Pulp Innovation

Pulp Innovation Chapter Seventy One

2010-02-23T11:15:00.000-08:00

I met the crew from Marlowe Innovation for lunch that afternoon at the Brown Derby. The cool late October sun made me wish for my gabardines and a wool overcoat rather than the business suit I was wearing. But I was following the consultants precepts - never dress worse, or much better than, your customer. And Accipiter was an old-line, suit and tie kind of place, where my lack of sartorial splendor was never an issue among the man in the gray suit fashion statements.

We were right where I thought we'd be at Accipiter, three months into an eight month engagement with about two months worth of work complete. That didn't alarm me much, since the lethargy and inertia that forestalled much action was starting to change. Either we'd energized the beast and it would move more quickly, or we'd startled the beast enough to make it panic. Then it would show us its teeth for certain. Only more work would tell if the new acceptance of our work was based on agreement or was merely laying a trap and waiting for us to fail.

I saw Matt in our favorite booth, with two cold, frosty adult beverages and one long slender iced tea. I started right in for the squat mug, assuming the tea was for Meredith, who usually didn't imbibe over lunch. Matt raised his mug to me in a mock salute and quaffed a fair portion while I did the same. Meredith entered a few minutes later and we took time to recap our work loads and plan the next quarter. Matt and Meredith were fully up to speed on my work at Accipiter, and I tried to avoid talking about it as much as possible.

Meredith told us about some new ethnography work she had just won at a new client. There's nothing better than new work, unless its also new work with a new customer. The client, a medical services company, wanted to understand unmet and undiscovered needs in its customer base. Spotting a possible opportunity, I asked Meredith about another service.

"Are they at all interested in innovating around the customer experience?"

She hardly blinked.

"I've already teed up some work on customer experience journey mapping, and I think they'll be very interested in it."

We didn't hire her just for her looks.

"We're going to kick off an ethnographic study with some of their customers and patients, and evaluate behaviors and actions to understand if there are some unmet needs. Those will become need statements that we'll have Matt use to drive some idea generation with their team. Once that work is complete, we'll have a chance to pitch them on some customer experience journey work, but I'm concerned about trying to do both at the same time."

Matt nodded. "Two different approaches for two different needs."

"Yep, and since they are a new client, we need to demonstrate some value before enlarging the scope of the work. Great job."

Meredith was clearly pleased, but Matt and I had already thrown out our shoulders slapping ourselves on the back for bringing her in. She had added a crucial capability to our team and had attracted new work on her own. My only concern was whether or not she realized how valuable she was to our little firm.

"How about you Matt?"

I knew what Matt was working on, and who he was working with, just as he knew about my trials and travails with Accipiter. You can't be partners for over a decade without great communication, but I'd found that a short discussion always led to new insights or opportunities.

"Still working with Conover on some new idea generation, and they've asked us to deliver some innovation training to their mid-level managers. I think over time they could do a great job managing the idea generation internally, but it will be a few more months before they are fully trained."

"We're seeing a lot of requests for innovation training."

"Yes, I think firms are starting to realize that with the right tools and methodologies, they can bring in house a lot of the work they've outsourced to the bigger consultancies."

"You think they've finally realized how important innovation is to their businesses?"

"No, but they are starting to realize that innovation can be a competitive advantage and they want more innovation more frequently."

We were well stocked for opportunities. In fact, if the work at Accipiter kicked off well, we'd probably need to hire another consultant or two if we could find some to fit in with the merry band.

"Reach out to your contacts, both of you. See if there are people you know you'd like to bring aboard, especially strategic folks and people with a background in training."

Meredith and Matt both nodded. I think they were happy, and I was pleased to see Marlowe growing.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Seventy

2010-02-16T05:52:00.000-08:00

While I'd never compared it to digging ditches, real thinking work is hard work, exhausting work. I've heard that the brain is basically a leach, sucking all the energy and nutrients from the rest of the body, but after a full day of scenario planning I had to believe it. I was drained. Wiped out from a full eight hour day in a Herman Miller Aeron chair in a comfy conference room.

We'd finally managed to agree on our strategic scope and had started collecting market information, industry trends and other information we felt would be helpful in building scenarios. One of the biggest challenges was to extend our line of sight beyond one or two years. It seems that no one in the aerospace group (and I suspect no one in Accipiter) had done any long range thinking for years. And by long range, I mean three years out. So we had quite the battle royal over creating scenarios that were more than five years into the future.

"The future much past three or four years is almost unknowable" Greg said. "We don't know enough about that timeframe to predict it effectively."

Greg had a point, but it didn't hold water with me.

"Do you plan to be in business three to five years from now?"

"Well, of course."

"What products and services will be important to customers in five years? What can you effectively and profitably deliver? What key needs will those customers have?"

"I think they'll have many of the same needs as they have today. As for the changes that may take place, we can't know what those are, and building products or services based on hunches is risky."

"We don't work on hunches, we work on educated guesses based on trends and their likely outcomes. For example, we can see already that the Asian economies are rebounding faster from the downturn than the US and Western European economies, yes?"

He nodded, not wanting to commit much more.

"Ok, if that's true, and if Asia depends on air traffic to move people around and air freight to move goods around more than these other economies, we can predict that there will be an uptick in demand for new planes and for replacement parts in Asia in the next two to three years at a minimum, and if their economies grow more rapidly than ours over the next five to seven years, the demand there will far outstrip demand here."

There were nods all around the table now.

Greg shrugged. "OK, but what do we do with that insight?"

"All we've done so far is begin to create a scenario that suggests that the Asian economies come out of the downturn faster, and we've begun to identify implications of that scenario. If they grow faster and maintain a higher growth rate than Western Europe and the US, the demand on air traffic will increase dramatically. That was already the fastest growing market for air travel, especially long range air travel and air freight. If we predict those markets to grow rapidly, we should begin to identify new products and services we need to create to support that growth and win market share. We also need to think about how our services are structured and where we have people on the ground. It may make sense to start shifting resources to Taiwan and Singapore, since we already have operations there."

"But what if that scenario is wrong? What if we've placed too much emphasis on Asian market growth?"

"That's why we create several competing scenarios about the future." I noticed that Greg no longer seemed to have as great a concern about the timeframe. Now he was worried about chasing the wrong story, rather than the length of the story. "We need to create another scenario based on other trends that we've collected. Perhaps we have a set of trends that suggests that there will be a significant reduction in military spending since we'll reduce wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the world is eager for a "peace dividend" again. In that case, governmental spending on aircraft and maintenance will plunge. That's a realistic scenario based on the trends we've captured, and would have a huge impact on Accipiter unless we find ways to deliver new services. Perhaps in that scenario Accipiter takes on the role of mothballing and maintaining planes in the desert."

Greg shook his head. "That's all interesting but almost too much to wrap my head around."

"The point of scenarios isn't necessarily to be able to predict the actual future, but to identify discontinuities and anticipate them, and bring new needs or opportunities to light. None of these scenarios is exactly right, and several of them overlap or intersect. It's just as likely that our Asian scenario and "peace dividend" scenario are partially right. If so, we need to either change our government services or exit those and move our focus to Asia."

Everyone on the team had their eyes glued on Greg. If he bought in, they were mostly on board. If he rejected the approach or timeframe, Susan and I had a lot of work to do to get the team back on board with our approach.

"We can either assume the future will look a lot like today, and plan new products and services based on the needs and demands we believe are valid now, or we can try to understand what the potential futures are and anticipate those needs. That's innovation" I said.

Greg nodded. "OK, let's finish the Asian growth scenario and flesh out the "peace dividend" scenario. I think there are one or two other scenarios to consider."

With that we were off and running into the future.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Sixty Nine

2010-02-11T14:23:00.000-08:00

Faulkner said that the past isn't dead, it's not even past, or something along those lines. I suspect if he'd been interested in innovation, rather than examining the mores of southerners after reconstruction, he'd have had a similar pithy statement about the future. Perhaps something like "the future isn't unknowable, just uncertain". One of my favorite authors, William Gibson, has a line that reads "the future is already here, it's just not widely distributed." By which I think he means that we are the future, just becoming aware of it at different rates.

When you work with trends, and develop scenarios to try to ascertain the future, you and your team work in a nebulous, ambiguous void where everything is possible. By conjuring just the right insights you may be able to identify opportunities before anyone else. But turn the broth the wrong way and you've created a picture of the future that is unlikely to occur. Scenario planning is where we first start separating the true innovators from the administrators. There's simply too much ambiguity for some folks, and they demand clearly drawn "black and white" lines. Sorry, that's not going to happen. And if you thinking developing scenarios based on a five to seven year time horizon and five to ten key trends is tough, wait until you try to tease out wants and needs from an ethnographic study.

No, the reason Trend spotting and scenario planning is one of the first activities in our work on innovation, beyond the obvious need to understand the future, is to quickly ascertain what the team can, and can't, or won't do. I'd rather face up to it now that some of the team may just not be cut out for innovation work, and if they struggle to create a simple story about the near future, they'll be a boat anchor to the rest of the work. Scenario Planning never fails to identify one or two people who seemed promising on the surface but can't, or won't, extend their minds beyond what they "know" is true and factual. If innovation was based on knowable facts, then it wouldn't have any risk involved. Perhaps Altshuller addressed that in one of his paradoxes. I'll have to brush up on my Russian to know for sure.

About a week into the scenario planning it was clear that most of the team was on board and comfortable with the tools and techniques, but Ann Livingstone was really struggling. Of course Ann came from a pure engineering background, which meant she was either going to be perfectly suited for innovation (the discovery part of engineering) or it was going to be an obstacle for her (the rigidity and "finding the one right answer" part of engineering). With Ann, it was all about the black and white. She struggled mightily and hampered the team's progress because she simply couldn't accept an unknowable future, or was trying to juggle too many unknowns in her mind. Two equations, two unknowns, a solvable problem. Five questions, seven unknowns, not possible, therefore no reason to try.

Ann clearly didn't come from what I like to call the handgrenades and nuclear bomb sort of engineering (close enough for effect) but came from the bridge-builder school of thought. I'm thankful that many engineers are worried about making sure the bridge stays up, and stays put, and can endure the forces thrust upon it to eight standard deviations. However, that kind of thinking conflicts with innovation thinking, and it was clear Ann was hurting the team. Susan and I were going to have to adjust Ann's methodologies and thinking, or ask her to leave the team.

"Will it damage the morale of the team to have Ann leave so quickly? she asked.

"I frankly think Ann's participation is damaging and holding the team back, and the rest of the team resents it."

"How do we let her go gracefully?"

"I don't think it would be a surprise to Ann for us to ask her to play a different role. Her skills are going to be much better suited for evaluation and product development instead of innovation. We just recast it as a better fit downstream."

"OK. Do we backfill her role now?"

"I'd like to have another engineering representative, but perhaps we should interview the candidates rather than have them assigned."

"Thompson won't like that. His aerospace team is already stretched."

"well, we'll find out from Gregg if it is more important to mollify Thompson and have a gap in our team, or if it is more important to have a fully stocked team and a slightly steamed Thompson."

"I'll talk to Ann in the morning."

"Take it from me" I said "she'll be relieved."

She was, and the rest of the team was as well.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Sixty Eight

2010-02-09T07:28:00.000-08:00

Three weeks, four days and two hours into our project, we finally started doing innovation work. Forming, norming and finally storming, we'd built the team, addressed their concerns and were finally at a place where we could do some real innovation work, rather than build the team, assess the participants, address their (realistic) concerns and define a project plan. We were finally going to do some scenario planning. There was just one problem.

We were meeting in the innovation team room, formally known as Conference room 2A, on a cloudy Tuesday morning. Susan was facilitating the meeting, our first effort to start looking further into the future of the aerospace business. It was at this point we realized that no one on the team knew exactly what the future looked like, or understood any of the trends that might shape that future. The parable of the blind men and the elephant from Kipling was top of mind.

"We've never really paid a significant amount of attention to trends, especially over a three or four year time horizon" said Sally McKay. Sally had joined the team to provide market analysis for our work. "We typically buy information from industry analysts and compile yearly forecast of market conditions, but we've never looked at bigger trends that would shape the industry over a several year time horizon."

"OK. Let's break this down and make it simple. We want to know what the significant trends are that will influence and shape the market for aerospace production and parts in five to seven years. Typically, when we at Marlowe do this work, we look at trends in four categories: demographic, technological, governmental and social. Who can help us understand the unfolding trends in those four buckets?"

James Davidson chimed in. "We have a chief economist who works with our CFO. He could probably provide some economic forecasts to help us understand some governmental and economic trends."

Susan nodded. "Accipiter also has relationships with several lobbyist firms that can provide insights and trends on federal government regulations and governmental actions, at least within the US. We'd need to find firms or analysts that can provide insights into foreign governments and their actions, since our parts can be used in a number of countries."

I looked at James and Sally. "Surely you have relationships with industry analysts who can provide forecasts and trends as pertains to technologies in the aerospace industry?"

"Yes, and we can go talk with the guys in R&D. They are constantly experimenting with new technologies and capabilities, and they attend a number of engineering conferences. I think we can get them to give us their insights."

"OK, that covers economic, governmental and technology. Our team can put together trends that encompass social and demographic changes over the next five to seven years that will impact the aerospace industry. Let's look at the flying population and how that will increase or decrease. Let's look at the green movement to see how that will impact recycling, or reductions in waste, or fuel consumption in the airline industry. There are a number of social and demographic factors that may influence how planes are used and built. Remember the massive Airbus plane? The one that was forcing international terminals to build new jetways for, because it is so large? The demand for that plane has fallen as the economy has dipped, and the price of fuel has increased. We need to think about that plane and consider all the factors that will influence the future."

So, with a few assignments everyone went off to gather insights from their respective sources. Susan and I had a few minutes to reconnect and plan for the next meeting.

"How frequently will we need to gather these trends? This is going to be a fair amount of work, and some of the team will run into resistance since the people they'll be talking to won't understand how we'll use the data."

"Ideally, trend spotting and trend gathering would be an ongoing, sustaining process, not a discrete activity. In this case I know we won't continue the effort, but we need to demonstrate the importance of gathering this information and assessing it regularly."

"That's a lot of work, and a lot of data."

"Yes. But if Accipiter can do it well, you'll have the ability to assess your future opportunities and challenges and a much longer runway to decide what you want to do. It's not that difficult, and not that expensive, and can create really valuable opportunities."

Susan shook her head. She agreed, but I think she realized how big the change would be for Accipiter. When you have a small army, you have to pick which battles you want to fight. Was this a time to dig in and fight, or a place to retreat and reserve our forces?

Pulp Innovation Chapter Sixty Seven

2010-02-05T13:59:00.000-08:00

They say the word sabotage was created when the Dutch would throw their clogs (sabots) into the works of mills. Every innovation project has it's saboteur, usually well meaning but very disruptive, and I'd been waiting for the shoe to drop. On a crisp morning not long after our meeting with Greg, the spanner, or shoe, went into the works.

James Davidson joined our innovation team from the aerospace product marketing team. He was eager, interested and full of ideas. He also had a full plate of work in his day job, which must have been important but uninteresting. The shoe fell on a day when we were moving ahead on our strategic planning and preparing for some trend spotting and scenario development. We'd just finished our plans and identified the meetings and workloads.

"Um, I have a problem" he said. I glanced at Susan, who glanced at Greg, and we all waited patiently for James to spit it out.

"Go ahead" said Susan.

"Well, how are we supposed to get all of this innovation work done? I mean, I still have a job, and my boss is on me to make sure I get my regular work finished. I'm finding it tough to balance the demands already."

"We're just getting started" said Susan, and James nodded. "The workload for the innovation team will only increase. This work is in addition to your day job."

"I know, and I volunteered for this project. But I can't end up worse off in six months because we created a cool new product but I didn't get my other work done as well as it should have been done."

"Good that you are voicing the concern now" I said. I glanced around. Of the eight of us on the project, only Susan and I were "full time". Everyone else still had some component of their regular jobs. Greg seemed unfazed, but everyone else seemed sympathetic to James' complaint.

"OK, how many of you have concerns about getting this project done well and keeping up with your day jobs?" All the hands went up, except Greg's.

There were only a couple of realistic responses. We needed to gain some cover for these folks who were innovating, and if possible relieve them of more of their day job responsibilities. We also needed to change their incentives and compensation to place more emphasis on innovation. Those were some big changes, but I didn't want to have to play the CEO card just yet.

"Greg, let's get Jane from your HR team in here. We need to place more emphasis on innovation in the evaluations and compensation structures for the team members, or at least work with the team to reduce their work loads so we can innovate successfully. My preference would be to tweak the evaluation and compensation models so people who demonstrate innovation activity and success don't get dumped on at promotion and bonus time." Greg nodded. So far he was steady as a rock when we needed it.

"OK James, if we can work to divert some of your work, and perhaps add some points about innovation in your evaluation, does that give you the cover you need to stick with the team? We probably can't totally relieve your work load, but Greg can talk to your manager and we can ensure you don't end up worse off for having participated on this project. What do you think?"

James paused, but realized he'd probably gotten all he was going to get.

"It's not perfect, but I want to be on this project. I think it matters to Accipiter. Hopefully, if we can create some great new products and services, any work I miss will pale in comparison. I just don't want to end up worse off because we are innovating."

Heads were nodding like naptime in a kindergarden. No one else had quite the guts as James, but they all felt the same way. The shoe had dropped. Everyone wanted to know that they would end up at least as well off in their positions and careers regardless of the outcome of the project. If they didn't get that assurance, we wouldn't have to worry about wooden shoes in the gears, they'd vote with their feet. They'd miss meetings on innovation to attend staff meetings. They'd fail to review ideas because of their "day job" demands. Slowly but surely the commitment would leak away and we'd be holding meetings with ghosts.

I knew what we needed, and I suspected Greg did too. He stood up.

"OK, I hear you. I'll work with your managers to ensure everyone ends up after this project is over in at least the same situation if not a better one, and no one will get dinged for working on this project. You have my word on that."

His statement was like a breath of fresh air, or perhaps the escaped sighs from the team members merely felt like a breeze. It seems as though every one was holding their breath, and Greg hit the right notes to allow everyone to relax and recommit.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Sixty Six

2010-02-03T06:20:00.000-08:00

Making decisions is easy. I make them all the time. Blue socks with the blue suit. Steak for dinner. Single malt after. Even a child can make decisions. Making good decisions with limited knowledge that have a lot of impact, there's the rub. And what the aerospace group needed were clear, concise decisions about innovation targets.

I couldn't help but feel for Greg. After all, I've been unfortunate enough to watch a number of executives twist on their own petards. It's easy to say "we need more innovation" but often hard to say, specifically, what we should be innovating. Making decisions and choices is as much about what to leave out, as to what to leave in. Making the decision meant making choices that would impact the organization for months or years, coming down on a strategic direction. Making the decision meant success or failure in the not too distant future. No wonder most firms can't innovate. They can't make good, informed decisions and communicate those things to their staffs. Something about plausible deniability.

We met with Greg a week or so into the project. We had selected a team, not necessarily everyone we wanted, but workable. We'd talked to the communications team and we had a program ready to alert the aerospace group that we'd be focusing on innovation and needed their attention. All the major pieces were in place, except possibly the most important piece. What were we going to focus on?

"New products" said Greg. "We need new products. We're getting our heads handed to us by foreign competition. Even our best customers are telling us that we've fallen far behind. We need something really revolutionary."

"Do you have any customer insights or requirements developed? Has your sales team discovered any interesting unmet or unarticulated needs? What about innovating around the way you service and support your products? Does it have to be a new product, or one that's delivered or serviced differently?"

"AXT has released a number of new products that are much lighter, but as strong and resilient as our older products. They are cutting weight from the plane, and that equals less fuel burned per mile. Nippon Air Industries has a completely different approach. They offer to maintain their products right on the tarmac. Their products are probably equivalent to ours in terms of weight and performance, but their maintenance is superb and cuts costs and time for the carriers. Whether our solution is new materials, new products or new services is almost a moot point. We need it all, just to catch up to what our competitors are doing."

"So, really, we could be just as successful innovating around a business model, or a service offering, or even the customer experience? What do you want to prioritize, Greg? That will give us focus for the team."

"My preference, because it's something we can do quickly, is to create some new products for the industry with really outstanding and revolutionary capabilities - extremely low weight or extremely easy to maintain or extremely long life. I think Accipiter can drive new product development faster than it can wrap its head around new services or business models."

Good. One key focus area down, with hits about how radical or disruptive the change needs to be.

"Do you want to conduct this as a "skunkworks" and separate the team, or open the work up more broadly to the entire aerospace division? I think we can move faster and we'll be more likely to achieve radical ideas in a small, separate group, but we may miss some good ideas from the division if we don't involve them."

"No, I'd prefer to keep it smaller. I've read about Lockheed and the skunkworks model and that's what we need right now. Small team, fast action, radical outcomes."

"Great. So we can assume that we'll form the team and keep the idea generation within Accipiter. No "open innovation" models - at least not with the Accipiter name. If we need to use some external innovation, we could leverage a company like Innocentive, perhaps?"

"I don't want to create a lot of publicity, but there may be inventors or entrepreneurs we need to tap externally. Tell me more about Innocentive?"

"Innocentive helps connect people with ideas to people with needs. Basically we can place a notice that we're trying to solve a specific technical problem, and anyone who is registered on their site can spot that and submit technical solutions to the problem. There are two nice things about Innocentive's services: first, most of the people on the site are engineers and technologists, so we're likely to get relevant responses, and second, we can post anonymously."

"But we're not ready to post anything yet - correct?"

"No. And we'd use them only if we weren't satisfied with the ideas we generated or felt we could go further by including that capability."

"OK - do you have what you need? A fairly radical product innovation developed by a small team that has a lot of leeway and flexibility but works primarily internally. Don't focus right now on services or business models. I just don't think we're ready for that."

"This helps a lot. As strange as it may sound, offering very specific instructions in some dimensions of the challenge encourages innovative thinking in the areas we leave "unbounded". And an innovation effort with no scope just becomes an attempt to boil the ocean. We've got enough for now."

It went even better than I had hoped for. Greg was under the gun and ready to make decisions, since many of them had been made for him and Accipiter by the competition. Nothing sharpens the mind like a near and present threat.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Sixty Five

2010-02-01T07:12:00.000-08:00

There are a number of impossibilities in life. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can lead a teenager to class but you can't make him think. You can't push a string uphill. To add to that litany, you can't tell people often enough, and in enough detail, about dramatic change like innovation.

In every innovation project I've worked on, I've preached the theology of communicating about innovation - it's goals, purposes and outcomes. Almost uniformly, my requests go ignored or unanswered. I'm not sure if the management teams don't want to talk to their folks, or are afraid a big communication efforts commits them to actually doing innovation work. Inevitably, we'll run into a significant portion of the workforce who is unaware of the innovation focus and effort, and needs insights into what we are doing and why we are doing it. Typically, at the end of an innovation effort, a senior executive will turn to me and say "that went well. Too bad we didn't do a better job getting people on board earlier." As sure as the sun rises in the east, and Sisyphus is pushing that rock, I'll live through another project where we fail to communicate effectively and regret it at the end. Accipiter was proving to be no exception.

Greg was actually on board to communicate to his team, but felt he needed to pull in the corporate PR team to help write the communications. After several missed meetings and delays, Susan and I convinced him that we could write the communications, but we would need help to select the most appropriate channels. In my work, we've managed to use a wide range of communication vehicles to educate and inform, including emails, newsletters, voicemails, taped video of senior executives doing the talking head thing, posters, table tents in the break rooms and a host of other activities. Susan and I had pulled together a relatively comprehensive program to communicate to the aerospace group, but we felt we needed the PR team's blessing and their final polish of our messaging. We'd even written up some talking points for Greg's reports, so they could talk about innovation to their reports and stay on message. Now, we just needed to get the internal communications team on board. No easy task.

We met with Leslie Parks, the VP in charge of internal communications for Accipiter. We'd been warned that Leslie was very proprietorial with her communication team and channels, and that we'd need to build a case for communicating. In fact, I found her very open to the fact we wanted to communicate the changes we were planning, but very concerned about the volume of communication in general.

"We'd be happy to work with you" she said, and I felt it was sincere. "But what we need to do is balance your messaging with all the other messaging that's going on. Right now many Accipiter employees are overwhelmed with internal emails and communications. We've just finished a big push for HR and benefits, and have another messaging and communication campaign about to start for the United Way. I understand the requirements and urgency of your work, but you also will want our employees to read and understand your messages, and with the volume of emails going out to them right now, I can't assure you that will happen."

"OK. What if we break our communications down into three targeted groups - executives, senior and mid-level managers and the rest of the staff? Most of our direct communication needs to go to the first two groups, primarily within the aerospace group. We also need to communicate a broader innovation effort more generally across the company, but our first targets will be within aerospace."

"Your talking points for the executives and senior leaders look great. I'd like to pass them through our review team to ensure they don't conflict with any other messaging. I think the managers will like this and use some of the draft emails and talking points to communicate to their teams. Do you have an intranet site or some other website set up where people can visit and get more information? Emails are great, but a permanent site that people can review as they are interested is very valuable."

