The Idea Hunter E-Book

Andy Boynton

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 235

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

A different way of discovering and developing the best business ideas Jack Welch once said, "Someone, somewhere has a better idea." In this myth-busting book, the authors reveal that great business ideas do not spring from innate creativity, or necessarily from the brilliant minds of people. Rather, great ideas come to those who are in the habit of looking for great ideas all around them, all the time. Too often, people fall into the trap of thinking that the only worthwhile idea is a thoroughly original one. Idea Hunters know better. They understand that valuable ideas are already out there, waiting to be found - and not just in the usual places. * Shows how to expand your capacity to find and develop winning business ideas * Explains why ideas are a critical asset for every manager and professional, not just for those who do "creative" * Reveals how to seek out and select the ideas that best serve your purposes and goals and define who you are, as a professional * Offers practical tips on how to master the everyday habits of an Idea Hunter, which include cultivating great conversations The book is filled with illustrative accounts of successful Idea Hunters and stories from thriving "idea" companies. Warren Buffet, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Mary Kay Ash, Twitter, and Pixar Animation Studios are among the many profiled.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

Already Out There

Ready to Unlearn

CHAPTER 1 - Know Your Gig

The Discernment

The Circle of Competence

Gigs Matter

Interested

CHAPTER 2 - Be Interested, Not Just Interesting

Curiosity at the Trading Post

Learning Machines

Your Brain Is Open

Defining Your Own Hunt

Diverse

CHAPTER 3 - Diversifying the Hunt

The Color of Your Ideas

When Weak Ties Are Strong

Widening Your Intellectual Bandwidth

Bridging Distant Worlds

Ideas Are Everywhere

Exercised

CHAPTER 4 - Mastering the Habits of the Hunt

The Practice of Ideas

Begin with an Eye

Observing at the Ritz

Erecting a Personal Platform of Observation

Write It Down

Get It Moving

Observe Yourself

Agile

CHAPTER 5 - Idea Flow Is Critical

The Case of the Guitar Strings

Creating Idea Spaces at Pixar

Finding the “Informal Bosses”

Letting Ideas Percolate

When It’s Time to “Kill” Ideas

CHAPTER 6 - Create Great Conversations

“Continuers” and “Terminators”

The Value of a Naïve Question

Preparing for the Big Conversation

EPILOGUE

REFERENCES

Acknowledgments

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

INDEX

This constitutes a continuation of the copyright page:

“Boynton and Fischer get right to the heart of what it takes for people to create a superb idea—the first step to any successful innovation. By describing the characteristics of successful Idea Hunters, they provide guidance and tools that will increase your capacity to find great ideas and put them into play.”

—Michael Raynor, director, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and author, The Strategy Paradox and The Innovator’s Manifesto

“My company aims to add about $4 billion in new sales every year. This won’t be possible without everyone in the organization contributing new ideas. The Idea Hunter is an essential guide to systematically developing this critical capability.”

—Werner Geissler, vice chairman, global operations, Procter & Gamble

“Thrilling, fun, and inspiring, The Idea Hunter tells stories and discerns patterns of behavior and habits shared by the great innovators of the past century. It finds similarities among the greats ranging from Warren Buffet to Steve Jobs, and even going back earlier in the century to Walt Disney and Thomas Edison. Through brief stories and simple self-reflection exercises, this book distills the quirky essence of leading imagination in a way we can consume it, and hopefully aspire to become one with it.”

—Aaron C. Sylvan, serial entrepreneur and technologist, One Technology, Trust Works, LemonadeHeroes, and Sylvan Social Technology

“We rely on using the ideas of thousands of experts to win against tough competition in a crowded market. Using The Idea Hunter as a trail map, any leader can win the daily wars of ideas that differentiate the innovator from the rest.”

—Jack Hughes, chairman and cofounder, TopCoder, Inc.

“Idea Hunters are normal people, with a normal life, in a common social context. The only difference is that they have an open mind and are skilled in searching. This brilliant book is an ideal guide to achieve an open mind in our complex world.”

—Maurizio Marinelli, visual artist and president, Baskerville Research Center on Communication, Bologna, Italy

“Observe, ask questions, be curious, dare to throw odd ideas into a group’s conversation to make it better. These are all ways to ensure that the blind spots that we all are threatened by do not stay blind. Be an Idea Hunter!”

—Ton Büchner, CEO, Sulzer, Ltd.

