“We innovate by starting with the customer and working backwards. That becomes the touchstone for how we invent.”
- Jeff Bezos
“If I had asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
- Henry Ford
Bezos and Ford offer a common refrain about innovation – it’s all about the customer. They recognize both sides of the same coin: Bezos applying a rigorous process of uncovering what customers report they want, while Ford recognizing the blindness of what customers think is possible. While this dual obsession about the customer is critical, it is only one aspect of innovation.
Innovation is often characterized as the broad acceptance of an invention. The telegraph was invented in 1809 by Samuel Soemmerring. It took 30 years before Samuel Morse innovated by producing the first commercially successful telegraph system. Soemmerring built a device, and decades later, Morse brought it into the mainstream. Google Glass was invented in 2012 but never became a commercially viable product. Invention does not always lead to widespread acceptance.
A different interpretation of innovation is not the realization of broad use, but rather what it takes to bring something new into being. As Peter Denning and Robert Dunham report in their book The Innovators Way, only 4% of all innovation projects return their financial investment. With this in mind, a different interpretation of innovation should be explored, one focused on how we cultivate social practices between individuals and groups.
A social practice is simply how we coordinate with others to get things done. For example, accounting practices include procedures and controls used to execute and prepare financial statements. Medical practices are treatment protocols widely accepted by healthcare professionals. These practices in a social or organizational context are taken for granted and in the background as people go about orchestrating their work.
Social practices can also be applied to innovation. Across organizations, individuals are responsible for taking care of concerns and bringing awareness to problems that affect how work gets done. Recognizing these inefficiencies, however, is not the same as addressing them. In order to bring new ideas into being, consider the action of making offers.
Offers are selfless acts that require a willingness to identify a concern that others can’t see or don’t want to own. They are conditional promises, that, if accepted, become a commitment to follow through on something.
Listen to Howard Teibel and Peter Denning discuss the power of making offers that spur innovation.
The act of making offers is possible when we tune into what’s going on in the world around us. Percy Spencer walked by a magnetron and the chocolate in his pocket melted. His attunement to what was happening around him led to the creation of the microwave oven. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, both graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design, made an offer to rent out their apartment. This started the phenomenon of Airbnb. Trends in our larger culture can spur innovation if we are able to pick our heads up and pay attention to the unmet needs of the world around us.
In order to grow innovative practices in your organization, begin by teaching your people how to:
1. Cultivate a beginner’s mindset that embraces humility and curiosity
2. Learn to navigate concerns versus treating everything as a problem to be solved
3. Identify emerging trends to uncover what’s possible beyond “business as usual”
To learn more about how we can assist you or your organization in building new innovative practices, read about our offers at teibelinc.com or connect with us at info@teibelinc.com.