What I did not realize for many years was that to have a great idea you probably need to generate a lot of ideas. The great news is that anyone can generate ideas very easily this by Listening, Looking and Thinking.

Listen, Look and Think

I realized how easy it was to generate ideas a few months ago, while teaching a couple of classes to top notch engineers who complained they had trouble generating ideas for innovation. The basic premise was to remind the students that innovation does not have to be completely new technology. Innovation can result from a change in a process, a new use for an existing product or even offering a new type of service.

For example, bread has been around for thousands of years but it wasn’t until 1928 that the first commercially sliced loaves of bread were produced. Other examples include some of the most popular products in the marketplace today:

• Post-it notes; which uses a glue from a failed research originally intended to develop a super glue
• Viagra; started out as Sildenafil (compound UK-92,480) started as a possible drug for lowering blood pressure
• Listerine; has been around for over 130 years and has been used as a surgical antiseptic, a cure for venereal disease, dandruff treatment and an additive to cigarettes
• Some other accidental inventions include LSD, Slinky, Silly Putty and Play-Doh and many others

It is true that most innovation results from a need of some type. Almost all of the products and services you use every day are a result of someone that recognized an opportunity by listening, looking and thinking. The secret is to identify a need. The opportunity here is to realize you do not know everything and if you want to create ideas you need to listen, look and think about the world around you.

• Listening means to listen to other people such as an elderly person, child, friend, significant other that has a problem. Every problem is an opportunity.
• Looking means to look at the world around you starting with your own personal home environment and then your town, city, state, workplace. This will become clear in the next section.
• Thinking means once you have identified a problem then the next step is try and think of a solution.

Sounds simple? It is!

How to Generate 20 Ideas in a Matter of Minutes

Idea generation can be done regardless of your profession or age or economic condition. The key is to change the way you see the world a little bit every day. The majority of people go through their daily lives oblivious to the world around them but if you follow the instructions below you can generate countless ideas.

As part of my lesson I asked each student to look around the classroom and in 60 seconds find 5 things that could be improved. After 60 seconds, I instructed them to review their list for 5 minutes and think of 3 possible improvements/solutions/changes that could be made to make the product better.

After the time was up, I instructed the students to pass their list of items needing improvement to the person next to them. Again, each student was given 5 minutes to think of an improvement that could be made.

The results were astounding, each person was able to generate on average 20 ideas in less than 15 minutes.

Their homework assignment was to do the same thing at their house, then their neighborhood and their city. By the time the next class arrived, the students had generated hundreds of ideas ranging from simple fixes to how to detect water leaks for the city. Several of their ideas could lead to innovative products and services.

The key point of the exercise was for the students to learn to pay attention to their own environment. So how can you do this?

The answer is:

How to Generate Innovative Ideas

1. Take 60 seconds every day to look at the environment around you. It could be at your home, office, workplace or public location. The location should be varied.
2. Find 5 products, processes or services that need improvement. Write them down either using the notes on your cell or on paper.
3. At some point during the day, review the items on your list and think of solutions to the problem. These are your ideas.
4. Repeat the process daily.
5. If you can, find someone to share your ideas with and is willing to do the same. I say this for two reasons; the first is that a shared problem will generate additional ideas and the second is that you would be foolish to think that only you can identify improvements.

It won’t take long for you to have generated hundreds if not thousands of ideas. It only takes one good idea to change your future.

Innovation is a Mindset

Taking a few minutes of your day to generate innovative ideas is not difficult. What is a little harder is transforming your ideation into a good habit. However, once idea generation becomes a habit your entire perspective on the world changes for the better. The reason is that ideas on how to make the world a better place have a long lasting positive impact.

The more time you spend on thinking how to make the world a better place, the more ideas you will generate. The most successful entrepreneurs I know have legal pads or some type of computer file that has thousands of ideas recorded over long periods of time. It should come as no surprise that their innovation mindset every once in a while produces an idea they can monetize.

On a final note, the same process can be applied to any size business, professional practice or organization wanting to have a more innovative environment. Allowing your staff a few minutes every day to think of improvements may just save or grow your business.

Share with us how you generate ideas.

The post Create Innovative Ideas In Just A Few Minutes appeared first on The Entrepreneur’s Advisor®.

Many times, over the last 10 years I have been asked by excited innovators how much their idea, innovation, or invention is worth. Everyone would love to hear that their idea is worth millions or even billions but the truth is, all of the mainstream valuation methods incorrectly assume that your innovation will successfully enter the marketplace.

