100 Great Innovation Ideas

Howard Wright

Description

Companies that fail to innovate will, like prehistoric dinosaurs, eventually disapper from the face of the earth. This book contains 100 great innovation ideas, extracted from the world's best companies.Ideas provide the fuel for individuals and companies to create value and success. Indeed the power of ideas can even exceed the power of money. One simple idea can be the catalyst to move markets, inspire colleagues and employees, and capture the hearts and imaginations of customers. This book can be that very catalyst. Each innovation idea is succinctly described and is followed by advice on how it can be applied to the reader's own business situation. A simple but potenitally powerful book for anyone seeking new inspiration and that killer application.

Sujets

• Service innovation

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814382625
• Langue: English

Extrait

GREAT INNOVATION IDEAS
Howard Wright
Copyright 2012 Howard Wright
Cover art: Opal Works Pte Ltd
Published in 2012 by Marshall Cavendish Business
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International
PO Box 65829
London EC1P 1NY, United Kingdom
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and
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www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
Other Marshall Cavendish offices: Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196 Marshall Cavendish Corporation. 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd. 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
Marshall Cavendish is a trademark of Times Publishing Limited
The right of Howard Wright to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permission should be addressed to the publisher.
The author and publisher have used their best efforts in preparing this book and disclaim liability arising directly and indirectly from the use and application of this book.
All reasonable efforts have been made to obtain necessary copyright permissions. Any omissions or errors are unintentional and will, if brought to the attention of the publisher, be corrected in future printings.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN 978-981-4382-62-5
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Mackays, Chatham ME5 8TD
CONTENTS
Introduction
The ideas
Part 1 - Approach
1 Take a break from technology
2 Reward innovation and creativity
3 Acknowledge and celebrate progress
4 Take your time
5 Be prepared to fail and learn from it
6 Take chances
7 Make a movie of the problem or situation
8 Be open to new ideas
9 Plan for action
10 Live the future
11 Keep things simple
12 Brand your team or project
13 Spread the word
14 Look for the silver lining
Part 2 - Creativity Ideas
15 The 20:20:20 technique
16 Using 8:3:3 - finding your passion!
17 Have fun!
18 Heroes and villains
19 Be childlike, not childish
20 Generate as many ideas as you can
21 Read science fiction
22 Look back at history
23 Media storming
24 Biomimicry - how would nature do it?
25 Make things look ridiculous... on purpose
26 Stop telling yourself you re not innovative
27 Carry a camera
28 Listen to classical music
29 Be a visitor in your own world
30 Think in new areas
31 Try snowballing
32 Read as much as you can
33 Practice creativity
34 Fight your fear of failure
35 Think about the environmental impact
36 Understand your biorhythms
37 Create an ideal competitor
38 Take a bath
39 Bring in diversity
Part 3 - People
40 Excite your team
41 Foster enthusiasm - it s infectious
42 Ask someone new for coffee
43 Communicate, communicate, communicate
44 Become an evangelist for innovation
45 Who are you innovating for?
46 Attend conferences that are off-topic
47 Follow interesting bloggers and twitterers
48 Think like a venture capitalist
49 Learn to listen
50 Break your routines
51 Change your attitude
52 Make a list - own your life
53 Role-play
54 Believe in yourself
55 Get rid of self-limiting habits
56 Create the right environment
57 Understand the problem
58 Set up an ideas wall
59 Set up an ideas bank
Part 4 - Process
60 Stand in other people s shoes
61 Understand what you mean by innovation
62 Think the unthinkable
63 Use random objects
64 Map the process
65 Alternate business models
66 ABC leadership
67 Explore the givens
68 Make it real - create a model of your idea
69 Expect the unexpected
70 Learn from every step
71 Anticipate problems, obstacles, enemies and processes
72 Feed on failure
Part 5 - Research
73 Set up a blog
74 Competitive analysis
75 Apply constraints
76 No constraints
77 Consider the big picture
78 Create a vision for your idea
79 Plan for action
80 Amplification through simplification
Part 6 - Technique
81 Most ridiculous ideas
82 Work backwards
83 Recycle old ideas
84 Focus on the customer
85 Seek solitude
86 Benchmark your innovation
87 Look for what people aren t doing
88 Harvest ideas from unusual sources
89 Suspend judgment
90 Stimulate innovation and insight
91 Try writing differently
92 Morphological modelling
93 Ask challenging questions
94 Actively seek out the opposite
95 Ditch group brainstorming
96 Think of the good and the bad
97 Trim the fat
98 Tolerate ambiguity
99 Find the spaces
100 Keep on trying
Appendix
Weekly innovation activity list
Further Reading
About the Author
This book is dedicated to my wife, Lorna, for her encouragement and patience in helping me complete it.

