Посты автора Drew Boyd

Drew Boyd

Tempting Innovation

Published date: April 13, 2023 в 9:21 am

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Category: Innovation,Strategy

Jeffrey Phillips makes a nice distinction between the various ways to adopt ideas of others outside your organization. In his post, The sincerest form of flattery:

  • If you are copying ideas in your industry, you’re a follower
  • If you adopt ideas from other industries and apply them in new ways in your industry, you’re an innovator
  • If you package your capabilities and dramatically change another market, your a disrupter

What about adoption of ideas of others inside your organization? Innovators face a particularly challenging issue getting colleagues to accept their ideas.  Tanya Menon from the Ohio State University describes the paradox of an external idea being viewed as “tempting” while the exact same idea, coming from an internal source, is considered “tainted.”

In a business era that celebrates anything creative, novel, or that demonstrates leadership, “borrowing” or “copying” knowledge from internal colleagues is often not a career-enhancing strategy. Employees may rightly fear that acknowledging the superiority of an internal rival’s ideas would display deference and undermine their own status.

By contrast, the act of incorporating ideas from outside firms is not seen as merely copying, but rather as vigilance, benchmarking, and stealing the thunder of a competitor. An external threat inflames fears about group survival, but does not elicit direct and personal threats to one’s competence or organizational status. As a result, learning from an outside competitor can be much less psychologically painful than learning from a colleague who is a direct rival for promotions and other rewards.

Companies such as Procter & Gamble have perfected getting ideas from outside the organization. Their Connect + Develop program is considered a best practice in external collaboration. What companies struggle with is how to overcome the internal acceptance of peer ideas. One way to approach it is with Team Innovation. 

Innovation Follows Strategy

Published date: March 2, 2023 в 12:42 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy

Innovation that is done in the context of business strategy tends to be more focused, efficient, and business-model relevant. Innovation should not be viewed as a way to take the organization off its strategic track and in new directions. Rather, innovation should be applied in a way that makes the current strategic track more successful and profitable…true growth.

Yet the tendency is to view this approach as incrementalism and not disruptive enough in the Christensen sense. Some would say that starting with your current situation is not bold and is risk adverse. “We’re not thinking outside the box” is the usual incantation at this point. Instead, there is a preference to chasing “white space” and “open source” innovation as a source of growth. Some executives prefer the lure of white space and opportunity spotting, and they readily acknowledge that it is “low yield by design.” The Scarcity Principle tends to make these opportunities seem more valuable than they really are. White space chasers position themselves as fighting the heroic fight. Resources come pouring in.

The best Fortune 100 companies pursue high yield, organic innovation efforts… not “low-yield-by-design” efforts. High yield innovation comes from tying innovation directly to the strategic marketing context of the firm. Ideas generated this way help the organization stretch its model in a way that is achievable and internally-sellable.

How do you tie innovation to strategy?  Professor Christie Nordhielm from Georgetown University has developed what I consider the best single contribution to marketing thought since the 4P’s. Her Big Picture framework of the marketing management process provides the context for innovating across the entire business model. Applying systematic innovation tools to each aspect of her Big Picture model can yield amazing insights at both the strategic and tactical levels of the business. It is the intersection of these two ideas…Big Picture Strategy and Systematic Inventive Thinking…that will yield consistent, profitable results. Innovation follows strategy…not the other way around.

Innovation Muscle

Published date: February 23, 2023 в 12:56 pm

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Category: Innovation,Methodology,Organizational Innovation

The best Fortune 100 companies see innovation as an ongoing capability, not a one time event.  These companies work hard to build muscle around this capability so they can deploy it when they need it, where they need it, tackling their hardest problems.  Companies do this to keep up with the ever changing landscape both inside and outside the firm.
What does it mean to build innovation muscle?  I think of it as the number of people trained, the frequency of using an innovation method, and the percentage of internal departments that have an innovation capability.  Call it an Innovation Muscle Index:

N (number of trained employees) x F (number of formal ideation events per year using a method) x P (percent of company departments with at least one employee trained in an effective innovation method)

 IMI = N x F x P

Building innovation muscle is not much different than building body muscle.  Let’s turn to an authority, http://www.muscleprogram.com/, and see how to build body muscle.  Here is an exact quote taken from that website.  Then I have overlaid my interpretation of it from an innovation point-of-view in parenthesis and in bold font.

