Report 103

Your newsletter on applied creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business – delivered to your e-mail box on the first and third Tuesday of every month.

Tuesday, 16 August 2005
Issue 64

Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your fortnightly newsletter on creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.

As always, if you have news about creativity, imagination, ideas, or innovation please feel free to forward it to me for potential inclusion in Report103. Your comments and feedback are also always welcome.

Information on unsubscribing, archives, reprinting articles, etc can be found at the end of this newsletter.

SPEED OF IDEAS VS. SPEED OF APPROVAL

Innovative ideas usually occur relatively quickly. Admittedly, they may be the result of a substantial amount of experimentation. But the ideas themselves happen fast.

Unfortunately, when innovative ideas occur in large organisations, it typically takes a long, long time for those ideas to be approved. The reasons are manifold, but typically include:

No clear communication path from the person who has the idea to the decision maker who can implement the idea.
No set procedures for approving and implementing new ideas – particularly radical ideas which might transform the company.
One or more committees which must review the idea before it may be approved.
Decision makers who are not visionary enough to understand the value the idea could bring to the company and the criticality of getting to the market first (if the idea is a product idea).
Company politics
A high level of risk aversion which leads management to create more approval hurdles, such as calling in outside consultants, creating additional review committees, running tests and otherwise wasting time and money rather than risking approval.
And so on...

As a result, by the time an idea is implemented, it may be too late to gain the full value of the idea. Your competitor may have implemented a similar idea – thus gaining the competitive advantage (such as a new product), the situation where the idea would have brought most value may have changed (such as a seasonal marketing related idea) or the idea may have been widely published – thus reducing its impact.

Even if the long time to approval does not diminish the value of the idea – as is sometimes the case with operational ideas – it can still cause problems. In particular, the individual or team who proposed the idea may well have lost enthusiasm for the idea during the months that passed before approval was given. This is particularly true if management has not been transparent about their approval procedures.

Imagine proposing an idea, one that you are very excited about, to management in August – and not hearing anything from management until the following April. Chances are you will assume management was not interested in the idea and will have moved on to new things. Indeed, if you were really excited about the idea, you may well leave the company for a faster acting competitor. You might even start your own company based on the idea.

Putting yourself back into your place in senior management, what can you do to avoid such damaging time lags from idea proposal to idea approval?

The most important thing is to implement a clear idea management process which not only captures ideas – but transparently evaluates and pre-implements good ideas. Such a process streamlines approval and provides a clear idea flow. People who contribute ideas can monitor the evaluation and pre-implementation procedures. Better still, they can be involved.

As a result, ideas are approved faster and more accurately. Even when an idea is rejected, the contributor has a clear understanding of the idea's weaknesses and can use this knowledge to redevelop the idea (if appropriate) as well as to propose better ideas in the future.

Of course I believe that our Innovation Battle plan (http://www.creativejeffrey.com/battleplan/) combined with out Jenni idea management virtual software (http://www.creativejeffrey.com/jenni/) is the most effective procedure and tool for implementing an idea management process. But even if you are not ready to invest in such a comprehensive (yet relatively inexpensive) solution, devising a clear, logical idea management process for handling ideas is a critical first step in becoming an innovative firm.

And it goes without saying, if you want to discuss implementing such a process in your firm, feel free to send me an e-mail or give me a call. I'm always up for a challenge.

THE NOTEBOOK EXERCISE: SLOW BUT EFFECTIVE CREATIVITY

The “Notebook Exercise” was introduced to me recently by Randah Taher, founder of www.MyArabicStory.org (see article below). This technique was inspired by an idea from Michael Michalko's book Cracking Creativity.

For the Notebook Exercise you need a team of people and one notebook for each team member. Explain the problem to the team and any additional information or restrictions that will help the team.

Each team member must enter three ideas per day for one week. At the end of the week, everyone passes their notebooks to another team member. Each member again enters three ideas per day for one week. But, now each will now be inspired by the ideas written by the previous notebook holder.

Continue for four weeks. Then collect all the notebooks, compile the ideas, summarise and present to the group. Randah tells me that this is an excellent method for bringing out shy people who often have good ideas but seldom are brave enough to share them.

Clearly this is not an approach that will work when you need ideas quickly. But for long term issues where richer, more thoughtful ideas are necessary, I expect it works brilliantly. Try it and let me know how it works for you.

CREATIVITY RESOURCE

While corresponding with Randah Taher (see story above), I also checked out her My Arabic Story (www.myarabicstory.org) initiative. While it seems still to be in the early stages, it is an impressive initiative indeed. And one worth exploring, particularly if you have, or care for, children.

To quote the web site: “'My Arabic Story' project aims at promoting and increasing awareness of the rich Arabic culture and heritage in Montreal through storytelling. Our stories will be chosen based on originality and complexity. We know that each and every Arabic country has its special culture and this diversity is its way of being unique. In this sense, we are promoting all Arabic culture in one pot and we do welcome inputs and opportunities to collaborate with other individuals and groups to work on similar projects.”

But you do not need to be in Montreal to appreciate the stories on the web site.

Now I am a firm believer in the notion that reading books to children helps open up their imagination by introducing them to all kinds of ideas as well as the wonders of language. Indeed, either my wife or I ALWAYS read our children bed time stories – as my mother did for me.

