Random Thoughts from a CTO: Creativity

Innovation and listening to customers

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 20:34:17 GMT

Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users has a thought provoking post this week called "Listening to users considered harmful". Here are some parts of that post:

Is "listening to users" really the most important way to keep them happy and -- if we're lucky -- passionate? Is giving users what they ask for the best way to help them kick ass? Or should you create or modify a product based solely on what you believe in... even if it doesn't match what users tell you?

Most of us realize that focus groups are notoriously ineffective for many things, but we still assume that listening to real feedback from real users is the best way to drive new products and services, as well as improve on what we have. But there's a huge problem with that -- people don't necessarily know how to ask for something they've never conceived of! Most people make suggestions based entirely around incremental improvements, looking at what exists and thinking about how it could be better. But that's quite different from having a vision for something profoundly new.

True innovation will rarely come from what users say directly.

This doesn't mean that you don't listen to users--because the truth is embedded in what they say...but you have to look for the deeper meaning behind what they ask for, rather than always taking them at their word. If they ask for "D", as an improvement to "C", you might have to dig deeper to find out what it is about "D" that they want. And in that answer, you might find the nugget that leads you--and only you--to come up with "S" as a solution. And the "S" solution looks nothing at all like "D", but gets to the heart of what users really wanted and needed when they asked for "D".

And this is NOT about giving them simply what we know is good for them but that they really don't want, because they probably won't stick around. This is about giving them what they really DO want... but simply don't realize it because they had no way to imagine it.

So maybe the key is to listen not only to what users say, but more importantly to what is motivating what they say. The rest is up to us. If we really care about our users, they'll just have to trust us... but more crucially--we have to trust ourselves.

Please read the entire post as Kathy gives some personal examples as well as gives the insight and background of why she wrote this post. I know that it is a balancing act between knowing what you think is right for your customers vs. what they think is right for your product. You don't want to fully lean one side or another as you risk either alienating your customers or having a poor product. True innovation is to come up with products that are able to balance properly for the best of both.

SCAMPER Part 4 - SCAMPER Solution Development

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 17:20:14 GMT

One of my favorite books that I came across was the book Tinkeytoys by Michael Michalko. There are several great tools in the book, but one that I have relied on several times is called SCAMPER. It must be one that the author liked, because he provides a separate kit called ThinkPak that revolves around the SCAMPER technique.

This is the final part of a 4 part series:

Part 1 - Process Overview
Part 2 - Personal Challenge Questions/Ideas
Part 3 - Challenge Statement Development
Part 4 - SCAMPER Solution Development

Step 3 of the process discussed in the first post of this series was to find possible solutions using the SCAMPER questions. By this stage, you already will have plenty of Challenge Statements to choose from and with these questions you will have unlimited solutions to consider. In starting the process, come up with some ideas on your own. Then, use the questions below to help you generate additional solutions by answering the questions against your initial list of ideas. You can also consider existing solutions into the mix.

In this post, I will only provide the questions that you should consider. You can pick and choose the questions that you feel are most relevant and will help you generate possible solutions. If one doesn't work, try another. Continue until you have a sufficient number of solutions. Then, as you saw in Step 4, you need to implement the solution(s) that will best address your Challenge Statement.

Substitute:

What can be substituted? Who else? What else?
Can the rules be changed?
Other ingredients? Other material?
Other process or procedure?
Other power?
Other place?
Other approach?
What else instead? What other part instead of this?

Combine:

What ideas can be combined?
Can we combine purposes?
How about an assortment?
How about a blend, an alloy, an ensemble?
Combine units?
What other article could be merged with this?
How could we package a combination?
What can be combined to multiply possible uses?
What materials could we combine?
Combine appeals?

Adapt:

What else is like this?
What other idea does this suggest?
Does the past offer a parallel?
What could I copy?
Whom could I emulate?
What idea could I incorporate?
What other process could be adapted?
What else could be adapted?
What different contexts can I put my concept in?
What ideas outside my field can I incorporate?

Magnify:

What can be magnified, made larger, or extended?
What can be exaggerated? Overstated?
What can be added? More time? Stronger? Higher? Longer?
How about greater frequency? Extra features?
What can add extra value?
What can be duplicated?
How could I carry it to a dramatic extreme?

Modify:

How can this be altered for the better?
What can be modified?
Is there a new twist?
Change meaning, color, motion, sound, odor, form, shape?
Change name?
Other changes?
What changes can be made in the plans? In the process? In marketing?
What other form could this take? What other package?
Can the package be combined with the form?

Put to Other Uses:

What else can this be used for?
Are there new ways to use as is?
Other uses if modified?
What else could be made from this?
Other extensions? Other markets?

Eliminate or Minify:

What if this were smaller?
What should I omit?
Should I divide it? Split it up? Separate it into different parts?
Understate?
Streamline? Make miniature? Condense? Compact?
Subtract? Delete?
Can the rules be eliminated?
What’s not necessary?

