Monthly Archives: April 2010
This is the second of several ‘Innovation Perspectives’ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘What is the role of social media in innovation? (Either inside or outside the organization)’. Here is the next perspective in the series:by Braden KelleySocial media serves an incredibly important role in innovation. Social media functions as the glue to stick together incomplete knowledge, incomplete ideas, incomplete teams, and incomplete skillsets. Social media is not some mysterious magic box. Ultimately it is a tool that serves to connect people and information.I’m reminded of a set of lyrics from U2′s “The Fly”:”Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thiefAll kill their inspiration and sing about their grief”Social media can help ideas grow and thrive that would otherwise wither and die under the boot of the perfectionist in all of us.Do you remember the saying “it takes a … Continue reading
Is news dying, or are newspapers dying? That’s a critical question. Most of us know the demand for news is not dying – and if you needed reinforcement a recent McKinsey & Company study verified that the demand for news has increased (McKinsey Quarterly “A Glimmer of Hope for Newspapers”). And a lot of the increase comes from people under 35 who are escalating their news demands. Of course, most of this increase is coming from the web and mobile media.Too often, however, we don’t see our business growing. Instead, Lock-in to old definitions make us think our business is shrinking when it is actually doing the opposite! And that’s the Re-invention Gap. Manufacturers of small printing presses said demand was declining in the 1970s, when in fact demand for copies was exploding. Only the explosion was from xerography instead of presses. So A.B. Dick and Multigraphics, small offset press … Continue reading
OK, after 2 weeks of sleep deprivation due to manuscript deadlines, I am now back in action here. The final version of the manuscript went to the publisher on Saturday. I then played Personality Poker in Memphis with nearly 100 representatives from Penguin’s gift sales on Sunday. These individuals sell books into non-traditional bookstores, gift stores, hospital gift shops, department stores, casino, and similar places.Last weekend, I played Personality Poker with a couple hundred people at a conference in Canada.After the event, over a dozen of us decided to go to dinner together. Half the people fit into taxis. After the taxis departed from the hotel, the remaining individuals went in two cars, one of which I drove. We had the address and a map. I, being Mr. Technology, plugged the address into the GPS. The other individual had the map, but also relied on directions he received from the … Continue reading
Here’s an idea.Pick 5-8 people in your organization who are not in sales or marketing. Invite them to a one-hour meeting later this week, and at the meeting spend 15 minutes each brainstorming on the four questions below:How will you identify and empower your most loyal customers to tell your story, increase positive word-of-mouth and general referrals?What can employees do to evangelize your brand, and attract both new customers and potential new employees, on and off work hours?How could you identify, engage and participate in customer communities to build value, trust, credibility and consideration/intent towards your brand?What simple things can you do to inspire greater retention, renewals or frequency with current customers (without spending additional money)?I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised how creative, innovative and useful their ideas and that time will be.Bonus points if you hand them a copy of the questions afterward, give them a day or two … Continue reading
by Paul SloaneOne of the most popular creativity methods in my Ideas Workshop is SCAMPER. It 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. SCAMPER is an acronym and you ask the following types of question when you use this tool:Substitute: What elements of this product or service can we substitute?Combine: How can we combine this with other products or services?Adapt: What idea from elsewhere can we alter or adapt?Maximize or minimize: How can we greatly enlarge or greatly reduce any component?Put to other use: What completely different use can we have for our product?Eliminate: What elements of the product or service can be eliminated?Rearrange or reverse: How can we rearrange the product or reverse the process?Here are some examples of how the SCAMPER verbs work for innovation:If you were making … Continue reading
If your job requires you to lead meetings, brainstorming sessions, or problem solving gatherings of any kind, chances are good that most of the people you come in contact with are left-brain dominant: analytical, logical, linear folks with a passion for results and a huge fear that the meeting you are about to lead will end with a rousing chorus of kumbaya.Not exactly the kind of mindset conducive to breakthrough thinking.Do not lose heart, oh facilitators of the creative process. Even if you find yourself in a room full of 10,000 left brainers, there are tons of ways to work with this mindset in service to bringing out the very best of the group’s collective genius:1. Diffuse the fear of ambiguity by continually clarifying the processMost left-brain-dominant people hate open-ended processes and anything that smacks of ambiguity. Next time you find yourself leading a creative thinking session, make it a … Continue reading
