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Innovation Blog
How To Get Your Customers To Innovate For You: Building a Customer Innovation Center
By Shlomo Maital
If you happen to be in St. Paul, Minnesota, and survive the freezing weather and deep snow, drop in to 3M’s “World of Innovation” Center. You will find 40 “technology platforms” that 3M believes can be combined and applied to meet market needs.
3M wants its customers to come and see these platforms and then come up with ideas — like using dental technology to improve car parts. Visteon, an automotive supplier and customer of 3M, has worked with 3M (following a visit to the Innovation Center) to develop navigation displays, Thinsulate material (to reduce noise) and optical films that hide elements of the dashboard until the driver asks for them to be displayed. These technologies appear in a new concept car developed jointly by 3M and Visteon.
According to Mary Tripsas, associate professor at Harvard Business School, more and more companies are building centers where customers are invited for face-to-face innovation sessions. [1] 3M has set up such centers in Japan, Brazil, Germany, India and China. Its 23rd such center opened this month in Dubai!
Usually, notes Tripsas, such centers are located near the company’s own research centers. They help bring marketplace customer-driven ideas to their innovation efforts.
Dr. John Horn, VP R&D at 3M’s transportation and industrial business, notes the Centers are not just about harvesting ideas, they also cement long-term relationships with customers. He notes that at the Centers, no products are shown. ”It would constrain their thinking,” he notes. He says that the focus is not to find out what customers need, but rather what they are trying to accomplish. Typically a visiting customer team presents an open-ended view of their business to 3M experts, who pepper them with questions.
These centers remind me of EMC2 ’s Executive Marketing Center, where customers similarly present their business. Only after deep listening does EMC suggest a solution — and usually, a sale results.
Hersey, the chocolate company, has a similar center. There they try different merchandising arrangements, to see which work best. Pitney Bowes too has one. I once visited a model store at Staples headquarters, used to test new store layout.
HBS Professor Ranjay Gulati’s new book Reorganize for Resilience discusses customer innovation centers, as part of his study of how companies can be more customer-centric.[2]
[1] “Seeing customers as partners in innovation”, New York Times, Dec. 27, 2009.
[2] Gulati, Ranjay. Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Organization. Harvard Business School Press, 2010.
By Shlomo Maital
Robert Ballard
James Cameron
This is the story of two innovators, light years apart in their endeavors, but closely linked by two things: the sea and Titanic, once the largest moving object on earth. James Cameron, who made the highest-revenue movie in history Titanic and Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck of the Titanic on the ocean bottom, (as well as the wreck of the Bismarck) were recently featured on Sixty Minutes segments. Cameron is a movie director. Ballard is an undersea explorer. Here are the lessons their life and work teach us.
1. Have a Dream, Pursue It Relentlessly. Cameron: “I’ve been working up to this for a long time. This is the film I always thought I wanted to make when I set down the path of being a filmmaker,” Cameron said. He wrote Avatar years ago, but had to wait for technology to catch up with his vision of blue people and alien worlds. “I’ve loved fantasy and science fiction since I was a kid. I’m an artist. I’m an illustrator. I’ve been drawing creatures, and characters, and robots and spaceships since I was in high school. I grew up landlocked. Seven hundred miles from the ocean. But the Jacques Cousteau specials, this was in the late 60s, brought the ocean into our living rooms and into my already inflamed imagination that loved, you know, exploration and fantasy. So I had a love affair with the ocean that began before I had actually even seen an ocean.” Ballard: For someone who has devoted his life to exploring the ocean, Ballard was born in an unlikely place: Kansas. As a young boy, he was inspired by the explorer, Captain Nemo, in Jules Vernes’ “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” Since then he has been on more than 120 undersea expeditions all over the world. What still excites Ballard most is making new discoveries and he’s done it time and time again. Ballard is 67 but is unstoppable. 60 Minutes asked him: “In all these years, is it the same passion now that inspires you?” He answers: “Oh yes, of course. Discovery is an unbelievable, unbelievable feeling,” Ballard said. “And it never loses its magic?” “No, because it always could beat the last one,” Ballard said. “People say, ‘What is your greatest discovery?’ And I say, ‘It’s the one I’m about to make.’”