In fact we did have plans for an innovation website, but the development of that site was currently IT project number 347, somewhere after the rollout of a new SharePoint site for time management and before the development of a blogging template for internal bloggers. In other words, we were probably going to have to build an external blog site in the short term.

"We're working on that" Susan said with a wry smile. "We'll have something ready within the next two weeks."

Leslie agreed to work with us to include our communications into the Accipiter communications calendar, and promised us feedback on our plan and talking points within a week. That would give us enough time to build at least a sample blog site to provide some insights into the Accipiter innovation process. As for the internal site development, we were still waiting on approval for hardware and trying to find the staff to do the work.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Sixty Four

2010-01-26T06:37:00.000-08:00

"Hi Greg, thanks for joining us on the call."

"Sorry I can't be there, but we've had a significant problem crop up in our Seattle operations. I had to come out here to see what could be done to straighten out a customer situation."

"No problem. Did you get our presentation for the innovation discussion?"

"Yes, but I haven't had time to review it."

Eyes rolled in the conference room. Several of them bounced off the table, and collected in a small, sad pocket in the corner near the projector. Several more seemed to glaze over with that look of corporate resignation so familiar to people trapped in small fabric covered boxes and chimpanzees in zoos.

I took the bull by the horns.

"Greg, we'll need your insights and directions for the innovation effort to succeed. If this is a difficult time for you, we can reschedule, but we need your thoughtful input on our recommendations. You'll need to understand those and be ready to support them, or indicate a different direction for our team. Can you give us an hour or so today?"

There was absolute silence in our conference room. The silence was so loud I was glad that Greg was furiously shuffling papers and making a significant amount of background noise. We were hardly started with our innovation efforts yet already at the cusp of a major decision. Greg needed our help. But Greg had many other priorities. It would really come down to how important it was to him that he create some interesting new products or services. I could feel the excitement leak out of our conference room by the second.

"Greg?"

"Yes, I'm still here. I'm working with Mary to shift our calendars around. I can give you one hour now, and I'll commit to reading the presentation and getting back to you with my thoughts by Friday."

"Great. Let's get started."

The energy level in the room increased by degrees as we walked Greg through a series of ideas and concepts we'd generated so far. We were trying to develop a "charter" for the innovation effort. We knew his team needed new products and services to stave off a lot of overseas competition. Little new product development had been done and his unit was suffering. Clearly, the products weren't the only issue, as we were interrupted twice by client managers in Seattle with pressing problems.

"Greg, what we want to do with you is establish the scope of the innovation effort. So, what we're trying to do is document the two or three most significant challenges or opportunities, confirm those are the concepts you want us to work on with you, and begin to define your risk tolerance."

"Risk tolerance?"

"Just shorthand for how incremental or how disruptive you want our work to be. We can set up a quick brainstorm and have some ideas to you fairly quickly, but they'll probably be more incremental, and may not have a lot of value. On the other hand, we can set up a more disruptive exercise, which identifies some more significant change but will take more time and have a greater chance of failure."

"Can we do both? Can we do some short term, more incremental brainstorming and some longer term disruptive work?"

"That's possible. What would you want us to focus on in the short term, and in the longer term?"

"We need some new product ideas, but we also need something radically different. I'm thinking about an idea to shift from a model where we sell and maintain our products to a rental model where we own and manage the products and our clients simply rent them. I think you sent me a white paper along these lines."

"Yes. That would be the York HVAC model. Several other heavy equipment makers are moving in that direction as well."

"No doubt we need to change our interaction with our customers. I think you've also recommended some concepts around customer experience journey. Tell me more about that."

"The concept behind the customer experience journey is that you purposefully design the interactions and touchpoints so that the experience a customer receives is optimal, and Accipiter places the right emphasis on touchpoints and interactions that matter to the customer."

"From where I'm standing, and what we're dealing with, we could definitely stand to innovate our customer experience."

We walked him through much of the strategic overview, trying to ensure we understood his goals and could link our work to strategic outcomes. Innovation is tricky enough without clear goals and expectations, and I wanted the chance to work on a well-defined problem, since our project was high visibility. Greg understood our need and managed to give us enough insights in the meeting that we were able to develop an innovation charter that he approved.

Later that week, Susan and I met with him again to confirm our approach and begin to chart our course for the work.

"So you're suggesting a more incremental project to seek out new product ideas and a longer term project based on customer experience?"

"That's what seems appropriate to us, based on what you told us were your key needs" Susan said. I just watched him and nodded.

"OK. What kind of staffing or resources do you need from my team?"

"We'll need your involvement, of course, mostly for direction and to ensure we get the people we need. We'll need three or four strong people from the product groups, marketing and sales to build a team to explore new product ideas. Say five or six people at 20% for six to eight weeks. We'll need to lay out the customer experience journey a bit more, but a similar sized team but a much longer time horizon."

Greg blanched a bit but didn't refuse. When you are backed into a corner with no good alternatives, even a painful exit can be promising.

"Alright. Get with Donna to identify the people you need. Can you draft a short email from me to my team indicating why this is important and why they need to take on this extra work? If you can get something to me later today, I'll review it and get it out."

"No problem. If you are comfortable with this approach we'll get started."

Greg was anything but comfortable, but I think he realized that we were his last, best hope for turning the tide. Lifeguards have a difficult job, pulling drowning people out and avoiding getting pushed under themselves. We'd need to be careful, execute against our plan and help Greg as best as we could, and hope we could create some meaningful success in the short run while we build the teams and processes necessary for Accipiter to succeed.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Sixty Three

2010-01-21T14:25:00.000-08:00

There's an old saying that you can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs. During my time at Accipiter, I had seen what appeared to be a few circular firing squads but few people who seemed to be leaders, and that was rapidly becoming a problem for our innovation effort.

You see, everyone is for innovation until someone has to be innovative. It's kinda like cliff diving or parachuting. In the abstract, sounds like a great idea, but in reality the corporate environment tends to weed out executives who introduce change or take on risky propositions. It was clear that everyone had the message from Jim and George that Accipiter was going to become more innovative. And every senior executive was ducking our meetings, hoping they wouldn't be called on to go first.

Our plan called for building an innovation capability, identifying, recruiting and training an innovation team and defining innovation processes while simultaneously doing some innovation work for one product line or business unit. I've found that doing one or the other is interesting but incomplete. If we focus on the buildout, sooner or later four or five months down the road everyone wants to know where the ideas are. If we focus on a specific innovation effort, there's no way to duplicate it once the work is done. Only by combining the two can we resolve short term needs with long term goals. But that works as long as someone wants to go first.

Accipiter had clearly bread a grow of senior managers and executives who were very happy with the status quo, and did not want to risk any change. Our innovation team had been approached by exactly two executives who were interested in working with us to kick off the innovation effort, and while they were earnest I wasn't sure they were the best candidates. Gregg Flynn ran a small aerospace components business line that had been hammered by off-shore competition. His margins and shared had eroded, and he was desperate for some new products. I wasn't sure if he was volunteering to save his job or because he believed innovation would matter. Mike Fraser had also met with us. Unlike Gregg, his machined products group was an industry leader, and had good differentiation and margins. Mike was interested in driving even more distance between his business and his competitors. Neither of these businesses were large or "core" to Accipiter. That meant that if we were successful we'd probably still have a tough time convincing the rest of Accipiter that changes we'd implemented would matter in the rest of the business.

Susan and I wanted one of the core business units to step forward, thinking that if we could do great work with one of them, the rest would notice and fall in line. But we also believed we needed to get started quickly, with a team willing to work with us. With a team still under development and the clock ticking, we didn't have time to convince an executive to take a chance with us. So we chose to work with Flynn's team, thinking that if we could create some interesting new products or services, we'd get the attention of the rest of the business. Margin improvement to a strong business is valuable, but could be discounted. Real change in a struggling business would draw attention.

By the time we recruited a few team members and had Flynn on board for the short term innovation effort, we were a month into a six month effort, far behind our original goals, but with the right people on board to succeed. It amazes me how much a committed executive and senior leadership team can water down the desire of a CEO. The level of urgency and desire for change was dramatically different, and I was sure we'd need to get Jim and George involved in our work to demonstrate to Accipter that innovation wasn't a sideshow but a new way of doing business.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Sixty Two

2010-01-20T07:03:00.000-08:00

Susan rolled her eyes at me.

"Well, what do you think?"

"What am I supposed to think?"

"You met her. You interviewed her. What do you think?"

"I think the same things that you do. I think that we need either really strong, connected people or really passionate, engaged people for the work to succeed. She was neither."

"Sort of a deer in the headlights. I wonder what she was told when her manager asked her to speak with us."

"Clearly, not much, since she didn't seem to understand what we were trying to do."

"OK, let's regroup. We are wasting time. That's the third candidate for just one role on our team, and none are close to meeting our needs or expectations. Are we asking too much?"

"Not if this initiative will have any chance of succeeding. We need people who will take a proactive stance and push against the status quo. While she seemed very nice, she is a corporate animal and used to taking orders. We need a few rule breakers and some individuals with real passion for change."

We'd developed our requirements for the team, and taken two actions to build out the team. First, we'd identified our wish list - the people we felt would help us the most and be the most difficult to get. Most of the best people were up to their eyeballs in work, fighting fires and mixing metaphors across the business. I didn't care, I was determined to get two or three of these folks on board, even if only as a steering committee member. The second track we'd pursued was to publicize the roles and they kinds of skills necessary and ask for volunteers. Of course even these folks would need their manager's approval, so what we'd seen so far in terms of potential team members were the inexperienced, the jaded and the checked-out. More direct action was going to be needed soon. It was probably time to rock the boat, and I was sure it wasn't going to be the last time this particular boat would get tipped.

Our demands weren't big. For a central innovation team in a Fortune 2000 firm we were looking for three full time people, and another four or five people who could contribute part-time. We needed people to help spot and track trends and develop long term scenarios, and who could facilitate an innovation process and eventually an idea management solution. We also wanted to interact with Accipiter's HR team so we could begin to change the evaluation schemes to place more emphasis on innovation activities and potential rewards and compensation. We needed subject matter experts to help us evaluate ideas and move them through a pipeline. We needed these skills, but more importantly, we needed people who wanted to work on innovation and would commit to working in the face of inertia, quarterly demands and the resistance to change.

Since casting the nets wasn't working, we decided to fish from the other side of the boat. Susan and I prepared a short list of ten key candidates from across the business, and asked George and Jim to help us interview and attempt to attract at least three of them onto the team. In the end we settled on a rotational program, giving fast risers an opportunity for 18 months to rotate into a position on the innovation team, exercise a wide range of skills, and then move back into a leadership position in a business line or product area. It was our hope that these individuals would become advocates for innovation throughout the business, but that's still to be proved out.

Our first hire on the innovation team was a young lady from IT of all places. She clearly wanted to help the organization change, and was very open to new ideas. She also provided a key skill set, in that she could organize and manage information effectively and helped us get our first intranet site established. Over time Lisa became indispensable, and her innovation skill sets grew rapidly. It was also a validation of our approach that someone from the team thought to be the least innovative became one of the leaders of the innovation effort.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Sixty One

2010-01-19T06:08:00.000-08:00

As a kid, a quick wit and a smart mouth eventually result in a poke in the nose. As one grows older, these tendencies lead one to become the life of the party, or as the acerbic outsider. Smart mouthed, short kids never get chosen in gym, so I knew something about our next task. We were off to do what could be the most trying task of all in an innovation effort - finding the right people who were willing to work on an innovation project.

In my experience, building the team is a lot like the plot line of some of my favorite movies. Assembling the team is very similar to The Dirty Dozen, a Lee Marvin vehicle about a bunch of loser and underachievers sent to do the impossible. Or perhaps it's like the Wild Bunch, a bunch of crooks who end up defending a town against the oppressive strongman. In any metaphor, my experience is that the people you want, and need, on an innovation team rarely have any interest in working on that team, and the people you get are the people that other people think are expendable. Maybe that's the movie title I was looking for - They Were Expendable.

We met later that week to talk about building a team to help flesh out our innovation goals. This would include a permanent central innovation team and a cast of people from the different product lines and business units who would coordinate their innovation efforts with the central team, and help get the initiative off the ground. We knew, going in, that everyone we wanted on the team was already wearing two or three hats and had full time jobs. We also knew that the people we wanted would be very wary of our project, and that we'd be approached by a number of people who actually wanted to be on the innovation team. I knew that we'd want, and need, some of these volunteers. The difficulty was identifying the ones with passion who could add value, and weren't merely tourists.

Susan and I decided on a somewhat unique approach to staffing the team. Actually, it was my idea, but she put the spin on it that made it compelling.

"You've got the list?" I said. We'd built a list of the people within Accipiter we believed could add the most to our team, regardless of their existing role or responsibility.

"Yes. Most of these people are really indispensable to their products or business units. But I can't imagine this project will get much buy-in without at least their support."

"What better way to support a project than to join it?"

"How do we get them to agree?"

"We don't. We ask them to submit an application to join us."

She looked at me with her head twisted sideways.

"What? None of these people will 'request' to join us. We'll be lucky if we can get a few of them part-time."

"Then we, and Accipiter, aren't setting our sights high enough" I said. I knew how important the initial buy-in and staffing of the team would be to the eventual success or failure. I also wasn't about to collect the flotsam and jetsam of the unwanted and unloved as part of my innovation team.

"We interview every person who joins, and we, you and I, agree or reject each person. We need to demonstrate that it is a privilege and a challenge to be on this team. This, this team will make the most dramatic difference at Accipiter."

"You are out of your mind. No one will go for this."

"Let's examine the evidence. Playing by the standard rules has resulted in Accipiter losing market share. The cupboard is bare - there are no compelling new products. Heck, as far as I can tell there are no compelling new ideas that might become products and services. What's Accipiter got to lose if they put some of their best people on this effort?"

"Well, when you put it that way, we've got little to lose. It's just going to cause a lot of upheaval. We'll need to get George and Jim involved again."

No doubt. We weren't going to get all of these folks, but I was determined we'd get some of their best people, and we'd fill in the rest of the team with the most passionate volunteers. Accipiter wasn't going to change if we staffed a team of minor leaguers, has-beens and one or two rapid comers. No, we needed some of the most respected senior folks, and some real die-hard volunteers, or the project would go the way of all the other initatives at Accipiter.

"You know Einstein's definition of insanity?"

"Something about doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results."

"Yep. On this project, we are at least going to try something different. We're going to find out how important innovation is, and how much investment the executive team is willing to make. A small investment know will speak volumes to the company about the commitment to innovation. A big investment will be rocket fuel for us now and later."

"Have you done something like this before - selecting the best people AND asking them to submit applications to be on a team they don't want to join?"

"No, but it needs to be done this way." I could only hope I was right.

"So, your position is that we request a number of the best people in the organization, and allow people to volunteer for the project."

"Yes, and we resist having people dumped on us to demonstrate that a product team has given us a "resource", since most of the time they'll be giving us a resource that isn't their best. Either this project matters and gets good people, or it doesn't."

"OK, I get the demand for senior individuals. What's the value of the volunteers?"

"The senior people have connections and knowledge, and don't expect much to change. The volunteers have passion and ideas, and expect to change everything. Somewhere in the middle of all that is what we really need - connections, ideas and passion. This isn't easy work, and will have many false starts. We need a few people on the team who are true believers, to push the rest of the team when it loses heart."

"Wait. Are we talking about climbing Everest or conducting an innovation project?"

"What's the difference? Both are monumental tasks that require significant planning, good guides and teamwork, and both are subject to huge failures and few clear successes. About the only difference I can see is that no one will fall off an ice field on our project."

"A bit dramatic, don't you think?"

"Machiavelli said once that you should make no small plans, as they have no power to stir the soul. I don't want to do small things that will quietly disappear, and neither do you. And, Accipiter can't afford to fail."

And that was how we built the team that created the concepts that saved Accipiter.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Sixty

2010-01-14T12:07:00.000-08:00

The sun broke over the hills early that morning and bathed the city in a soft white light, emphasizing the pastels of the buildings and the green of the palms. Or so I was told. I'm never up that early, but the sound of people describing their morning routines and the beauty of the city is always captivating. However, rather than risk disappointment in the breaking of the day, I usually prefer to have it reported to me by others.

That day I felt like I had finally gotten my feet firmly placed on solid ground. All the waffling, dodging and corporate misdirection that had plagued us seemed to be well in the past. It appeared we had a definitive rationale to move ahead and a senior sponsor who was in our corner. We even had a budget and an imperative to move quickly.

Now, I'm not naive. Some would say more likely cynical, but you'd be as well if you walked a mile in my brogans. Working in the innovation game, you discover that virtually any corporate issue, distraction or "fire" becomes immediately more important than the possibility of creating something new over time. I recognized that support today is interesting, and support tomorrow is fleeting, so I was determined to strike while the iron was hot and move quickly to finalize our project plan and kick off the project, before another distraction came hurtling at us. The most common refrain from my clients at this point is: why aren't we further along with this project? We started talking about it six months ago. If talking were doing then I could build a house on words. So far, lots of words and excuses and dodges, but not structure.

That's how I almost saw the sun come up that day. Susan and I were locking ourselves away in a conference room to develop a project plan to create an innovation team and kick off an innovation effort within Accipiter. I think she felt the same, if not even more urgency, than me. There was literally electricity in the air, the sense of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that would be fleeting and once gone, was gone for good. She knew, and I knew, that this was our chance.

I met her at the reception and we went immediately to a small conference room near her office. It was clear the pressure was on since the pleasantries were cut to a minimum, and we launched immediately into some sample project plans I'd brought along from my previous work. I'd meant to break the news to her earlier that I planned two concurrent projects, but she noticed the concept before I could couch it.

"Why are we running two projects at the same time?"

"Good morning to you, too."

"OK, sorry, good morning. But the question still remains."

"We are running two projects simultaneously for two very different but equally important goals. One project is meant to build an innovation team and define innovation processes for Accipiter. That's what George and Jim want."

"Right" she said, since this was a recap of the obvious.

"And the second concurrent project is a focused innovation effort in one product line or business area, to use as a test bed for our processes and ideas, and to demonstrate some real deliverables in the next four to six months."

"OK. What you're saying is that the team development and innovation process work won't be complete..."

"And more importantly, won't generate any ideas in the first four or five months. Even if we build a great team and process, we won't have any ideas to show for it, and the most obvious measure of an innovation program is..."

"Ideas. Got it. So we kick off a smaller innovation effort very focused on a product or business and generate and manage ideas in an ad hoc fashion while building the permanent process."

"Right. So we buy time to get our permanent team and process in place and generate ideas with a willing partner in the meantime. And with any luck, we'll have some good results to point to from that work just as our innovation team gets up to speed."

Still a bit uncertain but much more comfortable, she settled in to work. Together we built a plan that called for development of a small, central innovation team, the definition of an innovation process that contained the usual steps: linking to strategy, trend spotting and scenario planning, qualitative customer insights like ethnography, idea generation, idea evaluation and selection and prototyping. We also planned for quarterly and yearly events for managers and executives who had an interest in innovative topics, and a review of idea management software to capture ideas and create internal and external innovation communities. The combination of my plans and experience, and her knowledge of the organization and how it preferred to work meant we were able to create a rough outline of the plan by the end of the day. Now we both needed to refine the plan and make sure it aligned with our goals and the budget we'd been given by Jim.

That night we sat at the bar and told each other old truths and new lies about ourselves and our goals. There was definitely a there, there, but the question remained - what's the risk of getting involved with your client? I decided not to find out the answer to that question, at least that night, and we went home our separate ways. Another morning would break, cool, clear and pastel, and I'd miss it alone.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Fifty Nine

2009-10-02T05:26:00.001-07:00

We innovation consultants have a mantra that we repeat to ourselves and our clients on a regular basis. It has to do with the either/or possibilities of building an organization that can sustain innovation, or just doing innovative work in the face of a resistant culture. Both approaches are dead ends, it is a lose-lose situation. So, on the face of it, there's just one thing to do: "Build the plane while it is flying".

But in this case we were going to have to reset expectations and find a new pilot while the plane was in the air. Clearly Chad was going to have to have a come to Jesus with Brockwell, or we weren't going to be flying at all. On top of that we needed some real momentum to the project, to demonstrate some results in a reasonably timely fashion, and we had not even left the terminal yet.

Susan and I agreed that we needed to do several things simultaneously, and as quickly as possible. First, we needed to reset Chad's expectations and his ability to accept some change and risk, or we need Brockwell to replace him. Chad's concerns and connection to the way things are done now are too deeply embedded and will actively work against the innovation program. Second, we needed to identify one or two significant challenges or opportunities and frame our efforts around those, to generate ideas and kick start the innovation effort. And third, we needed to address the existing culture, and build an innovation process and staff a team that was engaged and excited about innovation. Something like juggling a running chainsaw, a bowling ball and a live baby while riding a unicycle, but much less fun.

We charted our course of action and asked to meet with Brockwell as soon as possible. Of course, Brockwell's calendar was full for the next two weeks, and he was out of town for several days as well. We agreed to waylay him on his way in to work on one of his first days back in the office. Our predicament with Chad was simply too much of a barrier to leave untested for too long. Next, we decided to meet with the heads of several of the business units to understand their biggest challenges or potential opportunities. We felt it was important that we demonstrate we were solving "real world" problems or challenges that one of these individuals could implement as a new product or service. We never anticipated how hard it would be to identify that problem or opportunity. Finally, we made plans to meet with the HR director to discuss how we could begin to change the compensation and evaluation schemes to encourage more innovation, thinking that this was the best way to start to move the culture, along with a series of communications from a respected senior leader. Which led us back to Brockwell, Underwood and Kasamis.

"Probably the most important thing we can do is start communicating our innovation plans and goals. If he's agreeable, Kasamis would be a great spokesperson for innovation. Everyone in Accipiter knows his story. He founded this company from nothing and built it and took it public."

I knew the story, a classic rags to riches entrepreneur. An immigrant with little opportunity wills his company to grow, and builds a respectable business. Through some luck and insight he had acquired a number of other businesses and successfully merged them to form Accipiter. He was riding out his senior years as Chairman, sitting in on board meetings and remaining one of the public faces of the organization. Kasamis understood the entrepreneurial spirit, and probably would get behind the concept of innovation. It was rumored that he was unhappy with the state of Accipiter, which had lost its leadership position and could not even contend for a fast follower position anymore. With his backing, we would have a respected voice advocating for innovation from the top.

Susan agreed to set meetings with the heads of the electronics division and the components division, the two individuals who had appeared the most receptive to our work and who probably had the largest challenges. From them we could hopefully identify several challenges or opportunities we could use to generate new product or service ideas. That work would help us demonstrate short-term, actionable results. Looking back on it later, I suspect that was the biggest failing, thinking that these "leaders" had any insight into where they were leading the firm.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Fifty Eight

2009-09-29T05:20:00.000-07:00

The euphoria didn't last long. It never does. There's the roller coaster ride to the top of the drop, and the either the fast descent straight down, or the twisting, turning descent that brings you to the same place. In our case it was almost an immediate descent.

Monday, I turned up at Accipiter to meet with Susan. There I discovered we had a new sponsor.

"Underwood is just too busy to work with us on a daily basis, so he has assigned Chad Gillette to work with us. Chad is a good guy, one of Jim's guys, and Jim has assured me that he understands the importance of this effort."

That lurch in my stomach was the first car going over the lip of the descent. We hadn't really started and already there were changes. No matter how close a relationship, no matter how well communicated, Chad would want to place his stamp on the work. It would be another few weeks before we sized each other up and got working in earnest.

Susan recognized my discomfort and added "Look, it's not what I had hoped for, but we have momentum and the opportunity to build a real innovation program. Let's see what Chad has to say."

"In my experience" I said "we need to keep the channels open to Brockwell and Underwood. Those two have given us the vision, and regardless of Chad's responsibilities on this project, we need to set the expectation that we want to meet with Brockwell and Underwood regularly."

Susan frowned but said nothing. There was no way I was going to allow the reporting structures and politics get in the way of achieving what Brockwell and Underwood wanted, because it seemed that everyone else had a different perspective or intent for our project.

We met Chad later that morning. Chad, on the whole, was a bright, earnest young guy, a fast climber who had impressed Brockwell with his hard work and smarts. Chad was a fairly newly minted MBA, which meant in my book that he knew a little about a lot of things, and practically nothing about actual work. Given that he was a finance major and worked in finance, that just compounded the issues in my head. I was convinced all Chad was going to worry about was the money. Boy, was I wrong.

After the usual pleasantries, Susan and I set out an ambitious plan to build an innovation team, encourage incremental and disruptive innovation throughout the organization and start building innovation communities by training high potential people in the organization. It was a very carefully designed program, one she and I had been building for months in anticipation of the approval from Brockwell and Underwood. I made sure to impress upon Chad that Brockwell and Underwood were supportive of our plans and the goals of innovation.

Once we finished our presentation, Chad had a few questions.

"What's it going to take to accomplish all of this work? How quickly can we get some new ideas into the product development pipeline?"

