Most of us by now have heard the phrase “think outside the box.”  But that doesn’t apply to everyone in every situation.  Thinking outside the box is beneficial for those who have been solving problems and working within an industry or department for a long time.  The longer we have been solving problems within a certain set of boundaries the more those boundaries becomes walls and obstructions to seeing anything outside of them.  We do need a clearly defined scope of the problem to effectively solve it.  So, even though we need boundaries in our thinking to help us focus and prioritize, those boundaries can limit our perspective over time.  Just like staring at a computer screen all day can make seeing distances difficult so can corporate and departmental boundaries limit our perspective.  

On the other hand if you have had very little time and experience in an industry or company discipline those departmental thought boundaries are going to be very transparent.  That is the value of the rookie perspective, they have X-ray vision that can look through walls and see things the old timers are blind to!  However, the rookie needs to learn to think inside the box rather than outside the box.  The box helps define most of the problems, just not all of them. 

Innovation isn’t about always getting it right or even most of the time.  Thomas Edison's famous line about discovering 1000 ways that a lightbulb won’t work was a positive spin on how many times he didn’t get it right.  There are a lot of failures in the innovation process and we admire those that persist and overcome incredible odds.  However, not all ideas are worth endless pursuit and knowing when to quit and move on is critical to being able to stay in the game.  After all, most innovation has a business or monetary element to it.  Even the idea generating phase of a brainstorming exercise has to stop at some point and get trimmed down.  Quantity must become quality or your energy and focus will be spread too thin to produce really great results.   

Unfortunately, every company has its own unique culture so it’s not possible to have an answer of when to quit, that works for everyone.  There are cultures that are very production centered and struggle to see the value of spending time on brain storming and creative problem solving and they are more likely to quit too early in the process.  Other cultures may revere the creative work but find it hard to get to the application and production phase.  In either case there needs to be some mile markers that are agreed upon and set in advance to track progress and timing.  This is a lot like project management for innovation.  

Setting goals and objectives and managing to plan is how you can ensure that you are keeping on track as long as you have a good understanding of how the creative process works when you set them.  If you have an experienced innovation team leader then they can follow the plan and it will help them know if the production of viable ideas are indeed happening and if not it will help them pull the plug so you can focus on efforts that have more potential.

The goal is to get better at the creative innovation process so that you can produce breakthrough ideas more consistently and with manageable risk.  Knowing when to say no is what innovation systems can help with.

4. Have an easter egg style innovation hunt where members or employees hunt for innovative ideas outside your business or industry that might be brought back and applied within.

Opening the blinds.  The difference between this step and the 1st step is that it brings focus to ideas outside your industry not just outside your company.  There is an arrogance in some industries about where ideas need to come from, in essence they have closed the blinds to the outside world.  If it’s not invented inside their industry or company then it doesn’t apply or isn’t good enough.  Some people wrongly believe that you must have lots of experience in one industry to really understand its problems.  That belief has been proven false over and over.  In fact it is exactly the opposite.  If all you have experienced is one industry, your vision and perspective will be limited.  Over time our mind creates boundaries and rules for thinking and the longer we operate within those boundaries the more  permanent they become until eventually we cannot see outside those boarders.  Since our mind creates connections and associations from our personal experiences to form new perspectives, it is to our benefit to have a broad range of perspectives to draw from.  The larger and more diverse your mental warehouse of experiences, the higher the number of potential associations and new ideas you will have.

So, the key to this step is to cultivate curiosities outside your industry, open the blinds and go hunting for ideas that you can bring back into your industry.  This is not a best practices or bench marking within your industry exercise!

And of course, make it fun and make it focused on solving real challenges.  Happy hunting!

Step 3.  Set aside a time in each meeting for innovation focus.  

There are few tools more powerful and effective than a razor sharp focus.  Many businesses and individuals have lots of capabilities and talents but they are spread too thin with too many agendas to truly accomplish much.  Distractions weaken and dissipate our energy whereas focus concentrates our energy.  When executives make it clear what they are focused on it directs the energies and creativity of the entire organization.  If over half of the meeting is spent on innovation it will be clear what the company priorities are.  With constant focus and attention on one thing a company can create habits and habits create a company culture.  Former CEO of Alcoa, Paul O'Neill showed us the transformational power of focus when safety became his number one priority.  The company wide habits formed through that one priority influenced and improved so many other business systems.  Laser and dogmatic focus and on innovation will ignite your teams.