Rating Qualities

7
Applicable
Innovative

Creative Genius
Peter Fisk | Capstone © 2011

If you flip open marketing expert Peter Fisk’s remarkable innovation handbook, you’ll find
something useful on every page. After introducing Leonardo da Vinci as a model and enumerating
his qualities, Fisk offers a choppy but interesting host of lenses, images, options, ideas, metaphors,
models and approaches, all to provide new perspectives based on a synthesis of sound concepts
that you might not think of combining. getAbstract recommends Fisk’s manual to anyone seeking
a guide to innovation that is immediately accessible and applicable. Though the cover shows no
subhead, one appears on the title page promising “An Innovation Guide for Business Leaders,
Border Crossers and Game Changers.” And that is what Fisk provides.

Take-Aways
• Successful innovation depends on design.
• Become more innovative by imitating Leonardo Da Vinci.
• Spark your creativity by expanding your notions of time and space.
• Generate new concepts by blending existing ideas, examining nearby markets, anticipating
consumer desires and shifting how you manage creativity.
• Design combines ideas with practical beauty and focuses on pleasing customers.
• Ideas alone never constitute innovation; they must be manifest in the world.
• Your target market determines which aspects of a newly launched product you will have to
emphasize.
• Don’t innovate alone; create with your customers or other organizations.
• Your innovation must create a “market vortex” that lets you define your market.
• Innovative companies are flexible, open, adaptive and eager to learn.

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 Summary

“Relentless Curiosity”

Inventor, scientist, artist and astronomer Leonardo da Vinci epitomized the border-crossing
innovator. He generated new ideas, and often anticipated scientific and technological discoveries
that became practical only in the last century. The secret to da Vinci’s boundless creativity was his
view of the world. His relentless curiosity allowed him to see more, think on a grander scale and
make original connections among disparate elements. He was brave, which allowed him to accept
paradox, and to live with new and challenging concepts. Become more innovative by imitating Da
Vinci. Methodically question and examine your world and how you perceive it.

Space Is the Place

Pretend you can travel through time. Project yourself forward and look around. Picture how the
world might change and what new opportunities that future world might hold. Borrow the vision
of renowned futurists like author H.G. Wells. Remember that innovation isn’t just new technology;
it also includes changes in culture, lifestyle and ideation itself. Remain flexible in your thinking:
Envisioning the future involves more than merely extrapolating from the present.

“In the midst of technological breakthrough and environmental breakdown, people are
more emotional, expectant and demanding than ever before.”

Time will not be the only change; space will shift as well, and in a more complex way than time.
Markets will shift and interpenetrate. For example, companies like Virgin Galactic already are
extending their sphere of innovation into outer space. Ideas drive economies, and generating new
perspectives is vital to economic success. Preparing for the future means emphasizing choices that
breed new thinking. It requires embracing concepts that cross categories, such as protecting new
ideas by training people in “neurosecurity” or supporting “biobanks” that store biological tissue
instead of money.

What Is Your Role?

What should innovative, creative thinkers do in the face of such change? You can encourage
innovation by recognizing the forces at work in today’s markets. For instance, pay attention to the
way that technology will continue to accelerate the pace of change, the complexity of society and
the ever-increasing speed of machines. New risks will arise, causing anxiety and affecting people’s
ability to adjust.

“Once you have a powerful idea, you want to make the most of it.”

Think of changing space and time to generate new ideas. First and most simply, contemplate the
rise of the East: China’s and India’s economies are booming. Numerous Asian economies are

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 pumping out new laptops, new phones and other innovations with inherent lessons to share. More
subtly, look for “whitespaces” – that is, gaps in markets, underserved customers and niches that
no company has addressed directly. Consider a product targeted to a niche audience and imagine
how you might popularize it for a mass market. Strategize how you could expand a business-only
service to work for individuals as well. Look to the upcoming new spaces that change will produce.
For example, a rising global population will create water scarcities, while an increased number of
aging people will need extra care and senior-friendly products.

