Idea Summit

Thinking about Thinking

Rolf Smith has spent virtually his entire career thinking about thinking. Back in 1963, at age 23, he left his job as a physics teacher at a boys' Catholic high school to join the U.S. Air Force. After a stint as a computer-communications officer at Strategic Air Command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, he was dispatched to complete his master's degree in computer science at Texas A&M University. That's where Smith first became interested in doing things that couldn't be done -- and operating in the realm of seventh-level thinking.

For instance, he became hell-bent on doing his master's thesis on artificial intelligence. Specifically, he wanted to program a computer to play chess. But he had a hard time finding support for his project. "The professors told me that there was no one at A&M who knew anything about artificial intelligence, so I wouldn't have an adviser. Then they told me that I shouldn't waste my time -- that computers couldn't think." Eventually, the head of the department, an avid chess player himself, decided to humor Smith. He agreed to be his adviser on the grounds that Smith would create a chess program to give him some stiff competition. "Dr. Wortham began playing against the computer one day at 6 AM," says Smith. "It beat him soundly. And I got to finish my project."

Smith's chess-inspired interest in pattern recognition and in analyzing the tactical and strategic implications of positions had wide (and obvious) applications in his work in the air force -- and also, he later realized, in his work on thinking in business. But it was not until 1984 that Smith, then a lieutenant colonel and director of long-range planning for the Electronic Security Command (now called the Air Force Intelligence Command), consciously began focusing on the process of innovation. And it was at this point that the air force's chief of staff made a bold request: Make the air force more innovative. "No one thought we could do it," says Smith. "A lot of people said that there's no way you can teach people to be creative and innovative. They're either born with it, or they're not."

But with a letter from his boss, Brigadier General Grover Jackson, authorizing him to go anywhere in the world and to do whatever it takes to "make innovation happen," Smith created the U.S. Air Force's first Office of Innovation. Its purpose? To spread innovative thinking and practices around the world -- in places like the Strategic Air Command, the Space Command, and U.S. Air Force operations in Europe -- and to create a global network of innovation centers in the field. "Our group had license to jump the chain of command to get things done. We were on a fast track for bold ideas."

The impact was immediate -- and huge. Smith and his team received, on average, 600 ideas per year from 13,000 enlisted men and women "in the trenches" worldwide. But it was one young airman on the Kelly Air Force Base, in San Antonio, who taught Smith the most important lesson in cultivating an environment in which breakthrough ideas actually are allowed to break through. The first creation of Smith's office was something called Form Zero (bucking an air-force rule that all forms had to be numbered beginning with the number one). Anyone in the force could use Form Zero to submit an idea. One day, Smith received a form from this airman: "Put speed bumps in front of the barracks," it said. "I'm on night shift and have to sleep during the day. I can't get any sleep because people speed down the street in their cars." Though admittedly this was not a breakthrough idea, it was a reasonable request, so Smith's office worked with the airman to implement a solution.

A few months later, the same airman sent in another form: "There's only one pay phone in the hallway of my barrack. Every time I talk to my girlfriend, everybody stands in the hall, listens, and laughs. Let's get a phone booth outside the barracks." Again, Smith's team worked with the airman to come up with a solution. Like clockwork, a few months later, they got yet another idea from the guy. "But the third time around," Smith says, "it was one of the biggest operational ideas we ever got. It absolutely blew us away. It solved a problem that I can't talk about -- but that the air force had been working on for a long, long time." The lesson? "If you show that you truly pay attention to ideas -- even the small, seemingly insignificant ones -- then you'll create an environment in which people feel comfortable generating and offering them."

The Long Climb to Creativity

The day is hot, humid, and overcast -- the kind of day that frizzes hair and dampens spirits. Everyone hopes for rain. Some hope that it will bring relief from the heat; others pray that it will postpone the day's agenda -- rock climbing. Harnessed, helmeted, and with all the appropriate legal waivers signed, the Face 2005 Team starts hiking down a narrow path in Virginia's Great Falls Park toward the Potomac River -- and toward a sheer rock face at the water's edge. Admittedly, the P&G crowd looks more like the grown-up cast from "The Bad News Bears" than like a team of scientists on a serious expedition.