Innolab

As innovators, we need to find ways to make innovation infectious. That means innovation needs to seem more valuable, more effective and less risky than the existing state of affairs. It also means reducing the antibodies and inoculations against innovation in the team you are trying to convince.

Learning from nature is important here as well. Some of the most infectious diseases are spread by 1) fun activities (sex) or 2) by many carriers or 3) being easy to transmit (through the air).

The d.school's founder, IDEO's David Kelley, believes that everyone has the capacity to innovate. They just need to change the way they behave.

They have to be more open to experimentation, more comfortable with ambiguity and less afraid of failure.

Great creative inventions don't come from betting on a sure thing. They come from facing our fears and working with uncertainty. Here's how to train up.

Think through your problems is essential to finding innovative solutions and achieving ultimate success.

Taking time to think it through is essential to your ultimate success. Here are five tactics that can help.

C = Customers. Who is affected by the problem? What problem do they have? How will your solutions affect them?
A = Actors. Who will carry out your solution? How will the solution affect them?
T = Transformation process. What processes does the problem affect? How will a solution change the process?
W = World view. What is the big picture and how does the problem affect it? What effect will a solution have on the big picture?
O = Owner. Who's responsible for the problem or process you’re working on? How will they help or hinder solutions? How would solutions affect them?
E = Environmental constraints. What are your constraints of time, money, resources, and competition? How can you work within them?

(A) ACTIVATORS: These are the people who will initiate the innovation process, without worrying about stages or phases. Essentially, their mission is to initiate the process.

(B) BROWSERS: These are the experts in searching for information. Their task is not to produce anything new, but to supply the group with information. Their mission is to investigate throughout the process and to find the information relevant both to the start of the process and to the application of new ideas.

(C) CREATORS: The people who produce ideas for the rest of the group. Their function is to ideate new concepts and possibilities, and search for new solutions at any point in the process.

(D) DEVELOPERS: People specialized in turning ideas into products and services; they are the ones who “tangibilize” ideas, who give form to concepts and develop a rough marketing plan. Creators come up with ideas; developers invent things. Their function is to take ideas and turn them into solutions. In short, to invent.

(E) EXECUTORS: The people who take care of everything to do with implementation and execution. Their function is to implement, that is, bring the innovation under development to the organization and to the market.

(F) FACILITATORS: Those who approve the new spending items and investment needed as the innovation process moves forward. They also manage the process to prevent it getting stuck. Their mission is the instrumentation of the innovation process.

I really thought I was a rebel back in the 80s when I had blue streaks in my hair or in the 90s when I told a boardroom full of conservative main line executives that it was a dog-eat-dog market and we were wearing pork-chop underwear.  So when I ...

From the continuing rise of tablet devices to the daily-deals craze and the return of the Internet IPO, 2011 has been a transformative year for technology.

It is widely believed that creativity is one of the most valuable and desired abilities in the history of humankind.