Brainstorming groups still kill ideas

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

I was surprised to find an article in a leading innovation journal that summarized a recent research paper on brainstorming. The summary stated that in contrast to most past studies this one showed that group ideation may reduce the number of ideas but it produced some of the best ones.

Fifty years of careful experiments have shown conclusively that group brainstorming reduces

  1. the number of ideas and
  2. the average quality of ideas

generated compared with individual interviews or brainstorming. In short, group brainstorming kills ideas.

Focus groups as well … when it comes to creating or ranking ideas

I am reworking an article on customer research for innovation. The empirical evidence about the use of group methods is truly overwhelming: hundreds of studies over the past 50 years and multiple reviews and meta-analyses of the empirical results show that individual interviews or individuals brainstorming alone are superior to brainstorming groups or focus groups in generating ideas, measured by:

  1. Quantity of ideas and
  2. Average QUALITY of ideas.

The new study

Therefore I went to the new study with keen interest. It turns out that the journal was 100% wrong — the study (Girotra et. al, working paper) was fully consistent with all of the past research. (Always go to the source — don’t trust the review.) The study was interesting because it took the results several steps further.

Group methods (compared to individual ideation):

  1. Produce significantly fewer ideas
  2. Generate ideas of lower average quality
  3. Produce fewer of the very best ideas, and
  4. In addition, groups are not effective at evaluating or ranking generated ideas.

The paper found that add-on ideas building on others ideas were generally lower quality than individual ideas. In short group ideation stinks.

An earlier version of the working paper is posted at:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1082392

I will post my working paper in a future posting.

Posted in Customer Research Methods, experiential innovation, Ideation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

In Search of Innovation

Posted on June 22, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

A great article on innovation in todays WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204830304574133562888635626.html

Look away from the lampost

I suppose a cynic might claim that “great” means that it agrees with the recurring themes and principles discussed in this blog. Specifically:

  1. Storytelling,
  2. Involving users
  3. Lead Users
  4. Deep customer information (ethnography)
  5. Probe and Learn

as well as other ideas.

Take the time to read it!

Posted in Co-creation or User collaboration, Customer Research Methods, experiential innovation, Experiment, Ideation | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

CEO as chief storyteller

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

More on the importance of storytelling for innovation:

RT: @GuyKawasaki Chief Storytelling Officer: why CEOs need to be great storytellers. http://trkk.us/?bSG

This is a followup on an earlier post:

http://servicecocreation.com/2009/06/08/storytime/

Posted in communication, NSD Process | Leave a comment

Medicine and Social Networking

Posted on June 15, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

Business on Twitter

Commercialization of the social networks is inevitable. Dell has posted over $2,000,000 in sales.

[ RT @mashable Making Millions via Twitter: @DellOutlet Surpasses $2 Million in Sales http://bit.ly/NkKHR ]

 Social Networks and Medicine

Social networks may have implications for the delivery of services.

The doctor who makes house calls is at best a niche market (see “Royal Pains”) but there is presumably a benefit to more interaction between a patient and the doctor. The potential for improved service is discussed in this NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/health/11chen.html?_r=1&hpw

Posted in communication, Internet effects, Online service delivery | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Storytime?

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

Storytelling, innovation and organizational change

How do you get an organization to share an innovative vision and push for change?

A common theme, from different perspectives, is the power of stories to impact organizational culture and promote change and innovation. Stories help sell the vision…

A research article showed that storytelling can help diverse team members work together on innovation — Organizational Storytelling and Technology Innovation (Maureen MacLeod; Elizabeth Davidson, System Sciences, 2007)

Another paper discusses design and storytelling:

http://www.uiah.fi/joiningforces/papers/Rivera-Chang.pdf

A business book shows that storytelling ignites action in knowledge-era organizations:   http://www.stevedenning.com/thinksmart.html

Another blog suggests success through storytelling: http://www.innovationcompass.com/innovation_compass/2006/10/business_succes.html

 Organizational change and storytelling: http://businessinnovationfactory.com/weblog/archives/2006/04/twentynine_word.html

Posted in communication, Process Innovation | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Social Design

Posted on May 25, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

The NY Times has an article on “social design” or bringing designers together with social scientists to improve organizational problems; in this case excessive time off by government workers. 

It seems to me that the application discussed might better be called organizational design, but it has significant implications to service, so as the Times suggested it might be called service design as well, another reminder that in service product cannot be separated from process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/fashion/25iht-design25.html?_r=1&hpw

 

Posted in Process Innovation | Leave a comment

Fitnoke.com

Posted on April 30, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

One of my enthusiastic professional sales students (Lee Bradshaw) somehow managed to produce a press release on his thriving online site while preparing for his finals. Check out Fitnoke:

Fitnoke.com

Posted in Internet effects | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Innovating in a down economy

Posted on March 30, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

An innovation consulting firm lists five steps to success in NPD in a down economy. Three of them are:

  1. Understand your customers’ new values
  2. Manage your new product portfolio/pipeline for the long term
  3. Manufacturing (process?) is your best friend.

To see the complete list and explanation from newlogic consulting go to: http://www.newlogicusa.com/_downloads/innovation_in_a_down_economy.pdf

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Facebook doesn’t listen to customers

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

Is it best to ignore your customers?

Innovation thought leaders such as von Hippel, Utterback and then Christensen, have written about the risks of listening to customers when trying to innovate. A fellow blogger defended Facebook’s policy to ignore users by pointing out that if Porsche paid attention to its customer surveys they would build a Volvo:

http://scobleizer.com/2009/03/21/why-facebook-has-never-listened-and-why-it-definitely-wont-start-now/

Of course Utterback, von Hippel, Christensen, and probably Facebook are not saying to ignore customer needs — their point is that customers have trouble expressing their deepest needs and understanding that there might be solutions to their most important problems. Academics refer to latent needs and contextual or sticky information to label this problem.

The solution is to not to ignore customers but to try to get to these latent needs. This may mean putting less weight on surveys and hiring anthropologists to do ethnography instead of hosting another focus group. Think voice of the customer, site visits, lead users, experimenting, rapid prototyping, probe and learn, and open source.

 

Posted in Customer Research Methods | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cross functional innovation teams

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

Cross functional development teams seems like a no-brainer:

  1. Having representatives from marketing, finance, operations, customer service, etc. involved early should speed the development process by allowing communication and coordination to be performed in parallel instead of linear fashion.
  2. Diversity of ideas and viewpoints should aid decision-making.

However, managing cross-functional teams is not trivial. There is a rich literature in management on difficulties in communication, increased turnover and conflict from diversity. So it should perhaps not have been that surprising that the Henard and Szymanski meta-analysis did not find cross-fuctional integration to be a strong antecedent of success in product development.

The current issue (March) of the Journal of Product Innovation Management is a special issue devoted to cross functional teams in new product development. I have not yet read the full issue, but will likely post more info as I read it.

For those who like a summarized version, NC State put out a news release about two of the articles that were co-authored by members of its faculty.

“When it comes to leading a team tasked with developing new products and bringing them to market, new research from North Carolina State University shows that being nice and playing well with others gives you a very real competitive advantage. One new study shows that project managers can get much better performance from their team when they treat team members with honesty, kindness and respect. A second study shows that product development teams can reap significant quality and cost benefits from socializing with people who work for their suppliers.” The full release is here:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-03/ncsu-sst031709.php

[A quick note to basketball fans. I will likely extend my 20-year record of losing a Tokyo-based “March Madness” pool as I indeed selected Radford to beat North Carolina.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/bigsouth/2009-03-12-radford-cover_N.htm]

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