Barriers to Creativity and Innovation - An International Survey

Ideas are the source of innovations, and when creativity is blocked, we will not see many ideas and innovations in the pipeline.

Here is a worldwide survey that I conduct to uncover the key success factors that are missing in organisations.

The survey is presented below. Click on the blank box for the drop down list of response choices. It should take about 5 minutes to complete this.

These are some of the initial conclusions from the findings drawn from the survey:

Communication

Why is communication important as a building block in innovation? We are not talking about active listening. Neither are we alluding to the use of NLP. Rather, it is what people in organisations hear from the chatter. Sometimes, we call this chatter the organisational grapevine. Employees are more likely to believe in what comes out from the grapevine than from official sources. Mismanagement of the chatter has negative consequences and it could upset all good intentions of the leadership team has of innovation for the company:

• We have a very active grapevine in my company and I believe what comes out from it more than what my manager tells me.
• I have several sources in the grapevine that I get my information, and none of them are my immediate superiors.

Supporting Environment

Having a creative idea is easy. It is the translation of the idea into a prototype and subsequently into an innovation that is a challenge. The success of this conversion needs a supportive environment. Organisational members who encounter difficulties in the environment are less likely to stick their head out and innovate on the behalf of their company:

• My managers seemed to be resisting or blocking ideas that are not his/her own or which he/she sees as threatening to his/her own growth in the company.
• We have a ‘blame-culture’ in the company and I am afraid of making mistakes and lose my prospect of growth in the company.
• The organisational value of getting things right the first time has induced a fear of making mistakes in me.

Role-Based Performance

There is this on-going maxim in the jargons of management – what gets measured gets done. I have one to share too – when we use the wrong measurements we will get behaviours that are detrimental to the organisation. We have to be mindful of the incentives we introduce and these are some that fly into the face of innovation:

• The reward system recognises me for getting things done fast with no mistakes.
• Ideas that demonstrate real and concrete value on the on-set is more likely to get support from the company.

Resources

It is unlikely that the employees will fork out their own pocket money to do innovative work for their company, especially not during this inflationary phase of the economy. The company has to help and companies that are not willing are unlikely to bring out innovative solutions:

• There seems to be a lack of explicit funding for experimentation and prototyping.

Social Networks

A worker does not work in isolation. In fact, he/she is connected to his/her network. We could call these networks ‘cliques’, ‘groups’, ‘gangs’, or ‘teams’. The networks could be formal or informal but they all have cognitive and affective control over their members. Poor management of these networks could hamper the organisation’s ability to innovate:

• There is a suspicion of novelty, a fear of the unproven amongst my peers.
• There is an over allegiance to past successes, proven experience and tried and tested methods from where I come from.
• There is a resistance to learning from mistakes or doing by trial and error, a tendency to blame external factors or other people for failures in the office.
• There is a tendency to shoot down novel ideas as a way of scoring points in my office.

Capability and Capacity

It is natural that we, as humans, are creative. If not, we would not be here today. However, it is an art to be consistently creative and innovative. It is almost like saying that we can get a creative idea and an innovation on demand, at the switch of a button. Now, this is difficult if we do not have the capability and capacity to do these. In capability, we are concerned about the competency, and by capacity we look at motivation. Organisations that fit these descriptions do have an uphill task of innovating and beat their competitors:

• We are very concerned about cost containment, standardisation, consistency and efficiency, and we look for talents that help us in these areas.
• There is a wanting to analyse everything to death and to wait and see what others do in the office before acting.
• There is a drive to meet short term financial goals rather than investing in the future.

This article was first written on 19 Oct 2007 and updated on 30 April 2008 and 14 Mar 2010.

Copyright 2007, 2008 & 2011. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Innovation Practitioners Singapore

I am starting an on-line community of practice of Innovation Practitioners in Singapore.

What is Innovation Practitioners Singapore?

This is a platform for Innovation Practitioners in Singapore to network, share and create sustainable transformation through creativity and innovation.

Purpose

Create an access for building sustainable corporations through creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Vision

Ideological commitment towards corporate, human, and ecological sustainability.

Mission

• To help organisations attain sustainable performance throughinnovative sustainable management practices.
• To build human capability and skills for sustainable high level organisational performance, and to renew the quality of life of the workforce, community, and society.
• To add to the richness of the biosphere by protecting, maintaining and renewing the biological integrity of the planet.

Values

• You do not do anything you do not want others to do to you.
• When you feel it is not right, it is not necessary the same for us.
• Openness is in the space of the listener. Feel free to speak your mind.
• We help. We do not sell. Not everyone want us and it is alright.
• Do not give up when you did not get it right the first time. We are fighting a cause and not for our lives.

If you are keen to join this community, please signup below.

Subscribe to Innovation_Practitioners_Singapore
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Basic SCAMPER

For several years, I have been asking to do write up on SCAMPER on my blog. Now, here is my brief attempt at it.

SCAMPER, which was created by Bob Eberle, provides a checklist for refining an existing product and service. There several reasons why SCAMPER is used. These are to reduce the:

• Material cost for creating the product or service,
• Manufacturing cost for producing the product or service,
• Distribution cost for diffusing the product or service to the customers,
• Storage cost for keeping the product or service to balance demand, and
• Propensity of product and service reaching the end stage of their life in the market.