I liked what I was hearing so far. Speed and urgency are so important in an innovation program. Let's get going while we have the ear of the CEO and some momentum.

"We can start generating ideas in specific product groups in just a few weeks" I said. "Clearly we won't have a chance to train the teams on innovation processes, but Susan and I can work with them to identify key opportunities and issues and start generating ideas."

"Great. Do you think we can have new products in the pipeline so we can get budgets in place during the annual planning cycle?"

The annual planning cycle, that recurring monster better known to innovation experts as the idea killing process. Perhaps as welcoming to innovation and new ideas as a place of execution, a place where great ideas went to die. Every large business basically shuts down to re-enact the development of next year's plan, which comprises a set of presentations where the numbers move slightly from last year's plan. A rigid, microscopically managed process with no ambiguity and no room for error.

"Yes, but I think we'll need to consider how to acquire funds for the idea within the annual plan, as well as outside the plan. Our experience is that new ideas seldom have much success in an annual planning cycle. Additionally, we may have good ideas that should be launched before the planning cycle, and may need to find the funds for those ideas instead of waiting for the plan."

You'd have thought I'd questioned the validity of the Black-Scholes equation or burned a tract on financial theory of markets to see the disbelief in his eyes. There was no consideration for funding outside of the annual plan from his perspective. And that's the way the rest of the morning progressed. We'd recommend changes to the way Accipiter worked, to further an innovation goal, and he'd reinforce the existing processes. What I came to discover, very quickly, that while he was in finance, he was actually much more invested in the existing processes and methods. He understood the need for innovation and different results, he just didn't seem to understand that new thinking and new ideas might require different processes, people with new skills and changes in the way Accipiter worked.

It was odd to see such attachment to a dysfunctional corporate process and culture by someone who had not served much time within Accipiter. From a corporate lifer I would have expected the adherence to the existing order, but not from a fresh-faced MBA. Yet Chad battled us on every recommendation, trying to water down our approach and align the approach to existing methods and processes, intent on keeping the work as close to what Accipiter already did as possible.

By the end of our first meeting I'd reached the bottom of the roller coaster. My stomach didn't lurch so much as heave. Just on the brink of success, we were being pulled back into the existing order. Even though we had open channels to Brockwell, I didn't think it would matter. One of us would have to go. Either Accipiter wanted to move forward with innovation, and was willing to change, or Accipiter wanted to act interested in innovation while reinforcing the status quo. I wasn't going to stick around for the second option, and Chad seemed unwilling to commit to the first. I wondered why Chad, and several other executives before him, were so wedded to the current structures and so afraid of change.

At the end of a completely frustrating meeting, where Chad and I had increasingly talked past each other, and both recognized the futility of further discussions without clear direction from the top, we broke the meeting. Susan had been relatively quiet for a while and had a pensive look on her face.

"OK, we go back to Brockwell and tell him the fair haired boy doesn't see eye to eye with him, and find another person."

She shook her head, not saying no, just in resignation and disbelief.

"I didn't realize how powerful the status quo really is, and how difficult introducing innovation as a sustaining capability was going to be."

It's not a hopeless cause, I thought, but we need a burning platform to get the company's attention.

"What would draw significant attention to this issue and get everyone on board?" I asked.

"I've been thinking about that myself. Perhaps we should pull in Mr. Kasamis."

"Doug Kasamis, the chairman?"

"Yes, he was the founder and a real entrepreneur. He is still very respected within the organization. If we can get him as a spokesperson, if he is willing, he could rally most of the organization to a significant change."

We knew what to do. Meet with Underwood and Brockwell, explain the gravity and urgency of a clearly communicated message, and recommend that we deploy the heavy guns.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Fifty Six

2009-09-04T05:58:00.000-07:00

Life is full of false peaks. Just as you scale those final few feet, ready to plant your flag at the top of the mountain, you realize there's another peak ahead. All the work you do merely positions you - gives you the right - to attack the next peak.

We'd been to the mountain, and in some ways the mountains had come to us. Now we were confronted with the actual work - creating and executing a plan that would make Accipiter more innovative. It was at once an overwhelming and exhilarating task. Susan seemed a bit stunned by the meeting, and I was chomping at the bit, ready to go.

All Brockwell wanted at this point was a logical plan, and fortunately I could pull samples of work we'd done and the plans that supported that work off the shelf. I had come somewhat prepared, assuming our next step would be to develop the plan to ask for the necessary resources. Susan and I sat down side by side at the conference table once Underwood departed. She seemed a bit out to sea.

"I'm not really sure where to start" she said. "There's so much to do. What should we do first?"

If there's one thing I think I'm good at, it's cutting through all the fluff to get to the heart of the issue.

"Look, nothing really matters until we develop a plan and cost that plan out for Underwood and the executives. We need to focus our attention on developing the plan that outlines how we make Accipiter more innovative, and cost out the effort. That's all we need to focus on over the next few days. Fortunately I've got some plans we've used with other clients in similar situations. What we'll need from you are the internal costs, especially in terms of resources."

Susan warmed to the task immediately. I've found that innovation work can be daunting, especially since there are so many ambiguities and gray areas within the work. Helping a client find the bedrock tasks and focusing them on these familiar actions is the best way to get started.

"OK. What do we need to do to modify these plans?"

"One of the first things we need to do is set up a couple of interviews with Brockwell, Underwood, and the other business line leaders. If we are going to implement an innovation program, we want to get their input as to the shape, size and scope of the program. Should we be focusing on disruptive innovations or incremental innovations? Should we create external innovation communities or rely on internal insights? Should we innovate existing products or create new products and markets? We need to gain a good understanding from them about how innovation supports their strategies, and how much risk and change they are willing to introduce. In my experience, it may be difficult to get this from them, so we may have to work up a draft outline of the program and have them say grace over it."

"All right, that makes sense. I think it will be difficult to get a clear picture of the strategies from them, but we can do our best. What else?"

"Once we understand or at least document a strategic scope for the innovation program, we can estimate the size of the team necessary to support our efforts, and begin to define the people we'll need on a part-time and full-time basis for our project team. That will include you and me, and Underwood as the executive sponsor, an HR person, a communications person and probably three to five representatives from the various business lines."

"I've already spoken to George about the communications person. It was clear to me that we'd need help active communicating our goals and the intent of the program. After our talk with George and Jim, George asked me to speak with the VP of HR, and we've identified a person in her organization who can assist us with the project."

"OK, then we need to identify a couple, probably no more than five, people, who can work with us and represent the various insights and interests of the organization from the various business lines or product lines. Best to ask for volunteers."

"Why volunteers? Why not simply have their managers assign a person?"

"A couple of reasons. First, regardless of the assignment, the folks we get are going to keep their hands in their "day jobs" because this project won't occupy them forever. They'll want to keep current in their regular jobs even if their commitment to us is 80-90%. Since they are going to be continuing some involvement in their regular jobs, I want people on the team who are willing to work extra hours because they believe in change and innovation. It's tough enough to implement any change, but the kinds of change we'll create will take real passion. People who get assigned to this will look at it as just another task on their plate. I want more than that - I want the malcontents and true believers. They are the ones who will be here late, and won't get disappointed or frustrated when we encounter setbacks."

Susan seemed unsure of my staffing philosophy. "It's not that I disagree with your approach" she said "but the managers may have a lot of concern about their staff volunteering themselves for extra work. After all, they do have a business to run."

"Yep, and you've pointed out another reason I want volunteers, and we need to reserve the right to accept or reject people from the team. This project is too important to be a dumping ground for people who aren't cutting it or up to snuff, or who don't believe in this work. We need, as much as possible" I said this waving my hands, trying to tamp down the fires" to make this an elite, conspicuous team. If this becomes just another "flavor of the month" team, everyone will recognize it for what it is and ignore us."

"With the strategic framework in mind, and the resources identified, I suppose we build a project plan next?"

"Yes, and that will help us arrive at some cost estimates for Brockwell."

"We've got until Friday. Let's get to work."

From altitude to bedrock in just over an hour. Now it was time to start climbing the next mountain.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Fifty Six

2009-09-03T05:08:00.000-07:00

Six am on a Monday. The sky still pitch black, at least the sliver I can see from my window. The alarm is insistent, my head is pounding and there's a cottony desert in my mouth. It appears that two wrongs don't make a right after all.

Confounded by the mixture of apprehension and elation. Filled with questions - what if, what if. Head aching, stomach churning. And I still am in a horizontal position, with one eye fixed on the clock. Six oh one.

In my mind's eye I could see Brockwell, who probably sprang out of bed at 4am each workday morning to sweat to the oldies on his elliptical machine, and was bright eyed and ready to go at the office by 5am. Even now he was sitting at his desk, planning his day, consulting his calendar. Preparing for our meeting. Hale and hearty, in fighting trim. The mind reels.

Somehow I managed to take a long cold shower, which relieved my head and jumpstarted my heart. Dry toast, bitter yesterday coffee from the bottom of the pot and a rumbled black suit. At 6:45 I took one last glance around the apartment, grabbed my keys and left, headed out to a celebration or an execution. Moving down the hallway to the stairwell I thought of Sean Penn in that movie. Dead man walking. Maybe so.

I can't say I remember the drive to Accipiter. It was cool that morning and the traffic wasn't too bad. I actually arrived early - a first for me. By the time I got to the parking lot I had settled down, ready to plunge in or back away, promising myself that if Brockwell managed to create yet another excuse for putting off the project I was going to immerse myself in the projects that Meredith and Matt had underway and leave Accipiter to its own devices.

At 7:15 there was no one at the main reception, so I rang Susan and got her voicemail, then settled in to wait for Susan or Brockwell, or the reception team. Promptly at 7:30 Brockwell himself turned the corner, called me over and started back down the hallway. As we walked together, my stomach began to lurch again. I was expecting the worst. Susan had not come to greet me.

"I did a lot of thinking over the weekend, Sam" and I felt a cool sweat break out on my forehead. "This innovation effort isn't easy." Still non-committal.

"It never is, but it is usually worth the effort" I said, with a grin that started and ended at my lips. The eyes, cheeks and forehead had already surrendered. I probably looked like a death mask, but couldn't make eye contact.

"Yes, well that's what I wanted to talk with you about. How much effort will be involved to create an innovation team and spark some real innovation here at Accipiter? Jim and I talked over the weekend and we are both convinced that Accipiter needs innovation as a core capability. We simply can't survive in our market without a radical increase in new products and services."

This wasn't the music I had expected to hear. Rather than a sweet sad melody, I was getting Happy Days are here again. But I know enough to never interrupt an executive when he or she is expounding on their own vision.

"We've decided to make this a strategic focus this year. Jim will ask the board to approve several new positions and we'll find the funding for a significant investment in consulting time. We understand this is a big change and we want to do it the right way - and come out of the effort with the skills and knowledge, and cultural change - to innovate well into the future. You look a little pale. Feeling OK? Want a glass of water?"

No. I was feeling fine. In fact, never better.

Susan met us in the conference room, clearly excited but strangely subdued as well. Brockwell opened the discussion.

"I've told Sam about our intentions to make innovation a strategic priority this year." He glanced at Susan, who met his eyes and nodded. "The two of you need to give me a plan by the end of the week we can take to the board, to approve any new headcount and funding. I want a three year plan. Our goal is to create within Accipiter a culture that support and expects innovation, and a team that is responsible for managing innovation across the organization."

"Can we get time with you and other executives to define the scope of the effort, to ensure we have good estimates about the costs and investments?"

"I can give you time, and I suggest you talk with several of the business unit heads, Fred Phillips in particular. From reading your previous work for Accipiter I found that you suggest including human resources in this type of effort."

It was a statement framed as a question, so I simply nodded.

"OK, then I'll clear it with Marjie that you can get time on her calendar this week. Speed is of the essence. Interview the people you can, and document your assumptions if you believe information is missing. I need that project plan and estimate on my desk by end of day Friday so we can present it to the board. If you are in doubt, estimate upwards, don't be conservative. We'll manage the costs downward later. Any questions?"

None from my side. I was ready to get started. I knew that Susan had one.

"I'm in a strange situation. I report to Bill. Has he OK'd my involvement?"

"Actually, for the next few months you'll report dotted line to me. We believe that this effort will need a committed head of innovation, and this is your chance to audition for the role. Do well, and it will likely be yours." He left the alternative unsaid, but it hung there.

It would make for some uncomfortable hallway meetings I was sure, but Susan had gotten what she wanted. Now the question was - could we make Accipiter an innovation success?

Pulp Innovation Chapter Fifty Five

2009-09-01T05:28:00.000-07:00

The weekend past in a blur of anticipation. The clock couldn't move fast enough, the days seemed to drag along. Even the attractions of sunny southern California didn't hold much appeal. I longed to be walled up in a noiseless, sterile conference room, surrounded by executives in suits making decisions about the future of their company. June called on Saturday and I took her to a prefunctory dinner, and we went dancing, but my head and my heart were elsewhere. She could tell that I was disengaged but I doubt she would have realized that it was Accipiter, and not another woman, that occupied my brain cycles.

As I walked her to her door, she turned and said "I hope she's good to you. I won't play one of those Hollywood heroines and tell you I'll always be here for you."

I put my hand on her door and closed it before she made the rapid getaway.

"We've meant something to each other for a long time" I said. "There's no other woman in my life right now. I'm just really occupied with a potential new client and trying to reason out the best way, no, the right way to do the work. It's been haunting me all weekend. I'm like the greyhound in the box, eyes on the rabbit but the bell hasn't rung yet. All nervous energy and playing out a bunch of scenarios in my mind. I'm sorry I wasn't the best date tonight. I know it and if you'll let me, I'll make it up to you."

She looked at me, not really buying the story entirely but seeing the truth that was in at least part of it. I knew then she was a terrific woman and I should make the right moves here and focus my attentions for at least a few hours on my personal life, rather than become so overwhelmed with Accipiter that I lost myself in my work.

"Can I buy you a drink?" I said, hoping she would ask me in for a nightcap.

"Sam, not tonight. If what you say is true, then give me a call when you are ready to focus on me, on us. I think I believe you, but I need to see more from you than an hour or two. Good luck with the new client" emphasis on client "and when you've decided that I'm as important as some company, then give me a call. Maybe I'll answer."

With that she glanced at my hand on her door, which slid away and she slipped into her apartment, without a glance back at me. I'd managed, in less than a few weeks, alienate my partner, my co-workers and my sometimes girlfriend all to win a new client that I wasn't even sure I wanted. The work was almost too personal.

I relieved my sorrow in the usual way, one shotglass at a time that evening and slept in on Sunday. The hours seemed to tick by even more slowly, so I left the apartment and went to the office, to catch up on all the work I'd left undone during the Accipiter sales efforts. Yet at the office I was unable to concentrate, still spinning the Accipiter opportunity around in my mind. Forms, bills, receipts were scattered around my desk representing tens of thousands of billings, but I could not help but play out all the alternative outcomes for Accipiter. I could imagine arriving on Monday to be told that over the weekend, Underwood and Brockwell had had second thoughts and were postponing the project, or that the board had decided to halt the project and hire a big name consulting firm to examine the strategic consequences of innovation and report back in six months. There were so many opportunities for any innovation project to go astray, and so few chances for one to succeed. I had a lot tied up in this one, and it had me tied up as well.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Fifty Four

2009-08-31T05:26:00.000-07:00

Matt eyed me warily that Thursday morning. He seemed uncertain about my presence in the office, as if I were an unexpected bill collector.

"You look a little surprised to see me."

"I am. I thought you had taken permanent office space at Accipiter."

Close to it I thought.

"We got the go ahead from Underwood, the CEO, yesterday. I'm working with the project manager and their CFO to pull together a project plan on Monday. Could be a good, long term client."

That seemed to bring me back into his good graces a bit.

"Meredith won a new research project at Cantide last week, and I'm continuing our work with Johnson Industries. Things are just busting out all over."

"Look, I know I got in a little deep with Accipiter, and I appreciate the fact you've stepped up to take over the work. There was something about this client - I just had to win this work."

"Something about Accipiter, or something about the project manager, that made you want to win the work? And since when do we make such a large bet on just one firm?"

Matt was right, but I wasn't going to lie down and let him walk all over me.

"Accipiter has the potential to be a very large client, and a successful client. I made the decision to spend my time on that account, and I don't have to justify it. I know I've been less than attentive to the firm and to our other clients, and I'll make it up."

Matt wasn't mollified by the answer but didn't pursue it any further. He and I both left the issues with Susan fall to the wayside for the moment.

"What's the work going to look like at Accipiter?"

"They need a complete overhaul of their product development process. They are too inwardly focused and haven't created a compelling new product or service in years. The culture is very comfortable and safe, so we'll need to do some revamping of the culture and the compensation systems. They have been a slow follower, and need to get out in front of their competition. I'd like to see them conduct some scenario planning and ethnography to understand where the market is going. There will be opportunities for your skills as well as Meredith's at Accipiter. I can see at least a year, perhaps more, of work for us there."

His eyebrows almost merged with his hairline and I think I had his attention and perhaps a bit more. One client of the size I described, in combination with our existing clients and prospects, could mean a good year, and perhaps another staff member or two.

"How certain are you of that forecast?"

"Not counting any chickens yet, especially after all the false starts. But I think we have a real sponsor who is committed to doing something dramatic. I'll know a lot more next week after we put the plan together and define the costs."

"So, in the mean time, do you think you can help me review some of the Cantide insights and meet with them tomorrow to lead some ideation?"

It was the least I could do, given how much of the load he'd carried the last few weeks. Or probably months.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Fifty Three

2009-08-28T05:30:00.000-07:00

It was one of those moments we'll look back in time and wonder what happened. It had a Rashoman-like quality, creating a different perspective from each of us that was in the room that day. While I had been a part of a number of discussions with senior executives, I'd never seen a CEO pushed into a corner by a compatriot. Underwood was cornered, and cornered executives, like cornered animals, were unpredictable things.

I gasped slightly and realized I'd been holding my breath, waiting for Underwood to respond to Brockwell's challenge. As I considered it, though, I was certain that Underwood would play his ace in the hole, the card every executive puts on the table when they don't want to, or can't, make a decision. Underwood was going to ask us for more information, more research, more cost estimates. Anything to keep from having to make the decision right now.

Underwood glanced from Susan to Brockwell, studiously avoiding my gaze. My eyes were fixed on him, an intentional challenge. I was willing him to have the backbone to support the innovation efforts he had championed earlier. He cleared his throat like a gun shot, and I couldn't tell which shoe would drop.

"You are right, George, that I have been advocating innovation, and I believe it is something we absolutely need to do." My heart rose. "However.." My heart sank while he held up his hand to stave off any immediate reactions "However, I don't have the time to get as involved as I suspect the team will need me to be. I have a suggestion, however." My heart was pounding - was there a light at the end of this tunnel, or just a train approaching? "I'll fully support you taking the lead on innovation, if you are willing to take on the work. You'll have my full support and can act as the head of innovation for Accipiter, at least until I complete some other activities the board has asked me to complete." He shot a conspiratorial glance at Brockwell, who decoded it and recognized what he was talking about.

In this game of pass the ticking bomb around, now Brockwell had it securely in his lap. There was no one else to pass it to in the room, as we all knew a senior executive would have to sponsor the initiative. He couldn't pass it to Susan, and certainly not to me, and, as they say in the military, excrement rolls downhill, not up. You could almost see the mental abacus working behind Brockwell's eyes as he weighed the alternatives. There probably wasn't another executive who would push as hard as he would. Thompson had already proved unreliable. If Brockwell backed down, there'd be no reason to go forward. If he agreed, he'd take on another significant initiative just as Accipiter was heading into the yearly budgeting cycle.

Susan was carefully studying the nap on the rug in Underwood's conference room, like a scientist trying to read ancient hieroglyphics. She was not making any eye contact, hoping like a kid at bedtime that Mom will overrule Dad and let her watch the late movie, there, but pretending not to be involved in the decision. Even so her face was flushed, and she was breathing rapidly. It was evident that this meant a great deal to her.

Brockwell finished sliding the virtual beads around and locked eyes with me. I knew what he would say before he opened his mouth.

"Let's do it" he said. "I'll delegate some of my responsibilities to Aaron" this he said with a glance to Underwood, who nodded "and I'll need to round up a few strong managers to help us make this project go forward" Again, Underwood nodded. I wondered what this would cost him.

Underwood stood up, signaling his part of the meeting was done. "Good. I'm excited about the project and about your role in heading it up. Sam, Susan, excellent work. I can't wait to see the new ideas start flowing." And with that he left the room, on to another meeting.

Susan looked a bit stunned. "What just happened?"

"We're on, and moving the project forward. I'll be the executive sponsor. You and Matt have convinced me. I'm sticking my neck out a bit, but don't worry, there's something in it for me, as well as for Accipiter. Now, let's get the plans finalized and get started. Matt, do we have an agreement with your team?"

"No."

"OK. Susan and I will walk the vendor agreement and services agreement through purchasing, otherwise it will be another six weeks before we can get started. I need a day or two to clear up my calendar and bring a few other people on board. What say we kick off this project next Monday."

I was excited but didn't want him to think we came cheap, or easy. I pulled a small appointment calendar from my pocket and made a show of checking my availability.

"I can do that. Will we meet here, say at 9am?" That was one of the first of my assumptions that would prove to be incorrect.

"9am? By god man, by 9am I'm half way through my day. Let's compromise and kick off at 7:30 next Monday." Susan shot me a glance that said just shut up and say yes, so I did. 7:30? That put me feet on the floor in my apartment at 6am. Was the sun even up at that hour?

We left the meeting and Susan and I thanked George and walked over to collect our things. She escorted me to the front, her excitement bubbling over.

"Can you believe it? I thought we'd lost our chance when George asked Jim to take on the executive sponsor role. I was ready to quit. And then George agreed to sponsor it. We finally have someone who will back us and support us on this project. I can't wait for Monday."

My emotions were boiling as well, but I tried to temper her thinking. "It's good George said yes" I said "but we need to be sure we understand his goals and priorities. He may have different objectives than we do, so one of the first things we need to do is to talk with him, and understand how he sees the world."

"You're right, but I'm still excited."

I turned, shook her hand and made to offer her my security badge. To my surprise, there in the middle of the reception area she threw an arm around me and hugged me.

"See you Monday" she said.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Fifty Two

2009-08-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

We'd worked for four days, examining every angle, talking to every influencer and building what we hoped would be a bullet proof case for the innovation efforts we felt were best for Accipiter.

Sitting in the assistant's office, waiting for Underwood to finish his meeting, I felt for a moment like a man on trial, waiting for the jury to come in and read out my sentence. I was entirely too invested in the success or failure of Accipiter, a prospect that had yet to pay me a dime of revenue after six months of business development. I had an uncertain and awkward relationship, both personal and business, with the project manager and had been so consumed with Accipiter that the rest of my business had been pushed off or ignored. Thankfully Matt was capable and Meredith had come up to speed more quickly than we'd anticipated. If I took a hard, objective look at the meeting I could see that if Underwood didn't want to invest in an innovation effort and shot us down, I'd have plenty of other opportunities and would quickly recover professionally. It wasn't clear to me yet why I had turned an ordinary sales effort into the hunt for the white whale, but there it was, and here I am, sitting impatiently like a kid on his first date, waiting for the new girlfriend to come down the stairs while I passed the time with her father.

Susan, on the other hand, seemed very optimistic. I think she had some inside information that had led her to believe that this meeting was a formality. We thought we were going to get the funds, and perhaps a real slap on the back as well. Who knew? Who can read the corporate tea leaves?

We were well prepared. We had a slide deck, examples of work Marlow had done for other firms, examples of innovative new products from Accipiter's competitors. All of this would be compelling, but only if Underwood felt the urgency and was willing to place a lot of emphasis, and a lot of his time, on innovation. And on that score, I had done my own homework. Underwood was a company man, having worked for Accipiter for almost his entire career, joining out of graduate school and working his way up through the financial organization. Not a promising track record for an innovator. Brockwell had assured us that while the numbers meant a great deal to Underwood, he was interested in placing his own stamp on the company and felt it had to change to be successful. We'd know in a few minutes.

The door opened and a number of Accipiter executives exited the conference room adjacent to Underwood's office. I'd been in and out of Accipiter's offices so frequently that I knew many of them, at least in passing, and several nodded in my direction and spoke to Susan. Brockwell walked over with Underwood and introduced me.

"Sam, this is Jim Underwood our CEO. Jim, Sam Marlow of Marlow Innovation. He's been a key contributor to the work we've done so far, and will be working with us if you give the go-ahead."

I'd seen Underwood's picture on the annual report, and he did not fail to impress. Every CEO looks like a television evangelist, not a hair out of place and crisp shirts with dark suits. Underwood was medium height, salt and pepper hair cut trim and carried himself like an athlete. One could easily imagine him walking off the golf course or the tennis courts.

"Sam, good to meet you. I've heard a lot about your work with our company, and I know it's been quite a while since you first started talking with us. I'm interested in changing the dynamic at Accipiter and encouraging much more innovative thinking and new product development. I'm interested to hear what you and Susan have to say."

