How To Jump-Start Your Innovation Engine

Short on ideas? In need of a big breakthrough, or even a small one? Feeling overwhelmed by a million projects, none of them creating the progress you’d hoped for?

I recommend the following steps to clear your head and get fresh ideas growing and break the vicious cycle of busy-work that doesn’t seem to move you ahead:[wcm_restrict]

1. Clear some time and space. A cluttered desk or calendar will keep good ideas from developing. There’s a good reason why farmers plough and weed their fields. You need to cultivate your imagination in much the same way. Block out some chunks of time and give yourself a neutral space to sit and think – or if it suits you better, to walk and think. DON’T sit amidst your piles of files of unfinished business.

2. Expand your viewpoint. Gather new information that is both broad in scope, and detailed in depth. Seek multiple ways of looking at or understanding the current challenge, problem, project or goal. Fresh information is the fertile soil in which fresh ideas grow.

3. Nurture multiple ideas. Come up with at least three – hopefully a dozen or more – possible ideas, designs, solutions or strategies before you try to narrow it down to a single solution. If you don’t see enough innovative approaches yourself, then enlist help by holding a group brainstorming session. Expanding your options is like sowing many seeds – it maximizes the chances of a strong one gaining momentum.

4. Narrow it down to the single most promising idea. Weed out those other approaches or designs now, only after you’ve enriched your viewpoint and allowed your imagination to show you many new possibilities.

5. Run with it! Having opened up your calendar, gathered a rich variety of information, and generated lots of options, you are finally in a position to pick a winner and focus on it. Make a plan, enlist the support and resources you’ll need, and champion it all the way through to implementation.

Most people start at Step 5, trying to execute a solution or implement a plan long before they’ve given themselves enough time to generate any fresh insights or good ideas. As a result, people often feel like they are struggling to get things done. A mediocre or poorly thought through plan is a lot harder to implement than an innovative one!

Thinking of innovation as mental gardening can be helpful, since it reminds us that imagination needs to be given fertile ground, and then nurtured until the best idea reaches maturity.

Innovation is not like growing a field of wheat. We don’t need a million identical small ideas, we already have that in most workplaces. What we need is one big whopper of a breakthrough. So think like the farmer who’s trying to raise a prize-winning pumpkin. Start with lots of good seeds and fertilize them well. Then narrow it down to the strongest plant. Finally, pinch off all but the largest pumpkin on that healthy vine, and give it all your resources until it’s ready to load up on the truck and bring to the fair.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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About the Author

Alex Hiam (www.alexhiam.com) is the author of more than 20 popular books on business, including Business Innovation For Dummies, Marketing For Dummies, and Marketing Kit for Dummies. A lecturer at the business school at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he has consulted with many Fortune 500 firms and large U.S. government agencies.