Seven
Strategies for Generating Ideas
by Robert B. Tucker
How do organizations come up with new ideas?
And how do they use those ideas to create
successful new products, services, businesses,
and solutions?
To answer these questions, a team of researchers
from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New
York spent time observing radical innovation
projects such as IBM's silicon-germanium devices,
GE's digital X-ray, GM's hybrid vehicles,
and DuPont's biodegradable plastics. Their
key finding? Most of the ideas behind these
projects came from "happy accidents"
rather than some ongoing process to generate
ideas.
In more than a few cases, individuals or small
groups were simply "freelancing,"
working on ideas on their own initiative rather
than being directed by some "new venture"
board or other idea management system.
"Almost without exception, these idea-generation
methods have been applied sporadically, rather
than systematically, continuously, and strategically,"
the Rensselaer researchers concluded. "In
no case [we know of] has an ongoing process
been set up that regularly requests such ideas.
What we observed were one-time acts, or new
systems put in place whose staying power remains
unproven."
It is little wonder that so many good ideas
never even come to the attention of management.
Or that so many die short of development--and
miles from commercial success. In most companies
today, the "practice" of innovation
can be likened to the mating of pandas: infrequent,
clumsy, and often ineffective. Its practice
is largely unchanged from 20 years ago. While
the world has changed drastically and organizations
pride themselves for having a process for
everything, the process of innovation remains
ad hoc, unsystematic, piecemeal, seat of the
pants, and, as the Rensselaer researchers
confirmed, heavily dependent on luck.
Creative, game-changing ideas will always
have an element of serendipity to them, and
will never be producible on demand. But today's
present economic climate of stalled growth
and fewer ideas (growth in the number of patent
requests have stagnated in recent years) has
caused a small but growing group of organizations
to rethink how ideas happen and to examine
what they can do to implement better innovation
processes.
Fortifying
the Idea Factory Three-fourths of companies
are consistently disappointed in their innovation
results, according to global surveys of executives.
But a minority of organizations--the innovation
vanguard--recognize the need for change if
their results are to improve. Put simply,
if good ideas don't get hatched, they won't
get launched. The "vanguard organizations,"
23 of which we studied for a recently released
book, create stronger idea factories by cultivating
the conditions whereby "happy accidents"
are more likely to occur. The vanguards are,
in essence, reinventing inventiveness. They
are paying much more attention to the oft-called
"fuzzy front end" of innovation
where possibilities first come to light. And
they are managing these notions in vastly
different ways so that large quantities of
ideas eventually fill the pipeline and emerge
as tangible results.
In reviewing the unconventional methods of
these vanguard organizations, we found that,
while innovation and breakthroughs can never
be commanded from the top, leaders can do
much to increase throughput of significant
ideas. And indeed they must. We see these
leading-edge organizations using seven key
strategies for fortifying the idea factory:
1. Invite everyone in the quest for new ideas.
2. Involve customers in the process of generating
ideas.
3. Involve customers in new ways.
4. Focus on the needs that customers don't
express.
5. Seek ideas from new customer groups.
6. Involve suppliers in product innovation.
7. Benchmark idea-creation methods.
Clearly the customer plays an important role
in these strategies for strengthening the
organizational idea factory. It only makes
sense. The goal is to create ideas--the building
blocks of new products, services, processes,
and strategies--the users of which are customers.
Ideation Strategy 1: Involve Everyone
in the Quest for Ideas
While suggestion boxes have been around for
over 100 years, innovation-vanguard organizations
are wiring their suggestion boxes so that
they become a powerful, energizing force for
corporate creativity.
Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), a global pharmaceutical
firm, does not restrict its definition of
innovation to activities related to finding
the next breakthrough drug. Rather, it sees
the need for new ideas in much broader terms
and involves employees constantly in the quest.
BMS has developed a series of ideation campaigns
for internal customers under the leadership
of "idea searcher" Marsha MacArthur
and her boss Mark Wright, vice president of
U.S. market research and business intelligence.
