innovation monthly may 2008

INNOVATION MONTHLY

MAY 2008

Try, Try Again

By Jason Tay “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.”

You've heard this one before. It's so timeless and universal, no one knows where it comes from. But it's probably one of the best and most important “doctrines” any innovator should hold close to their heart, should one have innovation doctrines!

In addition to my work laptop, I also have an Apple Mac mini at home, which works really well as a general purpose home computer, and best of all as a desktop it doesn't occupy much space, although it does nothing to eliminate the mess of wires at the back of most desktops.

The appeal is undeniable – it is compact, affordable as far as Apple Macs go and it is a typically stylish Apple product. It is also rumoured to be the all time best selling Mac that Apple has ever made, a fact which when it's US$599 selling price is taken into consideration is easily comprehended. Launched in 2005 during the last vestiges of Apple's PowerPC era and currently enjoying a second incarnation with an Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel chipset making up it's innards, the Mac mini is hardly a unique product. It has been preceded by a myriad other attempts at squarish-shaped or otherwise compact computers by a variety of companies dating back to at least the early 90's.

So does it all come down to price? Just to satisfy my curiosity, I asked our local computer shop to price up a generic, custom built Intel-based personal computer with an identical specification to that of the current entry-level Mac mini. At US$250, a noname brand PC with original Intel Core 2 Duo processor and original Intel chipset will set me back little more than the famed so-called $100 One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), although admittedly it will not be anywhere near as attractive as either the Mac mini or the OLPC. There is something much more that prospective buyers perceive in an Apple Mac mini than just any old computer.

“Cube Lore”

First, let's take a step back and examine the history and folklore of the cube. Luckily, the human race has always had a healthy preoccupation with imagined, perceived or the real “powers” and mysteries of certain fundamental shapes as soon as anyone realized they existed, such as circles, spheres, cubes, triangles, pyramids, tetrahedrons to name just a few. In order to keep the story brief, we'll get straight to the cube. Mathematicians call it a regular hexahedron; children enjoy multi-coloured cubes as

Continued... entertaining educational toys; architects and artists alike have found inspiration from cubes Can you think of another one? throughout the ages. For some, the cube inspired works of beauty, although some might assert that beauty is firmly in the eye of the beholder; for some, Rubik's cube is either hours of Everyone will agree that endless frustration or 50 seconds of puzzle solving genius. The cube and it's hyperdimensional cousin, the hypercube also became the inspiration and setting for various science Apple was literally “last to fiction horror movies The Cube (obviously! - 1969, and again in 1997); when the Star Trek arrive at the party” with their franchise was forced to invent a new űber-enemy after they made the Klingons part of the iPod music player, yet the United Federation of Planets, they created the The Borg and gave them powerful, mysterious product contained just the and utilitarian ships that had the form of a cube – anyway, you get the idea. Cubes are cool, mysterious and fantastic. right mix of timing, design and

innovations in usability that Going back to the Apple Mac mini, and our theme of perseverance, the Mac mini didn't just has made it more successful happen overnight. You can in fact trace the Mac mini's design heritage and philosophy back than any other portable to the 80's when Steve Jobs was ousted from the very company he was so instrumental in forming – Apple Computer itself. Instead of giving up, Jobs went on to found NeXT Computer, personal music player that Inc., which designed and for a short time, manufactured the NeXTcube (1987 - 1993), a cool had ever come before it. and enigmatic Unix workstation shaped like a black cube. Despite all that mysterious allure, the NeXTcube was not a commercial success. History, as they say, repeats itself and years The iPod not only opened a later, NeXT was acquired by Apple in 1996 and Steve Jobs was brought back into Apple to save it from self-destruction. With renewed inspiration, the design team at Apple launched the new chapter for Apple in Power Mac G4 Cube in 2000, and although it became an instant design icon (Apple designer business but also innovation Jonathan Ive won several international design awards for the G4 Cube design and the design terms, but amazingly, conscious still covet it), it too enjoyed only lackluster sales and was discontinued exactly 1 although there existed many year later. Apple would only finally get the compact cube computer equation commercially just right with the Mac mini in 2005. portable media players in the

