Changes in business and technology are occurring at a rapid pace while companies simultaneously fight to free themselves from the residual effects of the pandemic. Companies and teams must invest in innovation not only to stay ahead but to simply survive in today’s extremely fast-paced environment. Utilizing innovation exercises and innovation training can help create impactful, powerful results. 

A McKinsey study of over 200 organizations across industries found that 90% of surveyed executives said they anticipate the effects of COVID-19 to fundamentally alter how they conduct business in the next five years. 85% of executives said that they expect the pandemic will also impact their customers’ needs indefinitely. Innovation is the critical component companies need to heal from the current crisis, transcend its lasting effects, and adequately meet their customers’ needs.

“The truth is that there is no one ‘true path’ to innovation, no silver bullets and no shortcuts. There are, however, effective strategies that managers can pursue to dramatically increase their chances of success.” -Greg Satell, Mapping Innovation

In this article, we’ll explore five innovation exercises that you can incorporate with your team or organization to spur innovation and get creative juices flowing. There is no one way to approach innovation. Explore what methods work best for your team by applying these innovation exercises and strategies.

1. Group Brainstorming

This innovation exercise is great for getting the entire team involved, regardless of what project or role each team member has. Group brainstorming can take place in person using sticky notes and a whiteboard or wall or virtually for distributed teams using a virtual whiteboard tool like MURAL (and digital stickies). Have everyone write down any challenges they are facing on sticky notes and tape them to a wall or create them in a MURAL template. Next, everyone walks around the room and stops at each sticky note to add an idea with their own sticky note that can potentially solve that problem or challenge. For best results, have everyone write an idea on every sticky note and build upon what others said. This exercise increases productivity and creativity as employees have the chance to interact with individuals from different areas of expertise and perspectives, which helps spark new ideas to solve challenges. It also promotes full participation without anyone feeling self-conscious about sharing their ideas. 

2. Liberating Structures

Liberating Structures is a framework for facilitation that consists of 33 microstructures designed to build trust and enhance cooperation and communication between teammates. Incorporating Liberating Structures into in-person and remote team collaboration strengthens communication and improves attention management so you can do exceptional work as a team. When there is equal participation amongst the group, you get the best performance from everyone, i.e., you are able to create meaningful solutions together. Check out our library of Liberating Structures templates for MURAL and Miro.

3. Mind Maps

This innovation exercise can be done either alone or in a group setting. Start by writing a general idea in the middle of a blank piece of paper. From there, begin making connections that build off the main point and write them down. For example, if your idea or project is developing a mobile app, a connection that might branch out is Android vs. iOS. Continue building on each connection to generate a stream of new ideas. If you find your team is struggling to come up with connections, try to reframe the main idea and start a new mind map to get a new perspective. The output will be many new ideas to start working with.

4. R&D

Research and development is a series of innovation activities to develop new products and services or improve existing ones. This is a reverse version of Group Brainstorming (or standard innovation process). Instead of starting with problems and brainstorming solutions based on them, encourage your team first to examine the latest technological developments and then ideate their application to your organization’s challenges. This is the flow in many engineering industries, where technology comes first. The Design Sprint process is effective for exploring R&D and solving big challenges quickly. The 5-day structure allows you to align team members and key stakeholders to solve a problem, rapidly prototype and test potential solutions, avoid costly delays in the innovation process, as well as decrease the time to bring the idea to market. Learn more about how and when to incorporate a Desing Sprint into your innovation journey here

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5. Template Exercises

Exploring innovative ideas can be daunting. Where do you start? How do you bring an idea to fruition? We’ve created a library of interactive and customizable digital templates for you to use with your teams to ignite and accelerate innovation. The templates are created for MURAL and Miro, digital whiteboard tools that allow teams to work together async and in real-time in a shared space. Each template serves a different purpose in your innovation process. For example, the How to Remix Anything Template helps you vary your points of inspiration and approach to achieve a different outcome for an existing idea. The Beyond the Prototype Template helps you overcome roadblocks in innovation by navigating slumps and maintaining momentum. Explore the full library of free resources here.

Innovation is more important than ever for companies to stay relevant in today’s economy. Stay ahead of the curve by utilizing various innovation exercises and implementing innovation training to incorporate effective strategies for your team to succeed.

Want to learn more about innovation training?

We can help! Voltage Control offers a range of options for innovation training. We know that no two teams are alike. Companies are complex, with their own unique set of structures and company culture. That’s why we build and curate custom workshops to find solutions based on your team’s exact needs.

