Focused on creativity, creative thinking, brainstorming, ideation, and similar subjects

Lessons from Apple on Why Aesthetic Innovation is Important

It’s pretty much impossible to argue with Apple’s success. It’s one of the most valuable companies in the world, and has maintained dominance for its reputation as an innovative company that produces top-of-the-line hardware. Because of its products and brand reputation, Apple has gained a cult following that will buy nearly every new product that emerges, year after year. So why, even with the high price tag, are so many consumers willing to shell out for every new gadget that comes along?

Ideascale2019-04-24T08:22:16-07:00June 22nd, 2017|Categories: Enabling Factors|Tags: aesthetic innovation, apple, bitcoin, brand driven innovation, branding, case study, Collaboration, demographics, design, independence, innovative companies, Product Development|

Ways to Exercise Your Creative Muscles

Feeling like you’re stuck in a creative rut? Creativity works a lot like a muscle—you have to exercise it for it to work properly. Once you get stuck in a cycle of routine, it’s easy to feel like you’ve lost your creativity. Maybe you’re not contributing innovative ideas during team meetings anymore, or maybe you just feel like you’re doing the same thing every single day. Whatever is making you feel uncreative, you don’t have to live with it. All it means is that it’s time to exercise your creative muscles more than you have been! Here are some ways you can stay sharp, innovative, and creative.

Ideascale2019-04-24T08:33:14-07:00June 7th, 2017|Categories: Strategies|Tags: Best Practices, company culture, Creativity, Ideation, patterns|

How Big Radical is Reclaiming Design

Nobody doubts that design can be powerful. But while words and phrases like ‘design thinking,’ ‘agile’ and ‘lean’ may be officially welcome in the boardrooms of Deloitte, Accenture, PWc, McKinsey and similar firms, I believe that the full potential of design has been neglected and these terms misappropriated.

Ideascale2019-04-24T08:47:27-07:00May 19th, 2017|Categories: Strategies|Tags: big data, Big Radical, customer engagement, design, design doing, design thinking, outcomes, risk-taking, user experience, user led innovation, UX|

How to Make Your Design Thinking Program Turn Into Something Real

Why do a large part of the design thinking projects in the corporate world never pass through the prototype phase? In recent years I’ve been involved with many design thinking initiatives. Many of them related to the development of new products inside large companies in industries such as finance, health, education and consumer goods.

Ideascale2019-05-01T11:22:22-07:00February 14th, 2017|Categories: Life Cycle Processes, Organization & Culture, Strategies|Tags: Creativity, design, design thinking, front end of innovation, Ideation, IDEO, Innovation Culture, innovation method, Innovation Strategy, methodology, Product Development, prototype, prototyping, rapid design processes|

Creativity is Key: Tips on Avoiding Groupthink

It’s awesome when everyone agrees, isn’t it? Yes—and no. Most of us have, at some point, fallen into the trap of groupthink to avoid conflict and promote harmony in a group, whether at school, work, or on a committee. Groupthink has its perks: everyone feels comfortable, and there’s no risk of tension among members. It’s safe. Easy. Unfortunately, it can also kills creativity and innovation.

Ideascale2019-04-25T14:58:18-07:00January 10th, 2017|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: brainstorming, Collaboration, Communication, conflict, Creativity, criticism, debate, divergent thinking, diversity, evaluation of ideas, feedback, gender, groupthink, idea management, Ideation, innovation team, meeting, perspective, Problem Solving, soft skills, suggestion box, team diversity, Teamwork|

How Improvisation can Boost Innovation

If you have an innovative culture already in place (meaning you’re working with stuff like agile project management, design thinking, lean, etc.) perhaps it’s time you consider Applied Improvisation Training. If instead you are a static and uncommunicative company, Applied Improvisation may even work against your innovation efforts. Edoardo Binda Zane explains more.

Ideascale2019-04-26T09:05:21-07:00December 21st, 2016|Categories: Enabling Factors, Idea Management|Tags: Agile, brainstorm, Communication, Creativity, design thinking, Ideation, improvisation, Innovation Culture, Innovation Strategy, innovation tool, innovation training, leadership, lean, Teamwork|

The Card Game to Help You Innovate Like Tesla

Visions and consequently major innovations are molded by the technical and human revolutions that industries live in. In a time when just one big industrial revolution existed, every company simply had to follow the common path (see production automation in the 60's-70's). The 20th century car industry was a good example. Then Internet technology came onto the scene (more complex and diverse than the web from the early 2000's) and the thread for innovation is no longer so straight forward.

Ideascale2019-04-26T09:32:52-07:00December 8th, 2016|Categories: Strategies|Tags: automation, automotive industry, brainstorm, car-sharing, driverless cars, Elon Musk, gamification, innovation game, Innovation Strategy, IoT, reframing, sharing economy, simplicity, Tesla, visual thinking|

Top Diagramming Techniques for more Efficient Meetings

Do you ever find yourself stuck in a meeting that’s stalling? Does the agenda seem to accomplish no tangible outcomes? Perhaps you find yourself wondering what’s next after an important summit, or frustrated with the lack of direction after a meaningful brainstorm or discussion.

