Hand warming snow blowers would put their hollow handles to work. As the tubing for the handles ends up near the engine why not pipe hot air through it? No more cold hand while clearing the driveway or side walk! – Marks Stephens, Manchester, Conn.
Martin Gilliard
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Put some music on with some rhythm and a beat. This could be anything from a waltz to your favorite dance or pop track.
Hold your child’s hands and get them to stand on your feet as you dance in time to the beat. Hold young children that are unable to stand on your feet in your arms.
Be imaginative and pretend that you are the DJ at a night club. Comment on what people are wearing, the disco lights that are flashing.
Count out loud the number of steps that you make to a beat or sing out loud to the song and get your child to join in.
When embarking on a new innovative idea make sure that you first record your team’s wishes for the new project. What is it that they wish will happen.
It’s also good to consider the opposite of this too as in what they wish won’t happen. Another way to put this would be to list your team’s hopes and fears for the project.
Record Them And Share The List
In the corporate world, this is often recorded using the more formal terminology of project aspirations and project obstacles.
Whatever terminology you choose make sure that you list these plus and minus wishes for the new project on a flip chart or project wiki. This way you can continue to check on them as the project progresses and see how close you are to meeting / avoiding them.
Revisit Often
Don’t simply make this a once a project activity. Have the list as an active document that you revisit and update on a regular basis. Is there anything that you can add or remove or check off as you revisit the list?
Look in detail at the project fears or obstacles that have been listed. Try and remove or eliminate any fears/obstacles instantly as soon as they are raised.
Having a defined list of what you want to go right and what you want to avoid there for everyone to see and share gives the team more control as they’re often better able to respond and react to them when they appear.
Encourage your team to strive towards reaching project aspirations and reward them when they are met.
Knowledge management tools must incorporate four components in order to be effective:
- A database subsystem. A database is an essential element as it enables the underlying information to be shared and organized in a manner that assists employees and managers to share their information in a timely and efficient fashion.
- An organizational language subsystem. This could also be described as Metadata i.e., data that describes data. It enables individuals who access the tool to better understand the meaning of things.
- A networking subsystem. The networking subsystem is required so as to enable employees from far-reaching areas of the organization to share information. Sharing of this nature has the potential to create new knowledge.
- The transfer subsystem. This component enables systemic knowledge to be directly transferred between individuals or it enables new knowledge to be created from a combination of other people’s knowledge. This could be described as the most critical component as it enables both the transfer and, or the creation of knowledge.
Tools incorporating the above components, which are effectively managed and utilized, for the purpose of knowledge sharing, assist the organization in terms of greater innovative output, either in terms of new products or services or better operational performance. This often results in enhanced financial performance.
3M has effectively used knowledge management tools to assist with transferring employee knowledge and experience with other employees. These tools assist in motivating the employees to share information, an essential ingredient for innovation to flourish.
The most effective tools enable individuals to operate within communities. Sharing / transferring knowledge within communities enables a strategic focus for the development of knowledge and ideas in pursuit of common goals.
Communities promote intrinsic motivation (intrinsic means innate or within; intrinsic motivation is, therefore, one’s internal motivation to keep going; it is the form of motivation that drives us to help others), which is a necessity for creativity and innovation to flourish.
Generally, tools should simulate environments that were previously conducive to innovation. Key elements to simulate include accessibility to experts in individual fields, cross-department/division networking and providing the means to enable the sharing of ideas and practices.
It is important to recognize that knowledge production is a social process. Prior to knowledge management tools knowledge sharing was often face-to-face interaction (e.g. at the coffee machine, during cigarette breaks, by the water cooler, working lunches and scheduled meetings). Such tools simulate this form of interaction via specialized communities, news based emails of user problems, community events, discussion forums, and chat sessions.
Modern tools must strike a balance between supply-side and demand-side knowledge strategies. Supply-side strategies provide the means to distribute existing organizational knowledge whereas demand-side strategies attempt to provide knowledge to satisfy organizational needs for new knowledge. Demand-side strategies tend to be more learning or innovation-oriented.
Define or distribute ground rules at the start of a meeting to assist with the meeting’s smooth running.
