How to get 752 New Business Ideas?
Last week an innovation team of G+J Publishers in Amsterdam generated 752 new business ideas in 4 hours. How did they do it? Five reasons caused the explosion of ideas during their ideation workshop.
How Status Quo Bias Can Kill Innovation
Status quo bias is a proven cognitive bias that exists in all normal people. Innovation, especially breakthrough innovation, requires veering from the status quo. As a result, the average managers is all too likely not to approve a highly innovative idea, not because of any intrinsic flaw in the idea, but because the idea would require change. You need to work around this bias if you truly want your company to innovate.
How Can You Reuse Solutions From Other Industries?
Innovation is often more about combining what is already there than reinventing the wheel in a creative manner. In this article you will learn how to apply solutions from other industries to your problem at hand by using… metaphors. This method I am about to present is called Metaphor Safari and is based on professor Ikujiro Nonaka’s theory on knowledge management.
Implementing Ideas: Baby Steps
Big, crazy, breakthrough ideas seem wonderful when you are dreaming them up, but frightening when it comes time to implement them. Fortunately, the field personal development has a technique that you can apply: personal development planning (PDP). Jeffrey Baumgartner explains how to implement this approach to your innovation process.
Be an A-Tension Seeker: Why Good Ideas Stem from Irritating Problems?
All too often we see companies coming to us with a new technological advancement that they are very excited about. Sadly, having a new technology does not guarantee a winning innovation. One needs to work hard at the front end to understand what the consumer needs and how the current market offer isn’t meeting those needs. Only against this backdrop can we hope to bring an idea to market that will be truly disruptive. The following article explains.
Introducing New Ideas Using Analogies
Analogies can help people make sense of technological change and other innovations. Using them effectively relies on recognizing both their benefits and pitfalls.
Making Ideation a Part of the ‘Innovation Project Machine’
Why is the way we work with ideation so different than the way we normally execute projects? This article argues that the two ways of working can be combined into an ‘innovation project machine’ that more effectively captures new ideas and executes innovation, inspired by agile project management and with learning for managers.
The Surprising Connection Between Simplification and Innovation
Matthew E. May, author of the new book The Laws of Subtraction, believes if we would take a more minimalist approach to our work, seeking ways to get maximum impact with minimum effort, there would be much less waste - and much more innovation.
Revisiting the Idea of a Fully Formed Idea
What elements comprise a fully formed idea? How might originators capture the evolution in their thinking about their ideas over time? Innovation architect Doug Collins—older and, debatably, wiser—revisits his thinking on this subject.
If Ideas are the Seeds of Innovation…
Innovation is a product of human activity. Innovation keeps life interesting, yet it begins first, with ideation: the creation of a new thought or idea. In the following article, innovation practitioner Robert Brands shares a few idea management tips to help companies get back to the business of ideation.
7 Ways to be Creative
When faced with the question “Are you creative?” I have found that only the half of the audiences I speak to consider themselves creative. This is true even when you talk to people that are supposed to be creative in developing products or market plans. As innovation is partly depending on guts to dare, something that comes from self-confidence, I think it is time that we stretch our old opinion on what creativity is all about – here are 7 different ways to be creative. I am sure you can find yourself described at least in a couple of them.
A Strategically-Focused Innovation Process
Many people assume that creating new ideas is the beginning of the innovation process, but actually that’s not true, according to Langdon Morris. He explains that ideation occurs in the middle of a disciplined, strategically-focused innovation process. In this article, he outlines an 8-step innovation process that promises better results than the traditional 'spray and pray' approach to developing and managing ideas.
How to Effectively Manage the Fuzzy Back End of Innovation
You have doubtless heard of the fuzzy front end of innovation. It is another name for idea generation. But Jeffrey Baumgartner believes that the back end of innovation, where implementation is supposed to take place, is just as fuzzy. Many companies lack clear, efficient processes for implementing the ideas they generate.
Mind Mapping Software: A Simple Approach to Idea Management
Small to medium-sized businesses typically don't need an enterprise-level idea management system. What they need is a simple tool that enables them to capture, improve, evaluate and take action upon their best ideas. Mind mapping software is a tool that can help.
Does Encouraging Creativity in the Workplace Improve Innovation?
Let’s start by defining creativity as thinking of new ideas and innovation as implementing new ideas. The assumption has always been that if we want to deliver innovation in terms of new products, services, processes, etc. then we need lots of creativity in order to generate ideas. Creativity is the ‘front end of innovation’. It is how we fill the pipeline that generates a flow of new products. It follows that we should take actions to encourage creativity in the workplace if we want more innovation.