Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

The birth of ideas.

I am not going to start ranting about neurobiology (although I might next time ;)).

Before I start explaining how ideas are ‘born’ (in my opinion), I want to conceptualize ideas.

 I distinguish a core idea and different little ideas surrounding this core. These little ideas are the basis for the product; they state how you are going to concretize your idea. A lot of people are focusing on the core (eg. a disruptive idea) while a derivate idea (often incremental improvements) can generate a blue ocean too.

 

(download)

I like to think about the birth of ideas as the connection and disconnection of different parts by analyzing and reanalyzing situations (although some creativity might help). Therefore I refer to it as a form of chemical reaction (eg. connecting and reconnecting different parts).

 

Hot spots.

 

Last week I’ve attended a meeting with some young entrepreneurs. We talked about ideas and (business) opportunities. It reminded me of a book that I’ve read recently about hot spots (http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Spots-Workplaces-Organizations-Energy/dp/1576754189). 

Hot spots are created when people connect and start working on projects and this collaboration helps people to attain their full potential. There are different elements needed (according to the author):

1. Having a cooperative mindset.

2. Identifying boundary spanners (eg. people who want to expand their current vision and solve the issues at hand).

3. Sharing an igniting purpose. (eg. something special that you want to work on; a passion).

4. Sustaining sufficient productive capacity (no useless meetings and so on).

It’s hard to start a hotspot, it’s even harder to keep it active!

Collecting (even) more ideas.

There are always ways to improve your product; the pursuit of perfection.

How many people are thinking about how you can improve your product or service? What if you could double this number?

 Again there are a lot of techniques to do this (focusgroups, interviews, brainstorms and surveys are not adequate; we are talking about innovation, no closed questions!).

-      -Guerilla techniques: let people write on a wall that you place on a specific location,...

--     Ask feedback; ways in which you can improve your product (eg. online or on the packaging).

-      -Communicate that you are open to new ideas (I want to submit an idea for Philips but there is no clear way to do this).

-      -Contact lead users (eg. von Hippel, 1986).

-      -Contact experts (eg. Delphi method).

-      -Social media.

      - Stimulate people to think about your product (eg. contest like http://www.toyota.com/ideas-for-good ).

 

 

Ideation (inside the company).

Innovation is often R&D only; recently there is a focus on crowdsourcing and co-creation. Innovation managers often tend to forget that the employees of the company have good ideas too (for free!). Google, 3M let their employees develop their own projects. This is not achievable in all companies. I want to share some techniques with you.

 

-          The zone: create an idea zone. This is a cleary separated zone where the employees can only discuss ideas. One of the things that can attract a lot of people is to serve better (free) coffee there. The people that hang out there are clearly motivated to work in the intrest of the company. The ultimate goal is that people also think about new ideas after work. It should be a room to relax, to draw and write. It’s a dynamic think-thank.

-          Speeddating: cross-departemental quick discussions about recent trends.

-          The CEO should stress innovation everytime he communicates.

-          Meetups for people that want to work on projects. The people who are participating in this ideation phase are rewarded in a very visible manner (eg. give them free champagne at dinner) so that other employees are getting interested.

-          It is important that someone tries to capture the new ideas. The people who  came up with the ideas should be involved in the completion of the new ideas.

-          Open wall, walls where the employees can write on and share ideas

 

It’s sometimes stated that the ideation phase is overrated and that concretizing is the most important part. As a matter of fact, you need a lot of ideas that surround this basic idea to be able to implement the idea/concept..