Interested, but not yet committed I thought. It was better than a sharp stick in the eye, certainly.

We made our way into the conference room. Susan and I set up our presentation while Brockwell and Underwood took their seats. Susan made introductions and gave a brief overview of the proposal we'd developed, and then we settled in to present our thinking.

We had decided to recommend the whole kahuna - a centralized innovation team to facilitate innovation throughout Accipiter, to develop an innovation process and methodology and to act as a coach or facilitator for teams throughout Accipiter doing innovation. The central team would also take on trend spotting and scenario planning and would generate ideas for "white space" or "blue ocean" concepts, while the product lines retained responsibility for incremental and product innovation. We identified how the team would work, staffing requirements and investments for a three year period. It was a well thought out, well designed program but was reasonably expensive and definitely different from anything Accipiter had done before.

"This is a larger effort than I had anticipated" Underwood said once we were done. We'd intentionally asked for everything, assuming we could get some, if not most of what we thought was important. Ultimately for us we wanted 3 full time people in the innovation team and perhaps $500K to $1M dollars for innovation efforts by the team.

"When we spoke with George we felt the best course was to show you a true innovation program and what it would take to build and support such a program. This isn't a short term solution or a "toe in the water". What we've shown you, and what we think is the best chance for success, is a full immersion." Susan was hitting her stride. I think she was fully committed to an innovation program or finding a new company to work for.

"I didn't say I was opposed - just surprised." I think Underwood caught Susan's passion and conviction. "We need something like this, there's no doubt. George, what are your thoughts?"

That was a good sign to me. Brockwell was a supporter and felt the innovation program was a good way to drive new revenue.

"I brought these folks to you because they convinced me that innovation was necessary to do what we need to do to change Accipiter. I'm on board for the people investment. We'll need to do some work to find the funds. But what Sam and Susan have also told us is that this program needs your investment as well. Jim, can you spend the time and the energy to build some momentum for this program?"

How much did he really want it, and what was he willing to do to make it successful?

Pulp Innovation Chapter Fifty One

2009-08-25T05:11:00.000-07:00

Nine thirty sharp the next day my phone rang.

"Marlow" I said, wiping coffee grounds from my tongue.

"We're in" she said.

"OK. What day?"

"Next Tuesday, 9am. We'll have an hour. Just Underwood and Brockwell. We make our recommendations and ask for funds and resources."

"Great."

"Can you come over today? I want to get started on the presentation as quickly as possible. I'd like to have a draft to Brockwell for his comments by Friday."

I pushed some papers off the desk blotter. Normally they'd have my full attention, since they were the project plan that Meredith developed for Cantide. We'd been asked to conduct some ethnographic research to identify new products. It was Meredith's first project start to finish. But right now cracking the Accipiter nut was simply too compelling. Around the ring marks and smoldering ash, underneath the sticky notes and assorted flotsam and jetsam of my desktop I found my calendar. September 12, 9am. Noting booked for that day. Good. Counting back. September 7, today. Matt had scheduled a meeting with Goine Technologies to present some early idea concepts. He had asked me to attend weeks ago. Goine was a paying customer, while Accipiter was still in a sales process. Matt was going to have to go it alone.

"I'll be there in an hour" I heard myself say, and I rung off. I trusted Matt to get the work done well, and I knew Meredith had it in her to design the work at Cantide correctly. We'd finally climbed the ladder at Accipiter. There was no going any higher. With luck we'd walk out of that office on the 12th with the funds to do the work the right way.

I gave Meredith's plan the once over, marking up a few tasks and adding a recommendation or two and left it on her desk. I left Matt a note explaining the situation. I told June I'd be at Accipiter the rest of the day and left the office. It wasn't clear to me anymore if I was going for the client, for the project, or for Susan. It felt as if we were both captive to the project, and to a certain extent the work was running us, rather than the other way round.

I drove to Accipiter in a fog, arriving without recalling the drive. It was only 10:15, but I felt I'd been up all day. I resolved to myself to set priorities. Marlow Innovation had my name on the badge. It employed a number of interesting and dedicated people. I was the leader, in name and in practice. I had to balance the importance of Accipiter to the firm, and to me, and I had to be willing to move on as well if Accipiter didn't progress the way I knew it should. My feelings for Susan were confused - not love really, more like the way two people in a lifeboat cling to each other for assurance. We were like two kids who finally get to see Santa, and realize that perhaps it wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Susan met me at the reception desk, with a wary look in her eye. I think we both were confronted with the reality that Tuesday would make, or break, whatever relationship we had. Perhaps it needed to be defined first.

"Susan, Accipiter could be an important client to Marlow Innovation" I said, "And I'm working hard to win this business. On Tuesday, Underwood can make us both very happy, or he can decide to forego innovation. I'll work my other clients if that happens. What will you do?"

It hadn't come out the way I'd wanted, but my my thinking wasn't clear. We were on the brink of something big, but the work felt crowded by the possibility of a relationship between the two of us. What would happen if we won this project? What would happen if we lost?

Pulp Innovation Chapter Fifty

2009-08-20T05:08:00.000-07:00

The line between commiserating and celebrating is a very thin line. A few weeks ago we'd had a beer together to commiserate the fact that nothing we did at Accipiter seemed to go as planned. We'd sat at the same bar, had the same drinks and we'd consoled each other over our hard work and lack of progress. Today, the beer was just as cold, the wine just as tart, but we were sitting in a nether world somewhere between shock and celebration. George Brockwell, probably the most unlikely candidate to improve our innovation chances, had broken the log jam and offered to take our proposal straight to the CEO. Given that Brockwell, was the right hand man to Jim Underwood, and the heir apparent, we believed this meant our project would finally gain some momentum.

Immediately after the meeting, Susan turned to me and said: "O'Malley's. Five thirty." And had gathered up her things and left the conference room, never acknowledging Bill Thompson or anyone else in the room. I was sure if it was relief, emotion or some other factor that caused her to flee the room.

I hovered, slowly gathering my papers and re-arranged my bag. I wanted to speak to Brockwell alone, away from Thompson and some of the other executives who'd been part of the innovation program all along. Slowly, one by one, some of the executives left the room, leaving me, Thompson and Brockwell. It was fairly clear Thompson wasn't going to leave me alone with Brockwell, so I made my move.

"George, just want you to know we appreciate your confidence in our proposal and look forward to meeting with you and with Jim."

Brockwell looked at me curiously, as if he had a bad taste in his mouth and was trying to clear it before speaking. His eyes never left mine.

"Sam, we are under attack from many sides. We've researched, and investigated, and piloted, but we have no compelling new products to release. In my mind, we have no alternative but to innovate, and quickly. I can't for the life of me understand why it has taken this long to reach an agreement on this project."

Thompson stiffened visibly but said nothing. I was on very thin ice, since Thompson was Susan's boss, but Brockwell clearly held the whip hand now. My hand was flush, but I needed to know what cards he held.

"In my experience" I said "these projects always take time to approve, since the work requires a different approach and perspective than the existing culture is comfortable with, and introduces a lot of risk and uncertainty. I'm just glad we are moving ahead with you."

If a glance could cut diamonds, I'd have ten or fifteen facets by now. I could feel Thompson glaring at me but did not bother to acknowledge his presence. Brockwell shot holes through my chest but didn't take his eyes off me.

"Hmm. Yes, I suppose these projects do take more time and discussion. Call me tomorrow and let's set a time to see Jim."

"Glad to. I'll get with Susan and we'll work with your assistant to get on your calendar and then find a convenient time to talk with Jim. What do you want to accomplish in the meeting with Jim?"

At this point, since neither of us had acknowledged his presence, Thompson stood, gathered his papers and left. He'd heard what he needed to hear.

"Sam, I want you and Susan to present the same material to Jim. He is passionate about implementing change and wants the organization to innovate. Frankly" he said, glancing at the open doorway "he's frustrated that this hasn't moved over the last three months, and has made clear to me that it needs to move faster."

I could take the hint. Thompson, for whatever reason, had been stringing us along, not intending to do more than absolutely necessary, while Underwood had wanted more. I never understand why CEOs allow their plans to be held hostage by their subordinates, but that's another story for another time.

"Susan will be ecstatic to move forward more quickly" I told him. "I'm sorry she had to leave so quickly once the meeting ended."

"No worries. Just talk with my assistant and get the meeting set with Jim."

I thanked him and left. I walked to my car with the lightest step I'd had in weeks, and pointed the convertible to O'Malley's. I had a beer at the bar and read the paper, waiting for Susan to arrive.

Promptly at 5:30 she pushed the door open and glanced around. I waved at her and she came over, sat down and made eye contact with my waiter. She ordered a Chardonnay.

"Sorry I walked out so quickly. I was afraid I'd say something to George or Bill that would end my career, so I felt the best thing to do was just leave."

"You were definitely in a no-win situation. I know Bill's your boss, but what game has he been playing?"

"No idea. I had no idea that Underwood felt so strongly about innovation. Bill has been parsing out information to me, and I thought perhaps someone above him was pulling back on the reins. Now I feel like he's misled me for several months. What do you do when you can't believe your own boss?"

I told her about the conversation I'd had with Brockwell after the meeting ended. Her spirits rose as I told her that Brockwell was stepping in and clearing the way for us to meet with Underwood as quickly as possible.

"What could Bill have been thinking?" I asked. "Clearly Underwood wants more action around innovation."

"I really have no idea" she said, signaling the waiter for another glass. "I was led to believe that Underwood and some of the other senior executives were reluctant to move forward. What am I to do now? Bill won't be happy that we are moving ahead quickly. I wonder what he'll do now."

Thompson didn't strike me as particularly vindictive, and he'd been the bottleneck. It seemed strange to think that he'd continue to be a fly in the ointment now that Underwood was stepping in, but who knows how things work.

What was important to me just then was that very soon we'd be meeting the CEO of Accipiter to pitch him on our plans for innovation.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Forty Nine

2009-08-06T05:28:00.000-07:00

My head was spinning and I was glad that Susan had offered to kick off the presentation. I was still trying to recover from the coldcock blow that announced that the CFO was the new "sponsor" for innovation. Now, I'd worked with a number of firms on innovation, and I'd had sponsors that ranged from the expected (product management, marketing or business line lead) to the unexpected (a human resources director) but the last person I thought I'd ever see as a sponsor for innovation was the CFO. But, there he sat, paying close attention to Susan's introduction.

I was pulled out of my funk by Susan introducing me and the transition to the next slide, which introduced our vision for innovation at Accipiter.

"Pardon me, Susan, but before Sam presents, can you tell me how long you've been working on the innovation effort to date?" That from Brockwell. It was probably an innocent question, but my heart sank to my knees. I'd be involved with Accipiter now for at least six months, presenting, talking, cajoling and we still didn't have an active project. Susan had been at it far longer. It wasn't her fault that we weren't further along. It wasn't anybody's fault. So far there hadn't been any reason for the project to succeed.

I glanced at Bill Thompson, but there was no joy there. He wasn't willing to step out on the ledge with us. If Susan was going down, she would do so publicly and alone.

"I've been working on developing an innovation capability within Accipiter for about eight months. I took the position in September and had to transition some of my other responsibilities. We've had, frankly, some starts and some stops along the way."

"What's the barrier?" Hmm. Things could get interesting. Could Brockwell actually care about innovation and want it to move forward, or was he just scratching a rhetorical itch? And, how far out on the limb would Susan be willing to go?

"Well, George, Accipiter's culture doesn't lend itself well to this kind of change. That's actually why we decided to take a step back and get agreement on a vision for what innovation could do for us. It was pretty clear there was a lot of concern and little interest in some of our initial efforts, so we decided to see if we could get buy in with you, the senior executives, and start to push the concept of innovation through the business units."

George was nodding, but not giving too much away at this point. It still wasn't clear whether he was agreeing with Susan or just taking it all in. He definitely was playing his cards close to the vest.

"Please continue with the presentation" he said.

That was my cue to start.

"Susan and I have spent the last few weeks thinking about innovation and what it could mean to Accipiter, and what Accipiter needs to be successful if it commits to an increased focus on innovation. Over the next few slides I want to show you the vision we've defined and discuss the opportunities and challenges we see in relation to that vision. As we progress through this, I hope you'll find that we've defined the opportunity well, and that you'll see the importance of senior executive commitment to this effort. As Susan has already pointed out, no significant initiative is going to be successful without your buy in and continuing support."

"We've identified three significant strategic objectives that Accipiter is pursuing. These are: Organic growth in key markets, entry into new product lines or areas where Accipiter does not have an offering today and entry into international markets. We believe that a focused innovation effort can support and accelerate the first two strategic goals, and this is our first supposition. Innovation is not a strategy, but an enabler of key strategies and goals."

So far, so good. We'd taken the strategic goals we could identify, which hadn't been easy, and identified the ones we felt we could support with innovation.

"If we seek to innovate around these two strategic goals, we can decide whether we seek incremental or disruptive innovation. Making these choices will then determine what kinds of innovation activities, processes and goals we'd implement, and the amount of change we'd require for Accipiter. Our recommendation is to pursue incremental innovation in new markets for organic growth, and pursue disruptive innovation in new products. This recommendation means that we'd form programs to assist the existing product groups with incremental but intentional innovation, seeking new ideas for new products and services that are aligned to existing products for organic growth. We'd also work to set up more radical or disruptive innovation programs to identify new product or service opportunities or "blue oceans" where Accipiter can be the first to offer a new product or service."

"You'd suggest doing both, simultaneously?" Brockwell seemed a bit surprised. It was becoming evident whose meeting this was, as no one else had offered a suggestion or made any commitment. Thompson, who had been our sponsor and conduit, seemed to shrink even further in his chair. I wasn't sure if he was preparing to duck the bullets, or if he was losing stature in the hierarchy.

"Yes. Both require different commitment and different tools and techniques. The incremental work can start quickly and will identify new ideas in fairly short order, which allows us to get to the proverbial 'quick wins'. The disruptive work will take longer but will create more interesting and valuable opportunities. So the incremental work creates momentum and new products and buys time for the disruptive work, which will take longer but have more potential impact."

Brockwell's eyes widened. I'd really stepped in it this time.

He turned to face Thompson and Phillips. "Can we take on two simultaneous innovation projects?" He wanted them on the record.

Phillips hemmed and hawed, but allowed that Accipiter could probably manage both. To him it wasn't an issue of dollars but an issue of resources.

I responded. "Yes, in our experience innovation is almost always bounded by people more than costs. We will work with you to define the appropriate team, and we'll keep the requests to a minimum, but there will be demands on resources - and they'll be on your best people."

Thompson still hadn't responded, and Brockwell looked at him curiously. I was beginning to sense that Thompson had never intended for things to get this far - perhaps all he had ever wanted was to look like he was making some efforts around innovation. Well, he was soon to be hoist on his own petard. He'd have to come down one way or the other - either he'd been stringing Susan and I along for a number of months, or he'd grow a spine in the next 30 seconds.

"I don't think we can afford to do two simultaneous initiatives" he said at last, refusing to look at us. He busied himself with rearranging some papers in front of him. "I think the best we could do would be to focus on the incremental innovation for the product groups." Once again choosing the least risky approach.

Brockwell took that all in, nodding all the time. He was beginning to remind me of the bobblehead tchotchkes you can pick up at the ballpark on souvenir night. Then, he said something that I'll never forget.

"No, Bill, I think we need to do them both. What's the point of only doing the easy, incremental stuff? We already do that occasionally. Accipiter needs more, and we need to challenge it to do more. Susan, you and Sam plan to see me tomorrow. Call my assistant and set something up. I'll look at your estimates and see what we can do for the funding, then we'll take our proposal to Jim."

Jim. The CEO. George was overruling Bill and taking us straight to the CEO.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Forty Eight

2009-08-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

Three days. That's a long weekend to some people, and a lifetime to others. Three days could make or break a quarter for a large organization. Three days is longer than most women get to be in the hospital before, during and after the birth of a baby. Three days can seem like a lifetime when you are on the receiving end of a software vendor pitch, trying to understand fact from fiction and watching screens and functions fly by at a thousand miles an hour. There was nothing to it, however. We'd asked for the demos and then we'd been unable to provide clear guidance about what Accipiter wanted to do with the software. Without clear direction and a defined set of needs or processes, all the software vendors could do is walk us through their standard dog and pony demos. After three days of watching these demos, I could tell you which ones had the nicest colors and which used fonts I liked, which offered features and attributes I thought were useful and which firms I'd want to work with or avoid based on the sales pitch. But none of that really mattered. What mattered after three days of demos, and after several weeks of work developing the innovation vision, was that we'd finally get an audience with the senior executives to get approval on our vision or clarity on the purpose and goals so we could reshape the vision. That meeting, finally, is scheduled for today.

Over my third cup of coffee I reviewed the requisite PowerPoint slides and pondered what the reception would be to our proposal. We'd tracked down as many of the executives as we could get in to see to brief them on our thinking and listen to their ideas, fears and concerns. The reception had been modest but polite. There were no overt concerns voiced or significant discomfort displayed by the executive team, and several interesting and valuable suggestions. One of the things we'd hoped would come out of these briefings would be a volunteer, someone so interested in innovation and trying out the process that the executive would volunteer his or her line of business, product group or geography to go first. In seven meetings we'd had only one taker, an up and coming hotshot who was interested in changing Accipter who ran one of the product groups. Mike Stimson is a real mixed blessing. Mike is clearly a comer, and is one of those guys who is fully committed to change. Stimson has implemented a number of new methods and processes in his team, some of which have worked well, and some of which have failed or managed to piss off the people around him. Stimson, while a climber, has a bit of a deaf ear when it comes to working well with his peers, and he is covered by Fred Phillips of all people, who is acting has his mentor and sponsor. Having Stimson as our first trial would mean that he would be fully engaged, and his team would be on board, but could damage our results in the eyes of other executives. We'd need to tread cautiously during the pilot.

Susan walked in with the final, updated deck. At this point I could have recited the contents of the deck blindfolded, drunk and hanging from my heels over an abyss. Strangely, that what I was sure the meeting would be like as well. Susan had dark circles under her eyes, the stress emanating from her fingertips like small sparks of electricity. She seemed perfectly composed except for around the edges, like a painting the artist was too busy to complete, fading off around the edges.

"You ready?"

"I'm ready. I was up early this morning reviewing these slides" she said. "There really shouldn't be any surprises. Everyone has committed to the meeting and we've briefed the deck with about 80% of the attendees. Bill has committed to me that the CEO will cover us if necessary. I don't see a big concern, other than perhaps the IT guys."

"They won't scotch the request."

"No, but if they aren't on board they can extend this project until you and I are comfortably rocking ourselves into retirement on a porch in Modesto."

"I'm not retiring in Modesto. When the time comes I'll push off in a little boat and go fishing like the Old man and the sea. Just float away and not come back."

"Ok, whatever your choice of oblivion. They can delay, obfuscate and pilot this thing to death. I think we've got Frank on board. Let's just hope he stays there."

"You'll do the presenting?"

"I'll kick it off and handle the first two sections. I'd like for you to cover what competitors are doing and what you see as the best going in concepts for our vision and innovation expectations and models. That will come better from an outsider than from me."

"So you can blame the consultant later?"

Her eyes tried to smile. Her voice was tired and wavered a bit. "I don't think you have to worry about that. If this goes down, or even gets significantly delayed, I'll be looking for something new, and you'll find another innovation executive to start a beautiful friendship with."

Darn tootin. But I'd put far too much into this to see it fall apart, or lose momentum, or run up against an executive team with too little gumption and too much fear of change. Come hell or high water, we were going to leave there with an approval, or something was going up in flames.

"I'm with Cortez on this one. We've landed and we're burning the boats. There's no easy way out, no easy way back."

Now her eyes smiled, and so did the rest of her face. I didn't realize it until then, but she was a wreck. The weeks and months of living in limbo, never sure if we were moving ahead or killing the project, living in a half-alive, half-dead no man's land had taken a lot out of her. Admirable that she was keeping it together. Frayed around the edges but still solid at the core.

"It's time" she said, sounding like the executioner leading me to the guillotine. "Let's go."

After six months of uncertainty and misdirection, headfakes and management gibberish, we were finally going to bring this to a head.

We entered the conference room and I spotted many of the usual suspects, most of whome we'd managed to brief before the meeting. Frank was there, of course, representing IT. Fred Phillips was there, and of course Bill. George Brockwell was a surprise addition. George, the CFO of Accipiter, had expressed little interest in the innovation program to date. A few other sundry executives, most of whom we'd met before, completed the cast. The only outlier in the room was George. His presence made me uncomfortable since I didn't have any sense of his agenda or purpose in this meeting. The vision we were proposing and the innovation community we'd scoped weren't large and certainly weren't expensive, and George as the CFO didn't seem to have a dog in this fight. As Susan and I arranged the PowerPoint decks and set up the presentation on the projector, I managed ask her, very much under my breath, why George was there.

"He's just been named by the CEO as the new sponsor for innovation" she said, eyes pleading for me not to blow my stack.

"What?" I shouted that whisper.

"I just found out this morning. The CEO values George's opinion and usually follows his advice. George is probably here to act as an impartial reviewer of our proposal."

Like a funhouse, the surprises never end.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Forty Seven

2009-07-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

As should be evident by now, I'm not a morning person. My sleep patterns and rhythms mirror vampires in this regard - we both abhor the rising sun. This morning, however, was going to require me to be on my feet, awake and alert very early, to recap the work Susan and I had completed last night and present it to Bill and his colleagues before the next software demo. If we could frame the innovation community more effectively, we could ask more relevant and insightful questions and understand how the software might best work for Accipiter and achieve its goals.

So that morning, the sun peeked over the eastern horizon and slanted through the shutters like a laser beam, and bathed me in strange orange-yellow light. As the sun poked through I raised my fourth cup of terrible, lukewarm, bottom of the pot coffee, hopefully left over from yesterday. I reviewed the writeup from our discussions and tried to encapsulate it in a format that the management team could quickly absorb and understand. Since Charles Schultz was no longer with us, that meant I'd need the oldest presentation crutch in the business world - a PowerPoint presentation. There's simply no better way to present three points on a slide, six slides in a presentation than PowerPoint, and it has the added benefit of being the linga franca of the executive suite. So there I was, bright and way too early, putting the finishing touches on a 44 point font to complete the presentation. If all went well we could present our thinking to the steering team at 8am and kick off a demonstration at 8:30. By 9am or so my brain would start working, just in time for the end of the demonstration.

My phone rang, which was strange, since anyone who knew me well enough to call me knew I was never up this early, and even if I was, I wasn't in the office.

"Hello Susan" I said into the phone.

"How did you.."

"How did I know it was you? No one else would be calling me this early. No one I usually work with would believe I was in the office before 9."

"Sounds reasonable. Quickly, two things. First, I wanted to thank you for dinner last night. I enjoyed a chance to get out and talk about Accipiter and innovation away from the office. I hope that you'll understand our conversation is confidential. I wouldn't want everything I said last night repeated in the office."

"No problems. Your secrets are safe with me."

"OK. Second, how's the presentation shaping up?"

"Just finished. Hold on and I'll send it over to you."

I emailed the presentation while we held the phone.

"OK, got it. Any significant issues or points from your perspective?"

"I think I captured everything we discussed last night. I think you should present this - I think it would be better received coming from an Accipiter employee."

"Hmm. Could go either way. They might like this very much, or feel like we are stepping on their toes, defining strategy. I'll present it, but I might make a few changes."

"Fine. Have at it. I'll see you there at 7:30."

"Thanks Sam."

"Talk to you."

I felt almost human after the short drive to Accipiter. It turns out that before 7am the highways have much less traffic, and the cool morning air flowed nicely over the convertible. At one point I felt my arm dangling out the window. One could almost get used to this early morning thing.

Another benefit to early arrival - the choice of parking spots right out front. I picked one that I knew would be shaded later as the sun got hot, and walked up to the front doors. This early, there was no one at the reception desk, and I'd need to go in with Susan or another Accipiter employee. She came out through the lobby a few minutes later, waving at me with a stack of papers in her hand.

"Sam, I think we're ready. I've made a couple of changes to your presentation and I think we can get Bill and the steering team to buy in to our vision for the innovation community. We might just get the kind of vision document we need to scope the work, and help shape the software demonstrations to be more valuable for us. Come on, Bill and the team should be ready for us."

When we got to the conference room, Bill, another executive I'd met but couldn't remember, and Frank were there. Bill made apologies for two other executives - they had been called into another meeting and could not participate in the discussion or demo this morning. I waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Since we don't have a quorum, I think it will make sense to hold off a couple of days on your vision document. We should still take time to see the software demo since we are here and it is scheduled, though." I think this is called throwing water to a drowning man.

Susan looked visibly deflated. I wasn't really surprised. I've seen the management two-step done before, and climbed enough mountains to know a false peak when I encounter one. This is just another hurdle to climb, and losing momentum or faith now wasn't interesting or practical.

"Bill" I said "can we have your assistant schedule a meeting with all the necessary team members at the first opportunity, so we can finalize the vision document?"

