To lead a meaningful life, all you need is a problem!

This post is in response to the excellent IndiBlogger contest "The Idea Caravan"  jointly conducted by Franklin Templeton Investments 

The contest presents a number of inspiring TEDx format videos that throw the spotlight on people passionate about a specific cause and let them share their stories 

Source:
Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012.

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The talk that I've zeroed in on is the one by:

Arunachalam Muruganantham - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u1iWhljEbTE

Watching this man talk, I am filled with as much positivism and hope as with wonder. If one were to use the phrase "Food for thought" in the context of his talk, what one sees is an exciting and quirky buffet; a long queue of healthy as well as tasty dishes!

This talk, in a nut shell, is profound at many levels. 

Ironically, I am, perhaps, not going to promote his cause per se as much as the other underlying messages that this man has for the world. 

• To start with, the talk is delivered in the form of an engaging story, filled with passion and natural humor. A great way to connect with and influence the audience, whatever may be the cause! #Leadership

• Even for a language enthusiast like me, the spelling mistakes and broken English were not distractions. It was easy to dive into his talk with the curiosity that is natural when one watches a 'little educated person' (in his own words) whose impressive ideas contradict such a declaration. #Passion

• If it was not already clear, it becomes clear after listening to this man that real education is not necessarily about going to school, religiously running through prescribed text books and clearing exams with high scores. Raw talent, that highly sophisticated and not so well understood element, cannot be ruled out. But it needs to be supported by a lot of reading, observing, thinking, adapting and doing and this is quite different from formal education! For example, he talks about a fascinating management idea such as "fail fast in order to succeed"! #Ideas #Education

• He goes on to passionately advocate that Business is not about chasing money; it is about pursuing something that will have a measurable social impact! The precise measure is, in my view, a point that needs to be very carefully determined, but if all corporate entities were to have such an attitude, it is hard to fathom the good that it can do to the world at large. #Values

• It is more than obvious, as one watches him, that we can learn to achieve anything, however ignorant we may be at the start. The approach that he emphasizes upon as a solution is "trial and error". Of course, it needs to be backed by purpose, vision and patience. #Perseverance 

• He declares "To lead a meaningful life, all you need is a problem!" Now, if that's not one of the simplest and most amazing philosophies in life, I don't know one when I see one. What a positive way of looking at a problem and turning it on its head in one swift and glorious gesture. #Wisdom #Positive_Thinking

• Other subtle messages that come through are worth every minute of the talk - one needs to be prepared to take a lot of risks, throw caution to the winds, appear weird and maybe even lose the people because of whom one was inspired in the first place! #Paradox 

I'd like to finish by saying that this story is a perfect example of the fact that success does not come easy, but if one is obsessed with the purpose, dismissing the obstacles in the path of success begins to look extraordinarily easy. 

The Power of the Written Word

"Each of us has a deep-seated need to reciprocate favors, regardless of whether the quid pro quo is on par with one another. Each of us has a deep-seated need to maintain an internally consistent view of who we are as individuals."

"Apparently, the simple act of writing something down, no matter how innocuous, becomes our perspective. We behave—and change our beliefs, accordingly—to satisfy a need to remain consistent with what we write" 

Source: http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2013/02/05/the-persuasive-innovator-influencing-people-to-collaborate/

Thinkers 50

Vineet Nayar's "Employees First, Customers Second" philosophy has put him in the list of Top 50 Thinkers. Tom Peters, anyone? Sheena Iyengar (TED video on the dilemma of Choice) is the only Indian Woman in the list. 

Umair just about makes it at #49. Phew. Seth Godin, Gladwell, Marcus Buckingham, Rosabeth Kanter, Daniel Pink, Gary Hamel, Stephen Covey, Goleman and Nitin Nohria are all there. Ken Robinson is definitely there but I'd have expected him to be higher up the list.

Clayton M. Christensen is at #1 and, importantly enough, he is someone who talks about organizations' (single-minded?) pursuit of profits being not just the death of innovation but of the economy.


http://www.thinkers50.com/

Gary Hamel: Who are the Most Innovative Companies?