“In my company, I ask all of our team members to be business owners. Doing things in a better way, at lower costs, and in a more customer-friendly way requires ideas from everyone. Those ideas come from great Idea Hunters throughout the company, regardless of rank and title. The Idea Hunter is not only an enjoyable read; it also offers a practical method so that anyone or any firm can learn the secrets of harnessing the power of ideas to drive success.”

—Laura J. Sen, president and CEO, BJ’s Wholesale Club

“Humans make progress by discovering new ideas, but also, importantly, by repurposing the ones that already exist. Boynton and Fischer show how each of us can get better at this critical skill—identifying and reapplying existing ideas.”

—Paul Romer, senior fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

“Hunting is an apt metaphor. Ideas exist everywhere in the wild. The trick is knowing where to look for them and how to capture them. Boynton and Fischer tell us how.”

—Ron Sargent, chairman and CEO, Staples, Inc.

“The Idea Hunter is unique. It’s about curiosity, agility, and perpetually hunting for better ideas. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to compete and collaborate more effectively each and every day.”

—Greg Brown, president and CEO, Motorola Solutions

“This book upends a number of persistent myths about innovation and what it takes to be an ‘idea person.’ It shows that what’s required is not spectacular creativity or remarkable IQ, but curiosity—not innate genius, but a genuine desire to engage in a daily search for ideas. The Idea Hunter will help transform the way you and your business operate.”

—Jay Hooley, chairman, president, and CEO, State Street Corporation

“Ideas are the lifeblood of innovation, and innovation is the key to growth. Boynton and Fischer offer powerful and practical advice on how to ‘jumpshift’ the flow of ideas in your organization. This book will become required reading for any leader intent on shaping a high-performance organization.”

—Michael D. White, chairman and CEO, DirecTV

Copyright © 2011 by Andy Boynton, Bill Fischer, and William Bole. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Boynton, Andrew C.

The idea hunter: how to find the best ideas and make them happen / Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer with William Bole.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-76776-4 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-03884-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-03885-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-03886-4 (ebk)

1. Creative ability in business. 2. Creative thinking. 3. Success in business. I. Fischer, Bill. II. Bole, William. III. Title.

HD53.B69 2011

650.1—dc22

2011005783

Asking Marie to marry me was the best idea I ever had! Kim, Amy, Billy, Sergio, Leah, Nicolas, Isabella, Mia, and William III are living evidence that one good idea can give birth to many, many more.

Also, for my mother, Virginia Fumagalli Fischer, who rose above an eighth-grade education to inspire several generations with her love for ideas. She was a true Idea Hunter!

—Bill

Dear Jane, you are at the heart of the very best ideas I’ve ever had—let’s start a fire and watch something tonight (“Maybe a game is on!”), can we go grab some Indian food, let’s take a walk, or let’s drive out to Great Point (“and maybe I can fish for blues!”). You know better than anyone that those are the ideas I treasure most—and I only enjoy them with you.

—Andy

PREFACE

Why Hunt?

IDEAS MATTER. We could talk at length about the impact of blockbuster ideas, like the microchip and mass production. But one of our favorite examples has to do with something less celebrated: coffee cup lids.

Many people have already forgotten the ritual they used to perform after ordering their latte or double-shot espresso in a coffee shop. Until fairly recently, customers often had to fumble around the counter looking for the right-size lid, because a medium lid would not do if they were holding a large cup of cappuccino. All that changed with the introduction of one-size-fits-all lids, the product of an idea that required some tinkering with the design of the rims of disposable coffee cups.

The notion was just a little one, not often talked about today. But one economist who appreciates such things is Paul Romer of Stanford University. “That small change in the geometry of coffee cups means that somebody can save a little time in setting up the coffee shop, preparing the cups, getting your coffee, and getting out,” Romer told an interviewer, explaining how the innovation has touched both the shops and their customers. He points out that millions of little discoveries like this, combined with some very big ones, have exponentially improved the quality of life over the past century.

There’s a larger point about the value of ideas big and small. It has to do with the profound difference between a thing and an idea, between a mere object and a creative act. George Bernard Shaw shed light on this distinction. “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples, then you and I will still have one apple,” he wrote. “But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” The apple in your hands will be exactly what it is (until it is bitten into), but your recipe for apple crisp, which is an idea, could be used many times by many people.