"Sure" he said "Carol can take care of scheduling that meeting and we can press ahead with the demonstrations." He knew, and I knew he knew, how valuable that vision document would be to our discussions with the software vendors and for the success of the team. But there was nothing to be done for it.

We were doomed to another dog and pony show from another software vendor, since we didn't have any prioritized needs or documented workflow. All we could do was watch a litany of features and another software wizard flip through screens in a mind numbing pace.

I looked at Susan, who looked a bit defeated and said, softly, under my breath "We'll get there."

Pulp Innovation Chapter Forty Six

2009-07-27T05:37:00.000-07:00

Susan and I worked late that evening, trying to develop a strategic document for Bill and the management team to review and approve. We needed to frame for the executive team the rationale for an innovation program and community, and we needed to ensure that the program linked into key strategic goals. In other words, we were trying to build a document for them to approve, that in all reality they should have given us to use as a foundation for the project. This wasn't cart before the horse kind of stuff. It was pull your head out of your.. well, get on with doing the work of managing your firm so I can help you innovate more effectively.

By eight or so we'd finished a rough draft that Susan could leave for Bill to review the next morning. That document wasn't going to help us manage the next software demonstration, which was going to kick off in a little more than 12 hours, but at least the two of us felt we had a good scoping document. If Bill could review it and run it up the flagpole, we'd see whether everyone saluted or if it came back down shot full of holes. At this point, I had no good insight and either option was likely.

"I'm going to head out and get some dinner" I said. "Care to join me?"

To date, Susan had been very professional, very correct and I had little knowledge of her personal life. On her desk I'd see the usual shots of family and friends, usually taken in those partially posed settings when you "catch someone by surprise". Everyone taken by surprise in these photos had perfect hair, perfect teeth and seemed to be smiling in a bucolic setting. Other than a few glimpses of those shots however, I knew very little about a person who might be joined hip to hip with me for the next six to eight months on an important consulting assignment.

She glanced up and shifted her head in a way that reminded me of a puppy trying to reason out what was going on.

"Dinner. You know, a restaurant. With food. Sustenance? If it makes you more comfortable, we'll call it a business meeting."

That seemed to call her back to the here and now.

"I'd like to eat, yes. I was thinking about whether or not I needed to go home first. I have a dog and he needs to get his exercise and get out, otherwise the condo will be a mess. Could we meet somewhere in 45 minutes or so?"

"Sounds good. Do you want to meet somewhere close to your place to make it easier for you?"

"Great. There's a good sushi place on Johnson and Vine called Ijami. It's one of my favorites. Do you eat sushi?"

You might think a hard boiled innovation consultant known for sleeping in his suit clothes who favors Old Granddad as a nightcap would be less than interested in raw, cold fish. However, Matt had adjusted my thinking years ago about sushi, and I had come to enjoy the food and the rituals.

"I've come to enjoy it over the years. I used to think of it as bait, but now I have a real appreciation for it. Should I meet you there at 9?"

"That's good. That will give me time to walk Homer and freshen up and meet you there."

"I'll see you there."

I left her in her office and walked out. It was a nice evening and I could use some fresh air, so I went to work on the convertible, putting the top down and securing a number of loose items that would fly around like confetti otherwise. I knew where Ijami was located, not too far from Accipiter's headquarters, and a long drive from home. I decided to drive over to Ijami and have a drink before Susan arrived. It made no sense to go home.

Ijami is set in a small shopping center, a relatively non-descript setting with a neon sign out front. I walked into the lobby, and the change was rather dramatic. Once inside, Ijami was fully Japanese, from the hostess and waitresses in kimonos to the low tables and bamboo floors. I asked for the bar and was directed to a small bar in the corner, where I ordered a bourbon on the rocks and contemplated levering myself down onto the floor to eat from the low tables. I like to think of myself as in relatively good shape. I jog and swim occasionally, and try to watch what I eat, but as I get older I notice that my flexibility is almost gone. I wake each morning with achilles so tight you could strum them. I'd need at least one bourbon, and perhaps two, to get that far down to eat.

Susan came in about ten til 9, and we were seated. With some maneuvering and a complete lack of grace, I made it under one of the small tables. She seemed to glide right in, with no problem at all.

"Thanks for meeting me" I said. "Otherwise it was a hungry man frozen dinner at home."

She laughed. "Lean cuisine for me."

"How's Homer?"

"Homer was very anxious to leave the premises and complete his business in the yard. I feel bad for him, cooped up all day but I haven't found a good place to leave him, and I'm not comfortable with dogsitters coming into my place."

"What kind of dog is he?"

"A cocker spaniel. He's pretty much all that is left of my last serious relationship. You know, get a significant other, and then test the waters by getting a dog together."

"Hmm. I've never gotten as far as the dog."

"Well, the dog wasn't the issue. Turns out we both wanted different things. But I didn't come to talk about that."

"Sorry, didn't mean to pry."

"You didn't. Just still a little ragged around the edges."

"Should we talk about Accipiter instead?"

She laughed. "Talk about ragged around the edges."

A sense of humor and she could see through all the noise around this project. Maybe this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Forty Five

2009-07-22T05:07:00.000-07:00

We'd assembled a team of Accipiter executives to sit in on a software demonstration from three software vendors. In this we followed the usual software demonstration mantra, which is to tell the vendor as little as possible about our needs and goals, and invite a number of corporate executives to watch software black belts demonstrate the ten thousand things their software could do exceedingly well, whether we needed it or not. Then, we'd decide which software we liked based on the colors of the screen or the lowest price. In other words, we'd failed to gain consensus on what the software should do, so rather than script the demo for the software vendors, we simply asked them to show us the software they had for innovation communities.

Don't get me wrong, I think the software guys were very enthusiastic and doing what we asked them to do. They trotted out their wares and demo'd software like a Benihana chef at a hot griddle. Some Accipiter executives seemed vaguely uncomfortable during the demos. I suspect it was motion sickness from the speed with which the screens flew by. Since we couldn't offer any specific instruction about what we wanted the community to do, we gave carte blanche to the software guys to strut their stuff. And did they ever.

After the demo was over, several executives hustled out to another meeting without a backwards glance. I suspect they weren't sure why they were there in the first place, and were making a quick get away to keep from having to submit an opinion. All remaining eyes turned to Frank and Thomas, the token IT representatives. Bill fired the first salvo.

"Well Frank, what do you think?"

Frank, as the CIO, had a number of opinions about software, mostly related to the challenges he faced with existing infrastructure and trying to keep the number of technologies his team had to master under control.

"Bill, as we've discussed before, we can support any Java-based application that is deployed and uses IIS and SQL Server. Those are the baseline requirements. It would be great if the application can link to Active Directory so we reduce user management issues. Whatever your team decides to implement will need to go through a validation test, and I'd suggest a short internal pilot. Other than that, I don't know that we have a strong opinion about these applications."

"What did you think of the functionality? Does it appear to be something that would be easy to maintain, and easy for the team to learn and use?"

"That's really a question for your users and your trainers. Most of these applications are relatively simple to configure, and seem to have enough APIs and extensions to allow us to link this to our intranet or perhaps share data with other systems, but I don't know if that's important to your team."

"OK, what if we want to invite customers or business partners to use the application?"

"Again, I can't speak to the functionality - all of these applications seem to allow internal or external users to enter ideas, rank them and comment on them. I guess my chief concerns when we talk about external users are user management and data security. How many users are we talking about? What requirements do we place on them? How do we ensure that they don't submit a Trojan Horse or try to inject a virus on the community? If you are going to invite external customers or users to the system, then we'll need to consider carefully where we host this - it will probably need to be in the DMZ, outside of our firewall."

"That's to protect other internal systems?"

"Yep. If we allow external users inside the firewall, we place all of our IT resources and data at escalated risk. Also, you're going to need to think carefully about monitoring the community, to ensure we identify and eliminate flames, derogatory comments, foul language and so forth. We may even need to identify and block individuals or certain IP addresses if we suspect they are trying to penetrate the system or are simply disrupting the community."

"OK. Anything else?"

"Who is going to maintain the community?"

At this point Susan jumped in. "I will be responsible for day to day maintenance and engagement with the community" she said.

"How many users do you anticipate? How many ideas? We need to get a sense of the usage and the anticipated growth of the system."

Susan turned to me, and I gave her one of those one shoulder shrugs which signals that I don't know and you're on your own. She frowned.

"We don't know that yet. We still have to decide the overall purpose and framework for the community and who we'll invite. That will drive the number of users and potential growth."

"So right now you don't really have a set of requirements for the community, other than it must be hosted internally and incorporate external customers or prospects who can submit ideas?"

Now it was Susan with the one shoulder shrug. "That's about it so far."

"OK, that explains the dog and pony we got today. Could I make a suggestion?"

"Write up a script to have them demo exactly what we want to do?"

"Well, yes."

"We're working on that. To a certain extent we are trying to learn about communities as we see a number of them demonstrated to us. Once we've seen a few and what the vendors can offer, I think we'll be more intelligent about what we want."

I think she almost believed that, but she fell on the sword nicely. Bill had suddenly become preoccupied with his notepad and Frank understood what he had stepped in.

"OK. When's the next three ring circus?"

"We have another demo tomorrow at the same time. We can use this conference room."

Frank and Thomas rose to leave. "We'll be here. I'll have Thomas draw up a set of minimum requirements for the software to help us rule out any that conflict with our existing investments or require learning new technologies."

"Thanks."

It was down to just me, Susan and Bill at this point. Bill glanced around, looking as sheepish as it is possible for one to look who is also the COO of a Fortune 500 corporation.

"I see we need to do a better job of defining what we want the community to do. Sam, Susan, draft a 'going in" position that defines the community as an open community that any customer or prospect can use to submit ideas. We'll want to categorize the ideas and align the categories to our lines of business or products. That way we can link the ideas to our product lines. We'll need a way to communicate with the submitters, so we'll need an email address. We'll also need to think about reporting, and rewards for those who submit ideas we accept for further investigation. Draw up a short presentation and have it for me to review by Friday."

Having heard, reacted and commanded, he rose to his full height, turned quickly and left the room, never admitting that we'd be right all along. I guess some of the criteria for rising to his level was recognizing but not admitting you were wrong, and quickly correcting the error before anyone else discovered it.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Forty Four

2009-07-21T05:16:00.000-07:00

We had that cup of coffee, or perhaps two or three. I had been so preoccupied with Accipiter that I'd forgotten what a great hire Meredith was, and what a great team member she was likely to be. We spent an hour or so getting reacquainted, talking about her skill set and our client base, and thinking about how to incorporate her skills into our offerings. Meredith was not the least bit flustered that we weren't as prepared as we should have been for her to join. In the coming weeks she jumped right in and won a new project from one of our existing customers, helping them use ethnography to find new customer insights which eventually led to a new product release.

We were fortunate, really, looking back on it, because Matt took Meredith under his wing and she came up to speed quickly. I failed her at first, because after that coffee and a quick review of our existing clients and their needs, I hurried back to the office to dive deeply into the Accipiter situation. We were on the crux of something big, I felt, and I was on the hunt, not to be distracted by a new employee.

Meredith brought something else to the office with her. She brought a sense of humor and balance that was lurking under the surface but was often expressed with sarcasm. Matt and I had been together so long we knew each other's moves and punch lines. Meredith confronted that thin veneer of weary humor and cleaved it in two, demonstrating insight and empathy that I hadn't expected. It was really her skills, patience and knowledge that held us together as a team while I piloted the ship after the elusive white whale. Matt and Meredith gave me the rope, and I hung myself on that lanyard that summer and fall.

Not long after the coffee with Meredith Johansen called.

"Sam, have you identified some software vendors that will license their software to us to install internally?"

I had the list - a short one but with several viable firms.

"Yes. It should be on your fax machine from this morning."

"Great. Can you arrange some short demos with them?"

"Of course. Who will need to sit in from your side?"

"Oh, well of course we'll need Bill and Fred, myself, and someone from IT. I'll ask Frank to assign a resource."

"OK" We worked out some available times and I set to work, lining up demonstrations of innovation software for Accipiter.

At the same time we were pushing hard to understand the goals of the innovation community so we could structure it accordingly. Susan and I lined up a call with Bill to better understand his vision for the community.

"Bill, for us to build an innovation community that meets your objectives, we need to understand what Accipiter wants from a community. Are you interested in radical or disruptive innovation, or incremental innovation, or both? Is it OK if any customer or prospect submits ideas, or do you want to invite specific individuals or companies? Do you want them working on topics that are defined by us, or simply entering ideas they think are important? There are a number of attributes that we need to define for the community, in order to shape it effectively and achieve the outcomes you want."

Bill shifted uncomfortably in his chair. In the back of my mind I was relatively convinced that he'd received a very vague directive from the CEO, and wasn't sure what the real goals or outcomes were. It looked like we were going to have to break this down, step by step, line by line, to get to an answer.

"Sam" he said "we're interested in innovation and want to learn more about what it takes to be an innovative firm. We recognize we are lagging many in our industry. Whit, our CEO, has asked us to create an innovation community, mostly I suspect, because several of our competitors have one. I'm thinking the best thing to do is have you and Susan recommend the structure of the community, making the assumptions you need to make, and we'll present it to Whit when you are ready. My thinking is that we should start carefully, so our intention should be incremental ideas at this point. Since we don't have clear direction, we'll let our customers suggest new ideas rather than try to direct them to specific problems or issues."

This was better than I had expected. While not the best approach for a community, at least Bill was able to help us shape it so we could achieve his goals.

"What about downstream, once the ideas have been submitted?"

"I'm not certain I understand you" he said.

"Once a number of ideas have been submitted, Accipiter will need to demonstrate that you are reviewing and evaluating them, and selecting some for further investigation. There's no process or team to support that today."

He looked at us and smiled. I suppose you could call it a smile. The teeth were exposed, slightly, and the eyes danced in a way that was either a threat or a grimace. "You're looking at the team in the short run" he said, gesturing at me and Susan. "There's no budget for this, what we like to call an unfunded mandate."

"You understand that.."

He waved me off. "I understand that we'll need to demonstrate some action on the ideas. The two of you will need to run this for at least a quarter or more, until we demonstrate some success and gain more knowledge. Structure the program the way you feel is best, document the process and your assumptions and present the solution and your cost estimates to me. Can you have that to me by Friday?"

Sure. Sure I could. The cost estimates were easy. It was the sense of signing up to a program that seemed doomed from the start that left me apprehensive. I think for just a moment I knew how kamikaze pilots felt, but I think they flew to defend their homeland. I wasn't sure anymore why I agreed to this effort. This was becoming an elaborate, inexpensive experiment that could fail miserably or succeed slightly. It was quite possibly the worst of both worlds.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Forty Three

2009-07-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

In later years I'd look back and call her Ishamael, since she joined us while I was in pursuit of the great whale. Accipiter sucked me in and caused me to lose focus on anything other than Accipiter at that time, but we survived, mostly because Matt and Meredith were able to keep our other clients engaged and happy.

While I was struggling to define the requirements for Accipiter's open innovation community, Meredith came aboard. I'd been so focused on the Accipiter account I'd started dreaming about innovation communities. The recurring image was an old fashioned switchboard operator, connecting a caller from a local line to a long distance trunk like, completing one call and moving on to another. Yet in my dream the trunk lines were always dead. There was no one on the other end of the call. Where was Freud when I needed him? No matter, even I, a lowly innovation consultant, could interpret these dreams, and they had nothing to do with oral fixation.

June opened the door that Wednesday morning, peeked around at me as if I was likely to remove parts of her anatomy for merely glancing in my direction and waited to make eye contact. I knew she was there yet I stubbornly kept my eyes focused on the document I was drafting, not wanting to hear about another client or a late invoice. June waited me out, gradually sliding through the narrow door opening - almost using the door as a shield to ward off my evil temper. I could almost imagine the visible waves of frustration I was sending out, like a lump of radioactive material slowing decomposing before her eyes. She seemed to gain some strength, or perhaps was just angry that I ignored her.

"Sam"

"What?" I said, surprised and embarrassed.

"Meredith is coming in today for her first day with Marlowe Innovation."

Now, I hate that phrase "stopped me in my tracks". I like to think of myself as someone so worldly, so experienced that little will surprise me, especially after the things I've seen done in back alleys and in conference boardrooms. But this did stop me, at least momentarily. I'd been so engaged and absorbed by Accipiter, attempting to nail the jello to the wall that I'd completely forgotten about Meredith. I slid some papers, pencils and flotsam from my desktop to glance at the calendar blotter. Sure enough, there it was, circled in bright red. Meredith starts today. Fortunately Matt and I had brought in a new desk and chair, so it wasn't as if we weren't at least a little prepared.

I glanced at June, who took it all in.

"What can I do to help?"

Why she puts up with me I'll never know. Perhaps it's the excitement of an innovation project well done, or the interesting and varied set of clients and challenges. It certainly can't be my good looks or the compliments I pay her. Matt is the suave, debonair one. I'm the nose to the grindstone, work/drink/sleep type. Yet she seems to come through just when I need her most.

"June, I think we have her desk ready. The real question is getting her up to speed quickly on how we work, and what we expect of her. What do you have in mind?"

I knew June would have some opinions, because I only hire people who have opinions. I'd rather work with people who have strong, different opinions than mine than to ever work with some complacent slouch who just goes along with the flow. There is absolutely nothing interesting or compelling about such a person. With a person who has an opinion, you get the chance to have a debate, or perhaps someone you can assign a task to who has a sense of how they want to do it.

"I'd like to walk her through some of the older client files, to give her a sense of how we work and our methodology" she said, as if that approach were handed down on stone tablets from Alex Osborne himself. "Then interview her to understand her skills and capabilities and update our marketing materials to include ethnography and customer research. Then, perhaps you and Matt can take her to lunch. If you think you can be civil today."

Civil? I was never civil, but I was frequently found eating lunch. It was only 9 o'clock, but lunch suddenly sounded very good.

"Perhaps I'll take Meredith out for coffee, to welcome her to our office while you prepare to walk her through some of our client work" I said, relishing stepping away from Accipiter and its innovation community if even for just a short period of time. "When is she due in?"

"She's in the reception area. Grab your coat and I'll have the files ready when you return."

"June" I said, but she'd turned and slipped back through the door. I needed to remind myself to give her a raise, or at least bring flowers back from the florist downstairs.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Forty Two

2009-07-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

In the office bright and cheerful the next morning. While I'm not a "people person", which is odd in a person whose gainful employment is in working with people, I felt rejuvenated by June. Just a few hours with her left me feeling great, refreshed, a believer in humanity again. In my line of work it can take a little resetting from time to time.

With the focus on Accipiter I'd let a couple of items slip. A few calls to Cantide and a quick update from Levantine took most of the morning, but I felt I had at least touched base with the folks who were waiting for me. That cleared the deck for a long think about Accipiter. One thing for certain, we had to get a good, clear scope defined for the effort, otherwise any result would be deemed a failure.

There were two items to pursue in parallel. One was easy. That was to generate a list of software firms that would license their solutions to Accipiter, rather than require a hosting agreement. Since most of the firms in the space were now software as a service, only a few firms would offer their code for installation and licensing. And of those, even fewer met the architectural requirements of Accipiter's CIO. He preferred not to introduce any technologies not already in house, so that eliminated any Lotus Notes solutions. Being a stickler for licensing and intellectual property, we also threw out any open source solutions. That meant there were only three or four viable firms to consider. We'd interacted with all of these firms from time to time, so lining them up to provide more information wasn't too hard.

At the same time we needed to establish the "going in" position for innovation - an operating model for innovation, if you'd like to think of it that way. We needed to establish the "rules" and expectations for innovation, and provide the programs and procedures to reinforce those programs, so innovation remained true to the goals of the organization. That meant getting executives to make decisions and provide clear goals and objectives, which is never easy. We'd get what we could, and make assumptions about the rest. In my experience, about 40% of any company strategy is made well down in the ranks, and percolates up once the mid level managers get tired of waiting to be told what the strategy is. More than likely, we'd see a healthy dose of strategy development by our team. Fortunately, we'd developed an innovation model that allowed us to ask questions and understand the initial goals and objectives of any firm. That model helped us help our customers think through their goals and objectives, and outlined areas of disagreement.

I assigned Matt to contact the software firms and ask them to prepare a short pricing proposal and demonstration for Accipiter. I pulled out our Innovation Model Facets white paper and used it as a guide to structure the work of getting the innovation model defined for Accipiter. We'd need to interview some of the top management, including Bill Thompson, Fred Phillips, the CEO of Accipiter and the HR director. The last one was always the hardest, because few corporations understood the link between innovation and recruitment, compensation and evaluation. A good HR team can help shift a culture very quickly, and also have a significant amount of influence over compensation methods and evaluations. These two factors - compensation and evaluation, can drive what people do, and what they are compensated to do, in an organization.

I called Susan to discuss my game plan.

"Susan Johansen."

"Susan, Sam Marlowe."

"Hello Sam. What's up?"

"Do you have a few minutes to talk about our game plan for the community?"

"Umm, yes, I'm free until 2, then just back to back for the rest of the day."

Here's a bronze medal for bravery in the face of dreaded corporate meetings.

"Great. I'll be quick. First, I've got Matt chasing down a short list of software vendors who will license their software. I expect we can line up four vendors who can provide some short demos as soon as early next week."

"OK. I'll ask Bill and Frank to put some time on their calendars."

"Second, I want to talk with you about the work we need to do to define the innovation community and understand the expectations and outcomes."

"We'd better schedule some time for that conversation". I could tell that she had some of the same concerns as I did.

"Yes. What does 4pm today look like for you?"

"I'm booked up, as I told you earlier. However, I am open after 10am tomorrow."

"OK. Can I get an hour of your time? 10 to 11 tomorrow?"

"It's on the calendar."

"I'll send you a short note with some of my thinking, then we can talk."

"Thanks Sam."

"Sure. Talk to you tomorrow."

I think Churchill said that the Russians were a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. I was beginning to understand what he meant. Often, working with Accipiter felt like I was chasing black cats in a dark room with a blindfold, never sure of my purpose or direction, and with no advice or coaching from the participants.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Forty One

2009-07-16T05:22:00.000-07:00

I left Accipiter that day facing a long drive home in terrible traffic. Yet I couldn't tell you anything about the drive home. It may have been crowded, bumper to bumper, or it may have been wide open. It was one of those drives where you suddenly realize you've parked the car in your driveway or parking spot, without actually realizing you're home. I was so preoccupied with the latest developments that I had driven home on autopilot, while the rest of my mind was churning over the newest twist to the puzzle. I hoped the reptilian part of my brain that had managed the driving had managed the drive home effectively.

Here's the puzzle that allowed me to drive through six lanes of freeway traffic at the height of rush hour without noticing the other drivers: how do you build an effective innovation platform without understanding the key strategic goals of the company? At this point, success was going to be as difficult as throwing darts at a dartboard in a dark room with a blind fold. There was some chance for success, but it was a very limited chance. We needed a lot more clarity on what the management team expected from an innovation community. Simply opening up a site where customers can place their suggestions for new products or services will be less than satisfactory if 'all those ideas' have already been suggested internally. Or what if there was a desire for some really radical, disruptive ideas? An open suggestion model might capture some of those ideas, amongst the hundreds of mundane ideas or outright critiques of existing products or services. This project was a balloon which bulged out in every different direction just as soon as I felt I had one clear goal or target. The number of variables in this equation was simply too high. If no one wanted to provide us with clarity, I decided, then we'd impose clarity on the process. We'd establish a clear scope and boundary conditions on the community, publish those and wait for the howls of protest. If we didn't get any, or at least none we couldn't correct, then we'd declare that the scope. Given a specific scope and set of expectations, I felt we could be successful. Then, once the ideas were generated and considered, we'd declare victory before anyone could complain. That would give Accipiter a 'quick win' that we could build on.

I was mentally exhausted and morally bankrupt by the time I dragged myself into my apartment. I'd need a good stiff drink to need a good stiff drink, so I slumped on the couch and set mental distress signals to June. Not that I'd ever been good at receiving her rather overt signals about a regular dating life, or flowers, or dinner out. We'd had, so far, a rather haphazard dating scheme, developed mostly around my inability to commit and disheveled lifestyle. Some might call it selfish, I simply thought of it as idiosyncratic. My life resembled the guy in that movie who crashed on a desert island with a beach ball, except that I left the island everyday to work with hundreds of people, who I suspect went back home each day to their own desert islands. The mental signals didn't seem to pan out, so I reached out and touched June the old fashioned way, with a dial tone.

"Hello."

"Would you throw a drowning man a lifeline, even if that man wasn't always the best to you?"

"Is this a philosophical question?"

"More like a cry for help from the deep end of the pool."

"For a man who is drowning, you certainly have time for snappy patter."

"Like a duck. Calm on the surface and paddling like hell down below."

"Sam, you never need anything from me or anyone else. What's up?"

"Tired, lonely and bored. I need a few rays of sunshine in my life."

"You know how to sweet talk the girls, don't you Sam?"

"June, you know me. I am what I am. I'd really like to see you - take you to dinner, out for drinks, whatever. My treat."

