johnson and johnson structured innovation

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A Structured, Facilitated Team Approachto InnovationDrew Boyd, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., A Johnson & Johnson Company

Abstract

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to create new organic growth opportunities and efcien-cies. The outcomes of fty facilitated team workshopsusing this method reect successful efforts to solve arange of issues: creating new products, improvingproducts, developing new marketing strategies, buildingbrands, creating customer solutions, and improving orga-nizational process. This paper reviews our experience with this approach over a period of four years beginningin July 2002.

Introduction

Innovation is a crucial source of both organic growthopportunities and efciencies for companies. It leads tonew products, effective strategies, improved processes,and fresh organizational designs. However, innovationis challenging partly because of behaviors and attitudes

-nization. A facilitated, systematic, team approach to in-novation can overcome human behavior challenges andmake innovation more predictable.

Why Innovation is Difcult in Organizations

There are several well-researched reasons why innovationmay be stied within an organization. Take brainstorming,for example. Brainstorming may be the most overused andunderperforming tool in business. Introduced in the 1950s,Osborne dened brainstorming as a group process to im-prove ideation. The premise was that to get good ideas,

study after study has shown that groups generating ideasusing traditional brainstorming are no more effective than

Even if people knew how to systematically and routinelyinnovate beyond brainstorming, there are other challeng-

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often keep their good ideas to themselves, afraid to testthem in the workplace, fearing embarrassment and lossof status if their ideas fail.

Another barrier is that even when people generate novelideas for the good of the organization, their colleaguesmay see these ideas as tainted. Acknowledging a superioridea from a colleague implies deference to their internalrival and devalues their own status and distinctiveness

Finally, employees may resist sharing their best ideas forfear of colleagues stealing or “free-riding”on that idea

for the ideal time to reveal them in a way that limits theircolleagues from taking credit.

How do we overcome these conundrums? We believethat a systematic technique to innovation conquers thesechallenges and increases inventive group thinking acrossa range of business issues and activities.

Templates of Innovation

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Systematic inventive thinking is a set of tools used in afacilitated team environment to generate predictable,progressive ideas. This innovation process uses templatesto help regulate individual thinking and channel theideation process in a structured way that overcomes therandomness of brainstorming.

The ve templates of innovation include: Subtraction,Task Unication, Multiplication, Attribute Dependency,



and Division. They were developed by recognizing thesame consistent pattern over many products so that thepattern could be applied in a way to create new innova-tive products. The templates are recognizable and identi-able for almost any type of product. The method grewout of research by the Russian engineer Genrich Alt-shuller who spent his professional life working to formal-

Briey, the method works by taking a product, concept,situation, service, process, or other seed construct, andbreaking it into its component parts or attributes. Thetemplates manipulate the components or variables tocreate new-to-the-world constructs that the innovator

problem that it can solve is called “Function FollowsForm,”and it is at the heart of the systematic inventivethinking method.

One example of a template is Subtraction. The patternof innovation for Subtraction is that something has beenremoved from a product or service so as to create a newfunction or benet for that product or service. Considera pattern in these four items: contact lenses, an exercisebicycle, powdered soup, and an automatic teller machine

pair of glasses removed. The exercise bicycle has had therear wheel removed. A package of powdered soup hashad the water removed. And the ATM has had the bankemployee removed. In each case, taking something awaycreated a new innovative use or benet.

Team Innovation

team workshops to create new organic growth opportu-nities and efciencies. Workshops range from four hoursto ve days in length. Typically teams have twelve tofteen members with diverse backgrounds: by businessfunction, by market/geography, and by gender. The ac-tual makeup of the team depends on the business focusand the purpose of innovating, such as growth, competi-tiveness, efciency, organizational design, etc. A sam-pling of workshop participants innovating new productsmay include the following: three or four marketers from

different areas, such as design, mechanical, and manu-

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such as an advertising agency or consultant.

SYSTEMATIC INVENTIVE THINKING TOOL OUTCOME IDEAS

Subtraction experience it without having to travel

can function without having to pierce the tissue rstTask Unication

equipment

more competitive product offering

Multiplication

incentives based on achievement

Attribute Dependency temperature, making it more maneuverable

tampering occurs

Division -ponents that can be moved from OR to OR and that can communicate with each other

Table 1.



Outcomes of Systematic Inventive Thinking

Systematic inventive thinking is counterintuitive,elegant, and highly productive based on our experience.Table 1 illustrates some of our results:

Why Templates Work

ideas from colleagues, team innovation workshops arefacilitated by an external consultant specializing in the

the challenges of human behavior and attitudes towardsinnovation and their personal organizational status.

Participants are led through a series of exercises usingeveryday, common products to demonstrate that peoplecan systematically innovate on command. Participantslearn how each template is applied to a problem, prod-uct, or situation to give many different original ideas in

that space. The templates, by their nature, specify a rig-orous course of thinking that participants are expected tofollow exactly. While the templates are not particularlydifcult to learn, the training is demanding so that teamscan execute each pattern in a routine way. At the end ofthe training, people no longer have the excuse that theydo not know how to innovate.

