Adrian And Brenda's Out Of The Box ToyBox!

The question may occur at some point in your professional life. "How can I do something different than what isn't working today?" Yet, you find the your mind is stuck in the same old tired tracks that have already been tried. Even you're group may suffer a terrible lack of new ideas. So how do we innovate?

Innovation originally meant "to alter." So you could say that the process of innovation is to alter something known with or into something unknown. I hear you now saying, ok, but how to start the process!

There are a variety of ways to innovate. You can use mind mapping tools. Quite simply, draw a circle in the center of your paper or whiteboard. Place the central question or idea inside the circle. Then just let the thoughts come out...each time you have a new one, don't judge it just write it...by drawing a line from the center circle with a new circle and the idea inside the new circle. Continue. This non-linear method often shakes things loose better than the typical process we are taught in school, where we create an outline.

Without all the fuss about writing or drawing you can simply brainstorm where each person in the room freely throws out any ideas, and nothing is again judged for a period of time. Then you take your best ideas and brainstorm them further.

The most certain way to arrive at innovative thoughts is to persist to at least 3 ideas. Come up with at least 3 solutions and one should be pretty good, at least as a start. The reason for this is that we think in binary typically, an either/or situation. By forcing a third option we open our thought processes up further.

Ask yourself, "What does the problem look like?" then "What does the solution look like?" Then have someone build the solution.

You can imagine someone from history who is extremely knowledgeable about the subject and ask them.

Go to where your mind thinks you've hit definite fantasy and explore. This is where good ideas reside.

You don't want to work hard, or work smart, you want to PLAY SMART!

Ask yourself,

How can I:

make it bigger?

make it smaller?

make it faster?

make it slower?

make it cheaper?

make it more expensive?

make it better?

make it disposable?

make it go with....name anything else?

make it appealing to name any social segment?

The key here is to look at it from multiple perspectives and keep your mind free of judgement. How do we know something can't be done? Most often we don't...we just know it hasn't been done before.

You can also use a technique called force field analysis. The technique was developed by Kurt Lewin who pioneered social sciences. He used this technique to characterize the conflicting forces in a situation. The key is to brainstorm the points involved in a problematic situation at the problem exploration stage, then recognize the factors that are likely to help or hinder at the action plan and of course continue refining as the implementation of the plan progresses.

So you gather your group and identify the driving and restraining forces and discuess them openly as well as you collectively understand them. You draw a horizontal line across the middle of the page. Your lead person will draw all the driving forces as arrose that either pull or push the line upwards and the restraining forces as arros that pull or push the line down. You show how difficult or helpful a force is by the thickness and length of the arrows. The judgement of the forces is a collective effort. Then you use the diagram you made to find as many combinations of moving your center line in the direction desired. You can find ways to strengthen or add positive forces, weaken or get rid of negative forces or discover there are too many strong negatives and discard the idea.

ALWAYS CHALLENGE YOUR ASSUMPTIONS. It is good to list them out and then ask when would this ever not be true. Repeat as you add conditions as these will likely be assumptions as well. Continue!

You could use the Heuristic Ideation Technique!

This is great for initial product development. You choose two items that already exist, for instance, say a t-shirt and a fan. You list each component of the items, like, the parts of the fan are, round, handle, fan blade, blue. The t-shirt may be cotton, red, etc.

You get rid of anything that either already exists or aren't feasible. There may be some that provoke ideas but need more work...that's ok! Highlight the workable ideas. Many new ideas are combinations of existing idea elements coming together in new ways. The more difference you have between the products you pick to use for this the better it will work.

Adrian and Brenda can show you that anything is possible if you get your mind set balanced. They came together after some very life changing experiences.Their site, www.lead-a-powerful-life.com  is for you.to get the proper mindset to take your life wherever you would like it to go.

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Copyright 2006 Adrian McMaster