I would also like to thank Maureen Gardiner for her inspiration and support.
INTRODUCTION
What is innovation?
There s a way to do it better, find it.
Thomas Edison
There are many different theories that explain what innovation really is: radical, breakthrough, disruptive, incremental, open, hybrid are just a few that are discussed in the numerous books, websites and academic journals available today. There are arguments stating that an innovation has to have a disruptive effect to qualify as innovative; others argue that any change, as long as it is measurable, can be considered an innovation.
These different interpretations of innovation are typically based on perception as there is no definitive definition of the word which has become synonymous with new and change , although it can just as easily be applied to incremental and evolution. It is an inspirational word with many connotations and associations, and companies around the world include it in their marketing materials as well as in their reports and accounts. How individuals and companies define innovation can have a dramatic affect on how they measure success.
When every new product or service claims to be innovative , it becomes difficult to say what innovation really is. Simply stating that a new product/service/business model is innovative without a definitive definition makes it difficult to assess whether the assertion is true or merely a rehash of the old.
A quick search on Amazon (UK) brings up over 45,000 titles in hardcover, and more than 112,000 titles overall, that contain the word innovation. A Google search reveals 70 million websites that refer to the definition of innovation . Clearly, everyone seems to be talking about it but there seems to be a high degree of ambiguity and misunderstanding about the topic.
To try to make things a little clearer, I have put together six approaches that seem to be in common usage around the world.
1. Innovation is invention
Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.
Theodore Levitt
For many, innovation is about invention and this is reflected in the Oxford English Dictionary s definition:
The introduction of novelties; the alteration of what is established by the introduction of new elements or forms. A change made in the nature or fashion of anything; something newly introduced; a novel practice, method, etc. The action of introducing a new product into the market; a product newly brought on to the market.
Although invention is clearly an element of innovation, it is only a part of it and the real benefits from innovation activities come from implementation - making something real and deriving some form of value from the idea.
There is however, some confusion about the difference between innovation and creativity. Are they the same or fundamentally different? I like to use the Attitude Skill and Knowledge (ASK) Diagram, which attempts to identify the dimensions of these two areas.

Figure 1: ASK Diagram
The diagram shows that to be creative you do not need a huge amount of knowledge, just the skill to understand and apply the various techniques, and an attitude that allows you to do so. Anyone can come up with a new design for a car or a stamp, but without applying it, it would be just an idea.
Alternatively, it can be argued that innovativeness requires some knowledge about the industry, as it is the different applications of this knowledge that can make the breakthrough innovative.
To me, innovation is not a skill; it cannot be taught the way creativity techniques can. Instead it is more a state of mind, an attitude that allows people to use the knowledge and experience they have in new ways. The ability to find new ways of doing things is present in all of us, but it is the confidence to do something about it that sets true innovators apart from the rest.
2. Innovation is incremental change
Future economic prosperity depends on building a new, stronger foundation and recapturing the spirit of innovation .
President Obama (January 2011)
It is sometimes argued that innovation is not radical but instead denotes incremental improvements that can be capitalised on and turned into significant change for the organisation - a bottom up approach. An example of this is Apple Inc. - instead of inventing new things, Apple took a completely different view towards what was already there. For instance, it took the MP3 player and used its flair for design to create the iPod; similarly the iPad built on the existing tablet computers.
3. Innovation is the silver bullet - the answer
Innovation is one of those activities that seems to go i