The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "Innovation".

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Innovation
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
THINKING SKILLS
Innovation

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Innovation
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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Thinking Skills
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INTRODUCTION
An innovation is the application of a new idea or an old idea
in new ways. Innovation in today's organisations has
become a major priority, in some cases, an absolute
prerequisite for survival. This is because the knowledge that
goes into the production and distribution of goods and
services is now so readily available that one of the few
things that distinguishes organisations from their
competitors is the novelty, originality and risk-taking of their
thinking.

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HOW TO INNOVATE
Innovation is the application of thinking skills to maintain a
competitive advantage. We can innovate in both big areas
such as new products and small areas, such as how we post
invoices out, how we thank our staff and how we serve
customers.
The following are seven pathways to innovation:
1. make chance discoveries
2. create an innovative climate
3. dream and daydream
4. make new connections
5. experiment
6. adopt and adapt
7. see things in new ways.
"Always remember that someone somewhere is making a
product that will make your product obsolete." (Georges
Doriot)

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CHANCE DISCOVERIES
Some of the major discoveries of the past have arisen by
pure chance.
1. in a lecture in 1822, the Danish physicist, Oersted,
chanced to put a wire conducting an electric current
close to a magnet and discovered an electric charge
2. in 1889, Professors von Mering and Minowski were
operating on a dog when an assistant noticed a swarm
of flies being attracted to the dog's urine. When
Minowski tested it, he found that the urine contained
sugar. This was the breakthrough step towards a control
drug for diabetes.
3. in 1929, Alexander Fleming noticed that a contaminated
culture of bacteria had stopped growing. This
observation led to the discovery of penicillin and anti-
biotics.

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A CREATIVE CLIMATE
Since the modern rise in global competition, the need to
find new approaches to the way we work has become an
organisational imperative.
Many of the ideas about how organisations can become
more innovative originate with the work of Goran Ekvall,
emeritus professor at Lund university in Sweden. Ekvall was
the first man to state the conditions necessary for a climate
of creativity. These included: trust, dynamism and humour.
One of Ekvall's case studies was a Swedish newspaper
where a team working on the women's pages consistently
outperformed all the other teams on the paper. When he
studied why this should be, Ekvall found that the major
difference was that the successful team had a creative sense
of humour not possessed by the rest.

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DREAMS AND DAYDREAMS
We know from research that while we all dream on average
four or five dreams a night, most of us are poor at recalling
and making use of our dreams.
It is a good idea to keep a notebook handy beside the bed to
jot down our dreams. Goodenough found that those who
do recall their dreams are less inhibited, less conformist and
less self-controlled than those who don't: in other words,
dream-recallers are typical creative thinkers.
Interpreting dreams is not a unique gift given to a few. Any
of us can give meaning to our dreams.
The story of Joseph in the Old Testament might serve as
inspiration to anyone wishing to save their company. As a
result of interpreting Pharaoh’s dream of seven fat cows and
seven thin cows, Joseph was "arrayed in fine linen, rode in
the second chariot and made ruler over all the land of
Egypt."

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DREAMS OF THE FUTURE
There are no constraints on the sort of things we can dream
about in the future. None of us knows who will dream right
and who will dream wrong.
Some of the inventions we take for granted today would
have seemed ridiculous barely 50 or 100 years ago.
1. soon: digital TV; electric cars; space travel; human
cloning; the Internet on TV
2. in 5 years' time: the 1lb personal computer; an AIDS
cure; a flexible working week for everyone; global
peace; compassionate organisations
3. in 10 years time: a one-world currency; everyone works
at home; every home on a global network; trips to
Mars; world government.
At a recent conference, a telecommunications executive was
asked where he worked. "In the future," he replied.

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WASHING-UP CREATIVITY
According to the findings of a report by Roffey Park
Management Institute, most company directors get their
flashes of inspiration when they are away from work.
For some, ideas come while mowing the lawn or taking the
dog for a walk or playing golf or waiting on a railway station
or doing the dishes. For Isaac Newton, it was an apple on
the head while sitting in the garden; and for Archimedes it
was in the bath.
The report, "Innovation at the Top" says: "ideas and insight
tend to come to us away from work because this is when we
allow our minds to drift and dream." This demonstrates the
value of taking time to relax and letting the sub-conscious
mind work by itself.

