In this session, we will examine the notion of 'innovation' with the goal of enabling new ideas within your team. This starts by challenging the concept of what innovation means and where new ideas originate. Techniques will be offered for building a culture of innovation which include: how to curate ideas, inspire teams, build innovative mindsets, create better processes and deal with change. By the end of the session, attendees will gain new strategies that foster an environment of empowerment, creativity and collaboration.

1. CRAFTING
INNOVATION
A Discussion About
Nurturing and Enabling Ideas
Steve Green
/steve.p.green
Chief Executive Officer
@stevegreenkc

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Who Is This Guy?
Steve P. Green
Steve currently serves as the Chief Executive
Officer for Blue Rivet, a collaborative digital agency
in Kansas City.
My professional experience
I consider code an art form, and have worked to master
the craft over the last 18 years at some of the finest
technology companies in Kansas City.

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Understanding My Bias
Seth Godin
One of the most-loved marketing gurus on
the internet, generating 50 million views per
month.
I believe that building software is fun. More importantly, I
view it as something worthy of mastery.
“If it’s work, we try to do
less. If it’s art, we try to
do more.” – Seth Godin

4. 01
What Does
Innovation Mean?

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Surround Yourself With The Best
Embrace It
Decompose It
Modify It
Re-release It
Steve Jobs: Understand What Others Have Done
Innovation seems to be grounded on building upon
what others have done. So surround yourself with the
best work you can find.

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Theft, Tributes and Collaboration
Bob Dylan
“borrowed” over
75% of his melodies.

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How Did I Prepare For This Talk?

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A Simple Definition
There are a lot of competing feelings and emotions around
innovation, but at it’s heart it has always been about what
is most valuable.
Innovation is simply
creating new value.
Complexity != Innovative
Innovation is most often experienced by deriving the
most value from the simplest solutions. Complexity
often destroys value.

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Let’s Start With An Example

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Prove You’re a Good Coder
The Power of Perfection
A king once asked a painter, “prove you’re a good artist”. After
contemplating, he stood quietly over a piece of paper and
drew a perfect circle.
What Is the Most Innovative Thing You’ve Built?
In a job interview, I was once asked what was the most
impressive thing I’ve ever made. I love data structures,
so I answered: a non-recursive red-black tree.

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Relevance is the Ultimate Outcome
It’s Not Relevant With Our Current Capabilities.
It’s Not Relevant To Our Current Audience
It’s Not Relevant For Our Brand
Relevance Is Not the Source of Innovation
Value most notably comes from business growth. However,
conversations about growth too often focus on relevance.
This exacerbates the bias to keep everything the same.
Consider these statements:

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Relevance is the Ultimate Outcome
“I know we are known for making computer hardware and
software but what if we could use our iTunes software as a
store front to buy music files capitalizing on this audience’s
love of music but lack of need for the physical version”

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The Art of Finding Ideas
Nothing New Under the Sun
The moment we free ourselves from The Cult of Originality,
we realize that ideas do not come from within; they come to
us from without.
Listen More. Talk Less.
Read Less. Read Better.
The process for finding new ideas is a social one. Become
intentional about the types of folks you use for inspiration.
The art of finding ideas is then… the act of going out and
finding ideas.
Becoming a Great Coder?
One of the most frequent questions I get is: “How do I
become a better coder?”. My answer is always: to
write great code, read great code.

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Learn To Think Inside the Box
The Box Has A Lot of Value
It is more important for us to think inside the box,
understand it and sometimes grow it.
“We need to understand the box,
everything in it and maybe make it
bigger. But the box is pretty cool.
There’s a lot of stuff in there that
we’ve worked with before, that we
understand, and that has been
great.” – Samantha Warren

16. 02
Build a Creative
Culture

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What Is Creativity?
“Creativity is all about making
connections and seeking
patterns.” – Bruce Nussbaum, Creative Intelligence

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What Is the Most Innovative Software?

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Creativity Is Not a Goal In Itself
Creativity is not a talent.
Creativity is a drive.

