Dan Roberts is the author of an interesting little book called The Innovator’s Sourcebook. While it’s aimed more at entrepreneurs, his fresh, unassuming take on how to think about innovation is worth a look. Unlike many of the gurus and consultants out there with popular, but thin, business books, Dan’s ambitions aren’t to hook you to hire him, but to clarify and simplify how you think about using ideas in business in the book itself.

I’m only a few chapters in so far, but I took the time to interview Dan about the book.

SB: There are shelves full of books on innovation and entrepreneurship out there. What made you decide to write one yourself?

DR: Actually, having read those shelves worth of books is what pushed me to writing my own book.  As an aspiring entrepreneur, I wanted to know everything about generating compelling business ideas.  What I found from the books you mention is the idea stage is glossed over.  Most innovation and entrepreneurship books focus on describing “how to start a business,” rather than how to create innovative ideas.  Additionally, many books focus on topics tangential to creating ideas.  They cover topics such as; categorizing innovation, managing innovation, creating a culture of innovation, et cetera.  The books that did actually try to put some frameworks around idea generation were even more disappointing. The Innovator’s Sourcebook stemmed from my belief that there had to be a better way to approach this topic and provide entrepreneurs with substantive answers.

Now, I mentioned there are exceptions to the above.  I was able to gain valuable insights and partial answers from the following resources; Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker, The Innovator’s Dilemma series by Clayton Christensen, Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne and some of the writings of Joseph Schumpeter.  These resources are great, but each only tells part of the story.  In addition, these authors wrote with managers, economists and CEOs as their target audience.  So, my goal with The Innovator’s Sourcebook was to aggregate the insights that do exist, add to the conversation my own insights and then give everything a consistent point-of-view by writing specifically for the aspiring entrepreneur, starting from scratch.

One of your first chapters is about problem finding – why is this an important skill for people to develop? Isn’t solving problems more important than finding them?

First, by having a system for finding problems, the entrepreneur is able to shift from a waiting mode to a proactive search.  Instead of going through life hoping to randomly come across a problem worth solving, entrepreneurs can use the steps laid out to actively search out problems.  This is important because it reduces the reliance on randomness and gives entrepreneurs a source of recurring, focused inspiration.

The second reason has to do with probability.  If I am walking through my daily life looking for problems, what are the chances that the problems I find are things that I am passionate about solving?  The probability is low.  This approach is inherently random.  I find many problems in life I couldn’t care less about solving.  Unless a person is already in a job they are passionate about, it is going to be difficult for them to stumble upon a problem that they have the desire, or ability, to solve.  Having a system for problem finding allows them to specifically target problems in markets that they have an interest in from an entrepreneurial standpoint.

The third reason problem finding is an important skill is because it allows entrepreneurs to find a middle ground in idea generation.  Too often people are walking around trying to dream up the next big thing.  When such a grand idea does not strike, I find that they revert back to more established ideas.  They start looking at starting a consulting company, or opening a franchise.  Having a process for identifying problems allows them to find that middle ground.  It might not be a roadmap to the next big thing, but identifying interesting problems at least does not preclude that from happening.

What do you think the most common points of failure for people trying to create new products or ideas?

I think that depends on the context of the situation.  If you look at a startup company, the main point of failure is often execution.  Plenty of great ideas have failed due to poor execution.  Likewise, plenty of “bad ideas” have seen great success due to great execution. If you look at a corporate environment, the killers there are often bureaucracy and politics.  Many corporations espouse the virtues of innovation while having little appetite, or understanding, for what that really entails.

Finally, in the case of aspiring entrepreneurs who are still looking for their opportunity, the failure points usually arise from having a random system for opportunity recognition and the tendency to think of ideas on too grand of a scale.

Given your research how would you compare Apple, Google and Microsoft in their ability or approaches to innovation?

I think you actually have to address each firm’s approach to innovation and their ability to innovate separately.  For instance, you could say that Google’s approach to innovation is to change the bases of competition in a market (namely by making something free), have it become widely adopted and then funnel those eyeballs back to their core product; search advertising.  On the other hand, you could say that Google’s approach to innovation is really about the way they have structured their corporate culture and applied their famous 70-20-10 rule.  In that sense, their innovation approach is to allow ideas to bubble up from the individual level.

As far as ability to innovate, I think that Apple and Google are blowing Microsoft out of the water right now.  Microsoft has recently scrapped a few of their new product initiatives (Courier, Kin) and they seem to be playing catch-up at this point.  Their release of Internet Explorer 9 could be interesting because they will be the first browser utilizing the GPU for processing power.  However, I think what Microsoft lacks is a unifying vision for their innovation initiatives.  They have had innovative products to be sure (X-box live, Photosynth), but you would be hard pressed to identify a common vision that has lead to the creation of those products.  In contrast, you could look at Apple and broadly attribute their success to the use of design thinking and taking a platform, rather than a product approach.  Likewise, Google’s idea of “democratizing information” is something that unites their efforts across industries.  So, I think Microsoft’s problem is that they try to be everything to everyone and they end up with a lot of mediocre innovation efforts.

Apple and Google, on the other hand, have both proven that they have excellent ability to launch innovative products and services.  Of course, Apple is top of mind right now considering they just launched a new product category with the iPad and have since surpassed Microsoft in market cap.  Google launches so many products it is actually hard to keep up with them all.  At the end of the day, Apple is probably at the top of the heap in ability to innovate, but Google may be the more impressive firm here because they have only been in the game for twelve years.

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You can read four different chapters from Innovator’s Sourcebook here, and follow Dan on his Innovation blog.