Innovation in Practice Blog
Innovation in Practice: Five Year Anniversary
This month marks the five year anniversary for Innovation in Practice, and I want to thank my readers and supporters who follow it. Blogging is rewarding, but challenging. Most bloggers quit within two years for a variety of reasons: lack of motivation, lack of strategy, no one is reading, nothing to write about, or not enough time. Fortunately, I have yet to be hit by any of these except perhaps the last one – time constraints – which will never go away.
My goal is to make this blog different from other innovation blogs and websites. Instead of focusing on why innovation is important, I focus on how innovation happens. My sense is corporate leaders realize already the importance of innovation, but they struggle with how to put it motion. Calling a consultant is not the answer. Learning the skill of innovation to be self sufficient is the answer.
Rejection Breeds Creativity
New research from Johns Hopkins University suggests that having our ideas rejected tends to boost our creativity output. Sharon Kim and her colleagues found that when most of us experience rejection, it can actually enhance our creativity, depending on how we respond to it. The paper, titled “Outside Advantage: Can Social Rejection Fuel Creative Thought?,” was recently accepted for publication by the Journal of Experimental Psychology. It also received a best-paper award at the Academy of Management (AOM) conference held this month in Boston.
Innovation Sighting: Music That Morphs Using Attribute Dependency
The Attribute Dependency Technique tends to produce innovations that are smart. They seemingly know when to adjust or change in response to a change in something else. It is one of five techniques of the SIT innovation method, and it accounts for a majority of new product innovations. Attribute Dependency differs from the other techniques in that it uses attributes (variables) of the situation rather than components. Start with an attribute list, then construct a matrix of these, pairing each against the others. Each cell represents a potential dependency (or potential break in an existing dependency) that forms a Virtual Product. Using Function Follows Form, we work backwards and envision a potential benefit or problem that this hypothetical solution solves.
Will You Help Me?
Asking for help may be the most powerful yet underutilized resource available for innovators. Researchers Francis Flynn and Vanessa Bohns found that people grossly underestimate the rate that others are willing to help when asked. As a result, we more often fail to ask for help when the likelihood was very high the other person would have said ‘yes.’ Consider this study they conducted at Columbia University:
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