A better question would be to ask what your potential idea/start-up’s Innovation Readiness Level (IRL) is. Knowing your IRL will help you figure out how to add value to your innovation and better prepare you for a successful market entry.

What is Innovation Readiness Level?

Innovation Readiness Level describes the stage of business development for product, service, technology, or social innovations. Diligently working through each level in the IRL chart may bring you one step closer to taking your idea from concept to market fruition.

You can also use the IRL chart as a roadmap of how your innovation’s value increases as you get closer to successfully launching it into the marketplace. Clearly, the more thought, planning and development that you have put into your innovation, the greater the potential value to investors, licensees, or buyers.

The concept of IRL is similar to the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) developed by NASA in the late 1980’s for technology innovations. Although TRL analysis has pretty much become the standard of how funding for technology is based; it does not adequately take into account how prepared for actual commercialization innovators and their teams need to be. A good IRL analysis fill this gap.

The success rate of high-tech start-ups is no better than any other category. The number one reason start-up companies fail is because they run out of money. The early focus of IRL on thinking through an idea and business planning helps entrepreneurs make wiser use of money and resources. This is especially valuable for the vast majority of new businesses and innovations that originate as simple improvements for products and services.

The Spectral Torch

If you want to see or present your innovation in the best light, entrepreneurs should be able to demonstrate that they have thought their idea through from concept to their end-goal. The IRL chart can assist entrepreneurs in making sure they have not missed the essential building blocks for a successful innovation launch..

Understanding Innovation Readiness Level groupings

The groupings within an IRL are directly related to the amount of time and effort put into your idea. This is not to say that every innovation must follow the same steps in the same order because there will always be exceptions. However, it does reinforce the fact that starting a business or developing an innovation is hard work and innovators must be willing to make the effort.

The IRL groupings look at the effort mentioned above and asks the following questions:

• • What problem does it solve? (if it doesn’t solve a problem your idea is probably worthless). Having an idea regardless of how creative or disruptive it has the potential to be, does not have much value (if any) until you can demonstrate that value.
  • What is the business concept?
  • That you have thought through your idea? Including but not limited to: Research, competitive products/services, uniqueness, costs/benefits
  • That you have a plan through your end goal. For example; Will you be implementing the idea yourself, licensing to others or selling it?
  • Do you have a prototype or working model that you can show others?
  • Do you have systems designed to support the production or implementation of your idea?
    • Budget
    • IT
    • Financial Controls
    • Business Plan
    • Web Presence
    • Cash Flow
  • Have your systems been put to the test in a real-world environment yet?
  • Are you ready for full scale production or implementation?
    • Staffing
    • Capital
    • Sales
    • Marketing
    • Operations

Innovation Readiness Level Descriptions

Below is how the answers to the preceding questions are grouped together. You should be able to identify the stage of development that your innovation is at and make plans accordingly.

Innovation Readiness Level 1 – 2

IRL of 1 indicates that you only have an undeveloped idea. Realistically, if the IRL for your innovation is 1, no one in their right mind is going to invest a penny with you. There are a million ideas at this level of development and they are not worth squat until you think your idea through.

On the other hand, an IRL of 2 indicates you know what problem your innovation solves or can define a specific opportunity and have a business concept in mind. Properly defining the problem is a cornerstone of innovation.

Innovation Readiness Level 3 – 5

An IRL of 3 through 5 suggests that you are focused and will provide potential investors/buyers/licensees with something tangible they can see and get excited about. This is the level that is most likely to attract incubator type seed money (enough to get you going for further development).

In this grouping you are building value and moving forward by completing your business plan, building a scaled down prototype and/or designing the systems needed to support your product/service. The biggest challenge in this group is making sure you know exactly how your innovation will work and what it will take to get it to market.

“Creating value is a collaborative process, if you always have to be the smartest person in the room your innovation is destined to fail”

Things to have considered and completed during these IRL stages include:

• • A dynamic business plan that shows at a minimum:
    • You have adequately defined the need your innovation addresses.
    • Competitive research: Evidence of competitive research on similar products/services, the state of current research in the field, possible patents, etc.
    • Your innovations potential and uniqueness: Why should people invest or purchase your innovation and can your innovation be easily reverse engineered?
    • Resources needed (capital, equipment, people etc.).
    • Who is on your team.
    • Sales and Marketing: A detailed explanation of how sales will be achieved and the cost of sales.
    • Design and Development Costs.
    • Ongoing operational costs and burn rate until profitability.
    • A list of all support systems that will need to be in place (financial, operational, IT, web, legal, HR
    • Critical Risks, Problems and Assumptions: You know and have weighed the known costs and benefits against each other and can explain why you should go forward by the numbers.
    • That you know your Intellectual Property IP needs. For example, do you need a Patent or Trademark and at what point should you seek IP protection?
• Prepared flexible, actionable plans: 30,60,90 days or longer plans on how you will get your innovation to IRL 6 and above.
• A working small-scale prototype or a demonstrable model of the innovation. This applies to service, manufacturing, software, web-based and product innovations. The million-dollar question has always been, will it work? Prove it and the value of your innovation jumps up significantly.
• Who will be your true mentor. Working on a new venture can be a very emotional roller coaster. A mentor can help even the ride out.

