Innovation, Invention, Opportunity Capture - What's The Difference? 
Change is the order of the day! There would be little doubt that businesses, whether large or small, realise that in order to stay ahead of the game it is essential to be constantly renewing their offerings. Whether it be products, processes, services or simply the way you do business, change is essential.
Do You Connect The Dots?
Have you ever worked in a company where the boss or your manager hoards information? Unfortunately this is not all that uncommon. The old saying goes that “Knowledge is Power”, and those of us that are insecure in our abilities or feel threatened by those around us try to remain in control by hoarding information.
Quality Innovation - Make Your Business Boom!
You've heard of IQ? Now learn about QI - Quality Innovation. You're at the 'enough is enough' point with the doom and gloom. Here's a resource to create boom. You can 'charge the change', and here's a quality recipe for a way forward.
Are You Asking The Right Innovation Question?
Most often when a group of people comes together to investigate a burning issue, a solution will be found. Just make sure the best question has been asked, the question that leads to the best solution.
Measuring The Probability Of A Business Idea's Success
Measuring the probability of a business idea's success is not a trivial task. But there is a methodology for predicting the success factors.
Service Innovation - Metrics Are Essential
Many people struggle with the concept of innovation in the services sector, but in essence the so called intangibles of the services sector can be made just as tangible as physical products once we dissect services to understand what is meant.
Opportunities For Innovation: Look For Widespread Frustrations
One of the major sources of real innovation opportunity, is a widespread activity combined with an observed frustration, very often expressed as a "curse".
Market Research For Innovation And Growth
Market research can provide you with answers to some of the questions that are crucial to your business success and arm you with the knowledge required for innovation and growth.
Move Your People From Operators To Opportunists
If you can move your people from operator to opportunists the outcome for the business will be extraordinary, and the risk in doing so is virtually non-existent.
10 Rules Of Brainstorming
Get the most from your brainstorming sessions with these 10 rules.
Simple Guidelines To Making Innovation Happen
These days most organisations have come to recognise the need for innovation, to be constantly moving their products, processes and services to an ever better place. So what underpins successful innovation?
The Innovation Imperative
No business is immune from competition and those that fail to observe new trends, spot opportunities and implement new technologies are destined to fall by the wayside.
Innovation - The Secret To Business Building
Business, best defined as "creating wealth through profitable transactions" is about selling products and services to generate profits. Businesses must grow to survive, for stagnation ultimately means oblivion.
How To Spark Creativity In Meetings
People generally believe that creativity is a gift that a lucky few were born with. However, all people have a degree of creativity and they use it every day to work around problems.
How To Think Innovatively
Most of us are used to thinking in logical and rational ways - in fact our business demands it! So how do we go about thinking innovatively? Here are some simple innovation tools to bring new ideas into your business.
Innovation – The Successful Implementation Of An Idea
There is massive confusion in the business marketplace concerning innovation. Many people I meet think innovation is being creative. Only a few people understand innovation is actually the successful implementation of an idea.
Taking Your Business To The Next Level
Taking your business to the next level can be done systematically and in a structured way that is not only low risk, but uses a process that can engage staff members at all levels of your business.
Innovation Circles - The Very Essence Of Success
Innovation, unlike some other disciplines, is not a black art or a special area of endeavour reserved only for the gifted. Innovation is in fact a rigorous pursuit that can be undertaken in a structured and systematic way. The task is simply to show people what that is.
Innovation To Help Business Growth
If you encourage your staff to be innovative in their work practices and nurture any ideas they have, you will be creating an innovative "culture". This will allow your business a better chance to grow, prosper and be competitive.
16 Ways To Bring Fun To Your Workplace
This list is provided with two suggestions:
Suggest them - don't impose them. Staff will only really participate when they take the initiative and think of the ideas themselves. If this list serves to start things moving, it's done its job.
Some of these ideas are very silly... feel free to modify to suit your organisation's culture.
Innovate Using Outside-In Thinking
Do you know your customer? Do you REALLY know your customer?
Take Any Two From Four...
You can make whatever you do cheap, quick, innovative, or good, but you can only have two of the four at one time. Think about it. I'll wager you will come up with lots of further examples of this "law" from your own experience.
Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone!
When was the last time you thought about taking your business to new and heady heights, but didn't actually get any further?
Innovation: Does It Really Pay?
Yes it does. In fact, innovative companies lead in every way. They have well-managed workplaces. And their return on shareholder funds is superior.
