Get Shouty

Innovation is undoubtedly the ‘secret sauce’ of business success. The good news is, the ability to innovate is a learnable skill — at least according to three researchers from INSEAD, Brigham Young and Harvard in their new study conducted over a six-year period.

‘Our research showed that at most companies, top executives do not feel personally responsible for coming up with strategic innovations,’ said Hal Gregersen of INSEAD. ‘True innovators rely on their courage to innovate and a willingness to take risks.’

Most innovative leaders possess five key “discovery skills” that distinguish them from their less creative colleagues:

1. Associating – The ability to successfully connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas from different fields, is central to the innovator’s DNA. The world’s most innovative companies prosper by capitalising on the divergent associations of their founders, executives, and employees.
2. Questioning – Innovators constantly ask honest questions that challenge common wisdom or ‘question the unquestionable.’ While most managers focus on how to make existing processes – the status quo – work better, innovative entrepreneurs are more likely to challenge assumptions.
3. Observing – Discovery-driven executives produce uncommon business ideas by scrutinizing common phenomena, especially the behaviour of potential customers.
4. Experimenting – Using the world as their laboratory, innovative entrepreneurs actively try out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots. Most engage in some form of active experimentation, whether it is intellectual exploitation, physical tinkering, or engagement in new surroundings.
5. Networking – Innovative entrepreneurs devote time and energy to finding and testing ideas through a network of diverse individuals in order to develop radically different perspectives. Unlike most executives who network to access resources, innovators go out of their way to meet people with different kinds of ideas and perspectives to extend their own knowledge domains.

The five skills, Gregersen says, are ‘a habit, a practice, a way of life’ for innovators.

Although Gregersen and his co-authors use the DNA metaphor, innovative entrepreneurs are actually made or developed, rather than born. “We each have unique, fixed physical DNA,” says Gregersen, “but in terms of creativity, we each have a unique set of learnable skills that we rely on in order to get to the ideas that will give us some insight.” Research involving identical twins suggests that only about 20-25 per cent of our creativity ability is geneticically driven. “This means the other 75-80 per cent comes from the world we live in,”

Quotes and data compiled from here, here and here. The study appears in the December 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review and can be accessed online at http://www.hbr.org.

New York photographer Spencer Tunick is looking for thousands of Australians to disrobe in the name of art on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.

The photographer, who has produced almost 100 installations around the world, wants to create an installation involving nude volunteers on the steps of the Sydney Opera House on Monday, March 1.

Tunick is hoping at least 2,000 people will get involved in the photograph to be called The Base.

“In a way, I’m making a base for the structure, a base for the architecture – and by combining straight and gay and lesbian people I’m weaving the different sexes and society together to form this wonderful fabric that holds up this gorgeous building,” he said.

I have a half a library of notebooks that have  acted as drawing boards and kept me company all throughout this year.

My favourite is the one I use on Fridays.

Fridays for me are for compassion and conversation- being there, in the moment, for both.  I’ve been fortunate in this downturn to have the opportunity of a four day week, and all the sums seem to have turned out in my favour. That extra day to play and give back….

Here are some snippets of the conversation notes:

• (note): expectations are  premeditated resentments (SHARE!!!)
• (note): what effects/ impacts handwriting on a day-to-day basis?
• (note): eating wild boar prosciutto with an ex vegan chef talking fish and chipocrates
• haiku and origami
• (List): Something fun, funny, relevant, timely. Entertain and Inform. Stuff that matters. Generosity, giving, sharing, real experiences, genuine interactions. Belive in something. Progress+ Passion+Playfulness
• (coffee morning list): Cognitive Edge/ Dave Snowden, Top 50 Arts videos on YouTube , Rolling Stone interview between William Burroughs and David Bowie, Laurie Lock Lee, Nancy White, Johnnie Moore, Dave Pollard

There’s a lot of organic flow chart diagrams unpopulated with text- empty buckets quickly drawn that I must have been using to explain a concept to someone. They all look completely mad though now.

The compassion scribbles are different. They’re witness to time spent in wards and waiting rooms:

• (List): scrabble, a bag of furry ears, 2 word dictionary, Julia + Julia

They’re longer, they’re less visual and more first person. The time between breaths. Pen and paper can bind, can help close open wounds.  Reading these notes reminds me how fresh those scars are. Luckily I’m a big believer in scars. They are a map of how you came to be and a measure of who you are.

BBH London has posted a series of “audio walks” on the Johnnie Walker Web site, in which folks like Richard Branson, Ranulph Fiennes and, yes, John Hegarty are heard ruminating about life and work while walking around places that mean something profound to them, personally or professionally.

In the clip, BBH founder Hegarty strolls through Carnaby Street and Soho in London, recapping his career. He covers lots of ground—why he was petulant and angry as a young creative, his advertising philosophy now, the interplay between inspiration and fear, what he learned about business from playing tennis,

I’m sure that everyone is under the ‘oh… can you get back to me before Christmas’ pump right now.

While it’s awesome for revenue that people are realising the ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’ nature of most marketing budgets it is astounding to me that rigour and strategy can tend to go out the window.

Like trying to find a present at the last-minute, trying to come up with innovation and excitement for a blue sky briefing in 24-48 hours (even for a six or seven-figure budget) is kinda hard. Bowerbird ways and kaizen ‘how can we do this better next time’ practices can help build a cache of ideas and tactics that can pay real dividends on their investment.

I’m more than happy to spend other people’s money. I’m really glad to have  thinking already charted up and mostly costed that as ‘value ads’ that never got the time of day…which only need the current context so that they can now contribute to the bigger picture

Don’t be afraid of the zeros at the end of your estimates. Big thinking doesn’t cost you more and sometimes there is a big present under the tree waiting to be unwrapped.

Maybe the greatest art director ever was Helmut Krone. At the end of his life, someone asked him why advertising had become so predictable.

“We were anti-establishment. But nowadays the kids want to be part of the establishment.”

It reminded me of a Picasso quote:

“When the avante garde becomes the establishment, you’re in trouble.”

And the wrong kind of trouble. The dull, boring kind.

Now there’s more reason and more opportunity than ever to create controversy, and free advertising.

Isn’t that what creative people enjoy?

As Steve Jobs’ said

“It’s more fun to be a Pirate than to join the Navy.”

I’m a bit of a  bricoleur – I love collecting random facts and lists and  etmymologies and anything that will add colour and movement to the improvisational nature of most of my expressions whether it be my paid work or cooking or scaring people at dinner parties…well anything really.

@charlesfrith: New etymology last night. Conspire = breath together; con spire. Sweet eh?

You can’t make good decisions unless you have great choices, and I’m a big fan of stocking up on those. Adding articles into Delicious is a great example that kind of bowerbird behaviour, and this combined with feeding my favourites on Flickr, my Google reader starred items and other caches of bits and pieces that have caught my eye helps me create collages pretty quickly.

It means that you need to have the discipline to contribute to your stock pile every day- but when fast strategy is required it really does become a pirate’s treasure just waiting for you to dig up. Tag ho!