Simplifying Innovation, a 5-step system for doubling speed to market and new product profits with your existing resources

I recently read Simplifying Innovation, a 5-step system for doubling speed to market and new product profits with your existing resources by Michael Dalton.

He calls it a theory of constraints business model.

"Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity" - Albert Einstein

This is one of those books that is written in storybook style. I'm not a big advocate of this type of writing, following fictitious people around and figuring out how they like their steak is not particularly interesting to me.

That said, the book is interesting and has a number of valid points. If you just wanted the business points of the book, you could quickly read through it and find the summaries which are italicized.

The theory of the book is that there are always bottlenecks in any innovation. The key is to identify those bottlenecks and figure out how to get through them more quickly.

One other part of the thesis is high focus pays and having less people on a project, spending more of their time on it, is likely to get better results than having more people spend less of their time.

As I'm reading the book, I'm thinking of how this plays with my Fail Often. Fail Fast. Fail Cheap. mantra that I often repeat. Where I think it's used slightly differently is the innovation the book is talking about is primarily development, not necessarily the pure research, or alternatively it's the execution or the implementation which is often a shortcoming in companies.

Fail Often. Fail Fast, Fail Cheap is one way to generate a lot of ideas, then figure out which ones are working and put more resources into the ones that are working.

The book did talk about DADS (Device Attention Deficit Syndrome), caused by Blackberries and cell phones. Ironically, even though I am a huge Blackberry user and a big advocate (and I sit on the board of RIM), I do see some validity to DADS. If DADS is a problem, it means the device is not being used as it should be used - as a productivity device.

"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."-Frederic Chopin

It's a good book, appropriate for anyone involved in the development of products.

Constant Learning - Deciding What to Learn

I was interested in an Harvard Business Review article on "Should you Sack Yourself". The gist of the message was that often people fall in love with their own strategy and methods even though they are not working. Sometimes the company would be better off without them.

I have seen many cases where a company outgrows people. Perhaps this is because I have always been involved in growth businesses or perhaps because I have always been in the technology business which is naturally high change.

Change is inevitable and therefore people need to adapt. I have long believed that proper adaptation or the "right" changes can be studied and learned.

I have constantly set myself with the challenge of "what do I need to know" and "what will I need to learn". I then devise learning programs around it. For me, much of the studying is reading books but some is setting myself with the question and then I find that material I feed myself becomes relevant - eg - the article a friend forwards hits home or a passage in a book triggers a thought pattern.

People often ask me how I managed to run a start up from the trunk of my car and also a Billion $ plus business. For me, it was this deliberate study.

I am a life long learner.

Learning By Teaching

We've all heard it said that the best way to learn is to teach. I'm a big believer that this is absolutely true. I think this is probably one of things that inspired me originally to start teaching my time management seminar.

When I first started preparing my time management seminar (and this came before my time management book), I did what I often do and I chose to study it. For me, this meant getting most of the books at the library. Listening to the audio programs, watching the videos and I even went to a couple time management seminars.

The more I study the topic, the more excited I got and the more I incorporated a number of the success habits in my life. The more I did this, the more success I had.

This became the start of momentum that built to eventually not only doing the seminar over a hundred times, but writing the book, publishing the audio cd and the time leadership eBook.

I know time management much better because I studied it and I taught it. Your tip for today is if you want to learn something well, teach it.

I think this works because all of us want to do a good job so we don't want to go teach without preparing.

I think there is a tendency of people when they teach to set a little bit better example (although people are better to do as I say and not examine me too closely in what I do, I'm still a work in progress on the time management front).

A Soldier First and Still Alice

Over the holidays I finished two non-business related books.

One of them was General Rick Hillier's book A Soldier First - Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War. I know Rick so the book was doubly interesting to me. I also have a daughter and son in law in the Canadian Navy.

At one point in the book he talks about expecting to have a break between postings of six weeks and what he planned to do is golf in the mornings and putter on his household chores and get his house all in order before his next posting. Then what happened is he got a call on Monday saying that he was going to have to leave on the following Monday to start his new mission.

So we can guess what happened, he then threw himself into accomplishing his list of chores and sure enough he got them all done. Then ironically he got the call that he wasn't needed for another 4 weeks, so he was able to truly relax having finished most of his "work" list.

