Innovation in Practice

Gender Role in Innovation

Optimal innovation occurs when there is an equal mix of men and women using a systematic process.  I have always believed this through my observation of many innovation exercises.  When a predominately male group tries to innovate, results are less impressive.  When a predominately female group tries to innovate, results are less impressive.  Put them together and the results are amazing.

Research in this area may have some suggestions why.  Lynne Millward and Helen Freeman tested several hypothesis and reported the results in their article, "Role Expectations as Constraints to Innovation:  The Case of Female Managers."  The essence of the research is that, while men and women are equally innovative, their gender role within the context of an organization can affect how they are perceived and how they behave when innovating and sharing ideas.  Men are perceived as more innovative and risk-taking, and women are perceived as more adaptive and risk-adverse.  "Thus, gender roles may interact with the role of the manager to inhibit (in the case of women) or facilitate (in the case of men) the likelihood of innovative behavior."

They tested several hypothesis.  People perceive innovative solutions to be more likely to come from a male manager, and they perceive adaptive solutions to be more likely to come from a female manager.  They also found that innovative solutions were perceived to be more likely to be implemented if they were suggested by a male manager.   

Innovation carries with it different levels of risk for men than for women.  Men are expected to take more risks when innovating and sharing ideas.  Failure is less damaging to men because that's what's expected of them.  Women are expected to be less risky, and this appears to limit or constrain both their degree of innovation and their willingness to share it.  Failure is more damaging for women so they behave more adaptively in innovation exercises.

As a practitioner, I believe there is both a negative and a positive side to this.  On the one hand, innovation workshops need a process to assure that women feel they can innovate "bigger" and share those ideas with the group.  If, as the research suggests, women are more likely to hold back, then the facilitation approach has to break through it.  Otherwise, you lose the inherent value of the (equal) innovation talent they bring to the table.

On the positive side, these differences can be beneficial.  I believe this more adaptive behavior in women and more risk-taking behavior in men provides a certain balance or harmony during innovation.  What I observe is a complementary effect that seems to yield better results.  Why?  I'm not sure, but my sense is that each partner holds the other accountable for ideas that are, at the same time, novel but adoptable.  Working in pairs, men and women also do a better job of expressing jointly-developed new ideas that may help overcome risks that women may be feeling.  Workshop processes that pair men and women up to take advantage of this are going to be more fruitful.

Innovation for the Ages

I taught innovation to a group of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders as part of my son's middle school enrichment program several years ago.  I had never taught children in a formal setting, and it was terrifying at first.  The course was called, "How to Be an Inventor," and we met one hour a week for five weeks.

I had my doubts about this...whether someone could actually learn a systematic approach to innovation.  I had recently experienced the S.I.T. method as part of my company's efforts to create new medical products.  I wanted to experiment to see if a templated approach to innovation could be taught...and applied...in a setting outside of my company.  So I taught these children the five templates: subtraction, task unification, multiplication, division, and attribute dependency.  On the final day, each student had to take a product that I would give to them randomly, apply one of the five tools, and create a new-to-the-world product - all in thirty minutes. They had to draw the invention on the blackboard and explain why it was useful.

The first student was given a ordinary wire coat hanger.  Using the Attribute Dependency tool, she invented a coat hanger that would adjust to the size, weight, and shape of the garment.  Sixth grade!  I had never seen such a product before.  Truth is it had already been invented by Henry Needles in 1953 (United States Patent US2716512), so technically, she failed the exam.  But she created something new to HER world, for sure.  Each student similarly created amazing new products, some incremental, and some far out (moon beam flashlight).

If 6th graders can learn to innovate in real time, so can the business world.  That is why companies are embracing more productive, systematic methods of innovating and shunning traditional methods.

Teaching children to innovate was an epiphany for me.  My next innovation experiment...senior citizens.  I believe a group of senior citizens could be an ideal scenario for innovating in real time.  They have time on their hands, they want to be productive, they have lots of world knowledge and experience, and they think about ways to improve their situation. 

Innovation for the ages...stay tuned.

Innovation Roundtable

The Marketing Science Institute has formed a new Innovation Roundtable to explore common issues and challenges in the world of corporate innovation. The roundtable representatives are from Johnson & Johnson, GE, P&G, Diageo, Eastman Kodak, AT&T, Kraft, Merck, Thompson Healthcare, Praxair, Aetna, and General Mills. I had the pleasure of hosting the last meeting held at the Endo-Surgery Institute, J&J’s world class training facility for minimally invasive surgery. The group plans to meet twice a year.

Topics at this last meeting included:

• How and why is innovation an important issue for your company?
• When, how and by whom was this issue identified? Who currently “owns” it (and why)?
• What steps have been taken to address this issue, with what results? What steps are planned?
• What internal or external resources have you used (do you plan to use)?

For part of the agenda, the group practiced using the SIT innovation method on a product category from a member company (Kodak). We decided to make innovation a regular habit at our meetings so we can “walk the talk” not just “talk the talk." Our goal is to try out a new innovation method at each meeting.

We are fortunate to have Professor Don Lehmann from Columbia Business School as our academic advisor. Don is a prolific researcher in the innovation space (and many others).

Next meeting will be held in conjunction with MSI’s conference, “Innovation and Co-Creation,” in Seattle June 16-18, 2008.  Check out MSI’s great collection of working papers and publications on innovation.