The apple of my eye

When I was a kid, I’d frequently cook up inventions. Before I had left elementary school, I had “invented,” among other things, a portable hang glider for kids; the snowboard (yes, the snowboard; this was c. 1980, and I didn’t know such a thing already existed in distant places like California or Colorado); a speech-to-type machine; a handheld foreign language translator; and boat-like shoes that would enable their wearer to walk on water.

Before you praise my precociousness and marvel at the fortune I must have made from these contraptions, I should clarify: these inventions of mine never existed in the world. They were manifested in brief descriptions and crude drawings, or sometimes even just in my boyish brain. Concerns like feasibility or even physics didn’t cross my mind—I thought the job of inventor, of innovator, was simply to apply one’s imagination to the world. If you have a child, or have ever been a child, you probably recognize this imagining instinct.

While a nine-year-old’s imagination is a mighty thing, it misses the important, relentless work of execution. That means testing how this thing might be made, learning and overcoming all the flaws in our original idea, overcoming risk, and determining how we’ll take this thing to market.

I know this is no great insight; innovators from Nikola Tesla to Steve Jobs have remarked on execution’s superior position to mere ideation. (“Ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions” -Steve Jobs) And there’s a reason that the ancient Athenians—known for living in a place populated with philosophers, playwrights, and wisdom-makers—had a soft spot for their Olympian god Hephaestus, the blacksmith, the maker, the craftsman, with his talent for the hard, humble, and noble work of executing. I like to think that Haephestus kept head-in-the-clouds guys like Aristotle and Aristophenes focused, offering a kind of feasibility-for-philosophers service.

This month’s Pollinator is dedicated to product innovation—and not just sitting on the shore imagining that we might strap little boats on our feet enabling us to stride across the lake. Innovation may start in the imagination, but it won’t last if it doesn’t leave that cozy birthplace and get out into the wide, cold world. To avoid an early expiration, the spark of ideation goes through a relentless process of identifying and then developing new ways to fulfill a durable mission, testing those ideas, refining the most promising ones, and manifesting them with that thrilling mixture of learning, effort, and teamwork that characterizes the best kind of product work.

Great Hephaestus’s ghost, this stuff is fun.

On to the Garden,

Note: The Pollinator is now on LinkedIn. While this monthly rag that you’re reading right now will continue to be SDG’s primary publication on product, we’ve just got so much that we want to share, discuss, and debate. Our LinkedIn page is where we’ll keep conversations happening all the livelong month. Please join us at https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/the-pollinator-sdg

Around the Garden

Harvard Business Review’s Middle Path to Innovation and SDG’s innovation services: a discussion with SDG’s Ryan McKesson

Check it out: The Middle Path to Innovation, Regina E. Herzlinger, Duke Rohlen, Ben Creo, and Will Kynes, Harvard Business Review

Solution Design Group Account Executive Ryan McKesson recently shared this article from Harvard Business Review on corporate innovation processes. The Pollinator chatted with Ryan to discuss this HBR article and how outside firms can help companies innovate.

The Pollinator: Ryan, what struck you about this HBR piece?

Ryan: Well, I read it on a plane. And maybe it was because I was in the air, but it helped me envision three different innovation “altitudes.” High in the stratosphere is the idea of big transformational innovation. But that type of innovation process and investment is too big and gnarly for most companies. I mean, it’s just so risky. And on the other extreme, down near the ground, there’s a kind of incrementalism that’s low risk, yeah, but also low reward. When you innovate at this lower altitude you are really just releasing standard new features. I appreciated this HBR article showing a middle path.

The Pollinator: Yeah, the HBR article calls this middle path the Growth Driver Model. The way I read it, it’s a structural model where a company uses outside partners and investors, sets up an innovation accelerator outside of its balance sheet, and then drives innovation from this parallel structure into the company itself. Am I reading it right?

Ryan: Yes, I think that’s right, but I am less interested in the financial and organizational structure than in the principles and process of that kind of model. I think companies in our market [Ed. Note: SDG tends to work with mid-sized firms in traditional industries] can adopt these principles without setting up subsidiary companies.

