Three Innovation Distinctions (Part 3): Diversity not Homogeneity

This is the third of my “innovation distinctions” entries.

In the first part of this series, I wrote why you should focus on “Challenges, not Ideas.” Next, I addressed the distinction of “Process, not Events.”

In this final entry, I discuss why innovation requires “Diversity not Homogeneity.” Be sure to read the previous two articles before reading this one.

As mentioned in the other blog entries, I first shared these distinctions with a group of speakers and authors who were brainstorming ways to improve the learning experience for other speakers and authors who attend their conferences. Here’s the Catch 22: Having only speakers and authors speaking to other speakers and authors does not lead to much creativity. Most of the “ideas” presented are well-worn and don’t address the “real world” outside of the industry.

Therefore, my last suggestion to the group was to increase the level of diversity at these learning experiences. This would provide a wider range of ideas, suggestions, and points-of-view.

How does diversity apply to an organization?

Diversity can mean a wide variety of things:

• Diversity of race, creed, color, sex, etc
• Diversity of innovation styles
• Diversity of disciplines

I won’t address the first point as that has been a topic of discussion for decades. Let me tackle the next two.

Diversity of Innovation Styles
The second point ties directly to my Innovation Personality Poker system.

In the card-based game, I discuss the four primary innovation styles: analytical, creative, planning/action, engagement.  Most organizations favor one over another and therefore do not have a good balance of styles. There’s a reason for this.

Although homogeneous teams are often more efficient (i.e., you get things done faster), having a bunch of “yes men” working for you is not the answer for long-term growth. When people think too much alike, new ideas struggle to surface. In these homogeneous climates, innovation and growth (i.e., effectiveness) suffer.

The essence of successful companies, then, is the ability to be both efficient and effective. They are able to focus on both production and innovation, not just doing things right but also doing the right things.

There’s plenty of evidence that team diversity translates directly into corporate profits. Sigal Barsade and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school studied top management teams at large corporations in the United States. Interestingly, the more diverse the functional roles of the members of those teams were, the greater the average, market-adjusted financial return in those companies. Diversity of the top leaders translated into bottom-line results.

In Personality Poker, there are four key concepts:

• You need people in your organization “play to their strong suit.” That is, make sure that everyone understands how they contribute to and detract from the innovation process. This includes ensuring that you have the right people with the right leadership styles in your organization.
• As an organization, “play with a full deck.” You must embrace a wide range of innovation styles. Instead of hiring on competency and chemistry, also hire for a diversity of innovation styles. Every step of the innovation process must be addressed. You need people who are great at conducting research, delivering results, developing plans and reports, building relationships, and creating new ideas, amongst other things.
• “Deal out the work.” That is, you must divide and conquer. You can’t have everyone in your organization do everything. Instead, get them to divvy up the work based on which style is most effective at a given task. You can’t have everyone generating ideas, or focusing on planning.
• Recognize that in order to treat everyone the same, you must treat everyone differently. People have different needs in terms of how they like to be managed, how they like to be praised, and how they want to contribute to the organization. In order to attract and retain a well-balanced organization you must be prepared to treat people as they want to be treated. To do this, you must overcome the inertia of your company’s personality and embrace the needs of the individual personalities.

I could write a whole book on the value of diverse teams.  Oh, wait, I did!  My Personality Poker book will be published by Penguin’s Portfolio imprint Fall 2010.  Throughout, I provide examples of, and evidence for the value of having a diversity of “styles” within your organization.

But what about the third type of diversity: The diversity of disciplines.

Diversity of Discipline
A discipline is any area of expertise like biology, chemistry, physics or mathematics. You can have an organization comprised of diverse innovation styles while sharing only one discipline.

A while back, I spoke with Al Bredenberg, Senior Researcher from ILO Institute. He subsequently wrote an excellent blog entry on the topic of diversity where he quotes me. He also mentions a Harvard Business Review article by Lee Fleming that suggests that companies with less diversity of discipline produce better overall financial results than highly diverse ones.

