A talk I gave to a VCU class on innovation in March.

1. hi

2. hi, i’m noah

7. Let’s start with three quotes.

8. "What part of this don't you understand? If two blades is good, and three
blades is be er, obviously ve blades would make us the best fucking razor
that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the
razor game by clinging to the two-blade industry standard. We got here by
taking chances. Well, ve blades is the biggest chance of all."
- "Fuck Everything We’re Doing Five Blades” ( e Onion, 2004)

9. "Gille e Fusion [the company’s new ve-blade razor] is 'the future of
shaving,' James M. Kilts, Gille e's chairman and chief executive, told
analysts and reporters who had gathered in a Manha an auditorium to
hear the latest news. Not to be outdone in hyperbole, Peter K. Hoffman,
president of Gille e's blades and razors unit, de ned fusion for the crowd -
'a nuclear reaction in which nuclei combine to create power' - and
intimated that the Fusion system's 'breakthrough technology' lives up to
the analogy."
- “Gille e Is Be ing at Men Want an Even Closer Shave” (New York
Times, 2005)

10. "Inventors, scientists, engineers, and academics, in the normal pursuit of
scientific knowledge, gave the world in recent times the laser, xerography,
instant photography, and the transistor. In contrast, worshippers of the
marketing concept have bestowed upon mankind such products as new-
fangled potato chips, feminine hygiene deodorant, and the pet rock…."
- "Managing Our Way to Economic Decline." (1980)

11. What is innovation anyway?

12. 1. Invention (Creation of a new idea or process)
2. Innovation (“Arranging the economic requirements for implementing an
invention”)
3. Diffusion (Adoption and imitation)
Library of Economics and Liberty: h p://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Innovation.html

13. 1. Invention (Creation of a new idea or process)
2. Innovation (“Arranging the economic requirements for implementing an
invention”)
3. Diffusion (Adoption and imitation)
Library of Economics and Liberty: h p://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Innovation.html

14. Innovation is essentially a business affair: e commercialization of a new
idea or process.

15. " e reason why Schumpeter stressed this difference [between invention
and innovation] is that he saw innovation as a speci c social activity
(function) carried out within the economic sphere and with a commercial
purpose, while inventions in principle can be carried out everywhere and
without any intent of commercialisation. us, for Schumpeter
innovations are novel combinations of knowledge, resources etc. subject to
a empts at commercialization (or carried out in practice)."
- “A Guide to Schumpeter”, Jan Fagerberg

16. Let’s talk about invention versus innovation.

17. So for now let's de ne innovation as the adaptation of an existing
invention, idea or process for the purpose of commercialization.

18. (1) e introduction of a new good-that is one with which consumers are
not yet familiar-or of a new quality of a good. (2) e introduction of a
new method of production, that is one not yet tested by experience in the
branch of manufacture concerned. (3) e opening of a new market, that is
a market into which the particular branch of manufacture of the country in
question has not previously entered, whether or not this market has existed
before. (4) e conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials or half-
manufactured goods, again irrespective of whether this source already
exists or whether it has rst to be created. (5) e carrying out of the new
organization of any industry, like the creation of a monopoly position (for
example through trusti cation) or the breaking up of a monopoly position.

19. Can something be innovative but not commercially successful?

20. If commercial viability is the main measure of innovativeness than
innovation is an effect, not a cause: A measure of success, not a part of the
process.