When the patent was about to expire on Glucophage,
an oral medication for type 2 diabetes, MacArthur
helped coordinate a campaign to solicit ideas
on how to get more people to use the drug
in the meantime. Rather than classifying this
as a marketing problem and letting the people
in that functional area work on it, the ideation
campaign was a sort of call for ideas to all
corners.
The campaign was publicized by employees walking
around wearing sandwich boards declaring,
"We're waging war on diabetes and we
need your help!" Town Hall meetings were
set up for the team to describe the problem
in greater detail: How do we drive patients
to their doctors' offices? How do we get patients
to switch from the medications they're currently
using?
Tip lines were then set up on BMS's intranet
site so employees could submit their ideas.
One idea was to run a national campaign declaring
war on diabetes. Another, to create a museum
for diabetics.
"I was really proud of everybody and
the ideas that were submitted," says
MacArthur. "They weren't obvious ones
like, 'talk to doctors.' We already do that.
They were quite well thought out."
That single ideation campaign generated 4,000
inquiries from 429 employees all over the
world. In a typical year, idea searcher MacArthur
coordinates 20 to 30 such campaigns, both
at the division level and enterprise-wide.
Lesson: Organizations can enlarge their pool
of ideas by including more employees in the
process of new product and service ideation
and in solving vexing organizational problems.
Start by encouraging them to listen to customers.
Don't allow managers, technical specialists,
or purchasing, finance, or human resource
professionals to participate in new product/service/market
development decisions unless they spend at
least 20% of their time with current (or future)
customers and suppliers.
Ideation Strategy 2: Involve Customers
in Your Process
New products are most often initiated by ideas
from customers, rather than from in-house
brainstorming sessions or developed internally
by research and development, according to
a study by business researchers Robert G.
Cooper and Elko J. Kleinschmidt of McMaster
University in Ontario.
If you immediately think "focus groups"
when the subject of involving customers comes
up, better think again. Vanguard firms are
going well beyond such techniques as they
seek more powerful insights and ideas.
To maintain its market positioning as the
"ultimate driving machine," Munich-based
BMW must constantly seek new technologies
and design features that keep it slightly
ahead of the pack. To accomplish this objective,
BMW tossed conventional wisdom to the roadside
and created what it calls a Virtual Innovation
Agency (VIA) to listen to customers directly.
Car buffs worldwide can access the VIA Web
site and join online discussions to share
their ideas with other enthusiasts around
the world--and with the BMW Group.
The VIA submission process allows anyone with
Internet access to submit ideas--and the ideas
are protected. If the idea has potential,
it's routed to the appropriate working group
at BMW for follow-up. Within the first week
after VIA was launched in July 2001, 4,000
ideas had been received.
Lesson: The traditional focus group needs
more focus. Form advisory boards of key customers
to serve as sounding boards for ideas. Identify
customers who tend to buy the latest versions
of your products. These "lead adopters"
can provide you with insights about where
the market may be headed and how your organization
can best position itself.
Ideation Strategy 3: Involve Customers
in New Ways
Organizations evolve and embrace new ways
of doing things at different rates. Nowhere
is this more evident than in the ways they
listen to customers. For instance, customer
surveys may be old hat to retailers but they
blow the lids off homebuilders.
KB Home, a market-leading homebuilder based
in Los Angeles, only began surveying customers
in the late 1990s; in a very short time it
gained insights on new ways of doing business.
In Denver, KB Home built houses with fireplaces
and basements, assuming that's what everyone
wanted. But some buyers weren't biting. CEO
Bruce Karatz eavesdropped on a sales pitch
to prospective buyers who wanted to save money.
The couple said they didn't need a basement,
but the salesman kept pushing them to accept
it as everyone else had.
Karatz decided then and there to survey customers.
Their answers shattered KB Home's preconceived
notions about what homebuyers wanted. In Denver,
people were more than willing to do without
basements when omitting them cut the price
by as much as 20%. In Phoenix, where covered
porches were thought mandatory, fewer than
half of the buyers said they cared about them.
