Tailgating and Innovation

This morning, on my way to work, I was tailgated by someone. Not an altogether unusual situation on a northern California freeway, by any means! The tailgater finally gave up on me and changed lanes, where he sped up until he reached the next car, which he then tailgated.

When I was a young driver, I used to drive that way too. Somehow, it felt like if I could take up all the space, I'd get there faster. Over time, though, I realized that not only was this generally unsafe and rude, but I had to slam on my brakes pretty frequently. If I was just to back off a bit, I would have a much smoother ride and would end up where I was going pretty much at the same time. Now, I drive pretty much at my own pace. There usually is a nice buffer in front of me, so when I see red break lights I can assess the situation and react calmly.

This morning as I watched that tailgater speed up and stomp on the breaks over and over again, I realized that I was seeing might be a great analogy for innovation.

Let me explain.

Following the person in front of you too closely doesn't allow you to respond. Instead, backing off and consistently assessing the lay of the land can help you see new opportunities and react calmly to what you see in front of you.

Most startups are like tailgaters. They speed up quickly to follow the guy in front of them and then stomp on the break (or crash). Maybe even repeatedly.

Great innovations don't tend to come from following too closely. They often appear to be things that take a new angle on the problem, which can only happen if you back away and look around. Think about a a few things that really were game-changing:

• The Nintendo Wii - Nintendo had been playing with the pack for quite some time, but they stepped back, assessed the situation, and took a new angle on the problem. This allowed them to "find a new lane" and speed out in front of the pack.
• The Apple iPod - MP3 players had been around for some time, but Apple held back and looked at the lay of the land before launching in with a solution that had fewer features, but a much more integrated experience, including the revolutionary integration with an online music store (iTunes). Their new angle blasted them so far past the rest of the pack that all these years later, no one has caught them.
• The Ford Model T - earlier models at Ford and all other companies were crafted one at a time. The Model T was created using an assembly line. Rather than continuing to follow the pack, the folks at Ford stepped back and reframed the problem of building a car... broke it into it's component parts and then strung it together . The result? 93 minutes to build a car... over a million cars built in 7 years (RADICAL acceleration over the way all other vehicles were built).
  

So... to come up with a game-changing innovation, it pays not to be a tailgater.

An experiment in guerrilla brainstorming

I wanted to see if I could start up brainstorming organically to help build in fun and creativity into the workplace. So, I bought some really bright flipchart sticky paper and put up a new activity on the wall each week. No explanation, just a felt-tip pen and a simple instruction (like: add to this).

Open brainstorm on a general question

Result: not much action.

Thoughts… just too open, too scary to contribute to. Happy about the drawings, but that wasn’t a result of the prompt as much as it was having a blank piece of paper up on the wall.

Mind map

Result: incredible organic participation

Thoughts… The effort for the mind map was pretty clear: word-association. People jumped in and added without prompting because it was relatively anonymous, and after a while there was almost an implicit challenge to come up with something witty or silly to contribute. Low effort. Low risk.

Thought Bubbles

Result: mediocre, but creative contributions

Thoughts… really didn’t know what I’d come up with here. Didn’t come up with much, but found myself contributing random thoughts when I walked by. I think it might have been intimidating to “share a thought”. Somehow, less anonymous.

Octagon

Result: not much action (but I sure had fun with it!)

Thoughts… loved this from a thinking perspective. But, it didn’t elicit much participation. Too constrained?

Phase II of the experiment: Amping it up.

Mind map at a company event

We had a site social on the topic of innovation, with all kinds of “booths” on some of the great innovation work that is going on around the company. We put up a big blank piece of paper on the window and drew a circle in the middle with the word “Innovation”. Initially, everyone who walked by the area was handed a sharpie and asked to add to the mind map. It started off slowly, but evolved into a rich point of discussion and laughter.

Thoughts….Leveraging the success of the “Visualize” mind map, which was in a rarely used hallway, I had hoped that this would work, and it did! Some people were more literal than others, but some people jumped in and got really silly and creative. Made for a good interactive element at the event, while being low-tech, low-cost, low-effort. It was a collaborative, “social contribution” activity… and look how incredible it became! (Actually, it evolved much further after this photo, but I didn’t get a later picture).

Next Step

Anonymous mind map in a public space, without “prompting”.