market before the iPod ever So what is the point, then? This article isn't really about cubes or iPods or even Mac minis – existed, it's introduction in it's about perseverance, attitude and vision. Thomas Edison was famously quoted as having October 2001 seems to have said that it wasn't the case that he and his team went through more than 1,000 failed attempts totally redefined this class of at making a lightbulb, rather that they had found 1,000 ways not to do it. It isn't just a simple matter of putting a positive spin on everything, although that can sometimes help, it's all about personal entertainment having vision, faith that it can be done, confidence that you or your team are the right people devices from that point to do it. onwards, causing even long

established personal media The lessons to be learned from ideas, and designs like the NeXTcube and Power Mac G4 Cube have reached cult status but were not commercially successful. In contrast, the Mac mini stalwarts such as Sony sells in record numbers, but may never become a cult icon. Other products like the Apple iPod scrambling to emulate Apple's clearly, have found the balance between those 2 values, producing cult icon products that innovation. have enjoyed massively successful sales as well.

Here are a few more cases of success in the face of ridicule and apparently insurmountable odds:

Paul MacCready – The Gossamer Condor human powered airplane Motivated to repay a loan, Paul MacCready and Dr Peter Lissaman succeeded in creating a human powered airplane winning a coveted prize where others had failed for the past 18 years. He and his team subsequently went on to win another price shortly after for solar powered flight. He has been designing and inventing machines that “Do more with less” ever since.

Prosthetic Limbs Although as a whole it cannot be attributed to any one person, this is an area that has been and continues to be pursued by many individuals in an effort to give back much of what is lost from a life from a quality of living standpoint when a limb is lost, either in accidents or as a result of conflict. The results are varied and clear – return of dignity, independence of an individual, the ability to earn a living. An affordable and effective artificial limb remains a Holy Grail that many strive to develop, not just for economic reward, but also the gratification of helping to better lives. Today, artificial toes that feel may only be a dream, but one day they will be reality.

Teflon and Stainless Steel The story of the discovery or rather accidental invention of Teflon and stainless steel are themselves success stories that came out of failed attempts at some other experiment.

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National Aquatics Center – the “Water Cube” in Beijing OK, so I had to throw in a cube somewhere in here. Although it isn't strictly a regular hexahedron, it is colloquially known as the Water Cube and is a spectacular example of breaking the mold and aspiring to do something truly different.

“Why bother?”

Why bother? You should bother because you must if you expect your business or product to survive. Those who are familiar with investing particularly on the stock market will know that the biggest gains also come with the biggest risk. Backing a startup or other new venture also comes with great risks, but why do people do it if the danger of failure looms? As the saying goes, “No pain, no gain.” The more you study the goals of management for any company, the more you should realize that success in business is all about managing and balancing risk against other business needs and values. Molly-coddling your business in a perpetual padded room will not ensure success – most likely quite the opposite. As the times change, by not taking the right calculated risks, your business will in fact, surely and predictably, fade out of relevance.

This is evidenced in many things that we take for granted all around us. In observation, we learn how to take notice of things that our adult training and education have taught us to accept and filter out as truisms. Times change and the mere existence and success of boutique coffee chains such as Starbucks worldwide are evidence of this. There is nothing intrinsically new about what we teach – all are based on tried and tested management techniques and practices, augmented with an improved understanding of business innovation derived from a broader understanding of the forces at play in a typical organisation in today's market. Trying to understand a business, it's products/services without understanding it's customers is the reason why we also use anthropology to enhance our understanding and observation of the issues at play.

In order to succeed in the market, your product must do much more than perform a function – it has to have the pizazz that your competitor's products lack, more than that, it should even have it's own indigenous culture and personal pride associated with owning and using one. If there's a lesson to be learned in examining the Apple Mac mini and other such products, it's that you learn from failure and like the phoenix, success can come out of the ashes of past failures. So if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

References: 1.Apple Mac mini http://www.apple.com/macmini/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_mini Levy, Steven – The Perfect Thing – Simon & Schuster Paperbacks 2007, ISBN 0-7432-8522-0

2.The Sunday Times, February 10, 2008 by Rachel Bridge – How to cope when your business goes bust – Part 1 Available online: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/entrepreneur/article3340926.ece

