So you’ve got a great idea! Now you need to share it with others to give it real life and power. This might mean a speech or presentation to your Peers, a Manager, or an Investor.

How do you take your ideas and transfer your passion and enthusisum in such a way that it is understood and shared by others?

A two part podcast by Lisa B Marshall, the Public Speaker (Quick and Dirty Tips) gives a great “starting with a blank sheet” technique for preparing a speech. While your presentation will not be a speech as described in these podcasts, the process that Lisa describes could easily be adapted and is a great starting point. During the Podcast Lisa covers the following points:

1. Step One - Brainstorm Descriptive Adjectives
2. Step Two - Defining Your Descriptive Adjectives
3. Step Three – Telling Your Stories
4. Step Four – Fleshing Out Your Stories
5. Step Five – Pulling It All Together

Listen to Lisa B Marshall’s Quick and Dirty Tips Public Speaker’s Speech Making Podcasts Part 1 and Part 2  (these will open in separate windows.)

Now - go share your ideas with the world.

Tags: ideas, presentation, speach, toolbox

Brainstorming and coming up with ideas is stimulating and satisfying. The satisfaction comes from finding good workable solutions to problems. Therefore defining the problem clearly upfront can be a real aid to the idea creation and problem solving that follows.

Defining a problem with a Problem Statement is common on academic circles and within TQM and Six Sigma methodologies. For Brainstorming however we need something shorter and simpler.

I’ve had a quick look for a problem statement template specifically for brainstorming. I didn’t find one but did come across some themes that I’ve pulled together into the following process.

The first step is to write down your problem or the current state. Don’t worry too much about quality at this point - simply making a start is significant. Next, expand on your problem by asking the following questions:

• who does it affect / does not affect.
• what does it effect / does not affect.
• how does it effect / does not affect.
• when is it a problem / is not a problem.
• where is it a problem / is not a problem.

Now, re-write your problem statement based on those answers.

The Second step is the same as the first, but focuses on the Desired or Future State.   

The Third Step is to combine your revised Problem or Current State and your desired Future State into a single statement. This might take a couple of attempts but stick with it. Finally, review your new problem statement against the following criteria:

• Focused on only one Problem.
• One or two sentences long.
• Does not suggest a Solution.

You should now have a concise and well balanced Problem Statement ready for a brainstorming session. It should be unambiguous and devoid of assumptions. It will enable you or your group to focus in on the problem and work toward solutions that truly fit.

Try it yourself - Download a Problem Statement workbook by clicking this link:

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The following diagram outlines the process:

 

 

Tags: brainstorming, problem statement, toolbox

Have you ever needed a quick and tangible way to illustrate that there may be more than one solution to a problem? This might just be the example you need.

Start with three squares of paper. The Problem: each square of paper needs to be divided into 4 parts. The goal is for each part to be equal. So, after you have folded the paper each section of the paper will be the same size, same shape, and same volume as the other 3 parts.

The illustration above shows 3 solutions, each following the rules but each having a very different outcome. One is a square, another a triangle, the third a rectangle.

This excercise is useful for two reasons. First, it helps an individual or a group physically experience an abstract concept; the concept being that there can be more than one acceptable solution to a problem.

Secondly, This example has a very good problem statement so it’s a great way to set up people’s thinking about defining problems before they tackle solutions.

I’ll cover problem statements in a the next post.

Tags: problem statement, solution, tools

I’ve been reading two books recently and picked up a theme from both that’s worth mentioning.

In Chip and Dan Heath’s book “Made to Stick” they talk about the Curse of Knowledge. In short this is the assumption that other people know what you know, or the inability to see things as other people might.

In Edward De Bono’s “Thinking Course” he talks about the Intelligence Trap and two ways that it manifests it’s self. The first is that intelligent people take a position and use their intelligence to defend that point of view. Equally, the speed in which an intelligent person can dispose of another’s argument simply reinforces the original position. And there’s the trap!

Does this imply that creativity and innovations come from those who are less intelligent? Not really. What it does say is that you need to look out for embedded attitudes that might be inhibiting your creativity.

Have you ever listened to or read an interview of a successful person where they’ve said “If I’d known then what I know now I probably wouldn’t have done it.” What got them through the hard time and past the failures? Was it simply naivety, was it just guts and determination, or was it a grand vision. It was probably all of those things and more. They certainly broke out of the Intelligence Trap and shattered the Curse of Knowledge.