Rearrange:

What other arrangement might be better?
Interchange components?
Other pattern? Other layout?
Other sequence? Change the order?
Transpose cause and effect?
Change pace?
Change schedule?

Reverse:

Can I transpose positive and negative?
What are the opposites?
What are the negatives?
Should I turn it around? Up instead of down? Down instead of up?
Consider it backwards?
Reverse roles?
Do the unexpected?

If you like what you see with this technique, please go buy the book (link above). The book provides more examples to this approach as well as other creativity tools.

SCAMPER Part 3 - Challenge Statement Development

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 18:19:15 GMT

This is the third part of a 4 part series:

Part 1 - Process Overview
Part 2 - Personal Challenge Questions/Ideas
Part 3 - Challenge Statement Development
Part 4 - SCAMPER Solution Development

Step 2 of the process discussed in the first post of this series was to develop your challenge statement. The better you define your statement, the more relevant and effective solutions you will come up with. For this post, I want to walk you through the process giving an example of how to come up with possible challenge statements.

In the last post, I provided to you a variety of challenges to pick from. For this exercise, I decided that I would try to identify the problem of providing ongoing training from my department to our customer service technicians.

So, I start out with the my Challenge Statement as:

"How can I enhance the technical knowledge in our Customer Service department?"

However, this isn't good enough, I need to do something called "Centering the Challenge". I do this by putting the following words at the beginning of my Challenge Statement - "In what ways might I...". Now my statement looks like:

"In what ways might I enhance the technical knowledge in our Customer Service department?"

Better! Now this will force me to think about several solutions instead of the first one that pops into my head. However, I bet I can do better with this. I do this by substituting some synonyms to see if I can better communicate what I want to accomplish.

"In what ways might I transfer the technical knowledge to our Customer Service department?"
"In what ways might I enhance the technical training to our Customer Service department?"
"In what ways might I increase the technical training to our Customer Service department?"
"In what ways might I increase the technical training to others who support our products?"

I finally come to a statement that I like:

"In what ways might I transfer the technical knowledge to others who support our products?"

This statement allows my to consider other people than just a particular department such as Sales or Marketing, and doesn't point to a particular solution such as training, but anything that could be considered "technical knowledge transfer".

The next step in the process is what is called "Stretching the Challenge". I do this by asking the "Why?" question five times and see what possible challenge statements I can come up with.

"Why do I need to transfer the technical knowledge?"
"In order to reduce the time in takes to resolve customer issues".
"Why do I need to reduce the time?"
"In order to instill confidence in our customers of our products".
"Why do I need to instill confidence to our customers?"
"In order to gain a reputation of good customer service."
"Why do I feel the need to gain such a reputation?"
"In order to retain our customers".
"Why do I need to retain our customers?"
"In order to stay in business."

Now I can provide an additional number of possible Challenge Statements by putting "In what ways might I..." and changing synonyms:

"In what ways might I reduce the time in takes to resolve customer issues?"
"In what ways might I build the confidence of our customer with our products?"
"In what ways might I provide ways to gain a reputation of good customer service?"
"In what ways might I retain and expand our customer base?"
"In what ways might I be able to stay in business outside of customer service?"

The last step is what is called "Squeezing the Challenge". I do this by asking the questions "Who?", "What?", "Where?", "When?" and "How?" against my original statement "In what ways might I transfer the technical knowledge to others who support our products?". Going through that process and the previous steps, I came up with these additional Challenge Statements:

“In what ways might I provide ways to document knowledge so reduce the learning curve for new employees that support our products?”
“In what ways might I provide a common place to learn what is happening with the product?”
"In what ways might I provide a place to reference when training or issues occur?”
“In what ways might I avoid losing that knowledge due to turnover in the company?”
“In what ways might I maintain the level of knowledge necessary to continue to support our product in the future, without that knowledge we have no future?”
“In what ways might I train the customer on how to use the software better?”
“In what ways might I find more ways to show the customer how to best use our product?”
“In what ways might I determine through training which areas of our software are easier or better than others, to address those areas that aren’t used or are considered clumsy?”
“In what ways might I make sure that everyone that supports our products has the latest information about the product and its functionality?”
“In what ways might I avoid assumptions that old solutions to issues are still valid?”
“In what ways might I ensure that everyone is talking about the same product to our current and potential customers?”

Now, instead of just one Challenge Statement to choose from you now have many more. You can decide to focus on just one of them, or many at once.

Tomorrow in Part 4: We will focus more on what questions you ask for each part of SCAMPER in order to assist you in solving the problem with the answers to those questions.