2. Just Do It! Cameron: Growing up in Canada, his passions were movies, art and science. After the family moved to California in his late teens, he spent some aimless years, dropping out of junior college, and working as a machinist and a bus mechanic. “And then one day I just quit my job and started making, making a film, a short film,” Cameron said. “You once said: ‘I went from being a bum who liked to smoke dope and hang out by the river to this completely obsessed maniac.’ What was the turning point? What was the point at which you lost your mind?” 60 Minutes asked. “Or found it? I think, you know, I found my calling,” Cameron said. “And I think the moment you’re making a film, no matter how crude, no matter how small or cheap the film is, you’re a filmmaker.”
3. Break the Rules! Ballard: “By cheating. I basically didn’t do the search pattern the way they had done it. See the traditional approach to searching for something in darkness, cause you can’t see, is use a sonar. And you lower the sonar down, and you tow it back and forth, and you mow the lawn. And that’s what all three of them had done. And I went, ‘Well, clearly that’s not working.’” So Ballard used what he had just learned investigating the Navy subs: that when a vessel sinks, the wreckage is carried by the current, leaving a trail of debris like a comet. Applying that to the Titanic, he decided not to look for the ship itself. Instead he searched for the trail of debris that he estimated stretched over a mile, a much bigger target. Ballard also expanded the original search area. And instead of using the sonar to slowly comb every inch of the sea floor as the others had done, he used cameras on a remote controlled vehicle to hunt visually, spacing his search lines almost a mile apart. “So I was able to go through the box real quick. And sure enough, I picked up the trail, and as soon as I picked up the trail I knew exactly: go north. And I walked right into the Titanic,” he explained. Asked how the other experts could not worked that out before him, Ballard said, “They were in the box. They were in the, this is the way you do it. …I live outside the box. I’m always outside the box.”
4. Never Ask Others To Do What You Yourself Will Not Do!… Cameron: His 1989 film “The Abyss” is still remembered as one of the toughest movie shoots ever. Cameron filmed it in South Carolina, in a decommissioned nuclear power plant filled with ten million gallons of water. “We were underwater for ten weeks. Six days a week, eight to ten hours a day, submerged,” he remembered.
5. …But Demand the Very Best! Cameron: From The Abyss on through Titanic, Cameron got a reputation for driving cast and crew relentlessly – come hell or high water – to get the shot. It’s not for nothing that the letters on the cap in his office stand for: “Head – M*** F**** – In Charge.” “I’m not in this to phone it in or to do mediocre work. I tell everybody when we start a project, ‘You know, we’re going to the Super Bowl. Just understand that. You got to be ready. Don’t, as Martin Sheen said in ‘Apocalypse Now,’ you know, ‘Don’t get on the boat if you’re not ready to go all the way,’” Cameron said.
6. If You Need Money — Abandon Modesty. Ballard: He admits he is a showman and a self-promoter, but he says he has to be. “Because I have to raise money, I have to promote myself. I don’t want to say, ‘Well I’m not very good at this, give me a bunch of money.’ No, obviously I’m a salesman,” he explained. Cameron: Cameron famously declared himself “King of the World” when Titanic won 11 Oscars in 1998. Since then he has been immersed in a wildly ambitious and very expensive 3D science fiction fantasy that mixes real actors with computer generated creatures, the sum of which he believes will change the movie business forever. [The cost of Avatar is estimated at $400 m., including marketing and promotion].
7. But Star or Not, Remember It is “We”, not “I”! Ballard: . “Science is a ‘we,’ not an ‘I.’ It truly is. I didn’t do anything. We did a lot of things. But in our system, in America, we have this star-based system. Star athletes, star news people, star politicians. And stars are ‘I.’ And the academic world is really, honestly a ‘we.’” “But you’re the star quarterback,” 60 Minutes said. “I’m the star. But it can get you in trouble in that world that doesn’t believe in that star-based system,” Ballard said. Cameron: Avatar is set on the moon Pandora, a fantasy Eden, which earthlings want to exploit. It’s a Shangri-la created entirely by computers. “You’re creating a world, every creature in it, every blade of grass, every tree, every cloud in the sky, every little reflection in the eyes of the characters,” Cameron explained. His state-of-the-art computer experts worked partly in New Zealand, partly on the 20th C. Fox lot where Marilyn Monroe once starred.
Innovation Blog
Lithium: Our Future is In The Hands of Bolivia
By Shlomo Maital
Meet Stan Whittingham. He is one of the world’s greatest innovators. Educated at Oxford University, he did a post-doc at Stanford, then stayed in America and worked for Exxon. While working there, in the 1970’s, he invented the lithium-ion battery. Today he is a professor at State University of New York in Binghamton, NY.