Ten Ways To Stimulate Creativity
We are often searching for creative solutions to the day-to-day problems of running a business. Creativity can simply be seeing a problem in a brand new light, finding a brand new opportunity, resolving an issue or finding an often unlooked for answer or idea.
Innovation - Driving Business Growth
It is one thing to understand how to grow your business - with some planning and foresight this is achievable but it is another to understand how to take your business from being good, to being great.
5 Innovation ThinkModes
Stuck in a mental rut? No storm in your brainstorming sessions? Try these ThinkModes on for size.
Tapping The Inner Riches Of Your Team
Wayne Dyer said it well. Our outlook is all wrong. We're constantly looking outward for the answers to our questions and solutions to our problems.
Innovation Unbound
Company leaders must actively choose a philosophy of innovation that helps everyone in the organisation understand how to get beyond the obstacles to success.
Convert Ideas Into Growth
Ideation is the flow of ideas that can be converted into growth on a consistent basis.
Creating A High Performance Culture Using Creativity
'Creativity in business' is definitely a broad term, and many organisations think they are unique. However if we take a closer look at the processes, people and systems, you'll find many organisations are quite similar.
Re-Innovate Your Innovation
If you want more innovation, you've got to innovate your innovation system.
The Formula For Innovation: What Competencies Are Vital Ingredients?
Let's assume that your business decides to pursue a strategy of innovation. Is there a formula to determine what kinds of people you will need to attract, hire, develop and retain in order to make sure that you can succeed in being innovative?
Do Talk To Strangers: Encouraging Performative Ties To Create Competitive Advantage
What gives firms competitive advantage isn't just their repository of sheer knowledge, but their use and encouragement of so-called "performative ties" - those impromptu communications made by colleagues who are strangers in which critical knowledge is transferred. While many companies have the potential to realise competitive advantage by creating and transferring knowledge more efficiently across employees, few know how to do it successfully.
Learning, Trust And Making Mistakes
If you really, truly want your staff to be creative, motivated and happy - tell them you want them to make mistakes. Tell them you'll punish them if they don't.
The Ten Easy Steps To Increase Your Confidence, Creativity And Cash In The Attention Economy
How can you be more creative? How can you turn creative ideas into cash. How can you motivate and inspire others to be more creative? There's a saying that locked inside every person is a 'million dollar idea' waiting to happen. How can you turn these ideas into reality? This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to get started, revitalize or have a fresh look at how to turn your creative ideas into cash.
Innovation - More To It Than Meets The Eye
Most business managers say they want their people to be more innovative and that they need ‘more innovation’ in their organisations. ‘Innovation’ also crops up regularly in corporate values and mission statements. The problem is, many managers don’t really understand what innovation is. And often, when they get it, they really don’t want it because they can’t cope with it.
If You're Constantly Asking Your People To Think Outside The Box, Maybe The Box Needs Fixing
So often we hear managers asking their people to ‘think outside the box.' What do they really mean? What box? What box are they talking about? Is it the box that sits between our ears? The paradigm box? The way we see the world box?
Campfires Of Knowledge
Campfires conjure up warm, safe places where story telling, camaraderie, frank conversation, and knowledge sharing can flow. Alastair Rylatt explains why igniting similarly safe spaces in the workplace is an essential management skill.
Encourage Staff To Be 'Risk Managers' And Reap The Benefits Of Their Creativity.
Encouraging staff to take courageous decisions and become 'risk managers' rather than 'risk evaders' will create a work climate that is open to innovation.
New Products That Really Sell
You may think of new products as radically new inventions. But most successful new products are actually modifications of existing items. Breakthroughs are rare – and they’re the riskiest - because new products can’t build on previous marketing successes. New product opportunities also vary considerably in their risks and potential rewards. This article discusses what steps to take to create a product that really sells.
Starting A Business Within A Business
In today’s marketplace, innovation, creativity, and flexibility are the watchwords for companies that hope to survive and prosper. But how can you help your firm create and develop new ideas that respond to customer’s changing needs?
Creativity In Business
One of the main problems in business today is that there are too many ideas, not too few. Dozens of solutions appear and disappear in chaotic piles of data, crowds of experts’ opinion and a jumble of contradictory statistics and reports on every aspect of every issue.
Foster Innovation At Ground Zero
In today’s rapidly changing world, entrepreneurs and executives must create a "culture of innovation" that increases performance and output throughout the organization.
Developing A SWAT Team, With A SWOT Mentality
What sorts of shift do we have to have our people make, to move to a more 'adaptive', change stance?