Innovation: Techniques used by frogs and sidewinders

Our clients are particularly yearning for innovation these days. This summer demand has surged for our supply-chain, logistics, and environmental strategy and research. After all, the tech industry wouldn’t be the tech industry without continued innovation. (The same goes for the apparel, medical, and other industries.)

To help clients competitively innovate for Leaner and Greener products, processes, and strategic corporate decisions, I encourage them to “leap frog” over sequential steps, and to think laterally for an entirely different and superior idea. Frogs leap 20 to 100 times their height to escape predators and catch lunch. Sidewinder snakes’ rapid sideways locomotion takes everyone by surprise (including hikers in the US Southwest).

Here’s an example of lateral thinking, of a low-tech variety. This week my husband asked our vegetarian, eco-minded neighbor. “Where do you get really good, water-treated, organic, shade-grown decaf coffee?” You see, being health and environmentally conscious, we have moved incrementally from drinking coffee to drinking decaf, then water-treated, then organic, and when possible shade-grown coffee. But our neighbor didn’t say a word. Instead, he yanked out of his garden a sprout of small, tapered green leaves. Then he said to my husband, “Why drink coffee when you can have delicious, fresh mint tea?”

It dawned on us: we had been taking sequential steps to mitigate a process fraught with inefficiency and environmental degradation. Our neighbor woke us up to thinking laterally: the point is that we want a healthy, hot, delicious beverage–why not drink a fresh, tasty “locally grown” alternative?

To help our clients with “leap and lateral” innovation, we lead two exercises called “Re-Think Products” and “What Comes Before?” We run these exercises within workshops for product designers, multifunctional/multiregional teams, and executives. The feedback we receive is that these exercises forever change the way participants make nearly every business decision, resulting in lower costs, use of fewer resources, and competitive distinction.

What leaps have you made or lateral thinking have you have had that you’d like to share and–together with our readers–build upon?

(By the way, though I haven’t yet completely given up my coffee, this garden-fresh mint tea is amazing.)

Posted by Pamela Gordon, July 30th, 2008

Filed to Environment, Lean Practices, Logistics, Supply chain management
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2 Responses to “Innovation: Techniques used by frogs and sidewinders”

  1. From: Tom Valliere
      on August 1st, 2008

    Pam, Good thinking points as usual. However, if you want some truly good organically grown and environmentally rsponsible coffee, Try Cafe Britt Gourmet Coffee [info@cafebritt.com]. Look at the green statement on their website. I have visited their operations in Costa Rica - they are what they say they are and their coffee is just plain delicious!

    Best Regards

    Tom Valliere

  2. From: Bud Natali
      on August 5th, 2008

    Pam,

    Interesting thoughts. Product innovation, however, has a very low return relative to other forms of innovation (transactions, process, exceeding controls and compliance, etc.). Regarding innovation, the only known source of it stems from investment in less-tangible assets. It’s hardly ever about the coffee or the tea, it’s about the producer’s ability to re-invest in the less-tangible asset base to drive new markets from the bottom up. I spent a lot of time with the whole fair trade coffee thing - it’s smaller than Hooville. Think bigger, and wider to have a real impact.

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