Lithium-ion batteries are found in your laptop, cellphone, iPhone, and many other devices. They have a number of major advantages over other types of batteries — to store 150 watt-hours of electricity, you need only 1 kg. of lithium-ion battery, while a 1 kg. NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) battery can store only 60-70 watt-hours, and a 1 kg. lead-acid battery (the kind you have in your car) stores only 25 watt-hours. Lithium is the lightest metal of all. Its current price is about $5.3 – $5.7 / kg.
Lithium-ion batteries are light; hold their charge (losing only 5 per cent per month); they have no ‘memory effect’ (you do not have to completely discharge them before recharging); and they can handle hundreds of charge-recharge cycles.
Lithium-ion batteries will play a key role in future electric cars, because of their light weight. Demand for lithium will expand rapidly in the future as a result. TRU Group projects demand for lithium will double by 2020, when 40 per cent of all batteries will be lithium-ion (mostly, in electric cars). TRU predicts that production of electric cars will rise from 1 m. cars in 2010 to 4.5 million in 2020 !
However, half of the world’s lithium is found in Bolivia, in its Uniyuni salt flates. There is an estimated 5.4 m. tons of lithium in the ground there. Annual world consumption is about 105,000 tons — so Bolivia has more than a 50-year supply (at present consumption rates), or 25 years at rates predicted for 2020. At current prices Bolivia’s lithium treasure is worth over $25 b. This is 50 per cent more than Bolivia’s annual GDP of $16.7 b. ! Bolivia’s President, Eva Morales, is determined that Bolivia will develop its own lithium treasure and keep the resulting wealth for Bolivia’s people, rather than ship the ore out elsewhere. This is reasonable — except, Bolivia lacks the capital and know-how to do so — to develop the complex mining and refining facilities that are needed, costing many billions of dollars.
According to Reuters: “Some far-sighted companies are already attempting to secure the rights to mine lithium in Bolivia’s Uyuni salt flats,” said Carl Firman, an analyst at Virtual Metals, adding that the metal is mined as a by-product in clays, brines, salts or hard rock.
“This will be fraught by political complexities, as Bolivia will not simply allow its lithium to be mined and exported elsewhere for downstream processing and fabrication,” he added.
Economists predict that scarcity of lithium would generate rising prices that lead to desperate research to find an alternative. Will Bolivia plays its cards smartly, cooperating with global companies with core competency in mining lithium? Or will it stubbornly insist on going it alone, creating an R&D race to find a different battery technology?
Andy Keates, who heads mobile battery technology for Intel, says lithium-ion technology is getting old. He notes that new directions, involving new chemistries, are: rechargeable zinc-alkaline , silver-zinc, and fuel cells (when batteries cannot be recharged). He thinks lithium-ion batteries will continue to improve by 7 per cent annually.
Innovation Blog
The Innovators’ 20 Commandments
By Shlomo Maital
This is adapted from something on the wall of my doctor’s office (annual checkup; please don’t skip yours). No-one in the office remembered where it came from.
The REAL Ten Commandments contain five do’s and five don’ts. The Innovators’ 20 Commandments are all do’s. Innovators always think positively.
1. Make friends with freedom and uncertainty.
2. Give money away, now! The money will follow.
3. Listen to old people.
4. Celebrate every gorgeous moment.
5. Stay loose; learn to watch snails.
6. Look forward to dreams.
7. Refuse to be responsible.
8. Do it for love.
9. Become yourself.
10. Have wild imaginings and perfect calm.
11. Draw on the walls.
12. Open up, dive in, be free.
13. Get wet
14. Write love letters
15. Entertain your inner child.
16. Refuse to “act responsibly”.
17. Post signs that say “Yes!” all over your house.
18. Drive away fear.
19. Cultivate moods.
20. Recognize your main deep passion and pursue it, no matter what.
Innovation Blog
Reinventing Ireland: How to Build an Innovation Ecosystem
By Shlomo Maital
Dec. 10/2009
Consider Ireland. Once Europe’s poorest nation, in 1988, Ireland reinvented itself. Driven by a powerful vision that united government, labor and industry, Ireland attracted multinational companies to build factories, attracted by an educated English-speaking labor force, low tax rates and Ireland’s strategic membership in the European Single Market. Ireland went rapidly from one of Europe’s poorest nations to its fastest-growing one.
