Understanding Innovation

Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.
William Pollard

Local innovation and initiative can help us better understand how to protect our environment.
Gale Norton

Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we've had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you're really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.
Steve Ballmer

Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Modern science is fast-moving, and no laboratory can exist for long with a program based on old facilities. Innovation and renewal are required to keep a laboratory on the frontiers of science.
Burton Richter

My innovation involved taking an idea from the telecommunications and banking industries, and applying that idea to transportation business.
Frederick W. Smith


Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
Steve Jobs

Productivity and the growth of productivity must be the first economic consideration at all times, not the last. That is the source of technological innovation, jobs, and wealth.
William E. Simon


Small businesses are vital contributors to our economy. They are the economic engine that is creating jobs, exploring innovation, and expanding opportunities for Americans in every community across the Nation.
Allyson Schwartz

So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.
Steve Ballmer

Technological innovation is indeed important to economic growth and the enhancement of human possibilities.
Leon Kass

Technology is driving the innovation. Technology is driving the creativity. Technology and the use of that is going to determine our workers' ability to compete in the 21st century global marketplace.
Ron Kind

The Performance Paradox

By Stephen Shapiro

Every organization dreams of finding the magic bullet that will increase creativity, boost productivity, and improve morale. Surprisingly, some of the best solutions are counter-intuitive and run against conventional wisdom.

Keep Your Eye on the Present

A few years ago, I worked with a Formula One racing team. Pit crews, consisting of 19 people, service these ultra fast, high tech racecars, refueling, changing tires, and performing required maintenance in a matter of seconds.

They continually shift positions to find the best combination for the optimal configuration of the team. As they practice, a stopwatch measures their time to milliseconds. Ultimately, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't go any faster. They hit their performance plateau.

Then, they tried NOT to concentrate on their time but on their style instead. While advised to go fast, this time their movements were more significant than their speed. Astonishingly, the crew shaved several tenths of a second off their best time even though they “felt” they were slower. This experiment, in itself, reinforces the concept that the more you focus on your goals, the less likely you are to achieve them. By worrying about the future, you take your eye off the present.

In higher intellectual activities, the results are even more pronounced.

Take the true story of a high school student who became increasingly anxious over passing her upcoming final exam in math, always her weakest subject. She studied incredibly hard, all the time focusing on her goal to pass her exam. In spite of her efforts, she failed. She pleaded with her teachers to give her one more chance. They did. This time, instead of concentrating on the goal, she used a powerful creativity technique. Her first conscious thought each day when she awoke was to visualize herself as Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, a very successful, highly educated woman. Dr. Rice wouldn’t worry about a high school math exam, right? By imagining she was someone else, she stopped agonizing and gained more confidence daily. By focusing on the present rather than the result, she scored a 93%, her greatest performance with less effort.

Dare To Be Different

Does this also apply to sales? Can we perform better when we don’t focus on our sales goals? A woman’s clothing store had a competition to determine who among its employees could sell the most in two months. The winner would receive a bonus and, possibly, a raise. All had their eyes on the prize, except for one sales rep who decided on a different approach. Instead of trying to make a sale, she zeroed in on serving the customer. If a customer needed help for eight hours to pick out a blouse, that’s what she would do. If she felt customers would find a better product at a competitor, she would send them there. After two months, she, who was not trying to make sales, sold more than everyone else did by a significant margin.

We have seen similar results in many sales and service organizations. We all know (and believe) the expression, “You get what you measure,” but will you get what you want? Targets and goals create stress and dysfunctional behavior.

Less Motivation, More Performance

The concept of reducing goal-obsession to improve performance is not new. In the early 1900s, Robert Yerkes and J. D. Dodson developed the aptly named Yerkes-Dodson Law. The premise is performance increases relative to motivation (they call it “arousal”) only to a point, after which performance drops.

Typically, it is drawn as an inverted U-shaped curve.

If you lack motivation, you have low performance. This is not surprising.

As your motivation increases, your performance increases…to a point. This point is the sweet spot of optimal performance. Then, as you become more goal obsessed, performance paradoxically decreases. Goals increase stress and fixate you on the future rather than the present.

Yerkes and Dodson suggest that different tasks require different levels of arousal (to use their word). For example, physically demanding tasks often require higher levels of motivation. This explains why professional athletes are inclined to be more goals driven. Even so, as demonstrated by the pit crew example, too much goal orientation will hurt even athletic performance. In 2004, the New England Patriots (American football) broke the records for the longest winning streak in NFL history--20 games in a row. At a press conference that followed, a reporter asked the team’s Head Coach, Bill Belichick, to comment on this winning streak. He replied, “We did not have a 20 game win streak. We had 20 one-game win streaks.” His philosophy was to play each game the best they could. Setting your sights too far ahead is a sure recipe for failure.


Creativity Has its Own Rewards

Within the business world, Yerkes and Dodson found that to improve concentration, intellectually challenging tasks required lower levels of arousal/motivation. The more creative the work, the less motivation required to hit peak levels of performance. Studies reveal that creativity diminishes when individuals are rewarded (externally motivated) for doing their work. Why? The desire to achieve the goal overtakes the personal interest in the endeavor. A myopic focus on the outcome overshadows the intellectual stimulation of the process. As a result, risk taking reduces, and creativity vanishes.

"Working hard" may not be the best way to improve productivity and creativity. Maybe it isn’t even "working smarter." As we have seen, maybe it lies in trying less. Or maybe it can be found in understanding human behavior and motivation, as illustrated in the following studies.

