Innovation Is Magic.

Really

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When Stefan Thomke teaches students how to manage innovation and

creativity, he turns to an unexpected source: Magician Jason Randal.

by Dina Gerdeman
When business executives create innovative products or services, they often
look to impress their customers by delivering an experience more
meaningful, more delightful, than possibly expected. A true "wow!" moment.
And Harvard Business School Professor Stefan Thomke knows just whom to
consult to create such a spellbinding experience: a world-class magician.
Thomke, the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration
at Harvard Business School, has paired up with magician Jason Randal to
teach innovation to business executives.
The unusual partnership came about after Randal visited HBS and
performed tricks that blew Thomke away. "He's an amazing performer, and
my curiosity went through the roof. I felt like a young boy again." Thomke
was teaching a course in the MBA program on innovation in 2009 and had
an idea: Wouldn't it be interesting if Randal could talk to students about
innovation in his performance art?
"When you teach innovation, you tell your students that the best practices
can come from some of the most unlikely sources," Thomke says.

In the following years, Thomke and Randal spent weeks discussing each
other's discipline and collaborated on the paper. They also developed a
learning experience, titled "Innovation Magic", that builds on their insights
and backgrounds as teacher, researcher, and performer.
The experience starts with magic performances by Randal and ends with a
two-hour class session that teaches the underlying innovation principles.
The initial idea was tested in a course called Leading Product Innovation in
the executive education program and refined over the years. At this point,
more than 1,000 executives participated and the feedback has been
enthusiastic.
Randal's lessons for executives are not just about how an engaging
personality, psychological insights, and talented hands can create wonderful
effects that amaze an audience. It's just as much about the hard, creative
work Randal puts in to continuously improve his art.

ORGANIZATIONS CAN DO A WONDERFUL JOB AT

SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEMS
Magicians are always under pressure to reinvent their performances to stay
ahead of the competition. When David Copperfield made the Statue of
Liberty "disappear," Franz Harary responded with a vanishing space shuttle.
The same is true of business managers: They must strive to be innovative,
providing the kind of magical product and service experiences that exceed
customer expectations and the offerings of competitors. What's the secret?
Success in business as well as magic has less to do with clever marketing
and more to do with the innovation process, Thomke and Randal write in the
2012 paper Innovation Magic. The authors also teamed to write The Magic
of Innovation, published in the European Business Review earlier this year.

A MAGICAL PROCESS

Thomke maintains that innovative managers looking to create successful

new products or services can benefit from the practices that magicians like
Randal follow:
Take time to understand the real problem that needs to be solved. Some
magicians spend a lot of time considering which illusion they want to
accomplish before they start working on how to accomplish the trick. Too
often, managers rush to develop solutions to customer problems without
defining the real problem the product or service should be designed to solve.
For example, when Walt Disney was plotting out Disneyland in the late
1940s, he didn't concern himself at first with typical amusement park issues
like how many rides to build, how much parking to provide, or what food to
sell. Instead, he focused on this overarching question: How can Disney
make its visitors feel as though they are having a magical customer
experience? Defining the problem may be the most important part of the
innovation process, yet it is often given short shrift, Thomke says.
"We have to allow ourselves time. It's often not seen as making progress
when you don't have solutions to show. I would argue it's just as important
as solving problems. Organizations can do a wonderful job at solving the
wrong problems."
Figure out how to solve the problem. "The solution to a problem can
sometimes come from the most unlikely sources, and it's often the
intersection of different fields that results in major innovations," theInnovation
Magic paper observes.
Just as the magician may need to delve into psychology, mechanics,
locksmithing and other fields in his quest to pull off a new effect, companies
often succeed at innovation when they assemble diverse teams of
designers, engineers, and other specialists working together to solve a
problem.

Find a way to hide the solution. The magician's audience doesn't necessarily
care how difficult a trick is or how it is accomplished. People simply want to
be entertained. Likewise, in business, sometimes the best solution involves
keeping certain complex pieces that go into a product design invisible. That's
why Bang & Olufsen removed equalizer controls from some of its audio
equipment in favor of a system that automatically adjusts itself for the
listener.
"At Disney, nobody wants to see someone take the trash out, so Disney has
an underground system of tunnels," Thomke says. "It's there, but you hide it
because it's completely irrelevant to the customer experience."

