Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Alicia Arnold on how to apply creativity to your specific challenges.

Alicia is the author of Creatively Ever After: A Path to Innovation, where she shows you how to innovate to get results, and how to apply the Creative Problem Solving (CSP) Process to your work and life.

I asked Alicia to share her best insights learned from studying and teaching creativity skills over the years, and to make it as actionable as possible for readers of Sources of Insight to instantly apply it.

To set the stage, you can think of creativity as simply applying the use of imagination and ideas to produce a result.  You can also think of creativity as a skill that you can build.  By thinking of creativity as a skill, you empower yourself to make the most of any creative techniques and thinking tools that are readily available

Without further ado, here’s Alicia …

By now you’ve probably heard the chatter about creativity – an IBM study of 1,500 CEO’s around the world identified creativity as the number one leadership competency for the future.

In addition, creativity is top of mind for CIO’s as well. CIO’s have identified issues like globalization, the need for acceleration, increasing amounts of data, a push to digitize, increasing proliferation of personal devices in the workplace, and having to do more with less budget, require creativity and innovation.

However, creativity is one of those funny topics. Creativity can be difficult to understand and many people do not believe you can learn to become more creative. The good news is, it has been statistically proven, over decades of longitudinal research, that creativity can be learned. Based on leading creativity courses in business and academic settings, I’ve compiled a list of top insights and lessons learned. I hope you find these valuable in thinking about how creativity and creative problem solving can be applied to your specific challenges.

1. The question isn’t are you creative, but how are you creative

When I describe creativity, I frame it in terms of identifiable skills. Creativity is made up of four skills – the ability to ask questions (clarify), the ability to come up with ideas (ideate), the ability to string ideas together to form a solution (develop), and the ability to take the solution into action (implement). By couching creativity within identifiable skills, it becomes easier to understand how each one of us is creative and what teachable skill is most important for each individual. Generally speaking, your chosen profession is a likely indicator of your creative preference. While there are no absolutes, marketers tend to exhibit high ideation preferences, while information technology professionals tend to exhibit high clarifying and developing preferences. This leads me to the second insight…

2. Creativity in business takes teamwork

Surviving in the business world means tackling complex problems. The more complex the problem, the greater the likelihood it will require cross-discipline knowledge and a variety of problem solving preferences. By diversifying your team to include folks who enjoy clarifying, ideating, developing, and implementing, you will have a greater chance for success. But, this can cause discomfort. The next time you’re in a situation that requires teamwork, but are feeling discouraged, ask yourself why you’re feeling that way. Chances are you may be working with people who have different preferences than yours. To help, ask team members to explain their reasoning and intent. This will help the group focus on the task at hand rather than individual positions. Also, knowing your creative preference helps. If you are someone who enjoys clarifying, when working with people who enjoy ideating, you can add significant value by asking questions to help ensure the ideas are solving the right problem. And, there’s a skill to asking questions. Read on…

3. Asking open-ended questions invites participation and solutions

The best way to ask questions when solving problems is to ask open-ended questions. These are questions that cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” For example, rather than asking “Can you meet the deadline?” rephrase as “What might be all the ways to meet the deadline?” Open-ended questions help in three ways: 1) they invite participation by moving your mind into problem solving mode 2) they help you believe the problem is solvable 3) they diffuse tense situations. The next time you’re in a bind, try asking open-ended questions. When used properly, open-ended questions can change the cadence of the conversation. To get started, practice phrasing questions with…

• How to…?
• How might…?
• In what ways might…?
• What might be all the ways…?

4. Getting a fresh perspective creates breakthrough solutions

Sometimes new thinking comes from physically leaving your work setting. In a memorable innovation workshop I ran, I worked with C-suite technologists, marketers, and finance executives from a global bank to come up with differentiating ways to leverage the web site to deepen customer relationships. We held the session at a local museum and tied all exercises to business strategy and objectives. After crafting the problem statement using open-ended questions, teams used museum exhibits to help come up with ideas on how to solve the problem. It was at this moment team members had a change of heart for tapping into new modes of thinking. When looking at a hologram, one participant remarked how the hologram looked different depending upon where she stood. This hologram experience helped the team come up with the idea of personalizing, customizing, and using data visualization to bring meaning to customer account data. The team proposed by allowing web site users to play with, and combine, account data in new ways, they could realize a way to build stronger, value-added relationships with customers. New perspective can be as simple as finding an object of interest and asking, “What ideas does this object give me for solving my problem?” Chances are this “forced connection” will bring new solutions.

