To get the right answer we need to ask the right question. Consider the scenario where your sales are falling. You ask the question ‘why are our sales falling?’ and get an answer like ‘because our sales people are rubbish’. Before we fire our sales force let us try a different and more in depth style of questioning. Why are sales falling? - Because customers don’t like our products Why don’t they like our products? – Because they are outdated, not as cool as this year’s model Why are our products outdated? – Because we have not developed any new
How to become a Jedi Master of Creativity
Have you ever wanted to be the person who has all the new ideas? Some people think that creativity is something that you either have, or you don’t. The fact is that everyone of us is creative and the creativity that we have can be boosted. Here’s how! Learning to think creatively is a lot easier than you think. The left and right hemispheres of your brain work together like a two man soccer team, and it’s natural for them to try out new tactics every now and them. With just a little bit of effort, you can be bending
Crowdsourcing – why it may not work for you
This is not an attempt to malign the use of crowdsourcing as a valuable technique, it is simply a way of pointing out that it is not a ‘cure for all ills’ as some people seem to think. Any technique used incorrectly or inappropriately can be at best ineffective and at worst damaging or disruptive (in terms of both cost and reputation). Following the recent election and subsequent formation of a coalition government here in the UK, much was made of the need to consult widely and get the input of real people to help in the formation of government
Only We Can …
I notice that a number of people play this game in their workshops but here is my version. It can be used in a number of different ways and can also be used solo or in groups. If you are having issues with a current product or service then you might try to produce statements such as: Only we can deliver product xx within 24 hours Only we can produce xx at a cost of less than £5 Only we have the technology …. This should not be too difficult, especially if you are already having some success but if
Creativity Cannot Be Managed – What Rubbish!
I was recently taking part in an online discussion about Creativity and Innovation when one of the contributors posted something that just stopped me in my tracks. There were a few words about how Creativity and Innovation are not the same (about the only thing we did agree upon) and some very logical and left brained words about how Innovation can be managed and then the line "Creativity cannot be managed". How come you cannot manage Creativity, but you can manage Innovation (which contains Creativity)? The rest of the article led me to believe that the author did not have
The Magic Of Metaphor
First of all what is a metaphor? Here I use the term metaphor and simile interchangeably but technically a simile is simply saying that one thing is like something else and a metaphor is saying that one thing is something else. A simile is thus a metaphor but a metaphor is not necessarily a simile. Enough of the terminology! Roll your mouse over the picture to the right to find a metaphor. Sometimes exaggeration or humour might be involved to help make the point. Many men might use the metaphor of their mother-in-law being a dragon. They are not saying
The Morphological matrix
This is a form of random stimulation that can be used solo or in groups. It is ideal for generating ideas when you have an idea about WHAT you wish to do but not HOW you might go about doing it. If you were a TV producer you might ask the question “How might we go about creating a new soap opera?” To use this technique in such a case first create a table with ten rows labelled 0 – 9 and 4 columns initially numbered 1 to 4. Next perform the following steps: Label each column with a different
When is Creativity not creative?
There have been (and there will continue to be) debates about what exactly is creativity and what it means to be creative. I remember having a discussion with some artists about being creative. Being artistic, they naturally thought of themselves as creative and were seen in a similar way by the general public. To be fair, their methods and output was, to say the least, alternative but I posed them the question “If you use the same method for each piece of art work you produce, are you being creative even if the output changes?” There is no real answer
