Innovation Hobnob and Articles

"In one way or another the American is an improvisation, the character in a play of his or her own invention, hoping that the audience--fortunately consisting of actors as makeshift as oneself--will accept the performance at par, believe the instructions." ~Lewis Lapham

It's been a while since I hobnobbed with the innovation crowd here in Chicago, so I wandered into the House of Blues on Monday night to check out the 500+ attendees of the Chicago Innovation Awards' annual Nominee Reception. With more than 400 organizations nominated for their new products and services this year, the Chicago Innovation Awards, now in its 10th year, does a yeoman's job shining a spotlight on creativity in Chicagoland industries.

While Chicago may or may not be the innovation hub it desires to be, I enjoyed speaker John Barron, publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, wax eloquent about the grand innovations of this midwestern home of mine, pointing to our brave history of reversing the flow of our river, inventing public conversation and public sobbing (Oprah), with a brisk wind chill to focus our thoughts.

The truth is, innovation continues to be a leading conversation topic in cities, within companies and among politicians and writers throughout this country. And the innovation imperative remains strong--we must continue to change and invent, as we always have. As Lewis Lapham wrote in Harper's earlier this year, what truly unites Americans is not their pride or armies or GDP or common ancestry "but rather their complicity in a shared work of the imagination...If America is about nothing else, it is about making it up as one goes along."

Here are some recent articles from thinkers and improvisers trying to steer us through a bumpy ride of needed innovation:

*Tom Friedman is back with a new book, That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. Click here for a link to a free chapter, interviews and more.

*Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile (one of the leading researchers on creativity and one of my mentors) recently published a book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work--read more about it here. More from me on it in the near future.

*Did you miss Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business issue? Check out the list here and a great guide to creativity by Conan O'Brien here.

*How did 9/11 spawn creativity and innovation? Read this Inc. article here.

*Innovation is dead, say PayPal founders. Check out this Forbes article here.

*Can innovation be part of a small company's every day routine? Read this Crain's Chicago Business article. And check out the video below--can songwriting techniques help business?

Digging through the Innovation Awards Goodie Bag

Last week the Chicago Innovation Awards and a crowd of nearly 1000 at the Goodman Theater celebrated the innovative spirit that is indeed alive and well in the midwest. Keynoter J.B. Pritzker reminded us that many great ideas and companies like G.E., Microsoft and MTV began during recessions, and now is time for "the next generation of innovators" to step up. The evening, which included an appearance from "Visionary Award" winner and Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz, honored the latest eye-opening products and services from local companies--for winner videos and more on the event, click here. There was also an overflowing goodie bag, which I'm happy to rifle through for your enjoyment.

In various ways, the award-winners reflected true innovation, which is taking the practical step of bringing creativity into the world, so let me dig in the bag to share a few with you. I'm reaching past the discount cards, freebies, magazines, promo pens and brainteaser game (thanks, John Kennedy). Now I'm briefly massaging the strawberry shortcake-flavored gum from Wrigley, the thumb-sized flashlight from Tripp-Lite, the natural sweetener from Pure Via and the noise-isolation ear buds from Molex. Not bad. Here are a couple more:

>>The Master Lock Speed Dial--Here's a sturdy lock for people who have difficulty remembering combinations (most of us?). Instead of numbers that you can easily forget, you open the lock using directional movements (like a video game joystick), so you can open the lock one-handed, without looking, based on remembering the movements you've chosen.

>>Probably the most unusual goodie-bag item I've ever gotten, here's a "Water Saving Fill Valve" from MJSI, whose HydroRight won this year's award. You actually install this one in your toilet to save water.

Innovation can be best defined as actualizing creativity in a way that provides real value or, as designer/innovator Dan Buchner recently asserted in this video (click here), "the implementation of an idea that improves someone’s life and brings meaning to their life.” Just as MJSI's innovation can make a meaningful difference, so can these other award winners whose actual products did not quite make it in the goodie bag. They include:

>Abbott Labs' recently FDA-approved HIV test, with much earlier detection ability.

>SoCore Energy's portable solar panels that can be rented and installed more easily.

>Smart Medical Technology Liftaem Patient Transfer System, which uses a cushion of air to reduce time and injury from lifting patients.

>CrowdSPRING, now the world's largest online marketplace for creative services.

>Chicago Transit Authority's Bus Tracker, an online tool to tell you exactly when your bus will arrive.

You can decide how meaningful these innovations are to you or others--and learn more about them here. But clearly the creative spirit is infusing some companies here in the midwest. If Rocky Wirtz can turn around the very recently woeful Blackhawks, miracles can indeed happen, especially if we make time for, promote and honor innovation, as these awards have aptly done again this year.

Creativity highlights so far in 2010

As we head into our final quarter of 2010, I wanted to recap some of the most important headlines on creativity and innovation this year. In a year full of lingering economic and cultural malaise, the innovation imperative--our need to be more creative as a culture and as individuals--is as urgent as ever, particularly here in the U.S.

Stunning news (at least for me) broke in the spring when the largest IBM CEO survey ever identified "Creativity" as the "single most important leadership competency." In a business world that loves to overuse the word "Innovation" (most often defined as "applied creativity") but shies away from the more personal "C" word, creativity itself was heralded like never before, as I summarized previously. Now you can read the full report, called "Capitalizing on Complexity," and even access an interactive version by clicking on the graphic on the right. "CEOs now realize that creativity trumps other leadership characteristics," states the report. "Creative leaders are comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation. To connect with and inspire a new generation, they lead and interact in entirely new ways."

In July, Newsweek weighed in with a cover story called "The Creativity Crisis," which explored new research that has found that creativity test scores have declined since 1990 in the United States. The authors note that other countries are making creative development more of a national priority, with the European Union actually designated 2009 as the "European Year of Creativity and Innovation." "While our creativity scores decline unchecked," write authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, "the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike." You can read the story and hear a fascinating radio interview about Torrance creativity tests, schools and adult creativity myths here, and can experience your own creativity test here.

Both of these headlines are calls for action, and one new source of inspiration comes from Steven Johnson, whose subtitle alone in his new book "Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation," makes its release a worthy event this month. While his book takes a wide-lens and historical approach to human innovation, he shared some of his more contemporary conclusions about creativity in the workplace in this interview with Salon.com yesterday. "The problem," he says, "is that most traditional companies...talk a big game about innovation and making their workforce more creative" but do very little to change the culture or allow for ideas to be nurtured in the normal structure of daily work. He argues for "innovation time off"--like the "20% passion time" Google allows for employees to work on what they wish--so that "you're always spending a little bit of your time working on something weird that's not part of the official plan," a "permanent track of hunches and half-baked ideas that runs alongside the regular work-week with its immediate deadlines and fixed concepts." Yes.

A local upcoming highlight here in Chicago local inspiration is the always entertaining and eye-opening Chicago Innovation Awards, scheduled for November 1, which honors our region's most innovative new products and services. If you live here, rush to reserve a free ticket (this link should work) and come join me as we see some positive examples of how humans are demonstrating the #1 leadership competency and combatting the creativity crisis as best we can during this time in our natural history...