From the principles of SCAMPER, I have developed a set of Let's SCAMPERTM cards in 2008.

SCAMPER stands for:

S - Substitute - If we don't use this, what else could we use in place of this?

Over the last 100 years, the global sea level has risen by about 10 to 25 cm. The Earth's climate will warm by at least 1 degree by the year 2100 and the seas will rise by 11 cm. The warming is likely to continue through 2400 even if pollution stops today. We could face the worst-case scenario of global average temperature rising by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit within this century resulting to sea level climbing by a foot or more.

There is a need to reduce these emissions and prevent the continuous lost of coastal land and habitats, and biomass may provide the alternative source of fuel to petroleum.

C - Combine - Could we put two or more together?

Ask anyone who bakes and they will tell you how nightmare-ish it is using the measuring spoons. Wouldn't it be a joy in baking when the complexity of using the spoons is taken out of the process by combining the spoon heads into just two that ride on sliders?

A - Adapt - Could we change it slightly and use it else where?

When come to adaptation, no other product does it as well as Listerine.

‘Listerine was invented in the 19th century as a powerful surgical antiseptic. It was later sold, in a distilled form, as a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. But it wasn't a runaway success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution for "chronic halitosis", the faux medical term that the Listerine advertising group created in 1921 to describe bad breath.

By naming and thus creating a medical condition for which consumers now felt they needed a cure, Listerine created a market for their mouthwash. Until that time, bad breath was not conventionally considered a catastrophe, but Listerine's ad campaign changed that.

As the advertising scholar James B. Twitchell writes, "Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis." Listerine's new ads featured forlorn young women and men, eager for marriage but turned off by their mate's rotten breath. "Can I be happy with him in spite of that?" one maiden asked herself. In just seven years, the company's revenues rose from $115,000 to more than $8 million.’ Source: Freakonomics. Listerine most recent addition is the whitening formula.

M - Modify - Could we modify its attributes to save on its costs and extend its life?

We are all too familar with the calculator. The sale of the first electronic desktop calculator began in the early 1960s and quickly became a commodity by late 1970s. The first microprocessor was developed originally as a calculator chip, which served as a springboard for an entire industry.


Modern calculators are electrically powered and have morphed in countless shapes and sizes varying from cheap, give-away, credit-card sized models to more sturdy adding machine-like models with built-in printers to extend it life and usefulness in the market. There are calculator softwares that could be uploaded onto the personal computers.

P - Put to another use

'Put is another use' is similar to 'recycle' and 'reuse' but we do not change the physical characteristics or attributes of the original product or service. We just take it lock, stock and barrel and apply it else where.

Sodium bicarbonate is used in baking where it reacts with other ingredients to release carbon dioxide to help ‘raise’ the dough. Sodium bicarbonate (or ‘NaHCO3’). Is a salt with many other names including sodium hydrogencarbonate, sodium bicarb, baking soda, bread soda, cooking soda, bicarb soda or bicarbonate of soda.

Baking soda has been put to many different uses without the need to change its Alkaline characteristics.

E - Eliminate - Could we remove its elements?

ELIMINATE - to go where it can’t be before

Recently the head of the US based MIT Media Lab, Mr. Nicholas Negroponte presented a prototype of the 100 dollar laptop to UN Chairman Kofi Annan at the WSIS-summit in Tunis.

This little bright green laptop can do almost anything a current laptop computer can, but, by using mass-produced cheap components, omitting expensive moving parts, and by the law of great numbers can be made for just one tenth of its price.

The price in the title is no mistake: this machine can be made for just 100 US dollars (S$148).

Source: http://www.bohol.ph/article116.html

R - Reverse - Could we turn it inside out or upside down?

Many things could provide fresh perspectives when we reverse it inside out or turn it upside down. Could we turn a piece of art upside down to give it a brand new feel? Could we print on the blank side of a piece of printed paper to recycle it? Here are some other examples of things on the reverse.

Copyright 2007. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved

Balanced Dynamics Innovation

Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM

This is an innovative approach that helps organisations increase their chances of getting innovative breakthroughs from their innovation teams.

The approach addresses the need of putting together a team that has all the capabilities and capacities to create and deliver innovative breakthroughs. It also overcomes the difficulties of getting a team, with very diverse backgrounds, to stay together long enough to bring their innovative breakthroughs to the market.

It is not natural that the teams will succeed. They need to be set up for success. Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM brings together two sets of technology to do just this. Here is a brief description of each of these technologies:

Setting the Team Up for Success

The typical reasons for teams which are unable to bring innovation to market include their failure to recruit entrepreneurial individuals to the job, leaders who ignore important tasks in the innovation process, and members failing to resolve conflicts.

The Opportunities-Obstacles, Team Management (visit this link or if you have a Facebook account, do click on this link to sample the Facebook edition of the 'Work Preference Profile') and Linking Skills (visit this link to sample the Facebook edition of the 'Linking Skills Profile')Profiles provide individuals with valuable insights and information into the way they prefer to work, their preferred roles within an innovative team, and propensity their teams are likely to deliver breakthroughs to the market.

This feedback will help improve the team members' relationship, and its capability to create and deliver, which in turn increases the organisation’s propensity to innovation.

