BOOK SUMMARY 173
Stoking Your
Innovation Bonfire
·
Summary written by: Andy Budgell
“Successful, growing organizations often focus
on driving out the operational inefficiencies they maintained during their
start-up phase, and unintentionally erect barriers to innovation as they become
ever more efficient and profitable.”
Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, pg 1
Braden
Kelley, author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, is no stranger
to innovation. He was the founder of Blogging Innovation, the internet’s
fastest growing innovation community. He has recently teamed up with another
innovating authority Rowan Gibson (who penned the forward to this book), who
have collaborated on InnovationExcellence.com.
Stoking
Your Innovation Bonfireis a distillation of his
original blog, and is an invaluable resource for managers looking to break down
the barriers that prevent innovation in their companies and organizations.
Golden Egg
Move Innovation to the Centre
“You have to make sure that stakeholders know
not only that innovation is important to the organization, but also what
innovation means in their organization and how they can participate.”
Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, pg 10
Is
innovation at the centre – the heart – of your company? If it isn’t, it should
be. Your employees must recognize that innovation is not only valued, but is a
priority in your organization. “Otherwise,” as Kelley writes, “how can
stakeholders be expected to make any significant changes?” (10)
As
most of us know, humans are naturally resistant to change (doubly so in
business, where failure can mean termination). To circumvent this fear, a
clear innovation vision must be articulated (complete with a
plan) by the senior leaders. As Kelly explains, “An effort to move innovation
to the center is best led by the CEO, but it requires the support and
involvement of the senior leadership to tell the stories to employees and
customers about what the organization is trying to achieve, what innovation
means to their organization, and how the employees and other stakeholders can
participate.” (10)
An
innovation vision is fluid and always changing, depending upon the
marketplace’s needs at any given time. That said, there are a few places
we can start in creating our own.
GEM # 1
Innovate for the Future Present
“The ideal is to design a product based on
customer insights appropriate to the time of the product launch to maximize the
useful life of the customer insights.”
Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, pg 57
In
researching Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, Kelley spoke with
ethnographer Cynthia DuVal who advised ethnographers and researchers involved
in innovation “to consider the timeline of the development process when
extracting insights.” (56) This is critical to success because “if you’ve got a
12- to 18-month product or service development process to go from insight to
in-market, then you should be looking not to identify the insights that are
most relevant today, but the insights that will be most relevant 12 to 18
months from now.” (56) This is innovating for the future present, anticipating
what your consumers will need at the time when you plan to launch your product
or service. This kind of innovation isn’t easy, and necessitates flexibility in
case the insights you have predicted are a little off the mark. But almost all
of the leaders in any particular field (Apple, for instance) have mastered
this. Those who haven’t have fallen behind, many irretrievably so. The trick
for innovating for the present future is to get to know your customer well and
learn to think one step ahead of them.
What
is your customer asking for? What can you extrapolate from that to
identify what they mightwant in the future?
GEM #2
Accessing the Voice of the Customer
“The man or woman stitching up your clothing
has no idea whether the stitching method worked well for you, or if you were
happy with the product. They only know whether they made their daily quota and
how much failed Quality Control. If the persons stitching up your clothing had
access to the voice of the costumer, would they do their job differently? Would
they feel differently about their job?”
Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, pg 47
In
today’s business world, the employee class is largely disconnected from the
voice of the customer. A consumer’s thoughts on a product or service, whether
they loved it, were generally satisfied but thought it required improvement,
hated it, or otherwise is typically relegated to the company’s marketing or
customer research department. Kelley would argue that this detachment
between the employee class and the consumer is not conducive to innovation and
the creation of a quality product or service.
“Today’s
customer benefits from marketing developments such as mass customization, mass
personalization, and micro-segmentation. In addition, they have unrivaled
access to communication channels to make their preferences known.” (47) I found
the example that Kelley provided, and quoted at the beginning of this GEM to be
a good one. I’ll offer another. My favourite holiday film, A Christmas
Carol, starring Alastair Sim was released two years ago on Blu-ray by VCI
Home Entertainment. While the quality of the film on Blu-ray was miles ahead of
the previous standard definition DVD incarnation (especially for a 60 year old
film), there were still many problems with the video and audio that could have
easily been avoided. As Kelley writes, today’s consumer “has unrivaled access
to communication channels”. Today’s home video enthusiasts are especially
savvy. Gone are the days when you blindly picked up a movie off the shelf;
today there are reviewers to tell you if a film has been properly presented on
home video. The said reviewers pointed these flaws in their reviews of A
Christmas Carol, which deterred many from purchasing the film. Consumers in
turn voiced these problems on such online forums as the Home Theater Forum and
Blu-ray.com, and on VCI’s Facebook page and through their customer support
e-mail address. This year they’re releasing the film again on Blu-ray and have
vowed that they have gotten their product right this time. If they don’t, you
know consumers will be using these online outlets to make sure their voices are
heard.
Simply
stated, Kelley is an advocate of allowing anyone in a company to access to the
voice of the customer – for the betterment of the company, the employee and the
consumer. As Kelley himself asks, “what do you have to lose?” Nothing!
Who in
your company is interacting directly with the end user? Are there other
people that should be? (The
answer is “yes”, by the way.)
Braden Kelley’s Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is a small book jam packed with invaluable information on how to ignite innovation and is a vital tool in helping erode the barriers to lasting innovation. Throughout the text Kelley provides many helpful illustrations, diagrams, and graphs, as well as more than 30 pages of appendices to get your innovation juices flowing. He even went so far as to establish InnovationBonfire.com for the overflow of material that didn’t make the final manuscript. (Where you can be sure there’s plenty of opportunity for user feedback) Simply put, Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is a must read to help you and your team get innovating, and stay ahead of the competition.
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