• Gary Hamel: Who are the Most Innovative Companies? - Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 - WSJ
  
  
  Notes:
  
  
  • Fourth are the cyborgs, companies like Google, Amazon and Apple that have been purpose-built to achieve super-human feats of innovation.  You won’t find much industrial age DNA in these organizations. These companies have been built around principles like freedom, meritocracy, transparency and experimentation. They are so endlessly inventive and strategically flexible they seem to have come from another solar system—one where accountants are treated as servants rather than gods.
  • If you work in a company that’s merely human—one that’s riddled with stale, conformance-inducing management practices—another chirpy anecdote about Google or Apple may make you puke.
  • Most of our management rituals were designed (a very long time ago) to promote discipline, control, alignment and predictability—all laudable goals. But to outrun change or head off a newcomer at the pass, these processes have to be re-engineered so they facilitate rather than frustrate bold thinking and radical doing.

Birth of Ideas

Seth Godin's post on a topic that you thought you knew everything about leaves you thinking again.


My favorites from Seth's list:


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• Ideas don't come from watching television (Is everyone listening? ;-))
• Ideas often come while reading a book (Of course!)
• Ideas occur when dissimilar universes collide (Always!)
• Ideas often strive to meet expectations. If people expect them to appear, they do (Love this!)
• Ideas come from our ego, and they do their best when they're generous and selfless (Aww!)
• Ideas come from nature (These are bound to be great!)
• An idea must come from somewhere, because if it merely stays where it is and doesn't join us here, it's hidden. And hidden ideas don't ship, have no influence, no intersection with the market. They die, alone. (KM...what else?)

The Arrival of Aha!

"Learning, creating strategy, and innovation are parts of a single long journey. The journey is iterative, interactive, and full of small steps. Nobody gets a big aha one day. Instead, there is searching; there are missteps, experiments, and doubt." - CK Prahalad

How to Deal with an Alien Idea

I find it exasperating when I am around people who have a tendency to dismiss or criticize ideas, that come from elsewhere, without a second thought. I find myself glowing with happiness when I am with people who respect an idea, consider it from various angles with patience and then come up with genuine concerns and communicate it in such a way that it only motivates the idea giver to introspect further and enhance her idea. So, when I read this article, I had an urge to share it on this blog. I couldn't possibly put it in a better way.

Open your mind: Consider your first reaction when faced with a new idea. You might admit that you frequently feel compelled to analyze and criticize new things. For tiny seedlings of ideas to grow to become big innovations, we must open our minds and defer judgment.

Here’s how: remind yourself that idea generation and idea evaluation are different, equally important modes of thinking, and that you'll work most effectively using one mode at a time. When you’re generating ideas, suspend your disbelief and say yes to everything. When you’re evaluating ideas, first look for the value in every idea. Power off the grading system that was installed in your head in kindergarten. Give all of the ideas you encounter an E for Exotic, Exciting and Excellent. Then phrase your concerns in constructive ways that build and refine ideas.

Innovators Need Patience...

Leading an innovative initiative:


Check out this simple but useful article from Innovation Tools. Be prepared for rejections, objections, ridicule, sarcasm and what not. Prototypes are important. Get the right people to work with you. Sell the idea. 

KM & Innovation are the Best of Friends

Well, a long time ago......but not a very long time ago, a passionate innovation evangelist wondered whether KM 'disables' innovation. Yours truly was shocked, stunned, concerned, curious and disturbed enough to want to vehemently deny it. Ironically, one of the reasons why this blogger loves KM is because of the potential role it can play in Innovation! You see the thing now? So, I decided to ramble non-stop (politely and smilingly though) in response to the post by the aforementioned person. Not sure whether that had any impact but this morning I found a student from Singapore posing a similar but milder question, in Linked In, on whether KM and Innovation are on the opposite sides of the table. So, I decided to refer back to the post that I'd come across last year and knew I could pick up my comment on it and sort of quote myself in response to the Linked In query. But to my surprise, the comment I'd left on the post was missing! No trace of it at all. Whatsoever. Strange, eh? You know what that meant....I had to ramble all over again on Linked In. Sad for the student perhaps, for I may have put in more energy into it this time around ;-) 


Here we go. If you believe KM does not enable innovation or, err, 'disables' innovation, then please get a cuppa or a chocolate bar, put aside your belief for just a few moments and consider my ramblings. But please do let me know if what I say makes no sense or if you have better and more points to add to this post. 


