Fresh Takes on Innovation

decompose the problem to solve it!

Today I attended a meeting of a small company that wanted to find a solution on how to find new clients. They were trying to have a brainstorming session on this question and (not much to my surprise) started struggling with it, becoming entangled in a very unstructured discussion. Soon they were so deep in the jungle of their problem that they were unable to find a way out.

What had happened? It is fairly simple: They had been staring the problem in the face without looking at it with more distance. This is a typical mistake when people try to generate ideas. But what is the solution. Simple, buit it needs a fair amount of training: Instead of trying to solve the question, first de-compose the question and work on subquestions.

For instance, if you are trying to find new clients, here are just a few examples of what you might want to look at:
- potential channels of communication
- different target audiences
- strengths in working with current clients
- totally whacky ideas on how to get meetings with potential clients
- ideas for mailings
- how are other companes finding new clients
- etc.

The difference is that you first look at subquestions to your greater problem, and that gives you the possibility to build great ideas using that raw material.

Another issue is who you involve in the generation of ideas, but this is yet another subject that we will need to discuss later.

There is an African saying: If you want to eat an Elephant, you have to cut it in small pieces. It’s the same with ideas, really.

Hans Rosling from Sweden is – in my opinion – the king of statistics. He studied Medicine and Statistics and is founder of the Gapminder Foundation that created a software that will show you statistics as you have never seen them before!

Enjoy one of the latest statistical contributions from Hans by looking at this interesting comparison of the news ratio between news about the swine flu and news about tuberculosis.

You know Open source software, and we at BrainStore love open source innovation – but did you know that there is open source Cola? Now you do. Feel free to copy the recipe and try this at home!

Design by Hwang Jin wook, Jeon You ho, Han Kuk il & Kim Ji myung

At BrainStore we were pretty excited a few years ago when a defense contractor asked us to create some ideas on how their existing technologies could be used to make the world a better place.

They wanted to know what the scenarios of future threats to mankind were and how to respond to them. We came up with many ieas to tackle themes like modern piracy, desertification, world hunger, water poisoning, terrorism in cities, deluge and many more.

One concept took into consideration to build a kind of “seed bomb” that you could drop over territories that cannot be reached easily. The bomb would carry seedy to grow vegetables and could be used by the local farmers to grow produce.

I found a similar concept on Yanko Design Magazine. The seedbomb consists of a biodegradable capsule that contains soil and seeds. Once the capsule reaches the ground, the plant first grows in the capsule and produces moisture, which then melts the biodegradable capsule. I like the design and the way the concept is thought throug. Bravo, Yanko Design.

While researching this topic, a friend pointed out that using seed capsules is not such a new idea after all. The technology exists since the 70ies in some way and was used by Guerilla Gardeners, wo try to claim back a piece of nature within urban space. I am truly amazed at the idea of Guerilla Gardening. It opens a whole new world to me! And here is one very nice example of a Guerilla Gardening blog worth reading!

Look at this video about a project for Zappos Showroom done by Stanford design students. What I like about this way of showing an idea is that it actually shows the full interactivity of a future website by using simple, everyday materials and a narrator. The idea is immediately understandable and you can much better understand it than if it were presented with stills or screenshots. And I bet that doing it was fun, too!

Have a look at this wonderful idea from Saatchi & Saatchi for T-Mobile. It has perfectly captured the “social media” mood of 2009. Want to know more? go to Saatchi & Saatchis web site and read the whole story.

Thank you, Hazel Swayne (@hazeliz) and Inaki Escudero (@inakiescudero) for the tweet!

sticky ideas

The tricky thing with new ideas is that they are very elusive and easily dismissed as compared to old, known ideas that stick in people’s minds and habits.

So this is my own personal recipe to make new ideas stick within the organization.

1. make yourself acquainted with the culture in the organization. You need to learn the way people argue for ideas, how they communicate with each other and how they deal with the “new” in general to be prepared to sell your idea.

2. For a new idea to succeed, you need accomplices. In general, there are three types of potential accomplices in the organization that you can work with to sell your idea:

a) the professional / expert. You need people who will help you with the “proof of concept”, who will waiver all the “is this even feasible” talk and who can back you up on the more technical side of things

b) the organizational expert. Usually these people are found in HR or related departments and know exactly how the organization works. Who needs to be convinced of what, how and most importantly, when?

c) The motivators: People who can motivate other people to move in a new direction, who are role models and users of new technology and new tools, can help you sell your idea.

Find these people within the organization and make them your accomplices.

3. Do not present one idea. Present many solutions to a problem. If your idea is a new specific product, for instance, do not try to sell that product, but talk about the need to add new products to the portfolio in general and then engage as many stakeholders as possible in the dialogue about what that new potential product could be. Talk about criteria, about goals, about new markets, about the customers need, etc. On the one hand, you will then be able to talk about your specific idea in a context, on the other hand, it might very well be the case that your idea gets much better by the additional input, and it might even be the case (I consider it to be very likely) that you find many other product ideas that are at least as good as yours. This will give everyone the chance to choose the best solution instead of just having one idea to deal with, that can be easily dismissed. Most importantly, the idea will now be the idea of the entire team and not the idea of one individual.

4. If you have more than one idea, be prepared to visualize them in a comparable way so people actually get a chance to compare them with each other and to choose the best solution in a structured way.

5. If your idea (or a variation or alternative of said idea) is accepted, you need to go on a campaign for this idea. Having been accepted does not mean that it is implemented; people may not even remember it in a week. Use all the materials you have gathered in the process to make the idea stick. Invent a claim, a logo, a motivational quote or whatever you might need to make the idea stick. Be prepared to talk about it every minute of every day. Remember “Yes, we can?”. That is a powerful idea, but it needed to be repeated over a long period of time to become truly sticky in everyone’s mind.

6. Use your accomplices (see point 2) and your knowledge about the organization (see point 1) to steer the implementation of the idea in the right direction.

7. Talk about the idea as if it were already a reality. This will help people see it as something that will truly be there in a short while and not just a fantasy that you have.

8. Celebrate milestones: Make sure that every significant move towards the implementation is celebrated or at least mentioned publicly. This will make your idea truly stick.