The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney

Innovation isn't just about creating new products or services. While this is critical to an organization, it is also essential to look at other areas such as business model innovation, process innovation, and marketing innovation.

We use the FIRE framework, which we have discussed many times on the show. The primary goal of this framework is to think about innovation with a full 360 view. The framework looks at three dimensions: the who (the customer), the what (the new product or service), and the how (ex., supply chain). Everybody tends to focus on "the what," but all three are vital to successfully doing innovation.

Business model innovation focuses on the mechanism of exchange of your product or service with the customer. One business model we have all seen is a subscription model. I pay monthly for my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription and receive many apps in return. Bundling is another business model in which a company combines various things to offer more value.

Freemium is another where mobile apps offer something for free but give more capabilities for a price. Razer and blades model is another one, where a company sells something for a low price, but a complementary good is needed to use that product. An example of this would be printers and ink. Leasing a car is another popular business model.

Lastly, crowdsourcing is where a company builds excitement around a product by offering pre-order and then manufactures the product based on the interest level.

Process innovation deals with delivering a product or service to the customer. It also deals with the sequencing, information, and communication aspects of the process. Ultimately, you need to figure out how to deliver more cost and time effectively to the customer.

How you provide the product can be just as important as the product itself. For example, the people who built the MINI cars used to keep the customer updated on the vehicle's manufacturing process. They would also personally sign a letter for the customer that bought the car. This move created an emotional attachment for the customer and the company.

This process is what we call the "how" dimension. In today's world, it is hard to break through the noise level and make something exciting. Packaging is one area of marketing that is a prime example of innovation. At HP, we tested our packaging a ton to make sure it arrived successfully to the customer. In one situation, we partnered with a university to have students create packaging designs. One group of students created a design that we loved, and we cut a deal with them to use the packaging for the company.

Another area is product placement, or how you get your product noticed. At HP, we did product placements on movies, tv shows, and even with the NBA. Lastly, it is essential to innovate on the pricing model and product promotion.

When I run into fellow innovators, they often want to share their ideas with me and get advice. In many cases, they have an idea that they believe is the pinnacle of ideas. They love their idea to death and hold it close to them. While they may have a great idea, it has no value in this state.

Having a mind-blowing idea without any execution is pointless. When I question these "idea hoarders," I often discover a similarity. They are afraid they only have a limited number of great ideas in their lifetime. Fearing that somebody steals their idea, they don't want to share it with anyone else.

The fundamental idea here is that once you succeed with that great idea, it will never happen again. This thought process is wrong. How many ideas did people like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Elon Musk create? They created tens if not hundreds of ideas that have changed our lives. Some people say these people are just special, but I say otherwise. I believe we are all able to innovate multiple game-changing ideas in our lifetimes.

Let me share my own experiences. I started off developing computer-based training for Deltek and Individual Software. At Individual Software, I created a product called Typing Instructor, which was my first award-winning product. Next, I worked at a consulting company started by my mentor Bob Davis. I ended up doing software for Apple on contract and developed some software for the original Macintosh. Next, I did consulting work for HP on the HP 9000, the first commercial computing platform built on a risk processor. The project was a big breakthrough.

Next, I became president at Teraplex, where we made a supercomputer. Then I went to Thumbscan and worked on biometric security technology. Next, I went to Telligent and built a product called Imagine, one of the first web-based online billing platforms.

All these products I listed were award-winning products. You may look at me and think I am special, but that is not the case. Firstly, I did not do all of this on my own. I had the right teams in place to aid me. So how was I able to accomplish these feats?

There is a two-step process that I use. The first step is, whatever idea I have, I either execute on it or share it with others. I don't hoard ideas for myself. Elon Musk is someone who also does this. While he was in the middle of dealing with SpaceX and Tesla, he came up with the idea of a hyperloop, which he shared with the public. As a result, we saw an explosion of hyperloop companies.

It would be best if you wanted to inspire others with your ideas as Elon did. If your motivation for innovation is solely money, then you have the wrong idea. My view is that if you do innovation for the right reason, the rewards and recognition will come.