These should encourage participation, help maintain control and keep things on track.
They can be developed together by the group or suggested for buy-in. Do this during your first meeting as a group and re-use them again at each future meeting that the group attends.
It should not be down to one individual to enforce the rules. Remind the group that everyone is responsible for the group’s behavior/dynamics.
Usual rules include… only one person can speak at a time – for this, there is a technique used in face to face meetings called ‘pass the pencil’. With this technique, only the person holding the pencil is allowed to speak.
This helps enforce a second common rule, which is to disallow interruptions. Which also usually means asking for everyone to switch off mobile phones.
Other common rules include:
- Set time limits on contributions – honor time limits and start on time. Don’t wait for latecomers.
- All ideas are worthwhile
- Take issues offline that cannot be easily resolved. This process is often called a parking lot and is where you basically park issues that are important but not relevant to the topic. A parking lot is usually a large piece of paper pinned to the wall and acts as a visual reminder to all that says everyone’s ideas are important.
- Limit conversations that stray away from the topic in question
- Use laptops only in break times. During the meeting show some respect to the speak by actively listening/participating
- Everyone has an equal right to speak
- Try to gain consensus within the group
- Speaking across others or shouting will not be tolerated.
- Stick to the objectives/scope of the meeting – simply note off-topic items for discussion outside of the meeting.
- It’s Ok to disagree
- Share responsibility for the outcome
- Base all decisions on data wherever possible
- Select the right decision rather than the quick decision. i.e. don’t let your time constraints make you too hasty to get to your conclusions. Re-group if the decision doesn’t seem quite right.
- Maintain confidentiality of what is shared i.e. no gossiping.
The team’s ground rules are living documents, so revisit and update them if necessary on a regular basis.
Ask group members to gauge the effectiveness of the rules.
You have a great idea, the next step is to build a business case for it. This document is used in order to demonstrate the advantages of an innovative idea to all stakeholders…
The case should put forward the vision for the idea, showing how it will add value for the organization and the people who use the idea.
A typical business case includes the following:
A problem statement: If the idea is aimed at solving some problem then the problem should be stated in a problem statement. Here you only state the problem and don’t start to give any details related to your solution.
Goals: Define the goals that will be achieved by implementing this idea.
Business model: How will this idea create value or improve compliance within the organization?
Fit: How does this idea fit into and complement the existing business? Getting support from your stakeholders is much easier if they are able to see how the idea fits in with existing practices or the strategic direction of the organization.
Benefits: Here you can list all of the intangible benefits. Leave the tangible benefits for the cost-benefit analysis. Document what the idea does to improve on what already exists. Note any metrics that you will be observing in order to demonstrate actual improvements.
High-Level Project Plan: Include a very high-level project plan which only includes the major milestones for the project and the expected dates when you expect to reach them.
Risks: To demonstrate that you have considered potential problems, list any risks that you envisage could happen to obstruct or derail the project, also list ideas that help mitigate those risks.
Cost-benefit analysis (CBA): Here you want to be listing quantitative benefits, along with your anticipated costs. List any dollar savings or expected profits over time. For projects that are less than one year you can document the benefits using the payback method which results in a number related to the number of years it will take for the project to pay for itself, ideally, many organizations like to see this number coming in at less than 1. For longer projects, you should use more advanced appraisal techniques that take into consideration the time value of money such as the discounted cash flow technique. Include in your CBA resource costs/requirements – be aware that people’s costs are likely to increase if the project is planned to take beyond a year.
Executive summary: Add an executive summary to the case to summarize all of the key points for anyone who may not have the time to digest the full document. Make sure that this summary is short, factual, and clear and effectively sells your idea. An effective executive summary should compel the reader to get more details about your great idea.
Go From Business Case To The Home Page
Image by Andrys Stienstra from Pixabay
Creativity styles are thought to be part of who you are. Similar to one’s eye color in that they cannot be changed suggests Charles Prather, in his book Blueprints for Innovation.
Two Predominant Creativity Styles…
Adaptive problem-solving. People who have this style are constantly looking for ways to improve the systems and processes that they work with on a day-to-day basis.
