[music] What we're going to do is we're going to take one of these constraints
each week. We're going to take it apart.
We're going to look inside it. Then we'll try to understand how does that
constraint present itself. How are different ways that people have,
have suffered from it? What are things we can do to overcome it?
And we'll use the language overcome a great deal to talk about a constraint and
how to overcome it. And these stories, that the stories that
I've collected in the book, actually are ones that I'm going to share with you
about how it is people overcome these constraints.
So now I'd like to take you on a quick tour of the class.
Each week we're going to cover one of the following constraints, followed by a wrap
up session that we're going to use to synthesize the whole thing.
So we're an eight-week class. This is the first week.
Week 2 will be the Individual Level Group Organization and so on and so on.
And so each week also, at the end of each week, I'm asking you to do is an in-depth
diagnostic survey to help you determine the kind of constraints that you face at
work. If you're working in the problem track,
that is in the student mastery track where you're actually working on an innovation
project. You're going to be able to apply the
constraints diagnostic to your actual project.
And then you should, it will generate information for you, will help you with
the project. If you're not choosing to do the, the
studio mastery track, then what you're going to do is apply the diagnostic survey
insights to your life, to what's going on for you in your daily life.
Week 1, we're going to start with the individual constraints.
Individual constraints are really about individuals enlarging their toolset.
How do we actually get to know more different kinds of ideas?
More different ways of thinking. I'll show you.
I'll, I'll share with you later. This is the Google Labs Aptitude Test.
So Google wants creative people. And at one point, they were using this as
a job application screening device. To find out who those creative people are.
Look at question Number 8. How many different ways can you color an
icosahedron with one of three colors on each face?
What kind of question is that? How is that a creative question?
What colors would you choose: Well, maybe that's creative.
And look at question Number 9. The question of this space left
intentionally blank. Please fill it with something that
improves upon emptiness. Well, what do you put there?
So how it is that these kind of questions are something that could lead us to
understand how to have better ideas? How to be more creative?
Because remember, innovation starts with the idea and somehow we're going to map
this kind of thinking into creative ideas. Individuals at this level, we're going to
be talking about how do we see things? How do we know things?
How do we understand things? And how things may help us.
Because in fact if we're going to bring things into our life, we're going to
change our life around things, these are questions that actually have to be
answered. The model we're going to use is a model of
perception. If I want to be creative, I need to get
new information in, right? So if I have ideas, it comes from the
stuff that's out there. So get new information in, we're going to
talk about how to do that; intellection Different ways of thinking about things.
And then we're going to talk about expression which is getting our ideas back
out. Because you can have great ideas but if
they're stuck in your head, they do no good to anyone.
They have to be able to come out. And so we're going to talk about these
three things as ways of overcoming individual innovation constraints.
The diagnostic, just to give you a brief look at that, is broken into three parts.
Perception, intellection and then expression.
And those are the kind of questions that the survey actually do.
It's going to be a slight, slightly bit longer but these are the kind of questions
that you're going to do as part of your diagnostic to understand what's going on
for you. Next, week three will be group
constraints. We're going to talk about what goes on in
groups. Groups are interesting in that, in order
for groups to share health ideas and become better, than it is to require a
certain amount of risk, actually. We have to take some risk in a group in
order to make things happen. In fact we have these things called a
trust fall. So this is where you get people on a team
together they all stand like this and a person falls willingly.
Backwards and trust that the people are going to catch them.
There's no net there that are going to catch them.
What strikes me, that I've often seen is that some people would rather do the trust
fall and risk a skull fracture than share their ideas with other people in groups.
Why would this be? They're afraid of being made fun of, maybe
what they're saying is taboo, maybe they're kind of things that they are
saying aren't thinking, they don't think that other people would agree with them.
These are all things that have to be overcome in order for innovation to move
forward. The kind of questions that go on in a
group, these are questions that are conscious and obvious but nonetheless have
to be answered. Now, how does this make me feel?
If I'm with a group of people, I feel scared, I don't feel safe, that's
problematic. Groups will ask is this how we do things?
Yesterday we did it this way, why are we doing it this different way today?
And we have to answer that. What do I need to do?
That's what people, I'm in a group of people, what do I need to do?
How can I be productive? How can I help this group?
Groups also wonder about goals. You're saying we're going to do something
in a different way. You're making this proposition for change.
Is it consistent with our goals? Is it where we're trying to go?
You know, I joined this group to go here, and now you're saying we need to go there.
And so again, kind of questions we have to answer.
The way we're going to think about it is, is we're going to talk about culture,
culture in groups and how groups sort of come to understand how it is they're
together, what it is they need to do together.
We're going to talk about emotion, what's going on emotionally for people in a
group. And we're afraid, we're being criticized,
what goes on there, what happens. We're going to talk about the environment
within group within which groups operate. So are we in a room, or in a small room or
a big room, are we meeting virtually, are we in a place with white boards, no white
boards? All these things tie into our ability to
express our ideas to each other to come up with new ideas to document what we have
done. And then finally, we're going to talk
about process, the real process. What do we do first, what do we do second
and what do we do third? Because certain groups have to generate
ideas, and certain groups have to select ideas.
These are very different processes, and if we try doing them at the same time, it
becomes very problematic in groups, and we're going to see why that is.
So here are the kind of questions you're going to have in the diagnostic.
The kind of, kinds of things that we want to ask to understand.
Is it emotion? It is going to be problematic?
Is it the, the environment that's going to be problematic?
