Persona Pain Gain Map – Mini Muffin Cookies

Mr. and Mrs. Jones are an upper-middle-class couple with three young kids.  Their youngest, Amanda is four years old and just starting to take swimming lesson and dance.  Terry is six and is very athletic; he’s already playing soccer and baseball.  Jane is the oldest at ten, and is setting the stage (literally) for her sister as she is very involved in dance, as well as gymnastics.  Mr. Jones is in upper management for a fortune 500 company and tends to work long hours every day, but supplies a very good income for the family.  Mrs. Jones teaches high school students, and enjoys the hours and summers off as they give her more time to spend with the kids.

As much as the teaching hours help, Mrs. Jones finds it nearly impossible to juggle the busy schedules of her kids, as well as take care of things on the home front.  Mr. Jones helps out when he can, but frequently gets stuck at the office late and can’t be relied on regularly.  Mrs. Jones often worries about having time to cook dinner every night with all of the juggling she does, and often prepares a week’s worth of food on Sundays and freezes the meals for later use.  Her top priorities are to raise happy, healthy kids, by keeping them involved in all the activities they want, while still having the time to provide them good quality food.

Mini Muffin Cookies can help Mrs. Jones by providing her with a good quality dessert to go along with her healthy dinners, while not taking up a large amount of her busy day.  The pre-frozen batter is made of only top quality ingredients, the kinds she would choose if baking cookies herself.  The plastic tray that the batter comes in can go right out of the freezer and into the oven, just like the dinners she prepared earlier that week.  In less than 30 minutes she will have a dozen desserts for her family, without dirtying a single kitchen item.  Mrs. Jones will have more time with her family, and her kids will love her delicious desserts.

Toyota's Secret: The A3 Report

With Toyota being the innovator in lean manufacturing, and lean business processes, that they are; it came as no surprise to me to learn that they have also developed a tool to assist with processed thinking.  It was even less surprising to learn that the tool they developed has the ability to incorporate any one of the other tools they’ve developed in their lean innovations.  At first glance, it would appear that the A3 method of thinking is just a simple, organized list.  Naturally, this is how a newcomer would look at it, as is illustrated with the example of Porter.  As Sanderson shows us, however, the tool can be and is much more powerful than that.


Before directly discussing the A3 method, I first want to talk about some of the other tools that Toyota has developed.  It is well known that Toyota is the pioneer and essentially wrote the book on lean thinking and methodology.  Many of the tools they developed are being taught to every level of employee at every size company today.  My company, for instance, uses an abundance of tools such as Value Stream Mapping, Kaizen Bursts, Gemba Walks, 6S, and many others, all geared at continuous improvement, waste elimination, and adding value for the customer.  When it comes to thinking about problem solving, however, we are often restricted to one of these techniques, such as a Value Stream Mapping Event.

The A3 method of thinking offers an opportunity for any person at any level of any organization to look at a problem.  It then allows them to use any tools they know to provide countermeasures to those problems.  The huge benefit to this is it allows the user to tell a story in the best way they know how.  This is extremely beneficial because this is more aligned with how we actually think.  We often don’t think of solutions in terms of one fixed tool, but when combining multiple tools, we can successfully tell a story that may help address the problem.  On the negative side, I do think the A3 method does have the potential to leave the new user overwhelmed, not knowing which tools are most appropriate at what times.  The best way to fix this problem, however, is a good education in all of the different tools, so that the user will have a good idea of which ones are most appropriate for telling each part of the story.

7 Sources of Innovation

1.   The unexpected innovation is an innovation from an unexpected success, failure, or outside event.  The founder of GoPro cameras started racing school after he had already build a small company selling straps for surfers to wear their camera on their arm while surfing, and simple digital video cameras.  The racing school offered to rent him a mounted camera for $100 and he said no, opting to mount one of his wrist cameras to the car’s roll bar.  At that moment, he realized he could build camera mounts for all sorts of purposes, and used this innovation to build GoPro into the $250 million company it is today.

2.   Innovation from incongruity is an innovation that arises from something that doesn’t match with an expected way of thinking.  When most investments are made, most of the focus is on the expected return on investment, and not as much on what exactly the investment will be used for.  Socially responsible investing, however, is a form of investing that considers both the return on investment as well as the social responsibility of the investment.  Investments must be ethical, moral, green, and overall good for society.  This is contrary to the common view of solely looking to invest in the best bang for your buck.

3.      Innovation from process need is an innovation to a process that does not necessarily affect the final product, but may offer that product more efficiently or cheaper.  One of the oldest but most influential examples of process need is the invention of the assembly line by Ford Motor Company in the early 1900’s.  This innovation allowed the FMC to hire much less skilled workers, as each worker only needed to learn one process rather than having to know how to build the entire car.  It also allowed them to build cars much more efficiently and cheaper allowing them to drive the price down to a level that was much more affordable for the general population.