Cycle of InnovationTM

This is a proven methodology that alleviates the adverse effects of the forming and storming phases of the team’s development. It takes the team from the creation of an idea to turning it into actual working prototypes within a short span of 3 days, thereby strengthening the team’s capacity to deliver what they have created.

The members of the team will also address issues pertaining to marketing the solution, dealing with sceptics, managing resources, and negotiating between different interest groups. It is fast-paced and is used for designing, refining, and introducing new products, services and processes. The roots of Cycle of InnovationTM can be trace to iDive, a process that has been used by the MINDEF Innovation and Transformation Office since 2004.

There are several recommended approaches to introduce Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM into your organisation. You could use one or several in combination, depending on how you like these technologies to be encased in the culture of your organisation:

• Starter - Organisation adopts the left hand side of the Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM. This consists of a set of profiling exercises and a half to one-day worth of Post-profiling Developmental Session. The knowledge gained could be dovetailed into the organisation's existing team development or management systems.
  
  

  

• Pilot - Organisation runs the Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM Workshop. The outcomes of the three-day workshop is the creation of an effective innovation team, which will deliver the prototype of the innovative breakthrough and the business plan for its introduction into the market. Recently, MICA has successfully incorporated this process in its 2008's Innovation Jam.

Testimonies from participants had attended the programme:

• I have learnt to use different tools to solve different types of problems.


• I found the tool useful both at work and at home.


• I have discovered a way to analyse problems in a systematic and comprehensive manner, hence I am able to tackle the problem with the most appropriate set of tools.

• Scaled - Organisation is imbued with the technologies. This approach is more involved as the organisation learns to use these technologies and conducts their own post-profiling developmental session and Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM workshop.

Please contact me (spaceman@pacific.net.sg) if you want to learn more about Balanced Dynamics InnovationTM or if you want to explore the approaches for bringing the technology into your organisation.

This article was 1st written on 20th August 2007 and subsequently updated on 7 & 23 Oct 2008, 11 Mar 09 & 15 Jan 2010.

Copyright 2007 & 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

GIST Planning Board and Strategic Thinking Cards

There are many reasons why innovation fails to take off after much of the fanfare introduced at its launch. One key reason is that the owners of the innovation do not think through their longer term strategies, and when conditions change, they either lack the disposition or resources to allow them to sustain the diffusion of the innovation to reach its critical tipping point, where the change could take place without further interference from the owners.

Thinking strategically involves looking not just at the past and present, but also at the future. Only after the successful completion of this phase could we strategically plan for the future. In short, regardless of the innovation introduced strategic thinking helps you anticipate changes in the environment, and plan for them so you are prepared and not go under.


The GISTTM Strategic Thinking Cards and Planning Board is a methodology that comes with a set of cards and board that take you through a series of steps where you think critically, strategically and creatively about your strategies and action plans to introduce innovative solutions into your organisation and marketplace.

The methodology presents four phases and these are:

Grounding the Problem. In this phase, a set of questions are presented to help you identify your users' requirements. You may like to view the slide-share below by clicking on the board.

GIST Planning Board - Panel 1

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: planning creativity)

Ideation and Refinements. Here, the board guides you in generating and refining innovative solutions.

Strategy Development and Leveraging. The planning board now asks you about your strategies of sustaining the change.

Putting Them Together. Finally, you are led into putting together a plan that introduces the innovative solution into your organisation or market.

There are several ways the methodology could be brought into your organisation. These are some of the suggested approaches:

Since 2008, the GISTTM Strategic Thinking Cards and Planning Board has been introduced to the trainers at the National Community Leadership Institute, innovation activists from the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts Innovation Teams and Land Transport Authority of Singapore.

This article was updated on 14 Sept 2008, 12 Feb 2009 & 31 Mar 2009.
Copyright 2007, 08 & 09. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Journey to Kinderland - Setting the Creative and Innovative Mindset

There were challenges running the MINDEF Innovation Game between 2002 to 2006. One of these was the organisation of workshops for large groups (more than 50 participants). With the configuration of 2 facilitators to every 5 players, I had to muster 10 facilitators to run an event for 50 players in the early days when the game was introduced into the organisation.

Subsequently, one of the players was made to helm the role of the 2nd facilitator but this arrangement affected that player's learning cycle. In the later years, I had the players trained in the mechanisms of the game so that they run the game with me and in their sub-units but there were reservations about their effectiveness in debriefing their participants.

Having facilitators at the table continued to be problematic (The mechanisms of the game could have been changed since I left MINDEF in Feb 2007 and these historical legacies may no longer impact it.)

From the lessons learnt from those few years of helming the game for more than 1,000 participants from MINDEF and many other public sector organisations, like MOE and MinLaw, it dawn on me that creating another game with simlar characteristics may not be viable for the private sector. I found another approach, in June 2007, that gets me out of this constraint of balancing learning effectiveness and organising efficiency.

Takeaways from Journey to KinderlandTM

Journey to KinderlandTM is a game, which consists of a series of 9 activities (to be expanded to 20 in the future), that provides players a new way of exploring their own personal and interpersonal barriers, in an experiential way, to creativity and innovation . The activities open a window into their subconscious mind and see how it operates. The game provides a language that helps them distinct and catches the triggers that control their thinking and behaviours that have prevented them from fully realising their personal potentials.