The Pollinator: I think I agree, but explain how that might work.

Ryan: Well, in my experience, companies like many SDG customers don’t really need help being innovative, but they may need help doing innovation. I mean, they have incredible insights, skills, and knowledge within their teams—but they may lack a framework, or tools, or even just the time.

So yeah, while this Growth Driver middle path does involve companies establishing subsidiary innovation companies with private equity investors, the real value is in setting up a parallel structure that has the capacity—actually, the mandate—to innovate and to drive that innovation into the business.

The Pollinator: Yeah, but isn’t that model available to all these businesses now? If they have the skills, why do they need investors or partners to do this with them?

Ryan: Oh, that’s my other big takeaway from the HBR article—the idea of an outside partner helping you innovate, through structure, coaching, and accountability.

I mean, I could go to the gym and work out every day. I know how to do that. But a personal trainer is someone I’m accountable to, who also has done this with others and has generated results. So I use the outside expert.

That’s why innovation services from a partner like SDG are valuable. Not because you don’t have the skills, but because we can guide you and create the structure to do something that you have the skills to do.

The Pollinator: Yeah, I like that. Innovation requires a kind of discipline or habit, and outside partners can enforce that. Is that what you see with this middle path?

Ryan: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, there’s a lot more to it, but innovating well means driving ideas to prototypes and through some kind of validation process. Then the ones that have potential move into the business for refining and operationalizing.

I don’t think of this model or these partnerships as outsourcing your innovation. Instead, especially if you have the right partner, it’s a way to insource it. By that I mean it is a way to build a bridge between all the smart innovative tech and design people in your company and the operations of the business. A good partner can help you do that, and can then empower you to keep doing it yourself.

Shameless self-promotion: Solution Design Group, the publisher of The Pollinator, offers innovation services using a structured, time-boxed model that we call Guided Innovation. Check it out at https://www.solutiondesign.com/guided-innovation

Consumer Reports: not just your father’s reviewers of refrigerators

Check it out: https://innovation.consumerreports.org, from the team at Consumer Reports

Most Americans are familiar with Consumer Reports. When I was a kid, CR was a popular print periodical that offered ratings and reviews of appliances, cars, and other consumer products. They’re where I first learned what Harvey Balls are.

With the rise of the web, Consumer Reports of course adopted an online publishing model. To this day, their reviews and ratings remain a respected, impartial source for anyone seeking advice on consumer goods.

But did you know that Consumer Reports is also a great example of an organization with a world-class digital and product innovation practice? In fact, Fast Company magazine recently named Consumer Reports one of the most innovative organizations in the world.

Check out innovation.consumerreports.org to see examples of the innovation initiatives that Consumer Reports is working on. All of these disparate efforts are rooted in CR’s mission to empower and inform consumers. Examples include a kind of “nutrition label” for cybersecurity and a dark patterns tip line enabling consumers to report websites using design practices that deceive their customers.

I love how they use this website to innovate in public. You can see initiatives in various stages, from research to prototype to launch. They also openly collect ideas and insights from the public. It’s a great, even inspiring, example of an organization innovating with contemporary technology to fulfill a mission it has had since its inception.

We love encountering venerable organizations that are relentlessly remaking themselves through thoughtful innovation. Kudos to Consumer Reports for this good work.

Operators and innovators, unite: Reconciling two necessary product functions

Check it out: Can Product Operations and Innovation be Friends? Greg Bayer, Silver Ridge Advisors, for Mind the Product.

One of the enduring conflicts, and perhaps enduring myths, of product work is that innovation and execution are inherently opposed to one another. And I suppose there is something to this. The mindset and models for innovation require rapid ideation, deep comfort with ambiguity, and a willingness to throw it all away. Product operations, on the other hand, is concerned with reliability, certainty, and scalability. And while I believe we humans are infinitely complex beasts, capable of operating perfectly well in seemingly contradictory contexts, I can see why these impulses might create some tension.

So what’s a product team to do?

