it perches on the rim of any cup or glass and by so doing changed the system of forces that governed the spoon. The bowl can be dipped into the tea with a gentle tilt of the handle. Release the handle and the spoon returns to a position of rest that keeps the aspirin from tainting the rest of her tea. No more worrying about a rambunctious dog bumping into the table and sending the spoon plunging into the cup.
These are simple daily problems—the type of problems we are all faced with. But, these daily problems give us opportunities to exercise our innovation skills. By regularly flexing our innovation muscles, we are ready when faced by the big challenges. How have you exercised your innovation muscles in daily life?









Bnet Five Tips for CEOs on Innovation
An article offering “Five Tips for CEOs on Innovation” appears on bnet. As with many such articles, the advice given is a mixed bag.
Here are the five points, and some of my thoughts on the tips. I’d love to hear what you think.
“Create a company-wide culture where innovation is worshipped” – This advice reminds me of the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” While I absolutely endorse the establishment of a strong, sustainable innovation culture, it is important to remember which is the cart and which is the horse. By this I mean that innovation is not the end in itself. The end is value creation. An organization that puts innovation on a pedestal without tying that innovation to corporate objectives has little hope of seeing the results of that innovation driving the value of the enterprise.
“The CEO’s role varies substantially” – The point being made here is that CEOs must recognize that innovation can come from anyone in the organization. This is very sound advice. Every member of the organization has a unique perspective and these perspectives should be included in the strategic innovation process. The need to encourage the ubiquity of contribution is one of the reasons that CEOs should ensure that all knowledge workers are equipped with the skills and tools to be successful contributors to the innovation process.
“Sometimes you have to break the rules” – This is a popular statement that pops up from time to time. However, popularity doesn’t make it so. Nor does pointing to an anecdotal story of someone succeeding by going outside of the system prove that the success could not have happened within the system. However, the popularity of this statement should tell us something very important. People clearly don’t feel the rules encourage or support innovation. Here is the real advice that CEOs need to focus on—change the rules to empower your innovation workers. This will allow your workers to achieve great things, and give the company the ability to develop and deploying innovation outcomes in an integrated fashion.
“A corollary of what I’ve said above is that innovation should not be limited to an innovation or R&D department” – Yes, it true there really aren’t five tips here. As above, CEOs must recognize that innovation can come from anyone in the organization.
“One of the most powerful things a CEO does to spur innovation is the allocation of capital” – This is certainly a very important thing. However, this is not where the CEOs responsibility ends. The CEO is responsible for setting the corporate agenda and direction. As it pertains to innovation, this must mean that the CEO has to make it unambiguously clear that development of the company’s innovation capacity is a critical success factor for the organization and a central element of the plan to build corporate value. The CEO must ensure that the top-level mandate is felt throughout the organization on a continued basis.
Just my thoughts… Do you agree?
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