I had used 4 of the 9 activities with LTA (2007 & 2008), NACLI (2007) and recently with MICA (2008). The outcomes have been very encouraging. The mechanisms of these activities have proven to work. Besides their abilities to consistantly evoke the same behaviours sets, deem necessary as opportunities for the debrief after the game, they also generate the same category of deep learning amongst the players. Because each activity is self contained, players enjoyed the activity without the intervention from the facilitator until during the debrief period. As learning is modularised, the introduction and acquisition of the language is specific and faster although the debriefs have to be conducted by a skilled and experience faciltiator. Still. this is a breakthrough from the confines of the original innovation game.

The Happy Family Game

One of these activities is the Happy Family Game, which is a card-based exercise where participants learn about how we deal with the known and unknown.

2 x 2 Grid of Knowns and Unknowns

Throught the card-based exercise, participants learn that:

We Pretend We Know It All But Really We Don't

We often see the Future seen as a continuation from the Past. From this perspective, many of us attempt to deal with the future by strategising and planning as if we already know how the Future will unfold.

However, all known futures are actually hindsights. Those futures that we know before their occurrence are just predictions. Honestly, we are clueless most of the time. The reality is that all events in the world could be grouped into 4 different categories and the future is unknown to us. It requires a set of strategies and behaviors, which is different from those we are using now, to deal with it effectively.

Understanding these can give us the freedom to create the breakthroughs in our ideas and actions……

Another exercise conducted at the workshop is the Old Macdonald Sing-along. Participants learn that there is:

Meaning Making Machines

More than a Conversation in a Conversation

Unaware to us, as we speak to someone, we are in more than a conversation. In fact, there are five other conversations taking place at the same time. Conversations that we are not even consciously aware of.

What we are present to in any conversation are those things we can hear and see. However, there is also this conversation that only we can hear. Sometimes, we even verbalise and act out some part of it. This is the world of the internal conversation. This is the conversation of 'yes' or 'no', 'should' or 'shouldn't,', 'right' or 'wrong', 'whys', 'cannot be?!' and many more. This is a conversation of evaluation and decision making. This is the conversation where meaning are being made. This conversation is capable of stoping us from doing something.

The scary part of this conversation is that it is the loudest.

This acticle was 1st written on 6 Nov 2007 and updated on 14 May & 23 Oct 2008.

Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Facilitation Star & Facilitation Competency Wheel

Towards the middle of 2005, I decided that we need a vibrant community of facilitators to sustain the culture of innovation in my previous organisation.

The timing for its formation was good as there was a urge in the organisation to move away from the efficient way of reaching agreements to that of the effective way of consensus building. Also, there was a growing recognition that the wisdom in the organisation is in the crowd and the efficient way of doing things has gotten in the way.

We attracted only 14 people at the 1st MINDEF Facilitators' Forum (MFF) on 16 September 2005. As the concept of facilitation was very new at that time, it became apparent to me that to grow the community I need to invest in the education, training and development of facilitators. Subsequently, this led to the introduction of the MFF Developmental Framework at the 30th of November 2005's MFF Gathering.

The years I spent leading the movement has provided me invaluable insights into how the art and science of facilitation could be imparted. The 5 points of The Facilitation StarTM represents the body of knowledge I have accumulated from MINDEF on developing facilitators.



The star is a structured process that could helps current and aspiring facilitators gain mastery over their trade. The star helps them to:

• Understand the characteristics of a facilitator and the nature of facilitation, and to differentiate this role from those of teachers, trainers, coaches, advisors, and consultants.
  
• Uncover the needs of the client who initiated the facilitated session and the needs of those participating in the session.
  
• Apply the above information to design effective group processes that could effectively to Manage the dynamics of goup in conversation, Facilitate the conversations, and Guide the group towards consensus.
  
• Use the skills of facilitation to create a sustainable environment for participation during the conversation.
  
• Deliver the design of the session to the group to enable its participants to create the intended outcome. Please click on this icon for the sample of the design template and the click on this icon for the Programme Run-sheet.

After two years of effort (and literally, of sweat), the membership of the community grew from a mere 14 to 200, and I have hosted 70 participants at some of the gatherings.

I am also very happy that some large departments have adopted the framework as their own, which shows the recognition of facilitators as champions of innovation in organisations.

The Facilitation Competency WheelTM

To begin cultivating and growing our facilitation capability and capacity, it is always good to know our current competency in facilitation.

The Facilitation Competency WheelTM is a self-assessment tool where facilitators and potential facilitators score 14 different statements against a 4-point scale onto the wheel below to determine his/her facilitation competency.

Understanding the Wheel

Facilitation is divided into the science and art of facilitation. In the science of facilitation, the focus is in the processes, methodologies and tools used in facilitating engagements. For the art of facilitation, the key concern is keeping the negative aspects of group dynamics out from the conversations at the engagements.

The wheel provides three important sets of information on the competency level of the facilitator:

Balance - It shows whether the facilitator is strong in the art or in the science of facilitation, and therefore suggests the broad areas he/she should next develop.

Focus – It provides information on the specific strengths to leverage on and weaknesses to avoid, which allows the facilitator to accurately pin-point his/her training needs and identify the most appropriate training programmes that could address these needs.