Is it the culture of the group that's going to be problematic?
Or is it in the envir-, the process that the group uses to get through the
innovation that's going to be problematic? And so again if we can isolate which one
of these constraints is going to affect us, we're much more likely to become
successful. Next layer we're going to talk about is
the organizational layer. The organizational constraints.
So organizational constraints, you know those things we know to be true about
structure. How it is we build the organization?
We're going to talk about, go back to the case of the digital camera, the first
digital camera and what happened there? Why is it that Kodak was not able to
capitilize on this thing? Well maybe Kodak had a strategy to protect
film, and this thing represented the opposite.
In fact, digital camera is not film. Right?
So it's film, and we have film not. So the organization of course is not going
to just drop everything and go do this. But we now know, you know, with retrospect
we should probably know that they probably should have payed some attention to it.
And so there was some kind of strategic failure in this organization that did not
allow them to see the value of this thing. And so we'll talk about how organizations
think about strategy and how the do strategy.
What should be there in order for us to, in our organizations, to put together an
organization or to cause our organization to pay attention to new ideas that are
meaningful, that are strategic, and build a structure around allowing those things
that happen. Organizations ask, you know, is this
consistent with our strategy? In the case of Kodak it was no.
Is it within our capabilities? Can we do this thing?
And in fact in the case of the first digital camera, the quality wasn't quite
there. Not as good as it was as film was.
So maybe they thought this is not in our capabilities.
Also do we have the resources? And are we willing to put the resources to
that kind of use? We'll spend a lot more time with Kodak
later. And the way we're going to think about it
is structure, how is the organization structured?
And we'll think about strategy, where are the different intentions, what's the
strategic intent of the organization? Then we'll talk about the resources, the
kind of resources that the organization has and how it allocates them across the
people in the organization. The diagnostics we're going to use are
like these. We're going to talk about These three
levels, the ones I just said, these three levels of constrain try to say is the
organization within which I am trying to innovate subject to these kinds of
constraints are not always going to be okay.
Those three are what I'd call the internal constraints.
So those are constraints that we have a little bit more control of.
Right. So, what I do as an individual, how I
generate ideas, the groups I work within, and even the organization to a lesser
extent. But still to some extent I may have
control or a higher locus of control. So I can actually exert more control over
those kind of constraints. The second set of constraints I want to
talk about are what we're going to call external constraints.
So these are ones that are outside. We're going to talk about the industry,
society, and technology. Let's just quickly, the industry
constraints. Industry constraints are about the market
and how the market sees utility and value in our Ideas.
So we'll make a proposition for change. And the world, the market, has to say,
yes, that makes sense to me. I will change, I will adopt, I will think
about it in a different way. So there was a proposition back in the day
about the music industry. So, for example, in the music industry, at
least in the United States, had a great deal.
You know, 20, 30 years ago, the music industry was basically, buy 12 songs you
hate. To get one song you liked, and for about
$20. And so, this is, you know people did it.
I mean, you bought music, I bought music, we, we all bought music.
But then, this guy comes in, into this market, so it was a market of, of, of
organizations. And he writes a program, Napster, that
basically trashes the whole thing. Because what is his proposition?
His proposition is get all the music you want for free.
Any song you want for free. And of course it was illegal, and that's a
problematic thing there. But my point here is that these companies,
these record companies knew about digital, they understood that, what the
possibilities were, but they didn't do anything about it.
And so why would that be? Why, in the industry, have all these
different organizations, each organization behaving and making different kinds of
assumptions about the world. But they couldn't get it together, and
they didn't decide. They decided not to pursue this thing
called digital, which allowed this teenager to basically destroy the whole
thing. Why would that be, and how does that work?
So that's what we're going to look at. And we're going to ask some questions at
the industry level of, y'know, does this give us more power?
By doing digital, do we get more power? Is it fair?
Do we expect our competitors to play fair? Are they going to do things that make
sense? Does it take control from us?
What does it take from us? What does it, you know, if I do digital,
now, what do I lose in the process? Also, industries are very interested in
what they can control. And so if I do an innovation, can I
actually control it? Because if I can control it, I'm more
likely to do it. But if not, I'm likely to suppress or try
to avoid undertaking that innovation. We're going to talk about competition,
that is what happens in a field of rivals. We're going to talk about suppliers, the
people that give things that, you know, the employees, the professionals and what,
what goes on there. Especially here, we're going to talk about
education. We're going to talk about health care.
We're going to talk about politics, and government.
We're going to talk about those things that are very important for innovation,
but in, happen at this level. And we're going to talk about markets.
What goes on in markets. We're going to talk about disrupted
technologies, and lots of innovation things that you may have heard of before.
And situated within this model allows us to generate power.
Let me say that differently, by using this model we're going to be able to diagnose
problems of innovation, understand which way forward we should probably take.
So, industry level diagnostic, which sort of breaks out in this way.
We're going to talk about competition, we're going to think about how people
compete. We're going to think about the suppliers
the kinds of, of productive capacity, the raw materials that go in.
And then we're going to talk finally about the, the markets and what goes on for the
markets. The fifth level, societal constraints,
what we know to be true is about society and how society has to say that thing is
legitimate. And so we talked about human cloning and,
and why it is that society says that's not a good thing.
Society says there's a potential for harm, and so therefore it's, it's not safe.
It's not our aspiration. We're not aspiring to have clones of all
of ourselves. None of us would believe the world would
be a better place if everyone on earth were a clone of, of us ourself.
