Brainstorming can be effective if it is performed properly. In this article, Jeffrey Baumgartner explores some of the weaknesses of traditional brainstorming and explores several potentially fruitful alternatives.
If you want to make the most of your creative potential, you need to learn how to override your inner censor so that it does not stifle your most imaginative ideas. Here are several techniques you can use to do this.
The biggest hurdle to innovation is probably allowing hurdles to become insurmountable. The thing to remember, however, is that hurdles are for jumping over. The best method of jumping over innovation hurdles is through creativity and innovation.
To sell ourselves and our big ideas, we need elevator pitches that stand out, are unique and stimulate a response. Clearly, some creativity is what is needed to design such a pitch. Jeffrey Baumgartner explains how to develop one.
Free Thinking Mode is a collection of best practices shared by the most creative companies and people Michelle Conrad and her team have come in contact with.
Coaching people to be innovative requires different skills from those normally used at work. This blog post outlines a few of the most important.
Creative problem solving isn't just brainstorming, although that's what many people may associate it with. It's actually a well-defined process that can help you from problem definition to implementing solutions, according to Jeffrey Baumgartner.
Often, the brainstorming process is followed by a lack of action. This one-page action plan is a fail-safe way to bring an idea to life.
Everyone needs to be responsible for innovation. It doesn't matter what your job is. It's still part of your work to improve things and even invent things, says author and creativity expert Gregg Fraley in the latest Creativity in Business interview.
A morphological matrix is a powerful tool for generating ideas, based on potential variations in a problem's characteristics.
SCAMPER is a productive and versatile technique for generating innovative ideas for your product or service. It forces you to look at your offering from seven different perspectives. Paul Sloane explains, and gives some examples of companies that have used this popular and highly effective technique to generate innovative products and services.
One of the most prevalent and dangerous misconceptions in innovation [...]
When many people brainstorm, they tend to get into the bad habit of stopping with the "first right idea." In other words, at the first sign of a promising idea, they decide that they're done brainstorming, and mentally "pack it up" and move on to another task. But this isn't very productive from a creative problem-solving standpoint. Here's why.
For any corporate innovation initiative to succeed, it is important that it is aligned with corporate strategy. Jeffrey Baumgartner shares a simple three step approach to help ensure that this happens and to avoid common pitfalls.
Successful organizations worldwide realize how important it is to their success to nourish creativity and innovation. Innovation is, after all, the vanguard to increased competitiveness. In my years of experience in the development of innovative electronic products, innovation challenges have necessitated the gathering and practice of techniques from many arenas. Here are a few ideas that we have developed in my company. I hope that they will help you to expand and enable innovation in your organization, too.