They look to make processes and systems cheaper, better, faster and more efficient. This particular style therefore quickly adds value to an organization. For this reason, people who have this style are in high demand from organizations and tend to be well rewarded and appreciated for the changes that they introduce. People with this style are strong at producing incremental innovations.
Innovative problem-solving. People who have this style fall more into the change agent category. They challenge and choose to change the system or systems that they are part of.
They avoid patching up or bettering existing systems and instead focus on completely replacing what is currently in existence. Their strengths include new product creation, research and analysis and they have an ability to anticipate unarticulated customer needs. Individuals with this kind of style would be more closely associated with radical innovations.
Blueprints for Innovation: How Creative Processes Can Make You and Your Company More Competitive by Charles Prather. Please note that as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
This easy read is a capsule describing how organizations can become more innovative. It contains many practical tips and techniques that will help you move to a higher level of innovation.
Blueprints for Innovation: How Creative Processes Can Make You and Your Company More Competitive
Image by Mihai Paraschiv from Pixabay
A creativity profile will often provide insights into your creative processes and aid personal development.
Often they focus on how you are creative rather than whether or not you are creative, everyone is creative.
They provide the user with an indication of where their creative strengths lie and give you an opportunity to look at areas where you could enhance your creative abilities. Creative people in art and science do not share the same unique personality profiles.
Ultimately the goal of a profile should be for you to understand your creative style and therefore help unleash your creative potential; enabling you to bring more excitement and creative energy into your day-to-day activities.
Image by Aline Berry from Pixabay
Vision can be defined as ‘A mental image of a possible and desirable future state of the organization’
Vision is the future picture and sets the scene for the purpose and strategy of the organization. A vision should be credible and realistic, setting an attractive future point for the organization. Something that is better than the current state.
One of the reasons a strategic vision can be developed is to create desirable challenge for managers within the organization. A combination of challenges along with a credible, realistic future vision, that the people within the organization ‘buy in to’ can influence innovative processes as they may be the only way to achieve such a vision.
Mission statements are personal to each organization and usually consider the nature of the business i.e. what business are we in? What business should we be in? They are usually defined from a customer perspective i.e. what the business does for the customer. They reflect the values and beliefs of an organization, and where possible the goal of the organization’s competitive advantage… “To be the leader in the field of…” They are connected with the defined purpose of the organization and are communicated to all stakeholders both inside and outside the organization. They define where the company is headed and what the company stands for.
Mission statements can directly influence a company’s culture (This is the way we do things around here). Company culture can influence attitudes to risk and change both of which can have a direct effect on the innovativeness of an organization.
Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay
Constant innovation is a necessity in our modern world. Why? Because products and services are always getting copied and it’s difficult to stop people and organizations from doing so. Of course, you can trademark brand names, logos, etc. However, many products and services can be very difficult to protect with a patent. Small changes to the components that make up the product or small changes to the processes that collectively represent the service ultimately can result in a product or service which is a copy but not from a legal perspective.
So your only real way to stay ahead of the game is by a process of constant innovation. Constantly coming up with new ideas and implementing them keeps your customers engaged and your competitors behind you in the business race.
Don’t Get Too Complacent
The trick is to not get too complacent. Experiment and test the market. Just because a particular product or service has performed well doesn’t necessarily mean that it will stay like that in years to come.
Get the most knowledgeable people of that product or service together in one room and get them to brainstorm on ways that the product could be improved or simply revamped. Sometimes a simple change in packaging can give a product a completely new lease of life.
Engage Your Customers
Reach out to your customers, either one-on-one or via focus groups. Get their feedback on the pluses and minuses of your product or service. Ask them where they think it could be improved. Also, ask them why they use your product or service. This can be quite enlightening as occasionally you may find that your customers use your offerings for something other than what it was originally meant for. Could this open new markets for you?
Work With Your Best People
Get together with your best people and analyze the feedback you get back. Anything that makes sense to change? If so act on in now. I need to reemphasize this though… Don’t just change for change’s sake – make sure it fully makes sense to do so? Is it going to improve your brand, product or service? If so, then put a team in place to make it happen. That’s constant innovation.
Consumers are demanding more and more choice, quality and variety. Stay ahead of the game by keeping up with this demand.