If you notice, you may observe that most of our nonintellectual discussions and conflicts are wars between tradition and innovation. Here you may find a person trying to convince others that one should stick with the legacies: experienced, practices, and patterns – not necessarily using the spoken words, but some contextual jargon; while the other person is contradicting. If only innovation and creativity can make a difference. Or in other words, you learn as you go. The same quarrel exists in our software engineering field, at least in our local industry as I see.

1. The Fundamentalist Craftsmen or Blind Followers 

There are people who have strong belief in old practices. They always have the same number of documents, same life-cycle, identical design, and unbelievably a single strategy for every project. The most surprising point for me is that even the failure is unable to make them believe that there’s something wrong. Instead of trying to make some improvements and searching for the shortcoming in their practices and strategy, they start believing that failure is a norm, or it’s not failure at all. For instance, you’ll hear them saying “Clients never get satisfied” or “Losing deadlines is a norm in our industry”.

Examples -make things easier

In a software project, the offshore back-office development team shares the documents reside in their local repository with the the on-site front-office team to let them update the documents. In absence of their access on offline documents the local team shares the documents via email with the remote team. Obviously they get frequent version conflicts in documents and when it happens, they arrange a meeting and manually resolve the conflicts in the documents.  For months, they suffer with this problem but avoid change in their practice e.g. having an online document repository instead of shareing the documents on email. The term coined here is Brute Force approach as Steve McConnell called it

2. The Innovator – or scientist, we can say 

Away from the above category, the innovators are what most of our new graduates comprise of. They start with buzzwords like Web 2.0, cloud computing and believe that legacy practices are obsolete and that the senior folks are not creative at all. They drive their projects for learning, ignoring the ground realities they neglect the cost and risk of change and avoid exploiting legacies: patterns and practices. Since they believe that they make things better than they are, it’s possible if you see them writing their own DB connection pooling in technologies having built-in connection pooling or writing their own classes from scratch instead of extending the existing one. They often try to make simple things state-of-the-art and having insufficient knowledge and experience they get lost in the middle. The term coined here is “Silver Bullet” as Steve McConnell says.

3. Engineering Mindset: the most needful 

The moderate mindset - or engineering mindset as I say- tends to utilize and exploit the experience, invested by the lots of great minds avoiding useless reinventions but never shy to address the issues with in the particular scenario, if it doesn’t fit with. The mindset says that understand your objective whether it’s build-to-learn or learn-to-build. It says that to be honest and successful, an engineer shouldn’t behave like a scientist who build and destroy just for learning. And it says that there’s always room for improvement since it’s a going concern but it’s not the ultimate goal of an engineer instead it’s to deliver the most optimal and economical.

A single practice may have different out comes when followed with or without reason. So, if a practice is being followed by majority, most probably there are reasons, try to find them, dont’ shy asking other followers if you couldn’t,  but if nobody else knows, you have at least one reason to avoid it. Better to have your own with reasons instead of following blindly.

Being an engineer, I do not believe that I am right all the way, considering that I’ve limited amount of skills, knowledge, experience. Your comments and disagreements will be anticipated hoping they’ll help us having a balanced mindset.



By: Catalyst

About the Author:

As a child, I sometimes found coloring within the lines too restrictive. Even when I chose to stay within the lines, I needed to add my own personal touch. Lines were not bad, I just wanted to create my own.

Innovation requires individuals to venture past existing lines to realize another vision, to pioneer and sometimes break convention. You may have heard the expression… We need to find new ways to innovate. Often the first step taken is to establish a process for the “new ways.” That’s when you’ll know, they’re making those lines again.

A few years ago I read an article about the Motorola team that developed the Razr and how this group went about creating what arguably became a thin cell phone revolution. The article went on to state, “Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the Razr team was Motorola’s internal innovation process.” The Motorola team was eventually allowed to go outside the lines, even having the freedom to go off the page and ignore sayings such as, “you shouldn’t go there because it hasn’t been done before.”

Do you work in an environment that encourages drawing outside the lines? Are existing processes a stimulate towards innovation? How do you approach innovation? Are you allowed to make mistakes while trying?

If you work in a finger pointing environment and can’t make the mistakes that come with risk, then you can’t freely innovate. Realistic expectations include the possibility of a failure.

For more about the Motorola story, check out:

Motorola’s Bet on the Razr’s Edge

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4992.html



By: Paul Hebron

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Brand innovation means reimagining your product such that it can successfully compete in public. Too often companies spend time and money developing a quality product that works, a product that they believe in, but they have no idea how to present it to the public such that they understand exactly how great it is. Too many companies settle for using outdated advertising techniques such as jingles or merely catchy slogans. These companies fail to realize that today’s public is much smarter than they used to be. People do not always behave like gullible sheep, believing every word that they read or hear. Especially considering that every product which advertises also has at least one competing company that also advertises. When a sheep is told two conflicting things, what does it do? It is forced to think. That is what has happened to today’s consumer. So many people’s lives have been soaked so thoroughly with advertisement that they look very skeptically upon them.