Voltage Control’s experts will guide you through your choice of experiential, interactive learning workshops and coaching sessions where individuals and teams learn and practice how to successfully apply the best of today’s innovation methodologies and facilitation techniques to any business challenge. Contact us if you want to learn more about innovation training, design sprints, or design thinking facilitation.

The post Innovation Exercises: 5 Ways to Spark Innovation in Your Team appeared first on Voltage Control.

As the workforce begins to return to (a version of) its pre-pandemic normalcy, advancements in business are happening faster than ever before. Teams and businesses must keep up with our world’s fast-paced environment in order to survive and stand out amongst the competition. The key to survival is investing in innovation. Explore disruptive innovation and/or sustaining innovation in your organization to create impactful and unconventional results and outshine competitors. 

“Managers are often told they must ‘innovate or die’ but are given little useful guidance on how to go about it.” -Greg Satell, Mapping Innovation

In this article, we’ll explore the difference between disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation and how to incorporate them into your own organization. 

There are variances between disruptive innovation vs. sustaining innovation, but there is also a time and place for both. Disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation don’t need to be alternative to one another, but rather can and should be leveraged as complementary measures.

Disruptive Innovation

According to the developer of the disruptive innovation theory Clayton Christensen, disruptive innovation means to reinvent a technology, business model, or simply invent something new altogether. Disruptive innovation generates new products, markets, and values in order to disrupt existing ones. Company examples of disruptive innovation are Waze, Airbnb, Uber, Netflix, and Doordash. This type of innovation drastically changes and/or improves a product or service in ways that the market did not expect. Disruptive innovation is accomplished through a combination of uncovering new categories of customers and lowering costs and enhancing quality in the existing market. This is done by utilizing new technologies and business models, and/or exploiting old technologies in new ways. Disruptive innovation is about identifying areas that haven’t been fully explored previously.

Sustaining Innovation

In comparison to disruptive innovation, sustaining innovation seeks to improve existing products and processes. It does not create new markets, but rather develops existing ones with better value. Sustaining innovation happens on an incremental basis, often in response to customer or market demand, or technology improvements. Sustaining innovation occurs within pre-existing markets that customers and consumers have demonstrated they value already. An example of sustaining innovation is the smartphone market – every year, cell phone manufacturers (i.e. Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Amazon, LG, etc.) release updated and improved products to meet consumer demand and to integrate new technology. Maintaining open channels for feedback and communication allow businesses to constantly improve and provide greater value to customers and the market. 

A Time and Place for Both

The “innovator’s dilemma” is the choice a company faces when it has to choose between holding onto an existing market by doing the same thing but better (sustaining innovation), or capturing new markets by embracing new technologies and adopting new business models (disruptive innovation).

However, many companies today recognize it doesn’t need to be simply one or the other when it comes to disruptive innovation vs. sustaining innovation. In order to achieve cutting-edge innovation within a company while also creating long-term growth, both disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation should be included in the overarching strategy to achieve a combination of revolution and evolution. In other words, there is a time and place for both disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation. They do not necessarily need to be alternative to one another, but can and should both be leveraged. Great benefits will also be realized when the two are integrated well. For example, Apple utilizes both disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation through producing net new products and services, while also constantly improving upon and updating their existing ones.

Identify Your Needs

Organizations should be very intentional about their various needs when it comes to disruptive innovation vs. sustaining innovation and utilize each accordingly, with purpose. 

Larger, established companies tend to be more successful when it comes to sustaining innovation. They have the resources, time, and an existing audience to be able to rely on more incremental change. More agile companies (often smaller companies and/or start-ups) tend to have the advantage when dealing with disruptive innovation. They may struggle to compete with larger corporations in more established markets but may be able to successfully challenge them in a new marketplace.

Christensen advises managers to follow four rules to avoid falling into the trap of trying to force disruptive innovation to happen the same way as sustaining innovation:

• Give responsibility for disruptive technologies to organizations whose customers need them so that resources will naturally flow to them.
• Set up a separate organization small enough to get excited by small gains.
• Plan for failure. Think of your initial efforts at commercializing a disruptive technology as a learning opportunity.
• Don’t count on breakthroughs. Move ahead early and find the market for the current attributes of the technology.

If you are a large organization that is looking to create disruptive innovation, consider finding a way to try it separately and autonomously from the main part of the business. This way, potential progress isn’t unnecessarily inhibited by any existing resources, processes, habits, or priorities. If you are a small organization that wants to sustain innovation, utilize your existing customer base for feedback and data on the most impactful improvements you can make to provide greater value.