“You need to decide what kind of (innovation) muscle form you’re looking to achieve. Drawing on examples nearly everyone is familiar with, you need to decide if you want to look like Arnold (GE) Schwarzenegger (bigger bulk) or Bruce (Apple) Lee (lean and toned). This decision will help you determine which kinds of exercises you do and how you do them.

Now, with all of that out of the way, let’s look at some things you can do to build your (innovation) muscles!
If you don’t already, start getting your body (company) used to working out. Start running (innovating) every day, not jogging (brainstorming) or walking (copying others), to help get your blood (growth) moving and your (innovation) muscles primed for building. You’re not running a race so you don’t need to be a speed demon. Instead, maintain a comfortable and steady pace, taking long and powerful strides (initiatives).
If you want to have the lean, Bruce (Apple) Lee appearance, you need to work with lighter weights and have a higher number of repetitions (innovation workshops) in each set. By doing this, you are toning and shaping your (innovation) muscles into longer and thinner forms. If you want the Arnold (GE) look, you need to work heavier weights (more departments using innovation) and do fewer repetitions. By doing this, you are toning and shaping your (innovation) muscles into short and thicker forms.
Ensure that you have a regular plan, focusing on specific (innovation) muscle groups, and stick to it. Don’t try to work every (innovation) muscle in your body every day of the week. At best, this will lead to burnout (budget crunch) and at worst it will lead to injury (downsizing). Your (innovation) muscles will be getting worked hard, so they need to have time to recuperate.
However, you should rotate your plan every month. For example, let’s say that you are working on your chest, shoulders and biceps (new products) on Monday; your abdomen, forearms and upper back (new services) on Wednesday; and your lower back and legs (new strategies) on Friday. Every four weeks, rotate one day so that you’ll be working on your lower back and legs on Monday; your chest, shoulders and biceps on Wednesday; and your abdomen, forearms and upper back on Friday. The following month, rotate one more day.
This will allow each of your (innovation) muscle groups to take advantage of the fact that you probably workout differently on each of those days. If you simply stick with the exact same schedule forever, then you’ll find yourself quickly running into what are known as “plateaus,” where you just can’t seem to build that (innovation) muscle group past a certain point. With a rotation schedule, you will avoid this problem by giving each (innovation) muscle group the benefit of your natural changing body (company) rhythm.
If you keep these general guidelines in mind and consistently work at your plan with passion and intensity, your body (company) will be more toned (competitive) and shaped (growing) than you ever imagined it could be. While it won’t happen overnight, it probably won’t take as long as you’re afraid it will.”

10 New Year Resolutions for Innovation Leaders

Published date: December 30, 2022 в 12:00 pm

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Category: Innovation

This blog marks its 10th anniversary this year.

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language

and next year’s words await another voice.”

                                                                                     T.S. Eliot

 In 2013 (2023), think inside the box and give your staff these precious gifts to drive innovation forward:

1. Give them Hope: Hope is defined as a positive motivational belief in one’s future; the feeling that what is wanted can be had; that events will turn out for the best. Without hope, tasks such as innovating become difficult if not impossible. Researcher Armenio Rego says, “Hope is important for innovation at work because creativity requires challenging the status quo and a willingness to try and possibly fail. It requires some level of internal, sustaining force that pushes individuals to persevere in the face of challenges inherent to creative work.”

2. Give them Voice: Giving your employees a voice in matters boosts their creativity. Research shows that, over time, procedural fairness (giving people the opportunity to express their views) has a positive maintaining effect on creativity whereas stifling their views decreases creativity. Be consistent over time. Don’t let distractions or a crisis cause you to change the rules. Give them a chance to speak about anything related to the innovation challenges you face – focus, methodology, budget allocation, team formation, and so on. Most importantly, let them speak about the nature and value of their own ideas.

3. Give them a chance to Get Even: When managing individuals or teams, the time will come when you have to say ‘no’. In that moment immediately after rejecting a person’s viewpoint, you want to let it sink. Don’t try to minimize the impact by rationalizing the decision or by other means of making the person feel better. Assign the rejected person right away to a new and important task. Put them on a project where they can prove themselves and “get even.” Let their creative juices flow.

4. Give them Accountability: Hold people accountable for what they do to improve innovation activities. It is tempting to judge employee performance and reward them for innovation output. This leads to the unwanted rivalry between employees. Avoid this trap by looking at how managers set up “cockpit indicators” and use those indicators to make changes. Have they created a closed loop feedback process to improve innovation continuously?

