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Report 103
Your newsletter on applied creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in
business – delivered to your e-mail box on the first and third Tuesday
of every month.
Tuesday, 7 March 2006
Issue 77
Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your fortnightly newsletter
on creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.
As always, if you have news about creativity, imagination, ideas, or innovation
please feel free to forward it to me for potential inclusion in Report103. Your
comments and feedback are also always welcome.
Information on unsubscribing, archives, reprinting articles, etc can be found
at the end of this newsletter.
SEVEN SHORTIES
Today's issue of Report 103 is a little different to the usual issue. Instead
of two or three longish articles, I am giving you a handful of short articles
designed to be thought provoking. Since this is the 77th issue of Report 103
– coming out on 7 March no less – you will get seven short articles,
or shorties.
SILLY RULES
If you are brainstorming ideas, but not achieving the level of creativity you
would like, try applying silly rules. A silly rule is any rule that is completely
unrelated to the creative challenge, yet which follow. Silly rules might include:
- In what ways, using only words starting with the letter 'c', might we...?
- What new features might we add to our coffee makers to make them more suitable
for cats?
- How could we improve the fuel efficiency of our engines. All suggestions
must be in the form of a haiku.
- In what ways might Count Dracula launch our new product?
- And so on.
The point of silly rules is to force you to look at your problem in a new way
and to make you stretch your imagination further when looking for ideas.
Next time you are stuck for an idea, try silly rules.
IT'S QUANTITY, NOT QUALITY
One of the popular misconceptions about creative people is that they have a
knack for dreaming up brilliant, high quality ideas.
The truth is that creative people simply have lots of ideas and they learn
not to reject their ideas immediately. A few of those ideas are brilliant, a
lot of them are fair and a few of them are ridiculous. But, because they have
so many ideas, they periodically come up with brilliant ideas. If creative people
are lucky, they are remembered for those brilliant ideas.
Even if you do not perceive yourself as being creative (the truth, however,
is that you are creative), you can mimic creative thinkers by striving to come
up with as many ideas as possible whenever you need ideas. Importantly, you
must also learn not to reject ideas immediately, even if they seem ridiculous.
Soon you will find that with quantity of ideas, you will also achieve quality
of ideas.
This is why one of the most effective methods for coming up with ideas is to
take a sheet of paper and start writing down every idea that comes to mind.
No matter how absurd the idea is, write it down. You may write a list, a mind-map
or chaos notes (my preferred approach). It does not matter as long as you get
those ideas on paper.
Likewise, if you are managing a company, a division or a team, you must encourage
your staff to share ideas all the time – no matter how irrelevant those
ideas may be. Once everyone gets in the habit of sharing ideas, they will soon
find that they have more ideas and with more ideas you will get better ideas.
Idea management tools like Jenni (http://www.jpb.com/jenni/)
can facilitate generating lots of ideas – as well as eventually evaluating
and implementing them.
One final word of advice: once you start pushing yourself to generate more
ideas, you should also get into the habit of carrying a notebook with you at
all times. That way you can capture the ideas as soon as they come to mind.
JENNI UPGRADE
We have been busy upgrading Jenni idea management software service with a handful
of new features.
Jenni (http://www.jpb.com/jenni/),
as you may know, is a campaign based idea management tool which allows managers
to launch and manage ideas campaigns centred around specific challenges such
as “What new features might we add to product X” or “In what
ways could we improve the efficiency of our home delivery service?” Jenni
also includes tools for evaluating ideas and collaboratively implementing ideas.
New features include...
An improved ideas vault.
If an ideas campaign generates an idea that is very good, but is more suited
for implementation in the future – perhaps because it uses advanced technology
or perhaps because it fits in with future plans – you can move the idea
to the ideas vault for future review and possible implementation. You can even
have Jenni send you a reminder after any period of time, from one to 36 months,
to review the idea again.
Anyone may browse ideas in the ideas vault, and may even build on those ideas.
Thus even ideas being stored for the future may grow through collaboration.
Spontaneous ideas
Although ideas campaigns are simply the best means of focusing employee innovation
on business needs, there are times when employees have brilliant ideas which
do no fit in an active ideas campaign. Now, employees can submit spontaneous
ideas to Jenni and send those ideas to the appropriate idea manager for review,
evaluation and implementation. Thus no good idea need ever be lost to your firm
again.
Improved implementations
We've improved the implementation process making it easier and more efficient.
For more information about Jenni idea management software services, please
visit http://www.jpb.com/jenni/
or contact
me using our on-line contact form.
CREATIVITY – ITS PLACE IN EDUCATION
Wayne Morris has contributed a new paper on “Creativity – Its Place
in Education” to our creativity library. You can download the article
as a pdf file (120 kb) at http://www.jpb.com/creative/Creativity_in_Education.pdf.
Creative pupils lead richer lives and, in the longer term, make a valuable
contribution to society. Surely then, it is worth the effort to provide children
with creative thinking skills in their education.
IDEA RATE WORK
I expect you are familiar with piece-rate manufacturing work. The concept is
that instead of paying manufacturing employees a salary, you pay them for each
piece of work that they complete. The theory behind this concept is that if
you pay people per piece, they will be more productive, out of a desire to maximise
their income.
A company that is truly keen on innovation might consider paying their employees
on an idea-rate basis in which employees are paid per idea. For example...
Pay per relevant idea = US$50
Pay per implemented idea = US$1000
Such a system would doubtless push employees to stretch their creativity and
generate lots of ideas for the company. And by paying significantly more for
implemented ideas, you encourage people to think about ideas that are relevant
to the company's needs.