Viima, the innovation platform, explains why both disruptive and sustaining innovation are important but must also be approached with the right intent: 

“If all focus solely lies on developing sustaining innovation, being replaced by disruptive innovation is a bleak question of when, not if. Especially for large companies, investing in disruptive innovation is always necessary for long-term success, although it probably doesn’t pay off for a while. If you only start investing when a disruptive technology has already gained significant momentum, you not only have to invest increasingly more to catch up with the competition but also do so from a base of declining revenue for your existing business, which usually proves to be impossible. Keep in mind, however, that moderation is key. If all attention is simply steered towards disruptive innovation, revenue and profit will usually start to decline, which in turn increases the risk profile dramatically.”

There are massive benefits to both disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation approaches as well as many negatives to neglecting innovation altogether. Sustaining innovation is typically an incremental approach with long-term growth benefits, whereas disruptive innovation (which can also take time) has the opportunity to create new values and markets for something consumers didn’t know they needed, wanted, or were missing.

There is no silver bullet to innovation, but utilizing resources like innovation training will help provide insight into effective strategies that teams can pursue to dramatically increase their chances of success.

Here at Voltage Control, we help enterprises disrupt, sustain and accelerate innovation through custom workshops that transform the way your organization works. If your organization is facing innovation challenges, let’s chat about your specific situation and how we can help.

The post Disruptive Innovation vs. Sustaining Innovation: a Time & Place for Both appeared first on Voltage Control.

Do you lead or manage a small business looking to scale? Concerned that growth could compromise creativity?

About two thirds of the 31.7 million small businesses in the United States won’t survive more than a decade. If you expand too soon, you run the risk of failure. The same thing goes for waiting too long.

If you’re wondering how to take your business to the next level, read on. We outline the basics of innovation consulting services and advice to find a credible workshop agency.

What Do Consultants Do?

A business innovation consultant is a professional adviser with the skills to analyze the business with external perspective and guide it towards its goals.

What are your goals? Are you looking to maximize productivity with a remote or hybrid structure? Are you realizing opportunities with potential customers? Are you maximizing relationships with current customers? 1An innovation consultant meets with you and your staff to determine effective next steps towards the business’s goals.

A fractional CTO, or chief technology officer, plays a similar role as an outside consultant. They can assess technological needs and help develop a new business plan.

A business innovation consultant can help with prototyping, developing a mission statement, or starting a new marketing campaign.

You may need to update your computer infrastructure or enhance online security. Your website may need to be optimized or completely redone. You may need to migrate client records to the cloud.

Once the CTO identifies high level technical areas of growth, they can hand over the project to the innovation consultant to further develop the growth model. A business innovation consultant can help with prototyping, developing a mission statement, or starting a new marketing campaign.

Does Your Business Need an Innovation Consultant?

If you want to stay ahead of competition, you’re wise to hire an innovation consultant. They can identify weaknesses in team processes, streamline operations, and generate ideas to advance company growth.

Business innovation consultants can update management style and structure. Operating as a small team may have worked thus far, but now hinders growth. With the help of a consultant, you can explore and test options before implementing. 

Consultants can also advise management style and work structure. Maybe you’re now operating remotely, and need to reassess team dynamics or improve remote culture. While some employees may be resistant to change, the right approach can enable them to feel excited about growth opportunities.

Innovation doesn’t have to be expensive. You just need to be open to new ways of thinking.

You may not recognize how you’re wasting resources: too many meetings, full-time instead of outsourced roles, inefficient processes. Innovation consultants provide perspective to help refocus efforts to accelerate growth.

Innovation doesn’t have to be costly,  and it doesn’t mean you have to change everything about the business. You just need to be open to new ways of thinking and working.

Changing Your Company’s Structure

Identifying what works and what should change is the first step. Business innovation consultants clean up processes with an impartial perspective.

One overlooked culprit is often meeting inefficacy. Meetings are notorious time and money-wasters. Yearly, upwards of $350 billion in the U.S. is wasted within meetings.

Business innovation consulting firms generate solutions. The solution to your meeting problem might be to meet in smaller groups, to record meetings for staff to view later, or to change how meetings are facilitated. With remote work in play, digital inclusivity is essential to successful collaboration. (Read up on virtual meeting best practices.)

Ideas are a start. Working with a business innovation consultant should put fitting ideas into practice.

In general, finding original solutions to common problems can help your company thrive. You may find that you want to outsource your human resources and accounts payable positions. Or you may need to bring a full-time IT person.

Ideas are only a start. Working with a business innovation consultant should put fitting ideas into practice. The more open-minded you can be, the better.

More Ways to Jump-Start Innovation

In addition to hiring a fractional CTO and innovation consultant, there are several more ways you can help your business grow.