“The financial value of the innovations resulting from such cross-pollination is lower, on average, than the value of those that come out of more conventional, siloed approaches. In other words, as the distance between the team members’ fields or disciplines increases, the overall quality of the innovations falls…. But my research also suggests that the breakthroughs that do arise from such multidisciplinary work, though extremely rare, are frequently of unusually high value—superior to the best innovations achieved by conventional approaches…When members of a team are cut from the same cloth, you don’t see many failures, but you don’t see many extraordinary breakthroughs either.”

However, as the diversity of disciplines increases, “the average value of the team’s innovations falls while the variation in value around that average increases. You see more failures, but you also see occasional breakthroughs of unusually high value.”

Therefore, although there is value to diversity of disciplines, the challenges seem to outweigh the benefits.

What’s the solution to having a diversity of disciplines without having to deal with the inherent complexities?

Open Innovation. By working with companies like InnoCentive, you get the value of discipline diversity while having few of the downsides.  You get the take advantage of a wide range of experiences while only paying for successful solutions.

I will write more on Open Innovation in subsequent entries.

The Bottom Line
Diversity can create incredible value for an organization. It can help facilitate the innovation process. It can help increase the quantity and quality of breakthrough ideas. The key is knowing the right way of managing and engaging a diverse set of perspectives.

More Blog Entries Coming Soon

I have been working ’round the clock to finish my Personality Poker manuscript.  It goes to the publisher Feb 1.  After that, I will be back and blogging in full force…

R.I.P. Robert B. Parker

Today I learned that one of my favorite authors, Robert B. Parker, passed away.

He is probably best know for his “Spenser” books.  These fast-paced crime stories are based in Boston (my hometown) and were the  inspiration for the ’80s TV show, “Spenser: For Hire.”  I read every book and loved them all.

He is also the author of the Jesse Stone books which were made into several made-for-TV movies starring Tom Selleck.  And he wrote Appaloosa which was turned into a major motion picture featuring Ed Harris.

You can read a tribute to him in the Wall Street Journal.

Bob, you will be missed!

The picture is of me with Robert Parker at his home in 2008.  He and his wife Joan hosted a lovely dinner party there for me and 20 of my friends.  It will be a night I always remember.

Three Innovation Distinctions (Part 2): Process Not Events

In the first part of this series, I wrote why you should focus on challenges, not ideas. You should read that article before proceeding.

In this second entry, I will focus on “Process, not Events.”

I first shared these three distinctions with a bunch of speakers and authors.  In the speaking industry, conferences/conventions are the primary model for professional development.   That is, a bunch of people get together for a few days.  The days are comprised of presenters on the stage who share their “wisdom” with attendees.  When the event is over, the learning ends.  And for most individuals, progress ends.

People who attend these events leave with a laundry list of ideas.  Most people never implement any of the ideas.  They just sit on the shelf in a binder.

This, in a nutshell, is what happens in the innovation programs of many businesses.  They hold ad hoc brainstorming sessions. Or maybe they run a campaign using a crowdsourcing tool.   They develop new ideas.  If they are lucky, those ideas do get implemented. But quite often, the event ends and progress ends.  Regardless, innovation does not happen again until someone has another stroke of inspiration and decides to hold another event.

Innovation in most organizations is episodic.  It is unpredictable.  And it is certainly not repeatable.

But what if you had a systematic way for ensuring that innovation continued long after the event?  What if you didn’t need to wait for divine intervention for your next big idea to sprout?  What if you could make innovation repeatable?  To do this, you want to move from “innovation as an event” to “innovation as a process.”

Back to the authors and speakers…what if, instead of just events, there was a process that helped people see their ideas through to fruition?  What if everyone came to the event with some challenges?  The process could involve regular mentoring or an online community.  There could be measures in place to help monitor progress.  The point is, there is a process to help ensure progress.

