November 25, 2009
The entrepreneurship area at Stanford sponsors the GIT annually. Radford decided to participate this year. I was on the committee to run the event and it was the best “service” function I am involved in — beats the daylights out of faculty senate…
Student teams get a question of social significance and have 8 days to demonstrate a solution on youtube. This years question was given that the low savings rate in nations such as the US may have contributed to the global economic collapse (no Keynesians at Stanford…) how can we make saving fun?
The winners at Radford are listed below – look at some of them!
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Ideation | Tagged: GIT, global innovation tournament, Radford, RU, Stanford | 
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Posted by gschirr
August 25, 2009
A cross-discipline approach to innovation education
A week ago Friday the UIC Innovation center held an open house and reception for academics attending the AMA Summer conference in Chicago. Al Page, professor of Marketing at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Stefanie Lenway, Dean of the UIC Business School discussed the Center, which was funded from a multi-million dollar grant from Motorola.
Housed in a former grocery store on the UIC campus, the center has flexible space, industrial size bean bag chairs, rapid prototyping machines and the feel of a start-up (except for expresso machines or ping pong tables).
The origin of the center was a year long innovation class that combines MBA students, design students and engineering students. The class is sponsored by a company that seeks innovation ideas. Motorola was an early sponsor and was pleased with the results.
There was an impressive collection of new product development scholars at the conference in addition to Dr. Page, including Abbie Griffin, Anthony Di Benedetto, Gina Colarelli O’Connor , Peter Koen, and many others.
More about the exciting interdisciplinary educational effort at:
http://randdlab.com/visions/january06/education.php
Leave a Comment » | Ideation, Innovation education, communication | Tagged: Abbie Griffin, Al Page, Anthony Di Benedetto, Gina Colarelli O'Connor, Innovation education, NPD education, Peter Koen, Stefanie Lenway | Permalink
Posted by gschirr
July 23, 2009
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
- the number of ideas and
- 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:
- Quantity of ideas and
- 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):
- Produce significantly fewer ideas
- Generate ideas of lower average quality
- Produce fewer of the very best ideas, and
- 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.
11 Comments | Customer Research Methods, Ideation, experiential innovation | Tagged: Brainstorming, brainstorming kills ideas, Customer Research Methods, focus groups, focus groups kill innovation, Girotra, group ideation, group research for innovation, Terwiesch, Ulrich | Permalink
Posted by gschirr
June 22, 2009
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:
- Storytelling,
- Involving users
- Lead Users
- Deep customer information (ethnography)
- Probe and Learn
as well as other ideas.
Take the time to read it!
Leave a Comment » | Co-creation or User collaboration, Customer Research Methods, Experiment, Ideation, experiential innovation | Tagged: crummy trials beat deep thinking, Ethnography, Ideation, lead users, probe and learn, Storytelling, wall street journal | Permalink
Posted by gschirr
December 16, 2008
A recurring theme of postings on customer involvement methods is that traditional market research methods such as focus groups and brainstorming kill ideas and creativity; there is a need for better ideation techniques that truly engage users.
J. Scott Armstrong has suggested using Delphi techniques to access the wisdom of crowds without suffering from idea truncation common to group efforts. Some researchers have suggested online groups to loosen the group effect.
Another blog takes a look at the benefits and dangers of using online communities in new service development:
http://www.mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=133916
1 Comment | Co-creation or User collaboration, Customer Research Methods, Ideation | Tagged: Brainstorming, Delphi, focus groups, group ideation, J. Scott Armstrong, market research, online communities, von Hippel, wisdom of crowds | Permalink
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September 15, 2008
Students of new product development are aware of the term the “Fuzzy Front-End of NPD”, which describes the less understood process of idea generation (versus the allegedly more rational development process at the end that is better studied and understood).
Professor Susan Hart, Head of the Marketing Department at Strathclyde Business School and a well-known researcher and author, coined an insightful phrase, the “Fuzzy Rear-End of New Service Development” and discussed at it at the PDMA annual research conference.
