do_matic

Matisse: Constrain yourself to push your design craft

(Mattsse, Goldfish and Pallette, 1914-1915)

On Saturday, I visited the new Matisse show Radical Invention at the MoMA. On display is Matisse's experimentation with his craft between 1913 and 1917. The show (and the curators) explained a couple of things to me.

First, Matisse would give himself a constraint (the same subject matter, the same color palette) allowing him to focus on variation in technique. Why worry about composition or subject matter if you want to focus on something else altogether?

Second, a piece could evolve quite significantly over the course of several years. One style would morph into another. We could see the faint lines of a prior manifestation underneath the end result. The subject would be shaped and reworked ("The Italian Woman" stands out in this respect). Perhaps Matisse was the inspiration for Photoshop tools?

These principles naturally extend to those of us working on our craft or design skills. By picking a direction or a mode of expression or a technique quickly at the beginning of a project, we can focus our energy on learning or experimenting with other techniques.

Innovation: Process is no substitute for leadership

(Generic substitutes courtesy of Shazam791 on Flickr and Creative Commons. I hate beets)

Increasingly, I've been grappling with the question of process, tools and methods and its relationship (or not) to cultivating a culture that, at worst, permits and, at best, encourages innovation.

Call it a slow hunch, but I'm coming to the point of view that innovation process, methods and tools are no substitute for innovation leadership.

Sounds trite for sure, but I'd guess that less than 5% of my time in discussions with clients about innovation competency and culture revolve around this hot potato issue. There's no focused effort to develop innovation leaders at all levels within the organizations. Seems like a real miss.

There are different styles of leader for sure - the iconic ones come to mind.

Yet to lead innovation, we each have to learn our way of embodying a certain mindset and behaviors. What makes me optimistic is that I think, through experience, we can develop these competencies.

Innovation Leadership: Cocktail Parties or Sourcing Brilliance?

(Cocktail Party At The Imperial Hotel: March 13, 1961 (Tokyo, Japan) via Jim Kuhn)

Good ideas can come from cocktail parties and coffee shops. Especially if the crowd has deep and diverse expertise and are experimental / action oriented. Unfortunately, lots of cocktail parties aren't like this. As a result, the ideas often suck.

Good ideas can come from spending time with the people in your organization and network, asking them what hunches they've cultivated and what support they need to try them. But most leaders don't invest the time to do this or have such a supportive mindset. As a result, people are left stewing and fermenting.

As an innovation leader, can you go to better cocktail parties? Can you do a better job of sourcing brilliance from people in your organization?

*This post was inspired by a great dinner last night with Dave Blanchard. The idea of "sourcing brilliance" was taught to me by Anese Cavanaugh.

Interested in revolutionary innovation? Focus on the bookends.

(Check out Kristian Bjornard's fun Flickr pages. He did a design a day in 2010.)

Last Wednesday, it occurred to me that a preoccupation with process can really impede the pursuit of revolutionary innovation. By process, I mean a focus on what happens between when an idea "emerges" and when it first gets to market.

Instead, leaders should communicate constraints and conditions and then actively support action. Focus on the bookends, not the books.

Constraints and conditions

1. Utilize clear constraints
Let people know they'll get real money, but not a lot of it, to take the next development and learning step.

2. Focus on user and market outcomes
Fund fundamentally different customer experiences or "good enough" solutions to disrupt our own market.

3. Start with impact, wait for mass
Be patient for scale, but impatient for in-market proof and per-unit profitability.

Support action

4. Cultivate hunches
Steven Johnson's forthcoming book (Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation) seems to be built in part around his idea of "cultivated hunches." Think of them as wise hypotheses and patterns that you're people have seen. They're out there in your organization. Actively find them, help people develop them and unlock them. If you asked people to share their hunches right now, how many big ideas would be in there?

5. Act, preferably fast
Help people get things shipped to generate feedback from real users, in-market. One of your jobs as a big-shot leader is to help people make progress. Is there an experience out there that you can't prototype or build within 60 days?

Agile/lean thinking and the theory of disruption come together quite nicely when you do this.