For this entry I’ve got a book review for you. Ingenuity in Practice: A Guide for Clear Thinking P. Kirkham, S.P. Mosey, M.R. Binks This clear and concise book presents a straightforward process for anyone who wants to bring more innovative thinking to their work. My company is called Deliberate Innovation because I’m passionate that [...]
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. [...]
Before the creative act of coming up with ideas, it’s important to be able to describe the problem or opportunity briefly, but comprehensively and in terms that are readily understood.
The statement of the problem is essential to a creative problem solving process partly because defining it helps you understand the problem better. It will also serve as the starting point(s) for ideas generation as well as to keep you on brief.
It is 40 years this week since the Apollo 13 astronauts reported “Houston we’ve had a problem” and their chance to land on the moon was gone. The only mission remaining for the three crewmembers and the team back at Kennedy Space Center was to get the astronauts home safely, but the odds were against them. [...]
One of the most common pitfalls of creative problem solving is the danger of the First Reasonable Solution. It’s understandable really – we’ve had an idea that sounds like it will solve the problem, so why carry on? There is a real temptation to get attached to that one solution, right up to the point [...]
There’s a common assumption that innovation means inventing or re-inventing. In reality the same tools and techniques that can inspire original new products, services and marketing ideas are just as effective to solve problems and improve any organisation, by exploring more options. “You are just as likely, or more likely, to find that elusive competitive [...]
Have you ever attended or run a brainstorm? Most people in all sorts of organisations have heard the word, but how much do people using the term on a daily basis really know about the technique? When people tell me that they have had poor experiences in brainstorms in general they say one of a [...]
Hi, and welcome to whatever this is! You might call it a blog, but by the strictest definitions it probably isn’t, since we’re not logging anything and it’s not a journal! The helpful software certainly thinks it’s a blog, but it’s more likely to turn out to be a series of articles related to Deliberate [...]
