[music] Welcome to week three of the Strategic Innovation class. This week we're going to talk about group constraints. And basically, we're moving up a level of analysis. Remember, last week, we talked about the individual, what goes on, basically, between the ears. So, for individuals, we talked about perception, getting information in and how if we don't get new information in, we're not going to come up with new ideas. We talked about intellection, different ways of thinking about things, like how or where the different problem solving strategies we have, different ways of looking at the world. And then, we talked about expression, getting our ideas back out. Because our ideas have to be meaningful. And so, the way that psychologists, this would be, basically, the psychological view think about the world is really different from the way groups people think about the world. So, there's this kind of person called the social psychologist. So, social psychologists think about the world really differently. And so, what social psychologists talk about is things like risk. So, for example, a social psychologist might say, hey, you know what, you've, give me a bunch of Leondardo da Vincis, you mean those really smart people and I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll put them in a room and have them start brainstorming and bring the boss in and say, that's a dumb idea, that'll never work, last person said that got fired. And what happens to innovation? It's gone. And so, we do need to pay attention that maybe there's something in our innovation process, in the way we're trained to innovate that the group really matters, what it really matters about what the group does and how it behaves together. And, in fact, there's a great deal of research that shows that brainstorm groups actually are not that good. And, in fact, they may produce fewer ideas, and fewer less unique ideas if you put people together in a group, rather than putting them apart. And so, let me say that differently. If I put a bunch of people in separate rooms and had them brainstorm ideas, I would come up with more different ideas, than if I put them in a room together. And so, the things we want to know is why would that be? You know, we would think that people together should be able to do something more than people apart. And also, we want to, well, what can we do about it? That is, how can we help, how can we get past the problems that groups have, especially around brainstorming where it's one of the primary activities where to use groups for? So, the subpanel, this, this piece of the of the class, this group-level piece, is really, it's sort of like why are brainstorm groups worse than no groups at all, why is that and how can we fix that and what is it we can do? Our agenda for this week, we're going to talk about information processing in groups, that is how groups go about processing information, because that's what we use groups for, as I'll tell you in a second. We're going to talk about emotion, what's the role of emotion. There's an argument that emotion is something that is social that we learn, that we, we interact with other people and that causes emotion for us; what's the role of that? We're going to talk about culture, groups' cultures and how groups sort of think about themselves and know about themselves. We're going to talk about environment, the group's environment within which they innovate, within which they work together and what effect that might have on innovation in that group. Also, we're going to talk about process, we're going to talk about a fair amount about process because I think if there's nothing else that you take from this group level thing, that it's that process matters. Process matters a great deal. Also, give you a couple of hints on the idea build which is part of the project assignments for this week. So, the first question we want to ask is why use a group? I'm sure many of you have been in groups, and then, found it to be very, very painful. I find it painful often in groups. And so, why do we even use groups and what's the idea behind that? One idea is that groups are really good for information processing. That is we bring people together and those people help us they did, basically, they multiply the effort of individuals. And so, as individuals, we can take three of us and we have a larger, more complex problem that we address, for example. So, if we have to dig a bigger hole, the more people, the faster the hole goes, the better it is. And so, you have big pieces at work and you split it up lots of ways and you can have people help you do that. And that would be one reason to use a group. Another reason to use a group is that you have a wider and more diverse information store that the groups may know more different things because of the different kinds of people in there. So, they may have different problem solving approaches. Remember, that's on the individual level we talked about why having different problem solving approaches matter. They may have deep, deeper base of domain relevant knowledge. That is, they may understand more about things that we don't understand. And also, they may have this wider base of potentially relevant knowledge. So, not only expertise, but they be broad also, by having more people in there, we sort of broaden this thing out and people have lots and lots of different kinds of pieces of information, perceptions and like ideas, expressions that they can bring to bear on the problem we're trying to face. And then, thirdly, if we we're going to assess our problems for constraints, so again, we're trying to do innovation, we're trying to figure out what the constraints are going to be and if we have more people there, maybe they can help us, maybe they have a more broad sense of what the constraints are. If I work in product development at an early stage of a product and someone else works in manufacturing a later stage of the process, if I bring them up, they may understand that, hey, you're designing something that's 20 inches wide, but our process in the back are only 18 inches width. So, something 20 inches cannot be made. So, I want to know that up front because that's a constraint that I would want to have an understanding of. So again, we're going to multiply the problem-solving efforts of individuals, we're going to have a larger and more diverse information store and we're going to have a better assessment of constraints. You know, what's not to like? Aren't these good things for us? But what can go wrong, because those things don't always come out in groups. And sometimes, as I'll show you, it can be really, really problematic. So, I want you to watch this piece of video here. So you can find it on YouTube. I put a couple links to it. You can also Google that the terms down there and find the, the piece of video. That's pretty interesting. Is that information processing? I mean, getting thrown out of the window, would you call that information processing? What's going on there? You know, where is this, this multiplying, problem-solving effort, where is the larger and more diverse information store, where's the better assessment and constraints? Well, there's a problem and groups do information processing, that's what we want them to do. But they end up doing this thing called emotion processing. So, there's lots of emotion stuff going on. And the problem is, in groups is when the groups are trying to do information processing, but then, the social processing gets in the way. This emotional stuff gets in the way. So, think about it this way. We're trying to do information. And somehow, the social junk, the, the, the, the adversity, the problems that people have with each other, that stuff takes off and becomes problematic. The answer is not just to say no emotion in the group, because that won't work. Because we need more, we need emotion for motivation, we needed to feel good, we need also for coordination, for cooperation. All those things require emotion, require us to be pro-social, require us to be able to take and read cues from other people. So, it's not just a matter of getting rid of the emotion, we really do need to think about how do I bring a group in a way that's emotionally sound, but that also allows them to do information processing without that being adverse. So, some of the kind of social phenomena that we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about self esteem social status. These are all the kinds of things that social psychologists study. And that they're look in, they try to understand what is the, what is the nature of these things in a group setting? And for our purposes, all of these things affect innovation. That is if people feel like they don't, aren't part of group that if people don't have meaning, if they're not motivated, if people are not risk tolerant, you're not going to have innovation. And so, I want to understand how is it that these things manifest in a group and what is it that we can do to get past them? And so, let's see if we can understand the group constraints and understand what's going on there. There are basically, I'll call them four group four, you know, group innovation constraints. We're going to put them in sort of four rough categories. First category is emotion. We're going to look at the roll of emotion and what happens for people emotionally in groups. When other people are around there's certain things that happen we need to take account of. We're going to talk about culture. That is, how groups sort of think about things and how groups know what they should be doing and what they shouldn't be doing. Even without talking about it. We're going to talk about the environment. Again, what's the environment within which the group operates? If you're in a classroom, it's very different than being in a meeting room, it's very different than being in the library. And those are very different spaces. And we want to sort of understand what is the nature of the environment? And is it something that we can become strategic about? And then, finally, as I've said before, we're going to really be focusing on process. What are the things we can do, in what order to make sure that the job gets done. That innovation actually happens in a good way.
