Turn on Your Idea Machine

Have you ever been absolutely desperate for a great idea? Or faced the pressure from your boss to “think outside of the box!” Or, “Out-think the competition.”

If you answered ‘yes’, then you likely know that chaotic feeling of a brainstorm session. That feeling of having dozens and dozens of seemingly good ideas, but you’re not quite sure which would best solve the problem or meet the goals of the project at hand.

If you’re searching for an idea or you’re trying to cull through a bunch of ideas, the key is to develop smarter, more relevant ideas, and make them irresistible to a buyer, whether that’s a potential customer or your boss’ boss.

So, how can you or your organization turn on your idea machine to consistently deliver more awesome ideas?

Places like Google, Apple and Tesla are often labeled as idea factories, but the reality is that for most of working America, only 1 in 5 working adults believes that management supports their entrepreneurial ideas, according to a recent Accenture study.

While workplaces might encourage workers to offer ideas that would improve operations or generate more revenue, actually, the opposite happens.

Because workers feel that management won’t champion their ideas, or actually feel criticized for suggesting a new way of doing something, they shut down.

The key to unlocking more ideas within your organization is to change your mindset, and that of your organization. Start thinking like an entrepreneur. Start thinking daring thoughts like, “How could we disrupt our industry?”

And, if you’re a business owner or a manager, create a safe environment that allows people to share their talents and solve problems for your business or your customers. That means communicate openly and invite your employees to share their ideas.

Consider, for example, Google’s policy that encourages employees to dedicate 20 percent of their work time on their own pet projects. According to a recent article published by Entrepreneurial Insights, in establishing this policy, Google employee productivity has not only increased, but this dedicated innovation time has led to a number of new products such as Gmail and Google Suggest.

While some would say that there should be no boundaries on idea generation, there should be a place that provides focus to the idea generation process. Start by asking yourself this one question: How can we deliver more value to our customers?

For an effective idea to move from thought to action it must solve a problem, meet a specific need, or move the narrative of your customer’s story along to the next step. When you place a priority on championing your customer’s success and happiness, you win, too.

If it helps to get the juices flowing, put yourself in your customer’s feet, and think about what is it that bugs you the most about your company’s product or service.

If that doesn’t work for you, then take the opposite tack. Think like the entrepreneur who wants to enter your market and put your company out of business — someone who wants to completely change all of the rules of the game. And with that mindset, think about how you can better add value to the customer than an established brand.

Improving the customer experience doesn’t necessarily mean actually improving the physical product by adding a new feature. That entrepreneur might be running these questions through his or her mind: Could the package be changed (wine in a box)? Could product delivery be altered (how about letting people download movies through their laptop or mobile device)? Could the online experience be made simpler or more user-friendly? Is there a market segment that’s being ignored or overlooked (serious road bikers like to shave their legs — maybe they’d like our new razor)?

Look at the craft beer market! There’s beer for bicyclers, for those with gluten allergies, and beer for enthusiasts who want authentic ale like the way Belgian monks used to make it in the 1600s. Beer is now packaged in fancy wine-like bottles, and those fancy hoppy beers are now available in cans so that you can toss them in a backpack or a take them on a camping trip.

The changes rocking the beer market didn’t stop at creating a better product or offering it in new packaging (e.g., growlers).

In Minnesota, craft brewers lobbied for a law that allows them to sell beer on site, directly from their breweries, including on Sundays. Certainly profit was a motive, but in Minnesota, where it used to be illegal to purchase beer from liquor stores on Sundays, they did it first and foremost to meet the needs of their hardcore craft beer fans.

Other areas of disruption to watch include:

— the commercial use of drones,

— Bitcoin and other digital payment systems,

— sharing services (Uber, Airbnb), and

— new pricing models (airlines).

When you focus your idea generation on producing a higher quality customer experience — an experience so good that your customers will want to share it with others — your ideas will automatically become smarter, more relevant, and easier to sell through your organization or to a client.

After you’ve focused on developing ideas that solve a customer’s problem, it’s time to push the “on” button. Here are a few tips for generating more, smarter ideas:

There are many tactics and tools that one can use to generate smarter, more relevant ideas. But the greatest tool is that which lies within you — your natural curiosity.

Ultimately, the end game of ideation is to spark change. But the spirit of ideation lies in the joy of just wondering.

Time is short. Go find the people, the organizations, and the projects that bring out the best in you.

The more you invest in yourself and stimulating your curiosity, the more those “happy accidents” (which become the big ideas you often read about) will happen more frequently.

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