3.The Sunday Times, February 17, 2008 by Rachel Bridge – The best way to deal with small-business failure (Part 2) Available online: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/entrepreneur/article3381060.ece

4.Skin, Inc., February 2008 – There's Fortune in Failure, available online: http://www.skininc.com/articles/14986171.html

5.MicroTrends: Failure http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article3304328.ece

6.Business Week, July 2006, How Failure Breeds Success, available online: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_28/b3992001.htm

7.Business Week, May 2008, Risk-Taking, Discipline – and Regulation, available online: http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/may2008/ca20080520_939791.htm

INNOVATION MONTHLY

MAY 2008

Innovation: The State Of Our Nation

By Andrew Tan The word on the street is that the local government has commissioned some of the big consultancies to advise Malaysia on what it should be doing in terms of innovation. Though I did not get the specific names of the consultancies, it is probably safe to assume that it included the likes of BCG and Accenture. The second recent news on the local innovation grapevine is that SMIDEC (Small and Medium Industries Development Corporation) is also trying to figure out a different path on what it should do in terms of innovation and SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises). I do not have the details of the recommendations given to the government by the commissioned consultancies or what SMIDEC will be

doing, but I hope that besides just revolving around the topics of science, technology, research and development, some emphasis would be placed on design and design thinking as well.

Let's look at a similar example in another country which has already taken some of these steps. The Cox review1 was commissioned in the UK in 2005. Out of this review came the recommendation to use design and design thinking strategically to make small businesses a viable engine for national economic growth in the UK. These findings echoed the UK government's earlier white paper on competitiveness (1995)2 that stated: “The effective use of design is fundamental to the creation of innovative products, processes and

services. Good design can significantly add value to products, lead to growth in sales and enable both the exploitation of new markets and the consolidation of existing ones.”

Another recommendation that came out of the Cox review was to create centers of higher education which offered multidisciplinary courses that combined management studies, engineering and creative disciplines.

On top of that, the Cox review also called for the establishment of a national network of design centers.

Historically, design has always been left to the end of the development process, be it the development of a product or a service. So much so that designers are usually only called in at the end to put a beautiful wrapping

“There’s an awful lot of evidence across an awful lot of categories that consumers will pay more for better design” A.G. Lafley, Chief Executive Procter & Gamble

Innovation has a variety of impacts;

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enhancing the outcome…

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continued... around an idea that the designers had no part of earlier. Sadly, that is how most of us generally view design.

We view design as just aesthetics such as style and appearance. In fact one study by Durham University Business School showed that "creativity and design are mostly seen as optional extras – ‘add ons’ to products or services being developed or marketed for other reasons.”

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design in order to use it as a strategic way of thinking -- a way of thinking where users are placed at the center of all decisions, a way of thinking where unmet needs are uncovered and fulfilled to provide real value to the users and thereby to the organization. This way of thinking is commonly known as design thinking .

Design thinking has its roots in traditional design but more specifically in industrial design which has always had a powerful usercentric focus. This design begins with an anthropological/sociological methodology based on understanding people be it consumers, patients, etc.

By deconstructing and distilling the traditional design thought process and reassembling them back into a general tool box for organizations, we get design thinking.

Most organizations already understand that the users of a product or service are fundamental to their business. At the recent Directions 08 seminar IDC Corp managing director for Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand, Selinna Chin, mentioned that “... getting to know customers is as important as ever.”3 I would actually say that getting to know

Penny Egan, Executive Director,

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M customers is MORE important than ever. I mean really getting to know the customers and not only just paying lip service. We really need to get to know customers or users in an intimate and rich way to mould the inspirations for a product and service.

Such rich and textured understanding of the customers with the goal of inspiring new product or service design cannot be accomplished by just using surveys. This is where design thinking comes into the picture.

“Innovate or fail. Markets are being transformed, brands are being 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 built, products and services are being re-designed, replaced or developed through innovation.

Research shows that businesses which harness creativity and design put themselves at the leading edge. More need to be convinced.”

