It’s not that they can’t find the solution. They can’t find the problem. A great quote from GK Chesterton. Find innovative ideas as they will drive the change we need.
Looking for ways of studying innovative change or creative business ideas? Aren’t we all. The best way to help your own brainstorming of idea generation is to examine as many other ideas as you can and get good at connecting the ideas. Often it helps when starting with a good list of problems your target audience is interested in.
Another secret to innovative change for more creative and innovative business ideas is imagination and lots of experimenting. Trying lots of new things … lots of prototyping and testing.
You generate lots of ideas to find the best of the best. By generating ideas you start by asking lots of questions. By being curious. By thinking widely and not discarding ideas too soon. By convergent thinking.
All of which help us to better understand and define the problem we are attempting to solve.
We often forget to encourage our employees to be curious … to question and to share their thoughts freely and often.
An employee who has no perceived customer skills, or ability to communicate well or the inability to be a good team player gets immediate and escalating attention. The employee with no curiosity, on the other hand, is no problem at all. Lumps are easily managed.
The same thing is true for following instructions. We usually like employees who don’t ask a lot of questions, and not question the status quo. Not a good way to operate.
Yet, without the question “why?” there can be no here’s how to make it better.
Here are 5 great examples of creative thinking. Do they help to stimulate your thinking? What do you think?
What a brilliant idea. A Coca-Cola Can that you can break apart and share!
As part of the ongoing ‘Share Happiness/Open Happiness’ creative platforms, Coca-Cola has come up with a brilliant idea, a Coca-Cola can that you can twist to separate, creating 2 mini-cans ready to be shared! Check out this cool video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72fRuE8vmo0
Simple innovative ideas … the interactive print ad
It seems more and more brands are looking to create richer print ads. But I still find the innovation examples around it few and far between. So here is a great example of a brand trying something new in the Jeweler sector.
This interactive print ad is designed for a smartphone to be placed into the position of a hand, loading a rich mobile site that allows users to flick between various bracelets and rings positioned on the virtual hand.
From there, readers can find out more information about each piece and then locate their nearest store, complete with maps. Pretty cool. And great way to see print innovation. Created by Agency .V.
You’ve probably seen an ad like this before. Combining motion and sound with the background of a great print ad is still pretty rarely seen, but again, here is a great example of it working a treat, created by AlmapBBDO in Brazil.
Related material: Should a Business Send Customers to Competitors?
It’s a simple combination that delivers a great experience for readers. Sure, it’s not completely seamless, but it’s adding another dimension for an audience that actually wants to interact with the brand or product.
It’s also a great way to measure the performance of the ad. What do you think?
Remember how great it felt the first time you got a social response from a brand you love or business you deal with?
All the goodwill generated by their speedy response?
Well, KLM decided to run an experiment with its social community, for people who check in via foursquare for flights or tweet about waiting to board the next KLM service, and they called it “KLM Surprise” a campaign that aims to bring random surprises and happiness to the boring wait for flights.
KLM’s social campaign involved a team of people identifying KLM passengers currently waiting for flights (and hanging out on twitter), before researching each person’s social profile to find out a little more about their personality and destination, before matching that to a surprise gift that they’d give before each person boarded their flight.
The aim was to add a little surprise to offset a boring wait, but also to create happy customers who have plenty of time on their hands to tweet their network about a great KLM experience at the airport.
That’s a very cool social experiment. (See our article on KLM social media marketing).
Innovative ideas in science … Google Chrome experiment with big data
Here is an amazing Google Chrome Experiment.
This time, the guys from Google’s Data Team, have mashed up a ton of data, info and visuals from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and Wikipedia to literally map the 100,000 stars closes to our very own sun!
Which as they note, is just a tiny fraction of the sextillions of stars in the broader universe.
The experiment makes uses WebGL, CSS3D, and Web Audio to deliver a seriously amazing experience that you’ll probably spend 20 minutes playing with… Make sure you check it out here.
Or see this video…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU6RAjABX40
Crowd accelerated innovation
Crowd accelerated innovation is the latest TED talk. It’s from TED boss Chris Anderson. The idea is one of those big ones, a simple one that will stick with you for a long time.
Online video radically changes the reach and speed of the improvement cycle. Things like dance, snowboarding and TED talks keep getting better, and faster because artists see the best and improve on it.
Even more than that, it requires you to top what’s out there, or you’ll be ignored.
The same thing has been done with scientific journals for two hundred years. Now, though, instead of a long cycle and a few readers, we have a nearly instant cycle and millions of ‘readers’. Video scales, now.
And to quote the other Chris Anderson, there’s going to be a long tail of these video cycles.
Also worth thinking on: Chris is using the medium itself to do something that would have required a traditionally published book five years ago.
His video was be seen by more than a million people by the end of one week–something he could never have achieved with a traditional method
Dealing successfully with times of change (like now) requires that you simultaneously broaden your reach, focus on what’s important and aggressively ignore things that are both loud and false.
Easier said than done.
Remember this important fact: Big ideas are little ideas that no one killed too soon.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.
It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with innovation and creativity efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Need some help in building better customer insights from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer base?
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Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new insights that you have learned.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed athow reasonable we will be.
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