An interesting lesson about innovating
Author: Michael Higdon | 11.24.2009At the Sierra Nevada Media Group of Swift Communications, we started an “Innovation Station” team. Without giving too much away, it’s a talented team of six employees from classifieds, editorial, advertising and sales from Reno, North Lake Tahoe, South Lake Tahoe, and Carson City. The six of us are lead by a three-person steering committee in upper management also from different areas of the company.
It’s very exciting and our objective is:
“…to develop a brain trust of innovative, out of the box thinkers from a variety of departments, each with different skills but united in their goals to integrate new technologies, design and ideas to make SNMG more relevant to the region’s audience.”
Our team will commit to a minimum six month term to build products on any and all information delivery products in our various communities.
We ” will develop the idea; prepare a product snap shot for senior management review; research the marketplace; develop the business plan, communication plan and profit and loss documents. It will then be submitted to senior management for approval and go ahead.”
The idea of an innovation team got me thinking about innovation in companies and in the workplace.
When I was preparing to graduate I had some brief experiences with the consulting firm, IDEO. They are great innovators for a lot of reasons. I felt like the only place to innovate was in a design innovation firm or in some kind of upper management position or in a big company. I was kind of sour I didn’t land a job at IDEO (me and my general studies degree pounds down doors of opportunity, right?)
But I was wrong to even think I had to go there or become a VP of Innovation somewhere.
My co-workers and I innovate every week. When something doesn’t work or we have a better idea, we briefly brainstorm – no need for sticky notes and a marker board – we figure out a new method and we implement it. Often it starts out as a gripe yelled across the room and that gripe is turned into a way to direct the conversation.
No complex meetings, no business plan, just talented folks working together to correct a problem and improve our workflow. This department is an efficient, happy engine because of it.
There is a time and a place for teams and business plans though. Our innovation team is preparing to tackle some large projects, so I think the team is a smart approach, otherwise the kind of large scale communication needed to accomplish our tasks might not happen – or at least not happen quickly and smoothly.
We’ll be using methods similar to IDEO, but less order out of chaos, messes everywhere. More of a directed plan in an honest, non-judgmental, no-rank environment. Lots of note taking. Lots of thinking about problems we face and things we could do for our users/readers.
That’s all brainstorming and innovation really needs to be.
I’m kind of over simplifying the innovation process. It’s hard work, brain pounding critical thought is required. And there is a very specific process that needs to be followed. And that’s before even writing business plans and executing strategies.
My point is, anyone can innovate any time, anywhere. You can do it in small increments so no one will notice. A method I’ve heard here is that you innovate and change in small ways over a long period of time. At the end of your journey, everything is completely different but everyone thinks of it as something that needed to be done and they look back at the old way of doing things and scoff.
Your last paragraph is so true (well, the rest of it is true, too, but this one part I particularly identify with). I worked for eight years for a large newspaper chain and we did many sweeping projects, newspaper redesigns, new directions, but in the end I learned that constant small changes are often more effective. Take a newspaper redesign for instance.
I was involved with a number of terrific newspaper redesigns. We’d revamp the paper, reshape the way we present the news, win awards and get lots of ooo’s and ah’s in the newsroom. Then the phone would ring off the hook from readers ticked off that you messed with their product. It took me awhile to learn that small incremental changes were more effective in most cases. I tried that with the last design I was involved with — no big marketing campaign, no “new and improved” paper, just changed things over several months. The result? A trickle of phone calls and comments: “Paper looks good lately.” “Did you change something?” The paper looked better, it was more functional, readers were happy and we were free to continue innovating. The danger with doing the big projects is everyone reaches a point where they feel it’s “done.” And that just leads to stagnation.
[...] are some questions we were asked by the leader of our newly formed Innovation Team. It’s our first real meeting, and these are our homework. I think these are the right [...]