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.

PSST, PASS IT ON: Whaddayou watching?

By the Keurig machines.  Over cubicles.  Via Facebook or texting.

Today, everyone wants to be first ‘in’ on the latest and hottest television show – whether viewercast on cable, Web, networks, YouTube or other talking animated media.  Now, PBS’ Downton Abbey is almost passé, with Monday Mornings and Girls vying for the lead [depending on what kind of viewer you are].  Or it could be seasonal sports events or reality show suspense, usually communicating the most recent iterations in the challenge or drama.

That yen to be vision-trendy started, critics and pundits insist, with HBO’s The Sopranos (though we contend it really caught on with Mad Men).  Or fueled by the amazing trajectory of YouTube, now calculating four billion hours of eyeballs a month. 

Whatever.  More important is the convenience of choosing to listen to talented artists and intriguing series at our convenience, wherever, whenever.  There, the thanks is due to all of the above:  Folks like Dustin Hoffman and Kevin Spacey and Maggie Smith vying for small screen opportunities.  The at-your-fingertips access of old-fashioned audiovisual media, on new-fashioned instruments, from smartphones and iPads/Nooks to, maybe, Google glasses in the near future.  And the prolixity of channels, with Netflix now challenging traditional broadcast and cable TV in the production of original content.

But the whispering about watching is what’s got us thinking.  It’s more than just a conversation insert, like “what did you do Saturday night?”  It’s grown to infuse and infect our activities – perhaps in generating content à la reality shows or creating a pastiche of the 1970s’ ad era in presentations.  It has, in short, got us talking and thinking, across generations, spanning cultures and attitudes.  It represents, in short, exactly the kind of ideas we might want to adopt for internal corporate dialogues, a way to help ensure our business messages go viral in the right ways.

“If you don’t stop watching the idiot box,” as teacher Mom and retailer Dad used to warn us, “your mind won’t develop.”

Not.

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.