How Do You Become More Innovative?

Disruption and innovation are buzzwords today. Yet, much like the flavour of tofu, which doesn’t taste like anything unless you add sauce on it, disruption and innovation don’t mean anything unless you supplement these words with explanations and examples. Before you can become innovative, you need to understand what it means to be innovative.

The best and most concrete definition of innovation is from a McKinsey report that I read many years ago and it says that innovation is about doing the same thing, just better. When you innovate, you’re essentially taking a product in the market and are making it better by enhancing a specific dimension of its property. Innovation could also be that you create something new that the market hasn’t seen yet and this new invention is an alternative to an existing product. However, this new invention hasn't become disruptive for the simple reason that people can choose between other options, but this new invention doesn’t make the current item obsolete.

“Disruption is when you create something new, which makes something else obsolete.”

Let’s use Procter and Gamble’s Tide washing powder as an example. If you enhance this washing powder by changing the concentration of the powder, creating Tide Ultra-White which helps users to use less powder and get the same washing results, that’s innovation. If you then created Tide liquid, a new washing product that isn’t powder anymore, that’s still innovation because it’s complementary to what’s in the market. Now, if you were to create a washing machine that doesn’t need powder or liquid and uses ultrasonic waves to shake the dirt off your clothing, then you have created something disruptive. This new invention causes washing powder and liquid to be completely obsolete.

It’s important that the disruption makes other alternatives obsolete. Just causing a buzz may be disruptive but it’s not a disruption.

An excellent example of disruptive innovations that are not disruptions is Uber. Uber can appear to be disruptive because taxi drivers are raging about how they’re out of a job and that Uber has disrupted their livelihood. However, when we look at Uber from a macro view, it does the same thing that a taxi does. It’s the same mode of transport, the same person sitting at the front and driving passengers around. What Uber has done differently is that they have connected all these cars to the internet so that people can easily book rides on their phones. Essentially, the ride-hailing service is shifting from a yellow Mercedes Benz (in Germany most taxis were yellow Mercedes Benz) to a green Toyota Prius. This innovation isn’t considered to be disruption unless Uber created pods for people to travel in, and these pods can be turned into offices. That’s disruption. As it is now, while Uber is disruptive to taxi drivers and taxi companies, it is an innovation and not a disruption.

In fact, Skype is more disruptive to ride-hailing than Uber.

With Skype, you don’t have to travel to meet someone anymore. You could do a video call and meet with the person, interact and even conduct meetings. Skype disrupts the ride-hailing industry because the video call replaces the journey they would have taken on those automobiles.

Currently, Skype is also disruptive to the airline industry. In the old days, without Skype, if you wanted to have a face to face conversation with someone you had to fly to them. With Skype, you don’t need to fly to other countries to have such discussions unless you wanted to meet with them physically.

Another disruptive product to taxis would even be virtual reality. If you have virtual reality, you don't need to drive across town for a meeting. You can just put your headset on in front of a desk at home. It seems as though you’re at the meeting and you don't need to travel anymore. Your Oculus Rift headset has disrupted the Uber and the taxi industry because you don't need to use them to go to meetings anymore.

The reality is that some of the most significant disruptions are not even that obvious. For instance, elevators have entirely disrupted real estate pricing models. In the past, when you had to walk up the stairs, the top floors were cheaper because they were harder to access. However, now that we have elevators, the top floors are the most expensive because they offer the best view.

While disruptions cause significant impact, innovation alone is also very valuable to consumers and companies. Innovating to meet the underlying needs of people more could potentially cause you to develop something disruptive.

So what can you do as an individual to become more innovative and perhaps even create disruptions?

Much like achieving any goal, when it comes to innovating, you have to do the work. For instance, if you wanted to lose weight, you should be exercising or going for a walk on the same day. You don’t need to read a thick book and come up with lofty plans for months. Likewise in business, don’t focus on setting up a meeting and preparing the PowerPoints, sit down and do the actual work.

I get the constant feedback of people asking me, “how do you produce so much in such a short period of time”. And the simple answer is that we don't just think about it, we do it. When it pops into your head, just do it. With innovation and creativity, you want to start being creative and start finding solutions to problems. So when you’re done with this Power Read, start innovating on the very same day, and I’ll show you how to begin in this chapter.

Innovation isn’t about being in a 5 million dollar project. It’s about starting small and developing.

Start Small

One simple way to start innovating is to pick a problem that is small enough to iterate quickly. Many people think that to innovate, they need to apply a brand new solution to a massive problem in a 5 million dollar project that has 40 people working on it. What you instead need to do is to build muscle memory. It’s similar to going to the gym. You want to be strengthening your muscles by starting with lighter weights and working your way up. Likewise, you can start becoming more innovative by picking a small problem that needs to be solved and come up with different ways of solving it. What you’re doing is that you’re creating a learning loop where you try something out, learn, iterate, test your assumptions and build the muscle memory of testing your assumptions using a short time with the least amount of resources.

A long time ago, I happened to teach Pilates to two Olympic trial runners. It’s a long story. What was fascinating is that these amateur runners can't make any money, but the amount of preparation they put into the race is just extraordinary. When it comes to exercising, everyone trains, but when it comes to business and innovation, no one trains! In business, many people think to embark on a 10 million dollar journey which is equivalent to trying for the Olympics when you’ve never ran before.

