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Relentlessly Relevant: 50 Ways to Innovate, by Douglas Kruger
THIS book notes several reasons that make innovation necessary. Among these is the fact that even sustained excellence eventually becomes invisible, and your “excellence” can be rendered irrelevant through change. Furthermore, your raving fans today do not want more of the same excellence, anyway.
The first third of the book deals with the mental processes that facilitate or inhibit innovation. The intention of the book is to offer inspiration and content that will help business people see the possibilities of serving their clientele better. It starts, Kruger asserts, with a way of thinking that eschews the conventional, bucks the expected roles we are trained to perform, and adopts a way of looking at the world that makes innovation possible.
Futurist Alvin Toffler of Future Shock fame, and an impressive intellect and thinker, wrote: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”
In case you think innovation requires wealth to get started, Kruger makes the case for constraints being a catalyst rather than a constraint on innovation. He cites his own upbringing as confirmation and an example of open-mindedness and unconventional thinking.
There are two types of innovation, “incremental” and “disruptive”. Incremental innovation is making what you have or what you offer “better and better by degrees”. Disruptive innovation is coming up with something quite different to what you have been offering which makes your original offering obsolete.
“There are several ways to innovate that can help you make your business very profitable,” Kruger explains. You could, most obviously, create and offer new products. You could also innovate by changing how you perform the operations of your business by, for example, automating what was previously manual.
You could change your business model by no longer renting out physical movies, but by enabling customers to download the movies as the American firm Netflix did.
The “Fifty ways to innovate”, the subtitle of this book, make up the second two-thirds of it, but it would be unwise to skip to the ways to innovate without going through the first third for orientation. Below are some of the ideas that make up the “fifty ways”.
A few of the 50 ways to innovate
“Frankenstein it by stealing parts”
Innovation is never without a precursor - someone always did something on which the new is based. With this acceptance, “steal ideas broadly and shamelessly from others”, then apply these ideas to your unique situation. The greatest and most lucrative innovations were cobbled together from existing parts in ways that solved new problems, as was the monster Frankenstein.
“Practise catching ideas on the fly”
We come across so many interesting ideas, hear fascinating points of view and have powerful insights. The biggest problem with all these ideas is how quickly we lose them.
“Have you ever tried to remember your brilliant idea even half an hour later?” Kruger asks. We need to get into the habit of recording what we think, see, or experience on paper, into a phone, or any other method that works for you. Richard Branson wrote how he has filled hundreds of notebooks in his career with ideas and observations.
“Train yourself to think"
‘That’s awesome! Now imagine if…’” Kruger holds that this is “the heart and soul of innovation”. He cites the self-parking Audi A8 that grew from the cruise control that freed drivers from managing the speed at which they travel, to sensors that assist rear parking to the “That’s awesome! Now image if…” the car could park itself as I dash off to a meeting!
The opposite of this is “That’s awful! Now imagine if…” He uses as an example his experience at the Embassy of Gabon, where people have to leave the embassy and come back again, only because they do not have a photocopy of their passports, and the embassy (open only a few hours a day,) does not have a photocopier.
The embassy lives with annoyed clients who do not have a photocopy, without imagining the benefits of investing a few hundred rands in a printer-copier-scanner which could pay for itself rather quickly through a fee charged to relieved clients. Recognise your “awfuls”, for therein lies opportunity!
“Ask: Who or what do we actually compete against?” Your competitor could obviously be another provider, but could as easily be “non-usage” – they simply do not use the product.
Godrej & Boyce wanted to sell their refrigerators to rural Indians who do not use them. They turned to the Innosight consultancy which recognised a set of facts: rural families cannot afford fridges; they travel by bicycle so they could not transport a fridge; they do not have space in their homes for one; and there is an irregular power supply which would lead to their food spoiling.
So Godrej & Boyce invented a portable, battery-powered, small cooler box, which turned into a sales phenomenon.
This book is great mind food. Feast on it!
Readability: Light --+-- Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High --+--- Low
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. Views expressed are his own.