One thing I noticed about productivity is when we absolutely need to get things done, we can be tremendously high productivity and like the old saying goes, "the work expands to fill the time available".

The second book I read was Still Alice by Lisa Genova which, although it is a novel, it is a well researched book written in the first person about a woman who has early onset Alzheimers. She is a Ph.D who advances through multiple phases of dementia. A very moving story.

Both books were entertaining, thought provoking and interesting.

Using Books For Inspiration

Anyone who's read this blog for any period of time knows that I'm a voracious reader. I believe one of the best values in North America is the library card. I read a statistic that only 3% of the population has a library card. It seems to me it's likely those 3% are some of the more successful, since it not only helps with the quest for knowledge but it also helps with the law of savings.

It would be interesting to commission a study to see where library users stand relative to the rest of the population on success and economic scales. Would be tough to grade but also where they stand on just "being interesting" scales as well.

Of course it's also possible among the more successful might be some of the people who buy some of the books so library correlations might not apply.

I have long used books for inspiration using the following simple exercise:

1. I write down what it is that I'm trying to do or what I want to accomplish.

2. I start to read and choose an appropriate book close to the topic I wish to study or gain inspiration on. Seems obvious but starting is half the battle.

3.I highlight or make notes either in the book or on a separate journal.

The simple act of knowing what I'm looking for when I'm reading a book often inspires me to find the answer.

A simple example of this is I was preparing to do a seminar on Goal Setting and in order to do that seminar since it was longer than my usual, I needed to come up with more material. So I started to read more books about success and success habits and sure enough the presentations flowed.

Thought Provoking Videos and Snippet Learning

A friend of mine sent me a link to a few thought provoking videos. (Thanks Jackie at Recruit My Friends. )

The YouTube videos talk about the changes that are happening in our world and the state of our educational system. They talk about learning.

I'm a big believer in change. I believe change is opportunity and when I can't find change I try to create some. One thing I like about change is it actually helps smaller companies and entrepreneurs gain their place in new world order.

I am definitely a constant learner. My chosen way to learn is mostly by reading but I am certainly open to learning in any way I can. I love audio books because they suit my sense of time management.

I'm also a believer in Microlearning or Snippet Learning (that's learning in short snips), or perhaps I should call it A.D.D learning.

Hope you enjoy the videos.

• Did you know 2.0
• Did you know 3.0
• A vision of students today

I also talk about change in my Are You Galvanized or Paralyzed article.

Super Freakonomics and Unintended Consequences

This post was written a few days ago.

I am just through airline security. No carry on by order of security. I did bring a book (The Tristan Betrayal - by Robert Ludlum - yes - just a mindless spy thriller). I have long read while I am in airport lines but these days it is even more important to develop the skill and focus to do this.

I read just Levitt's new book SuperFreakonomics (I love it) which delves into "unintended consequences". One consequence of 9/11 was 10,000 more traffic fatalities. I wonder what the consequences of the current crackdown will be.

I am thinking video conferencing will become even more pervasive. Interestingly, travel has always been very costly (mostly from a time and energy perspective). Executives that run larger companies have paid the highest price. They might actually get a productivity boost by having less travel. I know from experience the inefficiency of travel.

Conference calling with PPT will also increase. Perhaps my investment in online meeting company Calliflower (low cost Webex) will take off.

I think less people will travel. Will we become more local?

I also think executive jets will have a surge.

I used to have a rule, if I could drive it in 5 hours, it was more efficient not to fly. Thinking I will need to expand that to 8 hours or longer. So I wonder if audio book sales will increase. Perhaps I need to stock up on my Time Leadership CDs. Hire a few more people to handle the shipping.

SuperFreakonomics challenges some climate myths. Like buy local is not better for the environment. My brother Lyle (who wrote "Small is Possible") will no doubt have arguments with that. Perhaps the buy local will be pushed more for diversity and lifestyle than environment.

He also has some radical environmental proposals - some of which scare me to death (like releasing sulphur into the atmosphere to combat global warming). The book will be controversial and I hope is not used as an excuse by some to just keep damaging the environment on the theory that science can save us.