The second step of the process is that when you've given them all away, then you've made room for more ideas. Your creativity will fill the vacuum you created by giving away and sharing ideas. I have found that when I give away ideas, its result is similar to exercise. When you work out, your muscles get bigger each time. The more ideas you give away, the better your next idea produced becomes. This practice becomes a never-ending cycle that leads to success.

While innovation leaders have the same core behaviors all great leaders have, they carry important additional behaviors. Today's topic is the 9 leadership behaviors for innovation leaders which was inspired by an article on Forbes by Jack Zenger. Applied to the topic is my own forty years of experience in the innovation space. These behaviors are foundational for innovation leadership success.

Let's start by discussing two fundamentals of any leadership activity. Every leader is there to bring together the right people to achieve an objective. Typically, a leader brings in people with different skills and abilities like finance and software engineering. When it comes to innovation, you're bringing in people with different perspectives and thinking styles. It is critical to understand how to build teams to generate the next great idea. The next fundamental comes from a quote I use often, "leaders deserve the teams they get based on the worst actions they allow other team members to get away with". If you allow members of your team to get away with things like disrespect, or not being a team player, it will infiltrate the rest of your team. The negative result of this will be your fault as a leader.

For the first behavior, innovation leaders have a vision of the future, not just the goals of the present. You have to look at both the short and long-term goals and convey a vision that gets people excited. Secondly, innovation leaders establish trust in their team. Building trust is paramount when it comes to innovation. This is because of how risky and scary innovation can be. Without trust, a team will not take the risk of putting their ideas out there. Thirdly, innovation leaders challenge the status quo, refusing to rely on what is safe and comfortable. As an innovation leader, you need to try new things instead of sticking to the same processes. For the fourth behavior, innovation leaders are curious. They ask smart, strategic, thoughtful, and targeted questions to gather input. Spending the extra time to craft better questions will lead to uncovering many ideas. They also listen carefully to responses of questions. For the fifth behavior, innovation leaders set aspirational goals or BHAGS (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). In this position, you are expected to deliver breakthrough achievements and ideas. It is important to challenge your team to do better. This is achieved by giving more autonomy. If you are a micromanager, either break that habit or don't be an innovation leader.

The sixth innovation leadership behavior is that innovation leaders move quickly. Studies have shown a clear correlation between the speed of execution and the degree of innovation. The 10% fastest leaders were also in the top percentile of innovation effectiveness. The seventh behavior is that innovation leaders crave information. They need input and things that they can let their conscience work on. For me, I am always reading blogs, magazines, books, etc. I find that the things I read help me connect dots to things that I come across at different points in time. The eighth behavior is that innovation leaders excel at teamwork. They put their self-interest to the side and focus on creating collaboration. One challenge I've seen within organizations is competition between different groups. This needs to be avoided to have success as an organization. The ninth behavior is that innovation leaders value diversity and inclusion. If everyone on your team acts, thinks, and has the same background as you, you will have the same thinking style. Similar viewpoints lead to the danger of groupthink, where everyone is thinking and doing the same thing. Differing opinions fuel the creative process.

What comes to mind when you hear the term innovation burnout? Webster's dictionary says that burnout is the physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive or prolonged stress. Burnout occurs when we feel overwhelmed, drained, and unable to meet that constant demand.

For innovators, it's that constant demand for coming up with new ideas. Being in the innovation game for some forty years, I have often gone through the burnout stage. Burnout can kill your creativity that drives innovation. Over the years, I've learned that there are things you can do to avoid it.

If you face burnout, it is essential to talk to somebody about it, whether your spouse, boss, or friend. If you don't address burnout, it can impact your career, family, and even happiness.

The first thing you can do to deal with burnout as a leader is to eliminate time wasters. While at HP, when I asked my team to update me on something, they would often lose weeks of productivity preparing to present to me. Included in this time was preparation, meetings, etc., all leading up to a one-hour session with me.

In my organization now, when I ask someone for something, I have a conversation with them that does not need wasteful preparation. This meeting helps my team avoid burnout and keeps them focused on their projects, collaborations, etc.

