Category Archives: Innovation

A: “We’re Here to Help You Grow”

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Q: Why Apple has been able to create one of the most innovative environments – in any industry – ever.

The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Principle #6: Create Insanely Great Experiences

People don’t want to just buy personal computers anymore. They want to know what they can do with them, and we’re going to show people exactly that. – Steve Jobs.

Apple entered the retail business out of necessity. Up till 2000, it was dependent on giant electronics retailers that simple pushed products – Apple or otherwise. Apple realized it would continue to lose market share if it didn’t do something.

Steve Jobs’ decision was to enter retail: “We have to think different about this. We have to innovate.”

Along with Jobs, Ron Johnson, Apple’s Senior VP of Retail Operations, realized that innovation could not take place without a clear, compelling vision. That vision?  Enriching lives.

That simple vision drove the Apple team to create a store unlike anything else in retailing. They innovated around the retail experience by changing people’s expectations of what a retail experience could be.

  • Design uncluttered stores
  • Locate the stores where people live their lives
  • Allow customers to test-drive products
  • Offer a concierge experience
  • Make it easy to buy
  • Offer one-to-one training

Where most retailers are moving product, Apple is establishing a lifelong relationship.

Innovation is seeing what exists in another industry and applying what you learn to improve the customer experience.

What are the lessons here for ChurchWorld?

 

Developing Your Creative Rhythm

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A lot of leader conversations I’m having these days center around the concepts of innovation, creativity, and ideation. The past two days’ posts here and here dealt with the concepts found in the book “The Idea Hunter.” Continuing in the same vein but with a little different focus is the book “The Accidental Creative” by Todd Henry.

The author’s quote from the book flap sets the stage perfectly:

“You go to work each day tasked with (1) inventing brilliant solutions that (2) meet specific objectives by (3) defined deadlines. If you do this successfully, you get to keep your job. If you don’t, you get to work on your resume. The moment you exchange your creative efforts for money, you enter a world where you will have to be brilliant at a moment’s notice. (No pressure, right?)”

To attempt to be perpetually brilliant and increasingly productive, without changing the basic habits and structure of your life to accommodate that undertaking, is a futile effort.

Henry develops the following elements as a structure to guide your creative potential, providing you with the stability and clarity to engage your problems head-on.

Focus – in order to create effectively, you need a clear and concrete focus

Relationships – if you want to thrive, you need to systematically engage with other people, in part to be reminded that life is bigger than your immediate problems

Energy – to make the most of your day, you need to establish practices around energy management

Stimuli – if you want to regularly generate brilliant ideas, you must be purposeful about the kinds of stimuli you are putting in your head

Hours – you need to make sure that the practices that truly make you a more effective creator are making it onto your calendar

Practices in each of these five F-R-E-S-H areas provide the foundation for a life that is prolific, brilliant, and healthy.

Wait a minute – you’ve got a problem with the “creative” label? Call yourself anything you want, but if you’re responsible for solving problems, developing strategies, or otherwise straining your brain for new ideas, you are a creative – even if you end up being one accidentally.

– Todd Henry, “The Accidental Creative”

Hunting with IDEA Principles

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In an earlier post, the concept of becoming an Idea Hunter was introduced. Based on the work of Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer, these concepts are outlined in their recent book “The Idea Hunter.”

Understanding how to become an idea hunter starts with four foundational concepts the authors call the IDEA principles. Each of the four connect with crucial attitudes, habits, skills, and strategies.

Interested

The first principle turns on the question: Do I want to be interested, or merely interesting? In the hunt for ideas, being Interested in the world around you is of greater importance. Incredible ideas can come from anywhere; you just have to be on the lookout for them. Idea hunters understand that intellectual curiosity often leads to success. Curiosity will take you further toward your goals than cleverness or even brilliance.

