Summary: “Successful, growing organizations often focus on driving out the operational inefficiencies they maintained during their start-up phase, and unintentionally erect barriers to innovation as they become ever more efficient and profitable.” Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, pg 1 Braden Kelley, author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, is no stranger to innovation. He was the founder of Blogging Innovation, the internet’s fastest growing innovation community. He has recently teamed up with another innovating authority Rowan Gibson (who penned the forward to this book), who have collaborated on InnovationExcellence.com. Stoking Your Innovation Bonfireis a distillation of his original blog, and is an invaluable resource for managers looking to break down the barriers that prevent innovation in their companies and organizations. Golden Egg Move Innovation to the Centre “You have to make sure that stakeholders know not only that innovation is important to the organization, but also what innovation means in their organization and how they can participate.” Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, pg 10 Is innovation at the centre - the heart - of your company? If it isn’t, it should be. Your employees must recognize that innovation is not only valued, but is a priority in your organization. “Otherwise,” as Kelley writes, “how can stakeholders be expected to make any significant changes?” (10) As most of us know, humans are naturally resistant to change (doubly so in business, where failure can mean termination). To circumvent this fear, a clear innovation vision must be articulated (complete with a plan) by the senior leaders. As Kelly explains, “An effort to move innovation to the center is best led by the CEO, but it requires the support and involvement of the senior leadership to tell the stories to employees and customers about what the organization is trying to achieve, what innovation means to their organization, and how the employees and other stakeholders can participate.” (10) An innovation vision is fluid and always changing, depending upon the marketplace’s needs at any given time. That said, there are a few places we can start in creating our own. GEM # 1 Innovate for the Future Present “The ideal is to design a product based on customer insights appropriate to the time of the product launch to maximize the useful life of the customer insights.” Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, pg 57 In researching Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, Kelley spoke with ethnographer Cynthia DuVal who advised ethnographers and researchers involved in innovation “to consider the timeline of the development process when extracting insights.” (56) This is critical to success because “if you’ve got a 12- to 18-month product or service development process to go from insight to in-market, then you should be looking not to identify the insights that are most relevant today, but the insights that will be most relevant 12 to 18 months from now.” (56) This is innovating for the future present, anticipating what your consumers will need at the time when you plan to launch your product or service. This kind of innovation isn’t easy, and necessitates flexibility in case the insights you have predicted are a little off the mark. But almost all of the leaders in any particular field (Apple, for instance) have mastered this. Those who haven’t have fallen behind, many irretrievably so. The trick for innovating for the present future is to get to know your customer well and learn to think one step ahead of them. What is your customer asking for? What can you extrapolate from that to identify what they mightwant in the future? GEM #2 Accessing the Voice of the Customer “The man or woman stitching up your clothing has no idea whether the stitching method worked well for you, or if you were happy with the product. They only know whether they made their daily quota and how much failed Quality Control.