Competence – Finally, the Wheel also informs of the facilitator’s competency level. The lower the current competency is the greater the opportunity for growth in that area for the facilitator.

Both the Star and Wheel has been used in several organisations since 2007. These include Ministry of Education's Teacher Network and Ong Teng Cheong Institute of Labour Studies.

This article was first written in June 2007 and subsequently updated in April, September & December 2008.

Copyright 2007 and 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Big Splash – Diving into the Realms of Entrepreneurship

There have been calls for me to develop an approach to help organisation produce entrepreneurs. I decided to create The Big SplashTM. It has five components that touches, moves and inspires individuals to:

• Adopt positive mindsets for being creative, innovative and enterprising
• Acquire the competency and capacity to do well as an entrepreneur
• Apply their knowledge and skills around creative ideas and innovations
• Accept the responsibility of the entrepreneur by bringing the benefits of the innovation to the public

The Big SplashTM is designed to allow participants:

• Learn the skills by doing their projects
• Gain the competency for creating other innovations
• Acquire the capacity to deal with the unexpected

The process of The Big SplashTM is described in the following ways:

While I did not have the opportunity to introduce Big SplashTM in my previous organisation, but I was lucky to bring some expects of the process into the organisation. These include ThinkInnovate, Entrepeneur Dive, and Innovation Jam between 2004 to 2006.

Copyright 2007. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Enhanced Open Space (eOS)

I was introduced to the Open Space Technology (OST) in 2003 when the newly formed Facilitators Network Singapore (FNS) brought this to the country as part of their effort to introduce facilitation to the nation. Subsequently, I attended a three-day workshop, where I was ‘certified’ to conduct OST both as an organiser and facilitator.

Embedded in the OST process, are its capabilities of inviting, self-organising, and hosting large audience participation. However, it has limitations. Three are identified:

+ The breakout team lacks a group based process that could effectively ‘pull’ the wisdom out of the participants, organise the wisdom and record the knowledge systematically, and democratically reach a conclusion in the conversation.

+ The participants in the team do not possess the tools necessary to identify their wisdom, critically challenge them, and using the insights to generate new knowledge.

+ The Law of Two Feet, while empowers the participants with the freedom to join and exit the breakout groups, also weakens the groups’ capacity to unstuck and move the conversation forward, and thereby, reaching breakthroughs.

Understanding these weaknesses, I had the opportunity to create the Enhanced Open Space (eOSTM), which brought together three technologies.

These are:

Traditional Open Space Technology (OST)

Open Space Technology is a way to invite and convene different stakeholders to a large scale gathering where participants generate their own agendas, allocate their own time and duration, enthuse participation in the breakouts, and encourage group level conversations. Usually, the gathering is facilitated, and there are principles and rules that participants have to comply with to encourage the democracy in participation, commitment, and contribution at the event.

Rules of OST:

• Whoever comes are the right people
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
• Whenever it starts is the right time
• When it's over, it's over
• Where the Law of Two Feet should apply, will apply

Innovation ThinkTM

Innovation ThinkTM was first conceptualised in 2003, developed, tested and implemented in the Ministry of Defence by me from 2004 as a way to help teams focus their creative capacity, use their wisdom, combine knowledge, and generate ideas. Its birth came from my awareness and understanding in the limitations of traditional brainstorming methods where difficulties are in contextualising, screening, and organising large amount of ideas arising from the using these methods.

Innovation ThinkTM (aka iThink) has four steps:

• Brainstorming - drawing what are already forgotten
• BrainConnectingTM - combining and recombine existing knowledge
• IdeaSmashingTM - breakthroughing old frames and heuristics
• AngleOfAttackTM - determining the key thrusts for the idea-solutioning

Tricks of InnovationTM

The Tricks of InnovationTM is a box of tools that challenges assumptions, articulates challenge statements, develops broad ideation approaches, and creates and refines new ideas. The tools enable the users to breakout from their usual framing contexts and thinking heuristics so that they could think freely without hindrance of the past.

Tools in Tricks of InnovationTM include:

+ The Eager Attack – Locating the centre of gravity
+ CSx – Clarifying and articulating the challenge of a problem
+ Reversal X – Finding answers by opposing what’s known
+ SD Cards – Finding answers by examining their attributes
+ Split – Finding answers by divide and conquer
+ iBox – Finding answers by looking at their parameters
+ aSCAMPERTM – Advance SCAMPER for re-finding the answers

When I was told that the Defence Management Group (DMG, Ministry of Defence, Singapore) wanted to enrich her culture with creativity and innovation, I jumped on the opportunity by proposing to Mr Lim Hup Seng (the Deputy Secretary for Administration at that time) the conduct of a large scale event called the DMG Innovation Jam (iJam) on 8 Oct 2003.

This was where I tested eOSTM, and the successful implementation of the process and the positive outcomes at iJam helped the MINDEF Innovation and Transformation Office (MITO) secured her nominated for the DMG Community Award (Team) for Kickstarting her culture for Innovation that year.

The key takeaways reported by the 200 plus participants who attended the whole day event were that participants:

• were introduced to an alternative but highly innovative and democratic approach that engages large audience in creativity and innovation.

• were able to experience an unique group based process that that truly generated new knowledge and breakthrough ideas that was very different from the traditional brainstorming methods.

