Fresh Takes on Innovation

Look at this amazing invention by designer Andrew Bosley: The Brainstormer. Turn one of the three wheels or just press “random” to get a new and absolutely crazy suggestion for… well… I don’t know, but the design is awsome!

What about using this as a real tool for coming up with combined solutions, for instance for products or services? Or even just as a tool for decision making, for instance on how to spend your free time.

Every single week we visit companies in Switzerland and Germany, sometimes also in other parts of the world, and we often hear a variation of what we like to call the “we have more than enough ideas” myth, a story that is told to us by decision makers in companies of all sizes and industries. It is told in different variations, of which the most common one is something like the following:

In our company, we actually do not have a problem with generating ideas. We have so many ideas that we do not know which ones to implement or we have problems with the implementation of ideas that are new in general, because we face internal resistance in many cases.

It is, of course, true, that in all companies new ideas are constantly generated in one way or the other. New ideas for products are discussed in meetings, new improvement for processes are suggested by people who use them, and clients come with needs and ideas that will help them do better business.

Still, the question is: Are the ideas that are developed in this way truly relevant? Are they the most innovative ideas that can be generated? And to which question are these ideas an answer?

You see, the problem with “free floating” ideas like the ones described is that they are not rooted within strategy and they are not generated in a systematic way with a carefully chosen set of participants. And this, ultimately, is also the reason that implementation of these ideas often seems difficult, time consuming, expensive etc. Needless to say that if ideas are driven by individuals, it is always also a political choice which ideas should be implemented and which ones do not deserve another minute of attention.

So our answer to companies and organisations that say “we have more than enough ideas, we just do now know which ones to implement” is to say:

- Please set up a structured innovation management in your company. This can be a process like the Idea Factory process and software that BrainStore uses, and we are happy to provide the training for your team.

- Use this process to work on truly strategic projects, generating ideas for clearly targeted questions, not general ideas for your business

- Work together with internal and external people in this process, do do not just rely on the ideas from within your organisation, but invite your clients, partners and lateral thinkers into the process

- Dare to share ideas with others and improve them by having ongoing discussions about them with a diverse set of people.

If you follow these few suggestions, you will still have lots of ideas, and you still will not be able to implement all of them, but you will know exactly which ones to implement, how, and when. And you will face a lot less resistance, because you have integrated all relevant stakeholders into the process. Sounds easy? It is.

At Brainstore, we have a special liking for ideas that incite controversy.  Whenever we see an idea that half the groups hates, we know it’s a good one.  Even if that idea isn’t adapted, by simply including it in the discussion, we can often open up the group’s thinking to totally new horizons.

A recent article from the New York Times is one of those ideas.  In it, the author proposes that if we want humans to travel to Mars in the near future, we should send them on a one-way trip!

While it sounds like an awful idea at first, the article points out that there are benefits to sending astronauts only one-way.  It would be significantly cheaper and would move up human-travel to Mars by decades (at least).   It could even be staffed by  aging scientists who dreamed of going to space their entire lives, thought their chances were over and who would be thrilled to “boldly go where no one has gone before”.  It would let astronauts build-up a sustainable colony on Mars where other humans could eventually live – and the technology to make the return journey could be built there for future two-way travel.

See how considering a “ludicrous” idea can actually lead to new paths of thinking?  The first idea might never pan out… but by simply considering it, we end up looking at the challenge from a new angle.

I will say it right away that I have no statistics (yet) to prove my case, but I have a very strong gut feeling that what I am about to say is abolutely true yet not enough recognised with policy makers throughout Europe. I invite each our blog readers to contribute with whatever research material they can find to back this assumption.

Here goes: The most innovative countries in the world invest heavily in their education system, that is to say daycare, preschool, K-12 and higher education. It is NOT the countries that put the emphasis on strenghtening only the higher education.

Also, the most innovative countries would probably need to be those that already foster skills like problem solving, creative thinking and collaboration in the early childhood years.

I am very interested in learning about statistics and materials that back this gut feeling as well as schooling concepts that tell us something about how innovative kids that went through such systems become. Please contribute and we will share the results with you.

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.

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.

Here at BrainStore we believe that good ideas are created in unusual surroundings. During our workshops we try to encourage this by enabling our clients to step out of their everyday life and try something new. However, if you aren’t exactly looking for a particular inspiration and aren’t in current need of ideas or solutions, you might still be in search for some everyday surprises. This can be done quite easily. Why don’t you try one of the following suggestions?

1. Swop to the other side of your bed. Believe me, you and your partner will be surprised how interesting it is to wake up on the “wrong” side of the bed. It’s going to make your day!

2. Change the order of your kitchen drawers once a month you. It will take you a while to get used to the new setting. Once you start grabbing the saucepan automatically again it is time for a new arrangement!

3. Use a different deodorant. You will be reminded of the change of routine about a hundred times a day. This helps your brain setting up new neurological “highways”…

4. Change the setting of your living room furniture. A bit like the suggestions above, it includes a physical workout at the same time – never bad, always inspiring and above all, lots of fun!

5. Go flying, climbing, diving, bungee jumping… For the more courageous among you it can be extremely inspiring to try something completely new – such as a tandem paragliding jump, rock climbing, diving, a bungee jump – whatever you always wanted to do and never dared. DO IT NOW. I cannot explain the inspiring potential of my first flight and the adrenalin when I was a few hundred feet above the ground for the first time, all by myself… Tempted? Look here: http://www.chilloutparagliding.com/

General rule: Once you discover routine in your everyday life – CHANGE IT!

All here at BrainStore would just like to express their elation, happiness and satisfaction with the outcome of the election in the United States. We wish the new President a good transition and first term. Sure, there is a lot of work coming, but for someone who showed so much perseverance and patience during a long and tiring election, nothing is impossible!

And if he or his administration ever are in need of fresh ideas: We can help!

If knowledge is power, personal newsfeeds are your weapons. A newsfeed customized to your information needs allows for professional news monitoring and information retrieval like previously only news services and professional communication agencies could.
If for instance you wished to be constantly informed about your clients, suppliers and competitors, then an aggregated newsfeed could be an interesting solution for you.

In the following example I’ve combined selected data sources to process them with different methods. Eventually the outcome is a helpful aggregated idea-feed.

This is comparable with the concept of a search engine: finding what one is looking for via queries from any number of sources. So instead of constantly dealing with complicated Google scanning on a certain subject, you can continually inform yourself of a predefined field.

In this aggregated newsfeed example, articles of selected sources on the subjects of trends, ideas, innovation and future are displayed on a daily basis. For instance, you can subscribe to the Yahoo! Pipes aggregated feed as badge for iGoogle or Netvibes.

The Internet includes an elusive quantity of information. If we visited each existing URL on the Internet for only 10 seconds, we would be busy doing so for roughly 317,098 years.

Google and Yahoo search engines let you browse through this enormous amount of information as quick as lightning. And by using social bookmarking service providers such as Mister Wong and Delicious clever discoverers can find the information looked for in no time.

Based on a content analysis of social bookmark service providers, I have listed and summarized the most interesting websites on the subject of ideas, trends and future in a Google Custom Search. That is about the same as analyzing how many guests go to which restaurants. The best results however are not compiled in a list but in a search engine based on Google’s technology!

The result is a niche search engine to track trends, future and innovative ideas!

I suggest you begin searching for new business trends right away or start your discovery of exciting ideas from a land faraway.

Niche Search Engine to Track Trends, Future and Innovative Ideas:

Custom Search

For more informations see:
- We knew the web was big…
- Google Custom Search Blog