Note: The following essay is an excerpt from the upcoming new and revised edition of Ready, Fire, Aim. 

The Innovation Myth

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have…. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” – Steve Jobs

One of the great myths in business is that the first to the finish line is the one that gets the biggest prize. “Get this product out before the competition,” say marketing and product development executives, “or we will fail.”

The evidence does not support that rationale. The first product to market isn’t always the winner. Best sellers usually come later, in the second wave. Often these second-wave winners are knock-offs of first-generation products reinvented by Fortune 500 companies.

Of course, there are times when a small company’s timing and product mesh together perfectly and it captures not only the lead position but also the dominant position in the industry for some time. But that is rare.

Taking first place should not be the entrepreneur’s primary objective. The smart businessperson understands that long-term growth is built on multiple front-runners, none of which need to be number one.

Look back at any of history’s most popular products, from Apple’s iPods to Hublot’s Big Bang watches, and you will find that the innovations they represent were already being developed in slightly different ways by other, competing companies at about the same time. (In Apple’s case, it was portable, personalized record collections. In Hublot’s, sports watches made of high-tech metals.)

Malcolm Gladwell Got It Right 

Instead of looking to be first in the market with a new product, business leaders should aim at producing products that capture the imagination of prospective buyers – versions of existing products that have features and benefits that catch fire.

Malcolm Gladwell explained this beautifully and persuasively in The Tipping Point, his breakthrough book about social and commercial trends. Of all the marketing ideas I have heard over the years, this one has been one of the most useful to me.

It has helped me understand, in a very clear way, why some of my seemingly great ideas worked so well and why some of them were shocking failures.

It makes such complete sense because it corresponds to what every good marketer learns sooner or later: You can’t dictate to the market; you must let the market tell you what to do. All of the very successful product launches I’ve been associated with were – I realize now – evolutionary, not revolutionary processes. And all of the big failures – the product launches that lost millions – were brand-new ideas that the market had, until that point, shown no interest in.

Tipping-point products are hard to come by, but they can grow your business by leaps and bounds. They will bring you new customers at double or triple or quadruple the rate you could get by marketing ordinary things.

I’m not dismissing ordinary products entirely. In fact, in my experience, the tipping-point phenomenon follows the Pareto Principle. Eighty percent of your sales will come from ordinary products. But if you want to grow your company, you have to be able to produce at least one tipping-point product out of every five.

How do you do that?

A Lesson I Learned the Hard Way 

Early in my career in the information publishing business, I developed a product and a promotional plan that was a big success. It broke all sorts of marketing records for our company, earned tens of millions of dollars, and made me feel like I had figured the business out.

My boss gave me a sign that read “Marketing Genius.” I loved that sign. And for a while, I believed it.

If I had created one breakthrough product, I could create another one and then a third, and the sky would be the limit. All I had to do was tap into the marketing genius that was located somewhere between my ears.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what happened. My record in the years that followed my annus mirabilis was piebald. I had a fair number of hits, but they were mostly doubles and triples. And I had strike-outs too. What was going on?

It took me several years to realize that the great success I had with that first product launch was due to much more than me. First, it was, like all marketing coups, a combination of just the right product at just the right time. And second, it wasn’t the child of my sole genius. My boss and a marketing consultant critiqued both the concept and copy through five or six heavily blue-lined drafts.

Nowadays, I don’t even try to fly solo. I know I’ll get much better results much faster by working with a creative team. If I get an idea showering in the morning, I’ll have a “what-do-you-think” memo out by the end of the day. And that’s just to get the engine running. I am as anxious as ever to move things along, but I know that I’ll end up with a better result if I shape my idea with the help of others.

A Simple Formula for Creative Brainstorming 

I’ve developed a formula for creative brainstorming. I can’t say that I have ever seen it proved out in research, but it works for me.

1. Early Thinking

You need a minimum of three people to brainstorm. Two works better than one, but three works much better than two. The problem with two is that you often find the discussion getting into a rut. You say one thing. Your brainstorming partner says something else. You repeat your position. She repeats hers. Eventually, the conversation stalls. With three people, this seldom happens. I’m not sure why exactly. It may be that the third person represents an audience. Even if only two people are talking, having someone there to listen – even if that third person is not normally involved in brainstorming – forces you to be at your best, to work hard to present your ideas in their strongest form.

2. Getting Ready 

During the initial stages of product development, I usually limit the team to three: me and two smart people that I trust. But nowadays, working with a much larger business, it’s sometimes necessary to expand the team at certain times and for certain reasons. Most of the time, when I expand the launch team, it is after the product and the marketing plan are 90% figured out and ready to be put into action.

