[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. Also when we look at innovations, we're talking about our identity. We say, well if I change my life around, if I buy that Range Rover, if I buy that new iPhone does that reinforce me to myself? Does that make me more of who I am? Does that make me better? Also does this thing help us grow or does it help, or does it destroy us? So in either case, if we do perceive it helps us grow, we're more likely to allow that innovation to exist among us as a society. We're going to talk about values. We're going to talk about social identity. We're going to talk about regulation, and how it is that society stops things. Because something that we have to be aware of is that society has power, in terms of laws and things like that. We're also going to talk about history. What came before actually does create obligation for what comes afterwards. Because the world it was, the way it was, doesn't mean you can make it any new way again. So, we have to sort of acknowledge that history of what came before as we move forward. Societal level diagnostics. We're going to look and be able to ask these kinds of questions that we asked of Sow And Grow. Right? Do people want it, does it, do they identify with it, do they aspire to it, do they think it works in a positive way? Is there a history behind this stuff that actually makes people less likely to adopt it, or is the history something that allows them to adopt it? So we'll go into very gory detail about this and understand it. Then finally, Week 7, we're going to talk about technical constraints. What it is that's hard? In this case, I'm not going to talk as much about, you know, we talk about the development of the technology. I'm not going to talk about as much as like how do you do brain surgery, how do you keep that body alive? But the kind of things I want to talk about are, are sort of the, the, the, the way that we think about technology. You know technology is, in a sense, is easy. You know, does it work. The way we're going to think about that is knowledge. How, how much do we know about the technology. How much do we know about how the human body works, for example? So if we know more, we know about it the more likely we are to be able to drive innovation that works. Also time, you know, think about windows of time. If you have a product and you're trying to sell lots of that product, maybe before a big holiday, you know Christmas holiday or, or a Easter holiday. Some other, some, some big time when gift giving is important. Or there is a window of opportunity and you have to have a product innovation done during that time. We'll talk about the nature of time and how it is that coordination windows of opportunity. Those things actually matter and, and can be considered when we think about whether innovation is going to work or not. And then finally, we're going to talk about the environment. Like what goes on in the environment around us as we make innovations, we make changes they may actually be adverse to the environment. They may actually pollute it, may kill us, may, you know make the world a worse place as a byproduct of our innovation. And sometimes we want to think about will the environment actually support the existence of this innovation and if this thing is successful. Is that a good thing or a bad thing in the long run? And so we'll want to see that as well. Technology, we're going to ask these kinds of questions about what keeps functioning. What stops functioning from happening? Which one is it likely to do? Do we need to know more? Do we need to think about timing more? Or do we think about, need to think about what this will do to the ecology? To the ecosystem within which we live. So we think about inside the box, we're not going to think about outside the box. We're not even going to say that, we're going to think inside the box. It has noth, it has nothing to do with what we're working on. What we're working on this right now is understanding the constraints. We're going to understand which of these constraints we need to change in order to make our project successful. The project being, the project I'm working on for this class the project of my life, the project that I'm working on for my work the school project that I'm working on. Anything that's an innovation is going to be subject to these. And so we want to be able to diagnose which one of these things is a problem that we're going to get past. [music] So with that, if you're in the project track, take a look at the project brief description video. I have a small video there that talks about what I expect from the project and how it is you can get started if you have a team and all that. If you're not in the project track, be sure to do the constraint. The, the diagnostic that I've asked you to do this week. Also be sure to do the what you, read, do the readings and watch the videos in the rest of this week. All right. Thanks. [music]