In our lifetime, we’ve been schooled to find the “right answer.” This may work when we are trying to solve mathematical equations, however the business environment is ambiguous and the data set is never complete. Learning how to tap into your natural creativity is an essential life and business skill. Congratulations on taking a step towards building a leadership competency in creativity!

“Never try to solve all the problems at once — make them line up for you one-by-one.” — Richard Sloma

How well can you solve your problems?  Solving problems is one of the most fundamental skills in life, and it’s something we get to practice every day.

I learned early on that wishing away problems didn’t work and that it was more effective to embrace challenges as a part of life, as a chance to grow and expand myself.  One of my favorite sayings is, “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”

Unfortunately, we don’t always get taught the best ways to solve our problems.  Some of the less effective ways include anger, blame, avoidance, curling up into a little ball, etc.  The good news is, you can improve your problem solving skills by using problem solving techniques.

One of the most effective problem solving techniques to add to your problem solving skills cache is the Osborne-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process, or CPS for short.  It’s strength lies in casting a wide net over the problem, and testing multiple paths and possibilities before locking in on a particular solution.

In the book, Creatively Ever After: A Path to Innovation , Alicia Arnold writes about how you can use the Creative Problem Solving Process to tackle your challenges in work and in life.  It’s about getting science and structure on your side, while unleashing your creative powers to solve the tough stuff.

The Creative Problem Solving Process
According to Alicia, you can think of the Creative Problem Solving Process in six main steps:

• Step 1. Identify the Goal, Wish, or Challenge.
• Step 2. Gather Data.
• Step 3. Clarify the Problem.
• Step 4. Generate Ideas.
• Step 5. Develop Solutions.
• Step 6. Plan for Action.

While the process may look simple and obvious, the key is to compare it to your current approach:

• Do you know your goal?  (Can you state it in one line?)
• Have you gathered any data and sorted facts, opinions, and fiction?
• Do you have true clarity of the problem you are solving?  (Can you state the problem as a simple question, such as, “How to ….”?)
• Do you generate multiple ideas or just run with the first thing that pops in your head?  Do you look across the ways other people have solved this problem before, and find the patterns?
• Do sketch out solutions and possibilities and test for fit or do you dive into the details?
• Do you turn your ideas and solutions into actionable steps?  Do you break the steps down into mini-goals that you can test and get feedback?

While a lot of problems can be solved by jumping to conclusions and drawing from experience, many of the problems we face cannot.  Whether you’re solving a health problem or changing the game at work, a process like the Creative Problem Solving Process can help you tap into your creative potential.  Better yet, with a process like the Creative Problem Solving Process, you can harness and leverage the collective brain power of multiple people in a coordinated way.

My Related Posts

• Solving Problems with Skill
• 4 Types of Problems
• What’s the Challenge?

Photo by Alaskan Dude.

It’s built from it’s constraints.

I was flipping through one of my new favorite books, Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath in Your Industry , when the following line jumped out at me:

A Superior Product is Built from Its Constraints, Not Its Features.

So true, and I see that lesson at play, in multiple ways, every day.

Constraints are the forcing function of innovation.  Constraints are the cornerstones of elegance and simplicity.  Constraints are what flip the competition on its head … a strength becomes a weakness … or … a weakness becomes a strength.

Yes, constraints are the true romping ground of brilliance … by design.

The question then becomes, what constraints are holding you back, and how will you use them to leap frog your way forward?

Photo by Tony the Misfit.

“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.”– Napoleon Bonaparte

If you have five minutes to think about something, you actually have a lot.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking to make a lot of progress.  You can spend five minutes on a problem and actually cover a lot of ground more effectively.  That is, if you have a framework.

At Microsoft, I end up with a lot of short blocks of time, whether it’s in between meetings or in between tasks.  It’s easy to fall in the trap of, “I don’t have enough time to think about that.”  Well, the reality is, it’s actually very effective to use short time blocks to both train your thinking while solving your problems, rather than let them pile up.

