How to Innovate

An Interview with Innovation Guru Matthew May

Matthew May has reinvented the way we look at things.

In his book In Pursuit of Elegance and countless of articles, he shares with us thought-provoking ideas in the Art of Innovation. As we all know, in this rapidly changing age that we live in, innovation is the key to sustainability.

And Matthew holds the keys. A few years ago, he found one of the keys in the Far East by studying Toyota. Today, he wants to share these keys with the world. Do you want to learn the key to innovation and elegance? Read on.

What is innovation? How do we translate it on a day-to-day level?

I like the definition David Neeleman, founder and former CEO of JetBlue, offers:

“Innovation is figuring out a way to do something better than it’s ever been done before.”

It’s simple, abundant, accessible definition that needs no translation. Everyone, irrespective of walk in life, can do something every day to try to improve their performance.

Define ‘creativity’ for us. What does it mean to the janitor? To the cashier?

To me, creativity isn’t reserved for artists. It’s about thinking like an artist with respect to your work. Artists use the clear boundaries of their medium and work within them — a block of marble, the canvas edge, eight musical notes. Those constraints drive their creativity. Sting doesn’t say “I need another note.” So to the cashier or janitor, creativity means, as it does for the artist, being resourceful.

In your opinion, who are the most innovative companies globally?

The most innovative companies in the world are the ones you don’t know (yet) by name…the hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and small companies that drive the global economy. They have an idea for changing the world, work on shoestring budgets, and breathe innovation daily. They’re strapped for money, material, manpower…but those resource constraints drive them, fuel them.

What led you to pursue Elegance?

Elegance is the simultaneous achievement of to two conflicting traits: uncommon simplicity and surprising power.

An elegant solution is one that accomplishes the maximum effect with the minimum of means. The path to elegance is through subtraction, and I had a bit of an epiphany a half dozen years ago when I read a year-end essay by Jim Collins. His parting thought struck me: “A great piece of art is composed not just of what is in the final piece, but equally what is not. It is the discipline to discard what does not fit — to cut out what might have already cost days or even years of effort — that distinguishes the truly exceptional artist and marks the ideal piece of work, be it a symphony, a novel, a painting, a company, or most important of all, a life.”

What’s the best way to solve complex problems?

Understand that the most elegant solutions come from keen observation of the problem. In writing In Pursuit of Elegance, I spent time with UK urban designer Ben Hamiltion-Baillie, who says that, “What’s wrong with how we engineer things is that most of what we accept as the proper order of things is based on assumptions, not observations. If we observed first, designed second, we wouldn’t need most of the things we build.”

Combine that with the warning by MIT professor Peter Senge, who says “we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never get solved,” and you have the answer.

How can design help companies? How can design be part of strategy?

Design Thinking has rapidly moved to the forefront of the current management zeitgeist as a fresh take not just on how to rethink key products and services, but also how to reframe everyday processes and projects.

In an effort to create a cross-company culture of innovation and collaboration, businesses all over the world are taking a page from design firms, and realizing the rewards. But design thinking isn’t about “making pretty.” It’s about embedding a disciplined approach to blending creativity and logic in order to solve real business problems, with the intent of turning everyone, irrespective of function or title, into a designer of sorts.

Let’s hear your take on why ideas spread. What are the ingredients of an idea that is sure to spread?

There’s a lot of books and articles on how and why certain ideas stick and spread. But BAD ideas can stick and spread. We have a rocky economy now for that very reason. I’m more concerned with what makes a good idea in the first place.

A good idea is one that is elegant: it changes minds and mindsets, it seduces us into using our imaginations, it does so by cleverly subtracting something that pulls us in, and it’s sustainable — meaning it doesn’t undermine the capital resources used to generate it. A good example is Sudoku. Another is Twitter.

What’s the best thing about working with Toyota?

I spent eight years as an extended team member of Toyota. The best thing about working with them was that it changed my life, my way of thinking, about my own work. It taught me to look for the elegant solution, that it’s often a tiny idea that changes everything, that to find it you need to constantly experiment, and that there’s always a better way. In fact, my mantra is “No Best, Only Better.”

Who are YOUR personal heroes? Why?

My personal heroes are mostly the everyday ones: parents, coaches, teachers, teammates. It’s where I find a constant wellspring of heroic qualities, like selflessness, sacrifice, strength, resourcefulness, integrity, generosity. We all have have heroes, and need to have heroes, in order to, as Peggy Noonan once wrote: “…lift life, to suggest a future you can be hungry for. Heroes, just by being, communicate the romantic and yet realistic idea that you can turn your life into something great. The key, of course, is to have the right heroes — to be lifted by greatness and not just by glamour, to be lit by the desire to do good, as opposed to the desire to do well.”

What are YOU hungry for?

Why, elegance, of course! I’m insatiable when it comes to ideas and solutions — strategies, performances, products, services — that exact a profound impact but look to be unusually simple, to the point of being seemingly incomplete. I’m hungry for stories that illustrate how to make room for more of what matters by eliminating what doesn’t. It’s a universal pursuit. We all reach for elegance at some level, and yet it so often exceeds our grasp.

Tell us more about this: “The pursuit of perfection is not focused on achieving perfection, it’s focused on chasing it.”

Perfection is a vector. A direction for innovation and ingenuity. Approached that way, it can drive breakthroughs. Approached as goal or an end, it can actually block innovation. Why? Because perfection is unachievable…it’ll never happen. That’s what throws people, at least in our Western culture. We’ve become impatient with mastery. If you can’t achieve perfection, why bother with it? Because you have to. Otherwise you’ll always be a follower.

About Matthew May

Matthew E. May is Chief Strategist for MBox Design, and the author of In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing.

He blogs at the AMEX OPEN Forum Idea Hub, and InPursuitofElegance.com.

You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/matthewemay.