A design sprint, for example, is often helpful for businesses on the verge of expansion. It’s a five-day process with an emphasis on creativity, prototyping, and user testing.

Design sprints can give you that edge back. It’s all about taking the time to try out new ideas, not perfecting them before testing. These sprints are considered low-risk and high-output.

If you’re going to try a design sprint, you can involve your consultant. They may be able to lead small groups or provide guidance for the entire company. They’re equally possible for remote or hybrid teams.

To encourage company-wide collaboration, strongly consider setting aside time for a collaborative design sprint. This could happen during a few evenings after work, or as a hybrid offsite. All your staff should feel welcome to contribute their ideas to improve your company.

Finding Reputable Innovation Consulting Firms

If you’re on the lookout for a good innovation consulting firm, talk to your colleagues. They may have a great referral, along with tips on streamlining business operations.

Assess your options, prioritizing expertise and approach. Look for a consultant with at least 10 years of experience. They should have a background in thought leadership and design, as well as a firm understanding of your industry. Engage with a few consultants before you make your final decision.

Our founder is an entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience . He has extensive experience in design and technology and can work with businesses of any size.

Consider Participating in Our Design Sprints

In Design Sprints with Voltage Control, our team works with yours through design-based thinking to align your team on the most effective ways to innovate. We’ll teach best practices for facilitating a design sprint based on your company’s needs, outline questions to address during the Design Sprint, then test and implement the best practices for your normal workday.

Our goal is to transform meeting and innovation culture, and we’re confident that we can do it through thoughtful Design Sprints.

Register here for one of our upcoming Design Sprints. Our website and blog offer additional background, or you can contact us by email and we’ll respond promptly. 

The post Understanding Business Innovation: What is Innovation Consulting? appeared first on Voltage Control.

Everyone wants to innovate and promote innovation in some capacity these days. After all, the competitive landscape in most industries is only getting, for lack of better words, more competitive, Innovation keeps organizations in front of the curve and well-positioned to maintain long-term success. Create and sustain a culture of innovation for teams and individuals in your company to streamline growth and prosperity.

In this article, we’ll evaluate 5 strategies that will help you implement an innovative culture throughout your team. Everyone from senior leadership to entry-level hires is essential to driving innovation. Each person has a unique perspective and therefore can bring new, different ideas to the table regardless of title or seniority level.

“Innovation is like potential energy in physics. It represents the intrinsic creativity and wisdom of a team – the raw potential a team uses to succeed.” -Tom Counsell

Many companies try to build an innovative culture by stocking the company fridge, having a ping pong table and some company-sponsored happy hours, and a flexible work from home policy. That’s not to say those aren’t all great perks to have (and probably help with team bonding and employee happiness) but alone they won’t create and sustain a true culture of innovation. Although there’s no single “right” or sure way to drive innovation, here are some strategies you can apply to create and sustain a culture of innovation at your organization regardless of industry or vertical.

Innovation Strategies

1. Utilize Innovation Training

Innovation training is an essential process for almost every company to implement in their workflow and operations. Not only does it teach leaders (and teams) creative ways of thinking and working that push individuals to go beyond the status quo,  (and therefore improve the bottom line and result in more satisfied customers), but it also creates better employee engagement and satisfaction. Innovation training will create and sustain a culture of innovation, along with helping teams and organizations keep up with our world’s increasing fast-paced environment. Successful teams want to see their company address market needs and evolve with our current times.

2. Empower Your Team

The word “innovation” is making its way into more and more mission statements, company core values, and even the corporate C-Suites (aka the rise of the Chief Innovation Officer). As more organizations adopt innovation as a core value and key concept, it’s important to not only mention “innovation” on your website but create a real culture where your employees feel empowered to think independently and find new ways to solve problems. Great leaders make smart decisions, but they shouldn’t do it all alone – empower employees to make decisions on an individual and team basis, rather than concentrating decision-making authority at the top. This will help create and sustain a culture of innovation. Also – ask for feedback. Asking your team’s input and critiques will help ensure that ideas are aligned. The effort will ultimately empower your workforce to offer more ideas and ask more questions, leading to increased all-around productivity. Collaboration and diversity of thought are at the heart of every innovative company. And if you are looking for some ways to spark innovation with your team, check out these 5 innovation exercises.