How did they break the trap and shatter the curse? I think it was Openness. They were able to look for and consider alternate view points. They did it by challenging assumptions about the current state. They did it with passion, not for their current position but for finding something new, something not yet discovered.

Tags: creativity, thinking

Mind mapping has been around for years and it’s a terrific tool for expanding ideas. They are great for working through all the thinking associated with a specific idea and putting it into some sort of order.

What I’ve been looking for though is something that allows me to collect a bunch of related ideas and organise them. I’ve needed something that allows me to get the thoughts out of my head and on to something I can work with. For that task Mind Maps don’t quite work for me. In the past I’ve tended to use paper and pens or Post-its (nothing wrong with that), and sometimes PowerPoint.

I’ve recently discovered a great (free) tool that allows me to collect my ideas and organise my thinking into a concept map - a new term for me. From the concept map I can take the key concepts and expand and refine them as mind maps. The mind maps allow me to sort, categorise and expand sub-ordinate thoughts; I can document these into very specific outputs and actions.

The following is a concept map that shows the process and the relationships between Concept Maps and Mind Maps.

InnovationTools provides entrepreneurs and innovators with a focused, growing collection of the best resources on business innovation, creativity and brainstorming. Our goal is to help you to learn more about the tools, strategies and techniques you can use to be more creative in your business — and to help your company to increase its capacity for innovation and change.

Tags: brainstorming, concept maps, ideas, mind maps, toolbox

I recently wrote a post about collecting ideas. In that post I listed some reasons why collecting ideas and reviewing them can be a great source of inspiration when you need a creative push.

One of the inspiration techniques I suggested was to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into a new solution. It’s interesting when you see an innovation that has combines several ideas or trends to solve a problem, provide a solution, or approach an existing situation in an innovative way.

The concept of SPIN Farming is a fascinating example of how trends or ideas from unrelated areas have been applied to small scale farming.

I’m not suggesting that the inspiration for SPIN Farming came directly from looking outside of agriculture for new ideas, however it is a good example of trends from other industries combining to enable a whole new approach - in this case applied to farming. SPIN Farming is not a return to the methods of our grandparents, but a total re-think and application of new methods.

So what is SPIN Farming? SPIN stands for S-mall P-lot IN-tensive

SPIN is a non-technical, easy-to-learn and inexpensive-to-implement farming system that makes it possible to earn significant income from land bases under an acre in size. Whether you are new to farming, or want to farm in a new way, SPIN can work for you because:

• Its precise revenue targeting formulas and organic-based techniques make it possible to gross $50,000+ from a half- acre.
• You don’t need to own land. You can affordably rent a small piece of land adequate in size for SPIN-FARMING production.

What trends and ideas do we see applied in the SPIN method? An obvious trend is miniaturization. This directly challenges the large scale corporate farming practices and makes sub-acre sites into profitable enterprises. It even looks fun. Over the last two decades enhancements in technology have taken the power of large enterprise main frame computers down to very portable powerful and affordable laptop and hand held devices.

In recent years micro-financing has been very successfully applied in some of the worlds poorest communities. Again, this is an example of the large “lending beast” being scaled down, made more user friendly and made accessible to people who really need it.

Localization is another trend at work here. Farmers markets and localised produce have become very popular in many heavily urbanised areas. Interestingly there are many parts of the world where weekly local markets have never been out of fashion.

There are also similarities in the SPIN approach to just-in-time manufacturing processes. Conventional farmers sow a large crop at one time, then harvest a large crop at one time. The spin methodology has sequential sowing and sequential harvesting. The harvest is just enough to fulfil the market demand with no loss in productivity.

We can see that the SPIN farming technique combines several ideas that exist in other industries; miniaturization, localisation, and just in time production.

So what can you be inspired to do by looking around, observing, and collecting ideas. What ideas from outside your industry can be sliced and diced, combined, and applied to your business or project. Where will your next innovation come from?

Tags: innovation

thinking how is a journey, though the destination is not quite clear yet.

It is a journey to look at how ideas become ideas, and what do we do with them.

It is a journey that will ask -

• Is creativity and innovation learnable?
• How do we leap from thinking to doing?
• Can thinkers “do”, and can doers “think”?
• Are ideas, creativity and innovation spontaneous or are they a process.

I suspect that the answers will lie somewhere in between the extremes. I’m sure too that the questions will evolve as the journey progresses.

Come join me.

Tags: creativity, ideas, innovation, thinkers