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This is a topic very close to my heart. I am quite passionate about removing (or at least debating furiously upon) this not so uncommon belief that KM and Innovation don't go along together or are detrimental to each other. Like many responses above indicate, this is far from the truth, IMHO. It all depends on the KM objectives and strategy, overall corporate culture and its ability to focus on the objectives as well as balance different approaches. 


If the organization is exclusively focused on cost cutting and productivity improvements via KM, then obviously the KM team and the management may chant the 'reuse knowledge material' and 'collaborate to avoid redundancy' mantras more than anything else. But if the focus is on combining views in creative ways (which is nothing but innovation) there's nothing like KM for it! KM is about bringing people together, helping them learn from each other, collaborate in creative ways and add each other's learnings and experiences to create something fresh and new! Think of brainstorming sessions. Think of communities of practice! Think of team work. Think of experts in different areas coming together to combine their expertise and making something cool out of almost nothing. 


And, even otherwise, please note that KM strategies have undergone a significant transformation over the last few years. Long gone are the days when organizations and KM teams only used to emphasize on documenting and sharing knowledge via document repositories. Organizations started shifting toward tools for expertise location, social networking, collaboration spaces and now Enterprise 2.0 - which is all about connecting people and letting them innovate as a collective force! All said and done, the culture and the environment must help employees balance reuse and innovation via appropriate KM approaches. 


Finally, I think Nick Milton puts it well - KM should be used only to kill unnecessary innovation! Each individual needs to introspect on the context and the situation  in order to decide whether it calls for a quick reuse of material or independent introspection that could even later be complemented with some reusable material. And do remember - Innovation is generally considered to be the art of looking at old ideas in new ways or combining two or more old ideas in a 'new' way. :-)

Innovation and Communities

Discovered this interesting website on Collective Intelligence/Communities and read this article on "Innovation and Communities of Practice" today. I thoroughly enjoyed the article (it actually happens to be an extract/chapter from a book) and found myself highlighting and underlining quite a few thoughts/statements in it. 


Here are some extracts:


* People with talents in multiple disciplines are better poised to see and connect the dots of breakthrough possibilities
* Managers whose discussion networks more often spanned structural holes were more likely to express their ideas, less likely to have their ideas dismissed by senior management, and more likely to have their ideas evaluated as valuable
* Horizontal mobility is, no doubt, one of the ways to cultivate multidisciplinary performers, among which there is a higher concentration of disruptive innovators than among people with only professional identity 
* The fastest way to get smarter in any domain is to join its community of practice, and this is a trend likely to expand its reach to all industries
* The future belongs to organizations that learned to truly unleash the creative powers of self-organizing project communities, knowledge networks, open source teams, and other new ways of work and learning, based on free associations of people who are passionate about what they do together. Communities of practice are in the center of this widening innovation movement
* We nourish life with our generative relationships, as well as with value creation and exchange. Communities of practice are the “sweet spot” of those two dimensions
* The vitality of knowledge ecology--the rainforest of ideas, insights and inspirations - and innovation ecology depends on the same as the vitality of natural ecosystems: their diversity
* Innovation frequently recombines facts and assessments in existing knowledge and the relationships between them. Therefore, how well those community-based knowledge assets are organized and validated is a substantive factor of the organization’s innovation capacity
* When coordination is lubricated by trustful relationship amongst the players, then there is less friction, its transaction cost is lower and results are better
* The meta-capability of collaboration is the No. 1 competitive advantage in the innovation ecology
* Customer communities of practice are particularly essential to accelerate the adoption of an innovation if it is highly complex
* Radical innovation needs people who are members in multiple communities, and play a role of “cultural translators” between them
* Shift in deeply seated mental models, the mutual inspiration and push-back necessary to radical innovation, are most likely to occur in high-trust relationships fostered by the communities
* People freely associating with another, combining their talents, and sharing their learning edges to complete projects or upgrade their skills and invent new ones, are the most generative source of permanent innovation

The Life of an Idea!

Source of picture: http://innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com/2009/12/innovation-and-chip-away-theory.html

What an accurate description of an idea's life! How the heart bleeds at the thought of what most conventional organizations do to great ideas! Add the complexities of requirements gathering and the apple sauce probably becomes too sour to taste!

Innovator's Profile

Loved this article on the ideal composition of Innovation teams.

