Stuck with a problem that needs a completely different approach?
Pressure to innovate and transform how you do things?
Pondering on how to grow your business?
“without creativity there would be no progress” Edward de Bono
Try this 3 step approach…
1. Step into a resourceful, creative mindset
- Move away from your normal office desk to free up your thinking. Try sitting in a park or garden for additional inspiration.
- Stand up. Imagine a circle on the floor. Imagine its colour, width, size.
- Think of a time when you were resourceful, energised, innovative.
- Take a deep breath, think about the memory and step into the circle. Relive the memory. Intensify the memory
- Keep this mindset for step 2
2. Generate loads and loads and loads of ideas
Groundrules
- crazier (!) the better
- quantity, not quality (at this point) – at least 30 ideas!
- keep going…. the best ideas are the ones you get after you want to give up!
- instead of thinking ‘it won’t work’ think ‘how can it be useful’
- ?
- work quickly and give yourself a time limit of 10-15 mins to generate ideas
To get the ideas flowing …. what would these people/businesses do if they were in your shoes? What business models would they apply to your business? I used this approach to identify how I might market a career development support group for professionals and some of my ideas are in orange. Use this to spark ideas of your own
- your best customer
- eg selection process for clients to join the appropriate group, high quality presenters
- your worst customer
- eg drop in sessions, minimum investment, webinars, free service
- John Lewis
- eg range of products, personal attention, money back guarantee
- MacDonalds
- fast delivery, consistent quality, easy to access, strong brand, loads of advertising
- Amazon
- online, affiliate programme, reviews, rating
- The Queen
- throw money at it, quality, experts, exclusive
Keep going with generating ideas!
If you can, work with a group of people with the same or similar problem/challenge
- each person to work by themselves for 10 mins to write as many ideas as possible on post-it notes, 1 idea per post-it
- then share ideas and put post it notes on a wall for all to see
- keep going with generating ideas and writing on post-it notes and sharing
Got to at least 30 ideas yet? If no then keep going… think about other businesses/people.
3. Evaluate ideas
Now is the time to review and evaluate your ideas.
Select 3 ideas that have the most potential and consider…
- What steps need to be taken to implement?
- Implementation costs/benefits
- financial
- time to implement
- complexity
- skills/expertise to buy in/acquire
- cost of piloting new idea
- cost of launching new product/service
- Ongoing costs/benefits – short term and long term
- Impact on reputation
- SWOT analysis of new idea
- How can weaknesses/limitations in this idea be minimised?
- Does this open up further markets for you?
- Existing customers or new target market?
- Collaborate with other entrepreneurs?
- How will this impact on other products/services you provide?
- What’s worked in the past? What does this tell you about what needs to be in place to make it work this time round?
If your chosen ideas no longer seem viable after evaluation consider 3 others that have potential.
Now it’s over to you to innovate and succeed!
“the essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail” Edwin H Lond
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