Good afternoon,
Today, I'm going to talk about 'innovation'.
The word "Innovation" is perhaps, frequently used by many people, so I dare not define it now.
I will talk to you about my personal experiences and learnings about innovation.
There are three aspects to my work. Practice, research and education of innovation.
If I were to split my week, I spend around three days at my office working as an innovation practitioner and creating innovative ideas together with companies.
Another three days is spent at Tokyo University teaching innovation to students.
And one day a week is spent working for my NPO which educates grade school students about the meaning of motivation.
So as you might have guessed, my work and hobby is innovation.
And perhaps my only other hobby is reading the JUMP comic magazine once a week.
Let's start by talking about the future.
What kind of context will we live and work in 2050 ?
Firstly, the brain.
It is foreseeable that computers will surpass the brain capacity of human beings and will be more effective at many of the tasks that we do today.
Secondly, the body.
Robots are already beginning to replace our works and will continue to do more tasks as its intelligence level increases.
So what kind of tasks will be left for us humans in the future?
I see two competences that will still be in the realm of the humans.
And those are: Creation of new knowledge and collaborating with others to drive ideas forward.
And with these two competences, humans will be left with making innovation happen.
As you can get the whole picture of innovation, I would like to introduce my innovation bible to you.
But it is not this book.
Not even this book.
It's this book.This book contains everything about innovation.
When I was 10 years old, my mother gave me this as a present.
And my inner "Kodomo switch" was turned on. (Prof. Junichi Rekimoto had mentioned about "Kodomo Switch" in TEDxTodai.)
Ever since then, I have been fascinated by innovation.
This book introduces about 50 brilliant innovations such as Thomas Edison's light bulb.
Furthermore, it introduces 150 people who were involved in the process of making these innovations happen. That's very cool.
Many people struggled to make one innovation happen. Very cool.
The innovations introduced in this book are not necessarily all technological innovations.
But rather, things such as the sandwich and teabag are presented as examples which had a deep impact on the way people live and behave and not due to an invention of new technology.
It's very interesting.
Therefore, innovation is not about new technology, but rather it is to provide new value for the society and change the way people live and behave.
At least in this book, that is how innovation is projected.
As a 10 year old reading this, I was totally blown away.
150 people were introduced in that book, and I strongly wanted to be like one of them. So what does it take to become like them?
This is what it comes back to. Creativity and collaboration.
So how do I, as a 10 year old try to build these skills?
I understood that I was not genius, so I thought it hopeless!
This sort of plot is commonly planned in JUMP comics. A hero always starts from realizing that he isn't born genius and that he has to make some effort. I was like that too.
I was shy, and just didn't know how to make Collaboration at all. But I thought, how could I find the way out?
How could someone like me become someone like the innovators introduced to me in that book?
This question has shaped the work that I do everyday and forms my research interest.
What I focused on in order to become an innovator is to try to understand the underlying process that was driving innovation.
And by decoding it, I would be able to perform it myself.
So let's look inside the book to see what kind of process these innovators used. As an example, let's look at Edison's light bulb.
Edison had the idea that if he used electricity to create light, it could have a significant impact on the way people live.
Through lot of prototyping and testing, the light bulb was finally born.
Next, the light bulb is introduced to the world.
After commercialization, Edison continually improved his product and because there was no electricity, he even built his own power plant.
From 10 to 100. It's exactly innovation.
This process that Edison used is actually a very common product development process and fortunately, it has been beautifully systematized into clear steps.
Furthermore, there are many institutions where this process can be learned and there are existing career paths such as engineering and marketing that support this process.
So is this enough?
The answer is no. I personally learned this process and worked in a profession that supported this process but it did not make me feel like I could innovate.
If we go back to the book again, we can actually find the process of going from 0 to 1.
It was common knowledge at the time that if electricity flows through specific metals, they would light up. Using this knowledge, Edison had the idea that he could use it to light up a room.
That was the moment of creation.
But how can we do it? How could it be educated and practiced?
Fortunately, this topic is beginning to be discussed and researched throughout the world.
For instance, we have a program called the i.school at the Tokyo University, with Professor Hideyoki Horii of the School of Engineering and Hiroshi Tamura who worked for Hakuhodo at the time it was founded in 2009.
At the i.school, we are teaching students to be able to innovate.
Through workshops, students at the i.school learn the methodologies from fields such as human centered design and design thinking.
These processes often begin with understanding what people and the society needs.
We mix together students from very diverse backgrounds and also invite some professionals from inter-disciplinary teams and try to come up with innovative ideas under a given theme.
Here is an example workshop that I am currently running and it is called Robot Meets Life.
How will robots start to enter our daily lives? During this project, students will produce innovative ideas and build simple prototypes.
With the inception of i.school, the gap between 0 to 1 has been filled and we have come much closer to understanding innovation. Wonderful.
But is it enough?
The answer is no.
Now you might ask is it ok for the director of i.school to answer no but unfortunately it is.
So what's still missing?
Creativity. Yes! we are a lot better at coming up with innovative ideas now. Personally I feel more creative and also you can see it in the students.
And collaboration. We bring diverse people together and they work together.
And at the end of the process, there is wild and innovative ideas. Up to that point is great.
But the collaboration required for innovation is not limited to collaboration within workshops.