Extracts:

Innovation teams should be made up of VOLUNTEERS who are completely committed to the concept.

I don't care as much about experience as I do PASSION, since when all else fails it will be the desire and passion that pushes through the barriers.

I am interested in RULE BREAKERS.

I want people on the team who are willing to go the extra mile.

I want people who are comfortable with ambiguity, since innovation often works outside the lines of black and white, in the gray areas where there are no templates.

I want people who understand that innovation is as much about learning as it is about creating, so they understand that the ideas will occasionally fail.

I need people on the innovation team to be willing to discover what's great about an idea rather than what's wrong with it. I need the first words out of their mouths to be "What if" rather than "But". I want people who don't care how we did it before, or whether the idea has been considered before. I want people who look for opportunities for success rather than reasons not to try.

A.Q.O.E.D

Now, this is really interesting.

Article 1: The innovator's DNA

Extract:

"Imagine that you have an identical twin, endowed with the same brains and natural talents that you have. You’re both given one week to come up with a creative new business-venture idea. During that week, you come up with ideas alone in your room. In contrast, your twin (1) talks with 10 people—including an engineer, a musician, a stay-at-home dad, and a designer—about the venture, (2) visits three innovative start-ups to observe what they do, (3) samples five “new to the market” products, (4) shows a prototype he’s built to five people, and (5) asks the questions “What if I tried this?” and “Why do you do that?” at least 10 times each day during these networking, observing, and experimenting activities. Who do you bet will come up with the more innovative (and doable) idea?"

Article 2: Learn the 5 secrets of innovation - Associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and discovering.

Extract: (This is why organizations must not demur when employees want to attend conferences. I've been repeatedly saying this to some of the people who demurred but then I was not able to quote CNN in the past)

"They are able to put together something they hear from a conference they were at last week with a briefing they're at tomorrow and come up with a new idea"

The Life of a Genius

I am quite intrigued by this book. (Discover Your Genius by Michael Gelb) Should watch out for its arrival in my neighborhood bookshop! Some excerpts - that gripped me - from the interview with the author of this book:

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You can learn anything you want to, and you'll surprise yourself with what you can achieve when you know how to learn. We are not taught how to use our full potential. We are not taught how to learn from the great thinkers and doers of the past.

The love of wisdom – philosophy – and its manifestation in the quest for truth, beauty, and goodness, is the thread that weaves through the lives of all the great minds you'll get to know in the pages that follow

The knowledge of learning how to learn is perhaps the most important knowledge we can possess.

Plato "formulated the concept of education as drawing out the knowledge of the student, rather than stuffing it in". Most of us were probably taught by the "stuffing it in" method. I imagine the "drawing out" method would result in happier, livelier brains and a quite different experience of life. (This is from the interviewer)

It is to Socrates that we owe the whole notion of education as a process of drawing out. Socrates and Plato believed, as we discussed earlier, that each person is born with the capacity for genius. Their understanding was that the essence of truth, beauty, and goodness was effectively deep within the soul of each human being. And so education was a process of drawing out the innate understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness rather than trying to stuff it in.

Every one of the geniuses profiled in Discover your Genius had profound vision, a guiding dream and desire. They had unrelenting passion, drive, and persistence.

There was something that they wanted to accomplish, achieve, or understand. They wound up overcoming every obstacle in their way no matter how seemingly impossible it was. (Passion + Persistence)

Is there one or two genius skills that you think would be particularly useful for such problem solvers to cultivate? - I would say journaling as I describe it in the book. All the great geniuses I studied kept notebooks in one manner or other. One of the differences between normal people and geniuses is that when a normal person wakes up at 4 am with a quirky idea, they roll over and say, "I am no genius." But when Einstein woke up at 4 am he wrote it down. That is one simple thing.

The other skill is mind mapping that was originated by my friend, Tony Buzan. It is a fantastic way to generate more ideas in less time, and use more of your whole brain.

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Note: Michael Gelb's ten important geniuses, all of whom made significant and lasting contributions to world knowledge, are Plato, Filippo Brunelleschi, Christopher Columbus, Nicolaus Copernicus, Queen Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Einstein.

Open Innovation

I am on a roll today. Here's a very nice article on what it takes to adopt Open Innovation.

Creativity....

Check this out! Lovely use of colours and images....