Additionally, the popularity of the Internet means that the average consumer also has a lot more information at their fingertips than they used to. If a company makes a spurious claim, an intelligent consumer can look at reviews, articles, and basic scientific information online to make a decision for themselves-within ten minutes. A stupid consumer can probably do it in five. Most of the people that products target are those who can afford to use the Internet, which means that any advertising campaign needs to take into account the fact that their product can be well-researched with ease. And with a skeptical public, this is more likely to happen than not. Brand innovation must not only take into account how commercials and print advertisements present their product in light of this intelligent consumer population, but also take into account the way that their product is presented online.

The Internet is now the world’s number one resource for information, as flawed as that information may be. Instead of spending hours at a library, a teenager can learn a great deal of useful information about any significant historical figure online by using Wikipedia. At the same time, people argue that because of this great availability of information, more people are actually learning less. The sheer power of possibility of information makes the average person intellectually lazy. If a person knows that they can learn whatever they want about whatever they want almost whenever they want, they are not very likely to seek out that information before they absolutely need it.

Brand innovation means that products need to be reinvented on the Internet in such a way that the average Internet user will come across them. Google and facebook advertisements are wonderful ways to get a lot of people all over the world to notice your product, albeit briefly. At the same time, brand innovation means that the typical avenues that a person will take to look up your product must be very positive towards your product. No company can succeed today with a positive presence online. Companies should invest in creating a simple, powerful website that search engines will direct the curious to. Brand Innovation 1 means having a straightforward website that explains your product, looks good, and gives options to the consumer so that they feel in control. This is an important aspect of brand innovation as most people use the Internet so that they can feel as if they are in control of information. The Internet is key for succeeding in today’s business world.



By: Marlon Perry

About the Author:

With the increasing development of the knowledge economy worldwide, all countries in the world including China pay more attention to promoting scientific and technological innovation, so as to cultivate the national core competitiveness and realized economic sustainability.

Innovation is also the internal gene of ePathChina’s development. Since the beginning, ePathChina.com (www.epathchina.com) has not been copying the overseas existing mode, but has been making great efforts to found its special New Generation B2C mode to serve small business persons, such as eBay sellers, distributors, store owners, retailers and etc.

Good credit, fast delivery, super quality are the component parts of the success of ePathChina Ltd. (www.epathchina.com). ePathChina has done a series of work to establish a brand-new business environment with “good credit, super quality, fast delivery”.

In the field of quality, ePathChina has set up a special team to carry out the research in electronics market. After purchasing these products directly from partner manufacturers, professional quality inspector of ePathChina start to test all the functions in order to ensure its super quality when arriving to customers.

In the aspect of fast delivery, ePathChina has cooperated with many excellent logistics companies, including DHL, UPS and EMS for customers to choose. When delivery method has been confirmed, ePathChina make the delivery going immediately. If something unuausl happened in the way they will know first because every order is followed by technical clerk.

In terms of good credit, ePathChina has made meticulous work. In addition to those daily carefully dealing with deals from clients, ePathChina also makes many innovations such as Level-up Policy to encourage its buyers. When products are not satisfied by customers, they can return them back, then ePathChina can exchange, repair or even refund.

ePathChina’s innovative achievement has gained the global recognization. With these detailed work, ePathChina has accumulated lots good reputation in foreign buyers. Although established in 2007, ePathChina have served more than 15,000 worldwide customers as their high quality considerate service and electronic products.

About ePathChina.com

ePathChina Limited (http://www.epathchina.com) is a China based company and whose business office locates in Shenzhen of China (right next to Hong Kong), the global manufacturer and sourcing center of electronic products. ePathChina works for serving all business persons, such as ebay sellers, distributors, store owners, retailers, drop shippers and small wholesalers with high quality goods at a competitive price. Abiding by the principle of “Super Quality, Satisfactory Services”, ePathChina are striving hard to make win-win situation for its customers.

By: Steven Jobs

About the Author:

Large successful corporations started as small companies. They were once unknown entities thriving on with their limited available funds. In a world where large corporations dominate the market, small companies would easily collapse.

So what have made these used to be small companies stay in the market? Innovation breeds success. When these companies were just starting out, they were not afraid to try out something new. Innovation is taking improvement to a much higher level. Whereas improvement is just making an existing process or product better, innovation is creating changes and discovering new methods.