Ideascale2019-04-26T11:09:32-07:00October 31st, 2016|Categories: Enabling Factors, Idea Management, Leadership|Tags: brainstorm, Creativity, diagramming, diagrams, efficiency, how to, Ideation, meeting, meetings, mind mapping, productivity, techniques, visual mapping, visualization|

Mad Scientists and Creativity Labs

Managing solitary and collaborative innovation: All innovation is based on creative ideas which are generated and developed by passionate people working alone and with others. Both solitary and collaborative work are important to the effective development of innovation in organizations. The key for leaders is to effectively promote both.

Ideascale2019-04-29T08:04:10-07:00August 30th, 2016|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Leadership, Organization & Culture|Tags: brainstorm, Collaboration, collaborative innovation, convergent thinking, Creativity, creativity lab, divergent thinking, Employee Engagement, experiment, idea management, Ideation, innovation champion, innovation lab, innovation life cycle processes, innovation team, leadership, personality types, talent management, team building, Teamwork|

Collaborate with Night and Nature to Come up with New Ideas

It is not widely known that most people, before the advent of the Industrial Revolution around 1800, tended to go to sleep shortly after nightfall but then get up around midnight for several hours before going back to sleep until dawn. Modern lab experiments have been able to reproduce this ancient, two-sleep pattern. Furthermore, there is separate anecdotal evidence that a number of people currently practice divided sleep as a natural habit, without the prompting of an experiment. Some of these people, in turn, use their nighttime wakefulness period for creative thought, writing and problem solving. The divided sleep phenomenon fits in very well with the dualistic and holistic principles of East Asian philosophy. One should ideally integrate work, thought and sleep with the natural light cycle in order to maximize the potential for individual creativity over the course of a full day and night.

Ideascale2019-04-29T08:53:24-07:00July 5th, 2016|Categories: Enabling Factors, Innovation Psychology|Tags: asia, Creativity, enabling factors, innovation life cycle processes, innovation psychology, sleep, Zen, Zen philosophy|

Creativity is not Enough: How to Turn Ideas into Revenue

“Eureka!’, Archimedes famously howled, while running butt naked through the streets of Syracuse. Soaking in his bath tub, the bearded Greek inventor had just discovered a new method of determining an object’s volume. Funnily enough, this well-known story captures two myths about innovation. One: it’s the work of a sole – and usually slightly eccentric – inventor. Two: chance has a part to play. For businesses, the reality is vastly different. Indeed, turning ideas into revenue requires quite a bit more than just ideation and luck.

Ideascale2019-04-29T08:55:21-07:00June 28th, 2016|Categories: Strategies|Tags: Best Practices, Creativity, front end of innovation, fuzzy front end of innovation, idea management, Ideation, innovation champion, Innovation Strategy, innovation success|

Innovation Tautogram — A Simple and Powerful Innovation Tool

The human vocabulary with millions of words is adequate to explain all of our expectations and experiences, even those which are imagined. Why not harness the power of language to discover new products and services? Author Shanta R Yapa shares the Innovation Tautogram technique, which can be used as an individual or a group exercise.

Ideascale2019-05-01T11:22:22-07:00April 28th, 2016|Categories: Strategies|Tags: brainstorm, Creativity, Ideation, in-depth article, innovation, Innovation Strategy, innovation tool, innovation toolbox, innovation tools, Product Development, tautogram|

The Creativity Delta: How to Come Up with New Ideas

In a study of 5,000 adults in the US, UK, Germany, France, and Japan conducted by Adobe about creativity, they came up with some interesting findings. To begin with, they asked every participant if they felt creativity was valuable to society and two-thirds of the respondents said “yes.” Perhaps even more significantly, 80% of them felt that unlocking creativity was critical to economic growth.

Rob Hoehn2019-04-29T10:16:28-07:00April 4th, 2016|Categories: Idea Management, Organization & Culture|Tags: adobe, Creativity, Employee Engagement, IdeaScale, Problem Solving, productivity, talent management|

Design Thinking + Business Model Innovation

There has been a lot of buzz around designing new and innovative business models. But what does it mean to design a new business model? How do you apply design thinking to business model innovation?

Ideascale2019-04-29T13:09:54-07:00August 25th, 2015|Categories: Strategies|Tags: Best Practices, Business Model Innovation, Creativity, design thinking, ethnography, idea management, Ideation, IDEO, unmet needs|

Tips to Achieve an Innovative and Differentiated Startup Project

This is the era of rapid changes and disruptive innovations, and no startup, irrespective of size or industry, should be launched without a high degree of innovation and differentiation. This article is about the why, what, and the how— the systematic way to achieve this, based on the long international experience of the author, Dr. Stephen M. Sweid.

Ideascale2019-04-29T13:48:36-07:00July 21st, 2015|Categories: Enabling Factors, Support for SMEs|Tags: business development, business innovation, business model, business plan, Change Management, creative thinking, disruption, disruptive innovation, divergent thinking, incremental change, innovation, Problem Solving, risk-taking, SME, smes, startup, Success, team diversity|