But the 2007-9 global crisis hit Ireland hard. The economy contracted, and unemployment soared. Now, like other countries, Ireland again is working to reinvent itself — to build a new growth engine to replace the old worn-out one. I believe they will succeed. I believe that other countries should carefully study Ireland’s approach, given their past record of success.
Ireland’s two top universities, University College (Dublin) and Trinity College (Dublin) began a joint project, known as the Innovation Alliance, to work with government, business and venture capitalists. The aim? “To develop a world-class ecosystem for innovation that will drive enterprise, development and the creation of sustainable high-value jobs”.
The core of this ecosystem is a plan to link angel investors, venture funds, service providers and entrepreneurial mentors, that can help translate a novel idea into successful job-creating businesses. [1] Spearheading the effort is Burton Lee, a key member of the Irish Government task force whose mandate is to design the new system. “There is nowhere in Europe where all the elements of (such an) ecosystem are really functioning”, he notes.
Ireland has great universities and top scholars. Lee’s plan is to “turn Ph.D.’s into savvier businessmen and women.” I am sure he is aware of MIT Professor Edward Roberts’ finding, that other things equal, a Ph.D. seriously reduces the chances of success for an entrepreneur (in America), compared with an entrepreneur with an M.Sc. (Ph.D.’s, trained for perfection, take far too long to get to market).
I believe Ireland’s approach is validated by a new book, written by Harvard Business School Professor Josh Lerner, Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed—and What to Do about It. Lerner’s key point: government can play and often has played a key role in creating and stimulating entrepreneurial ecosystems, in Israel, Singapore — and even Silicon Valley, but more often, inept government policies have utterly failed. ”Particularly during the early years, the government played a critical role in shaping Silicon Valley, especially spending and funding from the U.S. Department of Defense,” Lerner notes.
In the post-global crisis era, the rules of the game have changed radically. The most important rule change: Governments today must be part of the solution, rather than be regarded as part of the problem. It is governments that will lead the effort to redefine and reshape innovative ecosystems. Countries that recognize this fastest, like Ireland, will reinvent themselves better and faster.
[1] See: Yasmine Ryan, “Banking on a Ph.D. ‘ecosystem’ to help the economy bloom”, IHT, Dec. 2, 2009, page 11 (www.iht.com).
Innovation Blog
‘KURZARBEIT’: German Bureaucrats as World-Class Innovators
By Shlomo Maital
Dec. 9/2009
As leaders and experts pronounce the end of the global recession worldwide, an army of workers who have lost their jobs and may never regain them are bitter and angry. In America, the rate of unemployment fell slightly in November to 10 per cent, but the number of long-term unemployed rose by 293,000 to 5.9 million, and the economy lost jobs for the 23rd straight month. In the 30-member OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the average rate of unemployment is 8.5 per cent. In Spain, it is a staggering 19 per cent, and the I.M.F. says it will reach 20 per cent in 2010.
Jobs continue to lag behind the economy. The reason is simple. Businesses reacted to the global downturn by shedding workers and boosting productivity. As the global economy recovers, those productivity gains mean it is not necessary or profitable to resume hiring. The same workers can produce more stuff. Why hire more of them? In America, in Q3 2009, non-farm labor productivity rose by a startling 8 per cent (annualized) — more than half coming from a sharp fall in hours worked.
What can nations do to mitigate the bad news — unemployment — that stems directly from good news — higher productivity growth?
A surprising source came up with a plan that works — German bureaucrats. This nation of 80 million is not renowned for creative thinking. Yet its plan, known as kurzarbeit (shortened work hours), has succeeded. In this plan, workers whose hours have been cut due to the recession have their pay supplemented by the government. In the plan, companies avoid firing workers and instead slash their hours by half; government supplements these workers’ salaries up to 2/3 of their former level, and more important, pays all the social benefits. That way, companies save half their wage bill, workers keep their jobs and income, and continue spending, bolstering the economy. Germany’s unemployment rate is 7.7 per cent, well below the OECD average and far below America’s 10 per cent. Some 1.4 million workers have benefited, and a recent report states that half a million jobs were saved.
The cost of the plan: a modest 5.1 b. euros a year. Compare that with America’s $ 1.2 trillion fiscal stimulus plan, that funneled $180 b. to bail out AIG alone, and which had very little impact on jobs. President Obama is now desperately searching for ways to create jobs.
