It’s Cicada season in Chicago. For those who don’t know, according to Wikipedia, Cicadas are large locust-type insects that have odd lifecycles - ours are on a 17 year cycle. Every 17 years, they come out from underground, mate, then slit into the bark of a twig and deposits eggs - up to several hundred. When the eggs hatch, the newborn nymphs drop to the ground, where they burrow and start another cycle.

The 17 year long life cycle is an adaptation to predators such as the cicada killer wasp and praying mantis, which could not regularly fall into synchrony with the cicadas. Both 13 and 17 are prime numbers, so while a cicada with a 15-year life cycle could be preyed upon by a predator with a 3- or 5-year life cycle, the 13- and 17-year cycles allow them to stop the predators falling into step.

Fascinating, no? And occasionally gross. Cicadas swarm (loudly) and they are quite blind and dumb, so despite the fact they can apparently do the math to understand prime numbers, they cannot necessarily tell the difference between a human leg and a tree, and therefore have a tendency to climb both.

So our cicadas have been asleep since 1990. In Czechoslovakia over the weekend, a man awoke from a 19 year coma. Imagine, he fell into a coma in 1988, when the country was still under Communist rule, and has woken up to an entirely new world.

Which leads me to a question - 17 years from now, what sorts of change would you like to see? If you were to awake in 2024 after a long hibernation, what progress would you expect?

Me, I’m looking for process innovations to have wiped out hunger and poverty. I want to see innovation in alternative, clean energies turn back the clock on the negative impacts we’ve made on our planet. I want to increase the speed of to reduce the amount of time we all spend in limbo. And I want all the fat and calories removed from my favorite foods.

Let me know what you’d like to see in 2024.

Henry Chesbrough’s article in today’s WSJ about the importance of business models in innovation reinforces a point we often make here: the most important, effective, and disruptive innovations are often the result of new business models, not new products or technologies. (Think Netflix to Blockbuster or iTunes to the rest of the music industry.)

Often, we look at the core reasons companies are unable to create new business models: they have entrenched infrastructures and a vested interest in maintaining them, they struggle to see the world as it could be vs as it is, they are risk averse, insular and myopic. They are fat and happy. Disruption tends to come from the upstarts and companies on the margins that need to find a new way in.

Chesbrough raises another good point: Business models are nobody’s job. R&D looks at technology. General Managers try to maximize profits within their systems and structures for predictable quarter-to-quarter growth. The CFO tends to look at different factors and metrics. Marketing focuses on current brands and capabilities. The CEO generally looks at the bigger picture vs. the business unit level challenges.

In other words, for many companies, business model innovation is out of scope - no one owns the responsibility. And yet, it offers perhaps the biggest point of leverage for innovation.

Maybe it’s time to appoint a CBMO. And if you’re not in a position to create structural change in your organization by adding this job, why not pick up the discipline and responsibility yourself? If you’re not looking at the model, you’re not maximizing your innovation potential. Start there and then branch out.

I’m searching for the visionaries. Where have they all gone?

Crafting a true vision for your brand/business seems to be the exception, not the rule these days. Too many companies are jumping into product ideas without a firm sense of purpose and path.

When Apple launched the iPod, Steve Jobs had a true vision for the product. The iPod wasn’t ever just going to be an MP3 player. From its inception, it had a much bigger footprint. The iPod was a vehicle for reshaping our relationship with content - all media content. What looked like a music player was really a blueprint for a total media revolution. It didn’t take long for iTunes to fundamentally reshape the music industry. It didn’t take long for the video iPod to offer television. The brand plan was more than a strategy, it was a vision for creating an industry.

This foresight is too rare. And I fear that as consumers play a bigger role in cocreating and codesigning the products and brands they love (a business initative I am 100% behind), more companies will misunderstand the relationship between a product idea and a vision for a business. Consumers will do a great job of informing and shaping innovation, but we cannot outsource to them the path for the brand. That job must be done by someone within the company, someone with vision and a clear purpose.

Vision is a critical factor in successful innovation. Don’t let it get run over by a pipeline of semi-related extensions. You can operate without a clear vision in the short run. But it will always catch up with you in the end.

Tensions are everywhere. They are the root of innovation - the tension between what we have and what we want is the force that drives new thinking.

Trendwatching tends to be a great way to identify tensions. For every trend, there is a countertrend. For all the interest in health & wellness, there is an equal and opposite interest in indulgence. For every McDonald’s Fruit & Walnut Salad, there is a Burger King Triple Whopper. (And note, both strategies are working, both QSRs are experiencing a sales resurgence.)