"OK Sam. Let's make a date."

"No, I mean now, tonight. Are you free tonight?"

"Well, I'd planned to arrange my sock drawer, but your offer does seem just a bit more enticing. Give me half an hour?"

"Great. And thanks. I'll stop by and pick you up."

"How gallant. Remember, three floors down, 7a."

"I've been there once or twice before."

"Yes, but it's been so long I thought you might have forgotten. See you soon."

OK. Feet on floor, hat on rack. Splash water on face and comb hair. Exchange formal monkey suit and tie for something a bit more stylish and slightly more casual for dinner. Rummage through the clothes in order - on hanger, off hanger on bed, draped on chair, piled on floor. Decide that everything needs ironing, so go with the linen slacks and silk shirt.

Eyeball the familiar mug in the mirror, and decide that except for the hangdog look around the eyes, that visage could be on movie posters around town. It's not the looks, it's the attitude I told myself. Buck up boy. Accipiter can wait until tomorrow.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Forty

2009-07-15T05:05:00.000-07:00

In the end, the IT department proved to be more powerful than the COO. It was almost Orwellian, in the sense that to preserve the data, they needed to destroy it. Don't get me wrong - the IT department has a tough job, managing the existing systems at Accipiter and layering on hundreds of new requests. They were actually quite pleased to learn of the desire for an innovation community, and quite unhappy when they realized that Bill and Susan had their eye on hosted software. The biggest problem in their minds: data privacy and security.

"Our policies, which we built to satisfy the users that no Accipiter data would be put at risk, require any sensitive data, or customer specific data, or data with high intellectual property must be behind our firewall" said Frank Smithson, the Accipiter CIO. It wasn't negotiable from their perspective. Either find a package we could install behind the firewall or IT would be happy to build it in SharePoint or some other technology.

Susan and Bill left the room, trailing a thin wisp of steam emanating from their nicely tailored collars. The IT guys glanced at me, shrugged as if to say "we don't make the rules, we just enforce them" and left quietly. Susan returned a few minutes later.

"I don't think I've ever seen Bill so angry. Lately, it seems any time we need a new system or software solution, the IT guys drag their feet. Usually, we can get them to do something we need. Now that we have a directive from the CEO to create an innovation community, they've thrown down the gauntlet." Susan, who wasn't used to the roller coaster ride of an innovation project, was getting tired of the ups and downs, the curves and straightaways. I stood like an old seahand on a pitching deck, since I'd been on this particular ride more times than I could count.

"Look, this is fairly typical in this situation. The IT guys are merely enforcing a policy that some other executives have asked for. You can argue it all day, or we can investigate some software applications that your team can purchase and install, or you can start designing a new application internally. It's best at this point to consider your next best alternatives. A hosted solution seems out of the question."

She nodded. "Let's start a review of applications we can license and install. I don't want to have to wait for the design and development internally."

I knew of a few firms that provided software that would probably meet Accipiter's needs, and went about the task of contacting them and setting up demonstrations. This time, we were careful to invite the appropriate IT resources to the meetings, so any issues with architecture or support were addressed early on. Bill continued on a separate path to talk with the CEO and CIO, to see if Accipiter could bend the security rules in this instance. He was rightly convinced that a hosted application could be available much more quickly, and would probably have better support than an internal application. No such luck.

While the Accipiter executives dueled it out over the software, Susan and I got down to brass tacks on the purpose, goals and management of the community.

"Susan, we need to document your goals and make sure we map those goals for the community to the software we select. Is it your goal to have an 'open' community, where anyone can submit ideas about an Accipiter product, or do you want to invite a specific set of customers or partners to submit ideas?"

"What's the major difference?"

"There are several. Most important is intellectual property. In a community that is by invitation, you can invite business partners and key customers and strike agreements that define the ownership of intellectual property, and perhaps share more of your strategy. In an open community, the ideas will have less protection, since they are visible to anyone who signs up. You will also have to work harder to validate the ideas submitted in an open community, because an average Joe won't know, and won't care, if that idea or capability belongs to another firm."

"Will we get more ideas from an open community?"

"Yes, but that's a two edged sword. More ideas, most certainly, and most likely the ideas will represent a very broad spectrum of interest and opinion from your customer base. An invitation community can be more focused, so you have deeper ideas but less breadth. An open community can become very similar to an open suggestion box."

She seemed to shudder slightly at that remark. All good innovation programs are just one or two steps away from the suggestion box, that seemingly innocent place where ideas go to die.

"Then another concern with an open community would be the same as our suggestion box - no clear statement of needs or goals, and anyone can submit any idea?"

"Yep. If you aren't careful, an open community can become a dumping ground for anyone with a problem, issue, idea or just a favorite topic. The breadth and diversity of ideas is interesting, but often many of them just won't be valuable."

"OK, what's the alternative?

"You can invite people or partners to a community, or you could establish clear, specific statements or goals for the community. In some smaller communities, we've even gone so far as to spell out the problem we are trying to solve or the opportunity we believe exists. The problem with that approach is that now you may be tipping your hand on your strategic direction and strategy. There are some fine lines to walk."

"I think our first goal is simply to start demonstrating that we are listening to our customers, and taking on their ideas. Let's start with the simplest model and then refine it over time."

"Fine, as long as you understand the tradeoffs. You also understand, I hope, that this community can't run itself. Accipiter will need to staff it with people who read and review the ideas, comment on the ideas, contact some of the submitters and evaluate and select ideas. We'll need to identify a team of people to interact with your community on a consistent basis. This is about engagement, after all, and not a one way street."

"Let's get to work outlining the community, the team we'll need to support the community and the process once ideas are selected. I'll talk with Bill to see if he is making any headway on the hosted solution, and if not, we can start looking at the licensed software options."

Pulp Innovation Chapter Thirty Nine

2009-07-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

8am the next morning found me at my office, rumpled, tired and uncertain about the whole Accipiter account. 8am most days found me safely ensconced in my own bed, dreamily considering placing one foot, and then the other, on the cold floor to start my day.

8am in the office meant having to decipher one of the new coffee making machines, with brightly highlighted buttons and special additives. What ever happened to the old coffee pots. I needed caffeine in the worst way and was confronted with a machine that appeared to have more in common with an Xbox than a coffee pot. Who wants to read directions to get coffee at 8 in the morning, just before a controversial phone call with an uncertain client?

8am that morning found me in a bad mood. I felt that Accipiter had spun out of my control, and had taken a very different direction that what I had expected. That unsettled me. I like my clients to follow my lead. I get uncomfortable when I want to foxtrot and the client wants to tango. After all, much of the reason a firm should pay me at all is for my knowledge and experience. I can't afford to risk being led around by the nose by a client whose management team can't agree on what to do.

8:45 found me at my desk, by the phone, reviewing my notes from the previous day's discussion with Susan. My writing reflected the reaction to the call. My prep notes were clear and strong, my notes of the call were rambling and jagged, uncertain. All I was sure of was that Susan and probably Bill were going to call in a few minutes to talk about an innovation community. An outcome as surprising to me as any in quite a while.

9am promptly the phone rang. Count on Accipiter to be on time when it mattered to them, and when I'm still trying to get my bearings.

"Marlowe" I said, with just a hint of remorse.

"Sam, Susan Johansen and Bill Thompson from Accipiter. How are you today?"

"Fine. And you?" I hadn't noticed before, but 'fine" slips through gritted teeth with the elegance of fingernails on a chalkboard. I quickly added "It's a bit early for me, and no coffee."

"Oh. Well, thanks for joining us. As you and I discussed yesterday, we need to move quickly to define and build an innovation community, so we can collect ideas from our customers and business partners. Bill has joined me today to discuss the direction we want to take."

"Hello Sam. Staying busy?" Not as busy as I'd like to be considering the effort to start a project at Accipiter.

"Yes. Several of our clients are keeping us busy with some ethnography research and scenario development, not to mention some work we've just finished helping another client with idea generation." I wanted to let him know we were busy, and that there were a number of capabilities that other people were paying good hard cash for our services.

"Great. Look, I know we've been a bit slow to start, but I think we've got a real opportunity now. Our CEO read about IdeaStorm and other innovation communities where customers enter ideas for new products and services. He's asked us to move forward on building a community for Accipiter. How can you help with that effort?"

Even without the coffee my mind raced. It struck me that Accipiter was not overly serious, and that their customers would see through a half-hearted attempt to collect ideas. Given their reluctance to generate any really disruptive or radical ideas, they were likely to be comfortable with incremental ideas, which may seem very ho-hum to other executives. And so far they hadn't parted with a red cent, which made me question their financial commitments. So many questions, just get started.

"We've built programs like this before. To be honest, I'll need a lot more information in regards to your timing and budget and expectations before we can give you a sense of what this will take to complete."

Bill rose to the occasion. "We'd like to have an innovation community up and running in 90 days, that allows our customers to submit ideas about our products and services. We'll need to examine the software that's available on the market, select something and implement it and build up our capabilities internally to review and select ideas. We'll also need to work with our PR and marketing team to make them aware of the community and to publicize it appropriately. It's a tall order, but the CEO doesn't want to go back to the Street without something to talk about."

"Any concerns about the kinds of ideas that will be submitted, in terms of diversity or whether they are incremental or disruptive?"

"We'll take them all for now, and as we learn we'll shift the focus of the community if necessary. What do you think it will take to get the system up and running?"

Up and running wasn't really the key issue. We could, with a few resources and some dedicated effort, get the system up and running in 90 days. No problem. What could be a problem would be if the community wasn't supported, and funded appropriately. Accipiter was making an implicit promise, not just for a few days, but for a period of time, to listen to its customers and accept their ideas. This wasn't something you simply started, and stopped on a whim.

"Bill, what's the budget to support this over time? It will take time for the customers to find it and submit ideas, and time for the ideas to be considered and implemented. Accipiter can't simply put up the community without supporting it and selecting ideas and interacting with your customers. This needs to be something that is actively supported and engaging with customers, over a period of time. Do you have that in your budgets for the community?"

Susan jumped in at this point. "Sam, Bill has given me some thoughts about a budget and the resources at our disposal. I asked him to sit in to demonstrate how important this community is to Accipiter. He's actually going to step out to another meeting, and you and I will work up a project plan for the implementation of the community and the long term resourcing required. We have money available for the build out of the community, and to support it through the end of the year. We'll need to go back through the funding process to get more funds to support it next year."

Bill had come, had spoken and had left. Veni, vidi, vinci. Now Susan and I were left to make it work. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me your arms.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Thirty Eight

2009-07-10T05:12:00.000-07:00

I'm a baseball fan, but from the old school. Give me the guys who slid into base headfirst. Pete Rose before the gambling. Give me Fenway park, or better yet Wrigley. Brick walls, stanchions in the sightlines, open air and grass. None of this faux throwback stadiums full of glass and astroturf with retractable ceilings and stars who are constantly on the DL, who are too thin skinned to take a little criticism and seem to be more about padding stats than winning games.

So you'll allow me a little baseball analogy when I say I was back on my heels in the box when Susan called. All my discussion and planning with Matt had me prepared for the heater, the high hard one, and I was on my toes, ready to swing hard and knock that pitch right out of the park. What I got instead was the slow curve, the change of speeds that had me swinging before the ball was halfway to the plate. If I'd been up to bat literally, I would have swung myself right out of my shoes, helmet and jockstrap. That swing might have actually cost me two strikes from a tightfisted ump.

All that to say that Susan called the next day, and all my preparation and thinking went out the window. It went something like this.

"Marlowe" I said into the phone, gripping the handle so hard I thought it would break.

"Sam, Susan Johansen here. I assume you receive my message about the skunkworks."

"Sounds like the idea didn't go over well."

"Not too well, but it did spark a new discussion within the management team, and I think we have some momentum behind this. We want to create an innovation community - you know, let our customers submit ideas to us. Can you help us with that?"

I had that momentary feeling you get when someone taps you lightly on the back of the head with a lead sap. I wasn't quite sure where I was, or what we were talking about. Susan had suggested a reasonable approach that I was completely unprepared for, and it had knocked me off my game. Nothing is worse than dead air on a phone call, so I had to fill it with something.

"An innovation community. To get ideas from your customers?" An echo chamber would have worked better, but I was still trying to get my wits about me. In this case, better to ask some open ended questions and see where the answers went than try to drive the discussion.

"Yes. We've seen some examples from other firms where they've asked their customers to submit ideas to an innovation forum. Since we don't have a lot of available resources to assign to generate and manage ideas internally, and we need more customer insight, it seemed a reasonable approach and might kill two birds with one stone. Do you have experience with innovation communities?"

The questions were right but the logic was all wrong. Innovation communities could be very helpful, gathering ideas from customers, business partners and so forth. But just putting up a site wasn't going to be enough. There was strategy involved, and planning, and the little requirement of actually reading and selecting the ideas.

"We've built internal communities and defined campaigns, and helped design and build external facing communities as well. Probably our work at Cantide is the best example of an externally facing community."

"Great. How quickly could we get started with that?"

This was like asking an architect how quickly he could build a house without a blueprint. I'm sure he could build one pretty quickly, but would it meet your expectations? Would you want to live in it? Wouldn't you want to design it first?

"We can get started tomorrow if that works for you, assuming we can get an agreement put into place, but there are a few things to think about."

"Ok. One thing at a time. Send me your standard contract and I'll start that through the legal process."

"I'll email it over today."

"What other items do we need to work out?"

"Susan, a community is only as good as the people who are part of the community and the ideas or suggestions they provide. Your team needs to think about how to structure the community and what you want out of it. Do you want a community open to anyone, who can submit any idea? Do you want to identify challenges that the community should submit ideas about? Do you want to form trusted networks with business partners? Does the management team expect incremental ideas or disruptive ideas? All of these issues will drive the kind of community we build with you. We still have to consider a number of the strategic concepts to get out of the community what's important to the management team."

The silence on the other end was deafening. I think she had hoped we wouldn't have to go back to the management team again. "Perhaps we can just make a set of assumptions and get started" she said.

"That's fine, as long as we are documenting what we intend to do, and build the community to meet those assumptions. One other thing - you are going to need staff to help evaluate and select ideas, and to communicate to the people in the community, and to implement the ideas. A community won't run itself, and will expect input and feedback from Accipiter."

This was getting bigger by the minute. What had initially seemed to her a small pleasure cruise was becoming a gathering of the animals, two by two, for a long, wet ride, with no clear destination.

"OK. First things first. Send your contract over and let's schedule some time to outline what we think we want in a community, and the staffing necessary to support it effectively. Then I'll talk with Bill about the funding. Are you free tomorrow at 9 to start talking about the project?"

"Let me see." I spent a few minutes fumbling for my pocket calendar, and looking at my schedule online. I was free, and did have the time available. The question of whether or not to take on a still very unformed project with a client that didn't seem to understand the investments necessary for success still had me worried.

"I'm OK then. I'll call you." I heard the words come out of my mouth, but still wasn't sure I was the one who said them. All I had committed to do, I reassured myself, was to talk about the scope and effort of the project. If I wasn't happy with their commitment, I could always politely excuse myself and my team from the project. Yeah, sure, here we go again.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Thirty Seven

2009-07-08T05:01:00.000-07:00

The iron triangle. That's what I'd learned in school. Cheap, fast and reliable. Pick any two, and the third is dictated to you. Accipiter was asking for an innovation program that was cheap, fast and reliable. Usually a client would ask for inexpensive and reliable, and we'd staff it accordingly, and work on it leisurely. Sometimes a client would ask for fast and good, and we'd tell them it wouldn't be cheap. Getting to cheap, fast and reliable meant making a lot of assumptions about Accipiter I wasn't willing to make, and forcing them to follow our methodology, which we knew and felt would work. So the question becomes - is working with Accipiter, and the opportunity to work with them beyond this project, worth the risk that they would fail to put the right resources on the effort, or choose to ignore our plans and guidance?

I left the call with Susan promising to contact her with our thoughts. I wanted to talk with Matt. Taking on what appeared to be a demanding client that might not agree to work to our approach meant a significant risk of failure, especially one that had been so slow to make a decision and now felt forced to move. I knew what this meant, and so did Matt. Time for a skull session. Darby's at noon.

I slid into the cool, comfortable booth and shot a glance at the waiter across the room near the bar. He sighed and wandered over. What ever happened to customer service I thought.

"What'll you have today, Sam?" I like a place where the folks know my name - I wish sometimes I'd get a little more respect for the business I bring.

"The usual. Dry white bread, Thousand Island dressing on that terrible corned beef."

"Grilled?"

"Yes"

"Ok, one regular reuben for you. Matt?"

"Cobb salad, hold the eggs."

My raised eyebrows got Matt's attention. We had an unwritten rule that meat, in some form, was consumed over lunch.

"Watching my cholesterol" he said. By eating a salad with bacon and blue cheese.

Our faithful waiter departed, in a hurry to place our orders and wait on someone, anyone who didn't denigrate the food and the waitstaff. I leaned in to Matt.

"Look, I'm torn about Accipiter. I think there's a lot of opportunity there, but I also think they want something on the cheap to point at for Wall Street. I don't want to create the show pony that gets put back in the barn after the carnival."

Matt scowled. "What do you care how they use what you teach them once you're gone? If they don't can't reinforce the programs we put in place, that's not our problem."

Matt had a funny way of shifting his eyes around when he was debating himself, and now his eyes shifted back and forth like windshield wipers. If he wasn't careful, on the next pass one of those eyeballs might just roll out on the floor, and keep going.

"You don't believe that, and neither do I. We're not big enough to leave a client with a half-complete, half-baked solution and not feel the consequences. If I start a job, I want to do it right."

He sat back and gave me his best devil may care grin. "So, tell them no. Tell them you won't work with them unless they agree to work according to our methodology. If there's as much pressure to get something done quickly as you say, then perhaps they don't have the time to search out another consultant. Maybe you can turn the tables and demand something for a change."

As this wasn't my first rodeo, that thought had crossed my mind. Could we make these demands and expect Accipiter to accept them? Would Accipiter simply decide to find a more compliant consulting firm who'd create a Potemkin village of innovation and cash the checks?

Our waiter slid our orders in front of us, and waited patiently to discover if we needed anything else before slinking off to flirt with the bartender. If I didn't need to pay the alimony I'd get me a job like that, which required as little thinking and strategy as possible, and as much time loafing around a bar with a good looking bartender as possible. A man's got to have a plan in life, and his wasn't so bad, looking at it from my current vantage point.

Matt attacked his Cobb salad with the attention he'd usually give to a rare sirloin. I assume that's what he was trying to conjure up. My reuben was tasty, hot, tangy and salty all at the same time. Matt looked at me, fork halfway to his mouth.

"What if you simply put down a set of requirements. You know, they define the scope and we define the project plan. Any deviation from the scope or plan and we both agree to rewrite the contract. If we need to do this much work this quickly, and you have concerns about their staffing or follow through, let's just make that part of the agreement."

"Well, I am worried about staffing, but what I'm more worried about is that we'll get people on the project who've been told to give us 10 hours a week, but who still have their entire "regular" job to do. You know we faced that at Thanone. Remember how popular we were there?"

"Yeah. That one guy was sure we'd cost him a promotion since he had to miss so many meetings with his boss to complete the work. I think he did most of the work we assigned him on Saturdays."

"There aren't enough Saturdays in this plan to get everything done on the weekend. The folks from Accipiter have to be fully committed to the effort, or the project will really suffer in such a short period of time."

Matt nodded. I wasn't preaching to the choir, I was reading from the book of Matt to the author himself.

There was nothing to it. I was going to tell Susan we'd work with them, but only under very carefully defined conditions. If Accipiter didn't like the scope or the workplan, then they could go find another firm to work with.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Thirty Six

2009-07-07T04:55:00.000-07:00

I was in the office bright and early the next day, fresh from untroubled sleep and a surprisingly easy drive into the office. Strangely it seemed that traffic was much lighter at 10am than at 8:30. I made a mental note to myself to sleep later all the time. Why waste an hour on the freeway when I could be relaxing in bed?

I had plenty of enthusiasm and energy. I was just coming off a great ideation effort with Levantine, and our work with Cantide that Matt was handling was going well. Meredith would be starting in just a few days, and Accipiter appeared to be gearing up for something, which was better than the alternative. I plunged right in, following up on a few introductory calls, accepting an offer to write a jacket blurb for a new book on innovation, and harangued June about the preparations for Meredith. Once I'd plowed through most of the clutter on my desk and squared away the work for Levantine, I decided to call Susan at Accipiter to see what new challenges awaited us there.

"Susan Johansen"

"Susan, Sam Marlowe. June said you called yesterday."

"Yes, Sam. I'm glad you called. There have been a number of changes here, and I wanted to bring you up to speed."

"Now's a good time for me."

"Well, the first item on my list for you is the skunkworks. I ran it up to Bill, and he has yet to give me a firm yes or no. He is taking it under consideration. In the mean time, however, our CEO was at an investment banking conference and was questioned at length about Accipiter's innovation plans. As you might expect, that meant that Bill got some pretty direct questions last week. All he had to show our CEO was my skunkworks proposal, which mollified him somewhat. But the pressure to do something is on."

A burning platform. That's what those of us in my line of work live for. A burning platform is what forces people to jump. It wasn't the first time an investment bank or Wall Street firm had pressured a potential client to get busy with innovation. I made a mental note to myself to see if there were ways to influence the Wall Street guys, so I could run a back door and start the innovation pressure from the CEO down.

"I guess the skunkworks isn't really what the CEO was looking for." I said this to let her know I was listening and to let her take the lead. It wasn't clear yet where this conversation was going, but I had an idea where it would end up.

"You are right. The skunkworks proposal at least gave Bill some cover that we were considering some options, but the timeframe to get the skunkworks built and get some ideas percolating seems too long to our CEO. Basically he wants something to show the bankers.."

"At the end of next quarter." I finished her sentence for her, since I knew the melody by heart.

"Yes" she said, a bit taken aback. "How did you know?"

How did I know? Doesn't every new convert want all the religion all at once? Doesn't every CEO under pressure from Wall Street want the numbers to change in one quarter?

"Um, let's just say that this isn't my first rodeo, and that we've heard this before. In some ways, Susan, this could be good news for you. In other perspectives, this could be terrible news."

"Terrible news? Why?"

"Working together, starting quickly and following our methodology, we can get some ideas into a pipeline for you by the end of the quarter. I doubt very seriously that anyone at Accipiter can identify the "right" ideas and get them into product development so your CEO has something to show the boys on Wall Street in 90 days. It simply doesn't work that way. We need to know exactly what's going to constitute a success for your CEO when he goes back to the analysts. Better yet, we need to set that expectation with him, so he can set that expectation with the investment banks and Wall street types."

"What's a reasonable timeline for us to generate a new idea and create a new product?"

"If we could identify a specific need or opportunity space today - that is, assuming we've got some good customer insight or trend spotting accomplished - we could start a brainstorming or ideation session in a week or two. With those ideas, we could quickly investigate and select several for further evaluation. Let's say if we have the right backing and conditions we can present several good ideas to a product development team in 30 to 45 days."

"But that's only half a quarter. That timeframe should be fine."

"Yes, but at that point we are only presenting rough concepts to product development. Recognize they have a set of existing priorities, and probably won't have been very involved in our ideation work. Generally, in your firm, what's the lead time from product definition to product launch?"

"Oh. Anywhere from nine to eighteen months."

If you could hear a person deflate over the phone, that's what I was hearing now. I could imagine her slumped over her desk, all the vital life forces drained out in a puddle under her Herman Miller Aeron.

"So, you see" I continued, grinning into the phone, the bearer of bad innovation news, the avenging angel of new product innovation, he who can be ignored for only so long "it won't be our innovation methods or process that delay a product innovation at the end of the quarter. It will be the challenge of getting a new idea funded, and placed into the product development process. If we'd started this process back when we first met with Bill.."

"We'd be in a position to offer a new product to our CEO. I get it." Rarely had a potential client grown a new backbone so quickly. She continued. "Well, we have to set the expectations with John that he can take new concepts back to the street and we can expect to have new products in the market next year. Hopefully just demonstrating a new process and a plan to come out with new products will be enough in the short run."

"OK" I said, waiting for the next shoe to drop. That's the shoe with the money it it. She knew about the shoe, and was hoping it would be a fast shoe, a running shoe, and one that would fit a very small child.

"Sam, we need your help to get this off the ground, but we don't have a lot of money, and we need to do this in a hurry. We've got to deliver something very high quality in a short amount of time. What can you do for us?"

The question wasn't "what could Marlowe do for Accipiter". The question, as I saw it, was "were the goals too high to achieve, and would this client be worth the return?"

Pulp Innovation Chapter Thirty Five

2009-07-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

I was beat, spent and dead on my feet. Actually I think my feet had expired a few hours ago, and the death rot had worked its way up from my feet, through my legs and was rapidly encroaching on my brain. Keeping a brainstorming activity humming as a facilitator is an amazing task, and can be exceptionally fun and rewarding. However it is seems as taxing as chopping wood or farming all day, both of which I can speak about from experience. While I was tired, fortunately the day with Levantine had gone well. Fortune rewards the prepared mind, and brainstorming rewards the prepared team.

