According to a recently released study of chief marketing officers (CMOs) by IBM, innovation is actually going to be more important than ever. In fact, Steve Robinson, senior vice president, CMO of Chick-fil-A, said he sees “more demand for innovation than (he) ever (has) in the past 30 years.”Not surprisingly because simply making it through a recession is not indicative of future success. And with consumer behavior changing at quantum speed, it’s essential for marketing communications specialists to keep time with their customers.

The report, “From Stretched to Strengthened,” is the latest in IBM’s C-Suite Studies series, and the first that targeted CMOs. The researchers sought to reveal the direction marketing is taking over the next five years and the preparedness of those tasked to lead that change.

The report found that 79 percent of respondents expect a high or very high level of complexity over the next five years. But only 48 percent of them feel prepared to cope with the complexity.

Innovation can help.

The respondents ranked 13 key factors based on their expected impact on marketing in the next three to five years. Of those key factors, four stand out as particularly challenging. They are:

1. Data explosion
2. Social media
3. Growth of channel and device choices
4. Shifting consumer demographics.

It is critical that CMOs and their teams develop new ways to tackle these challenges.

“The first imperative for CMOs is to deliver value to empowered customers,” the report said. “That means finding out who these customers are, what they want and how they would like to interact with the organization. It’s not just a question of understand their immediate needs and preferences. It’s also a question of understanding what they value and how they behave.”

Today’s marketplace is more crowded than ever. And it is only going to grow. Marketing consultants need to leverage innovation techniques to reach consumers in a variety of new places using new communications avenues, while also personalizing their messages.

As an insurance CEO in Turkey said in the report, “a new generation with totally different needs and consumptions habits is coming. Companies will have to adapt to this change in order to survive in the marketplace.”

What is your company doing to adapt to consumers’ changing behaviors? What techniques do you recommend to a company that has made it through the recession but is concerned about its ability to continue to thrive in today’s marketplace?

– Kathie

See, during his presentation, he showed an unmarked picture on the cover of “Where the Wild Things Are” and asked the audience to name the book. I raised my hand. And in exchange for the right answer, I won a box of books. A 27-pound box of books. Wonderful business and innovation books.

Since many people asked what was in the box, I thought I’d post a list:

1. “The Creating Brain: The Neuroscienc of Genius,” Nancy C. Andreasen, M.D., Ph.D.
2. “Life at the Extremes: The Science of Survival,” Frances Ashcroft
3. “Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul,” Stuart Brown, M.D., with Christopher Vaughn
4. “The Alchemist,” Paulo Coelho
5. “Peak Performance: Inspirational Business Lessons from the World’s Top Sports Organizations,” Clive Gilson, Mike Pratt, Kevin Roberts and Ed Weymes
6. “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference,” Malcolm Gladwell
7. “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die,” Chip Heath and Dan Heath
8. “The Precious Present,” Spencer Johnson
9. “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions,” Guy Kawasaki
10. “The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm,” Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman
11. “The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Beating the Devil’s Advocate & Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization,” Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman
12. “Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace,” Gordon MacKenzie
13. “Why Not?: How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small,” Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres
14. “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future,” Daniel H. Pink
15. “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” Daniel H. Pink
16. “Not a Box,” Antoinette Portis
17. “The Dot,” Peter H. Reynolds
18. “Lovemarks,” Kevin Roberts

Carroll also graciously included three of his red rubber balls and his three books:

1. “Rules of the Red Rubber Ball”
2. “What’s Your Red Rubber Ball?”
3. “The Red Rubber Ball at Work.”

I look forward to reading (and playing with) all these books and red rubber balls. And I’ll share more about this great conference later this week.

– Stephanie

Throughout the two-day conference, I’ll hear from nationally know thought leaders including authors Kevin Carroll, Dan Roam, and Peter Sims, and IDEO’s Iain Roberts. I’ll also participate in breakout sessions led by local innovators about topics such as collaboration, brainstorming, putting innovation to work and storytelling. And, I’ll take part in a lunchtime roundtable called “Innovation at Work,” hosted by FH Innovation’s own Kathie Thomas.

I hope you’ll follow along @ssusman or @FHInnovation, #cocabiz. We look forward to sharing our learnings with you!

– Stephanie

According to ABCNews.com, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said today that “dealing with (the White House) the last couple months has been like dealing with Jell-O. Some days it’s firmer than others. Sometimes it’s like they’ve left it out over night.”

So, with the democrats and republicans unable to negotiate, who can we turn to to get anything done?

Former President Bill Clinton.

