Continual Innovation

. One of Ekvall’s case studies was a Swedish newspaper where the team working on the women’s section consistently outperformed all the other teams. The reason? Quite basically, this group trusted 1 one more, had a high level of energy and shared a common sense of humour.

2. Develop Washing-Up Creativity. According to the Roffey Park Management Institute, most flashes of inspiration come to people when they are away from work and not forcing their conscious brains to come across solutions to their problems. For some, ideas come even though mowing the lawn or taking the dog for a walk or playing golf or waiting on a railway station. For Isaac Newton, it was an apple on the head although sitting in the garden. For Archimedes, it was in the bath. For others it’s although doing the dishes that’s why Roffey Park calls these flashes of insight: “washing-up creativity”.

three. Make New Connections. Making new connections between existing features of your item or service is a well-known way to innovate. Akio Morita, chairman of Sony, said that he invented the Walkman due to the fact he wanted to listen to music although walking between shots on his golf course. His team basically put together two seemingly incompatible products: a tape recorder and a transistor radio.

4. Locate Out What Men and women Want. Necessity is a fantastic spur to innovation. Take, for example, writing paper. The Chinese had already made paper from rags around the year 100 BC but since there was no will need for it, nothing came of it. When it did reach Europe in the Middle Ages when writing was all the rage, the supply of rags and worn-out fabric soon dried up. That’s when a French naturalist made the discovery that wasps made their nests by chewing wood into a mash that dried in thin layers. Within 100 years, all paper was made employing the notion of wood pulp.

5. Test, Test, Test. Item testing is the way most inventors and organizations go about innovation. It could not be the quickest route to success, but it is frequently the surest. Jonas Salk, for example, discovered the polio vaccine by spending most of his time testing and testing and continually finding out what didn’t work. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the filament light bulb, recorded 1300 experiments that had been complete failures. But he was able to keep going since, as he said, he knew 1300 ways that it wasn’t going to work.

6. Adopt and Adapt. 1 fairly simple approach to innovation is to notice how other people deal with difficulties and then adapt their solutions to your own. It’s known as “adapt and adopt”. It’s what watchmakers Swatch did when they realized that the far more reliable their watches became, the much less people needed to replace them. Their answer? Borrow an idea from the world of fashion and collections by turning their watches into desirable fashion accessories. Now individuals get Swatch watches not just to tell the time but simply because it’s cool to do so.

7. Take Lessons From Nature. If you really want to be inventive, you can’t beat nature. The world of nature gives us an endless supply of prototypes to use in our own world. Take Velcro, for example. Velcro was patented by Georges de Mestral in 1950 after he returned from a hunting trip covered in tiny burrs that had attached themselves to his clothing by tiny overlapping hooks. De Mestral rapidly realized that here was an ideal technique to fasten material together. A whole new way of performing things was suddenly invented.

The history of the world is the history of innovation. Thomas Kuhn called each acceptance of a new innovation a “paradigm shift”. For once a new innovation becomes accepted, the world has changed for ever and can by no means go back to the way it was.

Eric Garner, ManageTrainLearn.com For instant solutions to all your management training needs, go to www.managetrainlearn.com”&gtManageTrainLearn and download remarkable Free of charge training software. And although you’re there, make certain you try out our prize quiz, get your surprise bonus gift, and subscribe to our fortnightly newsletter. Go and get the ManageTrainLearn experience now!