Does the above sound like a lot? It should because failure to think through your idea is the number one reason entrepreneurs run out of money. Good financial management in the early stages of innovation development comes from a superior knowledge of your current and projected expenses. Always remember that Cash is King.

Innovation Readiness Level 6 – 7

The next grouping is an IRL of 6 or 7. At this stage you are putting together the final pieces of your new venture. The most critical components at this stage are:

• Completing your business and action plans. Note: A good business plan is a living document that you can adjust as new information becomes available. It is extremely rare that everything will go according to plan.
• Design and set up of all work flow as well as the main and ancillary support systems. This would cover having a budget, setting up your web presence, financial controls, securing funding, getting staffing ready, and anything needed to ensure the innovation is ready for full commercialization.
• Performing run-throughs to identify bottlenecks, performance issues, and unanticipated problems.

If you have all of the above ready, investor confidence for obtaining a return on an investment starts to skyrocket. This is the ideal stage to be in a business incubator, develop your marketing network and tinker with the product. In addition, you will have a better idea if you can or should sell, license or develop your innovation.

Innovation Readiness Level 8 – 9

An IRL of 8 or 9 represents the final stages of your innovation’s development. IRL 8 is the time to make sure all the problems from the systems tested in the previous IRL have been fixed and all your final product or service adjustments have been made.

Your innovation moves to an IRL of 9 when your product is truly ready for full commercialization. It is at this stage your innovation has its maximum value to potential investors/buyers/licensees because they can expect a return on their capital within a few years.

One very important note is that even at an IRL of 8 or 9 the ability to raise capital is far from guaranteed. Traditionally, most funding for innovations comes from the innovator’s savings, family and friends. Funding from angel investors, banks and venture capitalist is difficult to come by.

In fact according to the GEM Report of 2012, “professional investors and banks are not likely to invest in businesses until they see a strong path to profitability.”

Innovation Readiness Level Recap

The concept behind IRL is that current valuation models do not adequately review the capabilities of innovators with regard to their ability to plan a new venture or manage money. The ability to bring a new innovation from concept to commercialization is less about the actual innovation and more about the business acumen, energy and attitude of the innovator.

For new ventures trying to raise capital, understanding IRLs can help provide a path that will increase the confidence of potential investors or licensees.

What do you think?

Contact The Entrepreneur’s Advisor ® if you need help improving your Innovation’s IRL.

If you liked this article you may also enjoy reading

• How to Create an Innovative Environment in a Dynamic Organization
• Create Innovative Ideas In Just A Few Minutes
• The Ultimate Checklist For Entrepreneurs, Innovators and Micro-enterprises

The post Innovation Readiness Level appeared first on The Entrepreneur’s Advisor®.

A Commitment to Innovation is Going to Change Your Organization

Are you wondering if you can pull off changing your organization to be a dynamic, innovative and fun place to work? The answer is yes you can, but it requires considerable thought to the innovative environment you want to create.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the CEO when creating an innovative environment is to realize that it will not work if you always have to be the smartest person in the room. This is because organizational change is a collaborative effort and no one person has all the answers. You may have the vision but it is others will bring the idea from concept to fruition.

On the other hand, making a commitment to creating an innovative organization can have some very positive advantages thus creating a legacy for years to come.

10 Advantages of an Innovative Organization

The advantages if the type of innovative system outlines in the preceding articles are implemented include but are not limited to:

1. A dynamic and aggressive vision for the long-term future.
2. A huge increase in innovative ideas, viable products, new services and cost saving initiatives.
3. A managed innovative process that balances ideation with management control without stifling the creative influx of ideas.
4. Development of a whole new breed of forward thinking executives, managers and staff.
5. Staff loyalty to both fellow employees and the organization. This will reduce turnover, provide career paths, increase staff visibility and boost morale.
6. Positive image that can be used in attracting new talent.
7. Establish or re-establish the organization as a leader in the industry.
8. Raise the barrier of entry for competitors and competing technologies.
9. An increase in the ability to deflect and/or assimilate disruptive technology changes in the industry.
10. Establish a positive culture of change.

