Have you heard about the cardboard box that paradoxically encourages you to think outside the box?
Adobe Kickbox was created in 2013 by Mark Randall, VP of Creativity at Adobe. Mark saw that very few projects make it to the prototype stage and that there are not enough failures. He believes that failure is inherent in innovation and therefore innovation that shows no failure indicates that the organization is not sufficiently exploring new opportunities.
Mark wanted to open avenues for all employees in the organization, to bring up new ideas, both for those who are not in the “classic” roles of innovation and for those who are discouraged by the bureaucratic process. The kickbox is the ultimate invitation for employees to develop innovation – including treats to encourage creativity and motivation. Everything an “innovator” needs — to brainstorm, prototype, and explore product feasibility — all is neatly packaged in a little red box. This box contains a set of printed instructions, notebooks, a Starbucks gift card, and a chocolate bar—plus a $1,000 credit card fee in advance to finance any idea the employee wants to develop.
Inside the box is an innovative six-level learning plan based on Randall’s own past experience as an entrepreneur before joining Adobe. The six levels are:
Start – examining the employee’s motivation to create something new
Idea – how to utilize creativity and generate ideas
Improvement – providing tools to improve ideas
Investigation – Collecting data with real-world experiments
Repetition – developing and testing hypotheses
Penetration – raising the idea to management
The levels are described on printed help cards and come with actions that must be completed before progressing to the next level. For example, to complete Step 3, employees must build a canvas model of their idea. To complete Step 4, employees must create a product website and get at least 250 visitors to it through ads.
By getting ideas out into the real world, the ideas are first vetted by the target audience instead of a manager—who might reject ideas that customers might want.
If they manage to complete the red box, the innovators are the proud recipients of… the blue box. Since every idea is different, every blue box is different, and its purpose is to help the employee move the idea to a functional beta version. Adobe reports a significant increase in the number of new ideas that came up and were tested and a significant improvement in the effectiveness of the process.
Creating intra-organizational innovation is one of the challenges facing organizations in the field of organizational culture. Culture is a critical component in an organization’s ability to promote change, develop, and ultimately survive.
