“Men have become the tools of their tools.” -- Henry David Thoreau
On his blog, Practical Leadership, my friend Ken Flowers makes an observation about having the right tools for the job. Certainly, if you have ever tackled a home improvement project like Ken describes, you will know exactly what he is talking about. Of course, the plumbing task is just a foil for Ken’s point.
The same can be said about innovation. As professional innovation practitioners, we develop a bag of tools that we use to address the innovation challenges with which we are faced. Just as a skilled craftsman knows when to use a block plane and when to use a rabbet plane, the skilled innovation practitioner understands which innovation tool to apply to which problem.
Looking for freedom to operate? Pull your patent analysis and IP work-around techniques out of the tool box.
Need to envision a next generation product offering? It sounds like a job for your technology road mapping and system evolution predictive analysis tools.
Have a particularly nasty engineering contradiction to resolve? Maybe it’s time to dust off your TRIZ inventive principles.
Problems are not created equally, and they do not all yield to the same tools. You need to use the right innovation tool for the task to achieve optimal results.
Of course, this presupposes that your tool box contains more than just a hammer and a spanner. Innovation practitioners need to acquire many different tools if they are to be effective at repeatable, sustainable innovation—tools of methodology and of technology. They also need to practice with those tools so they when to use which method.
What’s in your tool box?
James:
Awesome entry! When people ask what process I rely upon to drive innovation and organizational creativity, my reply is "What process DON'T I use? I have a tool box full of processes, methods, theories, exercises, real world examples, etc...What are we trying to solve?"
As always, thanks again for sharing!
Posted by: Paul R. Williams | January 08, 2008 at 04:49 PM