The Idea Hunter - Bill Fischer

Bill Fischer is a Professor of Innovation Management at IMD where he focuses his attention on corporate strategy, the practice of successful innovation, and the effective expression of talent in organizations where expertise is the predominant strategic asset. He also authors a regular column for Forbes.com entitled “The Ideas Business,” (http://blogs.forbes.com/billfischer) and has a personal blog entitled “Dispatches from the Front Lines of Executive Education” (http://billunplugged.blogspot.com).An engineer by training, American by citizenship, Bill has lived much of his life in Asia and Europe. Bill co-founded and now co-directs the IMD program on Driving Strategic Innovation, in cooperation with the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He held a full-professorship and endowed chair on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was the President of the China Europe International Business School, in Shanghai. His two most recent books The Idea Hunter (2011) and Virtuoso Teams (2005) [both coauthored with Andy Boynton] address issues of talent development and expression in a variety of organizational settings.  We got talking about the world of Ideas, India & ChinaAbhijit Bhaduri: I would like to focus on understanding your view of what is an Idea Hunter? Bill Fischer: An Idea Hunter is anyone who is consciously seeking out ideas as a source of professional advantage. It’s that colleague who always seems to have better ideas, or the friend who is always recommending things to read for professional growth, or the person across the meeting table who seems to be so well “plugged-in” to the latest professional news, way before anyone else. What they all have in common is that they recognize the power of ideas in building professional expertise and finding that next new idea which can move the organization, and they most likely are all -- wittingly or unwittingly -- disciplined in how and where (and maybe even when) they hunt for new ideas.This is not about scientists, or academics, it’s about normal people who have figured-out the power of knowing more and who then have become disciplined in the pursuit of that advantage. In fact, one of the most important lessons of this whole project has been that successful Idea Hunting is not about brains as much as it is about behavior: the smartest guys in the room are often not the most effectively smart. Why? Because the power of their individual intellect does not compare to the disciplined hunt that really accomplished Idea Hunters are able to achieve, which leverages the ideas of many more minds.Abhijit Bhaduri: Where do you get your ideas from? What are your favorites sources from information - websites, people, books you follow? Bill Fischer: Good question! My motivation in writing the book was actually to find out how others do it, because I’ve always felt a bit deficient in my own idea-hunting. It’s envy: how come these other people seem to know so much? So fast? I wanted to be in that club as well!The way I would characterize my own hunt practices, however, is to say that I am a T person. I know something about a lot, rather than a lot about any one particular thing -- I have a diverse set of interests. What has helped me greatly, however, is that I have several red-threads that run through my professional life:

• Innovation: as a practicing engineer (before becoming an academic) and as a graduate student in business, I was captivated by innovation, and by the ways that innovation could be performed more successfully. This took me immediately into IdeaHunting, although I didn’t know it quite that way at the time.
• China: In 1980, my family and I moved to Dalian, in Northeastern China, to work with senior Chinese officials in developing the reforms. One of the criteria for being selected by the U.S. government for this opportunity, was that the Chinese government expressly did not want “China experts” involved. I was well-qualified on that dimension, knowing very little about the Peoples’ Republic, but once there, at that time, I became fascinated by all I saw and those I met. In those days, there were few foreigners with as much in-country experience as I was fortunate to have, and I became heavily involved in interpreting the Chinese reform experiences for a wide range of different audiences and communities.
• Talent Utilization: in the early 2000s, my good friend and colleague Andy Boynton and myself were frustrated by working with so many organizations that excelled in turning great talent into average performers. So, we embarked on a search for teams that did just the opposite: teams which had recruited great talent and on the basis of that talent had achieved exceptional results. This led to our book on Virtuoso Teams and really became a third foci for the ideas that I continued to hunt for, well after that book project had finished.

