REAL INNOVATION TIMELESS TECHNIQUES FROM THE AUTODESK INNOVATION GENOME PROJECT BILL O’CONNOR Is there such a thing as an “Innovation DNA”? Are there timeless principles that innovators have applied for thousands or even millions of years to create the things that have shaped our world? If so, how can we discover and use these principles to make our own work more innovative? These were some of the questions we most important question: Could we help were wrestling with back in 2011 in the them become more innovative? San Francisco offices of Autodesk, a design software company based in Our customers, who create the buildings Silicon Valley. It was questions like these and bridges, consumer products and that inspired us to embark on a ten-year industrial machines, as well as the games, project that would take us back to the TV shows, and feature films we see all earliest origins of innovation—which we around us, must be innovative if they are estimate to be 3.5 million years ago, to succeed, and because Autodesk was starting with the remarkable innovation the company creating the complex tech- known as the stone hand axe—in search nologies that enabled them to do their of what we now call the Innovation work, they quite reasonably assumed that Genome. Autodesk would have some answers to these important questions. INNOVATION: A TOPIC AS The thing was . we usually didn’t. URGENT AS IT IS FUZZY Now, that’s not to say we hadn’t done a So, why the interest in innovation at lot of careful thinking about innovation; Autodesk? It was simple: many of of course we had, as demonstrated by the Autodesk’s best customers—20 million many innovation-related presentations designers, architects, engineers, and digi- Autodesk executives had been giving at tal artists from 160 countries—had conferences and other industry gather- become intensely focused on the topic, ings. and they were constantly asking us all kinds of things about innovation: Do we know what it really is? Do we know how THE SEARCH FOR REAL it’s done? Do we actually know how to INNOVATION do it at Autodesk? How does Silicon Our executives started making these pre- Valley innovate? And the kicker, the sentations in 2006, when Carl Bass took 80 innovations / Policy Design Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/inov_a_00258 by guest on 30 September 2021 Real Innovation over the company’s CEO role. Over the useful insight that every innovation goes next five years, Carl had given a good through five distinct phases: number of high-profile talks about inno- 1. First, the innovation is impossible, vation, which I helped him prepare in meaning no one has ever before done my role as his speechwriter. I also had or created it. been working with Autodesk’s chief technology officer Jeff Kowalski and vice 2. Second, it becomes impractical, mean- president of strategy Jon Pittman on ing the innovation now exists but is their innovation talks—and I had even available only to a select few. started giving these presentations myself. 3. Third, the innovation becomes possible, By 2011, Autodesk had earned a pretty meaning it has become ubiquitously good reputation for our perspective on available and is a true innovation innovation. We had defined innovation, because it has had a significant impact explored it, debated it, and offered our on the world. perspectives on it hundreds of times in 4. Fourth, it becomes expected, meaning our presentations—and, in the process, it has become commonplace enough we had addressed all of the now well- known topics in the innovation canon: that, while still valuable, it is not sur- prising or novel any more. What is innovation? 5. Fifth, the innovation becomes required, What’s the difference between inven- in that it has become a fully integrated tion and innovation? part of the world landscape. Should we focus on breakthrough inno- vation or incremental innovation? I developed the Innovation Continuum— which presents the full journey from Is innovation a cultural phenomenon something being a wild idea (impossible) or an individual achievement? to being a fundamental part of the world What processes should organizational (required)—with fellow Autodesker Jim leaders implement to inspire innova- Awe in 2009. This was a great example of tion? our work on innovation around that How can we measure innovation? time: after five years exploring the con- cept and engaging with customers and Almost Useful: The Innovative audiences all over the world on the sub- Continuum ject, we had become adept at helping peo- Along the way we had created some ple think about innovation. However, we interesting concepts, like the Innovation hadn’t yet cracked the code of how to Continuum, which demonstrates the help people actually “do” innovation. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bill O’Connor is Autodesk’s Innovation Strategist, and Founder of the Autodesk Innovation Genome Project. © 2017 Bill O’Connor innovations / volume 11, number 3/4 81 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/inov_a_00258 by guest on 30 September 2021 Bill O’Connor Figure 1. The Innovation Continuum The Dreaded Curse of IBNU— customers—from 3D printing and robot- “Interesting But Not Useful” ic systems to generative design and artifi- By the spring of 2011, Autodesk had cial intelligence—as a source of real become what I would eventually describe innovation. And by real innovation, we as “IBNU”—Interesting But Not Useful. weren’t referring to the kind of “innova- People would listen to our presentations tion poetry” that makes up about 90 per- about innovation and comment on how cent of what we might archly call the interesting they were, but I would think “Innovation Industrial Complex.” No, we to myself, “Well, okay, I’m glad you liked were talking about the exact opposite of the presentation, but I don’t think I’ve that kind of purely theoretical work, and given you a damn thing that can actually we had defined innovation/real innova- help you to become more innovative.” tion as “the art of establishing something Basically, we were offering some com- new or different out in the real world pelling words, images, and concepts that has a significant impact.” At about innovation, but they weren’t pro- Autodesk we had been exploring dozens viding any practical help with the task of innovative projects for the previous itself—it was kind of like spending the five years, which gave us a valuable con- whole summer talking about surfing text for the methodology we would even- without ever getting in the water. tually create. So the next question was, how do we get The Innovation Secrets of Silicon beyond IBNU and start to develop Valley insights and techniques that will help people become more innovative? Where Our second source for insights about can we look for real-world inspiration innovation was Silicon Valley, that and information about this elusive topic? famous epicenter of technology, startups, We came up with three answers to that and innovation situated in the San question. Francisco Bay Area. We started looking for innovation patterns that made Silicon Valley different (see Figure 2) and were The Autodesk Ecosystem as a able to infuse our innovation work with Source of Innovation Information the spirit and best practices of our home The first answer was to look at the work town. we were doing at Autodesk and with our 82 innovations / Policy Design Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/inov_a_00258 by guest on 30 September 2021 Real Innovation Figure 2. The 7 Innovation Secrets of Silicon Valley 3.5 Million Years of Innovation INNOVATION: IT’S MORE and Inspiration THAN TECHNOLOGY, AND Our third answer to the question of how MORE THAN 30 YEARS OLD to go beyond IBNU was somewhat Why peer all the way back to the dawn of counter-intuitive, but it ultimately history for innovation insights and tech- proved both interesting and useful. We niques? knew that the innovation work we’d been doing at Autodesk, and the work Autodesk and Silicon Valley were both being done by other Silicon Valley inno- rich sources of information about inno- vators, would give us two good innova- vation. However, we recognized that, tion datasets. However, we soon saw that because both are based on technology, our scope would need to be broader, and focusing our efforts entirely on those two certainly go beyond the realm of technol- sources would ultimately be very limiting ogy, if we were to achieve our stated and would blind us to, or cause us to objective of creating bona fide innova- devalue, innovations that were not tech- tion techniques. nological per se or not somehow related to technology. We realized that to identify the timeless universal principles of innovation we We also realized that it would be difficult would have to do a little intellectual time to identify any new universal principles travelling—all the way back to the very of innovation if all we did was focus on first innovation in human history, some what everyone else in the innovation 3.5 million years ago. world was focusing on, which was pri- marily the past 30 years of technology. In other words . Silicon Valley. We started to realize that, because we were smack in the middle of the global innovations / volume 11, number 3/4 83 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/inov_a_00258 by guest on 30 September 2021 Bill O’Connor Figure 3. Innovation Genome Research Parameters center of technological innovation, we we considered to be the one thousand were subject to the preconception that greatest innovations in human history, innovation and technology are quasi- and to use that list of human achieve- synonymous, which isn’t true.