By polling for preferences, KB Home opened
up its business to budget-minded buyers. But
it also discovered other, more-desirable amenities
that customers were willing to pay for: coffee
bars in the master bedroom, built-in home
offices, and higher-quality windows, for example.
This "amenity customization" proved
popular for buyers--and traumatic for competitors
still locked in to the one-size-fits-all housing
approach.
DaimlerChrysler used a more experiential approach
to try to divine what fickle car buyers wanted
next, turning to anthropology and ethnography
for a process known as "archetype research."
The development team created a prototype model
of a vehicle mixing retro and futuristic design
elements. But instead of then testing the
prototype with traditional focus groups, such
as young men ages 18 to 24, they chose people
that represented the entire national culture
and studied their emotional responses to the
prototype.
The designers realized that participants were
looking for protection from "the jungle
out there." The retro/futuristic prototype
was too playful, too toylike; they seemed
to be saying, "Give me a big thing like
a tank." The revised design: the PT Cruiser,
which was an instant success when it was introduced
in North America in 2000.
Lesson: Look outside your own field or industry
for ideas on how to get customer input. Automakers,
retailers, consumer electronics manufacturers,
for instance, are on the leading edge of customer
surveying and are often considered the early
adopters of ideational techniques.
Ideation Strategy 4: Focus on the
Unarticulated Needs of Customers
Another reason traditional focus groups are
inadequate idea generators is that they provide
feedback only on existing ideas. How do you
get feedback on ideas that don't exist?
One approach growing in popularity is to probe
the unarticulated needs of customers, asking
them to consider hypothetical products and
prototypes to see how they would respond.
Consider the microwave oven. Asked why they
like it, most people would say it's because
it heats food up faster than conventional
ovens. Asked how they actually use it, most
people might say "to heat up my coffee"
or "to pop popcorn." What they don't
say--their unarticulated desire--is that when
they try to use their microwave to make a
"real meal," such as a roast or
a steak, the results are ugly, gray, and unappetizing.
GE probed just such unarticulated needs in
1999 and came up with Advantium, a speed cooker
for roasts, steaks, and other items. A white
hot halogen bulb browns the outside part of
the meat while microwaves cook the inside.
The result: home-cooked meals that are fast
and good.
Another great innovation-vanguard organization
is Callaway Golf, creator of the Big Bertha.
Callaway's innovators went out to country
clubs and public courses and observed how
golfers approached the game, quizzing them
on how they felt about their skills. The observers
discovered that many golfers felt frustrated
and intimidated by the game. The unarticulated
need was simply to succeed at something they
loved doing.
Callaway's breakthrough Big Bertha club features
a large and forgiving "sweet spot"
and a longer shaft, making it easier for golfers
to hit the ball--and to hit it farther. As
a result, new players took up the sport--and
old players traded in their drivers for Big
Berthas. By focusing on customers' unarticulated
needs, Callaway's innovators created a blockbuster.
Lesson: Learn from customers by observing
what they are not doing, listening to what
they are not saying. Recognize the sources
of their frustration and find potential ways
of eliminating it.
Ideation Strategy 5: Seek Ideas from
New Customer Groups
Most organizations should have a good idea
of who their customers are. But if you expand
your definition of customer, you can also
expand your ability to generate winning ideas.
The medical products division of Holland-based
Philips Electronics had assumed its only customers
were doctors in hospitals, since they were
the ones making decisions about medical supplies.
But Philips managers looked more deeply at
changes in the health-care industry and saw
that more services were being provided in
nontraditional environments, such as in outpatient
clinics, in homes, and even on the street
for homeless people.
By asking themselves what these customers
in non-hospital environments might need, Philips
came up with such products as a stethoscope
with improved acoustics to filter out voices,
traffic, and other background noise, making
it easier for caregivers in chaotic settings
to hear heart murmurs or breathing problems.