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3. Define (or Redefine) Your Innovation Success Metrics

Measuring the success of innovation and ideas is much more difficult (and different) than measuring something more definite, such as the return on advertising spend. Therefore, first understand that new initiatives can’t be expected to perform at the same level as other activities that have been utilized for a long time. Give new ideas time and a chance to prove themselves. Create and define metrics specific to the innovation process rather than reassigning success metrics from other programs. This goes for people too – create a safe space for experimentation. For example, allow time and space for team brainstorming and discovery; potentially even consider aligning employee goals with innovation vs. hard sales or profit targets and understand failing is okay. Encourage your team to be bold and push the boundaries. If you’re not failing, you may not be innovating much. Focus on what you can learn rather than becoming focused on first-time success. Creating this space for your organization is another way to sustain a culture of innovation.

4. Be Agile

To truly create and sustain a culture of innovation, don’t be afraid to take action on innovative ideas quickly. This isn’t to necessarily say every idea is a great one or every new product concept should go directly to prototyping, but make informed decisions as quickly as possible (whether the decision is to invest more time and resources in an idea, or not) in order to keep learning and moving forward. 

5. Learn to Facilitate Innovation With Us

Innovation facilitation and training can feel intimidating. We offer expert training to help individuals, teams, and companies build the skills they need to design magical meetings, transform meeting culture, and run exceptional events, both in-person and virtual. Having an unbiased third-party perspective can make innovation training organized and engaging, and help create, promote and sustain a culture of innovation on your team.

Does your company need Innovation Training? We can help!

Voltage Control offers a range of options for innovation training. We know that no two teams are alike. Companies are complex with their own unique set of structures and company culture. That’s why we build and curate custom workshops to find solutions based on your team’s exact needs.

Voltage Control’s experts will guide you through your choice of experiential, interactive learning workshops, and coaching sessions where individuals and teams learn and practice how to successfully apply the best of today’s innovation methodologies and facilitation techniques to any business challenge. Please reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you want to learn more about innovation training, design sprints, or design thinking facilitation.

The post 5 Strategies to Promote an Innovative Culture appeared first on Voltage Control.

Most people would not expect to find a world-class innovator living on a farm in the middle of Iowa. But Todd Duclos, the bow tie-wearing Vice President of Digital Strategy at Lucas Group with a Boston accent, happens to be an industry whiz who studied a technology and innovation master’s program at the University of Tampa, a program that undoubtedly changed his life.

There, Todd studied statistics, new product development, innovation theory, and product, marketing and program management–all the pieces and details required to get innovation out to market. In a recent conversation with him, he told me that the program gave him a huge advantage in connecting the dots between where the industry is today and where it looks like it’s going, based on research and available knowledge of the innovation industry.

“It really made the innovation process very straightforward to me and allowed me to bring that to my employers in a new and different way. ” 

I had the opportunity to talk to Todd about his experience in innovation as part of our Innovation Series, including his take on culture and product innovation, what makes a great innovation program, and how failing and unlearning are strategies for success. Read on for more of our conversation.

Culture Innovation vs Product Innovation 

Tod and I discussed the importance of identifying if a company is interested in cultural innovation or product innovation before beginning any sort of successful transformation. First things first, Todd said that an innovation team is based on the idea that the company is going to be three or four years ahead of everyone else. What does this mean? In short, innovation should be more about where you are going than where you are. He says designing in this way places you in a much better spot to lead the company away from being disrupted. The company is then in a stronger market position later on. But if you get too tied down in the tactical and operational side, the audience will feel that their existing work is being criticized, and you’ll lose them. 

“Trying to determine whether you’re going to be a cultural driven or a product innovation team and making that distinction early, then deciding how you’re going to go about it, is very helpful in the very beginning.”

He says in order for your innovation team to be focused on changing the culture, you want to get ideas from them so that they become subject matter experts. Then, it is important to drive them to understand that they are part of the company’s growth and direction and what you should be working on next.

“Cultural innovation is a job in and of itself, driving the idea that we’re all part of the innovation process.”

Product innovation is more about where you see the marketplace, or your market, going in the future. It also calls for a focus on what you should be doing now so that you’re not caught by a disruptive technology that could seriously impact your future earnings or your direction as a company. Todd understands that tackling innovation from within an enterprise is different from innovation as a startup or as a younger company with more flexibility and fewer guard rails. But within an enterprise, the challenges are greater because oftentimes the goals of the innovation aren’t quite solid. “They would like to infuse the culture with innovation, and while they do all that, they want to see incremental gains in product and marketing acceptance and things they can fix along the way,” he says. 

“Often, you end up leaning towards the current fixes, whether that’s for foundational purposes or just being able to build upon that later. By the time you get around to the innovation side, where you really could start to make some market changing updates and adding different things, sometimes the funding runs out, or the quarterly goals change, and you become much more operational than innovation-focused.” 

Disruptive or Incremental Innovation?  

