Social media, SEO, marketing and writingHow Fresh Are Your Ideas?
It can be challenging for companies to increase sales, grow market share and innovate due to once simple fact: competitors may be playing by a different set of rules.
Innovative organizations have a different way of approaching business challenges that allow them to more quickly respond to change, churn out new creative concepts, or implement technologies in ways that others cannot. They tend to approach challenges as opportunities, rather than obstacles. They look at the world, not through rose colored glasses, but differently, as though viewing a kaleidoscope of possibilities for the first time.
Albert Einstein once said that ‘problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which they were created.’ How true! Smart managers have extolled the virtues of ‘thinking outside the box’ for years now, but so few seem to be able to escape the creative rut they are in.
Do the following points ring try to you?
- You do the same things every day. Take the same route to work, read the same newspaper and listen to the same radio station in the morning
- You spend most of your time with people from similar backgrounds
- You rarely go out of our way to try new things, meet new people or go to new places
- You’re so busy that you usually settle for the first good solution to a problem
- Many of your ideas could easily be copied by our competitors
Let’s try a brief exercise to demonstrate my point. See if you can guess what type of vehicle each of these people drive.
Perhaps you ‘guessed’ the man drove a Lexus, the woman in the center a Prius hybrid and the asian woman a Mercedes?
The ‘right’ answer is inconsequential. What is important is how your mind came to its decision about which car belonged to which person. Logically, we know that people can choose any type of car they want—or they may own several vehicles. But our brains still look for clues, tips and direction based on our past experiences. Our best guesses are made automatically, influenced by patterns and memories in our brains. We leap to assumptions when there may be no proof to back up our first impressions.
Likewise in business, we often make decision based on assumptions on our products, competitors and consumer needs that are not based in fact. That’s why objective research is so important to a company’s long-term success. The same can be said for creative efforts to get our staffs to think differently. It’s one thing to request unique ideas in a staff meeting. But if your team is running on the same familiar corporate treadmill day after day, it’s doubtful that too many innovative concepts will sprout up and blossom from within.
If you agree your ideas are more incremental than revolutionary, then it’s time to figure out what to do about it. Ready to learn how to stimulate new thinking by utilizing some helpful tools, group exercises and creative best practices? Click on each of these previous articles for some free advice.
Alter Your Perspective to View the World in a New Light