However the design that the Cox review is referring to and that I’m advocating here is more than just the aesthetic part of design. As the Cox review rightly puts it, “design should be viewed in its widest sense, from strategy to product design, packaging, production processes, market positioning and communication, among others.” Sure, style, appearance, aesthetics, form and color are an important part of design and is necessary, but it is not nearly enough or sufficient in this day and age of globalization, where change is the norm, where the speed of change is ever increasing and consumers are becoming more and more discerning. What we need to do now is to expand the notion of

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The Cox review in the UK is not the only source calling out design and design thinking as a means to stimulate economic growth via innovation. In early 2008 U.S. News4 e-mailed a variety of smart folks to get their two cents on how America could become even more innovative.

Here are the responses from two of the smart folks:

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Niti Bhan, founder of Bhan LLC, a San Francisco strategy think tank that develops business models for emerging markets: “[Create programs] like James Dyson's [proposed] school of design [in the United Kingdom] for 16-to-19-yearolds. [They] can be set up to educate high school juniors and seniors about

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Continued... design and innovation as well as science and technology in a series of workshops. Making design very handson in schools, particularly in urban areas, is another powerful approach."

Tim Brown, CEO of global design consultancy IDEO: “1) Include design thinking as an integral part of the K-12 education system as it already has been in many countries in Europe. This doesn't mean lots of art classes. It means more specifically teaching kids, through projects, to be human centered, creative, and collaborative.

2) Fund universities to set up innovation institutes like the [design] school at Stanford. These institutes act as a place for business thinkers, design thinkers, and technologists to come together to incubate new ideas.”

So where is Malaysia in terms of promoting and developing the use of design and design thinking to stimulate local SME’s growth and indirectly the economic growth of the country?

Unfortunately, I feel that not enough attention is given to this area. It is clear that a lot of effort and resources are being poured into manufacturing, science, technology and engineering but nothing in the area of design.

SMIDEC, which is the organization responsible for developing local SMEs to contribute to the economic growth and enhancement of Malaysia’s competitiveness, is also taking this as their focus. For example, one of the programs that SMIDEC runs is the Skills Upgrading Program that is aimed at enhancing the skills and capabilities of employees of SMEs. Unfortunately this

program once again only focuses on technical subjects such as information technology and engineering but nothing on design let alone design thinking.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that we should totally ignore science and technology. However what I am saying is that if we look at developed countries and if they are starting to focus on design and design thinking, we might also want to do likewise. We might want to have a more balanced approach that focuses not only on science and technology but also equally on design. Admittedly design thinking as a field is relatively new. In fact here is what Bruce Nussbaum of Businessweek has to say about design in the U.S.:

“There is a huge amount of public policy work going on in Europe in the space of innovation, design and creativity. I fear that in the U.S., we are stuck in a rut of the federal government defining innovation just in terms of technology and pouring more money into engineering, science and math (yes, it’s a good thing but only necessary, not nearly sufficient).”5

In fact if we think about it, the above statement actually also describes our country’s efforts thus far in terms of where we are focusing our resources when it comes to innovation. So yes, using design and design thinking is relatively new and there are probably a lot of unknowns as with all things new. However if we ever want to catch up to the developed countries and not only play catch up ad infinitum then it will be wise as a country for us to start

looking into design and design thinking.

References: 1.Cox Review of Creativity in Business: building on the UK’s strengths, Available online: http://www.hmtreasury.gov.uk./independent_reviews/ cox_review/coxreview_index.cfm 2.The essentials of innovation, Available online: http:// www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/AboutDesign/Business-Essentials/Innovation/ 3.The Star, May 6 May 2008 by Jo Timbuong - IDC: Innovate to survive 4.U.S. News, 4 January 2008 by James Pethokouki - Innovate or Else: 6 Thinkers' Ideass. Available online: http://www.usnews.com/articles/ business/personal-investing-guide/ 2008/01/04/innovate-or-else-6thinkers-ideas.html 5.Businessweek, 10 July 2006 by Bruce Nussbum - James Dyson Sets Up the Dyson School of Design Innovation.