The second thing leaders need to do to avoid burnout is to establish priorities. In my organization, I am a big believer in utilizing OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Having set priorities helps people know what order they need to do things in.

Thirdly, leaders need to encourage and, at times, force downtime. By taking breaks, you replenish that energy required for the next project. At CableLabs, we offer unlimited paid time off (PTO) to our employees. If our managers see an individual struggling or just came off a big project, they often force them to take PTO.

We also shut down our teams periodically, allowing them to rest and avoid innovation burnout. By disconnecting, I found that my teams come back with better solutions to problems. The fourth thing leaders need to do is allow employees time to disconnect at the office. Employees shouldn't have to be on call at all times. Having stress from their boss constantly messaging them will fuel their burnout.

Leaders also need to set boundaries for their employees. When you are outside of work, you should disconnect from work. While this is not realistic with all jobs, it makes a big difference when implemented. When a leader does these five things, it gives their team time to recharge and avoid innovation burnout.

The first thing you can do is invest in your physical and mental health. You are an innovation athlete expected to perform at a high level. Athletes exercise physically and mentally to stay in shape and get more vital and more innovative. As innovators, it is essential to eat well, exercise, and do things that feed your creativity. This podcast is one of my creative outlets as I do it outside of work.

The second thing you need to do is take ownership of recharging your batteries. Don't wait for your boss to force you to take a vacation. Even as a startup guy, it is essential to take breaks to recharge. If you are struggling, don't be afraid to share your struggles with your leaders. If you are feeling this way, other people in your organization are probably feeling the same.

The last thing you can do as an individual is to find a community of fellow innovators. Within this community, you can find help from innovators who have experienced the same struggles. Check out the Innovators Community here.

Co-innovation is a common term used in the innovation space. It describes two organizations of any kind that come together to innovate in an area of common interest. I am not only talking about collaboration. Co-innovation seeks to deliver a result such as a product or service. There is a 50-50 contribution with this model, whether that's money, people, labs, etc.

During my tenure at HP, co-innovation played a vital role in the company. The amount of money it took to accelerate acted as a barrier to innovation. Corning was the co-innovation partner in this case.

The project we did with Corning was around gorilla glass, which we improved and expanded for more uses. Next, we worked on bending glass displays to limit eye strain. We built a frame and figured out how far we could bend the glass before it would break. This project led to the curved displays, which are now commonly used. With the constant acceleration of time and costs, finding partners with the knowledge you don't readily have is key to fueling innovation.

The first tip is to choose a partner with strong cultural alignment. During this time, you will be working very closely with your co-innovation partner. By alignment, I mean how they manage, oversee, and support their teams and what they expect from them.

It is also essential that both organizations grant similar autonomy to their teams. If one organization gives a lot of independence and the other micromanages, there will be unneeded friction.

Beyond people, you need to look at how the potential partner treats their customers and sells them. At HP, there is a very relaxed selling approach, but not all organizations are like that. You need to think about these things and figure out if you are willing to align with a company that approaches customers differently.

Next, it's crucial to discover what the mission objective of the organization is. If one organization is all about numbers and the other is about improving lives, there is no alignment. If you don't have a strong culture alignment with your co-innovation partner, your chance of success is slim to none.

The second tip is to define the area of focus carefully. There needs to be a substantial overlap of focus. Think of this as a Venn diagram, where your business has an area you want to focus on to achieve success. Your partner also has an area of focus where they want to achieve success. The area where these two spheres overlap is the general area of focus for this co-innovation effort.

Both organizations must have a committed interest in the common area and aware of each essential contribution. Co-innovation partners need to bring value and combine them to create a breakthrough.

The third part of tip two, which I can't stress enough, is the need for mutual dependency. It would be best to find an area of focus where you need each other to solve problems. If one can do it on their own, then it is not a co-innovation effort.