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System Thinking Kills Creativity
An Organization Is Not A System
A System is predictable, known, and can be acted upon. However,
Organizations are complex interactions between people.
“Culture eats
strategy for
breakfast.”

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Humans Have A Creative Spark
Have You Ever Lost Time?
If you ever been so “into” your work that you accidentally
lost track of time, you’ve tapped into that common creative
instinct.
Unblock
We have to remove barriers that prevent us from
being creative.
Communicate
Collaborate
Allocate
.
Unlocking Creativity
Humans have an innate need to “create”. To follow
this imperative, there are four directives:

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Unblock: Start Something Stupid
Operational Authenticity
How do you make authenticity operational:
Break-free of Fear, Pride, and Procrastination
we cannot recognize and operate from our inherent sense of
direction if we are filled with fear and pride.
Find the Courage to Do Things You Aren’t Ready For
Push through your uneasiness.
Set Standards, Keep Them and Get Respect
Mimic greatness to be truly great.
Trust Yourself
Your mistakes are things you’ve done, not who you are.
.
Start Your Stupid Idea
The world needs people who want to do good work, great work,
amazing work.

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Unblock: Too Busy
Parkinson’s Law
Work expands so as to fill the time available for it’s
completion.
Move Development Out of Electronic Systems
Get over your walls with who’s doing what so you all know
whether something’s taking longer than it should. Basic agile
stuff, Visibility is essential when the “too busy” card is played.
There is no other way!
Find R&D Opportunities
When an opportunity to innovate arises, grab the
people who are most passionate about it and
make it their thing, go off on a branch and spike it.
Treat this like R&D, This is not production code. If it
proves beneficial, awesome, job done. Otherwise,
bin it.
Time Box Activities
Time-box the activity, and make sure you factor
this into planning. That way, ‘failing fast’ is the worst
that can happen.

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Composing Creativity
Copy Transform
Combine
It’s About Action
Creating what you cannot see.
It’s About Connection
Connecting People with Ideas.
It’s About Deviation
Forging New Combinations
How Is Creativity Built?
How do we make creativity operational:
99% Execution < 1% Idea

25. 03
Embrace an
Experimentation
Mindset

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Many people try to correlate building
software with building a house. This
is not only wrong, it’s dangerous.
In fact, building software is nothing
like building a house. It’s more artistic
than that. Coding is more than just
following a schematic design.
Coding is Like
Building a House?
Surround Yourself With The Best

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What is the job of a software
engineer? What do they do?

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Building Software Is Like Writing a Book
The process of making software is actually much
more like writing a book than building a house. The
process:
Outline
The first thing an author does is create an outline of the story, a
plan or roadmap.
Write
An author then just writes, trying to complete his thoughts.
Revise
Once the complete thought is formulated, then the author goes fixes or
revises.
Review
When comfortable with his edits, an author may then send off for
editorial review.
Release
Finally, the story reaches a level of maturity that the author is able to
share it publically.
Coding Is an Art Form
While programmers work in a less accessible medium,
that doesn’t make it any less artistic. Coders are authors.
An Alternate View

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Recognize Technical Debt Is Natural
Stop Perfecting, Start Innovating
In order to innovate, you have to be willing to make
mistakes. If you spend too much time perfecting, you
are likely missing more important opportunities.
Hackathons
These activities are incredibly innovative because they focus on
value propositions and solutions over perfect code quality.

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“Avoid being a perfectionist
in a world of finite resources.”
- Forrest Shull

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It’s a Delivery Thing
Build Less
Lean-Agile promotes building less by prioritizing
requirements and limiting how many are worked
on at any one time.
Start Sooner
Organizations should stop debating whether to
start a project and should instead invest in some
development time to prove whether the project is
worthwhile.
Learn Constantly
an emphasis on testing, experimentation and
measurement to ensure that the product being
built is what the market wants.
Remember: Innovation Is About Creating
The key to innovative idea propagation is to
create social serendipity:
Dealing With Uncertainty
Many organizations delay projects over a concern about
uncertainty. By doing less, we limit unanswered questions and
promote higher value activities.