Available online: http:// www.businessweek.com/innovate/ NussbaumOnDesign/archives/ 2006/07/james_dyson_set.html 6.BusinessWeek, 3 October 2007 by Kerry Capell - How Britain Jumpstarts Design. Available online: http:// www.businessweek.com/innovate/ content/oct2007/ id2007103_116457.htm?chan=search 7.BusinessWeek, 4 October 2007 by Harry West - The Cross-Discipline Design Imperative. Available online: http://www.businessweek.com/ innovate/content/oct2007/ id2007104_562559.htm? chan=innovation_special+report+--+dschools_special+report+--+d-schools

Creativity

By Rosa Maria Galvan As with any other subject that pertains to the field of the study of the brain it is hard to have an exact definition of CREATIVITY. The National Association of Gifted Children defines creativity as: “The process of developing new, uncommon, or unique ideas. The federal definition of giftedness identifies creativity as a specific component of giftedness”.

In my article in the previous issue of this newsletter I wrote an introduction about INNOVATION and mentioned vaguely how CREATIVITY and ingenuity are the propellers of innovation. In the definition given above creativity is used as the platform upon which ideas are developed and as part of the intrinsic nature of giftedness. CREATIVITY is one of the many functions of the human brain but according to what Tony Buzan said in his seminar last April 30th in Subang Jaya, creativity diminishes as the human being grows through the formal education process, showing a pitiful 10% of it in adulthood. As toddlers going to the nursery we enjoy an extremely high level of creativity of about 95%, by primary school we have lost 20% of it and by the end of secondary school we only enjoy 50% of creativity. As humans continue to grow older and go through university only enjoy 25%

of creativity and the final conversion to full fledge hive drone is reached at full adulthood and right at the stage when the adult person becomes part of the workforce.

The social repercussions of creativity, or lack of it, are far reaching beyond speculation. One very clear example of it is the one set by the creators of Sesame Street given by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point. Joan Gantz Cooney decided in the late 60s that she wanted to create an educative children’s television program to help spread literacy among young children “to counter the prevailing epidemics of poverty and illiteracy”. Grantz, Jerald Lesser – a Harvard University Psichologist- and Lloyd Morrisett – from the Markle Foundation- set out to achieve such a goal knowing that the task ahead was a difficult one, since the target audience was too wide to know them too well and, the level of involvement between the student and the medium used in such cases is low. However, they counted on something that was to make the TV educational program a success. They recruited the “top creative minds of the period” and they used observation to analyse and collect data on the other available children’s television programs of the time. They also enlisted as head of research a psychologist, Ed Palmer.

Palmer learned about children’s behavior and attention span while sitting down and observing the

children’s reaction and interaction as study subjects in previews of coming Sesame Street episodes. If the children didn’t have a positive reaction or lost interest in something being shown to them, Palmer’s team would inform the CREATIVE team and they would set to work on creating something new. This team of CREATIVE minds kept children of the late 60s and 70s hooked on a television program purposely designed to educate them while they thought they were watching a fun program.

The children from the economically and socially deprived homes that watched Sesame Street were as much educated by it as the children from well-to-do and middle class families who also watched the program. This created a social enclosure that allowed children from all social backgrounds, in several parts of the world, to be part of the same phenomenon and enjoy the same privileges at the same time as all their peers. It is not known how many children’s educational needs would have been neglected without such team of creative people, from the producers, to the creators and observers, but it is clear that they enlightened a whole generation of viewers to learn by playing and encourage them to learn more.

Society as a whole needs creativity to improve, prosper and develop further.

system by which craftswomen in rural undeveloped Bangladeshi communities were able to get microcredits to own and develop their own cottage industries in a financial system that never before granted them any kind of financial assistance.

The idea of micro credit was not new in the world, but it was new and uncommon in Bangladesh and this unique idea has lifted hundreds of families out poverty in Professor Yunus’ home country. It was implemented in a portion of the market previously thought to be doomed to failure.

continued...

Two of the fields of expertise that first come to mind upon thinking about CREATIVITY are the arts and literature. Humanity would have missed out on the pleasures reported at enjoying a master piece by Da Vinci, Dali, Mozart, Kitaro, Sir Norman Foster (architecture), Shakespeare, Morrison, Kirosawa etc.,. Had the anonymous craftsmen/ women of the Stone Age, Roman Empire, medieval ages, Tang Dynasty, Easter Isle and many more felt short of creativity, humanity as we know it today, would not be able to admire and enjoy the many ARTISTIC works they left behind to help us understand what life was like then and give us a sense historical memory.