The kurzarbeit plan is vital for Germany, because as the world’s largest exporter (now tied with China), Germany’s economy is built on mid-sized industrial companies with skilled experienced labor. Dump that labor, in a recession, and you may not get it back in the upturn.
Will it work for other countries, like America?
Probably not. In order to save industrial jobs, you have to have them in the first place. America shipped its industrial jobs to Asia in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Getting them back, a vital goal, will be a thousand times harder than it was giving them away to China.
Innovation Blog
Creating Radical Change With Baby Steps: 10 Incremental Innovations Create a Revolution – Case Study: Singapore’s Schools
By Shlomo Maital
Dec. 6/2009
Singapore schoolchildren
Innovators love sweeping radical inventions that change the world. But sometimes, radical change occurs only through patient, plodding incremental improvements, many of them, that together add up to a revolution.
In the West, addicted to instant gratification (see my blog, “Marshmallow”, Nov. 27), baby steps are too slow. We search for a magic bullet. But, usually there are none. In the East, in Asia, with far longer time perspective, slow incremental changes are de rigeur, compulsory. And they create force-multiplying change.
Here is an account of how Singapore used incremental change to build a world-leading school system, written by Lars Qvortrup (Dean of a leading Danish School of Education) and supplied to me by my friend Bilahari Kausikan, First Permanent Secretary of Singapore’s Foreign Affairs Ministry. Qvortrup notes that Singapore ranks #1 in the world in quality of education (according to IMD’s World Competitiveness rankings), and is consistently in the top five countries in the world in reading, math and science.
Qvortrup recently made a best-practices benchmarking visit to Singapore schools. Here is what he learned.
1. Vision: “Singapore decided in 1997 its future was to be a knowledge society” (a slogan many countries, incuding Israel, mouth, but few implement). “They focused on innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.” These core goals remain the central focus, within a highly disciplined system that measures performance through results and tests.
2. School is work. ”School is a workplace, where it is expected each student will do his or her utmost”. Pupils stand up when the teacher enters, and say, “Good morning sir (madam)”. The teacher says, “Are we ready?”. The children answer, Yes!”
3. Class management. “What works?”, “why does it work in one context but not another?” are questions constantly repeated. Teaching has a clear structure: “problem, analysis, method, solution. Work is done collectively. “Class sizes are very high, 30-40 students per class.” All classrooms have a projector, “so that teaching can be supported by PowerPoint”.
4. Sport and health: Many children arrive as early as 7 a.m., and have fun, play ball, and do “wushu”, a Chinese gymnastics program; for the overweight, there is jogging between 7:30 and 8 a.m. St. Margaret School has a huge cafeteria, with five different cuisines, and low prices, because food venders are private small businesses.
5. Testing: As early as 2nd grade, a test is implemented, and 30-40 students are put into a special class, where they are stimulated in different ways and encouraged to develop their abilities. A comprehensive exam given at the end of primary school (end of 6th grade) provide feedback for teachers, and comparison between schools.
6. Physical facilities: Schools are big and perfectly maintained. Averaging 1,000-1,500 students, classrooms are bright, well-maintained, well-designed and spacious. Quality and cleanliness support respect for education.
7. Teachers’ work is organized uniquely. Primary teaching ends at 1:30 pm. Children then go to after-school programs. Teachers do not go home. They each have a laptop computer and a desk (and very small office). They work until 5 or 6 pm. The principal sends the last teachers home at 6:30 pm.
8. Parents are involved — and kept out. There are Saturday workshops for parents, where math and science are reviewed, so parents can understand the teaching principles and help their children with homework. But the boundary between home and school is clear. “Now you are in school”, children understand.
9. Teaching is prestigious. All Singapore teachers study for five years at the National Institute of Education (NIE). Instruction is research-based. There are ten times as many applicants as there are student openings. “Teachers are well-educated and have professional pride.”
10. Talented teachers: “All teachers in Singapore have a right to 100 hours of continuing education a year — a right they are expected to utilize”. Commonly, 50 hours are used for professional development and subject-area specialization, and the other 50, for common, educational development.
What works well in Singapore may not work well elsewhere. But the main lesson from the above is clear and simple. Education is about schools and teachers. Make each excellent, in a hundred different pragmatic ways, and accept nothing but excellence. Reject excuses (such as, no budget, bureaucracy, poor teacher education, bulging classes, crumbling schools). Keeping making changes until excellence is achieved, and then reinforce it by redoubling innovation. And always, every day, benchmark best practices, within your own country and abroad.
