How to Use Generative AI to Turn Your Insights into Investable Ideas (Part 2)
This article builds on our previous write-up (Part 1) where we demonstrated how to transform your initial thinking into a compelling value proposition. We showed how you can increase your chances for approval and funding by using generative AI and CO-STAR to accomplish this critical first step in ideation and complete it almost instantaneously. To take the next step and enhance the quality of your value proposition and deepen your understanding of its potential, we suggest prompting your generative AI tool to address each component of your CO-STAR. We will repeatedly prompt the AI to produce research that both creates and informs the story of our value proposition. Successful prompts have clear instructions with strong verbs, keywords, and include [...]
How to Use Generative AI to Turn Your Insights into Investable Ideas (Part 1)
Innovation is often glamorized by the bookends of sourcing promising ideas like colorful post-it notes or highlighting the final polished product we see in the store. Stories of the unglamorous hard work required to bridge the gap between “I have an idea” to its realization are often not shared. Generative AI will undoubtedly play an enabling role throughout the innovation process by making it easier for people with new ideas to get off to a fast start. We will show you how generative AI can accelerate idea development and help get you across the finish line with less effort and in record time. Leveraging CO-STAR Whether you are an employee with a great idea or an aspiring entrepreneur, you [...]
The Creative Challenge of Changing Culture at IBM
Key Strategy: Facilitating Genuine Employee InvolvementExcerpted from the book: Idea Stormers, How to Lead and Inspire Creative Breakthroughs (Wiley Jossey-Bass) by Bryan Mattimore There is no tougher organizational challenge than changing a culture. Just ask any CEO or company president. Even the most powerful executive can feel surprisingly powerless when it comes to changing a well-entrenched corporate culture. Nevertheless, my coworkers and I are occasionally called on to design and facilitate events to either launch a culture change initiative or help operationalize an initiative that is already underway. For the facilitating leader tasked with creating organization-wide change, the following example might provide some inspiration and encouragement as you travel down the challenging culture change road. As you’ll see, the [...]
A Yin-Yang Model for Global Sustainability: Moving Towards Rural-Urban Balance
This article employs a holistic, interactive East Asian framework—the ancient yin-yang circle—for presenting both defensive and proactive carbon control strategies in urban and rural areas. Given the recent wave of deadly wildfires in the American West, attention is focused here on the future significance of oceans as a massive carbon sink for fighting global climate change. Life probably arose in the sea, and the sea may end up having to save the planet.
Ideas from All? Try the Whiteboard Technique
By Bryan Mattimore “Creativity is contagious, pass it on.” Albert EinsteinIf you’ve ever had an experience with a suggestion box program – either running one, or more likely submitting a suggestion – the mere suggestion of having a suggestion box program at your organization might send your head spinning – and not in a good way. Truth is, with rare exceptions like Toyota, Frito-Lay and Dart industries, traditional suggestion box programs are – and continue to be -- one of the most dismal failures in business. How come? Suggestion box programs do not fail because of a lack of initial employee interest or enthusiasm. They fail because the process for managing, vetting, and developing submitted ideas isn’t as rigorous [...]
Generative AI can Augment Creativity
One of the co-founders of IdeaScale, Josh Folk, (disclosure: I am CEO of IdeaScale) recently co-authored a front page article published in the Harvard Business Review, describing how the explosion of generative AI can be used to augment human creativity and productivity. Here's the full article link at HBR. To practice what I preach about using AI as a tool to improve human product, I actually had chatGPT summarize Josh's article, with light editing by me to make it less marketing-y. -------------------------------------------------------- Introduction: In the contemporary digital landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) has permeated various industries, profoundly impacting the realm of creativity. Harvard Business Review presents a thought-provoking article titled "How Generative AI Can Augment Human Creativity," which explores the profound [...]
Leveraging the “Pamplemousse Principle” in Creativity Training
Leveraging the “Pamplemousse Principle” In Creativity Training For more than a dozen years my innovation agency has taught customized creative problem-solving workshops (what we now call “Un-Think” programs), to senior managers in medium and large organizations. Evaluations from the literally thousands of executives who have taken the workshop average 4.8 out of 5. Why such high ratings? I think it’s in part because we’ve questioned many of the most basic assumptions of learning and development workshops. To encourage greater participant engagement, for instance, we don’t use any PowerPoint slides. We also only tell original stories from our own innovation consulting work so we can speak authoritatively about how business creativity and innovation successes really happen. (No cliché Post It [...]
Types of Innovation
Innovation is an important part of staying competitive in any market, and most businesses would say it’s a high priority for their organization. When thought about abstractly, however, it’s hard to imagine how innovation can impact current and future opportunities. In order to better understand how innovation can have a tangible impact, we created this guide to the main types of innovation and how they are commonly implemented. What Defines Innovation? Innovation is a process that questions the status quo, locates new solutions, and solves problems for people in a unique way that adds value to their experience. As defined by Ideascale, “Innovation is the process of creating or improving products, services, and processes. Regardless of size, these changes [...]
What Is an Innovation Manager?
Innovation is a sector in which companies are putting an increasing amount of effort into optimizing, and with this growth comes new opportunities. Some of the roles that have sprung out of an increased focus on innovation are Chief Innovation Officer, Innovation Consultant, and, notably, Innovation Manager. Without context, it might be challenging to understand exactly what an innovation manager does and how they can be successful. In this article, we’ll define the innovation manager position and walk through the essential information to understand their responsibilities. What Is an Innovation Manager? An innovation manager is a person who is responsible for managing innovative strategies, activities, and opportunities for an organization. This innovation is meant to impact the company's [...]
What Is Innovation Strategy?
