Innovation!

Innovation! Creativity! Mindspace!

Are we in the 80's? At some touchy-feely seminar on getting in touch with our inner-CEO? Maybe we've taken a hop, skip and a jump away from science and are now basking in the holistic glow of a guru's inner-peace sanctum.

View from Apollo 17. Innovation made this possible!

Nope! Innovation, creativity, mindspace and many more such buzzwords are not traditionally associated with an empirical approach to things but are becoming recognised more and more as powerful, scientifically grounded concepts. Jack Donaghy, the larger-than-life executive from the show 30 Rock even created a whole new word to describe the process; innovent!

The idea is that for too long we've neglected the intellectual capital lying dormant in each of us. As creatures of habit we've stuck to tradition. We do things because they've always been done that way and we'll be darn sure to keep doing it that way, thank you very much!

There is of course a behavioural explanation for this. We're social creatures, we tend to go along with the group and despite having amazing abilities (operant learning process, see my Behaviour in Context page for more) to think logically we just don't! (for more see Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler's brilliant book; Nudge! my review can be found here) We like the comfort of tradition. It's nice. We get social approval. We avoid failure. We gain economic reward. Basically it's a very reinforcing process.

The problem is eventually we hit a snag. We hit a snag in that everyone is doing what we are doing. When one person is doing something innovation is unnecessary. When two people are doing something - innovation is hardly needed. When hundreds of people are doing the same thing as you, you need to stand out. How do you get noticed in your job? How do you become the top student? How do you become the go-to business in your niche?

Innovation! But what the heck is it? Encompass-Scotland define it as such:

innovation in your business means doing something new, different, smarter or better that will make a positive difference.  

So there you go. It means doing something different. It means being different. That's a hard thing to do. It means taking a risk. Not being afraid to "go there" with a new product, or process or design.

A couple of ways you could be different is:

Get different departments talking to each other. If you're a business you need to get the techies out of their office, the guys from upstairs to come down, and the people on the floor to stick their heads round the corner and add their two cents. Don't just trust that a team designated "innovation" will do any such thing. Collaboration is the key here!

Research outside your comfort zone. This one is for the academics or niche producers out there. As a psychologist I find it very easy to just read the psychology literature. Frankly, I tell myself, I haven't got the time to keep up to date with everything else. But you need to make time! If you're a psychologist, get into economics, get into philosophy, or literature. If you're a healthcare provider, draw inspiration from educational literature. Oftentimes the ideas are universal but applied specifically. An alternative perspective can introduce to novel, groundbreaking ideas if and when they are applied to your sector.

Brainstorm. The much maligned group activity that has people groaning. But trust the process! First of all get people comfortable with the idea of throwing out ideas that are just random. Focus comes later. First get all the ideas onto a board. Get a discussion going. The rest can follow.

These are just a couple of ideas you can build on, frankly the literature is massive and you can find a million ideas out there. The Wales Centre for Behaviour Change specialises in helping businesses in the public and private sector harness the power of innovation and creative development to enhance their impact.

Ultimately though, innovation is a process. It's about turning the way we think about our daily life, our business, our routine, on it's head and starting fresh with new, radical ideas. Consider, if you want, innovating in just one small part of your business or daily life. If that means eating a steak for breakfast, or moving from a production business to a service industry then so be it.

IQ@BU

Dr. John Parkinson (my boss!) discusses innovation and what the Wales Centre for Behaviour Change has been setup to achieve, with thanks to Alliance for Useful Evidence and Wales Public Services.

Review; Nudge!

Nudge; Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2009) is published by Penguin and is available on Amazon for £6.89

Nudge is a difficult book to categorise. In one sense it is an easy-to-read book in the style of many self help tomes that promises a quick fix to your looooooooooooong held problems. The tag line read like something you’d see on a cheesy 80’s paperback about wishful thinking or something.

On the other hand it’s an absolute game changer. It sets the tone for a revolution in the way we govern our own lives and indeed the way we are governed by politicians.

The underlying premise of the book is called (in the words of Thaler and Sunstein) Libertarian Paternalism. A seemingly oxymoronic concept that the two go to great lengths to show is actually a compatible idea. Personally I think it’s a misnomer... there’s no real paternalism in this book. In fact the book is quite respectful of it’s audience (which, from the examples given is obviously an educated, university-level professional, or semi-professional) and never gets too bogged down in idiosyncratic language normally ubiquitous in the special sciences.

The writing style as a whole is actually quite pleasing - the book is casual and moves at a decent pace. Neither Thaler nor Sunstein lose focus, nor sway off topic. However, strangely, they chose to refer to each other in the third person “Thaler did this...Sunstein did that” throughout. Weird, but hardly something to gripe about.

They begin this gem of a book by explaining why they think people need a “nudge” (and just what the hell a nudge is!) and then go on to apply it to Money, Health, and Freedom. They then look at some common objections.

I don’t want to spoil the book too much but underlying it is the idea that people are “Choice Architects” which is to say as we interact in the world with others and our environment we (consciously or not) affect our ability to make choices and the choices of those around us. Something so simple as putting something back on a shelf in a harder to reach place may be enough of a “nudge” to cause someone to go for something else... for better or worse.

The book is from a behavioural economics perspective which means it’s light on behavioural theory but anyone even passingly familiar with basic behavioural theory will easily identify relevant ideas.

The matching law plays a large role in this book. For those unfamiliar with the matching law I will write a more extensive post on it in the future, but for now the matching law essentially states that the proportion of behaviour we do in a given situation is directly proportional to the amount (and quality, rate etc...) of reinforcement received.

As such if I make it harder (but not impossible) to smoke, and relatively easier (but not mandatory) to chew gum I being a good Choice Architect (within the bounds of Libertarian Paternalism) since I am not forcing anyone to do anything, I am just influencing choices.

Of course the book raises deeper philosophical issues; like how can anyone claim responsibility for their actions? What about free will? Are we really to believe politicians only have our best interests at heart?

The book addresses some of these issues but there are many who would question the answers given  - however this book is not billing itself as a philosophical exploration of Libertarianism, Paternalism, Progressivism and so on. Within the bounds of bailiwick it does a good job of introducing the world to this game-changing theory.

I highly recommend you read it.  

Welcome!

Hi and welcome to this new blog. my name is Philip Nelson and I’m a research officer at Bangor University - for my full bio, go here - if you’ve found this blog it’s probably because you’re interested in behaviour.

I won’t go into too much detail at the moment, that can wait. In brief though this blog will be an amalgam of commentary, reviews, articles and other tid-bits of behaviour-related goodness.

I have no formal plan on when or how often to write, but it will probably be fairly recently; about once a week I guess.

I hope you enjoy your visit here!

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