Two weeks ago, Clinton hosted the first ever CGI America, a Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting entirely “focused on driving job creation and economic recovery in the United States.” According to HuffingtonPost.com, more than 750 CEOs, NGOs, Nobel prize winners and young entrepreneurs attended the meeting. All these participants brought with them new ideas for putting people back to work while also supporting a healthy workforce, clean energy, startups and STEM education, among other issues affecting the United States right now. These are some of the most innovative people in the country collaborating to bring change. Clinton himself shared 14 ideas in the June 27 issue of Newsweek.

As with all CGI meetings, participants were expected to make a Commitment to Action, or “a plan that outlines the steps the organization or individual will take to launch a program that improves lives,” according to PRNewsWire.com.

According to Clinton, there are 14 million Americans out of work and three million unfilled jobs available. “While not all jobs require a degree,” according to HuffingtonPost.com, “new jobs quite often require acquiring new skills.” Skills that many unemployed Americans do not possess. So, it’s imperative that we need to find innovative new ways to teach these skills to potential employees.

For instance, the AFL-CIO pledged to, among other things, “train 40,000 new apprentices in the next year in building construction and infrastructure related skills.”

The commitments made are all designed to solve problems that the government seems to be unable to solve right now. And, they are all highly collaborative. In fact, many of the commitments were made through partnerships.

I applaud the CGI participants for stepping up to this challenge. I look forward to following their progress and sharing some of their innovative commitments with you in the future.

– Kathie

On Wednesday, the Harvard Business Review posted a video interview with Brigham Young University (BYU) Professor Jeff Dyer about learnings from his upcoming book, The Innovator’s DNA. In the video, Dyer discusses the ways people innovate. He and his co-authors, Clayton Christensen, of Harvard Business School, and Hal Gregerson, of INSEAD, found five “discovery skills” innovators use to develop their ideas:

1. Questioning
2. Observing
3. Networking
4. Experimenting
5. Associating

The first four techniques, Dyer said, trigger associational thinking, the cognitive skills that people need to connect things together in order to innovate.

“Those behaviors,” he said, “if mastered, can help anyone to improve their creativity and their ability to be innovative.”

Dyer then offered some great suggestions to help people expand their thinking, or that of their teams.

But a comment from a reader posted below the video got me thinking. This reader, called “Reeree,” said:

“I wonder if this is a skill that can be learned. The idea that it is part of DNA kind of suggest (sic) that it can’t. How a person processes and perceives things does not happen in some step by step process. It’s an embrosia (sic) of processes happening at light speed producing thoughts as a byproduct. Not everyone’s DNA has the same program running the same way. Look at the mind of Michael Angelo, do you think anyone can train to produce a quality of work like his? We need to just respect people for their gifts and not emulate them. At the same time, we should appreciate our individual gifts and all the gifts others bring to the table.”

I think Reeree brings up an interesting point: The title of Dyer’s book suggests that innovation capacity is inherent, yet his interview suggests it can be learned. And, praise for the book on its website indicates this acts as a “how to” manual for innovative thinking.

What I think Dyer is saying that, perhaps, wasn’t clear in his interview, is that the most innovative people naturally practice all these skills more than their less creative counterparts. But, that doesn’t mean that innovation can’t be taught. In fact, I believe it can absolutely be taught. With the right tools and exercises, people can learn to think in different ways.

As Dyer said in a BYU news release, “contrary to conventional wisdom, innovation isn’t a genetic endowment magically given to some and not others; it’s a set of skills that can be developed with practice.”

We can all practice the skills that the experts possess. By doing so, we can all become better innovators.

The Innovator’s DNA comes out July 19. I look forward to reading it and applying the lessons to my thinking.

Do you agree? Is innovation entirely inherent, or can it be learned?

– Kathie

Sponsored by the Consumer Electronics Association’s Innovation Movement (CEA), the Declaration of Innovation is an online pledge, open to Americans, in “support of policies that ensure innovation remains the strategic advantage of the United States of America,” according to CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro.

“The policies supported by the Declaration of Innovation cover four critical areas of economic policy: Free trade, immigration, wireless broadband and government spending,” Shapiro said on Forbes.com Wednesday. “Pursued together, these areas define an innovative nation – one that rewards risk, encourages entrepreneurism and establishes a secure economic foundation for the rest of our economy.”

Reestablishing the United States as a top Innovation Nation should be a priority for all of us. Our elected officials say they work on our behalf. Let’s show them we care about our future by signing the Declaration of Innovation. Ask them to put aside partisanship and make the sacrifices and support the policies necessary for restoring the American Dream.

As Shelly Palmer, host of NBC Universal’s Live Digital with Shelly Palmer, said on his blog today, “historically, good old-fashioned American innovation has been responsible for everything from the automobile to the light bulb to the first man on the moon.” We can make that our future too. Signing the Declaration of Innovation is step in the right direction. Make your voice heard.

