Want to be more innovative in your thinking but not sure where to start? Why not start with a helicopter view of what you do and how you do it, and from there identify the likely targets to think about.
Identify everything you provide, every process you have, every problem that stands in your way, and why you do the things you do and then you have got a starting point for potential innovation in your organisation. Now you have a list, you can break it down…
Scan the list
- identify the products and processes that work, that you don’t want to re-think and then put them in a box marked “don’t need to mess with this stuff for 12 months”
- identify the products and processes that don’t work and then re-think them or get rid of them
- identify the problems that you think you can solve and then get cracking
This work will created an opportunity list for innovation, all you need to do is select which item to work on and you are ready to go. All this should keep you going for a while, innovating your product line (existing and new), innovating your processes and then removing the things that stand in your way. And once you have finished, you can start the thinking all over again.
Ray Maino
Great stuff.