Written by Tim Hefferon, Leadership Discovery Participant
What do you think about when you hear the word innovation? For me prior to Leadership Discovery, I would think of grand inventions that have altered our society such as the lightbulb, automobile, or the computer. For this reason, when I heard that our Leadership Discovery session was going to be with David Cutler, author of the “Game of Innovation”, I was not sure what to expect. Based on his photo in his book, he looked more like a mad scientist than an author and in my mind, no amount of lecturing would drive me to come up with the next amazing culture-shifting invention. I was expecting to walk in to a 2-hour brainstorm session of crazy, unobtainable, ideas in the name of innovation. What I walked into, was something surprisingly different.
David, besides being an author, is also a musician, a father, a professor, a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and newly a Dean at DePauw University. This unique background shows itself through David’s amazing teaching style. From the hilarious pictures in his presentation to the bells of doom at the end of activities, David’s style is one that flips the classroom standard and encourages teamwork, communication, collaboration, and general goofiness. Throughout the session we discussed innovation and how we can become innovators in our lives. One of the major innovation lessons that I learned from David right away was that innovation can be learned and innovation itself can be a small change. David discussed his 97% rule, which is that 97% of organizations, companies, restaurants, or whatever, generally do things the exact same way. If you can make a positive change to get into the 3%, you will automatically stand out from the rest.
As the session progressed, we put some of the concepts that David discussed in his presentation to test as we learned new strategies to fuel innovation. The first strategy we used was called feature tweaking. In this strategy, we identified some of the “97%” elements and traditions of an organization and then tweaked the traditions to be something completely new. When we were done we had a list of innovative ideas that could be implemented, in this case, into our companies hiring process. The next innovative strategy we tried was called disaster storming. In this method you intentionally brainstorm terrible ideas around a topic. After you have come up with the most terrible idea, you are challenged to flip that idea into a good idea. This strategy gets you to be very creative and certainly forces you outside of the standard 97% mold.
Overall, the session was one of my favorites in Leadership Discovery thus far. From David’s teaching style, to the fun activities, and the strategies that we can all bring back to our companies, the session was non-stop fun and engaged the entire group. After learning more about David and his innovation mindset, I was left with a completely different understanding of innovation and the role that it can play in any company or on any team. I am excited to bring these strategies of innovation back to my team, and to continue to reference “The Game of Innovation” throughout my career.
