questions
Idea Ranking
Once you’ve generated your ideas the next step is idea ranking to determine the potential to become innovations. So, how do you decide which ideas to work on? The typical innovation process leaves that decision to the senior-level managers, which seems like a logical choice. They’re senior, so they
5 Great Reasons to Ask Questions
In a world where customers have access to an almost unlimited number of products when they ask a question on Google, most of which they may not even use, it becomes even more important to differentiate yourself in order to draw attention to what you might offer. How can you make a customer’s life ea
The Impossible Project: Take something old and make it new again.
What if your best new business idea is simply a way to make an old idea new again? That is the question asked by the drivers behind The Impossible Project, a leap of faith effort to bring back analog instant photography invented by Polaroid. In 2008, Polaroid announced it would dismantle all product
Can The Right Questions Unlock Your Creative Process?
All of us could use a little creativity in our life. Regardless of what you do for a living, at some point in your work you will have to develop a creative process to move your business forward. Of course, unless you specifically identify as a creative person, you may feel intimidated by the whole
Beyond The Obvious Is Now Available In Simplified Chinese [创客学:苹果公司也在偷师的创新课]
During my recent trip to China I discovered that the simplified Chinese translation of my book, Beyond The Obvious (创客学:苹果公司也在偷师的创新课), has been released and on-sale. I reached out to the publisher while I was in China and there was a mad scramble to setup a handful of press interviews while I was t
Great Innovations From Asking the Right Questions
Innovation is not about solving just any problem, but about knowing which problems to solve. We discover the right problem by asking the right questions. There are a number of inflection points in history in which a brilliant person took a popularly held assumption — even one that is totally counte
Igniting Personal Creativity
In my book Beyond the Obvious, I discuss the power of questions in igniting personal creativity and thereby create innovations that impact a business or industry. If you’ve read the book, you know what some of those questions are. They begin, “What are . . . ?” “What if . . . ?” “What will be . . .
Smart Questions
The best innovations are those that come from smart questions. As a student, Dr. William Hunter, a leading cell biologist and CEO of Vancouver -based Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, was told by one professor that the difference between good science and great science is the quality of the questions posed.