7 Essential Lessons From The Harvard Innovation Lab
Here's what Harvard
students learn about how to create an environment where innovation thrives.
Jodi Goldstein knows a
thing or two about innovation. With more than 20 years’ experience as a
high-tech entrepreneur and investor with a focus on consumer technology and a
stint as a venture capitalist, she’s held leadership posts at several startups,
including PlanetAll, a social networking site that sold to Amazon in 1998 for
more than $100 million.
Now, she heads up the Harvard Innovation Lab (I-lab), a collaboration and education space launched in 2011 to help
develop students’ interest in entrepreneurship and innovation. A Harvard MBA
herself, it’s her job to get students to develop bold creative ideas and bring
them to fruition. She uses a cross-disciplinary approach—her bosses are the
deans of all 12 schools within the university, so no pressure there—to foster
new ways of thinking.
"The diversity of ideas is pretty profound," she says.
Current I-lab entrepreneurs are working on projects that range from creating snack foods from insects to improving the lives of
those in the military. The lab has been the
incubator for more than 600 startups since its launch.
Over the years,
Goldstein has learned some important lessons about how to create an environment
where innovation thrives. Here are seven essentials.
Innovators are
intellectually curious and thrive on absorbing new information that may help
their ideas. The I-lab holds regular programming and has a mentoring program to
help innovators learn as much as they want to learn. Even if you don’t have the
benefit of the I-lab, continually seeking out the information you need and
people who can teach you essential skills and information is an important part
of being innovative, she says.
Big ideas are great, but
most of us have limited resources. Trying to be the next Amazon or Google right
out of the gate is going to lead to burnout and frustration. Instead, try a
more focused approach and grow from there, she says. If you want to lay the
groundwork for a big idea, focus on developing one segment of it until it has
strong roots. "Pick a vertical. Pick a focus area. Keep it simple,"
she says.
Whether it’s in the
marketplace or between peers, competition can create a sense of urgency and
motivation that can spur innovation. Goldstein tells her students that finding
a competitor already in the marketplace is a sign that someone else has looked
into the idea and found a market for it. To succeed, they just have to do it
better.
The I-lab also holds
challenges where students are given a problem in the world and form teams to
come up with solutions. That kind of creative exercise and working with
teammates in a competitive environment can develop problem-solving skills that
help innovative thinking, she says.
Many people can come up
with a good idea. However, from the team you assemble to how your product or
service will be formed, marketed, and delivered, the real opportunity for
innovation lies in how you make it happen, Goldstein says.
"A diversity of
backgrounds and experiences is absolutely critical," she says. If you have
a group of people who all have the same experiences, viewpoints, and
backgrounds, you’re limiting the potential for innovation. The I-lab’s
cross-disciplinary approach brings together people who may never have met, she
says. A student with a public policy background may be working with a PhD in
chemistry or a law school student. I-lab founders often say they never would
have come up with their ideas or ventures if they hadn’t met people who thought
differently than they did, Goldstein says.
People who go to Harvard
are not really used to failing, Goldstein says. She encourages them to get over
it. Being creative and innovative means that you’re going to try many things
that don’t work. You have to develop prototypes that aren’t right and try
approaches that bomb before you get to the combination that works, she says. If
you get your feelings hurt or throw in the towel because your first iteration
was truly awful, you’re not going to be able to free yourself to be truly
innovative.
"We do a lot around
here around design thinking and human-centered design, testing early ideas with
customers, really giving them the opportunity to fail fast before you spend six
months or a year building a product that no one wants to buy. We work with them
quite a bit on that," she says.
When Goldstein brings in
founders to speak with students, she doesn’t want them to share the
"happily ever after" version of their stories—she wants to hear about
what went wrong and how they handled it. You learn more from mistakes—and from
hearing about mistakes—than from successes. She wants her students to know that
the stories of "overnight successes" are often predicated by long
periods of frustration and attempts at innovation.
"We all know too
well that [immediate success] is the exception, not the rule. That's what you
end up hearing about, but that's not reality. It's a long slog, and it takes a
lot longer than they think it's going to be," she says.
GWEN MORAN
http://www.fastcompany.com/3058731/7-essential-lessons-from-the-harvard-innovation-lab?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter-featured&position=3&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=04142016
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