Getting back to the coffee shop: the cardboard cup is a thing. Typically a person uses it just once before tossing it into the recycle bin. The lid is also a thing. Yet the insight that one lid could fit cups of all sizes—small, medium, and large—is not a thing. It’s an idea. What’s more, it’s an idea that coffee-shop owners and managers all over the world can reuse over and over again.

Romer takes up an interesting question: Which is a bigger obstacle—a shortage of ideas, or a shortage of things? His research has shown that “idea gaps,” as he styles them, hold back progress and innovation much more than the “object gaps.” He is speaking primarily about how societies have ultimately risen out of poverty not because of things, like paper or steel, but because of ideas about how to leverage those things (for example, the idea of mass production). His perspective is macroeconomics, but we’re looking at this from another angle.

What is more likely to hold us back as individuals—a lack of things, or a lack of ideas? Are many of us falling shy of career goals because our desks aren’t big enough or our phones aren’t fancy enough? Not likely. Most of us have what we need, as far as that goes. And there are more pressing matters—such as figuring out how to make a more persuasive sales pitch, how to manage a project more effectively, how to ramp up a revenue stream, how to bring a product to market. The most important tools for achieving those ends are in your head and in other heads.

Our focus is on individual managers and professionals: ideas matter to them, now more than ever. You have to know a lot to produce anything of value, whether it’s a tangible product or a service. You also have to combine and develop and apply what you know, which requires an idea at every turn. It wouldn’t be oversimplifying the matter too much to say that in today’s economy, knowing things is more important than making them. (After all, the back of an iPhone reads: “Designed by Apple in California; Assembled in China.” There’s a difference.) The idea payoff is greater than the thing payoff for individuals and organizations as well as for societies.

Those who have lingering doubts need look no further than the Google icons on their desktops and the iPods in their pockets. The employees that Google and Apple most value are the ones who understand they’re working in an idea-intensive environment. They are valued for what they know and are rewarded for the ideas they’ve added to such generic items as search engines and MP3 players. They look at things like music players and think of ways to make them more useable and appealing.

But Apple’s luminaries and Google’s giga-stars are scarcely the only ones who win with ideas. During our travels, we have spent much time talking to customer-facing employees like the housekeepers at Ritz Carlton Hotels. These people are expected (and trained) to look for fresh ideas about how to cater to each guest as an individual customer. They do so, first of all, by noticing things; the word “idea,” in fact, is culled from the Greek idein, “to see.” They look at the twelve crunched-up cans of soda in Andy Boynton’s hotel room, pull out pad and pencil, and make a note. This explains why Andy now finds Diet Coke on ice whenever he checks into a room at the Ritz.

Ideas matter to hotel workers. Shouldn’t they matter also to people in sales and marketing, and to managers everywhere? The same could be said for teachers, engineers, consultants, and others who get ahead not just by working hard but also by thinking hard. They are idea professionals (whether they describe themselves that way or not). They compete and collaborate more effectively when they know how to find and handle ideas.

And those who do well share one basic strategy. They go Hunting.

INTRODUCTION

Brilliance Not Required

BREAKAWAY IDEAS COME TO those who are in the habit of looking for them. That is the simple proposition of this book, which maps out a path for professionals of all callings, a way of getting ideas that make a difference. And that way is the Hunt. It’s a search for ideas that’s open-ended, ongoing, and always personal—dialed into who you are, what projects you’re pursuing, and where you’re going in your career. What’s needed is a fresh batch of skills that professionals can use every day.

Consider the intersecting stories of two passionate Idea Hunters. One is legendary; the other may well become so.

When Walt Disney got the notion of building a great family theme park, he did not go looking for ideas in all the usual places. In his day, the product of choice along that line was the thrill-ride amusement park—a seedy place with bad food and unfriendly employees. This was not Disney’s vision of a welcoming environment that would tap into the dreams of children and adults alike, so he went on a search (he was always on the trail of ideas). His quest led him all the way to Tivoli Gardens, a clean and orderly park in Copenhagen with, as one chronicler had put it, “lush flowers, tame rides” and a festive family atmosphere. The television personality Art Linkletter happened to be with Disney on that trip to Denmark in 1951, which was ostensibly a vacation they took with their wives. “He was making notes all the time—about the lights, the chairs, the seats and the food,” Linkletter later recalled. “I asked him what he was doing, and he replied, ‘I’m just making notes about something that I’ve always dreamed of, a great, great playground for the children and families of America.’” The dream became a splendid reality in 1955 with the opening of Disneyland in California.