5. Give them a Method: For thousands of years, inventors have embedded five simple patterns into their inventions, usually without knowing it. These patterns are the “DNA” of products that can be extracted and applied to any product or service to create new-to-the-world innovations. Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) is an effective, repeatable, and trainable innovation process for organic growth.

6. Give them Constraints: Research in cognitive psychology confirms that creativity is enhanced by constraints, not freedom. By limiting the number of variables under consideration from infinity to a finite number, we amplify our potential to come up with a creative solution. To throw away all constraints would be to destroy the capacity for creative thinking. It may sound counterintuitive, but giving employees too much freedom of thought leads to “idea anarchy” and a poor level of inventiveness.

7. Give them Skills: Innovation is a skill, not a gift. It can be learned by anyone regardless of where they are on the creativity scale. If you want a more innovative company, you must have more innovative employees. Train them in innovation as you would train other skill such as leadership, six sigma, or business ethics.

8. Give them Teams: Innovating takes teamwork. Properly selected teams using a facilitated systematic method will outperform ad hoc teams using divergent, less structured methods such as brainstorming. Create innovation “dream teams” with diverse talent from the commercial, technical, and customer-oriented parts of your business.

9. Give them Strategy: Innovation that is linked to strategy is seen as more realistic and supportable. Innovating is efficient because you avoid creating ideas that are out of scope. Companies get better results from innovation by targeting initiatives at the right places.

10. Give them an Innovation Culture: An innovative corporate culture is one that supports the creation of new ideas and the implementation of those ideas. Leaders need to help employees see innovation in the right light and create support systems to make it stick. As fellow blogger Jeffrey Phillips notes, “A culture that sustains and supports innovation is one that encourages reasonable risk and uncertainty in the goal of larger, more profitable products and services.”

Rebooting Your Innovation Effort

Published date: December 22, 2022 в 5:25 pm

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Category: Innovation,Strategy

Imagine you just completed an innovation program, but things went terribly wrong. So wrong, in fact, that the boss won’t allow anyone to use the term “innovation” in any context. You and your colleagues spent a lot of time, money, and effort only to realize that you did not get what was promised. What do you now? How do you reboot your innovation program?

Here are some tips:

1.  Conduct a Post Mortem: Despite the pain, you should thoroughly examine the “dead body” to understand what happened. How did we get here? What stimulated the initiative? What were our assumptions going in? What changed? How did we identify potential consultants to work with? How did we vet them? How did we select one to work with? Did we have the right team in place? Were we using the right method?

2. Take Stock in the Positives: No effort is a total waste no matter how miserable. You should take the time to identify the positives. What did we gain out of the effort? What did we learn? What were we hoping to gain and didn’t? Is that gap still relevant? What did we take away that we can leverage? Did we get anything that can be leveraged in another part of the company?

3. Refresh the Palate: Members of your team paid dearly to be a part of their program. They suffered the opportunity cost of being away from their work. In return, give them a rest. Let them recharge and catch up. People need to flush the bad experience out of their system before considering the next one.

4.  Create the Burning Platform: What is happening in your business over the next 12 to 18 months? Is it growing? Contracting? What changes do you anticipate in your competitive position? No industry is completely calm and stable, though some are more turbulent than others. You need to spot an inflection point in your business where technology, regulatory or other forces are looming. Then, you need to sound the alarm, create the burning platform, and gain alignment from your leaders to anticipate the problem with a new innovation initiative.

5.  Propose a Pilot Program:  Reduce the risk of a new innovation program by testing it first. A short, pilot program that addresses a specific product or service line helps you understand whether a new method is right for your company.  Pilot programs help keep your costs in line, and they help you reduce resistance to adopting new methods.

6.  Syndicate!: Initiate the next program with the support of other departments. Enroll other divisions to share the risks…and rewards…from the pilot. Ask peers to chip in part of the expense, even if it is a small amount. By “syndicating” support of the pilot program, you broaden the exposure to a successful outcome.

7.  Emphasize Skill Building: To stay competitive, companies must include innovation in their competency models. A competency is a persistent pattern of behavior resulting from a cluster of knowledge, skills, abilities, and motivations. Competency models formalize that behavior and make it persistent. Use the pilot program as an opportunity to partner with your Human Resources colleagues to create an innovation competency model.

