Book Excerpts
These posts are the full-text excerpt from my book, Beyond The Obvious. Here, I discuss the idea of “thinking outside the box” and how it can help you innovate better. It is my hope that by reading these posts, readers can learn how to think differently and develop innovative ideas. I also provide examples from my journey as an innovator so readers can get a real-world perspective on creativity and innovation. Thanks for reading!
Top Ideas and How to Execute Them
Which Top Ideas to Pitch? The next stage is to consider how these ideas might be implemented by your organization. Look at the top ideas and say to yourself as the leader, “These are great ideas—how can we execute them?” The following questions will help you get to your answer: Can we get our teams
Killer Questions and Stepping Outside
Once you have assigned your Killer Questions, briefed your group, and set the date for the innovation session, it’s time for everyone involved to do observational homework. This is exactly what it sounds like. You need your team to get out of the office, into the real world, and make as many observa
Individual Ideas in Workshop Groups
At the end of the ideation part of the workshop, have the team members briefly talk through their individual ideas. Have them take their Post-it notes and place them on a flip chart or other surface that everyone can see. Get through this process quickly. You don’t need master’s dissertations. Start
Area of Focus for Workshop Groups
The ideas you generate in your workshop are only ever going to be as good as the people in the group. I want people of different ages, races, education levels, economic statuses, and beliefs to come up with an area of focus. Theoretically, I want twenty-three-year-old inner-city scholarship kids sit
Ideation Workshop Game Plan
So what do you need to know as the leader of an ideation workshop? A workshop has multiple elements—participants, Killer Questions, and so on—but at the end of the day, the quality of the ideas directly relates to your ability to create a highly functional, highly effective group. In the following s
Innovation Savings: Your Input Cost
There is a reason that the percentage in this question is as high as it is. Sure, it would sound less scary and more reasonable if I asked you how you could cut your price by 5 percent, or maybe 8 percent, but that would be missing the point. If you want potentially game-changing moves […]
Innovate for Time-sensitive Customers
My wife loves to look for travel bargains. Her main goal is to save money, and she considers spending several hours comparison shopping a fair tradeoff for savings. I’m kind of the opposite; in the very rare instances when I have to make my own travel plans I all I want is to find the […]
Innovation Process: Develop…Then Design Later?
In the traditional R&D process, the product is developed and then handed off to the design team to “wrap” it and make it look pretty. The drawback is that this approach is out of date; in the last ten years consumers have become much more design-savvy. Consumers want functional, usable design that h
Innovate and Design over the Competition
No matter what business we are in, we are all fighting essentially the same fight—designing a product that a customer will prefer over that of our competitor. To do this, we need to constantly be aware of how our business environment is evolving, how our customers are changing, and what we need to m
Make Your Innovation Idea Happen, First!
A few years ago I saw a website offering a product called After the Rapture Pet Care. It claimed to offer a service for Christians concerned about the welfare of pets that would be left behind after the Day of Judgment. Subscribers were promised a network of non-Christians who’d swoop in, collect pe
