Toolbox.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you had to flee your country in the dead of the night to make a new life elsewhere, what idea generation techniques would you want to have with you?
I suppose I’ve been thinking about that question not because I feel under threat in the country am living in but because the question sharply focuses on which idea generation tools haved worked so effectively for me and others.
What idea generation techniques have worked best for you? Continue reading
It’s Tuesday today – the day that’s furthest away from Monday, the day when many feel at their lowest point of energy. It’s not for nothing that even songwriters have written about Monday blues such as “I don’t like Mondays”, “Manic Monday” and “Blue Monday”.
Interesting that songs about Tuesday are more upbeat: “Ruby Tuesday”, “Groovy Tuesday” and “Hooray for Tuesday”.
Mondays can drain our energy as we try to break away from the relaxed state of the weekend and recoil ourselves for the first day of the working week. Continue reading
Baking bread (Photo credit: net_efekt)
I was surprised to hear someone who should know better saying the other day that people don’t know how to come up with ideas.
How on earth can anyone say that?
Humans from a very early age come up with ideas for all sorts of things. Birthday parties, fun games and interesting combinations to eat.
In the adult world people could hardly function without new ideas. They come up with them all the time. For making tasty dinners, ways to make extra money on weekends, garden layouts and better ways to do their jobs. Continue reading
Español: Un hombre practicando kitesurfing en las palyas de Curanipe, Chile.
This African proverb is a great way to think about new ideas and innovation:
“An axe without a handle does not cut firewood.”
Combinations lead to innovation.
Connections among your experiences, feelings, emotions, deep thinking, facts and observations can spark new ideas for products, services, fresh thinking and stunning insights.
Three quick examples:
– Ballet and shoes = ballet pumps
– Surfboard and kite = kite boarding
– Internet and friends = Facebook
How do you discover these golden connections? How do you ignite these golden threads? How do you spark of these golden opportunities? Continue reading
If imitation were that simple, small business owners could come up with knock-offs of other products and services and ring their cash registers.
Imitation crab (Photo credit: DBduo Photography)
Imitation can be a more important source for new products and services than the original concept or innovation. In fact, researchers claim that copying ideas can be more valuable than inventing something new. Up to 98% of the value from innovation is realised by the imitators rather than the innovators. Continue reading
Source: Wikimedia commons
The other day I asked a supermarket employee the question, “Where can I get kebabs?” She didn’t say a word. She looked at me with glazed eyes without even acknowledging I was there. I repeated my question and this time she mumbled something – I didn’t recognise the language. It sounded like an ancient language from Transylvania. She walked away without a smile.
It suddenly hit me. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Shivering in my shoes, I realised who I had encountered. A zombie service staff member had infiltrated this business and was operating under the guise of a customer service representative. Continue reading
Discovering one’s passion on the Santiago de Compostella pilgrimage route of 750 km
A friend who has been trying to find his passion went over to New Zealand and Australia for six months. He travelled in a camper van with his surf board and came back to South Africa with stories: travelling along scary roads up cliffs and in dense trees to surf spots, getting electrocuted leaning against a farmer’s cattle fence and even stumbling on a nudist beach by accident.
Yet after all his amazing adventures, seeing different lifestyles and meeting new people, he hadn’t found his hoped-for passion. You see, after years working in demanding corporate jobs and high-pressure sales promotions, he has taken time to figure out what he really wants to do. Continue reading
Innovation (Photo credit: Seth1492)
A dog day care business faced stiff competition with similar businesses starting up. The owner decided to introduce new services such as caring for older, sickly pets, offering on-site vaccinations and placing webcams in the facility so owners could check their pets anytime. This innovation helped the business expand from 11 locations to 100 franchise outlets and wholly-owned shops.
The perception exists that small businesses are not as innovative as larger companies. Yet while this may be true for common village professionals like shopkeepers, real estate agents, plumbers, lawyers and doctors, many small business owners are highly innovative.
Why is innovation so important to small businesses? Continue reading
Who can you trust when buying products or services online?
Sorry to sound cynical but there’s a reason:
As a buyer or consumer these days even off-line you have to be ultra careful. For example, take your credit card or ATM card. You have to watch out that no one sees your three-digit number at the back of your credit card or your pin code. In the wrong hands, you can lose a lot of money. So many people get caught. Continue reading
Aren’t you just tired with people who make statements about small businesses but are far removed from the trenches of real business?
Politicians make yada yada in the media about supporting small business.
Academics chirp in on how jobs should be created by small business.
Conferences and summits with hefty admission fees are held on the state of small business where there’s much dreary theory but little hands-on practical advice. Continue reading
James Dyson came up with an idea for a bagless vacuum cleaner — inspired by an industrial cyclone at a timber mill — in the late 1960s.
After five years of testing and more than 5,000 “mistakes”, or prototypes as engineers call them, his vacuum cleaner concept was ready to take to market.
But all the big brand manufacturers slammed doors in his face.
Why?
Their business model was selling vacuum cleaners and bags — which made them lots of money.
He had to eventually launch his vacuum cleaner himself – in 1993.
He became a billionaire.
It’s hard not to admire this guy. Think of the many rejections he had to face. Imagine having to deal with all the people who must have thought he was crazy.
“What’s important is that I didn’t stop at the first failure, the 50th, or the 5,000th,” he wrote in a news magazine. “I never will.”
Such persistence is incredible. How many times have we come up with promising ideas and keep working on them for years?
In my case I had an idea for a website similar to www.ideaaccelerator.co.za that I started in 2005 for entrepreneurs. But I packed in it after a year because of competing interests.
It was only in 2010 that I decided to start a new blog on the easier WordPress platform. Keeping the momentum for the first year was difficult but now it has taken on a life of its own.
Persistence, someone said, is to the character of people as carbon is to steel. It’s hard to define but so essential for bringing a product or service to life.
How often do we have ideas and just give up at the first obstacle? How far would you go in pursuing your idea for a product or service? Would you keep at your idea for several decades until you finally brought it to market? Could you keep going, refining your idea after 5,000 mistakes?
Look at it this way, each one of Dyson’s 5,000 mistakes actually involved coming up with a new idea each time. It’s a myth that innovation is one single event or flash of inspiration. You sometimes need to build ideas upon ideas as you refine your product or service for the market place.
It’s ironic that Dyson was forced to sue one of the companies that had rejected his design years back. Success leads to copycats.
Want to come up with and develop ideas of your own?
Tune into www.ideaaccelerator.co.za for ideas and articles.
Stay inspired
Chesney Bradshaw