Reconciling tensions creates gamechanging innovation. While introducing products on either end of the tension continuum can drive business (McDonald’s going after health, Burger King going after indulgence), introducing innovations that resolve this tension (gamechanging products that are both healthy & indulgent) create true brand evolution.

Think of Target’s “Expect More, Pay Less” positioning. They operate at the center of the tension, giving consumers real quality and exceptional design at low prices. Target doesn’t ask consumers to choose which end of the continuum they value, it resolves the tension by solving for both ends.

Similarly, the Tiger Woods Accenture ad above is intriguing specifically because it calls to mind the tension of a champion. His swing is “50% relentless consistency, 50% willingness to change.” The line is an equisite statement about the challenge of innovation.

Christensen says that innovation always comes from the margins; market leaders cannot disrupt because it is not in their best interest to do so. We’re operating in a fascinating time of rapid change, with technological, scientific and human advancement proceeding at a mind-numbing clip. The status quo is unstable; it can’t be in anyone’s best interest to protect it. To survive, every company - market leaders, upstarts, challengers and entreprenuers - needs to recognize the tensions and find disruptive ways to resolve them.

Do you love your consumers? Really LOVE them? Respect them? Do you understand their needs, their desires, their aspirations? Do you know what drives them? Can you put yourself in their shoes?

Too many brand managers, account directors and creatives merely tolerate their consumers. Their actions are driven by their own needs and reward systems - grow volume and profits in the short term, get a big bonus and a promotion - so they load consumers with product, move consumer purchase cycles forward, bolster margins by taking out cost at the expense of quality.

Instead, try developing a relationship with your consumers. Innovate around what they want. Promote based on their own lifestyles. Solve their problems. Sell based on their schedules, deliver based on their needs.

Are there ways to take costs out that serve your consumers? Can you remove excess packaging they don’t need? Improve the supply chain to reduce internal waste and churn?

Are there ways to work with your consumers to help determine extensions and innovations? Do you have an effective mechanisms in place to enable you listen to their conversations in order to inform your development path?

If you love and respect your consumers, you will make different choices to drive your business. Never forget, you are creating products to serve them.

I’m reading Patricia Seybold’s Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company’s Future. It’s a terrific book that brings together the many aspects of what’s happening in consumer-partnered innovation and provides a fantastic range of rich case studies.

My favorite points so far:

1. Innovation is the result of the tension, the negative space, between what you ideally want and what you currently have. What a great, simple description of the opportunity zone.

2. You may have a company full of technical experts, but never forget that consumers are Subject Matter Experts about their own realities. Market research departments can help aggregates personas and uncover key insights and opportunities, but no one knows consumers better than themselves. Invite them into the process to help immerse your team in your consumers’ real lives.

It’s a great add to any innovator’s library.

Just finished reading Nobel Peace Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus’ brilliant memoir “Banker to the Poor”. Yunus created Micro-Lending, helping millions worldwide escape poverty. Some quotes:

“To me, an entrepreneur is not an especially gifted person. I rather take the reverse view. I believe that all human beings are potential entrepreneurs. Some of us get the opportunity to express this talent, but many of us never get the chance because we were made to imagine that an entrepreneur is somehone enormously gifted and different from ourselves. If all of us started to view every single human being, even the barefooted one begging in the street as a potential entrepreneur, then we could build an economic system that would allow each man or woman to explore his or her economic potential. The old wall between entrepreneurs and laborers would disappear. It would become a matter of personal choice whether an individual wanted to become an entrepreneur or a wage earner.”

“Can we really create a poverty-free world? A world without third-class or fourth-class citizens, a world without hungry, illiterate, barefoot, underclass? Yes we can, in the same way we can create sovereign states, or democratic political systems, or free-market economies. A poverty-free world might not be perfect, but it would be the best approximation of the ideal.We have created a slavery-free world, a smallpox-free world, an apartheid-free world. Creating a poverty-free world would be greater than all these accomplishments while at the same time reinforcing them. This would be a world that we could all be proud to live in.”

Yunus talks about blending the capitalist system of profit maximization with social ideals. Not either, or. Not yes, but. Yunus is a master of yes, and.

It’s an inspiring read and a reminder that innovation truly can change the world. We all have dignity. We all have potential. We’re all humans. We all share the potential for greatness.

We all need to ask ourselves how we can do more.