The importance of this these three red-threads is that they have become part of the leitmotif of nearly everything that I do -- or my “gig” to use terminology from The Idea Hunter, and that has made my “hunts for new ideas” so much easier. I rely heavily upon the web -- New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal -- for basic news information. In addition, I read a wide-range of technology journals and magazines, mostly, but not exclusively, on-line. I am also an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction (iPad and traditional versions --more the latter than the former), and essentially avoid “business books” in my search for new ideas. I am especially drawn to depictions of science and art, where talent and communities combine to move ideas. In addition, Twitter has become a major source of new ideas for me: I am very disciplined in who I follow, and look for links as a way of reaching new sources that would otherwise be invisible to me. I follow you, for example, because you open professional, cultural, and geographic windows for me that I would not be aware of without following you. Twitter is amazingly powerful as an IdeaHunting tool. Finally, I like to think that I have a rich network of professional colleagues, spanning a range of domains, that allows me to both hunt and test new ideas. I find that ideas are hunted most successfully when there is a purpose at hand; either a book project, or a need to curate tweets to a particular community.Abhijit Bhaduri: What do firms in India and China need to do to move up the value chain to compete globally? Bill Fischer: This is a question that I’m particularly interested in. I think that the two cases are a different in both their evolutionary paths so far, and in terms of global expectations of what comes next. I really know more about China than India, so let me focus my responses there. China has been remarkably successful in transforming itself from a very backward economy to a global player, in a relatively short period of time. However, a large part of what it has accomplished has been tied directly into the export interests of foreign-invested players, both inside and out of China, who have supplied the designs, the equipment, and the channels of distribution, and have done this all using their own brands, as well. For China to be a full-fledged player on the global stage, it needs to encourage more original innovation among its firms, and to bring these new products to market using its own brands. We are already seeing some firms doing this quite successfully. However,  in order for more Chinese firms to do this, China must alleviate the world’s doubts regarding its global intentions and the integrity of its products. It also must solve the endemic corporate governance problems that regularly embarrass Chinese organizations in the eyes of the world. A key to all of this is the development of sophisticated, cosmopolitan managerial talent, which is the topic of your next question.... Abhijit Bhaduri: What do they need to do to their people processes (esp Org Culture) to be globally relevant given that both are hierarchical societies.Bill Fischer:The hallmark characteristics of successful contemporary innovation involve: speed, openness, diverse idea-sources, closeness to the customer, value-chain partnerships, and considerable risk-taking. All of these are an anathema in a hierarchical society. Firms that originate in such cultural milieus need to work on “suspending cultural norms” within the business organization in order not to be impeded in the fierce competition that characterizes the modern global marketplace. This is easier to suggest than to accomplish! My experience as president of a 50/50 joint venture in China [CEIBS] suggests that the challenge is a daunting one, but worthwhile. China and India have such abundant talent, that that should be their ultimate competitive advantage, but only if they can find a way to release this talent, at least within the business organization, from the societal constraints that have long diminished it.This reminds me that in our book Virtuoso Teams, one of the main messages is that: the innovative potential of young people is breathtaking, but only if they are allowed to express their talent. Virtuoso Teams is really a book about “young people changing the world.” This is not only a Chinese and Indian challenge, but a challenge for all of us.Abhijit Bhaduri: Now that Indian firms are expanding their footprint globally - will the somewhat Western centric model of a global manager get redefined. What is your definition of a global manager in the new world? Bill Fischer: This is a great question! I think that what sort of managerial type will prove to be most appropriate will depend upon the strategic context of the firm. Where we are most likely, I think, to see a “global managerial model” emerge is those industries where it is imperative to unleash the talent employed in order to compete on the basis of fresh new, innovative, ideas. Here, I suspect, the Western model will remain highly influential, as it is has revealed itself, when applied most effectively, to be respectful of talent, embracing of diversity, and able to relax hierarchical prerogatives in pursuit of new ideas. All of these are central to what any firm needs in order to compete globally with innovation.-----------------Buy the book The Idea Hunter from Amazon (click here)