After returning from discovering America Columbus was honored in a series of celebrations. At one such party he was criticized by a gentleman who said: “What’s the big deal, anyone sailing west could have found America”. Columbus went and fetched a cooked egg and challenged all those present to balance the egg on its sharp end. One after the other they tried but they all failed. The egg would not balance and would not stand on the pointed end. Finally Columbus picked the egg and smashed the pointing end on the table just enough for it to balance the egg. To the amazement of all the egg stood balanced. Columbus looked around and proclaimed. “Anyone of you could have done it but I found the way!”

What are the lessons from Columbus’ workshop on exploration and innovation?

1. Discoveries and innovations often look obvious after the fact. After a truth has been articulated, after a discovery has been made known, after a development has been tested and refined, they often look simple and easily accomplished. But they were not obvious before someone articulated, discovered, tested and put them in front of people.
2. The bigger part of innovation is not what you do but how you do it.
3. Think outside the egg.
4. It’s not enough to discover America; you need to also sell it, or to sell your ability to discover the next America. Whether you come up with a technological idea, a service, a solution, a new process, a scientific breakthrough, a business model or a new creative design – It’s not enough that it is promising; you’ve got to be able to communicate it and deliver the good.
5. Be always ready to show what you know.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Mar.24.2008 :: Entrepreneur, Innovation :: No Comments »

Here are Central themes in the conversation of the Davos CEO Forum about Collaborative Innovation.

• What happens when you bring people together and they learn to understand and trust each other?
• How do you connect with different viewpoints to capture disruptive and innovative opportunities?
• What collective intelligence and brain power can be unleashed in a collaborative environment?
• How do organizations operate in a “meshed up” world?

This is a robust discussion about these questions and about embracing and harnessing the serendipity effect.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jan.27.2008 :: Innovation :: No Comments »

The Economist writes intriguingly about Evan Williams the founder of Blogger and Twitter: “Williams accidentally stumbled upon three insights. First, that genuinely new ideas are, well, accidentally stumbled upon rather than sought out; second, that new ideas are by definition hard to explain to others, because words can express only what is already known; and third, that good ideas seem obvious in retrospect.”

The Economist claims that Williams epitomizes Silicon Valley’s right-brain; truly good stuff but needing a critical addition. It is not right-brain – it is “whole-brain” that makes innovation possible.

Recent decades have popularized the right-brain / left-brain story. Every other person is ready to explain what the functions of each side are, and which side of the brain makes innovation, good leadership, happy relationships and more. We seem to love simplistic answers, especially when we believe them to be backed by hard scientific facts. This list below provides us such confidence:

We look at this and think – “well that’s why I am good at this and not good at that…” or “this is why I understand her but cannot connect with him…”

Why do people love to put themselves in boxes (personality types, astrological signs, brain sides and more…) that justify their behavior and explain their experience? Why do we need such labels to explain what makes great leadership, artistic and scientific breakthroughs and innovation? We love the security of telling ourselves right-brain stories supported by left-brain facts. It lets us off the hook of further reflection.

What’s my point?
How many times have we seen that the whole is more than the sum of its parts and how does this apply to the usage of our brain? Isn’t it time we expressed more interest in “whole-brain–whole-mind” functions to discover how it facilitates us to be more complex and complete humans, better innovators and greater leaders and partners?

Innovation is applying ideas to create valuable results where it matters. It is the transformation that makes ideas “happen”. Innovation needs integrated whole-brain function, not just right-brain. Innovation is not a one side or the other enterprise, but a “more than the sum of its parts” synergistic process.
A Whole-brain:

1. Combines creativity and analysis
2. Looks at the whole and sees the parts within
3. Uses feelings logically and applies logic feelingly
4. Integrates quantitative and qualitative awareness & objective and subjective perspectives
5. Is methodical and intuitive
6. Identifies facts and is imaginative about their meanings
7. Is conceptual and practical
8. Synthesizes problem solving
9. Organizes inside chaos
10. Assimilates learning from multiple sources

To build an innovative organization, to cultivate an innovative culture you need to facilitate whole-brain functions and systems. One of the ways we do this in our strategy and innovation summits is we shift between the “foreground” (the business) and the “background” (our internal operating system), and zoom in and out of both. Albert Einstein is one of the best examples of whole-brain–whole-mind thinkers. He is famous for saying, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” In our summits we cultivate new mindsets (individual and collective) by engaging whole-brain–whole-mind functions.