In the business world, we have the opportunity to take this process-driven innovation concept a bit further.

For this “event to process” transition to be successful, the first step is to start treating innovation like you would treat any other part of the business. For example, your organization’s finance department has skilled experts, measures, supporting technology (e.g., Oracle or SAP), processes (e.g., processes for closing the books at year end), an owner (the CFO), and a strategy.

The innovation “process” requires all of these elements, and more, including skilled innovation experts (e.g., an innovation center of excellence aka innovation master blackbelts), innovation measures (e.g., return on investment for each idea), innovation management technologies (e.g., InnoCentive’s @Work solution), an innovation process, an innovation “czar” (aka advocate, Chief Innovation Officer, VP Innovation), and a clearly articulated innovation strategy (what you expect to achieve with your innovation program).

I call this level either “innovation as a process” or more accurately, “innovation as a discrete capability.”  You can read more about this in my “Innovation Philosophy” page.

With these fundamentals in place, you can begin to make innovation a repeatable and predictable process whereby creativity is encouraged throughout the organization and the best ideas are implemented.

It’s worth noting that after successfully moving through the process level of innovation, the highest level of innovation is embedded innovation (aka embedded capability or environment). With both the event- and process-driven levels, innovation tends to be reactionary and discrete. It is somewhat separate from the business. With embedded innovation, people not only innovate to deal with “problems/challenges” that are presented to them, but in everything they do. They continuously, even radically, improve their products, processes and organization.

I could write much more on this topic.  In fact I did.  I originally wrote about the three level of innovation in my 2001 book, 24/7 Innovation,” and upgraded the concepts for my “Little Book of BIG Innovation Ideas.”

Look for the third and final installment of this three part series sometime soon.

I Need Your Help: Personality Poker Book Subtitle

I need your help!

I am in the process of finishing the manuscript for my next book, “Personality Poker.”  The book will be published by Penguin’s Portfolio books and is expected in stores September 2010.

We have been working on a subtitle for the book – and I would love your input.

I realize that you don’t know the details of the book.  But in general, it is about creating high performing innovation teams through the use of my specially designed poker cards.  There are a few key concepts:

1. Individuals should “play to their strong suit.”  In Personality Poker, the four suits correlate to the four primary innovation styles and the four steps of the innovation process.  Therefore, if you understand your innovation style/suit, you can maximize your contributions to your team.   [NOTE: "strong suit" is actually a term from bridge and not poker]
2. Organizations must “play with a full deck.”  That is, companies must have all of the styles (and sub-styles) in order to truly be innovative.  Most organizations are out of balance and have too many of just one or two styles.  This inhibits innovation.
3. “Deal out the work.”  Once everyone is clear about their role in the innovation process, you want to divide and conquer.  Avoid having everyone do everything.  Give people specific tasks and roles.

That’s the 10,000 (maybe 30,000) foot view.  You can learn more – and watch a video – on the Personality Poker page.

So, the question is, what is a good subtitle? Here’s a list of some ideas we had…

• “[How to] Play Your Best Hand to Win Big in Business”
• “[How to] Play with a Full Deck to Win Big in Business”
• “[How to] Play to Your Strong Suit to Win Big in Business”
• “[How to] Play with a Full Deck to Create High Performing Teams”
• “[How to] Play to Your Strong Suit to Create High Performing Teams”
• “[How to] Play Your Best Hand to Create High Performing Teams”

Do you like any of these?  Note that the “How to” is optional as each subtitle can stand on its own without those words.

Better yet, I would love to get new ideas for a subtitle.

Please leave your suggestion (either a new idea or a vote for an existing idea) as a comment.  If we end up using your subtitle, we will send you the Personality Poker system (a $200 value).  Plus, when the new book is published, we will send you a signed copy (with an additional deck of the redesigned cards).

Thanks in advance for your help.

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