Potential Risks in Creating an Innovative Organization

Transformative change is not without risks. The concept and implementation will fail without:

1. Total buy-in from executive and senior leadership for an innovative culture.
2. Commitment to culture change; innovation must be the mindset.
3. The identification and removal of dragons.
4. Employee engagement which is paramount throughout the process.
5. Proper ideation management. You must have a tool that can manage the ideation process including peer review, data, knowledge, O-Gap and reporting requirements.
6. Patience: Becoming an innovative organization occurs only after innovation has become business as usual. This is a long-term process of 3-5 years if set up correctly.
7. This model is at high risk if executives and executive teams in the organization are only there for the short-term to execute immediate financial impact.

The Globalization of Innovation

Access to ideas and information is no longer the privilege of largest or deep pocketed organizations. Thanks to the Internet, the availability of knowledge to all is leading to the Globalization of Innovation

The change in access to information is great news to innovative minds whose ideas and innovation are being generated in all walks of life across the globe. The days of tech companies and patent hoarders controlling IP and dominating innovation are rapidly becoming irrelevant.

As the globalization of innovation occurs those organizations unable to keep pace will be subject to disruptive changes, lose market share, relevance and eventually perish.

So the final question a CEO or business owner contemplating changing to an innovative organization should ask is:

“What are we waiting for?“

I hope you enjoyed reading How to Create an Innovative Environment in a Dynamic Organization. A full download of the whitepaper can be found in The Entrepreneur’s Toolbox.

Anyone can Create Ideas for Innovation

The next post will demonstrate how anyone can generate an enormous amount of ideas for innovation just by looking, listening and thinking about the world around them.

You can re-read any part of this series by clicking on the links below:

• How to Create an Innovative Environment in a Dynamic Organization Part 1
• Components of an Innovative Vision
• Ideation in an Innovative Organization
• Perception and the Ideation Process
• How to Create an Innovative Environment in a Dynamic Organization

The post How to Create an Innovative Environment in a Dynamic Organization appeared first on The Entrepreneur’s Advisor®.

Make the Ideation Process and Culture Changes Business as Usual.

One of the most demoralizing aspect staff face is senior organizational leadership that does not listen to ideas and rarely appears to make real change. This results in a perception that senior management is more interested in empire building and self-protection than taking risks inherently associated with ideation.

Because perception is reality; the most critical element of becoming an innovative organization is what occurs after good ideas have come about and have started down the path to business fruition. In a holistic vista the end game is for the organization to transform into a truly innovative entity. To achieve this objective; the ideation and innovation outlined in the preceding posts needs to become ingrained into the organizational culture.

However, this only works if all the pieces become business as usual and the work flow is dynamic and transparent. Therefore, the last step in creating an innovative culture requires information to be reviewed on a constant basis with adjustments made as conditions and technology change.

The Operational Gap (O-Gap)

In its most simplistic form the O-Gap is the review of what is working and what is not working. It is the final opportunity to determine how the innovation framework is best operationalized and optimized. Things that are working may be targeted for tinkering and things that are not working are removed. It is important to note that O-Gap analysis includes both people and processes.

You can see in the chart above that the entire innovation process is much like any other work flow. After the vision has been defined and a mechanism has been set in place, a good organization will constantly review and tweak its performance. Once the review process is in place and the cycle has been repeated a couple of times, your organization will be positioned to stay ahead of the competition.

It is important to understand that getting the process right takes time. It make take a couple of years before the intended innovation environment is established.

Next Post Subject: Perception and the Ideation Process

The fifth and final post in this series will summarize the takeaways of the series How to Create an Innovative Environment in a Dynamic Organization. At the end of the series a full downloadable version of How to Create an Innovative Environment in a Dynamic Organization will be available in the Entrepreneur’s Corner

Previous post in this series are:

How to Create an Innovative Environment in a Dynamic Organization Part 1
Components of an Innovative Vision
Ideation in an Innovative Organization

The post Perception and the Ideation Process appeared first on The Entrepreneur’s Advisor®.

In my second post, the components of an innovation vision were discussed. Once the vision has been established your organization must learn how to manage the ideation process from idea submission through the culling, vetting and decision making process.

It helps to think of ideation in terms of the Pareto Principle. 80% of investment will go to 20% of the ideas. In other words; if 5 ideas are vetted then 1 idea will receive major funding and 4 may receive some discovery capital. How you arrive at which ideas are to be vetted depends the approach. The approach discussed below involves the entire organization and a designated innovation committee (IC).