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MAKE NEW CONNECTIONS
Making new connections between existing inventions can be
a source of innovation.
Akio Morita, chairman of Sony, asked his research people to
come up with a recorder he could go on walks with. The
tape recorder already existed; the portable transistor radio
already existed. All the team had to do was to reduce the
size of the speakers to headphone size and the Walkman –
the precursor to the iPod - was invented.
"Make it a practice to look out for novel and interesting
ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea only has
to be original in its adaptation to the problem you're
working on." (Thomas Edison)

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FORCED RELATIONSHIPS
Making new connections by forcing relationships can be a
useful way to pick up on unconnected suggestions in a
brainstorming session.
An ailing chain of hardware shops held a brainstorming
session amongst its staff in which the following two
suggestions, one serious and one silly, came up:
No 73: "set up a 24-hour tool repair service"
No 108: "put a trapdoor in the pavement so passers-by
would have to drop in".
After some discussion, the group proposed the idea of
installing an oversized letter box in the shop front. Through
this customers could drop any tools at any time of the day
and night to be repaired and sharpened with a guarantee
that they would be ready for collection within 4 hours of the
shop opening in the morning.

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NECESSITY
Necessity is the mother of invention and invention, it seems,
is also the mother of necessity.
Take, for example, the discovery of writing paper. The
Chinese made paper from rags around the year 100 BC but
because there was no need for it, it took a thousand years
for it to reach Europe in the early Middle Ages. By the 18th
century, the raw materials of rags and worn-out fabric were
in desperately short supply and the price of paper had
soared as a result.
Then, a French naturalist noticed how wasps made their
nests by chewing wood into a mash that dried in thin layers.
He suggested that this could be a replacement for paper.
Some 100 years later the idea was taken up. Today, all but
the most specialised papers are made from wood pulp.

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EXPERIMENTING
Experimenting is the opposite of instant innovation but is
the way most organisations go about researching new ideas.
It can sometimes be a long and arduous road, strewn with
failure but each failure in experimentation takes you a step
nearer success.
Jonas Salk spent 98% of his time recording what didn't work
until he discovered the polio vaccine that did
Thomas Edison experimented with over a thousand ways to
create a light bulb that worked before he found the one that
did.
"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're
not doing anything very innovative." (Woody Allen)

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ANALOGIES
The Analogy technique of innovation seeks to find links
between objects and ideas that are fundamentally different
but have similar properties.
There are four types of analogy:
1. visual comparisons: what else does this look like? A car
has some properties of the home, hence the dormobile.
2. functional comparisons: what else can do what this
object does? A calculator can do some of the things that
a computer does, hence the palm-top computer.
3. natural comparisons: how is this achieved in the natural
world? Modern methods of air conditioning draw cool
air into a system of passages and towers in exactly the
same way as termites build their nests in the desert.
4. structural comparisons: what other material has the
same properties as this?

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BLOCKS TO INNOVATION
Many organisations discourage innovation because it
threatens the status quo. Amongst the biggest culprits are
those in senior positions who seek to retain their status and
position. Stopping innovation in a rapidly changing world
may well be the equivalent of a suicide sentence.
The kind of attitudes that prevent experimentation are:
1. refusing to see the signs: "everything's OK"
2. refusing to see the importance of change: "it doesn't
really matter."
3. refusing to do anything about it: "I can't be bothered."
4. an arrogant belief that we're the best
5. refusing to look at alternatives
6. focusing on the risks more than the opportunities: "It
won't work."

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THE SIX I'S OF INNOVATION
There are six steps that take us through the process of
discovering new ideas that will work: the six "I"'s of
innovation.
They are:
1. Identify what needs to change
2. get Information about anything relevant to the problem
3. come up with Ideas that could change things
4. Invent some theories
5. Investigate whether they work
6. Implement those solutions that work.
Innovative discoveries rarely happen without some
preliminary searching and groundwork.
"Chance only favours invention for minds which are
prepared for discovery by patient study and persevering
effort."

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ADOPT AND ADAPT
The method of adopting what works elsewhere and
adapting it to your own situation is also called
"metaphorical analysis": the study of what else our situation
is like".
1. the watchmakers Swatch realised that the more reliable
their watches became, the less frequently people
bought replacement watches. So, to keep themselves in
business as well as grow, they borrowed ideas from the
fashion world and from the world of collections. Now
people buy a Swatch watch as a collector's item and as a
fashion accessory.
2. an American airline company was experiencing delays in
turning around aircraft on domestic flights. They
investigated the methods used by pit-stop crews in
Formula One car racing and applied them to their
planes.