SCAMPER Part 2 - Personal Challenge Questions

Wed, 07 Sep 2005 16:56:21 GMT

This is the second part of a 4 part series:

Part 1 - Process Overview
Part 2 - Personal Challenge Questions/Ideas
Part 3 - Challenge Statement Development
Part 4 - SCAMPER Solution Development

Step 1 of the process discussed in the previous post was to determine your personal challenges. For this post, I want to give you some questions that can help determine what you keep and resolve in your "journal of problems". These questions will be grouped into two areas: questions that are focused on your improvement and questions focused on the improvement of your business or organization.

Here are some personal questions to help you determine what you would like to resolve. This is by no means exhaustive, it is just a sample to get an understanding of what you are looking for.

What would you like to have or to accomplish?
What business idea would you like to work on?
What do you wish would happen in your job?
What business relationship would you like to improve?
What would you like to do better?
What do you wish you had more time to do?
What more would you like to get out of your job?
What are your unfulfilled goals?
What excites you in your work?
What angers you at your work?
What misunderstandings do you have at work?
What have you complained about?
What changes for the worse do you see in the attitudes of others?
What would you like to get others to do?
What changes would you like to introduce?
What takes too long?
What is wasted?
What is too complicated?
Where are the bottlenecks?
In what ways are you inefficient?
What wears you out?
What in your job turns you off?
What would you like to organize better?
In what ways could you make more money at work?

You can also focus on business challenges, especially if you have the authority and responsibility to resolve business-level issues. Here are just a few sample questions to determine the particular business challenge you would like to resolve.

What creative suggestions can I make about new product ideas?
How can I cut costs and increase production?
How can we better differentiate our products from all others?
What new product is needed? What extension of a current product’s market?
How can I become indispensable to my company?
How can we better handle customer complaints?
How can we improve the role service plays in the sale of our products?
Is it possible to encourage everyone in our organization to actively look for ways to better differentiate our products?
What procedures could we institute that would reduce unnecessary paperwork?
What awards would be more meaningful to employees?
How can we become more customer-oriented?
Is it possible to change our corporate image?
In what ways might we outperform the competition?

Tomorrow in Part 3: We will focus on the details in putting together your Challenge Statement.

SCAMPER Part 1 - Process Overview

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 21:45:23 GMT

My job requires me to come up with ideas and solutions. Sometimes I need to come up with solutions that nobody else has been able to solve. Therefore, I need to have some tools in my toolkit around creative problem solving. Realizing this, I went on a "learning journey" a few years ago to understand more about creativity tools. One of my favorite books that I came across was the book Tinkeytoys by Michael Michalko. There are several great tools in the book, but one that I have relied on several times is called SCAMPER. It must be one that the author liked, because he provides a separate kit called ThinkPak that revolves around the SCAMPER technique.

This will be the first part of a 4 part series:

Part 1 - Process Overview
Part 2 - Personal Challenge Questions/Ideas
Part 3 - Challenge Statement Development
Part 4 - SCAMPER Solution Development

Today, we will focus on the overall process. Here are the steps of that process:

Step 1: Determine Your Personal Challenges. Start keeping a journal of problems that you find to be personally interesting and that would be worthwhile to resolve. You can also look at challenges that are happening at an organizational level.

Step 2: Develop Your Challenge Statement After you decide what challenges are interesting and will yield you solid benefits, it is time to state those challenges in the most useful way possible. This will allow you to most effectively use creative thinking techniques to generate creative solutions. The more time you devote to perfecting the wording of your challenge, the closer you will be to a solution.

You do this by shaping and centering a challenge by following this process:

Write it as a definite question, beginning “In what ways might I . . . ?”
Vary the wording of the challenge by substituting synonyms for key words.
Stretch the challenge to see the broader perspective. You do this by asking “Why?” five times.
Squeeze the challenge to see the narrow perspective by dividing it into subchallenges by asking “Who?”, “What?”, “Where?”, “When?”, “Why?”, and “How?”. To squeeze it further, keep asking “How else?” or “What else?”.

Step 3: Find Solutions for the Challenge Statement - SCAMPER

SCAMPER is a checklist of idea-spurring questions. Some of the questions were first suggested by Alex Osborn, a pioneer teacher of creativity. They were later arranged by Bob Eberle into this mnemonic:

S = Substitute?
C = Combine?
A = Adapt?
M = Modify or magnify?
P = Put to other uses?
E = Eliminate or minify?
R = Reverse or rearrange?

To use SCAMPER:

Isolate the challenge or subject you want to think about. You did this in the previous step.
Ask SCAMPER questions about each step of the challenge and see what new ideas emerge. Asking the questions is like tapping all over the challenge with a hammer to see where the hollow spots are.

Step 4: Work on those Solutions. Once you have defined the possible solutions to the problem, don’t stop there! Go figure out how to solve those problems. Talk with others to get their opinions. If you aren’t in a position to solve the problem alone, make sure that the decision makers are involved. You can use this process for any size of challenge to find opportunities or resolve issues.

Tomorrow in Part 2: We will cover some sample questions that can help you identify the problems you need to resolve.