'Connecting the Dots' requires lots of dots...

Steve Jobs during his Stamford University address famously talked about the need to follow hunches, and about how he always found connections between the experiences his heart lead him to and the products he wanted to create.

Whist this may seem like its pretty obvious, with many other people who have researched the area (such as Steven Johnson) coming to similar conclusions, it really got me thinking about one of the fundamental difficulties of doing this in a large organisation- Namely that its actually pretty difficult to get the time and space required to cultivate the variety of 'dots' (i.e. experiences) that are worth connecting -this may also be the reason why Johnson's research suggests that it can often take years for these ideas to form, after sufficient experiences have been gained.

You can just see how this translates on a corporate day to day basis- 'Sorry boss, that report you were after is gonna have to wait as  I need get experience of something totally unconnected with our work  under my belt...'

Nobody in corporate life has the time to play the innovation game slowly,  but there has to be a smarter way of dealing with the rigours of working in the big company innovation space and still maintain a stream of diverse, unique and creative thinking which continuously improves the work we do.

My own personal rule of thumb which I've kept true to in corporate life has been to continuously engage a new people in the work that I'm doing.  Not only do they bring different approaches, you can never underestimate how their own experiences with work can merge with your own to provide a broader tapestry of dots to be connected. Of course this can only happen through getting to know them, but I would argue that the opportunities for learning are there, we just can be too busy to miss them...

Mind your language...

Having recently spent some time with the extremely thoughtful Martin Derbyshire and the sage like Bill Fischer, it really got me thinking about how so much of your influence and credibility at work is based on the language you use.

Now don't get me wrong, Many have talked about the use of language in the innovation space, but this is often only in the context of how innovation is managed rather than how those of us on the coal face can use it to our advantage. As Richard Branson puts it, failure is only and 'experiment' or 'iteration' with the insight that this should encourage us to experiment and try new things as we innovate.

Great when you're trying to tell your boss why it's not your fault, not so great when you trying to address the challenge the preceded the 'experiment' in the first place.

So how can a change in language help you address the problem you're trying to solve? Well if you're stuck with the same industry day in day out its inevitable that you're going to get into certain patterns of thinking and how you speak illustrates this. If you don't believe me, just gauge how many times you use the same words to describe the same concept and it will frighten you.

Virtually all companies have an excessive vocabulary and TLA's used to describe the meat of their business; their consumers and products. As a consultant I would even make special effort to learn this vocabulary in order to sound knowledgeable and develop rapport with my unsuspecting clients. In hindsight, I think this was perhaps one of the worst things I could do to help, by reinforcing the patterns of thinking they were using by adopting their lingo.

My point is that when it comes to the innovation game, there's a huge amount of 'psychological inertia' that comes with the language we use to describe the industry specific challenges we face. So we're already limited in how effective we are in terms of our own thinking and how we influence others if we choose to look at things the same way and use the same words we always do comprende?

As I see it, innovation coal facers tend to fall into two groups- newcomers and everyone else. And sure, a newcomer doesn't carry the experience that comes with the years it took everyone else to learn this knowledge and language set that comes with it, but they are not limited by the baggage that comes with these terms and limiting thoughts that accompany them.

I've recently come to think more and more that I can really improve my impact as an innovator at work by making simple but effective changes to the way my team and I go about things, and changing the language we use to articulate our problems and solutions has proved priceless. Hence I would urge you to do as I do and  'mind your language...'

What you see should only be part of what you get...

This week the learned Richard Hall sent me a link to the TED presentation given a few years ago by Hans Rosling, and like most people who see it I was blown away.

Hence it was also no surprise when it got me thinking about the volume of research data I've been exposed to and how literally and absolutely it all seems to be interpreted.

'X correlates to Y' still seems to be the adage, but what sets Rosling and Messrs Levitt & Dubner of Freakomonics fame is the desire to sweat the data, to look for patterns, to uncover things that were not obvious but a whole lot more meaningful.

Now I can hear my colleague Nicole Hooper explaining that this is the difference between a commercial approach and a scientific one, but isn't that the point? Shouldn't we, like Rosling be pushing for new ways to analyse and express the research we do to lead to the killer insights, the marketing edge which will make the difference between launching a winner and an also ran?

Rosling, hell anyone should be applauded for not only crunching the numbers, but making the effort to communicate it to those around him in an engaging, immersive and dynamic way...


New technology will make analysing data easier and communicating data much more engaging (checkout this page at mashable), all thats required is the desire to discover something more...