The key is to use Five-Minute Thinks.  Five-Minute thinks are an effective time-management technique for your mind.  A Five-Minute Think is simply a structured approach to thinking that focuses your thinking and helps you identify the goal, explore options, narrow down, and then conclude.  Using a Five-Minute Think helps you avoid locking onto one idea too quickly, falling into analysis-paralysis, and over-engineering.  By casting a wide net, exploring a topic, and then narrowing down potential paths, you can naturally use your thinking skills very effectively.  You can also “chip away at the stone” of larger problems with these little time blocks.

In the book De Bono’s Thinking Course, Revised Edition , Edward De Bono shares the idea and approach of Five-Minute Thinks.

The Five-Minute Think
The framework for the Five-Minute Think is simple.  According to De Bono, to do a Five-Minute Think:

1. One minute: Target and Task
2. Two minutes: Expand and Explore
3. Three minutes: Contract and Conclude

That’s it!

Don’t spend more than five minutes or you’re defeating the purpose.  What you might do is use another Five-Minute Think on another aspect of the problem, but don’t turn Five-Minute Thinks into 10, 20, or 30 minute thinks.  By limiting your time, you’re telling your mind to focus and fully engage for a short-burst.  You’ll improve with practice.

One Minute — Target and Task
The outcome of your one-minute should be the target and the goal defined precisely, such as “Identify ways to improve my blogging speed.”  In other words,  — what do you want to accomplish with your Five-Minute Think?

At this step, you define the target and the task precisely.  The target is your focus of the thinking.  The target can be as general or as tight as you want.  The task is setting the goal – it’s the thinking task you’ll do.  For example, you might set the goal of reviewing something to improve it.  You might set the goal of finding problems.  You might make the task a creative exercise, such as “How else could I …” or “How could xyz be made more useful?”

Two Minutes – Expand and Explore
I think of it as elaborating on the problem, making a mental map, and exploring options and ideas.

In this part of the phase, you open up.  Don’t be critical or judging.  Just start flowing what you know and any ideas that come to mind.   You can scan your experience, analyze the situation, or look for familiar patterns.

Keep it positive and free-flowing.  According to De Bono, you’re “opening up the field, filling in the map, exploring the territory.”

Three Minutes – Contract and Conclude
This is where you spiral down on the problem.   Try to make sense of what you’ve got and get to a definite conclusion.  According to De Bono, this might be a “solution, creative idea, additional alternative, or an opinion.”

The next time you have five minutes to think about something, test your ability to define, expand, explore, and contract on the problem.  Simply directing your thinking will improve it over time.

Photo by BTO Educational.

I’m a fan of learning from the best.  What are the high-leverage strategies that the leaders in innovation use?  In “Smart Spenders, the Global Innovation 1000,” an article in strategy+business magazine, Barry Jaruzelski, Kevin Dehoff, and Rakesh Bordia write about the successful strategies that the 94 high-leverage innovators use.

Example High-Leverage Strategies
Here’s a summary of the key strategies according to Jaruzelski, Dehoff, and Borda:

• Here’s a sampling of the high leverage strategies:
• Have systematic ideation processes, including involving senior management in the conception and definition of new ideas.
• Have competence at all stages of your value chain.
• Involve end-users in your innovation strategy.  Spend a lot of time focusing on  where they work, where they play, where they buy, and where they learn.  This helps to increase your efficiency of your new product introductions.
• Favor flatter and nimbler management structures that make the innovation process more transparent to your executive team.
• Keep R&D costs down by keeping R&D focused and closely aligned with your business units.  This allows you to target your R&D efforts to meet specific customer needs versus doing a great deal of early-stage, academic research.
• Keep an internal innovation engine running efficiently through a core engineering team that designs and developers a variety of product lines (this helps provide common engineering and design as well as actual code reuse.)
• Place greater value on economies of speed, scope and skill rather than simply economies of scale.
  Look outside your organization for partners, suppliers and customers for new and innovative ideas.
• Build capabilities along the innovation value chain to generate significant improvements in return on your research and development spending.
• Pick the elements to generate a competitive advantage based on your industry, competition and internal capabilities.

My Related Posts

• Innovation Objectives
• Quantification
• 4 Stages of Market Maturity
• STARS Model of Business Evolution

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” — Steve Jobs

Innovation objectives are how you realize the potential for your business.  Innovation is how you can create game changers either in the marketplace, your product, or your processes.