Your Loss Could Be Your Gain

Which magazine do you think American men are more likely to buy?
• a men’s health magazine with the cover, “Lose Your Gut Fast" or

• a similar magazine with the cover, “Get Six Pack Abs?”


Although most people intuitively think that the second cover, “Get Six Pack Abs,” is the sure winner, when a magazine did such a comparison, it found that “Lose Your Gut Fast” sold six times more copies. Why? The answer lies in the three requirements for an individual (or organization or society) to change:
#1: They must be dissatisfied or uncomfortable with the current situation.

#2: They must see a better future.

#3: They must believe that they can reach that better future with a reasonable amount of effort.

Point #3 is critical. Using the “gut” example, when someone is 20 pounds overweight, as are many Americans, six pack abs may be desirable yet seem inconceivable. It’s just too much work, and the likelihood of success feels slim. Only when your gut is gone will the idea of six-pack abs seem like a possibility. Only when your organization is a lean, mean fighting machine will people embrace longer-term, strategic visions.
A question I ask when I address my audiences illustrates this concept further:

"Which would you choose:


• Option 1: A guaranteed gain of $75,000 or

• Option 2: An 80% chance to gain $100,000 with a 20% chance of getting nothing?"

Seventy-five percent of audience members choose Option 1, consistent across all groups, regardless of demographics. People are risk averse when it comes to increasing gains. What would you choose if I worded the question as a loss rather than as a gain?

• Option 1: A certain loss of $75,000

• Option 2: An 80% chance of losing $100,000 with a 20% chance of not losing anything


Over 80% in my audiences now choose Option 2. People will take risks to reduce their losses. This explains why the status quo often wins over change. Although there may be a benefit in changing, the risk of losing what you already have is too great.

People will take great risks to minimize (or reduce) their pain/losses, yet play it safe when the option is to increase their pleasure/gains. When your organization’s change plans are utopian visions of a grandiose future, your employees move to the far end of the performance curve: high motivation, low performance. They become cynical about success and feel as though you are not addressing their present moment pains and frustrations. Instead, fix immediate problems first. Then begin to address, more strategic visions.



What’s The Bottom Line?

To create a pervasive culture of innovation you must first create an environment of performance and motivation. Achieving this is often, paradoxically, the result of less effort rather than harder work. Although goals and performance targets are useful tools, they can also have a detrimental impact on results. When people are future fixated, their creativity and overall performance diminish. Find the sweet spot of optimal performance, and you will undoubtedly see an increase in employee productivity, creativity, and satisfaction…all with less effort.



About Stephen Shapiro

During his 15-year tenure with the international consulting firm Accenture, Stephen Shapiro established and led its 20,000-person Global Process Excellence Practice. In 2001, he left the management-consulting world to write his first book, “24/7 Innovation” (McGraw-Hill), which was featured in Newsweek, Investor’s Business Daily and the New York Times. His second book, “Goal-Free Living” (Wiley), became the #1 Amazon.com “Business Motivation” bestseller. Featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, the book was also included in The Best of O, The Oprah Magazine. His latest book is “Stephen Shapiro’s Little Book of Big Innovation Ideas.”

For more information visit

www.SteveShapiro.com

Wanna start a fire? All you need is a spark!

Welcome to the world of Spark magazine, a place where you can ignite your senses and find inspiration to stimulate your creative capabilities. All around us today are problems and issues that challenge the success of our dreams, goals, personal endeavors and businesses.

Many times in our lives we are like the proverbial maid searching for a lost coin in the dark. Or like the man trapped in a darkened room with a live tiger, not knowing how to escape. When light appears, we find what we are looking for, we find a way of escape.

All it takes to move forwards in life, overcoming our personal and organizational bottlenecks, are sparks of insight, ideas, innovations and creative solutions. That is what Spark Magazine hopes to create - Sparks!

It is our hope and mission, that through our content, we will be able to stimulate new ideas, promote old ones that work, and generally generate and highlight solutions to problems we face. The over all intention is to make a positive difference in our lives and improve personal and organizational productivity, which ultimately increases wealth.

We hope to achieve this through the content we will feature on this blog and in our upcoming website and magazine! (*soon to be out)

We will feature stories, reports and articles that are designed to stimulate. I am sure you, our potential followers, will always feel that spark of creative energy and inspiration each time you visit us.

Feel free to be interactive, sending in your comments, ideas, innovations and of course creative solutions.

And here is just a sneak preview of an event we have labelled - The Switch Challenge!, brought to you by Switch Media Nigeria.

Switch Challenge (SC) is an open innovation marketplace. It's where diverse community members from all over the world respond to challenges posted by companies. SC helps sponsoring companies highlight various organizational/business challenges and makes them available to a global network of Innovators. These Innovators develop solutions and the best short-listed solutions are submitted for review by SC and the Sponsor. If one or more of the submissions meets the Sponsor's needs, that Innovator is awarded a success fee.


SC is all about ideas, innovations and strategies, stirring up innovations within youths and focusing their intellectual and creative minds on solving tough problems, as they get recognition from their peers and the management of leading enterprises.

SC will also help aspiring young entrepreneurs to expand their network of valuable business contacts, as they develop relationships with community members who can also be useful outside SC - for business development, recruiting, investment searches and more. It is also an opportunity to earn significant financial remuneration.

Switch Challenge will be established in Abuja, with coverage all over Nigeria.

A yearly seminar will be held at each geo-political zone of Nigeria to stir up innovation amongst youths and a yearly award to the most innovative challenge of the year, as well as the most innovative company.

All this is already underway. So stay tuned and we will keep you posted.

SPM