What do you think? Talk about it in the Imagination Club, a discussion forum
for sharing ideas and stretching your imagination. To join the imagination club,
visit http://www.jpb.com/imagination/.
KIDS, BUILDING BLOCKS & THE GREAT INNOVATION LIE
Imagine two teams of children, each with a huge supply of building blocks.
The teams will compete to build the most spectacular town out of the building
blocks. The teams have one day.
Team A gets to work by talking about their plan, experimenting and building.
Soon a chaotic town starts to take shape.
Team B hires an expensive innovation consultant from a large consulting firm.
With the use of many colourful PowerPoint slides, the consultant teaches the
kids the basics of his firm's innovation plan (teaching them the whole thing
would take a month). The kids make a survey of the blocks, devise complex risk
reducing review techniques and devise an idea sharing system that involves 17
steps.
At the end of the day, which team do you think is likely to build the most
creative town out of building blocks?
What if you replaced the kids with teams of adults doing the same thing?
As I pointed out in “The Great Innovation Lie” (Report
103, 6 December 2005 issue), because innovation has become such an important
issue in business, consulting companies are developing and selling highly complex
innovation packages to companies desperate to be more innovative. These packages
involve a lot of analytics, highly complex systems and require strict adherence
to a method. Thanks to their complexity, these packages result in a lot of billable
time for consultants who charge by the hour.
My argument has always been that such systems are not only unnecessary, but
are actually likely to fail as they do not allow for creative freedom –
a key component of innovation. Moreover, when innovation systems do fail, the
consultant can blame the client for not strictly adhering to the complex system.
The example of the teams of kids competing to build a town with building blocks
illustrates the problems of complex innovation systems. Giving kids the freedom
to imagine, experiment and share ideas is far more likely to deliver a creative
result than teaching kids complex innovation systems. Moreover, even if you
replace those kids with adults, the results are likely to be the same. You don't
need a complex system to be creative with building blocks
Likewise, in your company, you would do better to give your employees the freedom
to experiment and try out ideas; rather than force them to follow a complex
innovation system in order to have ideas.
Alternatively, you might buy them some building blocks!
NEW PARTNER
We have recently signed an agreement with MarketLab, a new firm situated near
Milan, Italy, that helps financial institutions innovate better. MarketLab will
provide Jenni idea management to their clients in a package that includes Jenni
together with their training, consulting and coaching services. MarketLab is
a relatively new start-up, but Sergio Spaccavento, the founder and president,
has substantial experience in the financial industry as well as in innovation.
He's also a nice guy.
Although MarketLab's focus is the financial sector, they are happy to talk
to other companies in Italy that are interested in reaping the benefits of Jenni's
campaign based idea management.
Their web-site is at www.marketlab.it.
UNCREATIVE CLICHÉS
A cliché is an expression that has been used so many times it becomes
trite and rather boring. Nevertheless, the English language is full of them
and they tend to get used a lot, making them even more trite.
Two clichés are particularly dangerous to creativity as they are real
idea squelchers: “Let's not reinvent the wheel” and “If it
ain't broke, don't fix it.”
“Let's not reinvent the wheel” is another way of saying, “we
already have a way of doing this that works well enough for us. There is no
point in trying to develop an alternative way of doing this. We don't want your
ideas on this subject, thank you.” It is clear what an idea killer this
cliché is. Nevertheless, it is one we hear all the time.
In fact, it is a good idea to reinvent the wheel from time to time. Technology
changes. The ways in which we use tools, services and processes change. And
we change. Sometimes we need to reinvent the most basic things in order to make
them more innovative. If you are ever tempted to say: “let's not reinvent
the wheel here,” I suggest you say instead: “Good thinking! Let's
smash the wheel into pieces, start from the beginning and see what we can invent.”
“If it ain't broke, don't fix it,” is not only appalling English,
but also bad for creativity. It is a phrase people use when someone wants to
improve a product or process. “If it ain't broke, don't fix it”
is basically saying: “we are happy with the product/process as it is.
It works fine. We see no reason to change or improve it. We don't want your
ideas.” Again, this cliché is a real idea squelcher, guaranteed
to shut people up and encourage them to keep their ideas to themselves.
The truth is, of course, everything on the planet can be improved. And many
companies – Toyota being a prime example – have thrived by implementing
a steady stream of innovative new ideas. Toyotas are well known for seldom breaking
down. But their technicians are constantly fixing them and making them better.
So, if you are ever tempted to say “if it ain't broke, don't fix it,”
instead say “if it isn't broken (I cannot abide by poor English from native
English speakers), let's see how we can make it even better”
HOW WHIRLPOOL DEFINES INNOVATION
An interesting case study in Business Review tells the story Whirlpool's innovation
initiative. What is particularly interesting is that the article does not just
site the success, but also some of the mistakes they mad and how those mistakes
were rectified. Worth reading. You can find it at http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2006/id20060306_287425.htm
FINAL NOTE
If you are detail oriented, you may have noticed that I have given you nine
shorties, two more than the promised seven. That's because two of the shorties
were rather blatant marketing messages promoting our products. So, you've receive
seven informative shorties and two promotional shorties.
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Happy thinking!
Jeffrey Baumgartner
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Report 103 is a complimentary weekly electronic newsletter from Bwiti bvba
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information can be found at http://www.jpb.com/report103/
Report 103 is edited by Jeffrey Baumgartner and is published on the first and
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