4.   An innovation can come in the form of an unexpected change in industry structure.  One industry that has drastically changed in recent history due to the internet is the newspaper industry.  Before the internet, newspapers had two revenue streams; paper advertisements, and customer subscriptions.  With the internet, however, newspaper companies are finding paper sales declining rapidly, and with that a huge drop off in paper advertisers.  The industry as a whole has begun to shift its revenue streams to sell online advertising and offering their newspapers online.  With a mix of paid online subscriptions and click through advertising, newspapers have shifted their entire revenue streams due to an unexpected change in industry structure.

5.   Innovation can come from a change in outside demographics. An online based company called usbtypewriter.com recently started selling vintage looking, large, clunky typewriters that can be used as a computer’s keyboard.  The inspiration came from aging middle-aged people who were looking for products that could remind them of their youth.

6.   Innovation can come from a change in outside perception, mood, or meaning.  In 2004, Pfizer saw a growing trend in the need for personal sanitation for day-to-day activities.  They used this inspiration to purchase the rights to distribute Purell in the consumer market so that the general population would have quick and easy access to instant hand sanitizer.  Since then, it has been hard to find a building or public area anywhere that does not have some sort of instant hand sanitizing station.

7.   Innovation can come from new outside knowledge, such as a new technology available to the public. When Burt Rutan successfully launched SpaceShipOne for the second time and captured the X Prize, he proved a new commercial technology that could successfully take passengers to space.  Richard Branson saw this achievement as an innovation to build the world’s first commercial spaceline.  He went on to found Virgin Galactic and is currently selling seats for trips to space that will be offered as soon as Burt Rutan is finished building a fleet of SpaceShipTwos.

Google SWOT Analysis

Google SWOT	Internal Strengths: 1. Technological Skills - Google's products are constantly improving at a rate that stays ahead of the rest of the market.  Search engine algorithms are complex yet do not interfere with the simplicity of using the product. 2. Brand name - Google is a verb 3. Management - Google has created a positive work environment with happy employees (1). 4. Search Engine Market Share - Google currently holds 80+% of search engine market share (2). 5. Product Quality - Google's search results are relevant and usually direct users to what they are looking for.  Other product offerings are user friendly, intuitive, and powerful.	Internal Weaknesses: 1. No Switching Costs - If a user is to choose a different search engine, it is very easy and free to switch from using Google. 2. Little to no physical hardware development - It is difficult to compete with Apple in simplifying people's lives when they have no physical products to compete with Apple's products.
External Opportunities: 1. Expansion into any computer based / tech market.  This has already begun with Google's expansion into many different product offerings (i.e Gmail, Google Earth, Google Docs, etc.) 2. Human trends - Desire to simplify lives.  As we progress further into the digital age, we now have more opportunities to simplify, organize, and digitize our lives.	SO Strategies: 1. Google's brand name will allow them to easily expand into many markets beyond the simple search engine.  Continued expansion is important in getting customers more and more reliant on Google's multiple offerings. 2. The human desire to simplify their lives puts Google in a good position to make people more reliant on their products.  The more aspects of our lives we can manage in one place, the easier our lives become.  Google can utilize their brand name and technological skills to make user friendly products that people will recognize, try, and like the first time.	WO Strategies: 1. Google can make switching more difficult for users by making their lives more dependent on Google's products.  If the user relies on Gmail, Google Docs, Blogger, and a variety of other Google's products, switching to a competitor would be much more time consuming and painful than just switching search engines. 2. Google can take advantage of the latest human desires to simplify their lives by getting everything into one digital form.  They may need to expand their offerings to include physical devices such as phones or tablets to compete with industry leaders such as Apple.
External Threats: 1. Competing search engines such as Bing.com 2. Competing life simplifying technologies such as the iPhone or iPad.	ST Strategies: 1. Google's should utilize their technological strengths to continue providing the best search engine on the market. 2. Google can use their brand name and superior technical skills to create great "life simplifying" software that users come to rely on.  Google can get ideas by looking at popular Apple Apps that are used by individuals to organize their lives (i.e. Lemon, myFitnessPal, Checkbook HD, etc.).	WT Strategies: 1. By continuing to provide the best search engine on the market, Google will not have to worry about users switching to a new search engine.   2. Google can expand it's offerings by providing physical devices such as a phone or tablet that will further allow its customers to simplify their lives.  This would allow for better competition with Apple, which makes wonderful physical products, but relies on app developers to write a lot of the software customers use to simplify their lives.

(1) - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/31/fashion/31google.html?pagewanted=all

(2) - http://www.statowl.com/search_engine_market_share.php