If you want to understand why some companies lack innovative ideas, think about the man who can’t find his car keys.
His friend asks him why he’s looking for the keys under the lamppost when he dropped them over on the lawn. “Because there’s more light over here,” the man explains.
For too many companies, that describes their search for new ideas, and it pretty much guarantees they won’t go anywhere fast. While such a company can marginally improve what it’s already good at, it misses out on the breakthroughs—those eureka moments when a new concept pops up, as if from nowhere, and changes a company’s fortunes forever.
Far and Wide
- The Situation: Companies looking for innovative ideas often limit their searches to fields they’re already familiar with.
- The Problem: That can help with incremental progress, but it seldom leads to the kinds of breakthroughs or inspirations that generate new markets and dramatic growth.
- The Solution: Companies need to look at the edge of their radar screens, and sometimes a bit beyond, to experience eureka moments. The authors describe methods that successful companies use to keep innovation strong.
Those ideas, however, don’t really come from nowhere. Instead, they are typically at the edge of a company’s radar screen, and sometimes a bit beyond: trends in peripheral industries, unserved needs in foreign markets, activities that aren’t part of the company’s core business. To be truly innovative, companies sometimes have to change their frames of reference, extend their search space. New ways of thinking and organization can be required as well.
In other words, they have to look away from the lamppost.
None of this is easy to do. But companies that succeed may just recognize the next great opportunity, or looming threat, before their competitors do. And that’s important in tumultuous economic times with rapidly changing technologies. Indeed, every once in a while, that blip on the horizon turns out to be a tsunami.
For the past several years, we and other researchers have participated in workshops with more than 100 companies discussing and experimenting with new ways of looking for and developing innovations. Here are nine examples of practices with the potential to produce a company’s eureka moment.
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hi
I found some of the suggestions in this article to be pretty useful. Thanks. However, I would like to say a few words in favor of looking under the lamp post:
1) there’s light. light is what helps one find things;
2) in the other places it’s dark. dark is what prevents you from finding things;
3) it’s near, meaning you get there faster, it’s easier, you know your way;
4) under the lamp post is focused area. You know where you are looking, you can plan it. away from the lamp post is huge and fuzzy. where should one look? why here and not there?
5) out there everyone is looking. under the lamp post it’s only us;
6) since it’s focused and familiar, one can dig really deep. outside in the great dark you never dig deep. first, cause you can see, second because after a short while, if you haven’t found anything, you are always tempted to move a few feet aside and try there.
Not saying here that you should never venture away from your lamp posts. Just that you better be sure you’ve used them to their maximum before you do.
Thanks
Amnon levav
http://www.sitsite.com