Diverse

Idea Hunters are aware of the multitude of trails that can lead to worthwhile ideas. They don’t read the same magazines, browse the same websites, and compare notes with the same people. That only leads to variations on the same tired ideas. Idea Hunters bring in thoughts that are different but applicable, seemingly unrelated but potentially valuable. The operative assumption should be that ideas are everywhere.

Exercised

Idea Hunters exercise their idea muscles all the time, not just in your office or at a brainstorming session. Pursuing an idea requires daily training, keeping notebooks for recording what they’ve seen or heard. These personal experiences and impressions are then connected to their projects and proposals. Their searches are highly focused and purpose-driven. Successful idea hunters develop a wide range of skills, realizing that the pursuit of ideas doesn’t start when you are faced with a difficult problem that needs a quick solution.

 Agile

Idea Hunters don’t proceed in a straight line, because most of their ideas bounce all over the place. While it is possible to conceive of an idea and pursue it in a straight line to implementation, more than likely you will be veering right and left, maybe even backtracking, looking for ideas that come at you from different directions. Agility is required because your notions and impressions are worth little unless they are in motion, shifting in response to fresh data and conversation, evolving through stages of reflection and prototyping.

Understand and practice the IDEA principles, and you are ready to go idea hunting.

 

Brilliance Not Required

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Idea work is a vital asset for leaders today. It is highly learnable, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a creative genius because most high-value ideas are not created. More often than not, they are already out there, waiting to be spotted and then shaped into an innovation.

It’s time to become an Idea Hunter.

High-value ideas come to those people who are in the habit of looking for such ideas – all around them, all the time. It’s a search for ideas that’s open-ended, ongoing, and always personal – dialed into who you are, what projects you are pursuing, and where you’re going in your career and life.

Brilliance is optional. Idea Hunters are not, as a rule, geniuses. They are just idea-active. They have a voracious appetite for acquiring ideas, and they are skilled at setting those ideas into motion.

Ready to go hunting?

 

001…Licensed to…Steal?

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Bond…James Bond. You know – the British secret agent with the 00 designation, licensed to kill.

That was only in Ian Flemings spy novels from the 50s, translated into the super successful movie series that started in 1962 and is still cranking out a movie every few years.

There is another license that church leaders ought to consider – a license to “steal” other churches stuff. Let me explain…

I heard it first while attending a conference at Saddleback in the early 90’s – Rick Warren told the audience, “If my bullet fits your gun, then shoot it.” Tim Stevens, Executive Pastor at Granger Community Church, and writing in his book “Simply Strategic Stuff,”  puts it this way: “Visit other churches and steal their stuff,” and “Don’t worry about being original.”

This doesn’t mean you need to turn your brain off and blindly copy every innovative and creative element from churches that are having success. If you do just that, you will probably – no, certainly – be unhappy with the results. But there is a way to learn from others, framed nicely in this phrase:

Learn all you can about the principles from others, but then apply them in the context of your own setting and organization.

We need to figure out the best way we can to communicate the power of God’s Word to an increasingly skeptical potential audience. If that means hopping in a car with your leadership team and driving across town (or across the country) to visit and learn from another church – then do it. There are lots of churches (of all sizes) across the countries who have already figured out how to be effective in an area that you want to know more about. Learn from them! You can be innovative without being original.

Sometimes the most innovative idea for your church is something that was borrowed from somewhere or someone else. Stevens says that “most of our ideas come from taking someone else’s idea and making it work for us. We Grangerize it. That is, we make it work for our culture, and that is okay with us. If we can use the idea to impact our community, why does it matter if it is an already-been-used idea from LifeChurch or Willow Creek. Most churches need to get over themselves and just figure out what works.”

Of course, I’m writing this with a little tongue-in-cheek. If you quote from a message or book, give credit to the author. If you reprint published material or copy something, get permission first.

Just don’t think you have to dream up everything you want to do yourself.

Be the “secret agent” you’ve always wanted to be look for ideas and practices that are working somewhere else.

Learn what and why, and then apply the principles at your place.

Who knows – you may even get a YouTube video made out of your “theft.”