INNOVATION
"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."
Linus Pauling
Innovation is not about sitting around a boardroom table with your colleagues figuring out what you are capable of doing or even what your closest competitor has just done. True innovation requires hard work, an exceptional understanding of what your customer needs from you and ambition to be better at meeting those needs than you currently are.
Innovation isn't all fun, games and role play!
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news and completely squash the myth that to come up with great innovation you need to act a little crazy because the truth is, you don't. That may actually be a relief to you, especially if you have had the ahem 'pleasure' of idea generation sessions where you have been asked to do such silly things.
There are many stages to conducting a good quality innovation process that will deliver an innovation pipeline for years to come but it can really be distilled into four core activities.
The secret to great innovation...
Determine.
Create.
Test.
Launch.
There really isn't a secret to it. It is hard work and unfortunately, all too often innovation fails because the hard work wasn't done up front. Without that hard work, ideas that are created later on in the process are not cemented in true consumer needs which is the very backbone of successful innovation.
Our approach doesn't set out to have fun and hope we come up with a great idea, we set out to come up with great ideas and along the way find that we are actually having fun. That's the biggest secret of all!