As I have noted in past posts, new service development is not characterized by familiar processes like Stage-Gate(R) or other linear or semi-linear processes. The development process is nearly as mysterious at the front-end, hence Dr. Hart’s apt phrase: The “Fuzzy Rear-End.”
I just returned from the annual research conference of the Product Development & Management Association in DisneyWorld. This year there was a full session on service innovation! As was noted in the May JPIM article by Al Page and me the focus of NPD has generally been on goods-companies, so I was encouraged that there was a full session only on service this year. (Dr. Hart was one of the presenters, as was I. Al Page chaired the session.)
Three straight presenters talked about the dearth of research on service innovation, the risk of viewing service innovation through the framework developed from observing goods manufacturers, and the chaotic nature of the NSD process.
The PDMA is a wonderful get together: a two day academic conference followed by a industry focused conference. There is some crossover — I attended the industry conference two years ago, several brave industry people sat through the entire academic research conference this year. I would strongly endorse the PDMA and the two conferences for anyone involved in new product or service development or in broader issues in innovation.
PDMA website: http://www.pdma.org/
I will report observations from the conference in my next few postings. My Wednesday post will give an overview of insights from the service discussion.
………………………………………………………..
I apologize for the sparse posting recently. In the past 52 days I have defended my dissertation, received my Ph.D., prepared for the PDMA Research conference and delivered a paper and started a new academic year. (Excuses, excuses!) However I will return to posting at least twice a week — on Monday and Wednesday.
Leave a Comment » | Ideation, NSD Process, Stage-Gate® | Tagged: Albert L. Page, Fuzzy Front End, Fuzzy Rear End, JPIM, PDMA, Strathclyde, Susan Hart | Permalink
Posted by gschirr
August 25, 2008
Participatory marketing taken to the next level
The July issue of the Mckinsey Quarterly has an interesting article called “the next step in open innovation.” The article is a discussion of how the examples of customer creation of Wikipedia and Linux can be applied more broadly to most business. [Eric von Hippel has advocated user innovation since the mid-70s, and he and others have criticized the open innovation advocates for under-emphasizing the most useful co-creators, the users of the services and goods.]
The article claims that we are in the early stages of “distributed co-creation” and suggests important issues that need to be addressed such as:
- Attracting and motivating co-creators
- IP ownership
- Structuring problems
- Governance to facilitate co-creation
The full article is available at the McKinsey site:
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Information_Technology/Networking/next_step_in_open_innovation_2155_abstract
Leave a Comment » | Co-creation or User collaboration, Customer Research Methods, Ideation | Tagged: Co-creation, customer innovation, distributed co-creation, innovation, McKinsey | Permalink
Posted by gschirr
August 11, 2008
Deceptively simple
If your customers help create new services: the results should better fit customer needs, the process should be speeded, and many ideas generated. However, a firm must find a way to deal with a cast of stakeholders, must speed up existing processes, and must screen a multitude of ideas.
“Co-creation…affects everything the company does, from product development to marketing, even to billing,” says Ramaswamy. “Co-creation is going to become like oxygen.”
This article discusses some of the issues:
http://www.icpas.org/hc-insight.aspx?id=6456
Leave a Comment » | Co-creation or User collaboration, Ideation, NSD Process | Tagged: Co-creation, marketing, Ramaswamy, user innovation | Permalink
Posted by gschirr
July 13, 2008
from “mass” communication to one-to-one understanding
We have had several postings about Nokia in this blog. We have discussed its Beta Labs, Beta Culture and use of ethnography in emerging economies.
The communications director at Nokia calls co-creation a move from “mass” communication to one-to-one understanding. The full article is here:
http://conversations.nokia.com/home/2008/07/co-creation-and.html
Leave a Comment » | Co-creation or User collaboration, Customer Research Methods, Ideation, NSD Process, communication, experiential innovation | Tagged: 1:1 market research, Beta Lab, beta-culture, Co-creation, customer research, Nokia | Permalink
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