In the group workshop setting, people trade in their fearof failure at innovating for a fear of not innovating. Skill-ful facilitation lets each person have the spotlight at reg-ular intervals so that the pressure to perform and pleasethe group is strong but not overbearing. The facilitationcreates a level innovating eld so that all participantshave the same resources, tools, insights, and opportuni-ties to contribute novel ideas. While it may be true thatsome participants are judgmental of ideas and the people who generated them, this dynamic does not seem strongenough to overcome the productive nature of the tem-plates when properly facilitated. The templates makepeople innovate in a structured way regardless of theirfear of peer judgment.

The facilitated approach uses techniques that wouldseem to stie innovation when in fact they accelerate

innovation. One such technique is the Principle of -

come the tendency of people to lter their ideas or otherself-serving behavior as they are generating ideas.Participants work in small teams, often in pairs, wherethey are given specic assignments to generate newideas in a matter of a few minutes. Each partner hasto participate in the assignment which creates a strongcollegial pressure to perform.

With these constraints, it appears that people place apremium on getting the idea out of their head and over

to their partner rst rather than pre-judge the merits ofthe idea and the value to their personal status for havingthought of it. Working in pairs seems to create a sense ofaccountability and transparency. Once the idea is out onthe table, each partner gives some sense of oversight or verication that the idea has been shared with the largergroup. A participant may think afterward that one of hisor her ideas is brilliant and thus too good to share withthe group, but it is too late. The idea has been capturedfor the larger group to consider.

The systematic inventive thinking method producesseveral dozens to several hundreds of ideas dependingon the amount of time dedicated to the activity. Skillfulfacilitation is required again to help overcome the prob-lem of peer acceptance of those ideas.

First, the facilitators create an environment of non-at-tribution so that no one individual is associated with aspecic idea. Because the idea was generated in a smallteam of two or three, and because the moment of truth was born out of a stepwise contribution of their insightsand notions during the mini-exercises, it is often hardto distinguish who actually could be credited with gener-ating one specic idea. Idea anonymity reduces the in-ternal competitive threat among colleagues and makesideas no longer tainted. Participants come to recognizeidea contribution as process output.

Second, the facilitation process emphasizes only newly-created ideas rather than ideas participants had beforecoming to the workshop. This inhibits the problem ofpeople selling their pet ideas to their peers, which areusually ideas that the peers have already rejected.

Third, the facilitators lead the larger team to develop aspecic set of objective, weighted criteria to judge eachof the new ideas generated in the workshop. Diversegroups bring the value of diverse thinking but also theadded cost of having to converge on a set of guidingprinciples.

With these criteria in place in the form of a linear weighted model, ideas are allowed to rise to the top without the stigma of who generated them or who judged them. Internal competition among peer rivals isminimized allowing for a more objective evaluation of

ideas. Thoughtful facilitation seems to bring about thisalignment much more efciently than what internalgroups can do left on their own.

Conclusion

facilitated, systematic team approach to using templates



of ideas from internal colleagues. This technique alsoenhances innovation outcomes, yielding a predictablestream of organically derived innovation across abusiness.

References

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CreativeCognition: Theory, Research, and Application. The MITPress.

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Author’s Reection

My function is to increase marketing competency anduency throughout the organization. I report to the VicePresident of Marketing. This reporting relationship givesme line of sight to issues our associates face in creatingand implementing innovative marketing strategy.

With a systematic approach to innovation, my greatestchallenge was convincing people that innovation couldbe trained and routinized. A second challenge was to getpeople to realize innovation is not limited to the engi-neering team. Each individual has a need to generatenew ideas continuously.

To overcome these challenges, I proposed a pilot innova-tion session and sought support from more than onesenior-level sponsor. Multiple sponsors spread the nan-cial risk associated with the pilot so that no one sponsor would bear the full loss if it failed. If the pilot wassuccessful, the approach would gain more acceptanceand alignment.

The pilot was a success. It gave me the reference pointneeded to spread systematic innovation to other parts ofthe organization. Word of mouth and personal sellingmade people realize that they needed to try the innova-tion method or risk falling behind other franchises.

In a culture dominated by portfolio thinking, teamscompete for investment resources not just on the meritsof their current business prospects but also on futureprospects. This approach shows teams that systematicinnovation enables them to create an exciting pipelineof new product ideas and therefore to compete moreeffectively for internal resources.

Author’s Bio

Drew Boyd, Director, Marketing Mastery, Ethicon Endo-

marketing training program. His focus on raising compe-tencies in strategic marketing, market management, andnew product innovation helps employees learn how tosystematically invent medical products and integrateinnovations into long-range strategic plans.

Johnson Company, 4545 Creek Road, Cincinnati, Ohio45242, [email protected]

johnson and johnson structured innovation

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