When companies begin to look at innovation as incremental, it’s very easy to take the existing path and continue forward. This is a trend Todd has seen time and time again. You’re listening to your top customers, he says, serving their marketplace. While that occurs, someone is building a better widget beneath you.

“When you look at that market you think, ‘Well, we don’t need to be there, it doesn’t really affect us.’ Before long, they’ve taken over your market space and you’re left holding not much of what’s left. That is the very definition of disruptive innovation.”

Todd says that incremental innovation prevents the ability to be proactive against being disrupted. “As a market leader, which many of the companies I worked for were, my job was to keep them from being disrupted. We often would say disrupt externally not internally, so that we could disrupt the marketplace with our products and activities and move up in the market share side but not get disrupted by an external company, affecting us internally.” 

“Because I view innovation both as a long-term strategy and potentially disruptive as well, I am looking for success metrics that show things like where your new products or services are on the adoption curve,” Todd says. “Is your market viewing your entire company as ahead of the curve and a thought leader in your space, and most importantly, are you failing fast and putting those learnings from failure to work going forward. Using metrics and reports to predict trends moving forward is helpful, so you’re not disrupting the internal operations of the company, but you’re seeing where a problem can occur if you continue down that path.”

Failure and Unlearning as Forward-moving Strategies

Todd insists that if at the very beginning of a project you start to see a disconnect between the original intent of that project and where it’s starting to go, you need to raise your hand and explain why it’s not going to work. CEOs and people who release the funds are much more comfortable pivoting than they are shutting down and starting from scratch.

“If you can pivot and fail quickly, you’re learning through it and incorporating it into your overall goal.”

“I learned that the highest hurdle for innovation is to unlearn what has been learned. Part of my job is to teach people how to do it. It is the biggest challenge, but it’s more cognitive dissonance than just plain objection. Once I understood that it made going into very challenging change situations a lot easier. Often people get so caught up in the failure part that they can’t get past it. Moving past that is far more productive than trying to force a solution that won’t ever be there. I have met many a colleague with the right mental amnesia capabilities to successfully do this. You can’t buy into new ways if the only success is what you have seen work previously.”

To make this process most effective, Todd says it’s important to follow up with a quick and hopefully relatively easy win, which will gain you some initial credibility and evangelists going for you.

“If it is unclear what your team does, having a clear example of success and how it ties to future innovation is perfect.”

“If you can show what you’re there to do, why you’re doing it and how it impacts the rest of the business, they’ll understand that you’re a whole lot more than just the innovation team coming in to change the way we work.”

Todd advises to come up with a way to show everyone that you’ll be collaborative, working with them to solve the problems they’re facing. After talking to the teams to understand what their biggest problems are, you can solve something quickly to show them that you’re listening to them and taking them into account.

“Suddenly, their whole mindset changes to where you are a person who solves things for them, you’re not going to create problems for them.”

Innovation is a dirty word 

Well, not really. But Todd believes the term is overused, and often used incorrectly.

“It’s turned into any change you want to make in your company is now an innovation.”

He went on to explain, “Even CEOs who drive innovation throughout the company will say, ‘Stop saying innovation, I can’t hear it anymore.’ And it’s because the word has become synonymous with sucking capital out of the company with no forward progress on the other side. I think over time that will start to change again. I see it even more now with agile design and innovation being used interchangeably when they’re very different frameworks to be trying at your company.”

Typically, innovators see connections and options to innovate more clearly, finding new white spaces and focusing on the bigger goals following that initial win. This is where storytelling and innovation must come together. The key is finding a concrete example to affirm what you’re saying. “I often talk about the idea of robotics and warehouses and they would say that’s 25 years away,” says Todd. “Meanwhile, Foxconn is doing it throughout Asia right now. They have buildings with less than 10 employees, and they are all robotic. That means it’s coming faster than you think. Part of storytelling should be to reel that future closer to the day to day so that they understand why you’re seeing these things that could be a problem later.”

Todd says that, too often, companies let the framework drive the result versus using the right framework to achieve the best result.

“Sometimes it feels like the framework is driving the project instead of the other way around, and often it’s because companies decide a specific label with which they identify and won’t do things any other way, even though it might not be the right way to accomplish the goal. You can’t use a cookie cutter to fix a complex problem.”

That’s why Todd sees Netflix as the most successful company regarding innovation. “Their self-awareness of their market and needs has always been impressive,” he says. “They are the only company I am aware that successfully used the innovative process to look at their long-term strategy and was willing to kill themselves before others did it to them. First when they pivoted into streaming very early while being the market leader in DVD rentals by mail, and then moving into content creation. Taking funding from a stable business product that’s generating revenue almost automatically and address it towards something that’s going to kill it sounds like Kamikaze business, right? I’m just going to blow up the plane and me and everything in it, but hopefully it will be fine in the end. Sometimes you must look at your products that way.” 