This piece from consultant Greg Bayer, written for Mind the Product, offers some good advice for reconciling product operations and product innovation. His tips include:

• Build a habit of rapid testing. Product operations might facilitate the experiment design, freeing product innovators and designers to innovate based on the insights garnered.

• Prioritize effectively. Instead of just creating to-do lists, connect product work to meaningful team, business, and market goals, using techniques like OKRs.

• Set up a good cadence of connections. Bayer outlines different touchpoints for innovators, operators, and others, including Monthly Product Reviews, Monthly Broadcasts, and Quarterly business reviews.

Innovators and operators alike will appreciate Bayer’s advice. They might even read it together.

Pollinator seedlings: a miscellany of additional insights for product professionals

What is Product Management’s Role in Promoting Innovation? - ProductPlan
This brief post from product management software platform ProductPlan is jam-packed with practical, actionable advice for product managers seeking to extend innovation beyond their immediate teams. Our favorite nugget? “Encourage ideas from across the company—and make sharing them fun.”

Innovation is just good Product Management - Adrienne Tan, Brainmates
This is a well-written post from Arienne Tan of the Australian product management consultancy Brainmates. It’s one part advice, and two parts well argued opinion. Her thesis: “The essential purpose of product management is to execute the principles of innovation.” She makes a strong case.

The Open Innovation Barometer (Whitepaper. .PDF format) - The Economist
Open Innovation (OI) is an approach to innovation that emphasizes working outside of your company’s walls. Common OI practices include joining consortia of similar firms, developing university research partnerships, hosting ideation and start-up competitions, and co-creating with customers. Economist Impact researched global open innovation practices by surveying 500 leaders across industries; this report is the result.

When innovation goes south: the tech that never quite worked out - Diana Gitig, Ars Technica
This is an eye-opening summary and review of a recent book, Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure, by Vaclav Smil. Through the review and profile, we get a look at innovation’s graveyard: technology innovations that failed, for various reasons. Some failures had unforeseen awful consequences (the pesticide DDT); some never lived up to the hype (supersonic commercial jets). Innovators will enjoy the summary, and might even pick up the book itself.

5 reasons to work with the competition, according to business leaders - Mark Samuels, ZDnet
One novel way to innovate? Partner with your competition. This article asks business leaders from well-known companies to explain the value of innovating in collaboration with your competitors. A good example: building common data models and standards from which you and your fiercest rival both might benefit.

Outside the Box

As autumn comes to the American North, this product strategist’s tastebuds turn towards apples. The Apple Rankings website is a passion project from a chap named Brian Frange. It’s a remarkably comprehensive resource on this most archetypical of hand fruits. By day, Frange is a comedian and a writer, and it shows in his language, as in this excerpt from a review of an apple called Lady Alice: “Alice is a perfectly nice lady, but like an office colleague who sits somewhere over there, you will forget this apple’s name in the elevator even though it may have joined you for lunch on multiple occasions.”

As a Minnesotan, I was pleased to see that the many of the top apples in the Apple Rankings list were developed at the University of Minnesota. I’m munching on a Minnesota-grown Honeycrisp (Frange’s number 2 ranked apple) even as I type this.

Grab an apple and check it out at https://applerankings.com/

About the Pollinator

• The Pollinator is a free publication from the Product practice at Solution Design Group (SDG). Each issue is a curated digest of noteworthy content and articles from across the internet’s vast product community.

• Solution Design Group (SDG) is an employee-owned digital product innovation and custom software development consultancy. Our team of over 200 consultants includes experienced software engineers, technical architects, user experience designers, and product and innovation strategists. We serve companies across industries to discover promising business opportunities, build high-quality technology solutions, and improve the effectiveness of digital product teams.

• The Pollinator's editor is Jason Scherschligt, SDG's Head of Product. Please direct complaints, suggestions, and especially praise to Jason at [email protected].

• Why The Pollinator? Jason often says that as he works with leaders and teams across companies and industries, he feels like a honeybee in a garden, spending time on one flower, moving to another, collecting experiences and insights, and distributing them like pollen, so an entire garden blooms. How lovely.