8.  Create Lasting Support Systems:  Not only must you reboot the innovation culture at your company, you must also create the support systems to make it stick. Can we continue to use a method without consultants going forward? Are there training aids and tools to help teach others? Can the pilot program be extended to a general training program? What is the retention rate one month out? Six months out? How many people could be trained within your current budget cycle? How do you continue to build innovation muscle?

Innovating in Human Resources

Published date: December 8, 2022 в 9:42 am

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Category: Organizational Innovation

SIT – Systematic Inventive Thinking is not only for inventing new products and services. You can apply it to a variety of functions and processes. SIT is based on the idea that mankind has used distinct patterns when creating new solutions or innovations. These patterns are embedded into the products and services you see around you. The SIT method structures your thinking and channels your ideation to take advantage of these patterns by re-applying them to something else.

Consider the human resources function of an organization. Here are suggestions of which SIT technique to apply in a variety of HR activities:

  • Process innovation: HR departments support every other department with a host of processes like recruiting, staffing, compensation, succession planning, and performance management. The DIVISION technique is ideal for innovating these processes. Division has a tendency to break “structural fixedness,” the tendency to overlook new arrangements and configurations. To use Division, start by listing the process steps, in order, and place them on a wall using PostIt notes. Select a step and place it somewhere else in the process arbitrarily. Using Function Follows Form, try to envision new benefits or opportunities.
  • Organization Design: Restructuring is a way of life in the corporate world. HR is almost always involved at some level given the implications on jobs and careers. To shake things up, try using the MULTIPLICATION technique. Make a list of the job functions in an organization. Then select one, imagine making a copy of that function, but then changing the copied function is some novel way: role, location, alignment, deliverables, and so on. Using Function Follows Form, try to envision new benefits or opportunities of having both functions. Modify the idea to improve it and make it more implementable.
  • Training: Companies spend enormous amounts of money on training. HR is usually involved because of the impact on performance and standards. A great technique to use here is SUBTRACTION. This technique tends to break our “functional fixedness,” the inability to realize that something known to have a particular use may also be used to perform other functions. To use the technique, list all the components of a training program. Select one at random (an essential one), then imagine all the other components left to do the training job. What would be the benefit (to the trainee, the company, to its customers, and so on)?
  • Strategy: HR departments need to have a strategy to stay relevant and to deliver the optimal support.  ATTRIBUTE DEPENDENCY is the most complicated of the five techniques, but tends to produce amazing innovations and insights. To use it, list the attributes of your HR group (size, experience, locations, and so on) as well as attributes of your external environment (size of company, performance of company, performance of competition, etc). Then, create statements such as, “As X changes, Y changes.” For example, “as performance of competition changes, our HR department size changes.”
  • Planning: Once a strategy is created, HR groups need to plan their activities.  TASK UNIFICATION is a perfect tool to innovate new plans. Like Subtraction, it helps break functional fixedness, and it helps managers see resources around them in new ways to perform new functions. To use it, make a list of the components in your HR department and outside the department. Select a component and imagine it taking on a new role. It can “steal” the job of another component, or perform a completely new function (in addition to its current function).

For more insights about using the SIT method, visit Systematic Inventive Thinking.

Innovation and Organizational Savviness

Published date: December 1, 2022 в 10:40 am

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Category: Organizational Innovation,Strategy

Navigating complex organizations takes skill and savviness, or what some call office politics. It is such an important skill that world class companies like GE and Johnson & Johnson teach it to their employees and reward them for using it. We may not like it, but for good ideas and people to survive, we must build organizational savviness and influence skills.

Succeeding at innovation takes that same organizational savviness. Here are eight tips to improve your innovation savviness:

1.  You don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room. Corporate rookies, especially newly-minted MBA’s, rush in with the goal of getting to the best answer faster than anyone else in the room. Even when you are the smartest guy (gal) in the room, you should avoid this behavior. Otherwise, you will gradually lose allies. People will stop inviting you, and you will soon become a “solo act.” Instead, work hard to offer your ideas with the intent of combining them with the best of others. Be seen as an integrator of ideas rather than competing to create the best idea.

2. Make sure your innovation efforts are seen as relevant. It’s tempting to be the first to jump on the latest fad and prove your entrepreneurial spirit. However, by doing so, you risk being seen as someone who is out of touch, too theoretical, or “chasing windmills.” You may think you have a good grasp of what’s relevant to the organization. But your views may differ dramatically from what the boss sees at her level of the organization. Instead, make sure you solicit advice about the relevance of your project. How does it link to the strategic initiatives of the firm? How would you explain your project’s importance to an outsider? Pull out if you have difficulty making this link.