MAGICIANS LEARN THAT TO DO SOMETHING THAT

ONLY HAS AN EFFECT OF A FEW SECONDS, IT CAN
TAKE MONTHS
Sell the experience. A magician can be highly skilled in illusion techniques,
yet may not know how to perform--or sell--the experience in a way that will
resonate with an audience.
In the same way, successful companies have learned that selling a product
is about more than the product itself; it's about creating a customer
experience that taps into people's emotions, ultimately making them feel
good. High-end vodka companies such as Grey Goose and Chopin have
packaged their liquor in tall, sleek, frosted glass bottles as a way to enhance
the elegant feel of the products for consumers.
"A magician has to be very much aware of the emotional state of the
audience to get that emotional buy-in," Thomke says. "You can take a trick
and do it very clinically and people will sit there and say, 'That was
interesting.' Or you can tell an amazing story that draws the audience in and
you embed the trick in the story. Once you have buy-in, the audience is
much more likely to have a wow experience."

FAILURE IS PART OF THE PROCESS

Innovations don't appear out of thin air; rather, people need to actively
"intend to innovate," Thomke says. Figuring out how to solve a problem and
sell the experience involves deep thinking and plenty of experimentation.
Taking it slow, letting a problem "marinate" as you inch forward with figuring
it out is often the best approach.
"When you are experimenting, you are going to fail along the way. It's part of
the process," Thomke says. "What I often find is that there's no shortage of
ideas, but there are so many ideas, they don't get any traction. The idea has
to be experimented with. If you start out with a set of well-defined problems
and then generate ideas that address those well-defined problems, you have
a much better chance of success."
Magicians will stand in front of the mirror to test, revise, retest and further
revise illusions until they get them just right. Thomke says that celebrated
escape artist and magician Harry Houdini owned a very large collection of
locks and handcuffs, and constantly rehearsed picking them until he got to
the point where he could open most locks in seconds.
"Magicians learn that to do something that only has an effect of a few
seconds, it can take months," he says. "You have to think of all the things
that can happen. People in the audience can do strange things. They might
try to expose you. Magicians have to do a lot of rehearsing and testing, not
just so their technique gets better, but also to get a sense for all the
contingencies, all the things that could go wrong, so they have a plan for
everything."
The same goes for business, he says. "When you're delivering a service,
people will respond in very different ways. You have to be prepared."
Innovators who are working on solving a problem can benefit from
alternating between the roles of creator and critic. At times when we are
presented with a new idea, we immediately start tearing apart its flaws--and
that can put a damper on the creative process before it has a chance to get
off the ground. And just as magicians often challenge themselves to take a

trick and make it a better experience, managers should constantly ask,

"What else?"
"It seems obvious, but that question of 'what else can I do' is not often
asked. Sometimes the question is as important as the answer," Thomke
says.

WHEN APPLE BUYS YOUR COMPANY

In teaching a case study about Apple, Thomke asks a thought-provoking
question to conclude the discussion: Imagine that Apple takes over your
company. What would it change? "One good question can allow you to look
from the outside in. By asking the right questions, you can get amazing
solutions."
Persistence is crucial to success, and executives need to make sure they
are not giving up too early. The paper notes that the early makers of MP3
players "helped develop impressive technology, but they didn't take it far
enough. They stopped asking the next round of innovation questions,
leaving Apple to reap the benefits from recognizing that the crucial thing
wasn't just the device itself, but the magical way in which the entire music
industry could be transformed with the electronic delivery of digital content.
And thus was born the wildly successful iTunes platform."
The innovation lessons, which required many iterations and innovations in
how the material is taught, magically seem to click in just the right way,
Thomke says.
"We approach this like you would design any customer experience," he
says. "You want it to be unforgettable in a good way, which requires attention
to many details and the participants' recognition that the lessons are very
useful to solve business innovation problems. The magic is what makes the
innovation part unforgettable."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dina Gerdeman is a writer based in Mansfield, Massachusetts.