Ideation

Ideation Submission

Recognizing that an organization needs many ideas, the challenge becomes how to accept and manage them. The primary objectives become:

• Encouraging idea submissions using a standardized submission tool.
• Filtering the good ideas from the weak ideas. By this I mean that half of the ideas that are generated through the employee engagement process are merely a daydream without any substantive thought given to potential applications, markets or business potential.
• Organizations can help management and employee efforts by making implementing as a prerequisite an online training course in Intellectual Property (IP) basics, how the platform works and expectations.

Ideation Culling

Of the remaining 50 % of the ideas that have been submitted; the amount of thought behind each idea may vary but the person with the idea believes there may be tangible value. The amount of thought behind an idea can be discovered with a list of leading questions as part of the submission process. This list of questions is unique for each organization.

A peer group then evaluates the ideas for potential using a predefined calculated scorecard for:

• Sensibility
• A check against existing submissions as possible duplicate efforts
• Supplemental application use
• Possible IP opportunities or concerns
• Relevance to existing or potential markets
• A determination if the idea can create value (not how much)

The peer group is made up of any person(s) wanting to get involved with innovation. The concept here is that ideas that have been submitted into the ideation platform tool are visible to anyone and people can anonymously vote or rank ideas as well as add their thoughts.

Votes, ranks and comments are recorded and tallied for idea viability. The objective is to have a short list of ideas that the IC might consider for vetting.

By involving a peer group, employee engagement, transparency, enthusiasm and the quality of ideas are increased. It is a Win-Win for any organization.

The Vetting

This is where true transparency begins and ideas are analyzed and measured against the metrics determined by executive management. The goal of the IC is to select the 10% of the ideas that have made it through the peer review that will go to the next stage of more serious vetting.

The IC should be a mix of organization leaders, interested parties and a rotating executive who will review the results of the ideas filtered in the peer review. The primary objective of the committee is to further vet the ideas by evaluating them for:

• Operational focus
• Strategic growth areas
• Key metrics
• Potential value to the organization including monetary value, image impact, marketing impact and industry positioning

How often the committee meets depends on the number of ideas in the innovation queue but should probably meet at least once a quarter to avoid good ideas losing their competitive advantage.

If done well, the number of ideas at this stage has probably been narrowed down to 1%.

Ideation Decisions – The 1%

After the ideas are narrowed down to the final choices the following should occur:

• Overview and management
• Action planning
• Financial planning
• Resource planning
• Marketing, Delivery, Reporting

I make a point of this because of the need to encourage people to step-up and to develop talent within the walls of every organization wishing to thrive. However, starting a new venture is best done by a team and not just one person.

Note: Should the idea originator not be up to the challenge, the 2nd choice would someone with an entrepreneurial background or as a 3rd choice someone with high energy, a positive attitude and integrity. These are the types of people you should be looking to hire in order to be an innovative organization.

• An executive mentor is assigned to the innovator to help guide them through the learning process of taking an idea from concept to fruition. One person from the innovation committee is also assigned.
• The innovator is given 90 days to present a Road Show (with the help of the IC and executive mentor). The Road Show is the full-fledged (15 minute) why should an investment in this idea take place.

Key points for the innovator

• The innovator should be empowered to act like an entrepreneur and approach the presentation as a start-up company would. They are made responsible for driving their idea forward. Organizations must have extreme patience with the innovator. This person should never feel their job is in jeopardy for two reasons:
1. Mistakes will happen as this is part of their journey to become well rounded experienced leaders. Entrepreneurs learn from their mistakes and become stronger.
2. These are your future leaders as they will learn about communication, collaboration, networking and countless other skills.
• The IC will make resources available and/or provide additional information if possible such as market analysis, engineering contacts, IP requirements, Enterprise Architecture contacts as well as any other contacts as needed.

The actual ideation process may vary but the seed planted in your organization by having an ideation process will be the cornerstone of future success.

Next Post Subject: Perception and the Ideation Process

The fourth post in this series will help you understand the impact to your organization when innovation becomes business as usual. At the end of the series a full downloadable version of How to Create an Innovative Environment in a Dynamic Organization will be available in the Entrepreneur’s Corner.

Previous post in this series are:

How to Create an Innovative Environment in a Dynamic Organization Part 1
Components of an Innovative Vision

The post Ideation in an Innovative Organization appeared first on The Entrepreneur’s Advisor®.