I recently presented in front of over a hundred people at an Innovation event we ran. I talked about what innovation means, the collision of ideas, why the best ideas come from employees, customers and partners. I talked about trends I am seeing around culture and process from our clients. I also talked about our relationship with Brightidea, the world’s leading provider of ideation platforms and tools.
I concluded with a bunch of things that each and everyone one of us can act on – right now. Immediately.
I thought I would share these with you:
1. Think about how you can ensure that you are listening to ideas from everywhere in the organisation. Not just from usual suspects or from the executive team.
2. Activity bring in ideas from customers and partners. And that means thinking through how you can get those ideas from the coal face into your organisation. Unbiased. Unfiltered.
3. Establish a process to manage ideas from the ideation phrase through to execution. Even if you write the ideas down on sheets of paper. But better still, an ideation platform like the one from Brightidea provides a fun, secure and manageable way of recording and processing ideas – end to end.
4. Pick three things you can do to foster a culture of innovation and creativity. Just three. If you pick more you probably won’t execute them. Three will do.
5. Choose tools to help. See point 3 above.
6. Remove the words “Yes, but” from your vocabulary. This is really important. Really. “Yes but” are two words that kill innovation in its track. Remove these words forever. Replace them with “Yes and”.
7. Encourage failure – it’s part of innovation. Build an element of failure into your business plan. Talk about how important failure is to the company. Convince yourself first. Then spread the word.
8. Buy a copy of Tom and David Kelly’s book “Creative Confidence” and the “Ten Types of Innovation” – spread them about the organisation.
If you execute on even half of these points, you will move the needle in your organisation. I promise. Or your money back!
