Monthly Archives: October 2011
Have you tried brainstorming, ideas campaigns, crowdsourcing and other idea generation activities only to be disappointed by the results? Does it seem most corporate brainstorm sessions generate little more than pat phrases comprising the management’s favorite buzz words? Does your idea management system fill up largely with predictable ideas that at best might result in incremental innovations? If so, you are not alone. The truth is, many of these creative exercises – and in spite of what anyone tells you about innovation, idea generation is a creative activity that can eventually result in innovation – are poorly conceived. They are designed to generate as many ideas as possible in the hopes that once the obvious, conventional solutions to problems are exhausted, more creative, unconventional ideas will come to the surface. Yet in truth, the only time this happens is when highly creative people are participating in the brainstorm. Fortunately, there … Continue reading
There’s agreement: new thinking is needed for innovation. And for those that have tried, there’s agreement that it’s hard. It’s hard to create new thinking, to let go of what is, to see the same old things as new, to see resources where others see nothing. But there are some tricks to force new thinking, to help squeeze it out of ourselves. The answer, in a word, is scarcity. In the developing world there is scarcity of everything: food, shelter, electricity, tools, education; in the developed world we must fabricate it. We must dust off the long-neglected thought experiment, and sit ourselves in self-made scarcity. Try a thought experiment that creates scarcity in time. Get the band together and ask them this question: If you had only two weeks to develop the next generation product, what would you do? When they say the question is ridiculous, agree with them. Tell … Continue reading
If you want to create a culture of innovation in your organization, make sure you are matching people to projects that have passion for and have enough competence to succeed in. If you’re sensing that “things” aren’t going all that well, it may be due to the fact that you’ve got fish climbing trees. Your task? Find a pond for the fish… and find some lovers of tree-climbing to pick the fruit or swing from the branches. Problem solved. Don’t miss an article (3,300+) – Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Innovation Excellence group! Mitch Ditkoff is the Co-Founder and President of Idea Champions and the author of “Awake at the Wheel”, as well as the very popular Heart of Innovation blog.
Today, a light hearted post in which I get to quote two of my favorite philosophers – Jimmy Buffet and Albert Einstein. Buffet write in Changes in Latitudes that if we can’t laugh we’ll all go insane. Einstein said that insanity was doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. If Buffet and Einstein, both highly respected philosophers, are correct, then most large organizations are insanity factories – not just mired in insanity but actually producing insanity. Here’s why. First, creativity is enabled by a lot of factors. These can range from artistic inspiration, to dire need, to innate skill or insight. But creativity is most often enabled by freedom of thought, a chance to do something a bit different, and a little humor. Why do you think all good idea generation sessions start with a joke or an ice breaker? …
