The most overlooked aspect of innovation, but arguably the most important, is inspiration. Andy Stefanovich, author of the book Look At More, shares how companies can attain sustainable innovation.
If every company institutionally implemented innovation practices, we might all be just as successful as Pixar, Apple, or 3M. Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect world, and while most companies would love to dedicate more time to innovation, it's just not plausible.
Dedicating time to an intangible activity with no direct cause-and-effect is difficult for most companies to stomach, not to mention afford. Most companies engage in innovation practices periodically at best. Andy Stefanovich, chief curator at Prophet, a marketing and innovation consulting company based in San Francisco, believes that every company ought to find a way to regularly practice innovation in order to grow.
Stefanovich offers a memorable and viable innovation system that companies can effectively implement without subtracting too much from day-to-day business: This approach is called LAMSTAIH (pronounced, "lamb's tie), which stands for "Look at more stuff; and think about it harder."
This approach serves as the basis for Stefanovich's new book, Look At More, which focuses on the most overlooked, but arguably most crucial facet of innovation: Inspiration. Most people have misconceptions that inspiration is a lightning bolt; on the contrary, inspiration can happen at any minute of every day, but to be controlled, it has to be practiced regularly. Armed with anecdotes, tactics, and insights, Stefanovich shares how companies can attain sustainable innovation to help rejuvenate fatigued and fading companies.
Why did you choose to write about inspiration, rather than applying innovation?
After working in companies of great size over the course of 20 years, over the last few years we really saw the mechanistic and the mechanical side of innovation drying up and not getting the outcome. What we really needed to concentrate on was the inspiration, which fueled the creativity, which in service fueled the innovation.
By being inspired as an organization and as a group of individuals who want to create better and more, and in service of the innovation agenda, it's all in service of a better and more profound group of outcomes. Instead of focusing on the outcome—which is the market value, or the product or service—we reversed our head space and thought about the input, which is the inspiration.
We're really stepping back and saying, "Are we inspired as an organization to create as much and as well as we need to?" We founded a company, where in fact by looking at more stuff and thinking about it harder, creating more—which is in fact what innovation is—we could create big, and unique, and different. That's why we focus on the input instead of the output.
How did you come up with LAMSTAIH?
Years ago, another correspondent asked, "How do you innovate? How do you do it?" I said, "We've overcomplicated it." We were trying to simplify it and deconstruct the whole sophistication level of the idea, and I said, "It's really just looking at more stuff. Looking at more stuff and thinking about it harder."
What I was getting at was the idea that we as individuals, or we as a company, don't look outside of our walls, which in fact helps us create. We need to look outside of the simple category assessment or category competitive landscape—even that typical ethnographic work around psychographics, or demographics of audiences—we very much need to look outside who we are in an organization to find beautiful things and put them in front of us so we in fact see differently.
Looking at more stuff and thinking about it harder was a very simple, impromptu line that came out of my mouth, and now it's stuck; like naming my own child, it won't go away, but for all the right reasons. It absolutely resonates with the biggest and brightest GEs, Nikes and others of the world. American Express uses it almost religiously... It's about experiencing more and sensing more, and thinking about it differently and more uniquely than with the typical methodologies or practices we might've approached it with in the past.
Can you explain the five key drivers that lead to innovation: mood, mindset, mechanisms, measurement and momentum?
When we were talking with a client, we were asking about innovation in a pretty limited way, or not in its most holistic way. They were looking at the culture or leadership or mechasms and levers they pull, in terms of the processes they use for innovation, or they were looking at the product and service outcomes. What we wanted to put into the dialogue with our clients was the continuum around how to look at the innovation agenda.
So when you look at everything—from mood, to mindset, to measurement, to mechanisms, to momentum—it's a full range continuum that helps you look at the most qualitiative and most quantitave aspects of the innovation agenda. Mood is the most qualitiative: "Do we have the mood for innovation and change and growth in our company?" When you walk into a restaurant, you know if you want to stay or don't want to stay. It's very applicable to walking into an organization. You can feel it or not.
And all the way down to the measures, to the more quantitative side, "Are we measuring the right things to drive growth and change and servicing of innovation? Should we be measuring and rediscovering the measures most in service of growth and change?" It may not just be market share, or products and services, within the pipeline; it might be uniquely different things that help drive growth and change.
Which of the Five M's do most individuals and businesses have a tough time grasping?
The two that the companies and leaders wrestle with the most are the most qualitative, and those are mood and momentum. Momentum is how to make this innovation systemic and long-term and cultural, to make it a part of the DNA of the organization, and mood is what the "weather pattern" is. It's the leader's job to walk into an organization and immediately create the right mood by actions, behaviors, language, and emotion, and be sensitive of the mood and helping to shape that mood.
In regards to momentum, too many executives and clients really look at the agenda as checking the box and moving on, as opposed to making sure that it's a part of the DNA and the cultural norm in the organization. There's nothing a person likes to do more than to feel self-worth and create, and when you can bring that as an actionable behavior and belief and cultural norm of the poeple inside of your company, you'll in fact let that create great momentum.
How can companies institutionalize these ideas into their corporate scheme?
We've been working on finding the right actions, behaviors and mechanisms inside of the mood and the momentum. The mood is really fascinating. Language is a really big driver in terms of culture and helping to effect a level of change.
