From where the ideas might come from AND from where it may NOT.

Ever wondered where you should put in your effort to increase the chances of getting positive innovation outcome, or where you should not? We attempt to answer this question below, where we prioritize many positive and negative origins of innovations. If you find something missing or have a different opinion then we surely would like to hear from you.

Situation 1:
You are looking at sustaining innovation, you know the problem which is not easy to solve, and you need an innovative solution. 

- ideas most probably come from … someone who has already partially or fully, in same or different domain - solved it.
- ideas most probably come from … from a analysing a conflict between two or more expectations of your overall objective.
- ideas most probably come from … how emerging countries getting around it or from a person from different industry all together.

- may NOT come … From someone you were expecting it to come from.
- may NOT come … from your city of operations.
- may NOT come … from a problem statement which has not evolved from its original state during last few months.

Situation 2:
You are looking at creating a disruption in how user consumes the product or a service, even changing the mindset and create completely new need. 

- ideas most probably come from … a serious trouble, and not routine goals and objectives.
- ideas most probably come from … Confidence from your previous success.
- ideas most probably come from … Individual Genius, followed up with knowledge based collaboration.

- ideas may NOT come … from meeting rooms and conferences.
- ideas may NOT come … From a situation where top management is waiting for the team to deliver.
- ideas may NOT come … when you are in a hurry to counter the competitor’s recent launch.

Situation 3:
You are convinced that little drops can add up, and you are keen to innovate at a lowest denominator on a continuous basis.

- ideas most probably come from … Diversity of idea providers, Diversity in opportunities you make avilable.
- ideas most probably come from … Genuine ego to be better than the rest in the market.
- ideas most probably come from … an irrelevant inspiration or derivation of bad or not so good ideas.

- ideas may NOT come … When you are trying to think of an idea!
- ideas may NOT come … From the provider of previous great idea.
- ideas may NOT come … When you receive many ideas and goal is reduced to selecting one great sounding idea.

Best Time, Team and Technique for Innovation …

... do they exist?

Time …

I get some of my best ideas when I am not trying to get one, while not at my desk, during a casual walk. One probably does not innovate on 25th Avenue, at 3:00 p.m. Sometimes, the harder one tries to sleep, more difficult it becomes, same with ideas.

However, on a broader level, if one does not have an innovation agenda, innovation probably doesn’t happen. So it is a good idea to create a placeholder for innovation, meet to take stock; meet to elaborate the ideas.

Time boxing does not help in innovating; however the other extreme - time pressure gets amazing output, sometimes!

Team …

Focus groups, Innovation councils, R&D teams, Centre of Excellences, apart from doing innovation are better suited for doing equally important tasks of managing innovation. They are better equipped to provide the anchor for an organization’s innovation agenda, anchor for ideas from across the organization and optionally from outside the organization.

There is no such thing as idea team, there shouldn’t be.

Techniques …

Six Thinking Hats, or TRIZ are great techniques to ideate and innovate, however I believe that if one has a Six Thinking Hats or TRIZ mindset then it is far more productive than having a round table discussion for innovation using these techniques.

I read that some people are successful in submitting their problems to their mind, sleeping over it, and the subconscious mind coming up with clues, if not the solution the next morning.
I believe in something similar – our minds have an incredible capability in parallel imagination for the problems we have at hand. Leverage this, submit the problem to yourself, don’t start working on it.

Organizations should have capability to manage ideas and innovations just like an ERP manages inventory or General Ledger.

Don’t ignore non-techniques like gut feeling and intuition.

One old fashioned thing, record your ideas, however stupid or great. Instead of remembering idea, sometimes I only remember that I had a good one!

In a nutshell … ideas during after hours, at a lab, in the bathroom or on a treadmill … Innovation teams more as an anchor across and beyond organization … Innovation techniques with processes diluted … is probably the best time, team and technique for the innovation.