by John Brooker | May 16, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Tools
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 126 How can you sell your proposition if people don’t understand it…? “ Sometimes we can’t see the wood for the trees” Proverb Need to sell an idea? Define your proposition? This month, the British public has been in uproar over a government plan to sell off the forests in England. At its heart, there were some good ideas in this proposal that people didn’t understand. Often, a good idea fails because people do not understand it properly, as the idea owner does not explain it effectively, e.g. they do not clarify the benefits or they have not considered all the risks. So One way to overcome this issue is to develop a proposition statement. How do you do this? Here is a structured approach that you should find useful. 1. Develop an Initial Proposition Statement (IPS) for your idea. Use “Who? What? Why? Where? When? and How?” questions to build it. As a rule of thumb, your IPS should include the following points: The problem the proposition solves Whom it will impact / who wants or needs it A description of the solution, explaining how it solves the problem (benefits) and how much of the problem it solves How it differs from competing products As an example, let’s take a real situation from the payments’ business (I will steer clear of the trees!) in which I have much experience. This idea arose a few years ago and has now been implemented, however, as I do not know the original proposition statement, I have created one: “Acquirers of card transactions currently earn no revenue from...
by John Brooker | May 12, 2012 | Innovate
YES! AND… CREATIVE GORILLA # 122 Product and process is not the only area of innovation to focus on… “The question is not “How do we innovate on top of the day job?” It is, “How do we make innovation part of the day job?” John Brooker What qualities do you need to cultivate to become a creative leader? What is your least favourite innovation? Early one morning last week, I was walking round the lovely village of Trendelburg in Germany. I was preparing myself for a workshop when the peace was shattered by that worst of innovations; the petrol driven leaf blower / collector. Not one, but four of the pesky things, plus a lorry based vacuum cleaner disrupted my tranquillity. I understand why people use them (if they pick the leaves up afterwards), but the noise they inflict on others is outrageous. Can no one make a silent engine for these monsters? Having mentally ranted, I began to think about the blower as an example of a product innovation, with a touch of process innovation; having replaced the process of raking and brushing with the faster process of annoying other people! Much of what I read about innovation refers to product or product manufacturing processes and Research and Development. This is a shame because it is somewhat limiting, tending as it does, to lead to a view that innovation is for the “product people”, and cutting others out of the innovation loop. Here are a few areas of innovation other than product, which I have identified in the payments’ business. What else might you add? Non product...
by John Brooker | May 11, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 121 Can creative climate apply to a country too? “As bad as we think they are, these will become the good old days for our children.” Gladys Knight in the introduction to the song, “The Way We Were / Try to Remember.” Does the creative climate in your country need to improve? I was having breakfast in a hotel in Dublin when the Gladys Knight song referenced above started to play. The song was released in 1975 but the spoken introduction (click here to watch if you are a soul music fan like me) could have been written today. So how is that relevant to creative leaders? I was having breakfast in a hotel in Dublin when the Gladys Knight song referenced above started to play. The song was released in 1975 but the spoken introduction (click here to watch if you are a soul music fan like me) could have been written today. So how is that relevant to creative leaders? I had been preparing slides on creative climate the night before. Climate can be viewed as those factors that help an organisation to create and innovate. Dr. Goran Ekvall in his influential research on innovative and less innovative companies, identified 9 factors that built the creative climate and differentiated the companies. Dr. Teresa Amabile built on Ekvall’s research, adding positive and negative environmental factors such as the availability of sufficient resources, e.g. information, funds, materials, and facilities. Both have produced instruments to assess creative climates, available now as...
by John Brooker | May 9, 2012 | Innovate
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 119 Record key lessons and ideas about your innovation and other projects as soon as possible… “If life keeps asking you the same questions….You are NOT learning the lessons…” Leif Ericsson Leo Veness (American Artist ) How might you capture lessons from innovation and other projects? A couple of weeks prior to my recent holiday, I returned with a colleague from running an innovation capability programme with three companies in Ireland. Having woken at ridiculous o’clock to catch the first flight and drunk a large slug of expensive caffeine in Dublin airport, we were mildly hyperactive as we arrived back in Birmingham. Having run four days of workshops we had a lot to talk about and chatted animatedly as we drove out of the car park. Two minutes into our discussion I noticed there were some real nuggets of information arising. My first thought was to write them down but I found it easier to use the voice recording facility on my iPhone. Switching it on, I captured 34 minutes of discussion with some great material. Listening to the recording today, I recalled that we had identified lessons learned, generated ideas to improve the programme for the future companies and created a great business idea. As well though, we gained a number of lessons about capturing ideas, which you may find useful as a creative leader. So These lessons are: It is important to capture the learning from innovation and other projects to improve the next. This is common sense but is not necessarily common. Can you think of projects where there was no...
by John Brooker | May 8, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
The Creative Gorilla #118 How to facilitate people to innovate… “The rules are simple, hit him, don’t let him hit you.” Jackie Chan in “The Karate Kid” How might you facilitate innovation? I drove to Dublin in Ireland with a colleague to start a new Innovation Programme. After a long drive and with the prospect of a full day ahead we retired to our rooms at 8.30 pm, my head hit the pillow at 10 pm and I was asleep. Three hours later I was awoken by a loud crash, like someone throwing a collapsible table out of the window. I dozed off, only to be startled by another loud crash. After the fourth time I realised it happened whenever a vehicle exited the hotel car park over a metal speed bump. This being a tourist hotel in Dublin I laid awake for most of the night as taxis came and went, drifting off around 4 a.m. On the bright side I was able to relate this story to the group next day, using it to define business innovation as: Find someone with a problem (crash!) Identify if they are wiling to pay for a solution (I would happily pay!) Develop a solution Market it Earn revenue True, this is highly simplistic, but it can be useful to cut through complexity to the basic concept. So Whilst the concept of innovation is simple, implementing it is a little more difficult, so, here are eight ways to facilitate innovation in an organisation, based on my experience and reading: Know what you want Understand why you want to innovate and describe...
by John Brooker | May 5, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
The Creative Gorilla #115 Continually using the same approach is very efficient, but it can lead to stale thinking … “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got …” JB (after Anthony Robbins, motivation guru) Need a new approach to problem solving? Last week, I gave a talk to a company in Bristol. Having had my diary changed at the last minute, I decided to stay the night in a hotel and so immediately followed my usual approach for booking a hotel; go online and book through my regular hotel chain. Alas, all their hotels in Bristol were booked as were all the other chain hotels. So I Googled “Bed and Breakfast Bristol” and instead of staying in a prefabricated block just off the motorway, I stayed at a lovely Edwardian hotel overlooking the Downs. In the morning I went for a long walk across said Downs, found a fabulous view of the Avon Gorge and had time to rehearse my talk in my mind. Having been forced to take a fresh approach to booking my hotel I was delighted it had paid off so well. It also gave me an opening story for my talk, which challenged the use of only one approach to tackling problems. Like many companies, the one I talked to uses a structured approach to problem solving, in this case, “Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control”. Essentially, this type of approach senses a problem, identifies the symptoms, finds the root cause and looks for solutions. Companies have been using these types of problem centred approaches for many...