Tip number three is to secure proper sponsorship and support. The key here is to create a true partnership built on trust. In the HP and Corning co-innovation effort, I was the executive sponsor and Wendell Weeks, the Chairman and CEO at Corning, was their sponsor. I can tell you that Wendell and I talk regularly and are good friends even to this day. This level of trust and relationship was built from this project and led to better innovation.

Another thing to think about is that patent creation happens during a co-innovation. Intellectual property issues constantly come up when dealing with co-innovation. Keep these legal issues simple. Tackle this with things such as a split license approach or patent sharing.

I've done about a dozen successful co-innovation projects to this day. The results of which are products that you are most likely using today. Co-innovation is not a quick and easy process and takes at least a year to get a project up and running. Be patient and keep your eyes open because you never know when a co-innovation opportunity may arise.

Whitney Snider is the Head of Alexandria's LaunchLabs and the VP of Alexandria Venture Investments. Alexandria Real Estate Equities is a real estate investment trust that provides housing and labs for life science and tech companies. Whitney will share what ARE is doing to fuel innovation through collaborative campuses.

Whitney works at Alexandria Real Estate Equities and is involved in venture investment activity growing the life science cluster in New York City. Focused on collaborative campuses for life science, technology, and agTech companies, Alexandria brings companies together. They help grow collaborative ecosystems that fuel better innovation.

The concentration of Alexandria's portfolio is in some of the most innovative cities in the U.S, such as Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, and New York. Alexandria started with a vision to create a new kind of real estate company focused on the life science industry. Unique team collaborations contributed to their success as an established leader in the industry.

Alexandria uses four elements to fuel innovation through its collaborative campuses. The first is vocation, where they're at locations with quality housing, good transportation, etc. The second is innovation, where Alexandria evaluates and searches to find opportunities no one has jumped on yet. Then there is talent, where Alexandria focuses on building a solid pipeline to grow the company. Lastly, there is the capital, which is needed to fuel and fund innovation at all levels.

You need these elements to support your ideas. Alexandria's collaboration campuses range from some of the world's biggest pharma companies to top-tier upstarts. With this diversity, there is a co-mingling of talent and energy that allows for more growth.

Alexandria's venture and investments arm focuses on funding early growth stage companies through a built platform. This venture expands its reach and providing mentorship and capital to cultivate innovation that will improve human health.

Alexandria has LaunchLabs sites on many of their major U.S campuses. LaunchLabs looks for up-and-coming companies in their regions. Then, Alexandria identifies which ones could use their lab and mentoring infrastructure to become a new star. Alexandria tailors what they do to the specific region they are operating in. They work with teams, pinpoint their needs, and find the necessary resources to improve them. They work to push companies into the next stage of growth.

Currently, over one hundred of Alexandria's tenants and investments are working on COVID-19 solutions. Due to COVID, they had to adapt their buildings and launch initiatives to enhance their tenants' safety measures. In doing so, Alexandria formed a dedicated COVID-19 advisory board to improve and provide insights on the pandemic. As I've learned, there is no playbook when it comes to things like COVID. Having good processes and knowing when to change the process is vital to succeeding in times of disruptive shock.

Currently, there are 10,000 diseases known to humankind, with only 10% having some available treatment. Alexandria believes they are on the edge of a biology revolution. They want to find innovative ways to treat the world's major health issues.

Through COVID-19, it has been amazing to see the development of successful vaccines under high levels of pressure. Please don't underestimate the power of human ingenuity and collaboration when it comes to innovating solutions.

If you want to keep up to date with what Alexandria Real Estate Equities is doing, check out their website here. Check out Whitney's LinkedIn here.

At Alexandria, Whitney supports Alexandria's venture investment activity and other strategic initiatives to grow the New York City life science cluster. She also oversees general management, operations, business development, member recruitment, and programming for Alexandria LaunchLabs in New York City.

Whitney was formerly at an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City and spent two-and-a-half years at Celgene in the Business Development group, where she was a Director. Whitney also was previously a Consultant at Bain & Company in both its Boston and New York offices. Whitney received her Master of Business Administration degree with High Distinction from Harvard Business School and her Doctor of Medicine degree from Tufts University School of Medicine.

