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Tom Peters: Work on Your Writing!

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A good word from Tom Peters:

(How does this harmonize with my linking last week to Penelope Trunk’s post on not making a big deal out of typos on blogs? Peters is addressing a larger and more macro issue — he’s not talking about typos. However, eliminating typos would be a sub-set, for sure, of good writing.

Further, Trunk wasn’t saying that lots of typos are good or that we shouldn’t care about them at all; her point in general was that in the medium of blogging and the press for time that comes from it being avocational for most, an occasional typo isn’t such a big deal.)

HT: BNET

What Exactly is Thinking Outside the Box?

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From FedEx Delivers: How the World’s Leading Shipping Company Keeps Innovating and Outperforming the Competition:

When looking for these creative ideas and innovative solutions, it is often said that one should “think outside the box.” But what exactly is this proverbial “box”?

You can think of it as the space in the brain that contains all those bits of information and connections made so far. A dot is a bit of information in the knowledge base. And after solving a problem, repeatedly the same way, the connections become automatic. So, when a person is faced with the same problem, the mind, without any conscious effort presents the old, known solution.

In many ways, the mind operates like a computer. It scans the knowledge base of the memory (mind) to come up with creative solutions. If the knowledge base is old, the ideas generated may be obsolete. If the knowledge base is limited to a very small part of the total business process or operation, then the solution will only take that area into account.

Solutions that are derived from the same thought processes that the mind has used for years are unlikely to be innovative. The requirement for outside-the-box thinking is the ability to make new connections. New connections can be made in one of two ways: (1) having more dots to connect (a new or updated knowledge base) or (2) connecting the old dots in new imaginative ways.

Because creativity is the ability to connect seemingly unrelated variables (the dots we store in our minds) in imaginative ways, employees must continually update their knowledge bases…

Why Kiva Works

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Seth Godin has a good section in Meatball Sundae on how Kiva serves as a good example of the difference between an organization that is in sync with the nature of the web and one that isn’t.

He writes:

I attended an all-day brainstorming session with one of the oldest, best-known nonprofits in the country. They have a fancy web site, loaded with Flash features, tell-a-friend buttons, and a blog.

Last year, the site raised two million dollars. This year they want to do more.

With a mailing list of five hundred thousand e-mail accounts, this organization has demonstrated that they can extract money from people who sign up for “e-mail blasts.” And the stated goal of the group is to increase the size of the list by a factor of six, to three million. Then, using free stamps (e-mail), they can hammer this list to raise a lot of money for their good work.

Compare this organization to Kiva. Kiva is a brand-new [it was a few years ago, when Godin wrote this] organization that, after just a few months, generated nearly ten times as much traffic as the older group. And they are raising more in a month online than competition does in a year.

Is it because they have a better site?

Nope. It’s because they have a different sort of organization. They created a web-based nonprofit that could never even exist without the New Marketing. One group uses the web to advance its old agenda, while the other group is of and by and for the web.

One is focused on market share, on getting big by controlling the conversation. The other is into fashion, in creating stories that spread because people want to spread them.

And that’s the schism, the fundamental demarcation between the Old and the New.

One organization wants the New Marketing to help it grow a traditional mailing list so it can do fundraising and support a traditional organization.

The other (Kiva) is creating an organization that thrives on the New Marketing rather than fighting it.

Kiva works because the very nature of their organization requires the Web at the same time that their story is so friendly to those who use the web. Kiva connects funders (that would be you) with individuals in the developing world who can put a microloan to good use. Doing this in a world of stamps is almost impossible to consider. But doing it online plays to the strengths of the medium, and so, at least for now, the users of the medium embrace the sotry and spread the word.

Please note that I’m not insisting that everyone embrace these new techniques. All I’m arguing for is synchronization. Don’t use the tactics of one paradigm and the strategies of another and hope that you’ll get the best of both. You won’t.

After just a few minutes of conversation at the older nonprofit, one person realized, “So, if we embrace this approach, we don’t have to just change our web site — we’re going to have to change everything about our organization. Our mission, our structure, our decision making. . . . ” Exactly.

An Easy Way to Measure the Creative Environment of Your Organization

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From FedEx Delivers: How the World’s Leading Shipping Company Keeps Innovating and Outperforming the Competition:

Creativity in the business world involves continuously asking “What if . . . ?” Yet when faced with a problem, people tend to quickly lock into “how to” — a quick solution — before exploring all the options.

An easy way to measure the creative environment in an organization is to count how often someone in the company asks questions like “What if we frame the problem this way?” “What if we look at the relationships between these variables?” “What if we explore these options?”

Innovation Comes from Unexpected Juxtapositions

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From FedEx Delivers: How the World’s Leading Shipping Company Keeps Innovating and Outperforming the Competition:

When it comes to innovation, the question is not how to innovate but how to invite ideas. How do you invite your brain to encounter thoughts that you might not otherwise encounter? Creative people let their mind wander, and they mix ideas freely. Innovation often comes from unexpected juxtapositions, from connecting subjects that aren’t necessarily related.

Another way to generate ideas is to treat a problem as though it were generic. If you’re experiencing a particular problem, odds are that other people are experiencing it too. Generate a solution, and you may have an innovation.

The Value of Design

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Well stated, from a Time article from a few years ago (but still very relevant):

Most high-tech companies don’t take design seriously. They treat it as an afterthought. Window-dressing.

But one of [Steve] Jobs’ basic insights about technology is that good design is actually as important as good technology.

All the cool features in the world won’t do you any good unless you can figure out how to use said features, and feel smart and attractive while doing it.

Reverse Engineering Google's Innovation Machine

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Harvard Business Review has a good article on Google’s ecosystem of innovation. For a quick overview, here is the idea in brief.

Also, here are two very dense and interesting sentences from the article:

“Every piece of the business plays a part, every part is indispensable, every failure breeds success, and every success demands improvement.”

“If the company’s expressed mission is to organize the world’s information, it has a somewhat less exalted but equally important unexpressed commercial mission: to monetize consumers’ intentions.”

The Innovator's DNA

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Harvard Business Review has a good article on how five discovery skills distinguish true innovators.

Here is the idea in brief, from the site:

The habits of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and other innovative CEOs reveal much about the underpinnings of their creative thinking. Research shows that five discovery skills distinguish the most innovative entrepreneurs from other executives.

Doing

•   Questioning allows innovators to break out of the status quo and consider new possibilities.

•   Through observing, innovators detect small behavioral details—in the activities of customers, suppliers, and other companies—that suggest new ways of doing things.

•   In experimenting, they relentlessly try on new experiences and explore the world.

•   And through networking with individuals from diverse backgrounds, they gain radically different perspectives.

Thinking

•    The four patterns of action together help innovators associate to cultivate new insights.

How Do You Predict What is Going to Happen?

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Every business and organization needs to anticipate the future. Failure to anticipate where things are going often results in outdated models that hinder organizational effectiveness. But how do you predict what is going to happen?

You can’t. But one part of the solution is found in the title for a book that Peter Drucker once said he wanted to write: “The Future that has Already Happened.”

Joseph Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy, put it this way: “We see what’s going on in the world — not what will happen, but what is already happening that most people do not yet see. Then we develop frameworks that enable others to see it too and determine what they should do about it.”

In other words, the critical skill for anticipating the future is actually the ability to understand the present. That is, to understand the present in a way that goes beyond the obvious. The way things will go tomorrow is to a large extent a function of what is happening now, but which most of us just don’t have the frameworks to see.