Innovation with BEAN Concept

Innovation with BEAN Concept

D6565 – Hasna Larasati

Companies often fail to overcome one major obstacle, namely the habits and activities within the organization that hinder innovation. These obstacles such as meetings that are run less than optimally or poorly, little opportunity to speak to provide ideas or suggestions, lack of capacity and there is an assumption that doing things differently (innovation) is inefficient and expensive. In the Harvard Business Review, Anthony explained that the solution to overcome barriers to innovation is to use the BEAN Concept to break down the barriers to innovation. Scott D. Anthony is a strategic advisor, author and speaker on the topic of growth and innovation. He has been based in Singapore since 2010, currently serving as Managing Director of Innosight’s Asia-Pacific operations and co-author of Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future. BEAN Concept is an acronym for Behavioral Enablers, Artifacts and Nudges. Behavioral Enablers are tools or processes that make it easier for people to do something differently; Artifacts, which you can see or touch, support the new behavior; Nudges, promote change through indirect suggestion and reinforcement. Along with these developments, innovation also has the following behaviors: (1) Curious; Question the status quo and consistently search for different and better ways to do things, (2) Customer Obsessed; Relentlessly seek to develop ever deeper understanding of the jobs to be done of customers, employees, and stakeholders, (3) Incorporate cross-functional expertise resourcefully, recognizing that the smartest person in the room is often the room itself, (4) Adept in Ambiguity; Act confidently despite incomplete information, expect iteration and change, excel at experimentation, and celebrate judicious risk taking, (5) Empowered; Exercise initiative, seek out and leverage resources and make confident decisions.

The BEAN Concept was developed to overcome unwanted distractions or habits in innovating by promoting new and better things through three steps. The first step is to define desired behaviors. First the team outlines the characteristics of the organization it wants to be, describing a culture that is agile, learning-oriented, customer-obsessed, data-driven and experimental. Then the second step is to identify specific blockers. The team looks for things that hinder this innovative behavior. To uncover these barriers, members sit in staff meetings, conduct surveys, interview employees. With the intention to find out what obstacles or problems are faced by employees and provide input or ideas to develop company innovation. From the survey results through discussions and interviews, the cultural team (consultants and change agents) can identify and describe the behaviors that are sought and inhibited by employees. If you don’t develop this BEAN Concept, you may end up with pseudo-blockers that are difficult to handle.A simple way to identify the specific change you want to see is to gather a group of employees and ask them to complete two sentences: “Wouldn’t it be great if we …” (which elicited the behavior 😉 and “But we didn’t ‘not because…” (which helps specify a blocker). “Wouldn’t it be great if we…” (which surfaces the behaviors; ) and “But we don’t because…” (which helps pinpoint the blockers). The purpose of identifying through employees is because employees are an internal part of the company that runs the company’s business processes, those who know the constraints. Human resources are a valuable asset of the company. So ideas, innovations, new strategies start from the employees. Finally, the third step is the Develop & Implement BEAN Concept; Come up with an intervention. The culture team devises a way to remove the blockers. After discussing the desired behavior and inhibiting it, participants are divided into small groups for structured brainstorming. Each group is given a BEAN sample from another organization for inspiration and, to design a new one, uses a simple template that allows the group to define the behaviors it seeks, the habits that stand in its way, and the drivers and incentives that will help employees to achieve those innovations. All participants then regroup to review the proposed BEANs and select a few to apply.