“Innovation is about making people’s lives better.”

You can craft a wider variety of ideas by using role-playing and similar exercises. Futurist
Arthur Koestler suggests going beyond the traditional view of seeing “the artist” as the only
personification of creativity. An artist who sculpts a piece of marble is different from “the sage,”
who provides inspiring ideas, and both differ from “the jester,” who hides behind humor while
disrupting expectations. Try to inhabit each of these roles, and imagine how you would address
a problem within that mind-set. Jane Henry, author of Making Sense of Creativity, submits that
new concepts emerge through a kind of spontaneous “grace,” or luck. Talent also has an impact,
because it helps you logically work out startling ideas, or link two or more thoughts in new ways.
When you’re generating new concepts, find ways to resolve paradoxes. Think about uniting the
global with the local or the real world with the virtual.

“Out of all the creative techniques that you will come across, the one that I found most
powerful is the ability to connect two unconnected ideas.”

The “fusion” that occurs when you connect previously distinct categories – such as physics and
business – may be the most creative wrinkle. Design, a distinct stage in the innovation process,
offers a variation on such fusion in that all good design combines “function and form.”

Harnessing Design

Design, which is central to innovation, should have four essential characteristics:

1. “Customer centricity” – Designers should listen to people and conduct research to discover
what they want but don’t know how to express.
2. “Team experimentation” – Designers should explore “possibilities and solutions” by
working in groups to develop, test, and evaluate numerous concepts.
3. “Rapid prototyping” – Design groups build samples and models rather than merely
discussing or evaluating a hypothesis. Using prototypes means considering markedly
heightened realism, which avoids the risks associated with asking others to evaluate a theory. A
prototype lets you “test and learn.” Ideas alone are never the innovation. Rather, they are like
Lego blocks: Individual components offer little value in and of themselves, but by mixing and
matching the right pieces you can build innovations.

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 4. “Emotional appeal” – Design emphasizes the way an innovation touches the customers’
feelings.

Shaping a Context

Reframing, a key step in design, involves changing the frame of reference – the context, situation,
occasion, or purpose – in which people consider an “idea, problem, or opportunity.” Changing
your item’s frame of reference helps you reach a new understanding of how it could appeal to
others. Reframing lets you alter your competition, your audience and the values that other people
discern when they observe your product.

“Innovation requires stretch and depth.”

Broadly speaking, you can place a product in three general contexts: “function, application or
enablement.” The most basic, function, focuses on what a product does. Application frames a
product or service in terms of how people use it. It emphasizes an innovation’s diverse purposes.
Enablement asks: What does your innovation let people accomplish? Function is the core,
application wraps around function, and enablement enfolds function and application. Design
often also incorporates “co-creation” – developing products in a collaborative effort. That usually
means involving customers in product generation, garnering useful perspectives from them
and engaging them in every stage of the design process. Firms that have embraced customer
participation in developing products include Boeing (the 787), Nike and Lego.

Design Virtues

Good design offers simplicity. Simplification produces innovative usage. Use “thoughtful
reduction” to pare your product down to its essence, making it easier to use and quicker to learn
or assemble. Clarify its essence by pointing out a “contrast” with other products or a “context” that
gives consumers a reference point.

“One of the best ways to get new ideas is to look to other sectors, geographies and
extreme users.”

Then identify your item’s emotional appeal. It should invoke a unique emotional reaction.
Designed experiences range from the “subtle fragrance” that lingers in Singapore Airlines’ planes
to the way Ritz Carlton employees are trained to address hotel guests warmly by name. When
designing a customer experience, focus on the two most memorable moments: the peak of the
experience and its conclusion.

“We live in a creative world, an ideas economy.”

Design includes an experimenting, filtering and sorting process. When you come up with new
ideas, keep the best ones, not just the newest, as you seek unique possibilities. Design means

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 focusing on solutions and bringing your concept into physical being. Your innovation must be
appealing to customers, practical and efficient to mass-produce. Know your required investment.
Examine your innovation in terms of your personal and corporate mission and your likely market
success.