One of Williams’ whole-brain tricks is to ask “what can we take away to create something new? A decade ago, you could have started with Yahoo! and taken away all the clutter around the search box to get Google.” An idea can be initiated in the right-brain but then it needs a whole team of both left and right-brains working together to bring about whole-brain collaborative transformation to make the idea viable and cool in its implementation.

Innovation’s critical competency is whole-brain engagement. Thomas Edison, a great whole-brain–whole-mind innovator said:

“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Accordingly, a ‘genius’ is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework”

“I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.”

“Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their adaptation to the problem at hand, I am always extremely interested in how others have used them….”

“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent….”

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jan.07.2008 :: Entrepreneur, Innovation, Organizational Development :: No Comments »

Jeff Bezos hopes to “outbook the book” with Kindle – Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device. If you are involved in the cutting edge of technology and business you would want to watch Bezos conversation with Charlie Rose (posted here below) for the following four reasons:
1. Bezos’ narrative about where we are in the Internet revolution says we are clearly only in its early days. He points out that like electricity in the early 20th century, the Internet is still talked about as “vertical phenomena” instead of realizing that it is, like electricity was, a “horizontal enabling technology.” It is a “word-of-mouth-accelerator that benefits all things.” I suggest that you take notes while watching this conversation and ask yourself: how will these ideas and trends impact the business I am in?
2. The second reason is Bezos 70-30 rule: “In the old world you might have put 30% of your energy, dollars and time into building a great product or service and then you would put 70% of your energy, dollars and time into shouting about that service. In the new world that inverts. You better put the bulk of your time, energy and dollars into building great a service.” In a transparent world quality shines through!
3. Third, watch Bezos energy and excitement and passion for what he does and for his customers’ experience. He clearly is having a lot of fun (I made this same observation about Jeffery Immelt).
4. Fourth, pay attention to Bezos work practices. Specifically, he takes quarterly retreats where he isolates himself and locks himself away from everything for two-three days to reflect on what’s on the cutting edge. This allows Bezos to be creative and come up with new strategic themes and directions, which he writes up as a memo for himself. These themes and ideas guide his next conversations with the executive team at Amazon. Some of the important developments at Amazon resulted from Bezos quarterly strategic retreats.

Bill Gates has a similar practice where he takes his now-famous twice yearly week-long retreats to think, read and reflect “and not do email.” During these times of reflection Gates has come to some of his most important realizations and revelations, including the need to focus Microsoft on the Internet (he almost missed the boat), making the shift to refocus on security and trustworthy computing, and then his decision to focus more on the Gates Foundation.

It is evident from these stories that time for reflection is an essential part of success. However, Most people are not disciplined enough to engage in reflection on their own; they don’t know how to design their retreat, frame the right questions or start a practice of reflection. Few executives could design for themselves an effective strategic retreat. This is why we are seeing the return of facilitated leadership retreats and strategy summits.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.21.2007 :: Innovation, Leadership :: No Comments »

The Economist special report on innovation: “Something new under the sun” quotes John Dryden of the OECD: “We firmly believe that innovation, not love, makes the world go round.” Dryden makes an important point but misses the bigger point. The bigger point is that the driver of innovation is love and passion. What drives innovation is the love of new ideas and new solutions. It’s the passion to create new opportunities, experiences and services, and the disciplined love to drive and execute these to establish a new reality.

The Economist further elaborates on the polarity of GE execution-focused approach to innovation, which emphasizes “operational excellence”, versus Google’s approach to innovation that emphasize free-ranging play by granting its engineers permission to spend 20% of their time on pet projects. GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, brings the “What matters gets measured” mindset to innovation, while Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, declares that trying to measure his firm’s innovation process would choke it off all together. It’s the science versus art argument that again misses the point, as most polarity debates do. The greater power and opportunity is in integrating art and science. The integration point of science and art, and of the execution-based and the free-range approaches to innovation is a disciplined love. Great scientists and engineers get up in the morning like great artists and authors – they cannot wait to get into the process they love so much – the process that takes them to the next step of discovery and realization, the process that gets results.

In our program, The Three Propulsions of Great Companies – A Template for Greatness, managers focus on their best practices and on ways to unleash innovation. Amber Network offers practices and disciplines that cover the whole range from focused execution to innovation, where these are not mutually exclusive but integrated into the passionate art and science of getting results. It’s time to stop the polarity argument and create a whole-person, whole-organization integral approach to innovation that gets results.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Oct.20.2007 :: Innovation, Leadership :: No Comments »