Creative Thinking: Your Edge

View more presentations from Joanna Maxwell.

Summary:

1. Be curious, play, suspend judgment, ask a lot of questions
2. Make connections, learn new things, look at it from another angle
3. Challenge yourself, take risks, accept failures, question assumptions
4. Cultivate your ideas, day dream, give ideas time to grow, consider all possibilities

ReTALE

I watched an interesting program on the Retail industry – specifically on innovations in Supermarkets – on the History Channel last week and found it to be fascinating. I think I missed the first part of the program and only managed to see the last 15-20 minutes of it but even that was so very exciting to watch.

There was talk about how supermarket owners once noticed customers struggling with their baskets when picking up items from the shelves after which someone invented the supermarket trolleys (the inspiration was a folding chair whose seat was replaced with a steel carrier). What surprised me was that it apparently took no less than 10 years for the trolley to then evolve into some of the versions we see today! Latter versions of the trolley had flexible backs in order to allow for another trolley to be rolled into it when being piled up. Then, they thought of double carriers, child carriers, trolley locks etc. With recent technological developments, some supermarkets are experimenting with electronic devices that fit into the trolleys and help customers a) locate the shelves that the products they want to buy are on b) scan their products on the fly and calculate their total purchase as they pick up their items thus saving a lot of time at the cash counter c) scan and even compare the stuff that they pick up with standard products etc

It is predicted that with the advancement of RFID technology, all the customer will have to do is walk out of the shop through a panel that automatically scans all the products in the bag and the customer’s credit card and deducts the amount owed by her! Wow! Imagine that!

One more aspect of supermarkets that the program covered was the design of the layout and the placement of products based on buyer psychology. (I’d earlier read about this in my marketing books.) Extremely intriguing stuff! Fresh fruits are placed right in front so they add to the colour of the place, the perishables that people are bound to purchase often are right at the back of the shop as that means people will have to walk through the aisles and may end up buying more than what they planned for (I don’t like such manipulation though), in-supermarket bakeries are encouraged as they lend aroma to the place and make people linger on while munching cakes and cookies etc.

Methinks every damn (routine) thing on earth can be made more exciting than it seems to be at first, provided we believe in and genuinely focus on improving the customer-experience and get the creative juices flowing! :-) Inspires me to ponder over improving some of the routine stuff I am involved in….

Note: Just realized that I'd made a whole bunch of mistakes in this post. Why was I in such a hurry to post it? Anyway, I've corrected all of them now. (Detects instead of deducts, later instead of latter....pshaw!)

Wassup Doc?

Three things that are capturing people’s (and my) attention of late!

Zoozoo

Google Wave

And…..Bing!

H’mm. The world needs its Zoozooz, Wavez and Bingz! :-) Have you been following any of these or, even better, predicting how the world is going to change after being subjected to one or more of these? Ah..well, Zoozoo may not necessarily change the world but it could definitely change the face of advertising!

Change Management = Made to Stick+Tipping Point

Here's an interesting post that brings together E 2.0, the curse of knowledge, evangelization and the 'Made to Stick' concepts. Thought I'd link it up here as it reminds me of my own pet concept of communicating something via a catchy acronym (or tag line) apart from reflecting some of my personal experiences on what constitutes a 'sticky' idea.

Extract from the post which in turn must be an extract from the book, 'Made to Stick':

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Made to Stick: Ideas that are successful follow the SUCCES acronym..

Simple — find the core of any idea. Focus on that
Unexpected — grab people's attention by surprising them
Concrete — make sure an idea is real and not too theoretical
Credibility — give an idea believability allow people to test it themselves.
Emotion — help people see the importance of an idea by tapping emotions
Stories — Stories are great ways to achieve all above
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Coincidentally, I've been pondering over these things of late as you can observe from some of my recent musings on twitter...(read bottom-up)

And, finally, I am convinced that these ideas when combined with the Tipping Point concepts will form a significant force in any Change Management initiative. I have been playing around with these ideas for a bit and, going forward, would love to carve a 'story' out of my experiences. Let's see where it goes...! :-)

I am quite convinced that Made to Stick and Tipping Point are two books that provide an immense amount of raw material for anyone wanting to embark on a Change Management initiative...

Loved this....!

Zen of Innovation

View more presentations from Anders Hemre. (tags: brain mind)