3.  Work only on those projects with a clear, supported mandate from senior management. While your innovation project may be relevant, that is not the same as having a mandate. Many initiatives and ideas may be relevant to the organization’s success, but only a limited number get the necessary dollars and headcount to be successful. Link yourself only to projects that have management’s support. Avoid being sucked into every initiative that comes your way. If you are talented, people will want your time and energy on their projects. Be sure to “limit rather than dilute” – it is better to succeed on a few projects than deliver marginal results on many.

4. Timing is everything. Every project or initiative follows a predictable life cycle: intro, growth, maturity, and decline. Be sure to join innovation initiatives early in their life cycle, and get out when they mature. Some make the mistake of hanging on too long, after the program has lost its “oomph.” Either they didn’t see the decline coming, or they became too comfortable to change. Either way, they are doomed if they stay with an innovation program to its bitter end.

5.  Learn to recognize…and deal with…sabotage by others. People treat ideas differently depending on the source of the idea. If an idea comes from an internal peer rival, people tend to see it as tainted. They sabotage it because it’s not theirs. If the same idea had come from outside the firm (from a competitor or consultant), people overvalue it. They see it as tempting. You should expect to see this behavior and have ways to neutralize its effect. One way is to not associate ideas with a specific person, especially you. Contrary to popular wisdom, avoid giving attribution the person who created the idea. This makes sure the idea is stripped of any associations related to the inventor. The idea now has its best chance of survival.

6.  Savviness is not the same as manipulation.  There is an old saying in the corporate world:  “Don’t make enemies of your peers. If you do, you won’t need more enemies – they can ruin just fine.” When navigating the innovation waters, don’t see it as a political chess game where you have to manipulate others to get what you want. Savvy innovators have a high level of political astuteness and possess strategies and skills for ethically navigating the corporate terrain to gain “organizational influence and impact with integrity.”

 7.  “It’s not what you don’t know that will kill you. It’s what you know that ain’t really so.” Will Rogers is credited with this savvy quote. That wisdom holds true today for innovation. People let their current knowledge about an issue blind them to other facts that may contradict their beliefs. Holding onto a belief that you are certain is true…only to find out later that it isn’t…will cause others to question your flexibility and judgment. Learn to recognize this blind spot (called Confirmation Bias), and seek ways to weigh data equally, including data contrary to your point of view.

8.  Treat yourself to continuous development and improvement. The biggest mistake corporate innovators make is they stop developing themselves. Your first priority is to assure your relevance to the organization, and you can do that only if you take the time to learn new skills and update old ones. If you are doing today’s job on twenty year old skills, you have become the proverbial “dead man walking.” Instead, you should make every year count – take time to do something, anything that develops and improves your innovation abilities.

Will You Help Me?

Published date: November 20, 2022 в 11:33 am

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Category: Innovation

Asking for help may be the most powerful yet underutilized resource available for innovators. Researchers Francis Flynn and Vanessa Bohns found that people grossly underestimate the rate that others are willing to help when asked. As a result, we more often fail to ask for help when the likelihood was very high the other person would have said ‘yes.’ Consider this study they conducted at Columbia University:

“Participants in the study were positioned in the middle of the campus and instructed to approach random strangers for an escort to the university gym, which is located at the edge of campus (the Columbia University gym is subterranean and therefore difficult to find). Before completing the task, participants were asked to estimate how many they would have to approach in order to get one to say “yes.” On average, people estimated they would have to ask 7.2 people to get just one to agree. In fact, they needed to approach just 2.3 strangers, on average. While people presumed that about 6 out of 7 of the individuals they approached would refuse to assist them, the reality was that approximately every other person was willing to agree to their request.

Why are we reluctant to ask for help? The researchers suggest we focus too much on the other person’s cost of saying “yes” (in the form of their time and resources expended to comply with the request) versus their heavier social costs of saying “no.” They also suggest we may be letting a time when someone said “no” weigh too heavily in our memory. The fear of rejection looms large, keeping us from risking another bad experience.”

We also tend to overestimate how harshly others will judge us if we ask for help. We fear asking for help may be seen as a sign of weakness. The other person has power over you in that awkward moment when they can say yes or no to your request. However, taking another view of the situation turns the tables. When we view power and strength as the capacity to influence others to access their resources, help-seeking is not weak, but rather a “powerful act.”