What makes the perfect innovation program?

In Todd’s perfect world, he says a successful innovation program would include the fearless drive of Netflix, the cross-functionality of an IDEO, the product marketing understanding of Steve Jobs and the autonomy to not be derailed by current operations and strategies.

“I would have a beginning focused on the foundational elements required to build upon, whether a platform or product. My team would also be virtual to ensure you get the best team members and have frequent SKRUM-like stand-ups to define ongoing progress.”

The goal is to have the diversity of thought-leading the project, which studies show leads to better outcomes.

It’s not just a good thing from a social standpoint, it’s also more effective from a profit-generating standpoint. This is one reason why Todd is a big proponent of virtual work. When hiring for his teams, he is first and foremost looking to find the best person for the job, even if it means they work remotely or they’re in a completely different place in the world. But the amount of pushback you get at a large enterprise is still surprising, even when so many companies are purely virtual now. 

Hiring a lesser skilled person just because they’re local versus best available is a problem according to Todd.

“If you cut out a commute and you give people the autonomy to work from home, they’ll work well past that time you’re expecting, and productivity generally rises. I think it’s just an Old School vs. New School kind of thing. That’s always the hardest thing–getting any human to unlearn something is the biggest challenge we face.”

Today, Todd sees biotech and pharma as successful in innovation because they understand they are in the innovation business already and are moving to an understanding of innovation faster than other industries. But he sees a problem in recruiting since they are always looking for people with experience in their field, and not getting enough diversity of thought. “I know Biogen and others have seen good results of partnering externally to increase their effectiveness,” he says, “and even some of the general healthcare companies are looking at wearables and other things that can help their patients move forward, so innovation there is growing pretty quickly.”

“You shouldn’t be thinking of innovation as technology; it’s important to remember that innovation can often be process or people oriented instead of always being technology oriented.”

As an example, Todd points to retailers who have been failing for years and are now looking for innovative people to come to help them redesign their business to make it work better. “It’s not just about that anymore, it’s about the way people interact with retail that has dramatically shifted,” he says. “No innovation in the world is going to change that. But if you can show the theory behind it–here’s why I think it’s going to happen, and here’s how I think we should address it–I’ve found that’s been productive. But that’s a big unlearning.” 

The Future of Innovation

Right now, Todd says he is excited by the changes in the staffing and recruiting industries that will be brought about by AI and Machine Learning. Although these are in their infancy, he believes that AI and machine learning will take away mundane tasks and open society up for a larger focus on artistic endeavors like design and UX, and more roles that strategize and use the collective power of their teams to propel things forward.

“We are only in the embryonic phase of AI where a chatbot asks you logic questions with expected answers,” he says. “But down the road it will converse with you to understand you and your needs and then a human will help you achieve that. It is very exciting times.”

The post Redefining and Unlearning Innovation appeared first on Voltage Control.

Kim Jenkins is changing the discussion about the fashion industry and how its social, cultural, and historical influences show up in our daily lives and determine how we “fashion” ourselves.

She is a lecturer, researcher, and consultant that specializes in identifying why we wear what we wear as influenced across the intersections of psychology, race, gender, and economics. Kim believes that there is a purpose and meaning in how we dress and put ourselves together.

What we choose to wear, she says, is an external expression of the sense of purpose we have in our lives. It’s a topic she is passionate about exploring as a way to foster greater understanding and connection.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Kim about how the concept of race influences fashion, why it matters, and how open-mindedly considering our own and others’ fashion choices can teach us compassion.

Conversation as a vehicle for connection

Kim approaches her work with what she refers to as a broad perspective of fashion: “I scale-out into the bigger picture — to the way we think about things, the way we connect. How we can draw connections between how we present ourselves and put ourselves together? And, how that aligns with our identity, the way we see ourselves, how we wish to be seen, and how we’re just always working on ourselves.”

Contrary to popular belief that the fashion industry is navel-gazing, Kim is more curious about co-mingling with communities outside of the industry to share her insights. She thinks that’s where awareness and change can indeed happen. By starting conversations around fashion choices and what they communicate (or what we may think they communicate), we can build bridges with others to come to better understandings.

“I’ve always been interested in innovation, vision, genius, and productivity. All those conversations that are definitely not discussed in fashion studies…”

Talking about how to put diversity at the forefront of fashion and understanding how it impacts the “Western beauty ideal” is crucial to fostering innovation, Kim says. It is essential to understand the history and development of Western beauty ideals because it is a reason there are marginalized cultures and racial bodies, people who don’t fit in the “whiteness” of the structure.