From what I’ve seen, the people that do best with innovation are the ones that can effectively leverage their intuition.  I think the other real key is being able to turn innovation into results, both iteratively and incrementally.

In today’s world, I think another key that might not be as obvious is that innovation needs to meet applied use.  If the innovation doesn’t feel real to the stakeholders, you lose support.  Along these lines, it’s important to know that sometimes the market isn’t ready.

In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter Drucker writes about innovation objectives.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• You can innovate in your product, process or marketplace.  There’s three kinds of innovation: product, process, and marketplace.
• Innovation is how you grow your business.  Innovation is how you transform your business into what it should be.
• The toughest part is measuring the impact.  The key challenge with innovation objectives is measuring relative impact and importance.

What Our Business Should Be
The innovation objective helps transform the business into what it should be:

Drucker writes:

“The innovation objective is the objective through which a company makes operational its definition of ‘what our business should be.’”

Process, Product, and Marketplace Innovation
There’s three kinds of innovation: product innovation, social innovation, and managerial innovation.. 

Drucker writes:

“There are essentially three kinds of innovation in every business: innovation in products or service; innovation in the marketplace and consumer behavior and values; and innovation in the various skills and activities needed to make the products and services and to bring them to market. They might be called respectively product innovation, social innovation, and managerial innovation.”

Measuring Impact and Importance
The key challenge with innovation objectives is measuring impact and importance.

Drucker writes:

“The problem in setting innovation objectives is measuring the relative impact and importance of various innovations. But how are we to determine what weights more: a hundred minor but immediately applicable improvements in packaging a product, or one fundamental chemical discovery that after ten more years of hard work may change the character of the business altogether? A department store and a pharmaceutical company will answer this question differently; but so may two different pharmaceutical companies.”

My Related Posts

• Resources Objectives
• Productivity Objectives
• Social Responsibility Objectives
• How Much Profitability Do You Need?
• Quantification
• Innovation
• The Business Development Process is Not Static

Photo by Arvind.

My Nuggets
Here’s my nuggets so far …

• Idea Techniques (Group A)
• Idea Techniques (Group B)
• Idea Techniques (Group C)
• Idea Techniques (Intuitive)
• Personal Invention Quotas
• Storyboarding the Disney Way

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Orchestration is the elimination of discretion or choice. Initially I had an averse reaction to this, but then I realized the point is to carry forward what works and avoid figuring out everything on the fly. It’s about baking your lessons learned into your system so you can free yourself up to worry about other things.
• The purpose of Orchestration is to create order, standardization, and quality. The point is to make your results more systematic vs. lucking into success.
• Your people and systems need to be predictable. For your business to be predictable, your people and systems need to be predictable.
• When your Orchestration no longer works, change it. This sounds obvious, but in practice I often see people that don’t change their approach when it’s not working. Part of it is because they don’t know it’s not working and the other part is they don’t know what to change to. That’s why I think knowing your numbers and having a lot of reference examples and a good network to draw ideas from is key.

Orchestration is the Certainty
Gerber writes that orchestration is the key for predictability:

Orchestration is the certainty that is absent from every other human experience. It is the order and the logic behind the human craving for reason. Orchestration is as simple as doing what you do, saying what you say, looking like you look — being how and who you are — for as long as it works. For as long as it produces the results you want. And when it doesn’t work any longer, change it.

Orchestration Creates Predictable Results
Gerber provides examples how Orchestration produces predictable results:

"If a blue suit works, wear it every single time you’re in front of a customer," is the dictum of the disciples of Orchestration. "If ‘Hi, have you been in here before?’ works better than anything else you’ve tried, say it every single time you greet a customer." is the rule of the day from the disciples of Orchestration. By every disciple of Orchestration, I’m referring to anyone who has ever seriously decided to produce a consistent, predictable result in the world of business, no matter what business they are in.

If You Don’t Own It, You Can’t Depend On It
Gerber writes that Orchestration is the key to owning your business:

Because every founder of every great Business Format Franchise company, whether it is franchised or not, knows one thing to be true: if you haven’t orchestrated it, you don’t own it. And if you don’t own it, you can’t depend on it. And if you can’t depend on it, you haven’t got a franchise. And without a franchise no business can hope to succeed.

