Outside the Box

During economic slowdowns and in stressed industries"outside the box" thinking is more than some companies can handle.  How can you remain innovative and distinct when radical change is too expensive or risky?

Like everyone else, I tired of the term "outside the box" a decade ago.  But the concept--the ability to think "zebra" when you hear hoof-claps--remains a key distinction between great achievement and mere survival.  But smart people and smart companies, not to mention people who think they're not particularly creative, can reach higher by thinking inside a bigger box.

For example, the IT industry has grown leaps and bounds over the past 20 years.  IT specialists, whether networking and hardware specialists or programmers and architects, often generate brilliant ideas that no one in the business knows what to do with.  The IT people have no idea how to translate the potential in their minds into a sellable product.  The idea falls on the floor.

In this scenario, outside the box thinking by the software designer ran into the brick of wall of tiny mental boxes--his own and the business's.  To monetize the good idea, both parties need a mental box large enough to grasp ideas on the fringes.

The architect needed some basic business skills in addition to his professional skills.  These include:

Marketing:  Could the idea be piloted and measured with a micro-segment to determine its financial potential?  What are the key measures to determine the viability of the idea? CWhat have respected industry experts said about trends that point to your idea being a game-changer?  Businesses that are reluctant to invest $200,000 in a wild idea might very well invest $5,000 in a pilot project, but the IT architect needs enought marketing knowledge to propose the pilot, to help identify the metrics, and to identify the target. 

Finance:   What is the project's payback period?  What's the net present value?  What's the internal rate of return?  The IT professional probably has a handle on the total cost of the project, and you don't have to be the CFO to use Micrsoft Excel's finance tools (click here for an easy tutorial).  The IT person who can talk IRR and NPV catches the favorable attention of the people with the purse strings.  Even if your calculations suffer from rookie mistakes, the CFO, or her delegate, will be more prone to pitch in and clean it up if she thinks you know what the concepts mean.   

Whatever your current role, you can benefit from broadening your knowledge of business concepts, and marketing and finance are the most critical to selling your ideas internally; marketers and finance own the budget and the product catalog.

If you're a business manager, help your people expand their boxes.  The finance folks will be more effective with a strong understanding of the value of innovation.  Have them study IDEO or Google.  Your marketers will benefit from learning more about technology's costs and time requirements to develop new products.  (I've found that marketing people think other people's ideas take 10 years and cost $10,000,000 but their own ideas take an hour and cost $5.)  Your operations people can be your best assets in innovation and creative--they need the same marketing and finance knowledge that the IT professional needs.

Enlarging your mental boxes will bring innovation and creativity inside the safe boundaries of your SOP.   And the competition will never see it coming.