Hi. Welcome to the second week of Strategic Innovation. This week, we're going to talk about the individual and what goes on for individual. So last week, we talked about the six types of constraints, six things that stop people from being innovative or being creative. I want to go into those in more depth. And this week is the week for the individual. So what goes on really, between the ears. This is the realm of psychology, and so, the kind of things we're going to talk about are ideas that psychologists might have about what stops innovation from happening. Recall, innovation starts with the, an idea. Right? So there's an idea and then other things happen in order, and then adoption happens, but if that idea isn't very good then that's a constraint. That's something that going to stop us from being innovative. So that's where we want to start this week. We're going to talk about perception, that is getting information in. We're going to talk about intellection, that is how we think about things, the way we put information together. And we're going to talk about expression, that we are articulating our ideas. How do we get our ideas back out into the world? We're also going to talk a little bit about motivation and process. Like what do those things have to do it? What is it do I have to do? What are the steps I could do to actually make myself much more innovative than usual? There are going to be some exercises that I'll have you do this week. Later on, also, we'll get some hints about the project in the 101 ideas assignment that's related to the project. And then also, I want you to talk about some ideation strategies on the forum. And they're strategies for how it is that you can actually help yourself to have better ideas. All right. Let's go get right into it. I want to start with a story this week. The story of Spence Silver. Spence Silver was this young man in 1966. He had finished his Ph.D in chemistry and he joined the R&D division of this real, just say a big diverse entrepreneurial products firm. And so in 68, 1968, two years later he was working on, in one of the labs. He was trying to make a he said, in his words he was fooling around. What he wanted to do was to take some of the company's established technologies and make them much better, make like a super version of their current technology. Unfortunately, the product that he came up with in the end, it just, it couldn't compete. It was, it was, in many words, it some places it was, it was just not good. He thought it might be interesting to play with. Half of his colleague though, they said throw it away, it's not very good. But instead of throwing it away, Spence Silver he just kept, kept insisting on showing the thing to everyone. He kept showing it around and showing it around and say, hey, look at this thing. I have this glue. Basically this, the thing that is worked on was this product that didn't work very well. I have this thing that doesn't work very well, not as good as our current products, but isn't this interesting? And so he kept showing it around and showing it around and showing it around. Over 5 years, he was showing this thing around. And he kept working on this product, he kept working on trying to make this thing to figure out how could he use it. It didn't perform as well as his, as the, as the flagship product for this company, but it did, it had different properties than that. And it was sort of different in a way and so they couldn't figure out what it was. So in this company, they had a very a strong culture of, of sharing ideas. And so, they'd have maybe a weekly meeting or a weekly seminar, where people can get together and say, hey, guess what I've been working on this week? Or a monthly seminar that's organization wide, here's what I've been working on this month. And they would get, basically show these things around inside. So again, for 5 years, Spence Silver showing this thing around inside. He really does not know what to do with it. He's been as a staff working on it, but he won't take no for an answer and he just keeps on going trying to find people, trying to find people, trying to find people. Asking them do they have a use to this technology, unfortunately, they didn't. Sometime later, so I remember this is going to hunt for many years now. Art Fry, who's another employee inside the company, he realized that he had a problem that Silver's invention could solve. And he had seen him at one these seminars, I assume, and this guy had this hobby of choir singing, and this product that Spencer Silver had come up with could help him that hobby. Could help him organize these sheets of music for his choir, and he's really excited about that. So the two began trying to develop a prototype. So inside of the company, they said, you know, they said, this thing doesn't work, it's not a very good product, like what are you thinking. Throw the thing way. They said no, make us a prototype. Well, the manufacturing organization thought the prototype was just too difficult to make, so they said, we're not going to help you with that. You're on your own. So again, years are passing by and this unauthorized project is still being worked on. But now, they've worked on it instead in Ben, in Spence Silver's basement. So they built a prototyping facility there. So they've been able to develop a prototyping and then a little bit of manufacturing. And still, they try to make this thing work. They tried to get people interested in this thing, and so finally, if you get as you get only give the things away inside the organization. Because I tried market tests, market tests, you know, you can imagine what this is, so I'll give a way the name of the company. Now, this was 3M and what he invented was a Post-it note. And so, he had this little product that was this piece of paper too small to write on. You know with that adhesive, the adhesive is what Spence Silver had invented. So, let's do a market study. Sir, are you interested in a small piece of paper too small to write on, with a terrible adhesive on the back? No, of course not. So people who had been asked in a survey whether they wanted this thing were not interested at all. But people who had used them, tried them out, they loved them. And so, they had to keep trying to get the market study people to understand what they were seeing, that people were actually using it, were loving this thing. So again, now, it goes off as another market trial, people didn't see the value of it,p because again, they're asking in the, sort of, in this, this, wrong way and people wouldn't bite on it. And so finally, the marketing department said, look we're not going to do this anymore. Let's just stop. What did they do? Well, they keep going and they keep pushing and they keep pushing. So this again is Spence Silver and Art Fry are pushing this thing forward. And finally they appeal to the CEO and say hey, we have this great product. It's really important. It could be, could be a really good thing. Let's do another market strategy. Please help us do another market test for this product. And so in Boise, Idaho, they did their test. And that test, they found that every, basically 90% of people who tried the product, who actually tried it, loved it, and they would buy it. And so finally, it was given the official go-ahead and so in June 1980, again, this is 12 years, 12 long years after Silver accidentally discovered the invention of this sort of in, inferior adhesive. You know, 3M was about adhesives and he made a dud adhesive. Finally, the product that he invented for 3M, the Post-it was finally launched 12 years later. So this brings up some kind of question that we may want to be interested in. For example, what motivates a person like Silver to keep working on a project that part of it has failed, it's unauthorized, and he keeps working on the program for 5 years by himself. What enabled him to see that there was something there, that he kept seeing something there, and kept working on it, working on it, working on it. Other people just saw a failed experiment, he saw something. How is that? Why did some people, and why do some people in general, continue to work really hard and push on projects and go on through, while others sort of give up at the first sign of rejection or resistance from others? Another question, was 3M lucky to find Silver? Yeah? Did he, did he possess some kind of, you know, secret quality? Was there something about his personality? Something that the, the company knew, and they identified early in him, and hired him for that reason? Or was it random? I mean, was it just something else? Let's talk about let's ask the question about Silver's creative abilities. Are they genetic, is it only him or does everyone have these things? Can anyone do these things? And finally, why on earth was the guy not fired ? I mean, someone working for 12 years on a project that's unauthorized that no one sees any value in should be gone or at least that's the mistake 3M did not make.