Launching Your Ideas

Consumers adopt a novel product in a five-stage process called the “diffusion of innovations.”
“Innovators” (2.5% of the market) plunge in first. Next come popular, visionary leaders called
“early adopters,” who make up about 13.5% of consumers. The next 34% of buyers comprise the
“early majority.” They’re more “rational and cautious,” and let others convince them that new
technologies are worth trying. The “late majority” forms the next 34% of customers, those who
take action to keep up, not to lead. The remaining 16% of overall adopters are “laggards,” older,
less-educated skeptics who prefer the status quo and resist change.

“Ideas are your most valuable assets. The question is how to realize that value.”

Different forces motivate these groups. Know which set of customers you’re addressing, and
craft your message appropriately. Tell a simple story about your innovation that features a clear
“enemy,” so buyers can become good guys by joining you. Emphasize your innovation’s benefits
rather than its features. Structure your message using simple language; add striking visuals. You
want your concepts to become “memes” that catch on and spread on their own. Place “sticky
ideas” in the right context so influential “crowd connectors” see them.

Collaborative Partnerships

Collaborating with “creative partners,” such as companies or organizations, may complement

your business strategy. For example, you could subcontract your product in a limited-time joint
offering or license someone else’s product for a fixed term to gain access to new technology. You
could also enter into a consortium, which exploits pooled expertise at the possible costs of sharing
secrets and being anchored to a group’s actions. Those risks also arise in a “joint venture,” which
means collaborating for a longer period. Preferably, these relationships will provide both parties
with access to the skills they lack. “Partnerships can be the source of innovation even before they
start,” but collaboration can also expose clashing visions and cultures. “Open innovation” allows
companies that can’t afford research to share expenses. “Ideas exchanges,” such as InnoCentive,
offer a “marketplace in ideas.”

Getting to Market

Coming up with a new concept might be easy. Figuring out how to bring it into existence and
make it profitable in the marketplace “is the real creative challenge.” Whether you enter a sales
environment first or follow others, you must create a “market vortex” that enables you to control

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 your chosen forum and surmount obstacles by creating or shaping the market and introducing
“game-changing” products. Protect your unique ideas via copyright, trademarks, and patents,
or some combination, depending on the product. After you master your target market, look for
“adjacent markets” that might be linked by business categories, geographic areas or market niches
defined by “adjacent capabilities.” If your business doesn’t want to tackle this diffusion directly,
consider licensing or franchising your product.

“Getting an innovation to market is just the start. Making it successful is the real creative
challenge.”

As you innovate, think beyond generating only one good product and dominating one profitable
market. Transform your organization to become continually creative, and build innovation into
your company’s performance metrics. Measure a range of related factors, for example how much
money you spend on research, how many new products you produce, how long it takes to bring
them to market and what percentage of your revenue comes from innovation.

“Creative Culture”

“Reductionism, incrementalism and efficiency [are] the enemies of effective innovation in

business today.” Innovative companies nurture their creative cultures and share a cluster of
distinguishing characteristics. Rather than emphasizing hierarchy and formal titles, innovative
companies have flatter organizational structures. They are open, task-focused and adaptable.
They trust their employees and share information freely. Innovative organizations emphasize
diversity over conformity and help staffers collaborate, network, and learn. They use teams in
which employees can switch roles. Innovative organizations encourage their members to create
schedules that fit their needs and to work in ways that suit their characters and personality types.
These organizations’ leaders attract other creative people, spark their originality, and provide the
tools, concepts, and continual challenges and rewards needed to fuel innovation.

About the Author

Peter Fisk, former CEO of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, is the author of Customer
Genius, Marketing Genius and Business Genius.

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This document is restricted to the personal use of Pragya Chandrakar (pragya.chandrakar@adfactorspr.com)

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