Great article in Biz Week about the power of Design to innovate technical goods. Design focuses on human factors - usability, ergnomics, emotions - which can can differentiate just as much — even more — than bells and whistles. Also note the attention to systems thinking — innovating the ecosystem, not just the product. Read.

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jan2007/id20070109_587285.htm?chan=innovation_innovation+%2B+design_innovation+and+design+lead

Who would’ve thought that a little restaurant supply company on the outskirts of Vegas would be the one to innovate the humble crayon? Thinking beyond color, Classy-Kids has created the triangular-shaped crayon, the Crayangle - the only crayon that doesn’t roll off tables. (And if you’ve ever tried to entertain your kids with the restaurant’s kiddie menu and three-pack of crayons, you know exactly how important this is!) An added benefit: the triangular shape is easier for small, pudgy hands to grip.

While this isn’t exactly an innovation to set the world on fire, it’s amazing what the power of design can do to improve everyday items that have been around, unchanged for decades. Why not pledge to view the world with fresh eyes, looking for the little problems & work arounds you’ve simply put up with over the years? Imagine where a little design innovation could make all the difference.

The biggest talk in innovation circles is Open Source. Procter and Gamble’s Connect and Develop. Open Innovation. As if the idea of staying open were revolutionary.

Openness is the key to innovation and always has been. Being open-minded. Seeking out different perspectives. Opening your ideas to consumers, customers, functional teams, the ecosystem, the light of day, to give them a chance to be challenged, to grow. Creativity and problem-solving require openness. Innovation flourishes through collaboration and exposure. It’s the old We-are-smarter-than- me. The difference between “not invented here” and “I didn’t think of that, but I can build upon it” is openness.

True innovation has always required openness. At some point, when the number of available ideas seemed to be limited and shrinking, when more sophisticated branding and improvements to distribution technology enabled competition to flourish as never before imagined, corporations started kidding themselves that confidentiality was more important than involvement. Secrecy of ideas took precedence over solvency of ideas. They clamped down and innovation suffered.

Today, we’ve finally returned to the idea that opening our ecosystems to different experts, perspectives and feedback mechanisms creates a better learning and development lab. While most open innovation today is focusing on technical skills such as Research and Development, tomorrow we’ll see openness in every area. Think of CGC (consumer generated content) as just another aspect of openness.

For 2007, why not resolve to stay more open? I know a Creative Director who tells her staff “it’s my way or the highway”. That’s neither the recipe for creativity nor innovation. And certainly not success. In 2007, success will come through openness — listening, sharing, collaborating, and being open to change. How sad that those skills should be considered innovative.

I had the pleasure of speaking today with one of the most innovative, visionary men I know. Gene Silverberg, who revolutionized retailing, is now turning his sights on real estate. He’s found a brilliant white space in the branding of commercial buildings, transforming decades of undifferentiated, uninspired architecture into unique, distinctive, cost-effective leasing magnets. He’s combined art, architecture, ethnography, marketing and real estate to create real economic value at an insanely high ROI. It’s an immensely exciting model. Check out this article in Crain’s for an overview of his company, Sage Property Enhancement, Inc.

http://chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/mag/article.pl?article_id=26956&bt=gene+silverberg&arc=n&searchType=all

I cannot say enough about our evening last night with the Ghetto Gourmet. (www.theghet.com/website/). 80 of us managed to score reservations for the two nights the Ghet was in town - 1500 were turned away!!! It was the most fun we’ve had dining in a long time. The Ghet has successfully innovated the restaurant biz, deconstructing the essential elements (great food, great experience), subtracting inessential economic factors (overhead, static ambiance), and adding an element of spontaneity, magic and surprise. They’ve reframed dining as an adventure entertainment experience without the cheesiness of a Rainforest Cafe.

Ghetto Gourmet was started by Jeremy Townsend (a poet and the master of all emcees) and his brother, as a way to turn the restaurant experience on its ear. Give a chef a chance to experiment, gather a group of strangers-soon-to-be-friends in a casual and fortuitous location (often found last minute via Craig’s list), bring together some hot entertainment (also discovered via Craig’s list), and create a singular dining experience, never to be repeated. It’s byob, often byofc (floor cushion), and be open to whatever happens.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out the Time magazine article below. And definitely check out the Ghet. They are going “on tour” - 50 states in 52 weeks. It’ll be a night you won’t soon forget. And if you’re in Chicago, check out The Sons of Susan - a terrific western swing band. (www.myspace.com/thesonsofsusan)

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1555141,00.html