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Encourage Side Projects

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36. 04
Collaboration
Models

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Ideas Are Social
Facilitating Causal Collisions
Many companies are trying to foster ways to promote more social interactions across departments:
Lunch Lines: Google tracks the length of their lunch lines, not to reduce them but rather to keep
them at an optimal length.
Elevators: The Bloomberg building in New York elevator takes you from the ground floor to the
cafeteria where you can then switch elevators to other floors.
Bathrooms: Apple put restrooms in a single location to drive people towards the same place.
Lunch Tables: Offices are encouraged to replace small lunch tables with fewer, longer ones.
Watercooler: One company is even literally moving around the proverbial watercooler.
Open Floorplans: Tearing down office walls to create a single open space where people can
see and bump into each other.

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The Key Is Social Proximity
Designing Serendipity?
People want to meet colleagues, they just lack the system to do so.
Randomized coffee breaks allow people to break with their daily
routine, make new connections and strengthen existing ones.
Drive Employee Engagement
Creating active connections with the larger team
and organization creates higher levels of
employee participation.
Create Cross-Departmental
Networks
Encouraging employees to make new
connections across departments and silos can
create a culture of open communication.
Enhancing Talent Development
Collaboration impacts multiple talent development
processes, including onboarding, career
development and retention of top talent.
Promoting Diversity
Promoting discussion among affinity groups helps
support retention and professional development.
Physical Is Not Always Social Proximity
The key to innovative idea propagation is to
create social serendipity:

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A Real-World Example

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Leaders are responsible for
creating a culture of courage.

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Dare Greatly
Brené Brown: If You Don’t Know Her, You Should
Dr. Brown is a celebrated researcher and speaker who works to
uncover the origins of shame, guilt, courage and bravery.

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Feed Opportunities
Peter Drucker
Mr. Drucker is a great American management consultant
and corporate philosopher.
“Don’t starve
opportunities and
feed problems.”
– Peter Drucker
7 Deadly Sins of Business
In a New York Times article, Peter Drucker
articulated 7 deadly sins in business. The sin below
often occurs in software as well.

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What Does Success Look Like?
Whoever makes
the most
mistakes wins.
Not Everything That Counts Should Be Counted
Albert Einstein was referring, of course, to the part of the human brain
that 'knows' intuitively; the part that is tuned in, connected, and
innately creative.
It’s not about
success or failure,
but success and
failure.

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Innovation Relies On Trust
Listen To Ideas
Reward Bravery
Embrace Risk
Learn From Failure

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We Need Better Recording Devices
What you
measure is what
gets done.
We need to
understand what
creates value and
measure it based
on evidence.

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Understand What Motivates Engineers

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Don’t Try To Be Google
Create an
Innovation
Culture That
Fits.

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Just A Warning
Quickest way to kill
creativity in a team
is letting the boss
speak first.

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Innovation Starts At the Top
Leaders need to
create the vision
and live the values.

57. 05
Concluding
Ideas

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Innovation Is A Team Sport
Operating Inside
Silos is Deadly.
Collaborate.

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Progressive Enhancement
Innovation Is
Never Easy.
But It Is Always
Possible.

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Innovation Is Customer Centric
The Customer Is
Not Always Right,
But They Sit at
the Heart of All
Innovation.

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Speed Is Critical
Fail Early
Fail Fast
Fail Inexpensively

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Innovation Manifesto
Care More.
We are always under tight deadlines, because time is our most valuable asset.
Clean up your own mess. Clean up other people’s messes. Over-communicate.
Question premises and strategy. Don't question goodwill, effort or intent.
"I'll know it when I see it," is not a professional thing to say. Describing and discussing in the
abstract is what we do.
Big projects are not nearly as
important as scary commitments.
Make mistakes, own them, fix
them, share the learning.
Mostly, we do things that haven't been done
before, so don't be surprised when you're
surprised.
Talk to everyone as if they were your boss,
your customer, the founder, your employee.
It's all the same.
It works because it's personal.
Yesterday's hierarchy is not nearly as important as today's project structure.

63. BE BOLD +
DO GREAT WORK
steve.green@bluerivet.com
@stevepgreenkc
/stevepgreen