Throughout history humanity has benefited from creativity in some degree or other. At some point we have all experienced how creativity has enriched our lives be it through the arts, science or simply looking at a child’s rough drawing that made us smile. The sad part of it is that humanity shall never know how many great innovations and creative ideas it has missed out on by not allowing the human inner natural CREATIVITY we are all born with to fully develop.

How many P. Ramlees, Cervantes, Mary Shelleys, Tchaikovskys, Olivia Lums, Woody Allens, Issac Asimovs, Tony Fernandes, Marie Curies –and

Einstein is known to have played to be able to come up with ideas and concentrate at work and we have him to thank for the general theory of relativity and an enlighten view of astrophysics. One of the finest examples of creative thinking of our times that has changed the lives of many poor rural families around Bangladesh is that of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus. He formulated a

the list could go on forever – are we preventing from flourishing everyday by discouraging our children and ourselves to explore and develop the creative capacity innate in us?

References: 1.National Association of Gifted Children website http:// www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=565 2.“The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell 2000 by Back Bay Books. Little, Brown and Company.

3.“The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference” by Malcolm Gladwell 2000 by Back Bay Books. Little, Brown and Company.ideas.”

Innovation has a variety of impacts; in each case attention to design enhancing the outcome…

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Warm up exercise for your brain

By Edwin Chung Athletes warm up prior to training and a race. Properly warmed up, an athlete will have increased muscle, blood and overall body temperature, dilated blood vessels, improved cooling efficiency, hormonal changes, improved range of motion and becomes mentally prepared. Warmed up muscles contract and relax more forcefully and quickly enhancing the athlete’s speed and strength.

Increased blood temperature as it travels through the muscle reduces its oxygen carrying capacity making more oxygen available to the working muscle enhancing the athlete’s performance and endurance. Dilated blood vessels reduce resistance to blood flow and stress on the heart. An improved cooling efficiency help prevent overheating. Hormones regulating energy production are increased to allow more carbohydrates and fatty acids for energy production.

The athlete’s muscles would also be more elastic and motion around the joint increased; reducing the risk of injury [1]. Typically, athletes would warm up using stretching and movements related to the specific

sports starting slowly and gradually increasing its intensity.

If an athlete’s physical performance can be improved with warm up, an interesting question would be if a person’s brainstorming performance could be improved via some kind of warm up exercise for your brain and how would you do such warm up exercise?

As athletes warm up using movements related to the specific sport, mini brainstorming sessions are frequently used as warm up exercises prior to the formal brainstorming session. It was even put to me at one time that one may need to repeat a brainstorming exercise four to six times with the earlier sessions used as warm up with no useful result expected. Others have proposed activities such as challenging word games [2].

Ivan Lim, a young engineer leading a team at Intel, pondered over the same question as he searched for a way to improve his team’s brainstorming performance. In 2006, Ivan tried stimulating his team with a warm up exercise prior to a brainstorming

session where he would flash a picture on a screen for a minute and his team is asked to write down as many things they think of as they view the picture in that minute. He would than repeat this with a few other pictures. This warm up exercise was tried with several teams in different regions with amazing results.

Interestingly, what Ivan did is not new.

Though not commonly known, the usage of word, symbol and object/ picture association as brainstorming warm up exercises have been described elsewhere [3, 4]. Like a good warm up for athletes that produce the necessary physical and hormonal changes that improve the performance of an athlete, these methods may be exercising a particular part of the brain that improves one’s creative performance. At the time of writing, the author has not done sufficient literature searches to know if there exists EEG or similar data to support this and speculates that there is some validity based on the following arguments.

Whether it is association based on words, symbols, objects or pictures,

Continued... these methods encourage one to perform random association. Random association first of what you see then of what you thought of. After a couple of rounds, one’s mind will become so active a single item will trigger an exponential explosion of ideas of all sorts. This increases one’s performance in terms of the number of ideas one is able to generate and the ability to come up with wild out-of-thebox ideas encouraged during brainstorming.

References 1.Quinn, Elizabeth. The Warm Up [Internet]. About.com: Sports Medicine [updated 2004 March 22; cited 2008 May 1]. Available from http:// sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/ injuryprevention/a/aa071003a.htm 2.MindTools. Brainstorming Warm-Ups [Internet]. Mind Tools Ltd, c1995-2008 [cited 2008 May 1]. Available from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/ Supplementary/ BrainstormingWarmUps.htm

3.Swinton, Lyndsay. 3 Creative Brainstorming Activities, Games and Exercises For Effective Group Problem Solving [Internet]. mftrou.com [cited 2008 May 1]. Available from http:// www.mftrou.com/creativebrainstorming-activities.html 4.Cullen, Brian. Brainstorming Before Speaking Tasks. The Internet TESL Journal [Internet]. 1998 [cited 2008 May 1]; 4(7). Available from http:// iteslj.org/Techniques/CullenBrainstorming/

By 林成玮 在上

文章中，我与大家分享了要

创

充满商机的创意点子所应该具备的几点 条件。但如何鉴定一个创意点子是否是 充满商机

想天

的

摩托罗拉还是拥有很强的技术及强大的

想法罢了。就算只是单纯的有用处，却

市场占有率，但在可用性方面却还在原

无法引起“大众效应”，吸引越来越多的

地踏步。摩托罗拉手提电话的用户应该

使用者的话，只怕那点子也无法生存很

了解使用它们的用户界面（User

久。

Interface）是多么痛苦的一件事。结果

3.Technology/Feasibility（技术、可

是，摩托罗拉渐渐淡出了手提电话的市

话，那么这点子就只是一个

创意创造财富（续）

？来自Doblin Group的

行性）

Larry Keeley 提出了三项重点：

这是从技术方面为考量的。一个点子是

Desirability、Viability及 Feasibility。

否真的可行，有赖于当时的技术是否能

在Kwerkus Six，我们则利用同样的原

把点子从无变有，并支援持续的发

则，换上了比较易懂的字眼，那就是：

展。若当时的技术并不

Business，Usability，及

么则不需在浪费时间在该点子上。把该

Technology（简称BUT)。

点子暂时放下，等下次技术成熟时再考 虑还不迟。

以下就与大家分享BUT的原则：

发展出商

业价值的话，那么就表示它符合了BUT 里的第一个原则了。“这产品能

卖

提供很好的用处；但却没有足

当然，我们应该积

那技术成为事实之前，要发展该主意是 不可行的。但，如图中所显示，如果一 个创意点子是在X的位置的话，那么这

合可用及技术的原则，但却没有商业的 价值（图中A）的话，那么也许可以是 一个回馈社会的好产品，但在利益为大

却没有想用的价值（图中B），那么绝

2.Usability/Desirability （可用的、想

对会是一个败笔。试问，一个没人想用

用的）如果在“这点子有什么用处

的商品，会成功吗？摩托罗拉

吗？”“有人要用吗？”“大家会想用

（Motorola）过去在通讯科技及手提电

吗？”等问题中得到的答案是否定的

话制造业中可说是佼佼者。过了多年，

! "#$%&'$$(! )%*+%,%-.!

"!!

:!

/$*+%,%-.(!

0'$%1*+%,%-.!

9!

!

2'34&5,56.(!

7'*$%+%,%-.!

可能会是一个成功并可以

商机的好点子。

若是一样产品符合可行性及商业价值，

必须被解答的问题。

地等待，甚至去创

造所须的技术来发展我们的点子。但在

前提的商业社会中，可能就行不通了。

吗？”“可以赚多少钱？”等的问题都是

的技术

来发展的话，那么就只能想想就好了。

点子就

这三项原则缺一不可。如果一个点子符

1.Business/Viability（生意、商业） 一项创意点子，如果从中能

成熟的话，那

场。如果一个主意有商业价值，也可以

8!

创

rticle, a n a n o t n e m Want to com article or n a e t u ib r t n co s a line u p o r D ? ic p suggest a to s6.com u k r e w k @ n a @ andrew.t

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