Radical Innovation is a Proposal, Not a Product

We've noticed a common thread among many companies these days. When thinking about innovation - most seem to be heavily focused on providing incremental features and benefits as a cornerstone for their competitive advantage. What seems to elude many executive leaders is a lack of understanding that people do not buy products, they buy into meanings. Maybe the reason for this is simply the physics of most organizations inhibits radical innovation and the competitive advantage that results. What matters the most to people is not the function of a product, but their emotional, psychological and cultural connection to what a product means to them. The key to sustained competitive advantage for companies is to innovate around meanings rather than function and performance. Radical Innovation does not happen when you bring people an incremental improvement of what they already know. Rather, radical innovation (and market leadership for that matter) is the result of 'proposing' an unexpected meaning. This meaning, unsolicited by user needs, once discovered, turns out to be the very thing people were waiting for!

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The Creativity Based Resource Centre at the International Center for Studies in Creativity.

I stumbled across this wonderful resource The Creativity Based Resource Centre at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at State University of New York, Buffalo accidentally and came across a treasure trove on finely researched and written theses on creative problem solving, creative leadership and cross-cultural creativity from the only Masters programme globally to my knowledge that specialises in this topic.

This site is highly recommended and well worth visiting.

6 Ways To Ruin A Brainstorming Session

They say brainstorms are old-fashioned and no longer effective. But the real reason for the frustrations is that the brainstorms are not facilitated properly. A well-run brainstorm is fun and energetic. It will generate plenty of good ideas. But a poor brainstorm can be frustrating and demotivational. Let's look at some simple ways to ruin your next brainstorm meeting. 1. Having no clear objectives A brainstorm with a vague or unclear purpose will wander and lose its way. So set a clear objective. The purpose of the brainstorm is to generate many creative ideas to answer a specific goal. It is best to express the goal as a question.

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Creating Disruptive Differentiation with Innovation Management

Ask a CEO and he or she will tell you that innovation is critical to the organization's long-term growth prospects. Ask the same question of people who work in that organization and the answer won't be quite so positive. Without continued innovation, companies are likely to be relegated to the low-end commodity business (where returns are sure to be unattractive). Staying ahead of the product life cycle through effective and intelligent innovation and complexity management is a highly rewarding strategy, provided you can anticipate what the customer wants or - as was the case with Apple's iPhone - your company can be in a position to drive what the customer wants.

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Creating Value from Information - Aggregate - from the Innovation Leadership Network

How do we create value when we’re busy tweeting, blogging, reading and writing? I have been arguing that to create value from information, we need to have systems in place that allow us to aggregate, filter and connect information – and that this is true for people, and for business models. These are the things that go on all the time behind the scenes when people are creating blog posts, and I thought it would be interesting to see how this actually happens. Shortly after the unveiling of the iPad, Venessa Miemis wrote a post called ‘iPad: Overhyped Flop or a Case of Great Design Thinking?‘ Venessa has a distinctive talent for writing about complex topics in an integrative and creative manner, so I thought it would be interesting to ask her about how she put this post together.

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