The best and most innovative companies are doing the same thing. They start with a small project, to try something out. They learn from it and refine their processes. They then slowly take on the more significant projects till they can handle the 10 million dollar project which is honestly very stressful, but with the muscle memory to learn, and be creative, it’s easier for them to handle it.

Start fixing small problems really well. Train yourself to go beyond the first idea that pops into your mind. Question yourself about the underlying issues that you’re addressing and not just the product that already exists. Then find solutions for that problem. You then go through the process of testing out your ideas.

The Mechanics of Failing

We are fortunate to live in a world where we can test most things in a short time for a small amount of money. Of course, some testing would take a long time and a lot of money like if you’re testing out a transatlantic plane. However, in most cases, if you’re building a mobile app for a bank, you can test a lot with a small investment.

There are some key questions you should keep in mind when you’re testing something - How do I test my hypothesis? How do I test something in the least amount of time with the least amount of resources? Is the way that I’m testing this hypothesis, the most efficient use of resources and time?

For instance, if you want to build an app, the first thing that many people would do is to start writing code which perhaps takes two weeks. When you finally get your prototype and discover the product doesn't work, you would have wasted two weeks. So, before you write the code, prepare the design, or even start testing the app, you should first start from the basics. The basic isn’t even just sketching on the computer. In fact, when I was at Mozilla, we literally drew ideas on pieces of paper. We drew the exact interface, screen by screen on stacks of paper. We then walked into Starbucks and asked people if they would give us their feedback about what worked and what didn’t. In return, we would buy them coffee.

By the end of the day, we would discover that the first five screens worked, but the rest didn’t. We could do as many as 10, 20 or even 30 iterations in a day by using this method. It’s only after we’ve tested it out and allowed room for failure and re-development, that we would start sketching and designing it on Photoshop.

Of course, I fully acknowledge that if you are working in a synthetic biology company, and you need to modify yeast genetically, then this method doesn't work quite that well. So it has its limitations, but you can also be asking the same questions and reminding yourself to build the habit of testing things out before implementing ideas immediately.

I'm pretty sure that when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he didn’t just try something and throw it away because it didn’t work. He wrote down what worked, what didn't work and if it worked for 10 seconds, he would then try to figure out how to make it work for 15 seconds the next time around. Many people don't get feedback because they don't want to fail, but it's important to be willing to fail and learn.

The Mindset of Failing

The way that you label an experience, a person or even yourself makes an impact. There’s some neuroscientific support around this notion where if you label an experience as failing in your brain, you tag it as a negative memory. So when you have to think about this same experience or something that remotely resembles it, you think that it’s doomed.

Labelling can even be seen in simple experiences like if you walked across the savanna and you picked a lovely looking blueberry. If however, you fell sick from that blueberry, you won’t touch them in the future. While it might be smart to avoid wild berries in the future, with a business, it’s different. Most of the time, trying the same idea a year later with some improvements can make a huge difference. The various factors in the environment, consumers and business may have shifted.

So it’s vital to redefine failure as a learning process. When you see failure as a learning opportunity, you no longer create dark spots with negative memories but rather bright spots with positive memory that helps you grow.

“Ultimately, creativity is nothing but connecting your learnings to create something new.”

So instead of saying that you’ve tried it and it didn’t work, you can instead highlight what worked and what didn’t. Then you use these learnings to create a new idea.

I hate the notion of "fail fast, fail forward" because if you come to me, and say, “what would you rather do - fail or succeed?”. I would not say that I wanted to fail. I don’t think anyone else would. Let's acknowledge the fact that failing sucks. However, we can reframe our failures to focus on our learnings instead. We then create a system which allows us to learn very quickly and subsequently succeed in our creative endeavours.

When it comes to your communication you should be saying, “Well that didn’t work out, what can we learn from this segment?”. Rather than “Oh my God, we failed!”. Even in the greatest failures that are complete disasters, there is at least 5 to 10% of the project that actually worked and that you can learn from.

Create a learning culture for yourself. With everything you do, look at the learning and lock in the learning so that you can train yourself to become a learning mechanism that innovates and causes disruptions. If you can improve yourself by 1% every single day for a year, your total improvement after one year is 38 times better. These tiny little improvements are required, and if you do them quick, they lead to massive outcomes.

1) Pick a Small Problem

Instead of picking a big juicy problem, start by selecting a small problem that is useful to solve. The problem could be anything from creating a new marketing campaign, trying something on social media or making changes to a product. Practice coming up with solutions and thinking deeply about such things.

2) Label Failure as Learning

What are some failures that you’ve experienced? Now ask yourself what you could have learned from these failures. Then come up with ways you can improve, even if it’s the smallest improvement. Improving by 1% each day is small, but it makes a significant impact in the long run.

3) Do the Work

Start innovating now. Don’t think about becoming creative someday. Don’t make plans of how you will deliver your innovative solutions. Simply start by coming up with solutions right now. Do steps one and two today, don’t procrastinate.