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.

“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 …

This post is an index of my book nuggets from Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), by Michael Michalko. In this book, the author, a former Disney Imagineer, provides expert creative-thinking techniques for approaching problems in unconventional ways. You can apply the techniques to create original ideas to improve your personal life and business life.
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

How do you create predictable results in your business? Once you’ve figured out that an innovation is useful and you’ve quantified its impact, how do you implement it in your system? You orchestrate it. Orchestration is the elimination of discretion to help produce predictable results. Orchestration is about creating order, standardization, and quality in a predictable way. In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber writes about Orchestration.’
Key Take Aways Here’s my key take aways:

Orchestration is …

"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, …

“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 …

Can setting a quota, help you accomplish more? It worked for Thomas Edison. In Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), Michael Michalko writes about how Edison used quotas to improve his results.
Thomas Edison’s Personal Invention Quotas
Michalko writes:
“Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He was a great believer in exercising his mind and the minds of his workers and felt that without a quota he probably wouldn’t have achieved very much. His personal invention quote was a minor invention every ten days and a major invention every six months. To …

Storyboarding is a brainstorming technique where you stick pictures on a wall to frame out stories. In the book, Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition), Michael Michalko writes about how Walt Disney originally came up with the idea of storyboarding to see at a glance how far along a project was.
What Is Storyboarding
Michalko writes:
“Storyboarding can be likened to taking your thoughts and the thoughts of others and making them visible by spreading them on a wall as you work on your problems.”
The Story of Storyboarding
Michalko writes:
“Walt Disney came …

Your business situation is unlikely to be a pure example of a startup, turnaround, realignment or sustaining-success situation. At a high-level your situation may fit reasonably neatly into one of these categores. But as soon as you drill down, you will discover your managing a portfolio – of products, projects, processes, plants, or people — that represents a mix of STARS situations. In The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, Michael Watkins writes about systematically assessing your portfolio.
Diagnosing Your Portfolio
You use four categories to …

Is the fear of failure holding you back? Maybe not. Maybe it’s actually the fear of success. In The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, Steven Pressfield writes about how we fear becoming who we truly are.
Key Take Aways Here’s my key take aways:

That little voice inside that tells you that you’re capable of more is right.
It’s a path of self-discovery that can sometimes be lonely.
As you become who you’re really capable of, you’ll lose some friends, but …

In The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, Steven Pressfield writes about Resistance.  I think there’s a lot to be said for showing up, consistently taking action, and making little improvements over time. Maybe my inner artist isn’t waiting for brilliant inspiration after all. He just wants a routine and some practice.
A Writer Who Doesn’t Write … Pressfield writes, “Most of us have two lives. The life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands …

How do you beat Amazon? You narrow the focus. Rather than try to be the best online bookstore, you become the best business books site. This strategy can be counter-intuitive. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is full of insightful nuggets you can use.
What I like most about the book is that it gives concrete examples that resonate and it’s advice you can apply whether you’re improving your own personal brand or something bigger. It contains a lot of timeless principles so the time you spend learning can payoff over …

In the book, THINKERTOYS, Michael Michalko, presents sets of techniques for generating ideas. In my previous posts, I covered Group A linear techniques, Group B linear techniques, and Group C linear techniques for ideas. In this post, I’ll cover the Intuitive techniques. The Intuitive techniques help you tap your unconscious to find ideas that you already have.
Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

It seems to me that the keys to using intuition are being open to it and being in a relaxed state. Stress seems counter-productive to intuitive …

In the book, THINKERTOYS, Michael Michalko, presents sets of techniques for generating ideas. In my previous posts, I covered Group A linear techniques and Group B linear techniques for ideas. In this post, I’ll cover Group C. The Group C techniques help you change perspectives so you can gain new insights or breakthroughs.
Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

My favorite techniques from this set are Hall of Fame and Board of Directors. I really like the ideas of using reference examples such as your personal heroes in business …

In the book THINKERTOYS, Michael Michalko, presents sets of techniques for generating ideas. In my previous post, I covered Group A linear techniques for ideas. In this post, I’ll cover Group B. The Group B linear techniques arranges information in a way so that you move in determined steps toward a new idea.
Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

My favorite example is the Tug-of-War. It’s about reframing and changing the position of negative forces to neutralize thier impact and empower you.
Fitting your challenges into an Idea Box forces …

In the book THINKERTOYS, Michael Michalko, presents sets of techniques for generating ideas. In this post, I’ll cover the Group A linear techniques. The Group A linear techniques reorganize known information in different ways by listing, dividing, combining, or manipulating it to give you new entry points for solving problems.
Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

I like how False Faces helps you to challenge your assumptions.
Slice and dice is a great way to walk the attributes and look for improvement opportunities an attribute at a time.
I like how …

THINKERTOYS, by Michael Michalko, is a hand-book of creative thinking techniques. It’s not a book you read, it’s a book you do. I’m always looking for ways to get an edge on life. Improving my thinking and innovation seems to be among the best ways. Whenever I’m stuck, I change my approach. To change my approach, I need to think of new ways to look at the problem. THINKERTOYS is the latest way I’m filling my head with specific techniques for producing results.
Working Backwards From the Fish
Rather than a catalog …

Six Thinking Hats, by Edward De Bono, presents a framework for organizing and improving thinking.
Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

By switching hats, you can switch points of view.
It’s easier to ask somebody to wear another hat, than tell them to change their thinking
You can reduce time in meetings spent arguing towards constructive dialogue
You can better balance thinking, particuarly in a group (for example, creatitivity with negativity or emotional perspective with facts, particuarly)

Six Hats
The six hats are:

White Hat – the facts and figures
Red Hat – the …