Asking for help has many benefits as the researches point out. First and foremost is you are highly likely to get the help you seek.  Second, you are giving the other person a “gift” in the form of an opportunity to feel helpful and valued. Third, you will likely strengthen the relationship with the other person. Finally, you avoid the life-long feeling of regret of not asking help. Research suggests, in the long run, we regret more not asking for help than having a request rejected.

Successful innovation practitioners need help in many forms, including:

•   Advice and direction – where are the fertile areas for innovation

•   Participation in innovation programs and workshops

•   Evaluation of ideas and feedback about results

•   Support with both tangible and intangible resources

Need to innovate? Ask for help!

Measuring the Immeasurable

Published date: November 3, 2022 в 12:45 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

Innovation, like most other things in business, gets caught in the trap of “how do we measure results.”  Innovation managers at Fortune 100 companies find themselves confronted with this question in their efforts to raise innovation capabilities.  In the end, measuring innovation doesn’t matter.  Measuring innovation methods is where the focus needs to be.

The typical approach to measuring innovation is revenue from new products.  The usual question is: “Show me a product generated from an innovation workshop and its first year revenues.  My response to this might be: “And let’s compare that to the revenue NOT produced from ideas NOT generated because of a lack of innovation.”

Some aspects of innovation are immeasurable.  During an innovation workshop several years ago, an engineer in the group had a depressed look on his face.  It struck me as odd particularly because we had just completed a vibrant round of ideation with many new possibilities.  The entire group was energized except this one individual.  Out of concern, I asked him if he was feeling sick or in pain.  What he told me struck me hard.  He said, “No, I’m feeling fine.  It’s just that I NOW realize, after this round of ideation, that an idea that I have been holding onto for a long time…won’t work.”

I remember thinking, “Wow!  What is the value of giving UP a failed idea so that you can now direct your full focus and energy to new pathways?”  This ideation session freed this individual’s mind AND motivation to move in new directions.  He would no longer waste his productive time pursuing a pet idea in favor of better possibilities.  He would begin creating value not from an idea generated, but rather from an idea given up.

How do you measure THAT?

The question is not: “Let’s measure innovation to decide whether we should do it.”  Rather the question should be: “Which innovation method gives us the most results to improve our business?”  Companies should compare methods using simple metrics like: total ideas generated.  From this tally, break it down further to: new ideas versus ideas we already had; ideas actually pursued; ideas likely to be pursued; ideas never to be pursued.  The key is to compare apples to apples.  I once asked a colleague how she liked using a particular method by an innovation consultant in the local area.  She said that she loved it.  I asked, “Compared to what?”  No response.

The best practice from Fortune 100 companies is to build and measure innovation competency…the inputs of growth, not the outputs.

In Search of Bad Ideas

Published date: October 27, 2022 в 11:05 am

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Category: Organizational Innovation,Strategy

Mitch Ditkoff notes a common misperception regarding bad ideas:

“One of the inevitable things you will hear at a brainstorming session is something like “there are no bad ideas.” Well, guess what? There are plenty of bad ideas….The key for aspiring innovators? To find the value in what seems to be a “bad idea” and then use that extracted value as a catalyst for further exploration.”

I agree. Good ideas usually start as bad ideas, an insight I learned originally from the folks at SIT. But the question is: how do you extract the value from a bad idea to transform it? I offer three approaches.

First, look carefully at the bad idea and try to characterize the single benefit that the idea delivers to the customer regardless of how whacky that benefit is delivered. It is the benefit that you want to hold onto, not the whacky deliver system. Ideate new ways to deliver that benefit.

Second, what criteria are being used to judge the idea as bad? Try using the Reverse Assumption technique on those criteria. Turn them around, challenge them, re-frame them. Make the seemingly bad idea look good in a different context.

Third, look for what is old about the new idea.  Thomas B. Ward, is his chapter, “What’s Old about New Ideas,” says:

“Structured imagination refers to the fact that when people use their imagination to develop new ideas, those ideas are heavily structured in predictable ways by the properties of existing categories and concepts.”

In other words, we do not ideate in a vacuum, but rather in the context of what we already know. My advice is to take the bad idea and look for the original concept that it was built upon. Can that be taken in new directions using a structured process?

For corporate innovators, I see this as a best practice. I often ask people what they do with their bad ideas. If I see a curious look on their face, it usually means they are not taking advantage of this phenomena.

Bad ideas are better than no ideas.

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