Innovation is thinking out of the box. To be innovative, one must not set limitations to what he could do. Chances for success stops the moment limitations are set upon the horizons.

When things might seem hopeless, innovation could give more options. Companies that are just starting up definitely needs a lot of innovation. External factors might lack confidence in what a company can possibly do. Funds might be low but it shouldn’t hinder a company from succeeding. Innovation is capable of creating opportunities when none could be found.

At first, ideas generated might seem absurd but when these ideas are taken further, these create more feasible possibilities. Success stories usually begin with formulating ideas and creating ways to materialize them. At the onset, ideas are usually ridiculed and thought of as silly imaginations which couldn’t be done.

With the very competitive market that we have today, innovation is important. One small innovative idea could spell great success for a company. Innovation gives the lead from other competitors. Opportunities will continue pouring in as more and more ideas are generated.

In a day, millions of ideas are generated, but only a few of them really make it out to the market and fewer stays in the market. In business, pursuing that brilliant idea would make a significant difference. Starting from scratch is not at all a problem. That’s precisely what innovation is – creating something out of nothing. A lot of businesses benefit from this.

Innovation could also be applied to marketing strategies. New approach to business marketing would lead to better product advertising. Customers are always dying to try out something new. There are always room for improvement, as well as lot more room for more new business ideas. In the fight to stay in the market, those who have shown surprising and breakthrough ideas are the ones that stay.

Most of the time, failures are inevitable but these do not dampen the spirits of an innovator. Being innovative does not happen overnight, it is a product taking each outrageous idea to the next higher level.

Failures contribute to successes. Successful companies definitely had their share of failures. Usually these might even outnumber their successes. However, success due to just one innovative idea reap greater effects than a million failures. Those failures will just then be considered chapters of a great success story.

Anybody could be innovative if they chose to be so. All it takes is just a lot of freedom to let the thoughts wander about. Businesses are in cutthroat competition with each other. Whoever gets to discover new ways and products usually gets the edge.

Being innovative is defying every limits set by yourself or by other people. When others might think that it won’t be possible, innovators take it as a challenge. To be innovative means developing strong visions and working on those visions for the success of the business.

Usually, innovation would initially draw negative reactions. It would shake up the existing status quo. It is not afraid to take calculated risks. When this happens, it would broaden the opportunities for the business, thus giving it greater chances for success.

By: Mario Churchill

About the Author:

Every business, whether it has a core IT function or deliverable or not seeks to achieve and strengthen their own market differentiator. But how do we create the behaviour that will ensure that we truly achieve what we believe we can?

It follows that every business, especially in the current climate, needs to innovate. Do you rely on the Developers, the analysts or the Directors to be creative? No – it should be a core behaviour right through your business – however big, or however small it is.

So how do we get our people ‘unleashed’ in this area?

Thinking – Challenge the norm – Innovate

There is a school of thought that says that creativity, something most people regard as a talent you either have or you don’t, is actually a skill like any other. It can be trained in the same way as you condition the brain to excel in any other skill. So if you can train IT skills, you can train creative thinking?

The key ingredient in getting people to innovate and be creative is to take away the barriers that naturally prevent it in a normal business environment. For example, you might expect the following thought process in almost any business.

1. Why should I try to be creative? I might fail. I will have to persuade others to get on side. Better that I just keep my head down.

2. Things are going ok, why change it? And if things get bad, then no one will want my crazy ideas with all their uncertainties. Better I keep my head down.

3. If I go public on that idea I had, it might not be 100%. Better I keep my head down.

4. The only great ideas get backed up by fact and logic in the end, so logic should come up with the good ideas – where’s the need for me to be creative? Better I keep my head down.

Great ideas don’t come from the sky in a flash of creative genius, they come from the confidence to challenge the norm – with the authority of knowledge and experience.

So what’s the short answer?

Have the confidence to be creative yourself and have the confidence to allow your people to be creative.

Confidence is the key.   Successful innovation comes when people have the confidence to challenge, the confidence to know from experience that new ideas are possible and better ways can be found.

The norm is most people do what you want them to do – what they think they are paid to do.  The minority, a few rebels, don’t.   It is expected that the challenge to the norm will come from the rebels, so the rest, the majority, don’t challenge by nature.

Make creativity and challenge a norm in your team, not the sole jurisdiction of the rebels.   Make it an expectation of behaviour – finish every team meeting with an opportunity to air new ideas.   Give your team the confidence to have them.   Most importantly, expect your team to have them.   If they do not, then the job is not being done – that is a shortfall in performance.

Eventually you get a new ‘norm’ – the Creative, innovative business or team you have set out to create



By: Grant

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