Global Crisis Blog
Fall of the Wall: 20 Years Later
By Shlomo Maital
As I write this, I am watching German Chancellor Angela Merkel on CNN, in a sea of Germans, speaking informally about the extraordinary events two decades ago — events she personally witnessed and took part in, when she, then a young scientist crossed from East to West. Merkel chose not to create a formal diplomatic event with stuffy speeches, but simply stood elbow-to-elbow with thousands of Germans, some of whom had crossed with her on Nov. 9, 1989, after symbolically crossing from East to West again, as she did in 1989. Merkel thanked Mikhail Gorbachev, who was with her, for his policies that made the Fall of the Wall possible and eventually, on Dec. 25, 1991, led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. When Poland’s Solidarity movement won the June 4, 1989, election, the Russian ambassador to Poland called the Kremlin in panic and asked, what shall I do? what shall we do? Gorbachev had a simple answer. Do nothing. Let the election stand. It was in part Gorbachev’s non-intervention policy that enabled the Wall to fall.
The Berlin Wall was erected in June 1961, after some 3.5 million Germans fled East Germany to the West. The Wall had concrete walls, barbed wire, guard towers and a death strip that had anti-vehicle trenches, spikes and other types of defense. Between 1961 and 1989 some 5,000 people tried to escape over the Wall; an estimated 150 people died.
Those most surprised at the fall of the Wall were the Germans themselves. Most of them who witnessed the dramatic events of Nov. 9, 1989, said they never believed the monolithic German Democratic Republic would crumble so rapidly.
Today we know that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French Prime Minister Francois Mitterand were both worried and displeased by the fall of the Wall, understanding that it would bring German reunification and create Europe’s largest and most powerful economy. Indeed, unification came quickly. On Oct. 30, 1990, the new reunited Germany was announced. West Germany was in such a rush to implement the unification, that it offered to buy East German marks at a price of one such mark for a West German mark — at a time when the buying power was about eight to one. The resulting flood of marks into the system caused inflation, led the Bundesbank to raise interest rates – and ultimately, caused Britain to leave the European Monetary System, as the British wanted to free themselves from the straitjacket of high European interest rates and float the pound. (On Sept. 16, 1992, George Soros’ massive sales of pounds caused Britain to leave the European Exchange Rate Mechanism). So ironically, the fall of the Wall may have ultimately been responsible for keeping Britain out of the euro system.
These events, from 1989 through 1992 and beyond, show how appropriate is the initiative taken by German students to visually demonstrate the impact of the fall of the Wall. The students created 1,000 styrofoam dominos, each three meters high, and placed them along the path of those who fled from East to West. As one domino toppled another, we saw clearly how the Fall of the Wall led to a chain of remarkable events that forever changed history.
Congratulations to those innovative German students!
Innovation Blog
Poetry & Innovation: Mommy, Daddy, Tell Me a Story!
By Shlomo Maital
Nov. 4/2009
Do you want to build a powerful business innovation? I ask my students.
If you do — tell me a story. Build a powerful narrative that has real people in it, a plot, conflict, a story line, and above all, a happy end. These are all elements of every great children’s book, stories we all grew up on, Good Night, Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, and so on. Children make meaning out of the world through stories. So do we adults, it seems. War and Peace, Anna Karenina — great novels are all great stories.
So — I ask my students to write a great narrative, rather than a dull-as-dust business plan with a huge spreadsheet. Tell me a story. Tell me how you will build a prototype, sell to one customer, scale up — and change the world. And make sure there is a vivid photographic happy end.
Who is the main client for such a story? Investors? VC’s? No. The main is client is YOU yourself! Does your story excite you, does it reflect your deepest passions? If so, you have a business idea with potential to succeed. If not — you’re wasting your time. If you cannot energize yourself, you will not energize others that you will need on your team, in order to succeed.
Great stories create meaning. They are memorable. They inspire. No-one ever joined a business venture because of an inspiring spreadsheet. They do join because of a powerful change-the-world visionary narrative.
To tell the absolute truth — many of my students do not ‘get it’. They have been polluted by follow-the-rules here-is-how-to-do-it MBA course formulas for writing conventional business plans. Do it this way, students learn in their MBA studies. Is it not ironic that we teach entrepreneurship and innovation, by instructing our students to avoid innovation (in business plans) like the plague?
