Transcriber: Sara Abdelaziz Reviewer: Eunice Tan
I can't draw.
But I work with people who are brilliant at drawing.
I noticed, when I watched them,
that often what they do,
they do slowly.
I couldn't draw slowly like that.
It would draw way too much attention to me;
I would feel bad, embarrassed.
But they have confidence in themselves,
so they take their time.
And what they do is marvelous.
Now, even though I cannot draw,
I decided to join a design firm.
And there I had to find the confidence to focus on what I could accomplish.
Now, I've always loved innovation.
I've loved to innovate.
Not gee-whiz innovation -
I love to find small ways just to make things a little bit better.
I like to find little ways
to make people's lives just a little bit easier.
It's not rocket science, but it's what I do.
And today,
what I want to share with you is one way to innovate,
and I want to share with you one innovation story -
an early innovation story that was important to me.
So what's the first thing you need to do if you want to innovate?
You need to have a goal.
You need to be passionate about something.
You'll notice that most innovators
are serially obsessed with the strangest things.
In 1994,
my friend Craig Wynett asked me to get passionate about floor cleaning.
Now, I had never spent much time thinking about floors.
But for the next six months of my life,
floor cleaning
was the most important thing in my life.
Then you need to build a team.
So Craig and I pulled together a team of people
who are good at the stuff that we're not good at.
We were a team of designers and engineers
and strategists and planners
and model makers and marketeers.
And then you need to study the problem.
So we watched people clean floors.
I don't know if you've ever watched somebody clean a floor.
My guess is that most of you have cleaned one, once in a while.
But have you ever watched somebody clean a floor?
Well, we went into 18 homes in Boston and Cincinnati,
and we watched people.
We paid them
so that we could watch them do the mundane.
(Laughter)
Now, it takes about 45 minutes to clean a floor.
That is a lot of watching.
So we took our time.
But as you watch,
you have to think about what you're seeing.
So that's the next step in innovation:
watch, but think about it.
So as we watched people cleaning the floor,
we noticed some things that we hadn't thought about before.
We noticed that everybody swept the floor before they mopped it.
It's kind of obvious, but I'd never thought about it before.
We noticed that people seemed to be spending
about as much time cleaning the mop as cleaning the floor.
And I'd never thought about that before.
We looked a little closer,
and we realized that mops clean by adhesion:
the dirt sticks to the mop.
And the better a mop is at grabbing the dirt,
the more difficult it is to clean the mop.
Now, that's a contradiction right there.
And we like contradictions
because contradictions are clues for innovation.
We also noticed that people seemed to be wearing old clothes
when they were cleaning the floor.
(Laughter)
Now, these clothes were not fashionable even in 1994.
(Laughter)
So we wondered why that was.
So, there's the problem.
Now we have to find a solution.
Now, creativity can be the scary part.
But I think the best way to be creative is to not to try to be creative.
Just try to solve the problem.
Just step back and let the facts and the feelings wash over you.
I'm sorry, it's an old tape but it's fine.
Just let the facts and the feelings wash over you,
and the ideas will emerge.
There's power in slow thinking.
In time, the idea will become obvious.
And even if the idea is obvious, that's not a bad thing.
Some of the best ideas, the best examples of innovation
are obvious in retrospect.
So all we had to do was find a way
so that you didn't have to clean the mop -
you could just clean the floor.
We had to find a way
so you didn't have to wear old clothes when you were cleaning.
If possible, we could look for a way to connect sweeping and mopping
because it seems to be one thing.
And then maybe we could even find a way to make cleaning fulfilling -
fun, even.
Crazy.
So this was the idea.
It's kind of obvious in retrospect.
It's a very simple idea.
And now when you have a very simple idea,
you want to know is it a good idea.
So the best way is to sketch it out
or, better yet,
make a model or a prototype -
something that just approximates in a very basic way to what your idea is -
and then test it with people.
Do people like it?
Does it work for them?
Does it make sense to them?
Find out what doesn't work and fix it.
So this was the first model,
and then we tested it with people.
And it worked pretty well.
And, by the way, this is the very first Swiffer.
And people liked it.
Once people had used it, they said,
"This is cool.
I want one of these.
Where do I get it?"
So finally -
and perhaps this is the most difficult part in any innovation challenge -
how do you persuade other people to make it real?
Because it takes a lot of people to make any idea real.
Now, at this point,
numbers help
because decision makers like numbers.
But just an experience like that video I showed you
also helps
because decision makers are people.
Or a simple business model.
[Old Business Model - A Product New Business Model - A System]
Something like that
can also help people to appreciate what an idea could be
and help them to see what that future would be.
That's a good business experience.
So we're done.
It took us about six months to come up with an idea.
It took a lot longer to take that idea and make it real.
But it was worth it.
And in some small way,
we made some people's lives just that little bit better.
And I think that all of us,
if we have the confidence to begin
and to take our time,
with the right process and team to help us,
we can all make people's lives just that little bit better.
And that is innovation.
Thank you.
(Applause)