Cyril Bouquet joins us to discuss "A.L.I.E.N. Thinking: The Unconventional Path to Breakthrough Ideas." His book breaks down five keys to creating disruptive ideas called ALIEN Thinking: Attention, Levitation, Imagination, Experimentation, and Navigation.

Cyril is a Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD. Growing up, both of his parents were professors, but he had no desire to become one. Cyril had to do French military service, and one way to got about this was through civic service. Through his civic service, he fell in love with being a professor.

Cyril Bouquet was a professor in Canada and later came to teach at IMD in Switzerland. He has been an immigrant most of his life, to which he attributes a lot to his passion for innovation. He was raised in tropical islands, lived in France, Canada, and now lives in Switzerland. Through coming to different countries, Cyril has learned that there are many different ways to approaching the same situations.

Through Cyril Bouquet's story, it is interesting to see how different parts of the world view things differently. This ties into the new book he co-authored called "A.L.I.E.N THINKING: The Unconventional Path to Breakthrough Ideas."

A.L.I.E.N is an acronym for identifying the keys to being highly innovative. It is a metaphor that highlights the need to get rid of our previous assumptions. We have to think like an alien, coming from a different planet, or as I like to say, thinking outside of the box. The book explores the A.L.I.E.N acronym that applies to innovation in any field.

Firstly, the A stands for attention, or how you look at the world. Sometimes we need to zoom in or out and switch our focus. In the book, Cyril emphasizes not being too focused, as it can restrict your ability to come up with new ideas. There is a balance where you need to be engaged and concentrated while being attentive to the right things. If you want to develop an innovative concept, you need more fluidity than often taught. The L stands for levitation or stepping back, separating yourself, and expanding your understanding.

The I stands for imagination composed of playing with ideas and putting things together. A few weeks ago, I did a show that talked about a study N.A.S.A. did on kids and adults using their creativity test. 98% of the kids under the age of 6 passed the test, while only 18% of the adults passed it. Much of the loss of imagination comes from schooling that teaches you to stay on specific paths.

Young kids are less afraid of what others think of them. They don't care what they look like and are okay being themselves. As they become older, they start to care more. As they grow older, conformity starts to creep in. This concept is the same when dealing with innovation creativity. The more we think ahead, the less we innovate as we become afraid to play with ideas.

The E in A.L.I.E.N stands for Experimentation. The way we test ideas is often wrong, as we do it to prove we are correct. We use data to rationalize the story we have in mind and fail to learn from it. It is essential to be open to learning and discovery within the experimentation process.

The N stands for navigation or finding ways around things that are blocking innovation progress. Cyril believes this is the hardest part of innovation. It is because people often don't understand your idea. We often overestimate the support for our ideas that we will get.

Often killed immediately, most ideas scare people when they disrupt existing business models. In other words, the success of any innovation is very low. Innovators have to describe their ideas in a way that resonates with people for them to be successful. The language used to describe your innovation is so incredibly important.

If you want to keep up to date with what Cyril Bouquet is doing or grab a copy of the book, check out the website here.

Cyril Bouquet is a Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD, where he orchestrates all kinds of innovation journeys for companies that seek to create the future. He is the co-author of ALIEN THINKING: The Unconventional Path to Breakthrough Ideas (PublicAffairs; March 16, 2021).

As a professor at IMD, Cyril is doing research that has gained significant recognition in the field. His Ph.D. dissertation won the Academy of International Business 2004 Richard Farmer Award. Since then, he's published one book "Building Global Mindsets" (2005), and several academic articles in the most prestigious academic journals, including Harvard Business Review, M.I.T. Sloan Management Review, the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Management, and the Journal of Management Studies.

Have you noticed that there is a constant cycle of new product releases? Organizational quarterly results often drive these releases. Cars, smartphone devices, home automation products, applications all follow this pattern of release cycles. I believe the fear of being left behind is what draws people to upgrades. They don't want to pull out an old generation of a phone or drive an outdated car.