There are so many other people required to drive these ideas forward. For example, how can we get the sales people to sell our idea effectively?
And how can we pitch this new venture to the boss convincingly?
And to answer these questions, there is a need to speak to many stakeholders.
To solve this problem, I drew this simple graph.
Having majored in physics during a master's program, I love to use function.
One axis showing the innovation stage and the other showing social value.
The pink curve shows how new products or services are created in companies.
For instance, an air purifier. There are many existing products that clean the air inside a room.
This is stage 1, where value of the product is already somewhat understood.
In order to improve upon this product, it is most likely that this company will start by considering what technical improvements it could make.
When the product is improved and reaches stage 10, they might realize that it is not necessary or valued to sell such a high spec product.
Or they might reconsider the styling of the product from the previous versions.
Then they will do marketing research and the product that looks most viable in the market will be commercialized.
This is a wonderfully beautiful process
And they can repeat it next year. So this process is functioning to create new air purifier. They succeed with this process.
But there is something wrong. Do you think this process can lead to innovation?
It might produce the coolest looking air purifier on the market but the concept is always going to be fixed.
Let's add here what happens from stage 0 to 1.
The process of 0 to 1 is something like what we are doing at i.school.
Because human and social needs are valued, field research and interviews are conducted early in the process.
So in the case of the air purifier, they might find out that it is pointless to only clean the air inside a room.
And they might start to consider what if all of the air consumed by the user is purified?
And this could lead to new concepts such as an air purifier that attaches to your nose.
So in this process, existing assumptions are broken down and new concepts are thought of up from zero.
And there is a high possibility that the outcome of this process will result in a new concept.
But now, please imagine. An employee presents this idea for their company "I have a new concept for the next year. Let's put it inside people's nose"!
What do you think will happen?
I myself think it's cool, but the others will probably be confused.
They will say "An air purifier is placed in a room, this big. The thing directly attached to your nose, it's not what we've been creating."
They will find your idea interesting, but the new concept will probably not even be considered.
However, the person who had this idea has no idea where he should pitch it, in order to push it forward.
In other words, we believed that there was the 0 to 1 and 1 to 10 and so on but actually, there was a disconnect between these two processes.
I will use an analogy to explain what I mean.
Let's say that 1 to 100 is like classical music. A highly regarded genre.
And 0 to 1 is like rock music. Another highly regarded genre.
Would you dare to try connecting these two genres?
I don't think it makes much sense and it would probably sound terrible.
Nevertheless, that is what people have been trying to do. When an organization reaches stage 1 with their new concept, they try to make it somehow feasible.
But this is wrong.
It might have worked previously when the concept was fixed but when the concept is totally new, the thinking process within the organization abruptly ends.
So there is a process of 0 to 1 and there is a process of 1 to 10. But there is no sense in trying to connect the two processes together.
So what should we do?
The answer is simple; let's compose the innovation process from scratch.
And that is what I am currently trying to do in my practice.
Instead of aiming for 0 to 1, we should adjust the scope to 1.1.
What I mean by 1.1 is that 1 is not the end of the process. There are next steps of 1.1, 1.2, 2, 3 and so on.
And with these future steps in consideration, we can redesign innovation process.
In order to put this idea into practice, the members of i.school and I started an innovation consultancy firm called i.lab.
Together with students that have studied innovation, researchers at the university, and together with freelance designers and engineers,
we help companies to start new ventures and together, design and push these new ideas within their organization. And we support our clients up to 1.1.
Although I cannot give concrete examples since we keep strict confidentiality of our projects and clients, I can share one advice for getting ideas to go beyond 1.
Typically, there is a moment within the process of 0 to 1.1 when an idea is born. These moments are traditionally the realm of creative specialists.
But at i.lab, we share these creative workshops with stakeholders that may not be an expert in idea generation but may prove crucial in future stages such as engineers and business person.
These workshops may last 3 hours and we create ideas together.
It is not important that their ideas are taken forward but the importance is on the shared creative moment itself.
Because when an idea eventually reaches stage 1, we can take it back to that engineer who was present at that workshop and receive practical feedback.
He might suggest to look more closely into a certain technology.
And the business person who also came to the workshop might help you develop a business strategy.
The chances of receiving this practical feedback increase only when we start sharing earlier in the process and this gives momentum needed for innovative ideas to go forward.
Although it is still important to be able to come up with innovative new concepts, there is something more important.
And that's collaboration. There is a need for being able to carry out the process of 0 to 1.1 within organizations.
Let's think about 2050 once again. What work will we be doing?
The work that I am doing today of making something new through the process of 0 to 1.1, may seem quite special today, but in 2050, it is plausible to think that this kind of job will be the default task done by humans.
That kind of work might rather be the daily business which we, humans will perform.And now, we don't have such process.
So what should we do?
For the third time I ask today, is it enough?
Well, I'm still not finished yet but it's not a no anymore.
We're almost there, though it's not perfect.
One thing I can say about innovation is that it takes a great deal of time.
A great idea must diffuse into the society to become an innovation.
And that can take years and a lot of labor.
It has been 20 years since I met that book, and I am still working on achieving my goal.
So be patient, collaborate, create great ideas and through hard labor, you can achieve innovation.
Thank you.