We’d been in the room most of the day, kicking off promptly at 8:30 with an ice breaking exercise, something we use to get people out of their comfort zones and thinking in a very different way. Our icebreaker was a combination of Pictionary and Charades, matching one half of the brainstorming team against another. You really haven’t lived until you’ve seen a bunch of cube-bound desk jockeys trying to act out or draw The Unbearable Lightness of Being for their peers, or watched the nervous energy mixed with outright horror at the thought that one of the team still seated was going to have to go next. The participants weren't sure what to make of this exercise, but after a few minutes the barriers seemed to break down and they got into the game.

We’d proceeded in a fairly typical brainstorm: we’d reviewed the rules, talked about the problem statement and kicked off the brainstorm. Marge had prepared a very compelling and very well documented problem statement that framed our brainstorming nicely. I had done this a million times it seemed, and every time was the same and every time was different. What was different, and lucky, in this instance was that Marge was in her own right a gifted facilitator and was playing the role of scribe. We taught our brainstorming teams to start writing as soon as people started talking, even if what they were talking about wasn’t an idea or even relevant. Simply getting something on the page seemed to break the ice, and her writing seemed less threatening. Marge also didn’t question, didn’t judge, so the ideas flowed and she captured them effectively, stopping only occasionally to seek clarification or to elicit more information about the idea.

By lunch we had over 100 ideas documented. I congratulated the team and sent them out to typical corporate hallway food – a boxed lunch of dry break with stale turkey and wilted lettuce, a bag of chips, a pickle in plastic and a cookie, with your choice of water, tea or soda. The break came just in time as the hallway food vultures were already circling our lunch, waiting to see what would remain after our team had taken its share. A few hours later the only food left on the table consisted of three pickles still in plastic wrap. Over lunch several of the team members ate with Marge and me in the room, while the rest scattered to answer email and voicemail. Promptly at 1pm I sent Marge out to round up those who had left us, and right on time, well, fifteen minutes late, we resumed.

After lunch we performed some more brainstorming and then shifted into what we call “elaboration” – which allows us to review the ideas and gain any additional definition or insights, and “grouping” – which allows us to collapse or consolidate ideas that are duplicative or similar in nature. We set the rules for ranking and turned the team loose, and we found 8 ideas that the majority of the team seemed to think were the best. After that we spent an hour reviewing each idea and assigning the followup actions for the idea to a team member in the room, creating mini-project plans for deeper investigation. Each member of the brainstorming team had one idea to take further and report back to the team his or her investigation and findings by the end of the month. These follow up actions are always part of our efforts, to ensure there is follow up and action on the ideas we generate.

At this point I’d been on my feet all day, cajoling, facilitation, telling jokes, tamping down the more talkative and encouraging the reticent. I often felt like a combination of therapist and game show host, but we’d made it through another very valuable session. Marge and her team seemed pleased, which was ultimately how I judged our effectiveness.

I thanked the team for their time and Marge finished the wrapup. While they had been dismissed, several hung around to talk about the experience, while most scurried off to try to answer the email that had piled up during the day. Marge and I gathered the toys and put them back in the toolboxes. We took photos of the sheets of ideas hanging on the wall and collected them in order. We took down the brainstorming rules and I packed up my materials.

“Another great job today” she said.

I nodded. “Working with you and your team is always great. The folks in these meetings are always prepared, so we don’t spend time arguing about “why are we here” or “is that the real problem we are trying to solve”. That makes such a difference.”

“We didn’t take to your methodology at first, but once I saw how effective it could make these sessions, I’ve adopted it whole heartedly and never looked back.”
That was the case. I had the distinct feeling that whatever Marge decided worked for her she adopted whole heartedly.

I collected all of my materials and headed for the door. My feet were aching and I was at the saturation point. I needed a good, stiff drink, a comfortable chair and a shiatsu massage for my feet. What was waiting for me was a good stiff drink and a TV dinner.

I made the mistake of calling the office on my drive home. June was packing up, ready to leave. I could hear it in her voice.
“You had several calls today. The only one that seems important is from Susan Johansen at Accipter.”

“What’s the message?”

“She wants you to call her as soon as possible. The skunkworks idea is a no go, but other opportunities have opened up.”

Fine, I thought, we can back down off the plank and perhaps start a new discussion with Thompson. Now, instead of unwinding from a successful day with Levantine I had to wonder what new tricks Bill Thompson had up his sleeve.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Thirty Four

2009-06-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

The alarm was rather insistent, and I rolled over and shut it off. Clearly, based on the sunlight arching through the room, it was time to get vertical. I opened my eyes and ran my tongue over my teeth, tasting the remnants of Irish whiskey and stale cigarettes. I never claimed to be a morning person, and I'd left the corporate scene for several reasons, one of which was a kindly persistence on the part of my management to see me bright and chipper by 8:30am most days. That was simply not part of my social contract.

As an innovation consultant, I was expected to be a bit unpredictable and to have a bit of whimsy. Who wants a boring innovation consultant? So, that meant I didn't have to punch an 8:30am clock most days. However, on days like today, with a scheduled event at Levantine, like it or not I was expected to be on time, ready to go with a quick wit and a professional demeanor. Luckily this was expected of me only periodically in my consulting role.

After the usual ablutions and preparations, I uncrumpled my suit pants and pulled a jacket from a hook on the back of the door. The face looking back at me in the mirror by the front door seemed vaguely familiar, a bit more worn around the edges than I'd remembered. I took my portfolio, keys and sun glasses and headed out to face the corporate world.

Once you've left the regular commute, it seems almost impossible to wrap your head around the fact that people face this soul rendering drive every day. For me, once a week or more to face such a congested, angry, slow moving mob would have had me contemplating the view from the top of the downtown skyscrapers, putting Newton's theories to the test. Nine to five five days a week, these folks are wired very differently from me.

I arrived and found a choice visitor parking spot at Levantine. It's corporate offices sat in an office park that resembled a lush botanical garden, or a tropical resort. Even at that early point in the morning, hundreds of gardeners were working to ensure the steel and glass buildings were surrounded by palm trees, neatly mowed grass and freshly blooming flowers. It was as if the headquarters was trying to disguise itself as a Cancun vacation retreat. All that was missing was the surf, sand and twelve small shops hawking "I got drunk in Cancun" T-shirts.

I fumbled with my materials - the portfolio, markers, tape, toolbox and other items for the brainstorm - and made my way to the cavernous reception area, where a guard gave me the frozen stare. How anyone can have less personality or enthusiasm for their job, I don't know. Perhaps he, too, had just left the morning rush hour commute and was only now recovering his humanity. He asked for my name, my organization and my blood type, and gave me a flimsy plastic badge. He poked through my materials for the brainstorming session, looked at me as if I needed to have my head examined, and called Marge to let her know I was in the lobby.

I took my seat at an fashionable but very comfortable chair made by designers in Sweden for business lobbies in America, where one is supposed to view the furniture with interest but never actually interact with the furniture, and turned my attention to Electronics Weekly, that being the most enticing magazine on offer on the glasstop table. Fortunately, before I was able to obtain my undergraduate electrical engineering degree from the first issue of the journal, Marge poked her head through the doorway and called me in. I smiled at the guard, as a way to say "see, there really is a purpose in all this" and he shot me a look that convinced me he hadn't lost his humanity on the highway, he'd never really had any to begin with.

Marge greeted me in her usual way - that is to say that Marge is a hugger and gets a bit put out if we don't engaged in at least the ritual one arm around the neck. She'd prefer the full on two arms around, and possibly the full on Mitterand - a peck on each cheek - but I draw the line on this faux familiarity. Marge is a great client and a nice person, but sometimes I received more overt affection from her than I did on my second and third dates with women I intentionally wanted to get to know better. Plus, it's difficult to hug someone when you are simultaneously holding a door open with one foot, and clutching a briefcase, a toolbox and a smattering of other materials. The kabuki dance consisted of Marge trying to decide whether to hug first and offer assistance later, and me offering Marge some of my burden and anticipating the hug that preceded all of our meetings. We probably looked like two large birds in an elaborate mating ritual to those innocent passersby in the lobby.

"Sam, you look great. We are so glad to have you back today to lead our brainstorming."

"Marge, always good to see you. Where are we headed?"

"Just down the hall here. You remember the room we used in April, when we did the session on market opportunities?"

"Yes" I said, handing off some of my materials to her and walking in the general direction.

"I've managed to convince the facilities team that we should have permanent use of that room for innovation and brainstorming. It's a great room, with lots of light, big and very configurable."

"That's great, Marge. It is a much better location than some of the other conference rooms." Most of which were similar to early World War II submarines, usually the same color and with the same vague smells as those tin can death traps.

"Everyone should be here by 8:30. I'll introduce the session and the goals, and then you can take it from there."

"Great" I said, finally reaching my destination and ending my period of employment as a Nepalese sherpa. I unloaded all of my materials for the session, and noted that the room had several flip-charts, markers and other materials that would be useful. Marge noticed my glance.

"Yeah, we're getting better about having the right materials available in these rooms. That's another reason we wanted a permanent spot. That way we can outfit the room to our needs."

She was saying this as I opened the toolbox and started extracting a range of balls, Play-Do, an Etch-A-Sketch, a Slinky and a number of other tools that looked like the spillage of an eight year old's toy box from the back of the closet.

"I don't suppose you've got any of these about?" I said to her with a grin.

"Not yet, but that's our next purchase" she said. In our first session, lo these several years ago, Marge had been very concerned, expressed with a raise eyebrow and a slight sideways frown, when I started unpacking the toys. Once she'd seen their impact in an ideation session, she'd become a vociferous believer. I think she had a Mr. Potato Head and an Etch-A-Sketch on her desk now.

"Everybody loves the toys" I said.

After distributing these around the room, I pulled a set of laminated cards from my portfolio, and Marge helped me tack these up around the room.

"This is another thing we need to do to fully dress out the room" she said, eyeing my brainstorming rules.

"Never conduct a brainstorming session without the rules" I said.

At this point the participants were staring to drift into the room, coffee in one hand, BlackBerry in the other. The folks who had been with us before I recognized and nodded to or shook hands with. A few people who had not participated with us before entered, glanced around the room, sought out Marge to ensure they were in the right place, and took their seats, eyeing the toys and rules and making nervous small talk with others around the table.

Marge called the meeting to order.

"As you all know, we are here today to brainstorm about new product opportunities in our ASIC and FPGA product areas. All of you should have received the prep material" most heads nodded at this "and should be prepared to participate. For those of you who don't know Sam Marlowe, he will facilitate our session today. Our goal is to generate some incremental and disruptive ideas to explore as new products in our programmable products division. You've seen the material on what our competitors are doing. Any questions before we get started?"

There didn't appear to be any, at least none anyone was willing to voice at that stage. Marge turned to me. "Take it away" she said.

I stood, and walked over to close the conference room door. I do this for the effect it has of sealing the team off from the rest of the world. "While we are in this room" I said "we are generating ideas. We have the freedom to generate any idea - no matter how crazy or counter to what Levantine does. We have all the money in the world, and can violate any rule of physics. Give yourself that freedom when we start thinking about the task in front of us."

I continued. "This brainstorming session has been carefully planned. You've received the background and key questions we want to answer. Now, I'm going to ask you to start generating ideas in just a minute. My role will be to facilitate the discussion - to ask questions, to kickstart the conversation and to help the team stay on track. Marge will be documenting the ideas. You'll notice, tacked up on the walls, a set of brainstorming rules. Yes, good brainstorming is based on rules. One of those rules is to grant yourselves the ability to think objectively and to break the rules that govern you outside this room. Other rules: generate lots of ideas. Don't judge ideas as we generate them. Generate wild ideas. Don't try to "own" an idea. My job will be to reinforce these rules as we progress."

I stopped to let that sink in. "In front of you you'll see some toys, which some of you have already picked up. You are welcome to 'play' with those toys if they help you think more creatively. You are welcome to get up and move around if that helps you think creatively. You can draw an idea if that is helpful. Our goal is to stimulate your thinking and remove roadblocks. Before we begin, are there any questions?"

Some nervous chuckles and some experienced grins. OK, here we go.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Thirty Three

2009-06-24T04:51:00.000-07:00

While we were planning for Meredith's arrival and jockeying with Accipiter's skunkworks design, Matt and I had real client work to deliver the following day. We were facilitating a two day brainstorming session with Levantine, a long time client that used us on a regular basis to conduct brainstorming and scenario planning workshops. Over the last two weeks we'd worked with Marge Belinski, our primary contact, to identify the opportunity that her team would use to brainstorm against. Luckily, Marge knew our approach and how important we felt it was to do adequate prep work. In our experience, most brainstorming and idea generation sessions fail based on just a few reasons:

1) The issue or challenge is unclear or unimportant
2) The people who attend the brainstorm are inadequately prepared
3) The facilitation is poor or has an obvious bias
4) There's no plan to act on the ideas after the session

Clearly, none of these challenges is insurmountable if your client is willing to invest some time to address each of them. In Marge we had a long time partner who understood the value of the prep work.

I called Marge to discuss the preparation of the brainstorming participants.

"Hi Marge, it's Sam."

"Hi Sam. Calling right on time. You ready to review the prep work and our goals for the brainstorming tomorrow?"

"Yes" I said. "Let's review the framing first. What is the opportunity or challenge you've defined and communicated to the team?" In the past, we would have worked with Marge to develop a clear, definitive purpose for the brainstorm, a newly identified opportunity or an impending challenge. Marge had been through the drill so frequently that she knew how to develop it on her own.

"I've sent the team a framing statement that reads 'Levantine is a leader in extruded plastics for the automotive industry. Given the decline in the US automotive sales, Levantine must identify new clients or new prospects for its extruded plastics. In this session, we'll generate ideas about potential prospects for extruded plastic. You should come to the meeting having considered this need. Any relevant idea that identifies a new market opportunity or a new industry that could become a viable prospect is welcome, as is new business opportunities that Levantine can create in the wholesale or direct to consumer markets. We'll focus our efforts on US based customers to control timelines and shipping costs'. What do you think?"

"I like the definition and especially some of the scoping statements about considering opportunities only in the US. However, haven't you left the scope a bit broad? Should you rule in, or rule out, certain industries?"

"At this point, we are genuinely interested in any idea, in any industry. There may be some disruptive opportunities that we're not seeing because of the 'business as usual' mindset. So, for now, we are intentionally leaving the scoping fairly broad."

"OK. I don't see any significant issues otherwise."

"Great" She beamed through the phone. She was one of our first clients once we set up shop, and had been resistant to our approach at first, leading to one poorly prepared brainstorming session that almost meant the end of the relationship between Marlowe and Levantine. However, we were able to convince her to try it our way, spending the time clarifying the issue and preparing the attendees, and the results had been obvious to her, and to Levantine. Now she was crafting the problem statements and preparing the brainstorming teams on her own.

"So, we're conducting the standard two day event with you" I said, just getting it out there so there were no misunderstandings. "We'll lead the brainstorming session Wednesday morning, and you've got an activity for the team in the afternoon. We'll return to brainstorming on Thursday morning, and wrap the session Thursday afternoon by ranking the ideas and assigning responsibility for followup. Correct?"

"That's the agenda. You'll like the activity we've designed for the group."

Whenever possible we break up our sessions in two day increments, doing brainstorming in the morning when people are fresh, and conducting an activity or exercise in the afternoon to get them 'hands on' with the problem or product in the afternoon. What still amazes us to this day is how little people in a firm actually interact with their own products and services, or take an outsider's perspective. We've sent people from credit card companies off to shop with credit cards, but making them note how and why they used the card. We've had agricultural equipment makers out on tractors, thinking about the challenges and issues of the maintenance of their products. Inevitably these excursions create entirely new vistas of ideas that simply won't be generated sitting in a conference room.

"Surprise me" I said.

"We're taking the team to a series of stores that offer extruded plastics, including an auto parts store, a LEGO store and other stores in a shopping strip. Basically it's a scavenger hunt in the mall to find various extruded plastic products. We need to open the eyes of the team to the range of possibilities for our extruded plastics. And, we are asking them to buy one product from each store that is extruded plastic, and one product that isn't extruded plastic but could be if it was re-engineered."

"I do like it" I said, not just shining her on. "It's good because they are confronted with the range of possibilities for extruded plastic, and are forced to think about other possibilities for the technology and your capabilities."

"I think it will be a good session" she said "We've got a good range of people who are really engaged in this problem, and I think they are well prepared. I think I've earned the reputation as someone who will take the ideas and ensure they get a fair hearing in the product management council."

That was the case. Marge, whatever our early stumbles had been with her, was definitely one to champion good ideas and seek out sponsors and product managers who would work with her. She had several new products out in market pilots due to her sheer energy and enthusiasm, and had a great reputation in Levantine as a one-woman innovation program.

"Marge, we're good to go tomorrow. For grins, I am going to run the brainstorm in the same manner as always, with a statement of the rules of brainstorming and an ice breaker to get the team started. Could you fax over your agenda so we can review it?"

"No problem. I'll send it over in just a few. Anything else we need to cover?"

I didn't need to ask but I did anyway.

"Just checking - the room where we'll work has plenty of wall space, and we'll have flip charts and markers? We'll bring along some other manipulatives and the rules."

"You're bringing the toys? Don't forget the Play-Do and the Etch-A-Sketch. That one is always a favorite. The room is perfect for brainstorming - in fact I'm trying to take it over as a permanent brainstorming space."

"Then we're all set" I said. "See you tomorrow."

"Great. Take care."

I love it when a plan comes together.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Thirty Two

2009-06-22T05:17:00.000-07:00

The phone rang as Matt and I were talking about how to re-arrange the office to make room for Meredith.

"Sam" said June "it's for you, Susan Johansen from Accipter. Are you free to take the call?"

Why not, I thought.

"Sure, send it through"

"Marlowe" I said, gripping the phone a little more tightly than usual.

"Sam" she said "I've finished my proposal for Bill and I wanted to run it by you before I submit it to him. Do you have a few minutes to walk through it with me?"

What's a few more minutes invested on an inevitable failure? At this point anything to kick start Accipiter into action was worth something.

"Send it over."

"It's already on your fax machine."

"Pretty sure of yourself."

"No, I knew you couldn't pass the opportunity by. Probably like rubbernecking an accident on the freeway."

Hmm. How to answer that one - too true for comfort. I left it laying there like an orphaned cat.

"Hold the phone while I get the fax"

I left the phone lying on the desk, made a face at Matt and strode over to the fax machine. There, in the tray, were ten pages of text, describing a proposed skunkworks for Accipiter, including projections for costs. I noticed that we had a line item in the budget.

I picked up the receiver. "OK, how can I help you?"

"I just wanted to walk through the proposal to ensure I didn't miss anything, and to see if you had any suggestions or changes."

"Tell you what" I said. "Give me 30 minutes to read through it and I'll call you back."

"Hmm. I'm going into a meeting in 20 minutes, and won't be free until 4."

"I'll call you at 4 with my comments."

"OK. Thanks Sam, and please keep this confidential for now."

Like I was headed for the rooftops.

"No problem"

"I'd like to shoot this over to Bill by Wednesday or Thursday of this week, so anything you give me I'll incorporate tomorrow."

"OK. Give me a little while to review it and I'll call you with my comments."

"Thanks." The line went dead. I admired her moxie. She was playing chicken with the COO of a Fortune 500 firm. It was going to be interesting to see who flinched first, and to ensure we didn't get splattered with the remains.

I looked over her proposal that day. Where do these people learn to write? Most business propositions are as dull as a late summer Mississippi Sunday afternoon, languid and drowsy, with prose that an eight grade English teacher would mark as incomplete and inappropriate. Written in a passive voice with little excitement or emotion. I marked up the introductory pages, trying to breath some life into rather staid corporate speak. If we are going to innovate, and going to play chicken, we may as well make it interesting.

The proposal itself, once I'd waded through the various penumbras and passive voice hanging clauses and the three dollar words (utilized for used), was OK. It seemed Susan had captured the relevant costs for space, overhead, staff and cash expenses. She'd included a generous sum for "consultants" which I assumed meant Marlowe Innovation. The accounting for the costs was crisp and to the point, unlike the rest of the document. What was missing, however, was the most important aspect of the skunkworks. There was little mention of the result. Bill, and anyone else who was going to approve this investment would need to understand what he was getting for his money, and in a very specific way. We couldn't present a tic'd and tied budget on the cost side in the order of $600,000 without describing in some detail what we expected the specific outcomes and benefits to be.

Reading this document was like reviewing the obituary of an 18th century English accountant, flowery in description without being direct, yet specific to the point of pain on the accounting side.

Wasn't it Einstein who said the definition of insanity was doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results? Why couch a risky new venture in the existing corporate speak that never got approval for even safe projects. We needed some robust, action-oriented language, to make some bold claims and to have our work leap off the page if it was going to stand out. This proposal was written with to accept failure before it had been decided. Susan and I had our work cut out for us. Last I looked, pirates didn't meekly and politely ask for the booty they took, they raised the Jolly Roger and took it, guns blazing. Susan was going to have to step away from the corporate mentality to be successful - it simply isn't possible to represent the culture and innovate against it at the same time.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Thirty One

2009-06-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

Matt and I walked back to the office from Darby's. The mid-day sun was hot but the awnings of the buildings cast a dark, cool shade, and a breeze was picking up from the water. All in all, a day that even a hard-living, hard-working cynical guy like me could enjoy.

Matt and I had bought our small office building on the edge of a very sketchy neighborhood several years ago, betting on the come. The neighborhood was a mash-up of funky bohemian, edgy arty marcom types looking for the rough, exposed brick and wood buildings, a few used clothing stores, a boarded up grocer next to a thriving tienda. The city and its high rise sprawl ended just a few blocks from our neighborhood, and already the developers had their eyes on the real estate just down the street - perfect for some new yuppie condominiums for highly paid investment bankers and fashion models. The real people, doctors, police and innovation consultants, would continue to have to find shelter in the outer burbs.

Our building was perfect for us, because we took an entire floor, even though we didn't need all the space, and rented out the ground floor to a tailor and a florist. Our space was the entire second floor, a couple of offices and a reception room flanking an open space we could configure as a classroom, an ideation space or for other purposes. Really, just a big, open space with lots of bare walls, wood floors and large windows for natural light, perfect for a lot of the group work we did on site. I liked being a story above the street, so we could look down on all the goings-on without having to deal with the noise and distractions, while our tenants on the first floor relied on the walkup traffic.

Adding Meredith to the mix wasn't going to be a problem from a space consideration. Matt and I shared an office because we liked to toss ideas back and forth, and we'd probably just add more room and add another desk for Meredith. Having her in the office would probably mean a little less Scotch and soda and sports motif, such as it existed. The iconic dogs playing poker painting, hanging on the wall near my desk, or the faded brainstorming rules poster near Matt's desk could probably stay, but the picture of the Thanone client manager, currently used as a dart board behind the office door, might not give the best first impression.

Additionally, Matt and I had learned to work together, so we didn't disrupt each other. I could be on a conference call with a client and Matt could tune it out. As we grew, we'd probably need to create some separation and quiet space for each other, so we didn't interrupt or disrupt each other's work. June's reception space was probably OK. Coming up the stairs and entering the Marlowe Innovation office doors and looking at the reception space with critical eyes didn't produce any significant issues, but I made a note to ask Meredith to give us her thoughts - after all, she had fresh eyes and Matt and I were probably too close to the forest to see the trees.

Several things we'd done had made the open space a lot more viable for the work we did. First, we left a lot of blank wall space, so that when we were generating ideas or capturing trends we could hang these ideas or trends on the copious wall space, and do a lot of our work in groups. There was no crowding or difficulty organizing the ideas. We'd purchased a couple of very heavy but moveable white boards, which we could use to spark conversation or to divide up the room into virtual classrooms. We'd also collected over the years a veritable Sanford and Sons junkroom of cast off furniture and fixtures, giving the room an interesting dimension. It was completely possible to sit in a chair that would remind you of your childhood with the sticky vinyl covering, or find a comfortable rocking chair rescued from a second hand shop. The point was to get people out of their Herman Miller Aeron chairs and gray cubicles for just a few hours, and to have them think differently and act differently in a new environment. That was our goal, plus most of the furnishings had come cheap, and gave us a somewhat urbane, funky appeal, not something you could say about Matt and me generally.

Thinking about our space and the advantages it offered, I was struck by the fact that I should try to get Thompson, Briggs, Phillips and Johansen out of the Accipiter mahogany and glass encasement and into a less formal environment for some radical thinking. Perhaps if we could get them to visit, and to participate in a trend spotting session or an ideation they could see how the program would work, and the change in environment would weaken the corporate resistance to change. I made a note to speak to Susan about bringing her team over to interact with us on our playing ground, thinking that might break the logjam in their minds. Of course, with her skunkworks program proposal, she might be doing that herself already.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Thirty

2009-06-17T04:53:00.000-07:00

I hung up with Susan, thinking that she and I were out on the plank together. Taking a $600K proposal to create a skunkworks to Bill Thompson was going to take guts, but it might be the only way to break up the log jam that the innovation program at Accipiter had become. One way or another we'd probably reach a resolution on that issue shortly.