Walt Disney once quipped that he was in the business of “selling happiness.” Entrepreneur Puneet Nanda is in the same business but in an entirely different industry. He is better known as Dr. Fresh, president and CEO of a California-based dental hygiene company by the same name that makes products with special appeal to children. His most popular item is the FireFly, a toothbrush with flashing lights that blink for sixty seconds. The Indian immigrant did not find the idea on a list of the “Top 100 Ideas for Dental Products and Accessories.” He got it from his daughter, who was four years old at the time and no more enthusiastic about brushing her teeth than any other four-year-old. One day he told his daughter that they had to go do some chores. Her response was that she’d go only if she could find her sneakers with the flashing lights. That’s when the light went off in his head. He drove out to Disneyland, bought a few pairs of blinking magnet earrings, and taped them to his daughter’s toothbrush. When they arrived back home, she brushed intently for eight minutes straight.

The brightly colored FireFly, sold in retail stores nationwide, is now the linchpin of a $44.3-million company. Nanda has become the consummate Hunter, devoting half his time to drumming up new ideas for product innovations.

Just looking at these snapshots, you could tease out a few lessons about Idea Hunters:

• They know their gig—what they’re all about as professionals and where they’re heading. Selling happiness in a healthy and wholesome way is what lends identity to both the legendary Disney brand and the up-and-coming Dr. Fresh.

• They don’t let the organization, job, industry, or profession define their Idea Hunt. Certainly Disney did not follow in those tracks when his trusted advisers, including his brother and partner Roy, ridiculed the notion of a “Mickey Mouse Park,” partly because it ran afoul of the thrill-ride-amusement-park paradigm. Nanda clearly was not just listening to colleagues at dental trade shows when he designed a whole line of products (including flossing containers) with blinking lights. Each went down his own idea trail.

• They recognize how the world around them connects with their plans and projects. Disney was ready to learn, with notebook in hand, when he strolled through the gates of Tivoli Gardens while vacationing in Denmark. Nanda turned his daughter’s fascination with flashing sneakers—nothing out of the ordinary—into a breakthrough when he connected it to his vision and projects. In fact, he hasn’t stopped looking to children for ideas. He holds a national contest each year, challenging kids in the second through fifth grades to invent their fantasy toothbrush. The winner in 2008 was a South Carolina girl who designed a toothbrush that speaks, reminding people to turn off the tap while they brush their teeth. She won a free trip to Disneyland.

Already Out There

Disneyland and the FireFly were products of idea work—which, contrary to popular impression, isn’t something done only by uniquely gifted “creative types.” Idea work is a vital asset for all professionals today. It is highly learnable—and that doesn’t mean learning to become a creative genius, because, as we’ll see in these pages, high-value ideas are not necessarily created. More often than not, they’re already out there, waiting to be spotted and then shaped into an innovation.

The idea that launched the iPod was way out there and reeled in by Phil Schiller. A marketing executive (not a techie), Schiller did not dream up the notion of a click wheel—the lightning-fast scroll wheel that helped separate the iPod from its poor MP3 cousins. He borrowed this feature from a motley assortment of electronics products dating to the early 1980s, and by slapping the idea onto Apple’s music player, Schiller secured his place in the annals of innovation (more on this in Chapter Three). As this feat illustrates, ideas aren’t generated so much as they’re found and then something useful is done with them. That’s why we proudly appropriate the words of Thomas Edison—who described his search for solutions as “the Hunt.”

Brilliance is optional. What we have found in our work and research is that the most successful Idea Hunters are not, as a rule, geniuses. Rather, they are just idea-active. They have a voracious appetite for acquiring ideas, and they are skilled at setting those ideas in motion—selling them and making them happen. They think like Miles Davis, the legendary jazz trumpeter and band leader, who once remarked, “I’m happy if I could play one new idea on a night.”

How do you become an Idea Hunter, someone who stands out with ideas in an increasingly crowded professional marketplace? It begins with embracing a new perspective on the innovative work most prized by organizations and clients today. We have seen many people arrive at such a fresh outlook in the course of our DeepDive sessions, a process of idea-storming and solution-shaping that we developed for corporate teams worldwide (and that is now trademarked by Deloitte Consulting). No matter how smart they think they are, individual participants in these sessions come to realize that there are more ideas at the table than there are in their own brains. Teams come to find that there are more ideas in the room than there are at their tables, and still more in the building, in the city, and beyond. They discover the practical value of a deliberate, persistent, wide-ranging search for ideas.