• were using simple but powerful ideation tools that forced them to think laterally than linearly.


Copyright 2007. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

Segmentation of Problems - There Is No One Methodology for All Kinds of Problem

Organisations always have problems.

Taking a simplistic view, we can segment most problems along the lines of urgency and scarcity, which leaves us with a 2 x 2 matrix. The problems in each section of the matrix will require a unique approach in obtaining solutions for these problems.

So, no one methodology fit all kinds of problem.

Time based problems are a category of problems that are time sensitive but the teams have the funds to create and implement the solutions. Cycle of InnovationTM is a methodology best suited for identifying solutions for this type of problems because it taps on the diversity in the work group and concentrates the focus of the team on the problem to increase its propensity perform creatively and innovatively.

The roots of Cycle of InnovationTM can be trace to iDive, a process that has been used by the MINDEF Innovation and Transformation Office since 2004.

Cycle of InnovationTM is a 5-step process that that shortens the adverse effects of the forming and storming phases of the team’s development. It takes the team from the creation of an idea to turning it into actual working prototypes within a short span of 3 days, thereby strengthening the team’s capacity to deliver what they have created.

The members of the team will also address issues pertaining to marketing the solution, dealing with sceptics, managing resources, and negotiating between different interest groups. It is fast-paced and is used for refining existing products, and designing and introducing new ones.

These 5 steps are:
There are a number of tools used in the methodology. An example of a tool used in Cycle of InnovationTM is the Innovation Box.

Innovation Box - Combining Parameters into New Ideas

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: creativity innovation)

Please contact me (spaceman@pacific.net.sg) if you want to learn more about Cycle of InnovationTM or if you want to explore the approaches and investments for bringing the technology into your organisation.

Copyright 2007 & 2008. Anthony Mok. All rights reserved.

The Innovation Game - @ Verge of Disaster

A few years ago, I met Richard Mak, the inventor of a board game on entrepreneurship called Zeros to Heros, at an conference. He was exhibiting the game at the event when we chatted.

'How have things been since we met last year?' he asked me.

I replied: 'Busy. I see that you have successfully launched your game.'

'Yes. We were at the schools recently, and the acceptance of the game there was tremendous.' he updated me excitedly. He added: 'How about your game?'

'You mean the MINDEF Innovation Game? Yes. I introduced the game at the Civil Service College's Bluesky Festival on 10 July 2004. Over 200 officers from various ministries played it and the feedback has been great. We have started to receive calls asking us to run the game for their senior executives.' I said. (See side note below for coverage of the game on line)

'This is good. Like to collaborate?' he asked.

'Sorry. I can't do it with this innovation game because of IP issues, even though I develop it. Once I created another, I will reach you again.' I said, and we went on to talk about other things.
It has been some years since I made that promise. Nothing happened because I didn't have the time and energy to follow through. Now, I am please to say that I can finally keep my word. I am introducing the new Innovation Game called '@ Verge of Disaster'.

The game delivers three outcomes to the player. It:

• Creates for the player an access to his/her source of creativity.
  
• Provides the player the technology to overcome his/her barriers to innovate.
  
• Gives the player insights into his/her contributions to these barriers on others.

Side Note:

The MINDEF Innovation Game is a board game designed to help people understand what innovation is all about. The game is conducted as a workshop, in which participants will go through a journey of self-discovery, gaining insights into their own preconceived barriers to innovation, as well as realising the power of innovative, breakthrough thinking.

Anthony Mok facilitating the MINDEF Innovation Game

The MINDEF Innovation Game was created and developed by me, and it has attracted plenty of attention since its introduction in 2003. Here is a list of write-ups on the game:

• Corporate entrepreneurship: exploiting technologies for innovation discovery and breakthrough


• CAPAM - List of Submissions


• Challenge - Innovation takes pride of place in MINDEF


• Civil Service College - Course Details


• ::August Highlights:: - MINDEF Innovation Game Facilitator Workshop & MINDEF Innovation Game Workshop


• MINDEF Innovation & Transformation Office - Introducing the MINDEF Innovation Game to the civil service


• Challenge - 3rd Innovation Circle


• Riding on the crest - NDU's voyage towards organisational and operational excellence

Some feedback from participants:

“The MINDEF Innovation Game had very good learning lessons…I learnt that limits are often self imposed.”

“The MINDEF Innovation Game is not only fun but also very effective in imparting the importance of certain values and practices.”

“The MINDEF Innovation Game is more than an innovative tool. It also teaches some fundamental values (communication, leadership and etc). It can also be used to analyse individual’s behaviors, team dynamics…”

“The MINDEF Innovation Game was interesting helps people understand the concepts of risk taking.”

Copyright 2007, Anthony Mok. All rights reserved.

Measuring the Organisation's Propensity to Innovate

Recently, I was invited to one of the government ministries in Singapore to share what I could do for innovation for them. The host was interested in knowing how an organisation could be measured in terms of her innovativeness.

There are three challenges to her 'how to......?' question.

1st, we need to know what are the characteristics of innovative organisations to which her ministry could be benchmarked.

2nd, we need to know what the ministry has done in reaching and surpassing the benchmark.

3rd, we also need to know what is the impact of all these activities has on the staff in the ministry.