Matt and I left for our standing Tuesday lunch. We tried very hard to get together for lunch at Darby's every Tuesday, same restaurant, same booth, same meal. If we weren't careful, we could go for weeks without seeing each other, and we felt it was important to touch base regularly about what the innovation market was doing and the kinds of things we needed to do to stay out in front. With Meredith coming aboard, the next few weeks were going to be especially hectic.

We strolled down the avenue in the crisp summer sun, watching the crowds pass by and keeping our usual patter going. Business had been good recently, and we'd managed to put the Thanone challenges out of our mind. We had a reasonably strong pipeline and felt that the demands for innovation consulting were increasing. However, I felt that Matt had something on his mind, and I knew if he did it wouldn't be long before whatever concerned him was on the table. We'd been seated and ordered our usual - cobb salad for him, hold the eggs, reuben sandwich for me, two beers, when he unloaded.

"I'm concerned about what we are going to do with Meredith" he said. "I know she's got great ethnography skills, but that's new for you and me. How do we find and win that work? Can we deliver voice of the customer and other customer insights work that's reasonable and high quality?"

It was a bit late in the game to ask these questions, since we'd offered Meredith a job and she had accepted. Her first day was scheduled in less than two weeks, once she had detangled herself from her existing position. Matt had voiced some of the concerns that had been bouncing around in my head - had we overextended ourselves in an area that we knew little about?

"We've lost opportunities in the past because we didn't have good research and customer insight skills. We've also been forced to partner with firms that we felt did poor work or were the client's favorite, but who contributed little to the project. You and I don't know a lot about ethnography, but that's not exactly the point. What we need to do is consider the 'front end' of the innovation process and help our clients identify trends, unmet needs and customer insights. While we have done a number of trend spotting exercises and helped develop scenario plans, you and I don't have much experience gaining the qualitative insights of customers. I'd rather bring those skills on board than see that work go to another firm, or get neglected all together."

"I'm on board with all of that. My concern is that we need to sell that work - you and I have always partnered for that capability. Now we need to learn how to sell it, or Meredith will become a very expensive commodity."

In a small agency, a hunter's mentality is important. A good consultant is constantly hunting for new business and working on his or her existing business. Any good consultant is part salesman, part implementer. Without a dedicated salesforce, each consultant in a smaller agency had to pull his or her own weight. Matt didn't have to voice his concerns, I knew them as well. Meredith had never had to sell work before, and now her success, and ours, depended on selling her knowledge and skills in an ethnography project and blending the findings into insights we could use to drive other consulting opportunities.

"Matt" I said, between bites of my reuben, which was actively positioning small morsels of itself on my tie and shirt front "the first thing we've got to do is not allow Meredith or ourselves to be stovepiped. Meredith needs to learn what we do, and be able to consult with our clients on trends, or innovation processes or ideation. She can be very valuable as another consultant in that regard. She also needs to develop a pipeline of projects that require her skill sets, and you and I will help her do that. You and I need to learn to support ethnography and research projects. This is only going to work if we stick with our methodology - an integrated approach to innovation from trend spotting and synthesis all the way through idea validation. Ethnography and market research will help identify new opportunities that customers may not even be aware of, and validate the strength of the need, and help validate new products and services in market tests. Today you and I cobble that together as best we can. With Meredith aboard, we can deliver a better, more complete and practical solution for our customers."

Matt nodded, but I knew he wasn't completely satisfied. In that way he reminded me of my first wife, who could never fully wrap her head around any plan, or enthusiastically support any new project I suggested. No matter how much I tried, getting her on board with any concept or change was difficult if not impossible. When I'd decided to open my own consulting firm, that was the last straw for her. She wanted a stable life with a husband with a dependable 9 to 5 job, who worked in a cubicle and brought home a steady paycheck. Last I spoke with her, she was remarried to an accountant for a large industrial firm on the west side, probably worrying him to death about his plans for promotion.

Knowing Matt, it was clear he was going to reserve judgement, so I just shrugged and went to work on my reuben. There were several possible projects for Meredith even before she came aboard. Cantide and Accipiter could both use her services, even if they didn't know it yet. I was less worried about Meredith adding value than I was her adjustment to a pure consulting existence. The life of a consultant was very different from a corporate one. In a corporate existence, your day is not your own - you move from meeting to meeting, updating others or being updated, and try to squeeze in the work you will be evaluated on in the early morning or late afternoon. The days are mostly the same, and the work rarely changes. For consultants, each day is something new. Clients have no problem radically changing direction or asking for new, revised scope on a project, or starting or stopping suddenly. Often we'll work on two or three projects in a day for several different clients, or find that a deliverable has changed and work late into the night to meet the deadline. To a great extent you plan your days based on what you expect to happen, and prepare for what does happen, which is usually different and unexpected.

We called for our check and dropped the cash on the table. As we left Matt turned to me and said "Don't worry. I think we've done the right thing bringing her aboard. I'm just getting cold feet. There's no doubt we can learn a lot from her and she will add very valuable experience to our team. Plus, I think she can hold her own with us, and that's saying something."

Looking at us, two rumpled, cynical, sarcastic innovation consultants, leaving lunch with a combination of blue cheese and russian dressing hanging from our collective shirt fronts, it was hard to think that anyone would want to hold their own with us, much less be seen in public with us.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Twenty Nine

2009-06-16T04:41:00.000-07:00

"Building a skunkworks isn't going to be too difficult" I said. "You won't need a significant amount of space, or funds, to work effectively, but you will need several good people, and they'll need to commit at least half of their time to working in the skunkworks."

"Only half their time?"

"Ideally, they'd be full time in the skunkworks" I admitted "I just wasn't sure if you can convinced four or five people to give up their regular jobs and move into a disruptive innovation team for four to six months, with no guarantee that they can return to what they were doing before."

"I believe we'll have to have them full time, or else they'll get sucked back into their 'day jobs'. If we are going to make the skunkworks successful, then the participants need to be full time."

"In that case, they also need to be volunteers. You want a team that is fully committed to the success of the skunkworks, and innovation at Accipiter. If you simply ask for several individuals, you may have some assigned to the team who don't want to be there or who can't think disruptively. You are also going to need to demonstrate what these individuals will be doing in six months. Do you anticipate the skunkworks will continue? Or do you think they could become the core of an innovation team? Or will they need to find roles in their current functions?"

"I don't know that part yet. Let's design the skunkworks and determine the staffing, and then think through how it works and what the logical outcomes are."

I'd tossed a few grenades at her, and she seemed as passionate about the skunkworks concept as when we'd first started talking. I had very little reason to believe she could pull it off, but given the glacial pace of decision making and change at Accipiter, perhaps this was the only way to introduce something radically new.

"I'd recommend, based on our experience, a site off campus, away from the Accipiter culture and the pressure of fitting in. Does Accipiter own or lease any office space in town, away from the Accipiter campus?"

"We have small satellite offices in several locations. I'm concerned, though, that all of them have a fair amount of Accipiter staff, so we'd still be 'in' Accipiter even in those offices."

"Then that means finding a small office, away from Accipiter, where you can establish the team. With four or five people you won't need more than a thousand, fifteen hundred square feet of office space. You can probably find that anywhere."

"I had in mind some space in the warehouse district. You know, bare walls, high ceilings. Get away from the traditional class "A" space and cubicles."

"That's an interesting suggestion. You need to be sure the individuals you bring on to your team are comfortable working in a slightly different environment. If you can find something that's different in terms of space, it's possible it would be a good place for brainstorming and other innovation activities, close by yet away from Accipiter."

"OK, I'll start working on the space. You've mentioned four or five people. What kinds of people do we need? Is four or five enough?"

"Most research shows that as a team grows, it struggles to keep focus on disruptive or radical innovation. Only small teams seem to be able to get beyond the traditional corporate thinking. Much more than five people and you start to introduce group pressure, and you'll have a hard time preventing the team from introducing Accipiter corporate thinking."

I thought, after meeting many of the Accipiter executives, she'd have a hard time with this anyway, but perhaps within the rank and file there were people who wanted change.

"As far as types of people" I said "Look first for people who are a bit of an irritant in their organizations, who are 'idea' people or who constantly ask why things can't be done differently. There are always people that fit this description in any organization. Then talk to them to understand if they are merely complainers, or, if given the chance, they would create real change. Then, see if they are crazy enough to volunteer for something like this."

"Crazy enough? I'm going to make it a badge of honor to be on this team" she said.

She's either got the moxie to pull this off, I thought, or she's frustrated enough to commit a frontal charge directly into the guns.

"I'd want to see people with several different types of skills or business knowledge on the team. So I'd definitely find someone who has been working on corporate strategy, product management and sales. Don't worry too much just yet about finance or legal, they are trained to ask the right questions, just not the ones we want to focus on right now. Get as much customer interaction and insight on the team as possible, and a reasonable breadth of skills and knowledge so you don't attack the problem from any specific perspective."

"OK, I think I can start recruiting the team based on this feedback, and I've already looked at space. What kinds of help can you provide to help us get started?"

"From a consultative viewpoint we at Marlowe can help you with trend spotting and synthesis and scenario planning. What's going to be important for you to succeed is to pick one area of the company where you believe a radically new product or service can create a real difference. We need to focus all of our work on a specific area and create a compelling new product or service. Before your team can be successful, you'll need to shrink the scope of their work. Then we can help develop alternative scenarios and drive out customer insights and requirements, which you can use to generate ideas about new products."

"OK, so what's this going to cost over a four to six month period of time?"

"Assuming each person costs about $10K a month, fully loaded, and you have five people, that's $50K for the team per month, plus space, overhead and so forth. Say $60K for grins per month. Our costs will be another $25K per month. So you will be looking at approximately $90K per month, for four to six months. Minimum $400K, maximum $600K."

"OK, that's enough for me to get started. I'm going to write up an outline and send it over for you to review. My goal is to get something in front of Bill by the end of the week for his review and comment."

This should shake something loose, I thought. It will either light a fire under the executive team, or encourage Susan to find a new job in a different company.

"Are you sure this is the right approach, Susan? It could be a big risk on your part."

"Bill brought me aboard to run an innovation program. I left a good role to take on this position, and eight months later we are still only talking about innovation. I want to force this to a decision. If it goes my way, great. If not, I'll know where we stand and I can start looking for something new."

Pulp Innovation Chapter Twenty Eight

2009-06-12T05:06:00.000-07:00

In for dime, in for a dollar I always say.

"Tell me more about your skunkworks idea. What makes you think a skunkworks will appeal more than any other innovation effort?"

"I don't know that it's more appealing" she said. "I just think if we can create an innovation program that allows us to move forward, create some new products or services and demonstrate we can create something compelling, then the rest of the organization will get behind it. I think it will be very difficult to innovate within the lines of business as they stand today. There's just too much cost cutting pressure and too little appetite for change."

"Sounds familiar. Many of the firms we work with have the same cultural challenges."

"But I feel the need to demonstrate some value. Bill Thompson recruited me from a good product management position and asked me to work directly with him to build an innovation capability. I've been in this role for almost eight months and we've done nothing but talk about innovation. I'm losing time and credibility, and there's really few options beyond starting up a skunkworks at this point. I don't see Fred Phillips allowing us to innovation effectively, and most of the other product group heads want to innovate but don't have the budget or manpower. If I can't produce something - some idea, some method to break this logjam, I will have to find a new job in Accipiter or somewhere else. And I have to tell you, the perspective I've gained in this innovation role has led me to believe it will need to be elsewhere if we can't get something started soon."

Pirate flag, I thought. No, more like walking the plank joined together. But I had great sympathy for her, having been in her predicament several times, except as a consultant. Oftentimes it was easy to see the opportunities but hard to reach up and grasp them for most firms. As a consultant, I could walk away and find another firm more committed to change. As an employee, who'd committed years of her life to Accipiter, leaving would mean starting new in some other organization. Staying would mean going back to another job, tail tucked between her legs, the silly 'innovator' who should have been back doing the real work.

"OK, I understand the need to do something. Believe me, I'd like to see Accipiter do something. The question in front of us is: can you get Thompson to agree to a skunkworks and provide the resources quickly? Will he need to get the rest of the management team on board, or can he do it himself?"

"That's why I needed to speak with you. I need to build a compelling case for the skunkworks, define the costs and resources necessary and identify some possible outcomes. I think Bill is frustrated as well, but he can't force the product groups to innovate. A skunkworks allows us to set up our own team, outside the structure and pressure of the organization, to generate ideas and develop them. I think we can move much more quickly that way."

"Yes, you can. We've done things like this before. The definition and generation of ideas won't be difficult. You'll need a very well defined opportunity to address or problem to solve, and the hard part will be implementing the idea. If you don't have the product groups behind you, it's very possible that you'll generate good ideas but won't find a home for them in the organization. The product groups may snub even very good ideas if they weren't involved in the development, and you'll have to find funding for your ideas just like they do - in the annual plan. You'll compete with them for resources. Are you willing to take that risk, or to develop and launch a new product outside of the existing product lines?"

"I've considered the issue. I don't know how we'll develop and launch ideas out of the skunkworks, but I am willing to get started and see where this takes us. I think I can get Bill on board with that approach if we hold the costs down and demonstrate real value quickly. Will you help me put some cost estimates together for the skunkworks?"

When your neck is in the noose, do you help the hangman tighten the knot? The tradeoff was this - if the skunkwork was successful, Marlowe would get a lot of accolades and more business from Thompson and Johansen, and none from the rest of the organization. If the skunkwork failed, we get no business from Accipiter anyway, and it didn't appear as though the calcified decision making process at Accipiter was going to break up anytime soon. So, in balance, I didn't have much to lose.

"OK" I said "with a couple of conditions. First, we need to confirm with Bill that he'll look at our proposal. There's no need to do this work if he won't agree to look at the proposal."

"Done" she said.

"Second, you and I have to trust each other and communicate effectively. To date, talking with Accipiter has been like shouting in the desert. I'm talking and no one is responding. If I agree to do this with you, we agree to respond to each others emails and voicemails, and to talk regularly."

"Sam, I can't do this without your expertise, and I wasn't able to communicate with you since I didn't know the decisions or how things were progressing. I promise you that I'll communicate with you."

"OK. Third, if we build this and the proposal is accepted, you'll work with Marlowe Innovation to implement the skunkworks. I'm doing this work on my dime, sticking my neck out, and I need to know that you'll do the same for me if the proposal is accepted."

"I'll do my best to influence the decision. You know that Bill will ultimately make the final decisions."

"I'll hold you to your word."

"Any other conditions?"

I was sure there should be, but I couldn't think of any at that point.

"No. Let's get started."

"OK, what's it going to take to build a skunkworks here at Accipiter?"

That's what we were going to find out.

Pulp Innovation Chapter Twenty Seven

2009-06-11T05:03:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in my office, reviewing the results of a brainstorming session just completed when the phone rang in the outer office. I could hear June, our receptionist slash girl Friday talking to the caller. I tried to block out the conversation and continue on with the review of ideas.

Matt and I led a brainstorming session with Thanone the day before. Thanone was losing share and late to market with new products in its market, and had asked us to help generate new ideas. We'd stipulated the use of our methodology, which requires adequate planning, engaging the participants in pre-work, and a two day ideation event broken up by an "excursion" which allowed us to get the participants out of the conference room and acting like consumers, so they could get a sense of what it's like to interact and use the products and services they build and sell. The project manager agreed with our methodology, and together we planned an event that would help the team see past its current predicament and think differently. At least that was the plan.

"God save us from an engineering firm" Matt had said as we wrapped up the two day event.

It turned out that none of the pre-work was reviewed by the participants, over 80% of whom were engineers primarily focused on cutting costs on the existing product line. Several of them chose to see the ideation portion of the event as a time to catch up on their email or chat on their BlackBerrys, and several told us directly that generating ideas for new products was "a waste of time" as the management team was very focused on cutting costs and improving the existing product line. Generating ideas within that framework was nearly impossible, since several of the team members had to be educated on the goals, which most of the rest of the team members promptly rejected as a reasonable goal. The project manager from Thanone, a product manager working to improve his product line, surveyed the product and safety engineers and called the whole thing hopeless.

"Even if we come up with some interesting new ideas, the safety engineers will shoot them down in the session."

"That's our job to keep the team focused. We'll keep them from judging the ideas too quickly" I said.

"Um, you don't understand our culture. Watching this for just an hour or two, I can see that the engineers aren't willing to step away from what they "know" to be true. They can't remove themselves from the tiny adjustments or simple problems with the existing products to try to think of new products and services."

"We've seen this before. Unless we have strong buy-in from the team to move on to new and challenging opportunities, most teams, especially very homogeneous teams, will revert back to solving the day to day problems rather than generating new ideas. Could we bring in a senior executive to speak to the team about commitment to the new opportunities and ideation?"

"I doubt we could at this point. I was hopeful that following your methodology the engineers would appreciate a step by step, methodical approach to innovation. What I didn't realize is that they are so steeped in the culture that they simply can't break out - at least we haven't achieved any breakout."

Looking over the ideas later I had to agree with him. It had been quite possibly the most frustrating brainstorming session I'd ever led. We spent far too much time simply trying to get the team on board to think more disruptively, and it was evident their hearts and minds weren't in the task. Even when we did manage to generate some good ideas, some joker in the room would point out all of the problems with the idea, rather than trying to build on the strengths of the idea. Virtually no one on the team had done any of the pre-reading, and none felt there was a strong chance to build a new product. The lack of preparation and agreement on the goal showed up in the ideas. Typically in a two day event we can generate hundreds of ideas and winnow them down to a manageable list that are ready to be implemented. In the case of the Thanone brainstorm, we'd barely managed to generate 100 ideas, and there were very few compelling ones on the list.

"This has been a real failure on our part" my client said as we left. "I'm afraid this may set back some of the things I'd hoped to do from an innovation perspective. It's clear to me that there are bigger challenges to this approach than I'd suspected."

I left knowing that we'd done the right things, but would have a tough time winning more work at Thanone. There were simply too many obstacles to innovation in that culture, and a poorly received event, even one that wasn't our fault, would cause them to think twice about working with us again.

June interrupted my thinking.

"Boss" she said, in that way that lets you know who is really the 'boss' "I've got a Susan Johansen on the phone, from Accipiter. I told her your schedule was full this morning, but she seems very interested in talking with you today, as soon as possible. Can you take a call from her now, or can we move something around on your schedule?"

What the hell, I thought, would I rather beat myself up over Thanone, or watch the ice melt at Accipiter. Somehow, at this point in time, watching the ice melt seemed more interesting. "I can speak with her now. Send her through."

She nodded, and I thought I got a glance of sympathy as she closed my office door. Good help is hard to find. Good help that knows its place and has empathy is even harder to find. I decided to give her a raise at the end of the month.

The phone rang. "Marlow" I said.

"Mr. Marlow, this is Susan Johansen, from Accipiter. I need to talk to you about our innovation efforts."

The words came tumbling, spilling out, rushing out like they were escaping convicts freed from the pen. She gathered her breath and continued.

"Our quarterly results are just coming in and we are getting crushed. Our market share has slipped even more, and another competitor is planning to launch a new product to compete with our best product line in just a few weeks. We've got to improve the way we innovate. I'm so frustrated. Can you help me build a plan to take to Thompson to start an innovation program?"

Anger, desperation and a quixotic task. What more could an innovation consultant ask for?

"Susan, what you are telling me is that things have gotten slightly worse since we first met six months ago. I spoke with the Accipiter leadership council over a month and a half ago, and certainly the results are evident to them as well. Have they asked you to contact me?"

"No. There's no consensus on what to do. Fred Phillips is pushing hard for more Seven Schema work to cut costs. The line of business leaders are running for cover, since Thompson and the executive team are thinking of selling off lines of business or plants. It's as plain as the nose on my face what we need to do, yet trying to get everyone on board, or anyone on board, is almost impossible."

"You work for Thompson."

"Yes, I work for him. He maintains he's interested in innovation, but that the time isn't right. There are too many distractions."

"Well, waiting for the right time to innovate is a management prerogative."

"Sam, I can get the run around here in Accipiter. Are you interested in working with me or not?"

"What is it you want to do? What can we do to change the situation?"

I was buying time at this point. While I had always thought that Susan would be a key player in any innovation project, I knew she didn't have the seniority to drive it by herself. Thompson or Phillips, or one of the heads of the business units would need to back her up for the project to go forward. Clearly Phillips had cast his lot with cost cutting.

"I want to build a business case for innovation and take it to Thompson and the rest of the executive team. I think I can build a case that we should build a skunkworks and move a few people over to build new products and services for Accipiter, but outside the corporate culture."

Will you hang the Jolly Roger over the doorway, I thought.

"I'm convinced that a skunkworks is the only way we can get started. We just need a few people and some help getting started. We really have nothing to lose at this point."

She sounded a bit desperate, as if her career was somehow caught up in the success or failure of innovation. Perhaps it was. But could Accipiter stomach a skunkworks and would it be successful? Would it be another Thanone for Marlowe?

Pulp Innovation Chapter Twenty Six

2009-06-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

The day broke, clear and sunny, with a fine soft west wind off the bay. People were out, going to work, eating in bagel shops, sipping that first delicious draft of coffee. They were driving to work in convertibles with the wind in their hair, reveling in the fine weather. All was sunshine and light on the outside.

Or at least that's the way it appeared from my bedroom window, peering slightly off to the left to get a glimpse of the street down the narrow alleyway between my building and the one just across the way. Mornings were probably another invention we should chalk up to Torquemada, even mornings as bright and clear and resonant as this one. No wonder Starbucks and Caribou and a host of other cartoonish coffee klatches had succeeded. Most people didn't want to get out of bed even on the best of mornings, and they needed that caffeine kickstart to get them moving.

For me it was a fine morning outside, but a clock and a calendar clicked away inside my head. Today was the 30th working day since I'd presented to Accipiter's management team at the Excelsior. In that time period I'd had one voice to voice call with Johansen, left two voicemails for Phillips (unreturned), left three voicemails for Briggs (unreturned) and had four conversations with myself about what had gone wrong. Silence from a firm like Accipiter is as inevitable as rust, and since no executive in his right mind will tell you what is happening until the ground under his feet stops moving, the silence reverberated in my office. I understood that no decision would be taken quickly, but Accipiter was moving with the speed of a prehistoric sloth surrounded by hungry Cro-Magnons.

I tossed back my breakfast, a mixture of day old coffee with a slash of something Irish and dressed, pondering my next move. First, I asked myself, did Accipiter intend to do anything to innovate? Next, if so, did it intend to seek out an outside partner to assist with that work? Third, if so, how likely was it that Marlow Innovation would be that firm. Last, if all of those suppositions fell in my favor, what was the approximate timeframe until the next global warming period? In all honesty I answered my questions as 1) maybe but who really knew 2) probably, if for no other reason than to ignite some energy 3) Very likely since I'd met and spoken with most of them and 4) that date got reset each quarter.

Fortunately Matt and I had enough on our plate to keep us occupied, expanding the office, bringing Meredith up to speed, working with other existing clients and trolling for new opportunities. Hiring Meredith brought immediate and unexpected benefits - a small trend spotting and synthesis project for a traditional media company. Meredith had contacts and introduced Marlow Innovation as a firm to assist with trend spotting, synthesis and scenario planning, which we won fair and square, which is to say without competition. We'd be starting that project this week.

Trend spotting and synthesis is one of my favorite types of projects, because it is somewhat removed from the pressure of identifying a new "product" and more interested in discovery of new opportunities or markets. There's some of the Blue Ocean in a trend spotting and synthesis exercise, especially as it extends into a scenario planning workshop. Our goal is to look 5 to 7 years out, extending key trends and developing a description of the future conditions and possible outcomes. This work is interesting because it involves conjecture, and trading off alternatives and forecasting actions and reactions across time. Many firms do this work exceedingly well - the Shell Oil company has used scenario planning very successfully and much of what we do is built on the work they and the Defense Department created in the 60s and 70s. The other reason I enjoy trend spotting and synthesis is that we often open up unexpected opportunities and challenges for our clients.

For example, in one trend spotting exercise years ago we extrapolated the growth of the "doc in a box" or minute clinic, and one of our projections was that these locations would become the predominant place for people with insurance, as well as the underinsured, to obtain more of their healthcare. At the time, the health insurer laughed off that assumption. Two years later they were investing in minute clinics and considering completely new compensation schemes for doctors in those clinics and the patients who frequented them. Pressed to provide more coverage for the underinsured, where did they turn? To the locations with the least overhead and easiest access - the minute clinic. Done well, trend spotting, synthesis and scenario planning can provide a glimpse into a very possible future. All that remains is for the client to take action before some other firm does.

Thinking about the trend spotting activity brightened my morning. Or perhaps the Irish part of my coffee breakfast was kicking in. I finished dressing and went down to take part in the great commute in the warm summer breeze, my mind already exploring the trends in the media space and extrapolating into possible scenarios. Accipiter and its glacial pace would wait another day.