This is where separateness emerges and where conversation as a vehicle to understand people, even when it’s difficult, is crucial among varying perspectives. Otherwise, judgment without connection continues to fuel secludedness. Kim says: “I’m interested in correcting a lot of those misinterpretations and enlightening anyone to the fact that fashion and conversations about dress have depth. It has a more profound meaning than we consider.”

How race influences fashion

Kim identified that at the heart of “separateness” is the concept of race and how we relate to it. And how we identify with race shows up in how we dress.

“Race is a social construction designed a couple centuries ago to empower one group of people over another…We have “racialized identities” — people who, generation after generation, are told (and then believe) that they are a certain race. We see the vestiges of it in the news in terms of discrimination and how people feel when they see someone who looks different than them.”

Identifying the importance of this connection, Kim decided to create her class at Parsons School of Design — “Fashion and Race.” The field of fashion studies is relatively new (only formed in the last 20 years; nothing specifically regarding “fashion theory” was published until the late ‘90s). Because the field is young and evolving, there is still a lot to uncover about what fashion means on an individual and cultural level and how it affects the way we view and interact with one another.

“It’s a nascent field, and we talk about things like the intersection of fashion and psychology, the intersection of fashion and politics, the intersection of fashion and war…” Kim said. “We also talk about fashion and the shaping or construction of one’s identity. But, one thing I notice that my fellow scholars weren’t addressing (and probably with good reason because it’s a very tender subject) is one key aspect of our identity. That is race.”

Race is an issue she believes is essential for people to address because it is one we all face, whether it’s acknowledged or not. “It would be negligent or foolish to pretend that our diverse group of students at Parsons School of Design doesn’t regularly confront the construct of race in various aspects of their life.”

The objective of Kim’s “Fashion and Race” course is to explore and address the constructed identities that emerge within a racialized context to gain access, visibility, and power. It critically-addresses the historically and socially-accepted standards of identity and value.

Social innovation

Kim took her teachings outside of the classroom when major clothing brands began taking notice of her work in the past year. She started to apply her expertise to consult and help companies identify their “blind spots” and broaden their visions to be more inclusive.

“I’m all about vision and representation, correcting misrepresentation and tapping into the ethos of a brand. What is the kernel of your identity? What is your vision and how can we broaden the vision together?…People think they’re being innovative or visionary and it’s just like the whitest space. It’s just this space that does not have a diverse group of ideas…”

Along with awareness of a need for more diversity within brands, the issue of cultural appropriation, or “cultural plagiarism,” as coined by scholar Minh-Ha Pham, is another timely and complicated topic. Still, Kim says, it’s one that is prevalent in the fashion industry and must be carefully considered.

“When you’re a group of oppressed or marginalized individuals and your material culture, style, food, music, clothing, or hairstyle is taken by someone who is enjoying power — that’s when this becomes a messy situation and where emotions get involved. People become angry and start putting up walls. At the heart of the matter, it’s about power-sharing and profit-sharing, as well as recognition, not misrepresentation. All of those factors are swirling around when people see someone who is in a position of privilege or power wearing something that belongs to a culture that is not their own natively.”

So what is the antidote? Dialogue. We can be too quick to assume the worst and judge other people, she says, rather than being willing to talk and learn. But when we open up the conversation, first with ourselves and then with others, we create space for understanding.

“I believe things can start to be ironed out through conversation. I’m a cultural optimist in that way. That’s what is at the heart of this work…How can we think through these things? What’s the bigger picture? How can we do things better? What’s a more efficient way to do things?”

Talk therapy

When we allow people to work out their ideas for a certain amount of time, it can be therapeutic, Kim says. That’s why she structures her work around dialogue and creates platforms for people to engage in it safely.

Whether facilitating discussions, challenging companies to consider and talk through the limitations of underrepresented classes, or expanding the narrative of fashion history to understand misrepresentation better, Kim leads with inclusivity and compassion to fuel innovation in the fashion industry and our society at large. How should this transformation be measured? Kim says by how it withstands pressure over time and how it improves people’s lives.

“Innovation is the gift of vision, the circumstance of resources, and a unique life experience to know what to do with those things.”

Kim pairs her own life experiences, her expertise, and a particular focus on conversation to create innovation. The power of education and open dialogue creates consideration and comprehension. It helps us to come closer together rather than further apart, something we need more of in our world today.

The post How Fashion Can Influence Social Innovation appeared first on Voltage Control.