Create a Team of Master Problem Solvers
Problem-solving is an essential skill as an innovator. If problems stump your employees, how can your organization ever innovate for customers? Luckily, problem-solving skills can be learned, and as a leader you can create a team of master problem solvers and innovators.
How to Digitally Spark Corporate Innovation
To maintain relevance in the global competitive market, many companies already focus on the development and implementation of innovations, even using digital tools. But, in times of crisis, this focus is most likely to be lost when most businesses concentrate on keeping the daily business running.
Human Creativity: The Critical Survival Skill of the 4th Industrial Revolution that Cannot be Automated
While 4th Industrial Revolution technologies are fast becoming the way to go in the world of the "new normal," they are driven by something far superior to robots: human creativity. Let's have a look at the importance of creativity in this article.
What is lateral thinking?
Lateral thinking is one of those terms that many people have heard of, but probably very few of us really know what it means. So when I saw a very clear definition and description of it in Paul Sloane's excellent new book, How to be a Brilliant Thinker: Exercise Your Mind and Find Creative Solutions, I couldn't resist sharing it with you.
Zappos Insights executive says execution of ideas is key
Robert Richman, Product Manager of Zappos Insights, says the most successful companies will be those that have people with the best ideas, and who can execute them most effectively.
A Better Approach to Creative Problem Solving
If you're faced with a challenge, chances are that the solution is just a little outside of the focus of your conscious attention. Dr. Win Wenger takes a look at popular methods of creative problem solving, and suggests a unique solution to improve your approach to it.
Creative Lessons from one of the Most Inspiring Stories Ever Told: Acres of Diamonds
What creative lessons can you learn from one of the most compelling stories ever told? Plenty!
Understanding the value of a strategic innovation approach
For companies desiring organic growth and whose innovation efforts are not yielding the results demanded, using a Strategic Innovation approach using structured tools and methods will produce higher value products, services, systems, and environments that will resonate deeper with people to encourage them to become loyal customers. This approach delivers better solutions that are feasible to build, viable for profit, and desirable to the user.
To Nurture Innovation, Focus on What Went Right
In looking for improvements and innovations we tend to focus our attention on what went wrong. We try to fix problems. A typical management meeting consists of a group of people who are looking at what is not working and trying their hardest to come up with ways to put things right. But in the process they are often allocating blame, arguing, becoming negative and getting frustrated.
When no one wants to change: 6 questions that lower the defenses to improving innovation
Why is change so hard? Most people will tell you that it’s because people naturally resist change. I really like Eli Goldratt’s response to this argument: If a very wealthy person that you knew and trusted offered you a huge sum of money, say $50 million, with no strings attached, would you accept it? Before you answer, consider how much that much money would change your life. If you doubt this, just look at the scores of reports on how lotto winners have messed up their lives. They always think it won’t change them, but it always does. Even knowing this, I’d wager the vast majority of us would still accept the money. Some might consult lawyers or accountants, but [...]
How to build balanced innovation teams
When building a team it is critical to first understand what the group is expected to deliver, then take a deeper look into who is selected and how they are expected to work together. Purposefully balancing the right type of people for the job will go a long way toward making the team more effective, productive, and successful.
How to Generate Original Creative Ideas with Random Word Stimulation
Random word stimulation is a powerful technique that provides a practical method of accessing your subconscious mind and utilize the wealth of information it contains to generate fresh new original ideas.
Building a Company
Rowan Gibson explains how intellectual capital has become an outdated way to measure an organization's worth. What's needed are new measures used to create value today, such as imagination capital, entrepreneurial capital and relationship capital.
Why Business Model Innovation Matters
Managers frequently rely on innovation to drive profitable growth. In many industries new products and services are fundamental. However, although product and service innovations are and have been important to firms for decades, competitive pressures and the search for increased profit have pushed business model innovation higher on the priority list.
How to Think What No One Else Thinks
How can you think of things that no-one else thinks of? The answer is by deliberately taking a different approach to the issue from everyone else. There are dominant ideas in every field. The innovative thinker purposefully challenges those dominant ideas in order to conceive new possibilities, explains Paul Sloane.
Are you solving the real problem?
When an organization sets about solving what is perceived as a problem, is it addressing the real issue or is it addressing the symptoms that cause the most heartburn?
Innovation: Back to the Basics
With everyone and her aunt now involved in innovation and a never ending stream of articles, blog posts and books being published on the topic, we need to be sure we are clear on the basics of innovation, particularly corporate or organizational innovation.
Don’t be a prisoner of your patents
A short case history that demonstrates the catastrophe that can result when technically and commercially superior innovations are ignored because of the desire to remain within the boundaries of a company patent.
Ask Questions: The Single Most Important Habit for Innovative Thinkers
Questions are the best way to gain deeper insights and develop more innovative solutions. So why do so few people utilize them, asks Paul Sloane?
How to use creative problem solving to get a job – even during an economic downturn
The late Earl Nightingale, known as "the dean of personal development," once related this story in one of his audiotapes that speaks to the challenges we face today, and why creative problem solving is more important than ever.
Predicting the future and focusing your innovation program
Derek Cheshire offers some advice on how to identify the drivers of future trends and develop new product and service ideas to drive your innovation program and your business.
10 Rules for Creative Teams
Under the right circumstances, a team can be significantly more creative than any individual team member and is often better able to push creative ideas through the implementation process so that they may become innovations. Here are ten quick rules for ensuring your teams are effective creative teams from Jeffrey Baumgartner.
Intuition and Emotion in Creative Thinking
Great ideas arise in the strangest ways and are blended from the oddest ingredients, such as gut feelings, intuitions and emotions, explains author David Jiles Ph.D.
Eight ways to generate more ideas in a group
Group brainstorming is common in organizations around the world. But more often than not, it delivers a disappointing quantity of so-so ideas. Here are eight ways to generate more and better ideas in these ideation sessions.
Innovation and skills agility
As the pace of innovation continues to accelerate, driven by increased global collaboration and rapid advances in technology, a growing need will be for organizations to locate the right skills base to carry its innovation initiatives forward. So says Jim Carroll, author of the new book, Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast.
When to Kill an Idea
The problem most people and organizations have is that they tend to kill ideas at the wrong times, either too early or too late, and this is very detrimental to their innovation process. Jeffrey Baumgartner explains to how to establish common-sense criteria for killing an idea
Framework Innovation and Detail Innovation
A combination of detail and framework innovation is a potent recipe for business success, according to Jeffrey Baumgartner. What are framework and detail innovation? Read on to find out.
The Six Thinking Hats of Creative Communication
Edward De Bono’s Six Hats method is a powerful and creative approach for communication. If you design your communication efforts - such as speeches, meetings, dialogs, posters and ads - according to this model, you will increase your odds of getting your message through in an original yet clear and effective way.