Based in part on these experiences, we have identified four bedrock principles for use by managers and other professionals. We call these the I-D-E-A principles, each of which connects with crucial attitudes, habits, skills, and strategies.

The first principle turns on the question: Do I want to be interested , or merely interesting? All of us naturally want to be interesting, but in the Hunt for ideas, being Interested in the world around you is of equal or greater importance. Those who excel at the Hunt understand that almost anyone can hand them an incredible idea, which they are generally free to use. Because they are thinkers as well as doers, the best Idea Hunters also understand that intellectual curiosity is not irrelevant to business success. Idea people approach their work with drive and enthusiasm, but also with a level of intellectual seriousness. They agree with Warren Buffett, who believes (as his business partner Charlie Munger relates) that it’s “very hard to succeed in something unless you take the first step—which is to become very interested in it.” And, we would quickly add, to become very interested in other people, too. As we show in the examples of innovators like Sam Walton, curiosity will take you further toward your goals than cleverness or even brilliance.

The second principle is about diversification. Idea Hunters are aware of the multitude of trails that can lead to worthwhile ideas. When setting out on a search, they always take along an assorted mix of idea sources, a collection as Diverse as any investment portfolio. This is how to avoid the plague of “me too” ideas that come from traveling the same narrow paths as everyone else in your group or field. You don’t want to be where all of the competition is—browsing the same publications, going to the same web sites, comparing notes with the same people, and winding up with variations (at best) of the same tired ideas. You want to bring in thoughts that are different but applicable, seemingly unrelated but potentially valuable—whether the source is a member of your team at work or the guy who coaches your daughter’s softball team. This part of idea work requires a wide intellectual bandwidth and a desire to span distances—for example, between your specialty and other specialties. That’s how you go about launching what management superguru Tom Peters calls “WOW projects.” The operative assumption should be that ideas are everywhere.

The third principle says you need to exercise your idea muscles all the time, not just when you’re in a brainstorming session at work. The most experienced Idea Hunters are Exercised, engaged in daily training, though it’s hardly a chore for them because they take pleasure in the Hunt. Many of them keep notebooks where they record what they’ve seen and heard, and they connect their personal experiences and impressions to their projects and proposals. Their search is highly focused and purpose-driven. They’ll scan web sites that they have determined are most likely to provoke interesting, adaptable ideas, yet they remain open to serendipity—to the idea that seems to come out of nowhere. One key to being exercised is to develop the skills of observation, which include knowing what needs to be observed closely. These skills go hand in hand with other habits of the Hunt, such as recording your observations (with or without a notebook) and sketching out rough notions that you can bounce off friends and colleagues. Successful Idea Hunters develop these and many other habits, realizing that the pursuit of ideas doesn’t start when you’re faced with a difficult problem that needs a quick solution. If you wait until then, it’ll be too late.

The fourth principle is that you also need to be Agile in your handling of ideas. You can’t expect to proceed in a straight line, snatching up a single idea and taking it to market. That could happen (theoretically), but more likely, you’ll need to veer left and right, catching and combining ideas that come at you from different directions, always with an eye on your projects and your gig. Ideas require deft handling, partly because of the sheer number of them that need to be in play. (As Edison said, “To get a good idea, you must first get a lot of ideas.”) Agility is required especially because these notions and impressions are worth little unless they’re in motion, shifting in response to fresh data and conversation, evolving through stages of reflection and prototyping. That’s why, through much of the Hunt, wild ideas are encouraged, bad ideas are not a deal breaker, and quantity is preferred over quality. The successful Hunter knows that the most important thing is to keep up the idea flow.

If you’re looking for a brisk way of calling up these four principles, just think Interested, Diverse, Exercised, and Agile, or simply I-D-E-A.

Ready to Unlearn

This book is about learning, but it’s also about unlearning. It’s about altering some of our mental pictures—including the one in which we discover an idea by shutting the office door and thinking real hard, finger pressed tightly against forehead. Hard thinking is, of course, necessary, and sometimes you need to close the door. But there are better ways of visualizing the Hunt, which looks more like a search party in which more than one set of eyes is needed. Or picture the common areas at work, where good conversation happens (especially if you make it happen); or the conference room in Cupertino, California, where Schiller and the Apple team decided that a scroll wheel was the right user interface for their music player. Idea finding isn’t really about sitting back and searching your brain. It’s much closer to a contact sport.