The Innovation Blog

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Topics: creativity, Jay Terwilliger, Ideas, groupthink, Collaboration, brainstorming

Though I'm not a Knicks fan, I must admit that I've been caught up in "Lin-sanity": the meteoric (and still very early) rise of Jeremy Lin, an unheralded, journeyman bench player who several weeks ago was on the verge of another cut but has put together the most impressive start for a player's first 5 games in the past 40 years. Better than Bird, Jordan or Lebron. Who could have guessed?

Finding the stars in your portfolio of ideas is a little like finding an NBA player -- some are fast-tracked for stardom and shine (or don't), and it's the 'scouts' (product managers, marketers, R&D folks) job to sniff out the good and great ones. Some ideas are like Jeremy Lin was -- they have the potential, but fall through the cracks, maybe not even making it to the 'bench'. What if you could find those diamonds in the rough, just one or two, that reside in your organization? What value would that bring to your organization? To your customers?

So how do you do that? One way is to revisit your old ideas with new eyes, but lets stick with our athletic analogy for the moment. As in sports, the larger business world has a variety of metrics (definitive market potential, ROI after x years, etc.) that are used to pick the strong ideas. With breakthrough ideas -- ones that bring something truly new to the game -- these types of metrics are often what we call "imaginary numbers", because breakthrough innovation by definition means there is nothing to compare it to; it has no frame of reference. Then what do you rely on? To me there are two major tools: a process that nurtures rather than kills new ideas and something that we call The Educated Gut.

Criteria vs. Metrics
We once worked with a client who had historically required the Net Present Value of an idea immediately following ideation. Truly new ideas wither and die rather quickly in this environment. Instead, rate beginning ideas on a few (4-5) criteria, and use that in concert with an evaluation model that preserves what's good about an idea, while clearly identifying flaws (and they've all got them) in a way that encourages problem solving. We call this an Open-Minded Evaluation. Some of the criteria we find are the most powerful are:

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Topics: open-minded evaluation, David Culton, Educated Gut, Innovation criteria, new product development

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Topics: Clay Maxwell, bizinovationist, user experience, UX, branding, Innovation

Bill Belichick is widely regarded as a football genius, contrarian, and grump. He is also an innovator. All of the X's and O's of design thinking can be found under the hoodie.

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Topics: Design, Design Thinking, Innovation, Innovation Strategy, strategy

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Topics: Jay Terwilliger, bizinovationist, Success Factors, breakthrough innovation

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Topics: creativity, Clay Maxwell, bizinovationist, Innovation, brainstorming

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Topics: creativity, Clay Maxwell, bizinovationist, Innovation

Business Model Innovation is becoming a hot topic these days as business leaders increasingly recognize that disruptive innovation requires not only innovative products, but also fundamentally new business models.  Recognizing this trend, the Product Development Manager's Association (PDMA) featured a full day Business Model Innovation Lab at their 2011 Annual Global conference.  I had the pleasure of co-chairing the lab along with Matt Benson, Advanced Innovation Manager at Faurecia.  Our panel of speakers consisted of Josh Suskewicz of Innosight; John Lynch, Head of Innovation at EMD Millipore; Philip De Ridder, Co-founder of Board of Innovation; and Creative Realities President Jay Terwilliger.  We were also joined by an experienced and thoughtful group of participants, which made for an engaging and stimulating session.  Here are a few of my key takeaways and some business model innovation tools that you may find useful.

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Topics: Chris Dolan, business model mapping, Business Model, breakthrough innovation, new product development, disruptive innovation

Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. 

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Topics: creativity, Alignment, creative thinking, Innovation, creative problem solving skills

If I hear once more about how Facebook and the iPhone define the speed of change in business I’m going to scream. And the tragic passing of Steve Jobs has only increased the noise on this topic. The fact is that like all aspects of innovation the same rules don’t apply everywhere.

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Topics: Mark Sebell, Future, Future Pull, Future Trends, changing the game