A Franchise Is Your Unique Way of Doing Business
Gerber writes that your franchise is your unique way of doing business:

If by a franchise, you understand that I’m talking about a proprietary way of doing business that differentiates your business from everyone else’s. In short, the definition of a franchise is simply your unique way of doing business. And unless your unique way of doing business can be replicated every single time, you don’t own it. You have lost it. And once you’ve lost it, you’re out of business!

Your People and System Must Be Predictable
Gerber writes that orchestration is the key for predictability:

The need for Orchestration is based on the absolutely quantifiable certainty that people will do only one thing predictably — be unpredictable. But for your business to be predictable, your people must be.  Then what? Then the system must provide the vehicle to facilitate predictability. To do what? to give your customer what he wants every single time. Why? Because unless your customer gets everything he wants every single time, he’ll go someplace else to get it! Orchestration is the glue that holds you fast to your customer’s perceptions.

Discretion is the Enemy of Order, Standardization and Quality
Gerber writes how Orchestration is about eliminating choices to achieve order, standardization and quality:

Orchestration is the elimination of discretion, or choice, at the operating level of your business. Without orchestration, nothing could be planned, and nothing anticipated — by you or your customer. If you’re doing everything differently each time you do it, if everyone in your company is doing it by their own discretion, their own choice, rather than creating order, you’re creating chaos. As Theodore Levitt says in his stunning book, Marketing for Business Growth, "Discretion is the enemy of order, standardization, and quality."

My Related Posts

• Quantification
• Innovation
• Why Some Small Businesses Fail
• The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and The Technician
• Work On Your Business Rather Than In It

"The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen." — Charles Lamb

How do you know whether your innovations are working? You need to quantify your results. This is how take a business from good to great. You experiment, you innovate, and you measure your results. You carry forward what works and you throw out what doesn’t. If you don’t have the numbers, you’re flying blind.

In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber writes about the need for quantifying your results.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• Know your numbers. Start with what you can quantify that’s meaningful for your business. Find ways to find the numbers for things that may not be so easy to get, but may produce better results.
• Your numbers are your health chart. Remind yourself that the purpose of quantification is to chart your business’s health. You need to know whether innovations are improving or decreasing your performance.
• Wear your multiple hats. In a small business, you wear multiple hats. Remind yourself that your inner entrepreneur, manager, and technician are always at odds. If it helps, think of switching hats. When you go into bean-counting mode, put on your "manager" hat.
• Make data-driven decisions. In the absence of data, you have to use your intuition and pattern matching. If you make your decisions purely by emotion, that’s a recipe for failure. It’s why most people lose at casinos. You need to make data-driven decisions.
• Carry forward what works. This is where your numbers serve you. It can be tough to break a habit or practice that’s not working, particularly if you have an emotional attachment to it. If you have the numbers, it’s easier to convince yourself to make meaningful change and throw out what’s not working.

Innovations Need to be Quantified
If you don’t quantify your results, you don’t know whether your innovations work. You need to quantify your innovations. 

Gerber writes:

“By it’s own, Innovation leads nowhere. To be effective, all innovations need to be quantified. Without Quantification, how would you know whether the Innovation worked? By Quantification, I’m talking about the numbers related to the impact an Innovation makes. The sad fact is that Quantification is not being done in most businesses. And it’s costing them a fortune!”

The Numbers Tell You the Value of Your Innovation
Numbers tell you the value of your innovations. 

Gerber writes:

“For example, how would you know that by changing the words you use to greet an incoming customer you produced a 16-percent increase in sales unless you quantified it by (1) determining how many people came in the door before the Innovation was put into effect; (2) determining how many people bought products and what the dollar value of those products were before you changed the words, and what you said to produce those sales; (3) counting the number of people who purchased something; (5) determining the average unit value of a sale; and (6) determining what the improvement was as a result of your Innovation? These numbers enable you to determine the precise value of your Innovation.”

Quantify Everything Related to Your Business
Quantify everything related to your business.

Gerber writes:

“Begin by quantifying everything related to how you do business. I mean everything. How many customers do you see in person each day? How many in the morning? In the afternoon? How many people call your business each day? How many call to ask for a price? How many want to purchase something? How many of product X are sold each day? At what time of the day are they sold? How many are sold each week? Which days are busiest? How busy? And so forth. You can’t ask too many questions about the numbers.”

