Don’t Concentrate! Innovate!

Let me set the scene for you. I am sitting at my study table at home at three in the morning (jet-lagged), reading a book on creativity and innovation. Here is a question from the book.

People tend to forget what they read in newspapers/blogs/e-books. Research has shown that we need to read or practice something at least 7 times for it to move from short-term memory space to long term memory space. Suggest ways to make it happen.

In essence, how can we make people remember stuff they read?

I pondered over the question for 10 minutes, without finding any suitable solution. Giving up, I turned to my phone, unlocked it and started playing my favorite game on it. The question was still on my mind, but not at the fore. And that is exactly when the solution hit me.

Why not design an app which can capture paragraphs you want to remember, convert the text into a question and answer format, and ask you a question every time you want to unlock your phone. The question will stop popping up on your screen once it has been answered, say, 10 times. If you can’t answer the question, the app will redirect you to the paragraph you had read.

The point of this blog post is not the solution, but how the solution was reached. The lack of concentration was key. I have even coined a phrase for it. I call it (Drum roll)…. Aided Creativity.

Aided creativity is the art of coming up with a solution for Problem A, while working on Situation B. In my case, Problem A was the Remembering-Stuff question and Situation B was the Playing-Game situation.

So how can companies use the concept of Aided Creativity, to increase productivity and innovation?

Watch television/play laser-tag/plan a heist, while thinking of an answer to that question!

Oh and by the way, I broke my high score record in the game too. See the power of lack of concentration!

The Best Friend

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship, said the famous English poet/painter, William Blake.

But in today’s age of Web 2.0, perhaps some of the social networking sites are our best friends. So let’s personify these websites as friends.

Facebook: ‘The gossip’. Gossip is idle talk or rumor about the personal or private affairs of others.

Mark Zuckerberg's creation is the quintessential "Did you hear" guy. Happy, fun, but sometimes, too intrusive and misleading.

Google: ‘Mr. Know-all’. He is the encyclopaedia, the guy who knows everything. He is the typical “Research has shown” guy. Educative, informative, but, boring (although Google has shed that image through its doodles and Google plus).

LinkedIn: ‘Mr. Formal’. A friend, who calls you only when in need, and you reciprocate the favour. He is the “So, how is work” guy, only concerned about your career. All work and no play makes LinkedIn a dull boy. But then, he is essential for the growth of your career.

Twitter: ‘The Big Shot’. This guy knows the Who’s Who of the web world. He tells you all that is going on in their lives. He is the “You know, Megan Fox* just...” guy. Well connected, quick at spreading news, but, comes out with a lot of c**p, too.

So who is your best friend? Vote now (through your comments)!

And oh, Happy 2012!

*Megan Fox’s name was used for grabbing your attention, of course

If a sentence were to describe...

Finance:

                The sentence/phase/word: Trade-offs

                Description: From the simplest to the most complicated, finance is all about trade-offs. The very building block of finance lies in accounts and economics. Accounts is about trade-offs in assets and liabilities, debit and credit. Economics is about trade-offs in price and demand among others.

                                        

                                   Perhaps the most complicated concepts in finance are found in financial derivatives and this too is about trade-offs. It is about risk-reward trade-off. Reward rises with risk. That’s finance in a sentence.

Operations:

                The sentence/phase/word: In + Process = Out

                Description: The “Process” part of the equation is what is Operations. And the study of various factors of this process (like time, costs, inventories etcetera) is the study of operations. Operations research, for example, is the study of reducing one or more factors (mostly cost or time).

Marketing:

                The sentence/phase/word: It’s about selling value

                Description: Value is defined as benefit/cost. All the frameworks used in marketing are aimed at communicating this value to the customer. For example, the levels of a product, aims at communicating the value of the product. The levels of a product are: core product, basic product, expected product, augmented product and potential product.

                                        

                                   Each of these levels tells the customer what value the product delivers. The concept of advertising stemmed from this very need of communicating value.   

Questions

Is money “the” motivator for success?

Remember studying the Herzberg’s Theory of Motivation? It talks about hygiene factors and motivators. Money is just a hygiene factor. You need some of it but beyond that “some” (playing with the word sum here), the satisfaction it gives is at a diminishing rate. So, what are the motivators? What increases satisfaction at an increasing rate? The answer: respect and self-esteem

How do you avoid doing wrong?

The solution is to avoid the “marginal cost” analysis. The primary reason for doing wrong is that the marginal cost of it, the cost of “just this one time”, is very low. So the marginal cost of driving drunk can be understood through the following equation:

Cost = Probability of Occurrence * Monetary or any other cost

Note that the probability of occurrence will keep reducing after each experience of drunken driving and getting away with it. And with it your propensity to act. Remember, it is easier to be 100% committed to your principals than being 98% committed to them. You do it once; you will do it again and again.

The Greatest Marketer Ever?

Business has only two functions Marketing and Innovation, said Peter F. Drucker. I discussed innovation in my first post. The time has come to talk about the other function of business, Marketing. The question is: Who is the greatest marketer ever? (As if that wasn’t obvious from the heading!)

According to Sean Burke, CMO GE Healthcare IT, there are four characteristics of an effective marketer.

a.       Innovator of products, wants and value.

b.      Instigator or agent of change.

c.       Integrator of cross-functional members.

d.      Implementer

The nominees for this prestigious award are:

a.       The Church: What an idea! The name of the idea: Santa Claus. He sells the spirit of Christmas. No other religion in the world has an icon so loved by children. That is innovation at its best.