In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argued that there is a limit to the number of people that can efficiently work together. That limit is six or seven. My preference is six. Since our meetings at this point are more about execution than innovation, I want the people in charge of execution to be there. But since the product is only 90% figured out (Ready… Fire… Aim), some further brainstorming is always done. Often with very good results.

3. Playing Chess 

Brainstorming is like chess. A game can take a year, a day, or just a half hour. And when it goes on too long, it can be frustrating. I have attended countless full-day and multi-day and even two- or three-day creative sessions that, in my opinion, could have been done in half the time. (I’ve always been impatient: “Okay. Great idea. Can we have it done tomorrow?”) But experience has taught me the wisdom of slowing down, so I resist the urge to set the project timer to warp speed.

However, when it feels like I am wading through the muddy waters of Lethargy Lake, I do everything I can to speed things up. And that usually works. Because if brainstorming is like chess, it’s also like basketball. After a long and sometimes fun game of back-and-forth, everything important happens in the last quarter.

4. Clarity and Purpose 

The best way to brainstorm efficiently is to be clear about what you want to accomplish at each session. Avoid the temptation to cover too many topics in one meeting. Six half-hour meetings spaced a day or two apart are likely to be 1000% more effective than one six-hour meeting because of all the chewing-it-over time participants will have.

Set the meeting’s objectives in writing, in the form of an agenda, with a time limit for each topic and for the meeting overall. I know that this is the kind of “anal thinking” that rankles some people – especially “creative” types. I used to feel that way. Nowadays, I’m all for restrictions. To me, time and topic limitations make good thinking great.

5. The Feeling

Most good product and promotional ideas don’t work. That’s a fact of business life. When I think about the hundreds of ideas I’ve brainstormed, I can retrospectively divide them into two groups: those ideas that the team was super-excited about and those that elicited a generally positive but not enthusiastic response.

About half of those that we were hyped about worked, and some of them worked very well. Only a small fraction of those that we felt moderately good about worked.

And that’s why, over the years, I developed a standard for new product and marketing ideas – an emotional standard: We don’t launch this thing unless and until we are all super-excited about it and super-sure that it will work.

That may seem like too high a standard. But it isn’t if you have the right people in the room.

6. The Right People in the Room 

When it’s time to “Fire” the launch of your new product or advertising campaign, you will have to include all sorts of good and thoughtful managers in the process. But during the brainstorming sessions – and especially the early ones – you must limit the participants to those people that are not just smart but enthusiastically committed to helping you grow the business. They should be ambitious. They will likely be competitive. Some will be contrarians. But they must be, absolutely must be, people with the brain power and the heart power to make a good idea a great one.

7. From Each According to His Brain 

Creative sessions work best when everyone contributes. But that will never happen if your creative team is divided into the smart people and the rest. The usual situation is that preference is given to the marketers and product people because it’s their job, normally, to come up with ideas. But if that were true, you wouldn’t need brainstorming sessions at all. You are all there for a reason – to generate fresh ideas. And they will come faster and be judged more fairly if everyone on the team feels like he has an equal right to be there.

8. Don’t Comment… Contribute 

It may seem counterintuitive, but the best way to encourage a free flow of ideas is to establish and maintain strict rules about the flow of communication.

The number one reason brainstorming sessions break down is because of intellectual laziness. It’s very hard to come up with a novel idea. It’s very easy to criticize one. To limit negative comments and diversionary conversations, I sometimes impose the following rules:

* Specific suggestions only. Nobody is allowed to speak in generalities or make general comments. They waste time, confuse people, and give rise to long-winded discussions.

* No specific criticism. When an idea is suggested, I will take a poll to see how many people in the group like it – but I don’t allow any specific criticism of the idea. Just tell me whether you like it or not and move on. We don’t have time to hear why.

* Be positive. I try to say something positive about every idea that is contributed, even the weak ones. If an idea gets a mediocre reception, I ask, “How could we make that better?” rather than “Here’s what’s wrong with that.”

* Encourage the meek and cut the windbags short. To keep up a steady generation of ideas, you have to be willing to control the conversation. The moment someone begins to pontificate – and you will know the second that happens – derail his speech by asking a question. Encourage the wallflowers to speak by prodding them with questions and complimenting their answers. Get the group working toward the goal of coming up with new ideas by reminding them of it over and over.

9. A Culture of Innovation 

I’ve been talking here about brainstorming new product and marketing ideas, but brainstorming is just one part of a much larger process. You can have the best creative team in the industry and come up with a dozen great ideas every week, but if your business can’t implement them well and quickly, it may do you no good.

Ultimately, you need an entire workforce of creative people in order to be an innovative company. And that includes everyone from the receptionist to the people in the warehouse to the customer service people, and so on. To grow your company, you need to develop a company culture of innovation and speed. (I will talk more about how to achieve that in my next essay on innovation.)

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