Without the Numbers You Can’t Know Where You Are
Without the numbers, you don’t know where you’re improving.

Gerber writes:

“Eventually, you and your people will think of your entire business in terms of the numbers. You’ll quantify everything. You’ll be able to read your business’s health chart by the flow of the numbers. You’ll know which numbers are critical and which are not. You’ll become as familiar with your business’s numbers as your doctor is with your blood pressure and pulse rates. Because without the numbers you can’t possibly know where you are, let along where you’re going. With the numbers, your business will take on a totally new meaning. It will come alive with possibilities.”

My Related Posts

• Innovation
• Calculating Impact
• Eight Rules of Business Think
• Why Some Small Businesses Fail
• The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and the Technician
• Work On Your Business Rather Than In It
• Sustainable, Healthy Commitment

Photo by aussiegall.

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” — Peter F. Drucker

Which innovations can amplify your impact or save you time or create more value? Innovations in your approach. It’s one thing to try to innovate in your products. It’s another to innovate your process. Innovating in your process can unleash your capability, create more value, reduce costs, … etc. To get in the right mindset, you have to think of your business as a product. It doesn’t matter whether you’re working from home or working in a large corporation, your system of results is an opportunity for innovation.

I’ve experienced the benefits of process innovation first-hand. I’ve run multiples projects and multiple teams and I’ve experimented with various approaches over the years. Having created both product innovations and innovating in terms of approach, I think it’s approach innovations that carries me further and continue to serve me.  In fact, it’s my changes to my approach that help me unblock innovation and turn insights into results. It’s my systems for results that are far more important than any particular product.

In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber writes about focusing your innovation efforts on your business habits and practices.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• Innovation does new things. I like this distinction between creativity and innovation. I often see smart people with great ideas get stuck thinking, but not doing doing and learning. Analysis paralysis is one of the worst enemies of results.
• Innovate in your approach. Your approach is your system for results. If you innovate here, you can amplify your impact, save time and create more value.
• Your business is your product. Adopting this mindset helps you shift from thinking about innovation in your product, to innovation in your process.
• Know your system for results. Hunt and gather your processes and procedures. Walk your processes end-to-end and you’ll quickly start to find areas for improvements.

Innovation Does New Things
Creativity is thinking, but innovation is doing:

Gerber writes:

“Innovation is often thought of as creativity. But as Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt points out, the difference between creativity and Innovation is the difference between thinking about getting things done in the world and getting things done. Says Professor Levitt, ‘Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things.’”

Innovate Your Approach
Focus your innovation efforts on your process.

Gerber writes:

“The Franchise Revolution has brought with it an application of innovation that has been almost universally ignored by American business. By recognizing that it is not the commodity that demands Innovation but the process by which it is sold, the franchisor aims his innovative energies at the way in which his business does business.   To the franchisor, the entire process by which the business does business is a marketing tool, a mechanism for finding and keeping customers. Each and every component of the business system is a means through which the franchisor can differentiate his business from all other businesses in the mind of his consumer.”

Your Business is the Product
Your business is your product:

Gerber writes:

“Where the business is the product, how the business interacts with its consumer is more important than what it sells. And how doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective. In fact, some of the most powerful Innovations have required little more than the change of a few words, a gesture, the color of clothing. Innovation, then, is the mechanism through which your business identifies itself in the mind of your customer and establishes its individuality. It is the result of a scientifically generated and quantifiably verified profile of your customer’s perceived needs and unconscious expectations.”

The "Best Way" Skill
Innovation is the "best way" skill:

Gerber writes:

“It is the skill developed within your business and your people that is constantly asking, "What is the best way to do this?" knowing, even as the question is asked, that we will never discover the best way, but by asking we will assuredly discover a way that’s better than the one we know now.

In that regard, I think of Innovation as the "Best Way" skill. It produces a high level of energy in every company within it’s nurtured, fed, and stimulated, energy that in turn feeds everyone the company touches — it’s employees, customers, suppliers, and lenders. In an innovative company everyone grows. There’s no doubt about it: Innovation is the signature of a bold, imaginative hand.”

My Related Posts

• The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and the Technician
• Launch a Crusade
• THINKERTOYS

Photo by mckaysavage.