Church has used all types of marketing – ambush marketing, viral marketing & even mass market marketing. Surprisingly they seem to succeed in spite of the fact that their product (Christianity religion) is in no way greater than other religions in the world. The reason they are able to do so is because of their implementation skills.

b.      Hugh Hefner: The founder of Playboy Enterprises has all the qualities of a top-class marketer. Hugh Hefner, my personal favourite, launched one of its kind Playboy magazines in 1953.The magazine captures the imagination (pun not intended, clearly!) of the young and the old, erasing the hype of generation gap. As an agent of change, he introduced the world to Playboy Radio, Playboy TV and Playboy Wireless for mobiles. Playboy has handled the paradigm shift from Paper-to-Pixel pretty well. It sells twice the number of magazines as compared to its closest competitor.

c.       M.K. Gandhi: Father of the nation of India, M. K. Gandhi, was born on October 2^nd, 1869. Imagine the scene in 1915, on his return to India. The industry of Indian freedom was dominated by the product of violence. As any smart marketer would have done, he introduced something new to this industry. His product was non-violence.

      

      He used the Non-Cooperation movement, Salt March, Quit India Movement and many more, in order to establish the strength of his product. It also helped him implement his marketing ideas. And it also shows his leadership skills and the role that an implementer plays in any marketing effort. He was able to garner support of people of all ages, a rare commodity nowadays.

d.      Osama Bin Laden: The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks also features on our list because of his creativity and execution. He introduced the “art” of crashing planes into buildings, in a market (terrorism) dominated by bomb blasts and suicide bombers.

Thinking is different from doing. The difference between good and great marketers is the act. Execution. And that is where Bin Laden is, sorry was, so good. His execution of the 9/11 attack was what got him on our list.

He also used his popularity to great advantage, by encouraging youngsters to join him on his quest and instilling fear in the minds of others.

And the winner is............. M. K. Gandhi. He seems to be the only candidate on our list, who meets all the four requirements of a great marketer. 

Marketing Mix of Terrorism

The recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai on 13^th July, 2011 got me thinking. How do terrorists market themselves to their prospective customers (both internal and external)? What are the 4 P’s involved in marketing to terrorists (internal customers) and the common people (external customers)?

For those lucky enough not to what these 4P’s are, its Product, Price, Promotion and Place.

Product: The product here is emotion. To the common people, the emotion a terrorist organization sells is fear. To its employees, the organization sells dreams. Dreams of martyrdom and glory.

Price: Price always has two aspects, cost and revenue. To the seller, price represents revenue. To the buyer, it represents cost. For the terrorist organization the revenue may be money, land, power and so on and so forth. For the common people, the cost may be loss of life and a life plagued with constant fear.

Promotion: The age of the internet has opened doors to large-scale terrorist promotions. Youtube is one of the major sources of promotion (though users can now flag videos on youtube as “Terror Promotion”).

Place: The distribution channel of a terrorist organization is highly centralized. All the participants in the distribution channel are owned and controlled by the organization.

Boredom, Creativity, Stupidity, Innovation

The goal of this blog is to try and establish a relation between boredom, stupidity, creativity and innovation. Let’s begin with a brief definition of each word.

                Boredom- Boredom is an emotional state experienced when an individual is without any work or is not interested in their surroundings (Wikipedia.org). The word “boredom” was first used in the year 1856 by Charles Dickens.

                Stupidity- James F. Wells, in his book, "Understanding Stupidity,” defines stupidity as, "The term used to designate a mentality which is considered to be informed, deliberate and maladaptive." Dr. Welles distinguishes stupidity from ignorance; one must know they are acting in their own worst interest. Secondly, it must be a choice, not a forced act or accident. Lastly, it requires the activity to be maladaptive, in that it is in the worst interest of the actor.

                Creativity- Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new (a product, a solution, a work of art, a novel, a joke, etc.) that has some kind of value (Wikipedia.org).

                Innovation- The term innovation derives from the Latin word innovatus, which is the noun form of innovare "to renew or change," stemming from in-"into" + novus-"new" (Wikipedia.org).

Hypothesis:

a.       Boredom + Stupidity + Unknowns + Knowns (like, technology) = Creativity

b.      Creativity * Execution = Innovation

The reason the left hand side of (a.) is additive is the fact that the existence of these variables are optional. Even if say Boredom score is zero (0), the process of creativity may not be hampered. However, in (b.), both creativity and execution are mandatory. If Execution score is zero, then innovation is not possible.

A lot of articles have been written on the relationship between boredom and creativity. An article in Indian Express explored this relationship recently (July 22, 2011). In fact, a book has also been written on the same (Boredom: A Lively History). Think about it. When do you get the most brilliant ideas for the presentation? Or the most obvious answer to that difficult question? Is it not on the pot, when you have absolutely nothing to do (well, technically you do!).  The more bored you get, the more you force yourself to think about things and thus, the more creative you become.

The relation between stupidity and creativity may not be this obvious. The year is 1903; the Wright brothers decide to take their first flight. Think how stupid the idea would have sounded then. Men flying like birds! According to the definition of stupidity, the mentality was maladaptive. The Wright brothers knew that the cost (monetary and physical) would clearly outweigh the benefit. "Flight is possible to man... [and] I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life". - Wilbur Wright said. His quote checks all the criteria of stupidity; he was aware of the far greater cost as compared to the benefit. By all accounts a stupid act.

Albert Einstein famously said,” If an idea doesn’t sound stupid at first, then there is no hope for it later”. The great man closes the discussion.

The importance of execution in innovation has been hammered into the minds of young leaders in b-schools. Professors like Vijay Govindarajan have written about it (hbr.org). Thomas Edison, the greatest innovator of all time, put it well: "Innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." The use of multiplication in our equation stresses on the importance of execution. So, it is easier and more beneficial for a company with a creativity score of 5 and execution score of 2, to increase its execution score to 3 or 4 rather than increase the creativity score to 6 or 7.

                To conclude, ask stupid questions. Make stupid suggestions. Burn all your books. Get bored. Create. Execute.