21. Innovation = Invention + Adaptation to the market + Diffusion

22. Agency Report Card
Diffusion

23. Agency Report Card
Diffusion A+

24. Agency Report Card
Diffusion A+
Adaptation

25. Agency Report Card
Diffusion A+
Adaptation C-

26. Agency Report Card
Diffusion A+
Adaptation C-
Invention

27. Agency Report Card
Diffusion A+
Adaptation C-
Invention D-

28. Agency Report Card
Diffusion A+
Adaptation C-
Invention D-

29. Bank of America “Keep the Change”

30. Fiat eco:Drive

31. Fiat eco:Drive

32. Domino’s Tivo

33. Domino’s Tivo

34. Got some other good examples?

35. "As long as they are not carried into practice, inventions are economically
irrelevant. And to carry an improvement into effect is a task entirely
different from the inventing of it, and a task, moreover, requiring entirely
different kinds of aptitudes. Although entrepreneurs of course may be
inventors just as they may be capitalists, they are inventors not by nature of
their function by by coincidence and vice versa. Besides, the innovations
which it is the function of entrepreneurs to carry out need not necessarily
be any inventions at all. It is, therefore, not advisable, and it may be
downright misleading, to stress the element of invention as much as many
writers do."
- Josef Shumpeter, e eory of Economic Development

36. So agencies really want to work more on this stuff, how do they make it
happen? And is it really something they should be doing and are good at?

37. And now back step one: Invention.

38. Got any good examples of agency invention?

39. Magnetosphere

40. Magnetosphere

41. Skimmer

42. Qapture

43. Tap Project

44. Tap Project

45. Basecamp

46. Lead user innovation

47. " e greater the bene t a given user can obtain from a needed novel
product or process, the greater his effort to obtain a solution will be. ... I
therefore reason that users able to obtain the highest net bene t from the
solution to a given new product (or process or service) need will be the
ones who have devoted the most resources to understanding it."
- Eric Von Hippel, “Lead Users: A Source of Novel Product Concepts”

49. "Sometimes lead users may have developed complete new products
responsive to their need."

50. Google News

51. "Since around 2000, we let engineers spend 20% of their time working on
whatever they want, and we trust that they'll build interesting things. A er
September 11, one of our researchers, Krishna Bharat, would go to 10 or
15 news sites each day looking for information about the case. And he
thought, Why don't I write a program to do this? So Krishna, who's an
expert in arti cial intelligence, used a Web crawler to cluster articles. He
later emailed it around the company. My office mate and I got it, and we
were like, ' is isn't just a cool li le tool for Krishna. We could add more
sources and build this into a great product.' at's how Google News came
about. Krishna did not intend to build a product, but he accidentally gave
us the idea for one. We let engineers spend 20% of their time working on
whatever they want, and we trust that they'll build interesting things."
- Marissa Mayer, “Marissa Mayer’s 9 Principles of Innovation”

52. Behance Action Book

53. What need do agencies have that they might be able to invent a solution to
that they could bring to market?

54. What about turning your process into a product?

55. IDEO’s Human Centered
Design Toolkit

56. Interbrand’s Best Global Brands

57. e best place to get started making things is to solve your own problems.

58. "We teach kids to do all sorts of things, but we don’t teach them to think
about things in the inventive way — and why don’t we? It’s something you
should be alert for from earliest childhood. You should be conscious that
when you do devise something, when you ll a gap, you have invented. I’d
love to see kids thinking in that way, and growing up to be adults that think
in that way… that solve their own problems, and acquire stuff for
themselves that they want, whether or not it can be bought off the shelf.
e process of doing it is absurdly easy… it’s ridiculously easy to get a
machine shop to build you a gizmo. You sketch it, they’ll help you make it,
you try it, and if it doesn’t work, you make another. You can’t imagine how
much fun that is."
- Garre Brown, inventor of Steadicam

59. My First Tweet

60. How Much Does it Buy?

61. Parting thoughts (aka I wanted to nd somewhere to t this stuff in but I
wasn’t sure where)

62. Never stop noticing.

63. e value of serendipity.

64. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

65. Find the inefficient market

66. Making stuff ma ers.

67. "And let it be noted that there is no more delicate ma er to take in hand,
nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to
set up as a leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will
have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of
things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be be er off
under the new. is lukewarm temper arises partly from the fear of
adversaries who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity
of mankind, who will never admit the merit of anything new, until they
have seen it proved by the event. e result, however, is that whenever the
enemies of change make an a ack, they do so with all the zeal of partisans,
while the others defend themselves so feebly as to endanger both
themselves and their cause."
- Niccolò Machiavelli, e Prince

68. the end