In fact, I have conceptualised, designed, created, developed, implemented and refined a technology in 2003 that addresses these challanges at my previous organisation. The technology is still in use after these past 4 years.

In line with this technology, I have create a newer and updated instrument called the Innovation Circumplex that:

• Uncovers what the people in the organisation have to say about the innovativeness of their organisation.
• Determines the effectiveness of the leadership's strategies for building an innovative organisation.
• Reveals how far the organisation is away from the benchmark of world class innovative organisations.

The knowledge gained from the instrument provides valuable inputs for deciding the kinds of risks to take, the levels of intervention to inject, and the types of resources to deploy in the organisation to bring her propensity to innovate higher.

Without the knowledge, management will be operating in the blind, and this endangers everyone.

Copyright 2007, Anthony Mok. All rights reserved.

Evaluating a Project for Innovation Funding in the Public Sector

It is important to determine whether an idea is worth the effort of projectisation. Ideas is the source of projects that ensures that the pipeline of solutions never dries up. Solutions that bring us the promised breakthroughs are innovative. The end result is the creation of new value that replaces or supplements the old. On the other hand, failures, while create opportunities for learning and growth, break the company.

Therefore, deciding whether an idea is worth working on, provided for, and protected against, is serious a business and cannot be taken lightly.

However, ideas are not innovations. In idea, the phases of trials and pilots have not been established and implemented. In fact, there is no known prototypes of the idea yet. Therefore, we cannot determine if there is a market for the adoption and diffusion of the innovation. So, the typical means of measuring projects using KPIs and ROIs cannot be applied. They kill ideas.

So, how do we determine if an idea is worth the risks, resources, and preferences of everyone?

Well, there are 3 determinants. These are:

• Degree of Innovativeness
  
• Depth of Creativity
  
• Propensity to Build

Let me define all these three and expand them progressively.

Degree of Innovativeness

Organisations are no longer finding it important to engage in protracted discourses on whether a concept is innovative or otherwise. They are now more interested to uncover if a design concept has the potential of upsetting the traditional structures that hold the market together. Therefore, they are looking for the market disruptions that the concept could potentially bring. The more future-oriented the concept is, the likelihood the concept will deviate from its evolutionary roots, and this is the source of new value for the organisations and their customers.
Currently, there is a debate on whether Apple’s iPhone is an industry disrupter.

According to Christensen, disruptive innovation is the mechanism by which industries get transformed and prior market leaders are toppled. Christensen described disruptive innovation as:

A disruptive innovation is a new product or service or a new business model that doesn't attack the core market by bringing a better product to established users in direct competition with the leaders in an industry, but rather it comes into the low end of the market, either through a business model that can compete at much lower costs, can compete profitably at lower costs, or it brings to the market a product or service that is so much more convenient and simple to use and affordable, that a whole new population of people who previously couldn't afford or didn't have the skill to own and use a product can now own one.

iPhone is a combination of four things: function, possession, emotion, and access. These are value dimensions that were not properly addressed together. Apple has created a value delivery model that so far no one else has successfully duplicated. This combination brings a totally different experiencing to the users and we should watch for its disruptive potential over time.

To determine if an idea could become a new-market disrupter, try this litmus test:

• Is there a large population of people who historically have not had the money, equipment or skills to do this thing for themselves, and as a result have gone without it altogether or have needed to pay someone with more expertise to do it for them?
• To use the product or service, do the customers need to go to an inconvenient, centralised location?

Here are some questions to help you decide whether an idea has the potential for a low-end disruption:

• Are there customers at the low end of the market who would be happy to purchase a product or service with less, but good enough, performance if they could get it at a lower price?
• Can we create a business model that enables us to earn attractive profit at the discounted prices required to win the business of these over-served customers at the low end?
• Is the innovation disruptive to all of the significant incumbent firms in the industry? If it appears to be sustaining to one or more significant players in the industry, then the odd will be stacked on these players, and the new entrant introducing the new product or service is unlikely to win.

(Christensen, C. M. & Raynor, M. E. (2003) The Innovator’s Solution, Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, HBS Press, Boston, Mass. pp 49-50)

Depth of Creativity

In the long run, all competitive firms will only acquire normal profits. This means a firm will enjoy a short period of substantial profits and growth up to the point its competitors enter the market. Therefore, the duration for supernormal profit is determined by how long the firm could defend its market. So, we should not measure the uniqueness of the design concept but how that uniqueness helps the firm sustain its market position. The higher the defensive potential the concept could offer, the greater it is differentiated from the rest and longer the time the firm draws supernormal profits.

In 1985, Time magazine declared Post-it Notes as one of the best products of the previous twenty-five years. But what would have happened if Post-it Notes had been introduced in, say, 1940, or even 1960? They probably would have still been a hit, but they wouldn’t have been so indispensable, so perfectly timed, so culturally apt. “The digital age generates so many documents, and they all look the same,” said Art Fry. “How do you organize all that material?”

Indeed, as workers tried to keep pace with all the new technologies invading offices in the early 1980s, the quickest to master them is to menace their colleagues with a punishing blizzard of reports, memos, spreadsheets, newsletters, proposals, presentations, and white papers. Functionally, Post-it Notes were a useful tool to manage such information overload. Not only could you highlight the material that was most important, you could also document, via a quick little note to yourself, why you thought it was worth highlighting.

