Creativity, overalls, and hard work
People who are successful inventors do have lots of ideas. But also they realize that ideas are a dime a dozen, and that in addition to the inspiration, a lot of good, plain hard work is required to bring an idea from start to finish, explains Susan Besemer.
Articulating the value of your innovation
Now that you've created that next great thing, how do you convince your customers that it really is as great as you think it is?
Rapid Prototyping Technologies Enhance Innovation Opportunities
Rapid prototyping technologies enable innovative companies to quickly and inexpensively develop rough prototypes of new products and components - which can help them to nurture an innovative design through multiple iterations and bring the final product to market faster. As such, it represents a potentially potent innovation edge.
Innovation check-up: Is your company dying from root rot?
You need to analyze your organization and culture to assess its innovation capacity with the same intensity as you do the rest of your business, warns Carol Franczek. Otherwise, you may find your firm suffering from the symptoms of "root rot."
A process for continuous innovation is built on a service ethic
New products and services can be "knocked off" or copied. But it's much harder for competitors to duplicate a management system and corporate culture that produces a continuous stream of successful product and service improvements, innovations, adaptations and extensions. That continuous innovation stream comes from controlled chaos, which can be achieved through a four-stage process, according to Jim Clemmer.
Innovation by subtraction
We tend to think that the best way to innovate is to add new features to our products or services. What can we add that increases the appeal of our offering? This route can easily lead to extra cost, feature overload and customer fatigue. Sometimes a better answer lies in subtraction, says Paul Sloane.
Need breakthrough innovation? Resist the temptation to ‘build a better mousetrap’
product development in many industries. Moreover, the percentage of ideas that make it from lab to consumer is low. One factor that affects the probability of success is how innovators look at a given development challenge or problem.
Brainstorming Techniques for New Product Development
There are several ways to incorporate brainstorming into a new product development session. Here are two of the most productive techniques.
Innovation Strategy: Finding Alternative Uses of your Products
Finding innovative new uses for successful products and services can clearly increase your market size and, as a result, sales. Here are some tips from Jeffrey Baumgartner on how to apply this strategy to your firm
Innovation strategy: Does your new product idea really solve a customer problem?
Whether you're inventing teabags or nail polish, innovations that solve actual problems make more common sense to consumers than "bright ideas" that "assume" a problem.
An Overview of Idea Management Systems
Idea management technology helps organizations to gather ideas from all employees, evaluate them and bring them to market faster than ever before. Learn more about the typical features of these powerful tools, and the benefits they can provide to firms like yours.