CUSTOMERS.COM® RESEARCH FROM THE PATRICIA SEYBOLD GROUP
MAKING
TEAM INNOVATION WORK
Learning from FIRST How to Inspire Inventors and Build an
Innovative Culture
By Patricia B. Seybold, May 1, 2008
One
of Three Winning FRC Teams!
Photo
by Akill11, Flickr
Illustration
1. Three members of the ThunderChickens: one of the three
championship teams. The Winning Alliance of the FIRST Robotics
Competition Championship was: Team 148 “Robowranglers” of
Greenville High School from Greenville, Texas; Team 217 “ThunderChickens” of
Utica Community Schools from Sterling Heights, Michigan;
Team 1114 “Simbotics” of Governor Simcoe
Secondary School from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
HOW TO FOSTER INNOVATION AND GRACIOUS PROFESSIONALISM
How do you build a culture that nurtures repeated success in innovation?
1. Give a really hard problem to solve to multiple teams of smart, motivated
people.
2. Give them unrealistic deadlines, too little money, and not enough resources,
so they have to become inventive in creating their own conditions for success.
3. Give them, as a reward, the opportunity to compete against and to learn
from other teams who are working on the same problem.
4. Provide each team with many opportunities to test and refine their solution
in real world conditions in competition with others who are solving the
same problems.
5. Provide each team with mentors—knowledgeable experts who don’t
have the answers but who are willing to learn and explore with each team.
6. Celebrate all aspects of success, including teamwork, learning, community
service, mentoring, marketing, and entrepreneurialism.
7. Provide a framework for them to do this over and over again, year after
year, and to spawn and mentor new teams.
That’s what FIRST has done with kids. Can we do it with our
own employees? As Woodie Flowers reminds us (see below), “Societies get
the best of what they celebrate!”
Read
more.