And here, Randah and her volunteers provide a variety of Arabic classics that you can share with your children free.

Take advantage of this wonderful resource. Your children will benefit. And you can also read these marvellous stories yourself – you will probably be inspired.

FREE IDEAS CAMPAIGN

In order to promote the campaign approach to idea management, we at jpb.com are offering you a free mini ideas campaign – allowing you to try out Jenni idea management, the ideas campaign approach to idea generation and test the creativity of your team. Free campaigns are officially limited to 20 participants, 50 ideas and two weeks. But, I'm easy. If you want a bigger and/or longer campaign, tell me why and remind me that you are a Report 103 reader. I'm sure something can be arranged.

Take a look at http://www.creativejeffrey.com/jenni/ for more information about Jenni idea management and click on the “Free trial” link to arrange your free trial.

But prepare an issue for your ideas campaign and have a group (such as your colleagues, customers, club or whatever) ready to participate.

Note: this offer was valid at the time of publication of this article, but may not be valid now. Please check the above link to ascertain validity.

NOT IMPRESSED WITH MIND-MAPPING

This article will probably make me a few enemies in the creative community. But, I've got a confession to make: mind mapping doesn't impress me.

My introduction to mind-mapping occurred a few years ago when I led a meeting involving the potential joint venture between an e-learning company and a communications company where I was at the time an e-business consultant.

One of the e-learning team glanced at my notepad and said “Oh, are you a mind mapper too?” Then he stretched up and looked at my notes and was slightly embarrassed. The scribbles he took to be a mind map were in fact what I call “Chaos Notes”. Instead of a structured radial image of connected thoughts he saw unconnected boxes with strange headings, large words that had nothing to do with the meeting and my typical doodles of cartoons, monsters and robots. Truth be told, I was rather embarrassed too. While I am a firm believer in Chaos Notes, I appreciate that they do not look very professional.

Mind-mapping has certainly become more popular since then. At most presentations and lectures I give or attend these days, I inevitably see at least one person spiralling out a mind map.

But while mind-maps are probably better than linear notes (ie: starting your note writing on the upper left corner of the page and working your way down), most mind-maps that I see are still overly structured. Mind-mappers start by writing a key word in the middle of the page. As the lecturer speaks, they add lines and additional words in a pattern like way.

The result is a highly structured spiral which is developed chronologically as the speaker speaks. My problem is with the highly structured aspect of the mind map. Links seem to be one way: from the main concept to another concept and from that other concept to yet another concept, and so on. Never have I seen a mind mapper rub out a line and send it in another direction. Rarely have I seen a mind mapper draw a line from one outer concept (ie. Not the central concept) to another outer concept across the page). Worse, every concept has to be connected to another concept. This forces you to make connections when they shouldn't exist.

Perhaps these people are bad mind mappers. I have seen one or two very cool mind maps over the years – but that is about all. And, if it so easy to mind map badly, I have to wonder if mind mapping is such an effective approach to note taking and thinking after all.

I personally like Chaos Notes. Chaos Notes involve writing all over the page, putting separate ideas into boxes and circles and drawing little pictures in the open spaces. Usually on the upper right hand portion of the page, I make a big box labelled “Toodles”, which is short for “Things to do”. Whenever I listen to people talking or try to draw out ideas, I am always reminded or inspired to do things. So I make note of these toodles. They are not directly related to the topic at hand, so it would be pointless to put them in the spiral.

At other times, while writing notes, I will be inspired with an idea about an unrelated project. When this happens, I make a note, circle it and write “idea” in big letters. Again, this idea usually has little directly to do with the note-taking at hand. But I don't want to forget it (see “Don't Multitask – MultiThink instead” at http://www.creativejeffrey.com/articles/article_multithink.php). Making a note an boxing it off from the other notes helps prevent forgetting.

Of course when concepts connect during my Chaos Noting, I connect those ideas by arrows, lines, monsters, ribbons or whatever takes my fancy.

The advantage to Chaos Notes is that they allow you to multi-think and apply aspects of your current note taking to other unconnected issues. This in turn makes you apply, in your mind, your current issue to other issues. And that is what creativity is all about.

Do you disagree with my view on mind-mapping? Tell me why. I'd love you to know your view.

NEW NEWSLETTER: REPORT 105

In view of the success of Report 103, we are trying out a new concept. Report 105 is an e-newsletter of ideas about the future, technology, society, government, philosophy and more. Report 105 is a look into the future together with a collection of ideas ripe for exploiting. I hope it will be often provocative, sometimes controversial and regularly inspirational. In short, Report 105 is for anyone who likes ideas.

Report 105 will also be edited and largely written by me and the first issue will be out next Tuesday: 23 August 2005.

Subscribe by visiting http://www.creativejeffrey.com/report105/.

Happy thinking!

Jeffrey Baumgartner

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Report 103 is a complimentary weekly electronic newsletter from Bwiti bvba of Belgium (a jpb.com company: http://www.creativejeffrey.com). Archives and subscription information can be found at http://www.creativejeffrey.com/report103/

Report 103 is edited by Jeffrey Baumgartner and is published on the first and third Tuesday of every month.

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