Innovating doesn’t just happen when inspiration strikes. In order to ensure forward progress, a business has to create a structure that stimulates innovation regularly. This structure will determine the rate and efficacy of overall innovation and is commonly known as an innovation strategy. This article will define innovation strategy, discuss how to create one, and outline the main types of innovation. What Is Innovation Strategy? An innovation strategy is a plan that organizes future growth milestones in an effort to fill unmet customer needs. It will detail the value added to the product/service in the coming months and should evolve your business to better target an improved customer experience. An innovation plan will consist of the policies, research methods, [...]
Ambition Matrix: What It Is and How To Use It
Creating an innovation strategy means improving what you currently offer and finding ways to differentiate from your competition in the future. This is easy in principle, but applying this practice to your business can be very difficult.
5 Elements to Consider when Commercializing Your Ideas
In this article, we look at five tips to launch your next innovation, using a proven framework for successful launch and scale.
What Is Idea Management?
Traditional innovation can only take your business so far, and without an evolution of processes, you might find it harder than ever to move new ideas forward. Introducing structures and systems to formulate, organize, and act upon new ideas is one of the best ways to optimize internal innovation. This practice is better known as idea management, and in this article we will define and discuss idea management in full.
Zen vs. Zoom: Is Person-to-Person Interaction Better for Innovation?
The author draws upon the theory of “emptiness” and other principles of Zen Buddhism to evaluate the desirability of remote vs. person-to-person interaction during the course of innovation, especially new idea development. This evaluation is pursued within the context of three related idea process parameters: interdependence, intuition and intensity. An in-person work environment is recommended for the intense phases of new idea processing.
6 Innovation Exercises to Try With Your Team
Creative thinking and innovation don’t come naturally to everyone, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good at them. Sometimes, teams need practice and routine to improve their creativity skills. This article will highlight some popular innovation exercises you can conduct with your team to get your creative juices flowing. These will be a combination of workplace exercises and ice-breakers. Let’s get started.
How Online Whiteboards Create Actionable Results for Businesses
To run a successful business, you must be able to complete individual and shared tasks regularly and reliably. One of the most significant components to achieving this is making sure you create actionable results in your meetings, conversations, and workflow.
How to Improve Return on Investment With a New Project Management Approach
Too often, leaders label projects as successes or failures based on budget and schedule expectations. Although time and cost are critical factors, they ignore whether the project delivered the expected benefits.
The Inverted Funnel: How Blockchains Will Shake Up the Traditional Consumer Funnel
The use of blockchains will become mainstream in a few years from now, so say consultancies and pundits, who look at penetration curves across the globe1. Crypto is on the rise and powerhouses like Starbucks and Nike are merging blockchain into the fabric of business, reinventing the dialogue with their fans. In this short piece, we double click on how the efficiencies, tracking and reconciliation capabilities of blockchains will revolutionize the famous 4 P model2. We will do that with a slightly activist tone. The future scenarios are, indeed and on purpose, exaggerated, to highlight the disruption vs. today’s status quo. How is the world of marketing looking like five to ten years from now? We will go from product [...]
How to Create a Competitive Advantage Through Innovation
In the modern world of business, innovation is both an equalizer and a differentiator. It can give tiny startups an edge over global conglomerates and enable industry leaders to develop competitive advantages.
How to Innovate Your Business to Make It Climate Efficient
Climate efficiency is key for the future of everyone on this planet. With an issue of such magnitude, you may feel that individual actions cannot make a large impact. While your business by itself cannot solve global warming, the actions you take can inspire others and can have a much bigger impact than you may realize.
How to Create Innovation Confidence During the Great Resignation
Do your employees feel confident at work right now? Or are you worried that the Great Resignation may impact your company? Take these steps to make sure that your focus on innovation is the reason employees stay, and not the reason they leave.
How the Pandemic Created the Virtual Innovation Lab
COVID reshaped every department—including your innovation department. Find out how some organizations adapted to the remote work age by creating the virtual innovation lab, and how you can create your own by downloading this complimentary infographic.
The 4 Golden Rules of Brainstorming
When innovating with your team, there are a few rules that are important regardless of the ideation session you’re conducting. In this article, we’ll outline the four golden rules of brainstorming and talk about how following them can improve your team’s innovative capabilities.
Crowdsourcing vs. Traditional Granting: Which Method Most Benefits Social Entrepreneurs
Open innovation can be organized into a more inclusive granting mechanism. In the past, nonprofits and other organizations would fund social enterprises by asking for a written proposal—but combining mentorship and crowdsourcing creates new opportunities and community solutions. Find out how it worked for Pact and the US Department of State in this case study.
Innovation Management Data Trends from 2021: What Can We Learn About 2022?
Many people have said that 2021 was 2020 Part II, but IdeaScale looked at some of our system data (as we do every year) to see what we could learn, and there are a few key trends we think are different from 2020, and that we think bode well for a creative 2022.
How Does the Chief Information Officer Role Relate to Innovation?
Nearly 40% of IdeaScale’s customer base is run from a dedicated innovation department helmed by a Chief Innovation Officer, an innovation leader, an innovation manager or someone else. However, there is another emerging owner for innovation at a large organization. At IdeaScale, we often find that CIOs and their organization are driving innovation strategy for a company.
Is Communication Sabotaging Your Ability to Innovate?
Avoid these four communications landmines as you navigate the stages of innovation.
Reflections on the Evolving Role of Innovation Professionals, Based on a Recent Panel Session
I recently participated in a panel session as part of a great conference organised by the Innov8rs group (thanks Hans!), with an amazing set of innovation leaders, including Gina O’Connor, John Metselaar, and Andrea Kates.