Lesson: Look at your customers' customers
and your competitors' customers. Instead of
looking at only the present, look also at
the past (former customers) and the future
(anyone you haven't done business with yet).
Ask how you might meet those customers' needs.
Ideation Strategy 6: Involve Suppliers
in Product Ideation
Suppliers can be key partners in the idea-creation
process, but many organizations are reluctant
to share information with suppliers (who,
after all, might be partners with the competition
as well). Other obstacles include cultural
differences, lack of cooperation, lack of
resources, and lack of vision--an inability
to conceptualize new opportunities.
The chief global purchaser for a leading consumer
products company used to visit suppliers and
try to solicit ideas by saying, "If you
have any new ideas or technologies you think
we'd be interested in, be sure to let us know."
Result: zero new ideas.
Now, he brings his problems to his suppliers:
"What I need to know, for example, is
whether you might have an adhesive that would
work well on elderly skin, sensitive skin,
bruised skin, diseased skin, and five other
kinds of skin that we've identified."
This approach encouraged suppliers to contribute
to the company's idea-creation process, the
manager reported. "Even one of our notoriously
noncreative suppliers developed two proprietary
materials for the company in the last 12 months.
It's unbelievable how excited some of our
suppliers get when we ask them to be creative
on our behalf." And the seemingly routine
procurement process added value to other departments
in the organization, from R&D to marketing.
Lesson: Just as you look to your customers
for new ideas (such as by detecting their
unarticulated needs), think of your organization
as your supplier's customer. You, too, have
unarticulated needs. Try articulating them
and get your supplier's idea-generating capacity
working in concert with yours.
Ideation Strategy 7: Benchmark Ideation
Methods
Innovation-vanguard organizations actively
manage the ideation process by examining its
effectiveness and questioning how the ideas-to-results
process might be improved. Ideation is not
something that should be left to chance.
Ideation specialists can be called on to teach
new techniques, shake things up, and inject
maverick thinking into the process. One leading-edge
ideation specialist is Doug Hall, a former
product manager at Procter & Gamble who
runs idea sessions at Eureka! Ranch outside
Cincinnati, Ohio, for companies like Celestial
Seasonings.
Hall's replicable, quantifiable process for
inventing breakthrough ideas involves a combination
of play, "sensory overload," and
analytical rigor. The goal is to generate
as many new product ideas as possible: No
idea is too radical, he tells his groups.
"Breakthroughs are going to contradict
history, so you have to break rules,"
he says. Eureka! Ranch sessions promise clients
30 commercially viable ideas in three days.
Lesson: Organizations that rely on innovation
need to seriously examine the climate in which
ideation takes place and put someone in charge
of making the process better, more productive,
and more innovative. Innovation-adept firms
invest in ideation sessions, read books, attend
seminars, and constantly seek to improve their
skills.
Monday Morning at the Idea Factory
As the world changes at a faster and faster
pace, ideas and ways of operating that were
adequate only yesterday no longer suffice.
Given the torrid pace of change, the rapid
commoditization of products, and the convergence
of strategies, firms that rely on yesterday's
ideas, yesterday's products, and yesterday's
assumptions are clearly vulnerable.
Organizations need a constant stream of new
ideas if they are to create exciting and prosperous
futures. Yet, in most organizations, there
is resistance to change the approach to innovation
lest it upset the status quo. Most companies
today have allowed their methods of encouraging,
nurturing, and acting on new ideas to languish
while they focused on more immediate concerns,
such as taking costs out of existing processes
and products and services.
Yet because of the present economic climate,
firms are increasingly willing to rethink
their most central of processes: how they
accomplish innovation.
Robert B. Tucker is the author of Driving
Growth through Innovation: How Leading Firms
Are Transforming Their Futures (Berrett-Koehler,
2002, $27.95), from which this article is
drawn. A popular keynote speaker, Tucker is
president of The Innovation Resource, a consulting
firm based in Santa Barbara, California, that
assists companies in implementing innovation
for growth. E-mail:
rtucker@innovationresource.com.