I find badly-needed moral support in last week’s New York Times column by Thomas Friedman, titled “More Poetry Please”. Here is what Friedman says:
“President Obama has not tied all his programs into a single narrative that shows the links [among all his ideas and initiatives]. …such a narrative would…evoke the kind of popular excitement that got him elected. Without it, the President’s eloquence is lost in a thicket of technocratic details. OBAMA NEEDS TO ENERGIZE THE PROSE of his Presidency by recapturing the poetry of his campaign!”
[Yesterday's (Tuesday) elections in the US prove the point. The Democrats lost two key races for Governor (New Jersey and Virginia), despite Obama's intervention there.]
Precisely! Every innovator, including Mr. “Yes, we can”, must energize the prose of his or her idea (the feet-on-the-ground business details) with head-in-the-clouds narrative poetry, to excite himself or herself and to energize the team, the investors, and even the clients.
But innovators, beware! Building such a narrative is extraordinarily difficult. Entrepreneurs are not supposed to be poets! Many innovators are engineers; engineers are trained to understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics, not the First Law of Rhetoric and Narrative.
Here is a suggestion. Do you have a business idea? Tell it to a six-year-old. Make it into a story. If you can hold their interest, and elicit questions, maybe you have a good business idea. If you cannot, if you cannot respond to “Mommy, Daddy, tell me a story”, with a good one – go back to the drawing board.
Innovation Blog
How to Say “I Love You” Without Saying “I Love You”!
By Shlomo Maital
Nov. 4/2009
A BBC World Service program on the songs of Irving Berlin and George and Ira Gershwin, American Jewish songwriters and musicians who lived in the 1930’s, reveals a key innovation principle:
Often, thinking IN the box [i.e. within difficult binding constraints or limitations] spurs enormous creativity.
In the 1930’s composer George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris] and his brother Ira, who wrote the words (lyrics), wrote wonderful love songs. They did so, however, without using the words “I love you”, because those words were overused and tired.
How do you say I love You without saying I Love You? Wow, here are two great examples: Gershwin’s Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, and Irving Berlin’s How Deep is the Ocean?
Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
This song was written for the 1937 movie musical Shall We Dance? By Ira and George Gershwin. It was sung by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who did an innovative dance while singing it, on …. roller skates! It is pure magic! Compare these lyrics with today’s rap!
Things have come to a pretty pass
Our romance is growing flat,
For you like this and the other
While I go for this and that,
Goodness knows what the end will be
Oh I don’t know where I’m at
It looks as if we two will never be one
Something must be done:
You say either and I say either,
You say neither and I say neither
Either, either
Neither, neither
Let’s call the whole thing off.
You like potato and I like potahto
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto,
Tomato, tomahto.
Let’s call the whole thing of
But oh, if we call the whole thing off
Then we must part
and oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart
So if you like pyjamas
and I like pyjahmas,
I’ll wear pyjamas
and give up pyjahmas
for we know we need each other so
we better call the whole thing off
let’s call the whole thing off.
You say laughter and I say larfter
You say after and I say arfter
Laughter, larfter
after arfter
Let’s call the whole thing off,
You like vanilla and I say vanella
you saspiralla, and I saspirella
vanilla vanella
chocolate strawberry
let’s call the whole thing of
but oh if we call the whole thing off
then we must part
and oh, if we ever part,
then that might break my heart
So if you go for oysters
and I go for ersters
I’ll order oysters
and cancel the ersters
for we know we need each other
we better call the calling off off,
let’s call the whole thing off.
I say father, and you say pater,
I saw mother and you say mater
Pater, mater
Uncle, auntie
let’s call the whole thing off.
I like bananas and you like banahnahs
I say Havana and I get Havahnah
Bananas, banahnahs
Havana, Havahnah
Go your way, I’ll go mine
So if I go for scallops
and you go for lobsters,
So all right no contest
we’ll order lobseter
For we know we need each other
we better call the calling off off,
let’s call the whole thing off.
How Deep is the Ocean?
Irving Berlin’s 1936 song, to which he wrote both words and music, conveys the deepest feelings of love , using I love you only twice, but as a question….
How can I tell you what is in my heart?
How can I measure each and every part?
How can I tell you how much I love you?
How can I measure just how much I do?
How much do I love you?
I’ll tell you no lie
How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?
How many times a day do I think of you?
How many roses are sprinkled with dew?
How far would I travel
To be where you are?
How far is the journey
From here to a star?
And if I ever lost you
How much would I cry?
How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?
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