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SCAMMMPERR
The acronym SCAMMMPERR stands for 10 simple ways to
produce new products from old. Here they are:
1. Substitute: eg vegetarian hot dogs
2. Combine: eg musical greeting cards
3. Adapt: eg snow tyres
4. Modify: eg scented crayons for kids
5. Magnify: eg larger tennis rackets
6. Minimise: eg bite-sized snickers bars
7. Put to another use: eg using a towel to swat flies
8. Eliminate: eg cordless telephones
9. Rearrange: eg office re-planning systems
10. Reverse: eg engine at the back of Volkswagens.
The SCAMMMMPERR model was developed by Michael
Michalko at Thinkpak. His book "Cracking Creativity" offers a
rich source to thinking differently to come up with new
ideas and innovations.

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COPYING NATURE
Many of the inventions made by people are no more than
copies of what natural creatures have been doing for
millions of years.
In 1941, Georges de Mestral returned from a day's hunting
in the Jura mountains in France to find his trousers covered
in burrs, little seeds that attach themselves by tiny hooks to
wool and other fabric. de Mestral had the idea to use the
technique to fasten materials together. By 1950 he had
patented Velcro.
The idea is not unique in nature. The front and back wings
of a butterfly are separate but have to flap together. Where
they overlap, thousands of tiny hooks on one wing latch on
to thousands of tiny eyes on the other: in effect, a Velcro
fastening.

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MESSY THINKING
Nicholas Nicholaides analysed 322 decisions made by public
officials in the United States. He found that, far from being
based on logic, inspiration or creative thinking, most new
ideas were a mish-mash of old ideas, emotion, ambition,
petty politicking and pure chance.
1. superglue is one of the wonder inventions of recent
years. It is instant, needs no heating and is incredibly
strong. A superglue joint one inch thick can support a
ton in weight. But the patent was discovered by chance
while researchers were trying to make transparent
material for gun-sights.
2. the stationery supplies company 3M, developed an
apparently useless glue that could only stick paper to
paper. The product was due to be scrapped when the
team found it being used around the research office to
attach notes to memos. The post-it note had been
invented.

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SIMPLER AND BETTER
When NASA began sending astronauts into space, they
quickly discovered that their writing pens were useless once
away from the earth's gravity. Without the downward pull
of gravity, the pens just didn't work.
To solve this problem, NASA lured Andersen Consulting to
come up with a solution. Andersen's took ten years and $12
million to devise a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside
down, underwater, on practically any known surface,
including crystal, and in temperatures from below freezing
to over 300 degrees Centigrade.
When the Russians started their own space programme,
they came up against the exact same problem. How to use a
pen in zero gravity. After some thought, the Russians came
up with a quicker solution and much cheaper. They used a 5
cent pencil instead.

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PARADIGM SHIFTS
The term "paradigm shift" was introduced by Thomas Kuhn
in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". Kuhn
argued that all major innovations were the result of a
different way of seeing things.
The great discoveries of people like Galileo, da Vinci,
Newton and Einstein were a complete break with the past:
once the view shifts, there's no going back.
We can have paradigm shifts in any part of our lives:
1. I once saw money as the aim and objective of work;
now I see money as a by-product of good service.
2. I once saw my colleagues as being my chief rivals in the
rat-race called "work": I now see us as all able to
achieve win-win results.
3. I once saw my children as smaller versions of me; I now
see them as unique individuals in their own right.

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A ONE-WORD INNOVATION
The story is told of how one shampoo manufacturer called
in an outside consultant to help them come up with some
ideas to increase the sales of a failing product.
At the end of a fruitless day looking at ideas, the consultant
announced to the assembled executives:
"Well, there is one way to double your sales overnight. So
straightforward it can be put into one word. But to reveal it
to you I will require a large fee.“
The executives looked at one another in some disbelief.
After some fevered discussion, they decided that any idea
must be worth the fee.
"OK. We agree. What is the word?"
"Well," said the consultant. "You know the instructions on
the side of the bottle. Just add the word "repeat" at the
end."

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THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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Thinking Skills
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THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn