The Culture of Innovation

History is rife with examples of breakthroughs and innovative leaps. However, if we look to the past 150 years, we begin to notice a clustering of breakthroughs around a handful of organizations that set themselves apart from the rest of the world. While many individuals and companies have contributed significant efforts to the development of innovative technology, specific labs like Menlo Park, Bell Labs, PARC, and Google X have become veritable innovation factories. Most for more than a decade and in some cases, for an entire generation, the culture and structure of these labs provided the perfect storm of people, processes, placement and problems to nurture technological genius.

So what is this perfect storm? Far from being chosen ones with crystal balls, these organizations had targeted, calculated strategies and approaches to generating consistent breakthroughs. By analyzing four of the most successful labs in the history of human kind, we hope to uncover their approaches and shine a light on what creates the culture of innovation.

Menlo Park

Menlo Park would serve as the location for Thomas Edison’s groundbreaking research lab. It was opened in 1876, operated for roughly a decade and at its peak, occupied more than 2 square city blocks. Edison’s “Invention Factory” applied for about 400 patents and gave the world the phonograph, a practical incandescent light, the carbon microphone, the electric generator and the electric power distribution system.

Edison’s team was populated by brilliant individuals from all over the world who were largely engineers and master tradesmen – clockmakers, machinists, glassblowers, etc. His lab became a small industrial city, housing nearly all conceivable materials and the equipment necessary to turn these into new inventions. While Edison was a controlling visionary with his work, he pushed his employees to work long hours and to constantly tinker, build, test and refine. Many of his patents were filed as improvements (albeit drastic) to existing inventions as the strength of Menlo Park came not necessarily in its ability to generate unforeseen concepts, but in making breakthroughs that optimized and improved existing inventions to make them inexpensive and robust enough for the consumer market. Edison had created the first industrial laboratory that, instead of leaving research to the academics and application to the factories, brought the conceptualization, development and production of new technology under one roof.

Bell Labs

Bell Labs, Alexander Graham Bell’s namesake research lab, was the creative brain trust of AT&T and Western Electric. Formally formed in 1925, this powerhouse of technology would spend more than 5 decades as the world leader in communication technology. A staggering 7 Nobel Prizes were awarded for work completed within the Labs, including the invention of the transistor, discovering cosmic background radiation, creating the CCD and, though never awarded a Nobel Prize, Claude Shannon produced the foundational approach to information theory in 1949, laying the pathway for computers.

While not headed by a singular, controlling demi-God such as Edison, Bell Labs housed its share of techno-heroes to be idolized: Jewett, Shockley, Shannon, and Fletcher. Similar to Menlo Park, Bell Labs brought together multidisciplinary teams that worked to control the full cycle of concept development: theorization to production. However, Bell differed in 2 major ways. In addition to hiring tradesmen and engineers, Bell was staffed by a number of theoretical academics – physicists, chemists, etc. – who were largely held unaccountable for their output and given the autonomy to research by their own interests, sometimes without a clue of what potentially lay at the end of the tunnel. Realities of business existed and the Labs were not without focused projects and deadlines, however, the senior management believed in the scientific pursuit of knowledge and that financial benefit would ultimately emerge. Yet perhaps the most important element of Bell Labs’ success was its endless challenges. Due to the sheer enormity of the AT&T network and the problems and realities of scale, incoming employees were surrounded by problems to solve and stimulus on how they could improve the world.

PARC

Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was founded in 1970 as the research wing of Xerox.

Though still existing today as an independent subsidiary, PARC’s heyday was in its first 15 years of operation under the guidance of Bob Taylor. Anticipating trends a decade ahead of their time, PARC would make some of the most important advances to computing including Ethernet, the modern personal computer, GUIs, email, laser printing and object-oriented computing.

Once again, a multi-disciplinary, collaborative, and exploratory culture at PARC reigned supreme. However, PARC’s collaboration reached beyond their own walls and found the team engaging very closely with academia – being situated in a Stanford Research Park – through joint projects, seminars and informal conversations. However, this collaborative spirit at times harmed the lab, such as when a burgeoning Apple Computers was able to tour and steal many of PARC’s best ideas. The culture and environment of PARC likely also had something to do with its success. Beanbag chairs, games and a generally relaxed attitude to working gave employees the comfort and freedom they needed to think creatively. Only by situating PARC thousands of miles from Xerox headquarters in New York was Taylor’s team able to get away with this novel approach to business. However, the distance may have ultimately been PARC’s undoing, as it also served to make it very difficult for Xerox management to see the value of PARC’s inventions and provide support.

Google[x]

Google X is the internet giant’s top-secret research facility that has only come to be known in recent years. Situated in a pair of non-descript, two-story brick buildings only a half-mile from the Googleplex, the group, headed by founder Sergey Brin, has the goal of tackling the most wicked problems in the world in hopes of generating out-of-this world breakthroughs such as Google Glass, driverless cars, diabetic smart contact lenses, and space elevators.

While little is still known about X, the group has the very ostentatious goal of disrupting complacency in the technological world by doing mind blowing research - “moonshots” - intended to improve the state of affairs by leaps and bounds. By pushing employees to engage with radical challenges that deliver near certainty of failure, individuals are forced to restart their thinking about problems instead of simply building on the status quo. Moreover, by knowing that you are working on the most insane, cutting-edge projects in the world, a certain prestige and motivation guides your efforts. X is kept secret not simply for IP concerns, but also to give those within the team the understanding that what they are doing is truly remarkable and must be insulated from the real world.

Common Threads

These four labs by no means hold the patent on breakthrough work, however, they have passed the torch as some of the most innovative organizations of the past century. Looking across these labs, we unquestionably notice differences in how they operate. However, common themes begin to emerge that seem to shine a light on the culture of breakthroughs:

• Committed, visionary leaders
• Passionate, ideologically driven individuals
• Multidisciplinary, collaborative teams
• Autonomy & isolation in operation
• Lack of focus on business realities
• Willingness to fail, but at least try
• Surrounded by impossible challenges

Many of these points are core tenants of Design Thinking, however, it is still important to remind ourselves of their value and to look back to see their power in action. These approaches to innovation are what produced the most important pieces of technology of the past 150 years and yet only a handful of organizations have been able to replicate such environments. While designing the next innovation factory may be a daunting task, at bare minimum, organizations and teams attempting to center themselves around the ideals of innovation should look closely at their predecessors and pay close heed to the common themes identified above.

Be Yourselves: Balancing Your Business Style

I’ve never been much of a salesman. Raised on a farm, my father instilled me with fairly humble values and a penchant for letting my work speak for itself. But my father never raised a boy intent on operating in an office environment and whether I’m pitching to a prospective client or trying to persuade a coworker to see things my way, salesmanship has to be a part of what I do. I’ve had to adapt my style at work to find a new balance somewhere between the humble farmer and the used car salesman. And perhaps more importantly, I’ve had to learn to be dynamic with my style and find the appropriate times to either stretch my overall straps or slick back my hair.

It may not be the most innovative topic in the world, however, beyond the quality of your work, your personal business style is perhaps one of the most integral elements of who you are in the office. Many would argue that how you act is even more important than what you do. Therefore, the question emerges, how should I act at work?

First, let’s get something out of the way. Anyone who answers this question with the sappy, age-old adage, “just be yourself” is wrong. Don’t be yourself. You’re an asshole. You’re shy. You talk too much. You’re too academic. You’re a control freak. You make people uncomfortable. You’re a doormat. And for god’s sake will you please stop forwarding joke emails and petitions; you’re not my Aunt.

I don’t care if you work on Wall Street or in a daycare; the business environment is a shark tank of political influence and jockeying for position (even if that position is avoiding the evening shift since there’s always one parent who is an hour late to pick up their kid and you don’t get paid overtime). If you remain naïve to the realities of your work environment, expect to get steamrolled and left behind.

This isn’t to say that you need to be a two-faced, back-stabbing, grinning sociopath; you simply need to be aware of the different ways that you interact with different individuals and how you should temper your style accordingly. Without getting too deep into social determinism – a theory that I have no business discussing or even uttering the very words – our personality, and by extension our style at work, cannot be considered in a vacuum. Social interactions are by definition a dialogue and who you are is defined differently for each individual dialogue you engage. You’re polite and pleasing to your customers. You’re submissive and attentive around your boss. You’re confident and alert with your peers. You’re formal and authoritative when speaking to subordinates.

I write all of this to help you realize that you’re already a two-faced sociopath or, as we better know the term: a person. You already adjust and tweak your style based on the people you speak with and the situations you encounter, partially because of a wonderful little thing we call empathy. This type of behavior isn’t fickle or false, it is simply part of being a social human being. As a matter of fact, if you didn’t adjust your personality and couldn’t be empathetic, then we would have true cause for concern and proper use of the word sociopath.

So back to the question of how you should act at work; you should act in whatever way is appropriate to the situation. Your business style should be a floating spectrum, not a fixed point. You should be the person that you need to be by crafting a context-sensitive balance of the most suitable pieces of yourself. Your subconscious is likely already doing this for you, so why not be aware of it and take a more active hand in how you present yourself at work? This doesn’t have to be disingenuous or inauthentic; it is still you in the conversation.

Give yourself some credit; your personality is a rich tapestry woven of countless experiences, emotions, and influences. Each interaction has the potential to surface different parts of ourselves to engage and connect with other individuals in a meaningful way. A CEO can be a humble follower. An apprentice can be a leader. An accountant can be an unpredictable maniac. A rock star can be tame recluse.

And yes, even a farm boy can be a salesman.

Technology's Shadow

How exactly does one “balance” technology? What is there to balance? More importantly, what would one even balance against? As a man of rigor, I performed an exhaustive, five minute scouring of the internet and as far as I can tell, there is no antonym for the word “technology”…and that’s just weird. If we trust the ol’ Oxford English (which, of course we do) technology is defined as “the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry.”

I know…this feels like the start of a terrible high school humanities essay, but bear with me.

In the absence of a proper yin to technology’s yang, it can be helpful to break things down and study from the ground up. At a glance, this definition seems quite innocuous – we conjure images of early man bashing a wheel onto a cart or using fire to cook meat. Technology is our friend. Technology has made our lives easier. Technology has saved us all.

However, if we read the above definition closely, cross our eyes, hop on one foot, rub our bellies, pat our heads and let the gravity of these words sink in, we begin to visualize the grossly intimidating breadth of this word. From the tiniest microchip to the largest building, the fastest rocket to the slowest-motion camera, technology is no longer our harmless, quaint little friend; it has evolved into an intricate beast the likes of which no single human can comprehend in its entirety. Hundreds of years ago, technological innovators were diverse individuals who were able to span a number of different disciplines and create new discoveries from the comfort of their bathtubs. These days, the bleeding edge of most technological pursuits exists in state-of-the-art laboratories and the minds of only the top scholars in the world. Breakthroughs have dropped from the realm of popular noteworthiness because the common person can no longer comprehend the development of modern technology let alone play a role in it.

Dare I be so bold as to say that in this day and age, it is impossible to divorce the word technology from the word complexity?

Not so say that complexity is entirely a bad thing, however, it muddles the value of our scientific progress and makes advancements increasingly difficult for businesses to grasp and apply to their products. Yes, businesses can hire these top scholars to push the envelope of technological progress, however, until we also have applied design minds to understand the core value of scientific advancement, we stand to lose much of that value in translation to a consumer product.

While historically, technology has led to massive breakthroughs and steps forward in our societal and economic progress, recent years have felt a lot more like we’ve just been spinning our wheels. Granted this is a massive oversimplification of a complex ecosystem of gadgets, organizations and people, however, countless businesses seem to waste inordinate amounts of time and effort forcing cutting-edge technology into their products without first properly considering their end goal.

The hypocrisy of an individual such as myself - a former robotics engineer, gadget junkie and proud owner of more pieces of computational doohickery than I care to even count let alone admit to – writing this article is not lost on me. You may question the origins of this luddite-esque heresy. In fact, this rant is brought to you by one of the most important adages for all designers and engineers such as myself: K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid). A true designer knows the value of minimizing complication for the end-user and in a world where technology is increasingly becoming defined by complexity, the antonym to technology may just be simplicity.

This article is far from a cry to put a halt to the exploration and advancement of academic institutions and research labs around the world – those crazy technocrats may continue to lick batteries to their hearts content and concoct a world of increasingly superior mouse traps. However, to the designers and product developers of the world: get your heads out of your asses. The value of your work is defined not by your ability to incorporate the greatest amount of next-gen tech into your designs but instead by your ability to keep things simple enough for people to actually understand how to use it.

Building a Better Man

I recently completed a series of articles analyzing how we structure and operate businesses. In these four articles, I analyzed corporations at various stages of life – infancy, youth, adulthood and old age - by taking the corporate personhood metaphor far more literal than it should ever be taken. In doing so, I wanted to find extreme examples where the corporation as a person made no sense, extract a few chuckles and, if I was lucky, stop someone from laughing for just long enough to realize that the point being made may not be so ridiculous after all. My goal was to entertain, but also to fool the reader into catching small moments of conscience or confusion that found truth in words so outlandish that one couldn’t help but question our way of running businesses.

My core thesis with these articles was that corporations are an extreme form of person – all profit and no empathy – that benefit from many of the same rights as people, but are not held to the same standards. It’s not just that this creates unethical businesses or amoral organizations; my largest issue with the corporation as it has manifested is that we have created exceptionally dumb organizations. By maximizing profit, we’ve minimized thinking. We can’t really be mad when corporations cut corners, cheat the system and generally screw people over to make money – we designed them that way. That old saying about the type of person who would crawl over their own mother’s dead body for a buck – we actually made a type of person that deems that sort of behaviour as perfectly logical.

I don’t want to see the end of the corporation, and I hope that didn’t come across in this series. What I want to see is a better kind of corporation. I don’t simply want more ethical corporations, I want smarter ones. I want corporations that are not as near-sighted; those who have the freedom and ability to break the shackles of the quarterly earnings statement in order to focus on a more holistic, long-term strategy.

I want corporations to have two considerations to maximize: profit and social good. Will these two considerations be at odds at times? Yes. Will this new corporation be an easy entity to design? No. Will the resultant design be a much more complex, confusing, ambiguous and at times frustrating environment to work within? Yes; that’s the point. I want to design healthy tension into the way we work. I don’t want to have an obvious answer – will it make money? - to every question.

Simplistic corporations allow for - nay, encourage - simplistic thinking. This should disgust us. The human brain is an intricately complex vessel that allows us to hold exceptionally involved thoughts and ideas. Our minds are playgrounds for creative thinking; however, they’re also lazy. If we design an easy way out, they’ll take it. As such, if we want better thinking, we must structure environments that encourage better thinking.

This is my job in a nutshell. As an Innovation Strategist what I do is create environments that encourage better thinking to ultimately lead to innovative ideas. Design thinking guides me on how to solve wicked problems by looking at them differently, asking stupid questions, and placing a diverse team in environments with healthy tensions that force us to question traditional thinking and each other. We design our approach intentionally to be critical of ourselves so that there are no easy answers. However, for the most part, I only get to play on a smaller scale around products and services. 

To me, the corporation is the most wicked of all design problems. Countless cases highlight the flaws of current corporate design, leaving the business world and the rest of the world crying out for a better way forward. Do I have a solution to this problem? No, not yet. However, I do know the first stupid question we need to start asking: 

Why did we make a person so drastically different from ourselves?

Death to the Corporation

This is the fourth in a series (see the first, second and third) of articles analysing corporate personhood and the standards to which we hold corporations. Since Dartmouth v. Woodward in 1819, private corporations have been viewed as having many of the same rights as you or I, prompting one to look at the state of business around them and ask simply, what kind of person are you?

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; the conclusion to any life, much like the conclusion to this series of articles must be a natural end. Death is a part of life that we often don’t like to think or talk about; however, it is still a part of life. As we’ve explored in this series of articles, corporations are very unique types of persons that differ in many ways. Whether as unhealthy yet frighteningly powerful infants; socially awkward, irresponsible teens; or sociopathic and near-untouchable adults; we have seen how corporate persons differ from flesh and blood. But in no stage of life do we see more of a stark contrast between the two then in old age.

If corporations are persons, then why won’t they die?
Let’s get this out of the way first: yes companies can die. But all the ways in which they die I would consider accidental or preventable death. Lehman Brothers contracted a rather nasty condition by playing around with too much toxic debt. Nortel owed way too much money to the people you don’t want to owe money to and suffered the consequences. Enron fell in with some shady characters and made some rather poor life decisions that led them down a path of ill refute. These companies all died, but they are the exception, not the rule.

What I’m concerned about is dying of natural causes, a feat that seems impossible for any corporate person. They can be seemingly lying on their deathbed, but then find new life in a re-envisioned strategy, bold leader or champion product. While they may go through a number of iterations and changes over the years, many corporations (as much as we may want them to at times) just won’t die. Take for example Hudson’s Bay Company (1670), Beretta Firearms (1526) or Hoegaarden Breweries (1445). What kind of person do you know that can live forever?

If corporations are persons, then our airlines are zombies.
There is of course a caveat to corporate death: it doesn’t have to be permanent. If bankruptcy is the equivalent of flat-lining, then for a society that does terribly with corporate infant death, we’ve got the greatest geriatric intensive care doctors money can buy. The only problem is that, as a man deathly fearful of (and very excited by) the potential for zombie apocalypse, I question what kind of a company we create every time we bring them back from the dead instead of just letting them die.

Take for example the aviation industry. Countless airlines have gone under at some point in their history: Continental, Delta, Eastern, Northwest, Pan Am, Trans World and US Air. These corporations have come back from the grave so many times that one almost has to question whether bankruptcy is a convenient strategy for shedding debt to begin anew. I won’t dig too deep on this point, but I will say that I for one don’t trust these companies coming back from the dead and feasting on the brains of healthy, functioning businesses that are trying to make it without cheating death.


If corporations are persons, then why aren’t they more like us?
To sum this up, the overarching question remains: what kind of person are these corporations? If we’ve given them so many of the rights to be like us, then why do we not expect them to be more like us? What would a corporation look like if it was compassionate, curious, quirky or fun? Why do we expect so much of the people in our lives and yet so little out of the corporations in our lives? I for one would like to see more out of the corporations around us to ensure that the rights we give them match up with the responsibilities that every person should have to face.

If you want your customers to start respecting you like a person, then start acting like one.