– Stephanie

According to SolarRoadways.com, “the Solar Roadway is a series of structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon. The idea is to replace all current petroleum-based asphalt roads, parking lots and driveways with solar road panels that collect energy to be used by our homes and business.  (The) ultimate goal is to be able to store excess energy in or alongside the Solar Roadways. This renewable energy replaces the need for the current fossil fuels used for the generation of electricity. This, in turn, cuts greenhouse gases literally in half.”

The solar panel road will have a glass surface that is thick enough to withstand heavy traffic while still allowing sunlight to enter. It will also have a textured surface similar to that of asphalt; LED lighting to display road lines and signs like “slow down;” and heating elements to melt snow and ice. And it will be waterproof.

According to SmartPlanet.com, Brusaw said “solar panels, operating at just 15 percent efficiency, installed as roadway surfaces with the 25,000 square miles of existing roads in the lower 48 states” would produce three times as much electricity as we produce on an annual basis now. That’s enough electricity to power the entire world.

This ambitious idea has received a great deal of praise. In fact, last fall, Solar Roadways won the first Challenge Award in GE’s Ecomagination Challenge. The first phase of this challenge was to find ideas for “Powering the Grid.” Five ideas, not including Solar Roadways, each won $100,000 to further develop technology. Solar Roadways, however, won the $50,000 Challenge Award for receiving the highest number of votes.

Voting in the second phase of the Ecomagination Challenge, “Powering your Home,” recently closed but the winners have not been announced yet. Solar Roadways again received the highest number of votes.

Still, there are some who question its validity. Brusaw says the road pays for itself, but the cost to install the solar panels on the roads today is about 50 percent more expensive than paving highway-strength asphalt, according to Aaron Saenz of SingularityHub.com in August 2010. Saenz also doubted the panels’ ability to generate the amount of electricity we need.

Regardless of whether we are all driving on solar panels in 10 years, in 50 years or never, I think Solar Roadways offer many great lessons in innovation.

1. Clearly define problems you’re trying to solve: We define innovation as people working together to develop and implement new ideas that create value. The Brusaws have developed something that has the potential to solve a lot of problems, including dependence of foreign oil.
2. Look in unusual places for ideas: The Brusaws say the Solar Roadway combines an idea of Julie’s with Scott’s favorite childhood toy: Slot cars that travel around a track powered by electricity.
3. Explore and build partnerships: Solar Roadways will require significant collaboration to make it happen. The Brusaws realized early on that they faced obstacles they couldn’t overcome alone, so they reached out to various organizations for help. For instance, Scott met with scientists from multiple universities to develop the appropriate glass for the panels.
4. Prototype (early and often, if possible): On SingularityHub.com, Saenz said he needed to see a sample in order to believe in the concept. Others, especially potential investors, will surely feel the same.
5. Gather fans: Entering the Ecomagination Challenge was a good move for the Brusaws for a reason other than prize money. According to TechCrunch.com, buzz around the contest and their award win brought five times more views to their website and Facebook and MySpace pages. They’ve now exposed Solar Roadways to a whole slew of people who can offer additional ideas, invest in the project, and talk about it with their friends and family.

What do you think of Solar Roadways? Is driving on solar panels a feasible idea? What other innovation lessons can we learn from this project?

– Kathie

On Tuesday, Neal Conan of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” interviewed the leaders of two different institutions about the challenges they faced while undergoing recent organizational change. The first was Alan Merten, president of George Mason University (GMU) in Northern Virginia for the last 16 years, and the second was Wright Lassiter III, CEO of the Alameda County Medical Center (ACMC) in Oakland, Calif., since 2005.

Based on their interview, I’ve compiled nine tips for organizational change management. What are your tips for organizational change management?

1. Get out and meet people. No matter what your organization is, you fill a void in your community. Whether it’s community based on location or based on similar interests, you have an obligation to fulfill its needs in a fiscally responsible way. Get out and talk to your community members about their interests, desires and beliefs.
2. Get things done. At GMU, Merten found a target of opportunity in information technology and acted on it by hiring the right faculty to support that niche. Then he built a culture of making things happen. This attracted faculty who were frustrated at other slow-moving institutions and encouraged both students and faculty to “succeed beyond their wildest expectations.”
3. Set goals and develop a vision. Every day is an opportunity. Get clear on your vision by talking with your stakeholders. Find out their jobs and their needs. Then develop goals together.
4. Meet with organizational leaders. Lassiter said he sat down with leaders from the start to explore ACMC’s problems and determine solutions.
5. Remember that change is often necessary even if you’re not in crisis. When Merten joined GMU, the university was doing well. It was his job to make it better.
6. Bring along your current staff. At least try to. You will often have to hire new people to fill new rolls at your organization, but don’t forgot about the current staff. Some may not want to change, and, therefore, may not stay with you. But others are invested in the organization and eager for change. And they can help you embed your change initiatives into the current culture. Or vice versa.
7. Build trust with your leadership, board and stakeholders. Lassiter said a lot of trust is built around transparency. So he maintained open communications with his staff, physicians and key constituents. And he kept no secrets.
8. Listen to naysayers. It’s good to hear what your opponents are saying. You’ll find out if any of them are willing to change and you’ll learn what people think of your change initiatives and if you need to make any edits to your plans.
9. Empower your staff. Allowing all your staff, from the top to the bottom, to make decisions and necessary changes helps them take responsibility for their own careers and happiness. As a result, employee satisfaction and confidence go up, while waste goes down. Lassiter said ACMC “would be the ideal organization if every one of our 3,000 or so employees felt that they were the CEO of their 20-square feet.”