In most companies, product managers will make incremental changes while portraying them as revolutionary upgrades. They put minor innovations into releases to get customers to buy the upgraded version nine months later. Companies have made it a standard operating procedure to launch numerous releases of the same product with minor cosmetic changes.

One example of this comes by way of Canon's cameras. Canon has a top-rated camera called the Canon Rebel that came out in 1990. Between 1990 and 2004, Canon released eleven versions of the Rebel. New versions of the product came out in 92', 93', 96', and 99'. The subsequent three releases (2002, 2003, and 2004) went through two releases per year. Here, you can see Canon accelerating releases of the Rebel's next version on an annual basis.

Another example of an accelerating release cycle comes from the Apple iPod. From 2002-2007, there was a new release of the iPod every year. The iPhone updates at a similar rate.

While these are some common examples, these fast release cycles also occur in other industries. They can be attached to fashion, home appliances, automobiles, and various things besides consumer electronics.

Inside organizations, innovators want to create revolutionary products. The pressure to pump up sales comes from shortening release cycles with recorded quarterly profits. Pumping up products becomes a drug that many organizations get hooked on. It conveys a false sense of innovation capability to shareholders and investors.

Organizations that get hung up on fast releases fail to make long-term investments into revolutionary products. They feed into the next release cycle, hurting innovation efforts along the way.

Here is a personal example of a product I was involved in that was negatively affected by fast release cycles. The product was the 2011 HP Touchpad, based on some ongoing tablet work. As the CTO, I pushed for the creation while leading the Palm acquisition's due diligence. After the 2011 HP Touchpad was released, the board of directors discontinued it seven weeks later.

Internal organizational fighting is what led to the ruin of the product. Proponents for traditional product release cycles were firmly anti-new products. They came out in force, preventing dollars from going to new products. They wanted the spending dumped into traditional HP laptop and printer products. These conventional products are low risk but don't add much value to products.

At this time, HP valued good quarterly numbers over long time growth and the transformation of lives. Ultimately, this mindset resulted in the death of many other innovative products.

As an innovation leader, you need to avoid falling into this trap. Incremental changes to existing products are not innovation but artificial marketing. Following the discontinue of the Touchpad, I announced that I was leaving HP. Dealing with the innovation antibodies in this situation was very frustrating. While this case was extreme, this is often the reality of innovation efforts.

As we have seen, faster release schedules hurt innovation. The law of patience says that innovation takes longer than you think. Trying to force it into a release schedule is incrementalism, not innovation.

The law of resources says that you should not tie your resource commitment to a release or budget cycle. An organization that focuses on accelerating release cycles is not doing proper innovation. As an innovator, it is crucial to fight the urge to be like everyone else.

Wicked problems are problems that are extremely difficult or impossible to solve. The best example of a wicked problem comes from a project I did with the Department of Education.

This project aimed to innovate kindergarten through 12th-grade education in the U.S. We ran a series of workshops in our attempt to transform education. The project turned out to be an extremely frustrating endeavor. Looking back, I realize that this qualified as a wicked problem.

A wicked problem is something that is inconsistent and changes over time. People's opinions on the problem also change over time. The ecosystem of people interested in education, such as policymakers, teachers, unions, and students, have different opinions and think theirs are superior.

A wicked problem also has a sizeable economic burden or risk. If you mess up education, you impact a generation of people and how they compete in the marketplace. Entangled with other problems by nature, wicked problems are complex.

Wicked problems can often be overwhelming due to their size and complexity. The complexity of the problems comes from these entanglements. For example, if you look at the poverty problem, it is linked to education and linked to nutrition.

Each wicked problem has a set of organizations that are trying to solve the problem. Some try to solve poverty, education, nutrition, economic disparity, etc., from their perspective. Each group believes their approach is the right one. This process becomes part of the overall challenge in finding innovative solutions to these wicked problems.

Wicked problems are unique, and everyone frames them differently. Other things that challenge the solving of wicked problems are restraints and limited resources. These can come in the form of laws and contracts and limited finances and time limits.

Wicked problems are never entirely solvable. The education problems today are just different than the issues that existed when I was in school.

