We all hear that innovation is a key to long term success. Be innovative and all will be well. Unfortunately most of the conversation about innovation is lacking in a process to ensure ideas appear, are evaluated, and the best actually get tried out and implemented.
Recently I was part of an amazing innovation process in a global corporation. In a few short months, the process led to development and implementation of money saving and money making innovations by teams of executives with little or no innovation experience. While clearly there is more detail to the process than a short posting can transmit, here is a brief overview to give you something to think about.
First off, and most importantly, as with many things innovation starts with the person at the top being a believer and an evangelist. Believe it will work and useful and successful ideas will surface. Belief and support somehow activiates the creative thinking of everyone.
Second, forget the word innovation and start talking about Design Thinking. Design Thinking, the process of clearly and systematically thinking about issues, creating ideas, and developing successful new ways of addressing things. Note that we’re talking about a specific methodology for developing and evaluating ideas, not a random process of hoping some good ideas pop out mysteriously.
Third, here’s the simple three step Design Thinking Process:
- Inspire: define the challenge, gather data, observer people everywhere…at all levels of experience and knowledge, watch for the outliers which often are the most important ideas, take it all and form insights.
- Ideate: frame opportunities, brainstorm ideas, discuss it all, benchmark.
- Implement: filter, prototype, perform mini experiments, get feedback, review and evaluate, validate.
Most importantly, be supportive and devote the time and resources necessary for your folks to be creative and be comfortable stepping outside the lines.
And then, keep it going…always. Build your future rather than be dragged along in the slipstream of others.
Build Design Thinking into everything you do and before you know it you’ll be leading the pack.