Share your tips for organizational change below.

– Kathie

This is just one example of how hard it is to sustain new ideas.

Another example is in the pharmaceutical industry. According to PhRMA.org, “only one of every 10,000 potential medicines investigated by America’s research-based pharmaceutical companies makes it through the research and development pipeline and is approached for patient use by the Food and Drug Administration.”

Perhaps you’ve experienced similar obstacles when developing and sustaining new ideas within your industry?

If you search the Internet, you can find a number of reasons why innovative new ideas fail. My business innovation colleague Jeffrey Phillips offered four great reasons innovative ideas fail on his blog in January:

1. Ideas don’t solve an important problem for a customer.
2. Ideas take too long to get to market/shifts in needs.
3. Ideas underfunded or poorly launched.
4. Ideas require too much work to adopt.

I wanted to add the simple fact that innovation is hard work. It can be really painful and if your organization isn’t ready for the stress associated with idea development and implementation, it’s not going to be able to bring new ideas into implementation even with customer buy-in and proper funding.

In order to commit to the innovation process, staying the same has to be more painful than changing.

What obstacles have you faced when developing new business ideas? How have you overcome them?

– Kathie

I recently read an article in The Atlantic about the power of play in education. “The division between work and play is a myth,” author Laura Seargeant Richardson said. “If America is going to teach its youth to innovate, we need to unite the two. …

“Literacy is like Legos,” she said. “Basic proficiency in math, reading and writing are, and will remain, the building blocks of education. But we need to advance our ability to use these literacies. While the United States currently struggles to achieve 30 percent reading proficiency by 4^th grade, other economic powers like the E.U. and China have begun their quest for advanced forms of play. For example, the Chinese government recently launched a five-year initiative on fostering creativity and innovation in China.”

Meanwhile, yesterday, I read a CNN.com Op-Ed by columnist LZ Granderson advocating for U.S. schools to move from a nine-month education model to a year-round school year in order to gain a national competitive advantage.

Granderson said that research by Harris Cooper, a summer-learning expert at Duke University, found that “our kids lose about a month of progress in math and that low-income students lose as much as three months’ worth of reading comprehension” each summer. …

“More than a month of teaching time at the beginning of the school year is spent re-teaching the stuff our kids forgot over the break. This may be one of the reasons why reports suggest Finnish 15-year-olds are one to two years ahead of our kids in math and science.”

But does removing summer break mean less time to play?

Tara Parker-Pope wrote in The New York Times in February 2009 about the critical importance of recess in educational development. “New research,” she said, “suggests that play and down time may be as important to a child’s academic experience as reading, science and math, and that regular recess, fitness or nature time can influence behavior, concentration and even grades.”

The problem is that some schools do not view this much needed brain rest as essential. And schools are already strapped for time and money.

Granderson wants to structure the summer around education, but Richardson says we need to build “play capital” as well. Granderson says it would improve our kids’ scores, but Richardson says business innovation companies don’t ask for basic skills or grades, they want people who apply those skills to solve challenging problems.

I say we need the “both/and.” There must be some happy medium in which students can learn and play, sometimes simultaneously.

Indeed there are many solutions that gives kids both. Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte wrote in 2009 about the creative and engaging “intersession” classes at her kids’ year-round school in Alexandria, Va.

But, Schulte also pointed out one of the big problems with year-round school: “It’s expensive to pay teachers for intersessions and to keep buses, cafeterias and maintenance staff running five or six extra weeks.”

I know there are a lot of schools moving to the year-round model. Did you or do your kids go to year-round school? Do you support it or do you miss what Schulte called “long, lazy, Huck Finn summers that most Americans have come to think of as an inalienable right of childhood”?

This brings me to my next questions: Are summer breaks important to building Richardson’s “play capital” among students? Or can and should play literacy be developed entirely in school?

– Kathie