Nearly two decades later, in 2004, the product is still earning raves and remains highly profitable for 3M. New York’s Museum of Modern Art featured it alongside the white T-shirt, the incandescent light bulb, and 121 other icons of beautiful everyday design in its “Humble Masterpieces” exhibit.

When looking for indication of defensive power, we may want to use the following questions to guide us:

• Are there similar products or services similar to yours currently in the market?
• Are there companies, which are serving in other markets, capable of adapting or extending their products or services into your market?
• Are there companies, which have the capabilities and capacities to create a similar product or service offering like yours?
• Is the concept easily copied and manufactured at a cost lower than yours?
• How early is the first competitor going to enter your market?
• How long you think the rate of production will exceed the rate of demand?
• Do you have an improved version ready for launch in the next 6 months?

Propensity to Build

Most innovative solutions have no known precedents. This means there is little hindsight and past experience to inform on the success of the solution in the market. Investment in this kind of innovation is fully based on faith. Not blind faith though. We can measure the conversion power of an idea and prototype into a workable innovative solution that generates true value to the stakeholders by looking at the quality of the team and the resources available to it. The more quality they reveal, the higher is its conversion power, and its propensity for good returns in the investment.

When looking for indication of conversion power, we may want to use the following questions to guide us:

• How complete is the plan to prototype the idea and test it?
• What is the experience of each team member in translating ideas into commercially viable innovations?
• Does the collective capability of the team provide it the wisdom to see the project through?
• Is the team in an environment of space capacity?
• Is the team widely connected to networks of resources and what is the quality of these networks?
• Does the team have a mentor or coach and what is the quality of this mentor or coach?

News Network (CNN) was the world's first twenty-four-hour cable television news channel when it was established in 1980. CNN was founded by Georgia businessman Ted Turner. In the 1970s Turner took advantage of the increasing availability of communications satellites to begin broadcasting his independent UHF station, Atlanta’s Channel 17, which he had acquired in 1970.

From its home in Atlanta, CNN has extended its reach around the world, becoming a dominant force in national and international journalism. Along with its subsidiary channels and the competitors it helped inspire, the network has changed the way information flows throughout an increasingly connected world.

However, the idea almost did not take off. When Ted Turner started talking about establishing a network that only ran news, a channel which he believed would become a democratising force around the world, people thought he was mad. Everyone from the network union ridiculed CNN and they used to just call it ‘Chicken noodle news’.

Because Ted Turner was unorthodox and visionary, he attracted investors and partners who believed in him and helped him bring CNN to the market.

This article was 1st written on 30 April 2007, and subsequently updated on 22 Sep 2008 and 14 Jan 2009.

Copyright 2007, 2008 & 2009. Anthony Mok. All rights reserved.

Study of Innovation and Innovative Organisations

My study of innovation and innovative organisations has began as early as in the year of 2000. One of the organisation that I have researched on is IDEO. These studies culminated in a visit to the United States of America in 2002This visit took place in about 2 months after I founded the MINDEF Innovation and Transformation Office (MITO) on 16 August 2001.

That year, the Center for Business Innovation (CBI) hosted us to a series of seminars and on-site visits to learn how key governmental departments, leading universities, and global companies create, innovate, and enterprise in the States.



The trip, which took about 3 weeks, brought the 6 of us from the east coast to the west coast of the country, and gave us the opportunity to meet, talk and network with individuals who are leading thinkers of innovation in their respective organisations. They continue to be influential even today.

The end result was my conceptualisation of the MINDEF Innovation Framework, which is known as RACE, and the creation of the intervention strategy called the MINDEF Innovation Programme, known as MIP. Between 2001 to 2007, I led a team that was instrumental in putting the programme in place and delivering the transformation in the SAF units and MINDEF departments.

My study and research on innovation and innovative organisations continues even after I left the Ministry in Jan 2007. Recently, I have encapulated a key part of my knowledge on innovation by publishing writings on the 'Characteristics of Innovative Organisations' on my blog.

I am very happy with the outcomes from these write-ups and I like to continue sharing these with anyone.

This article was 1st written in April 2007 and updated in Mar 2009.

Copyright 2007. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

10 Critical Factors of Innovative Organisations

The first time I learnt of IDEO was in 2001 when my former employer included The Nightline video into the programme for an event that celebrated the efforts it had made in continuous improvement.

Here is a segment of this video that I have used to impart knowledge about creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.

I was totally impressed. I told myself that I would like to work in such a company or transform my organisation to resemble what IDEO has to offer...........

Inspired by what I have seen, I have researched and written extensively on what are the key success factors of innovative organisations.

Here are the ten factors of innovative organisations:

1. Purpose Driven Organisation

2. Understanding the Demonic Nature of Vision

3. Risks of Playing No Games & Being Off the Board

4. Fearless Organisation Environment

5. Openness is in the Eradication of Fantasies

6. System of Authentic Sharing

7. Human Resource Investment Is Not About Spending But Creating Opportunities for Learning

8. Stun-gunning Your Organisation into Inventiveness

9. Focus on the True Purpose of Celebrating Success and Contribution

10. Fully Appreciating the True Meaning of an Innovative Team

Copyright 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 & 2011.

Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.