There are two keys to success when finding innovative solutions to wicked problems. Firstly, there is multi-disciplinary collaboration. There need to be experts in many different fields involved in these efforts. If you want to solve education, you need parents, nutritionists, economists, educators, etc.

The second key to success in this area is to have perseverance. Wicked problems are never done and require continuous improvement.

There are a few strategies to tackling wicked problems. The first strategy is an authoritative strategy, which gives a group or individual the responsibility of making decisions. This process simplifies the complexity problem, but some perspectives of the problem are left out.

The second strategy is a competitive strategy that puts opposing points of view against each other. This way presents many different solutions but creates a confrontational environment that reduces knowledge sharing.

The third strategy is collaborative, which consists of getting people to discuss and share their knowledge. The con here is that a collaborative approach takes a lot of time. Remember, don't think about solving wicked problems. Instead, seek to find the proper intervention that will improve them and continue that cycle of improvement.

Let's recap the discussion on wicked problems. The first element to innovating wicked problems is to recognize that there is an adaptive vision. It's not about finding a solution but applying that intervention.

The second element is creating an idea-safe environment that brings people together. It is essential to experiment and try new ideas while encouraging social bonding.

The third element is to enable knowledge sharing. People often approach wicked problems with biases that don't help the situation. It's vital to encourage differences and frame them as strengths. One way to do this is to force face-to-face interaction. This type of interaction is the most beneficial for collaboration.

The last element is recognizing that execution is learning. Don't focus on timelines and blueprints when dealing with wicked problems. These things are often changing, so you need to be ready to adapt through each step you take.

Is creative thinking based on a born ability, or can you learn it like any other skill? Is it nature or nurture? There is research that argues both cases, and I believe you can do both. I would say that we are all born highly creative.

Children use problem-solving and their imagination every day. Here's some insight into this creative transition from child to adult. In 1968 George Land tested 1,600 kids to analyze their creative transformation. He focused on three-five-year-old kids and used a creativity test developed by NASA. This test helped identify highly creative engineers, thinkers, and problem solvers. It had proven to be incredibly valuable in NASA's recruiting process.

George Land tested the same kids when they were five, ten, and fifteen years of age. 98% of the five-year-old kids passed the test, 30% of those same kids passed the test at ten years old, and 12% of them passed the test at fifteen years old.

Two hundred eighty thousand adults took the NASA creativity test, and only 2% of them passed. The result of the study was the realization that non-creative behavior is learned as people age.

Non-creative behaviors fall into two categories: rules and regulations. The educational model that we use today originated in the Industrial Revolution. The purpose of schooling during this time was to produce good workers who followed instructions.

The question then becomes, can you teach creative thinking? I believe you can teach and learn creative thinking. However, you cannot use traditional learning methods like lecturing, reading, testing, memorization, etc. There are many "creative thinking" courses out there that I would call traditional such as one-day courses, talking head on a YouTube video, or a "guru" speaking on stage.

When it comes to creative learning skills, you first must unlearn by breaking old habits and patterns. Intensify the breaking of old habits by creating new muscle memory. Getting out of the comfort zone is also a big part of this, and it starts with humility. People often come into my workshops with an ego problem stemming from prior successes. Ego is one of the most significant barriers that leaders have when trying to rediscover their creative thinking. Overall, it's an unlearning process, not a learning process.

You don't become a Marine by reading a book. Instead, you go through intense boot camp experiences. Likewise, you don't learn to be creative. You become creative from intense experiences. Becoming creative entails various challenges and tests that put you under stress. Remember the military model and how you can apply it to teaching and learning creative thinking skills.

You should also hang out with creative people that have experience because it creates community. In the Innovation Boot Camp course, we give those who complete the course a callsign— which signifies the experience they went through and achieved. The callsign is a symbol to wear. When we run into someone who has taken the course, we share that common experience of creating community.

The Innovation Boot Camp is a great way to unlearn bad behavior stemming from rules, regulations, and assumptions. The boot camp puts every student into a very intense experience. We start with a blank sheet of paper on Monday and a finished product to pitch on Friday.