READY, SET ... DRAW!

There’s something to be said for doodling during meetings.

According to Presidential biographers, our nation’s leaders indulged – a lot.  JFK drew sailboats; Reagan, cowboys and hats.  And Eisenhower, pictures of himself as a younger, stronger citizen.

The growing presence of whiteboards in the office, not to mention the increased number of virtual meetings, begs for white paper and pen (or pencil) to illustrate.   Drawing while otherwise occupied might, for sure, be a symptom of boredom; at the same time, it allows us to focus on what’s being said.

That kind of child’s play appears in other parts of work life:  mainly, in those corporations where imagination and innovation seem to be treasured.  HP devoted Friday post-lunch afternoons to thinking and tinkering, while 3M’s famous 15 percent “to do your own thing” came up with such hits as Post-it notes.  Today, Apple, LinkedIn, and Fusenet, among others, allow techies specific amounts of time to dream, develop, and create products or initiatives that will further the business’ goals.

Wait, though:  True experimentation, very often, results in failure after failure after failure … before netting any type of success.  How lenient are companies in allowing their best and brightest to continue to think after a series of no-gos?  Will goals and structured space generate great ideas that turn into worthwhile and revenue-producing products?   Are the innovators among us seduced by the 9-to-5 and accompanying benefits?

Or what we’d suggest:  Let’s decamp to a nursery school or kindergarten and watch, for a few hours, how children play.  What they do in terms of toys, space, and each other to create an environment in which they are genuinely happy, expressive, and, yes, inventive.  

It’s something we’ve lost.  But we – and our employers - can regain it. 

How?  Your answers more than welcome at cbyd.co.

SPEED KILLS!

Okay, our headline was a cheap trick … but we hope we grabbed your attention.

When we talk “speed,” it’s referring to the amazing work sprint, the time spent, from start to finish, on any one project, any one deliverable.   That race applies to those of us in creative and consulting fields as well as our colleagues employed in manufacturing and retail positions.

The question then becomes:  Why?  In our humble opinion, it’s caused by what researchers call the confluence of events.  Think about it:

• Quite simply, digital means fast.  We’re accustomed to orders acknowledged in nano-seconds, to 140-character tweets, to FourSquare apps that immediately email receipts.  Why not for work?
• Industry and competitor pressures don’t help.  “First to market” seems to be the bible for many CPG and tech companies, with “fast follower” a close second.  [And you know what that means for all department heads and executives.]
• Business quicks.  A number of years ago, the giant SAP released its ASAP program … yes, shortcuts to implementing enterprise resource planning software (which typically eats money, and time, and resources).  Beyond IT, everyone is looking for the immediate or near-instant solutions, from home plumbing issues to worker productivity tools.

But what fast doesn’t allow is the ability to plan, to think, and to go with your gut.  In the creative biz, agencies are now competing against briefs completed in less than a day.  The time-honored RFP process is being shortened, not by days, but by weeks.  Sure, there are ways to stave off the speedy wolf at the door, but at what cost?

Here’s our call:  Set reasonable timeframes, realizing that everyone has his/her own pace.  Allow space for quality thinking … which can happen at any time, individually and in groups.  And recognize that the “Eureka!” moment, whether for product innovation or a campaign, works best in association with a multitude of other activities and thoughts.

WORD FATIGUE

Never have so few been confused by so many.

In thinking about the word “innovation” while working on a project, we ran across at least three different definitions.  Are we developing something that never existed?  Finding another use for a product-at-parity or commodity?  Or looking to expand the use and care of a service/item?

Then, we turned to our handy databases.  One limited search on the word – the last 30 days and full-text only – yielded nearly 12,000 hits.  Each hit includes different explanations, different parameters, and different processes to innovate.  [That doesn’t even include internal “googling” inside annual reports, on corporate Web sites for “innovative” job titles, and the most recently released business books.]   Everyone, in short, claims innovation, even The New York Times which solicited ideas from its readers mid-last year.

What’s more, there are ongoing, sometimes volatile arguments among those who innovate for a living.  The talk rages between ideating for efficiency sakes, sustaining an already viable item, and/or for disrupting the heck out of an industry [e.g., moving from mainstream computers to PCs]. 

Why the much ado?  Because it seems like, in the word melee, we’re intent upon the process and thing, not the benefits.  It bestows some sort of accolade to say Chief Innovation Officer.  Or kudos that we’ve cornered the market on ideas.

As with all these intellectual wrangles, we giggle.  There is truly no “I” in innovation.