Developing business ideas

If there was a law that every organisation had to put forward five creative ideas a year - then they would do just this. Perhaps there could be a tax credit for the ideas. A committee would examine the scale and feasibility of the idea and then assess a tax credit accordingly. But there is no such law, so what do organisations do about creativity? There are several options.

QUIET LIFE: Organisations do not want new ideas. They want successful new ideas. Most executives believe they are there to keep things going smoothly and to solve problems. A new idea is a distraction and a disturbance. The idea may fail.

ME-TOO: Let someone else develop the new idea. Let someone else carry the development costs. Let someone else develop the market. When the idea is seen to be successful then you come in with a ‘me-too’.

This is usually possible in spite of patents, etc. Sony developed the Betamax system of video recording but then VHS came in and captured the market. Often, however, ‘first in the field’ stays there. There may still be enough room for others who have taken no risks at all.

ACQUISITION: This is a particular form of me-too. Let some other organisation develop new ideas and then you take over the other organisation, so acquiring the new ideas. The advantage is that you only choose to buy successful ideas. The price may be high, but there is no initial disruption of your own organisation to meddle with new ideas.

OSMOSIS: This tends to happen in professional fields like medicine or in the service industries. A new idea is tried out. It is successful. People talk about it.

Gradually it becomes part of the standard thinking in that field, so you adopt the idea. There is no particular decision to take up the idea, it just becomes the ‘sensible’ thing to do because everyone else is doing it.

This is a bit like ‘banker’s risk’. If everyone is lending to developing countries then it is not a risk for which you can be blamed. So you lend too.

CHANCE: You sit around under apple trees waiting for an apple to fall on your head. You rely on chance to provide the new ideas. You read the literature. You go to conferences. You talk to others. Ideas do happen from time to time. Ideas have always happened from time to time. You believe the process cannot be accelerated. You have to be patient and to wait.

RESEARCH: You rely on your R&D department to generate new ideas. That is what they are there for. They have generated new ideas in the past and will do so in the future. What is not usually realised is that ‘research’ thinking is very different from ‘innovation’ thinking. A scientist sets out to discover the truth. The truth is there somewhere. Innovation sets out to design something which is not yet there. Research can work out how to do things. Research can solve problems that have arisen. This thinking is different from generating new ideas in the first place. Most organisations make this mistake.

ADVERTISING AGENCIES: These are creative people. Surely they can suggest new ideas. Sometimes they do. They can also organise focus groups.

Unfortunately focus groups are very good at saying what is wrong with a product or service, but not much good at suggesting new products and services.

CENTRE FOR CREATIVITY: A few organisations have set up a formal Centre for Creativity. This Centre takes over responsibility for the ‘New Ideas’ function. This Centre would organise training in creative thinking. This Centre would put together the Creative Hit-List which defines creative target areas. This Centre would energise the creative process. This Centre would act as a liaison point for a person with a new idea and the person who should be receiving that new idea. This Centre would identify creative talent and keep it focussed on corporate needs.

This Centre would invite Edward de Bono to talk to senior management to explain the need for and the logic of creative thinking. This Centre would arrange matters so that everyone is involved in creative thinking, and it is not just the responsibility of the Centre itself. To head up the Centre there is a need for someone with a lot of energy and people skills. That person need not be a creative genius personally, but should be someone who understands the nature of creativity and how it can be made to happen.

PROCESS CHAMPION: This is a person who is given the responsibility for ideas in an organisation. This person may be running the Creativity Centre or this person may act as a one-man Centre. Other functions such as law and accounts have their own responsible officers, why not creativity? This is the opposite of waiting for chance to provide new ideas.

It is the specific responsibility of the Creative Champion to seek ideas, to energise the creative process, to compile the target list and to collect new ideas from
any source.

CREATIVE OUTSOURCING

If you need graphics design you go to a graphic designer. If you need expert legal advice you go to an expert lawyer - even if you have in-house lawyers. If you need additional creative thinking you could have a creative contract with a ‘creative shop’ or even with myself, Edward de Bono.

Is there any guarantee that you would get an idea you want to use? No, but any ideas are valuable because they can be a basis for your own future thinking about the matter. There is a risk involved but it is very small.

Does outsourcing mean you have no confidence in the internal sourcing of new ideas? Not at all, it means that you realise that ideas that arise outside the culture and idiom of an organisation may be different from those that arise within that culture. You cannot be at the same time inside and outside.

SO?

Someone once said: ‘Thank goodness the sun has gone in and I do not have to go out and enjoy it.’ If the sun had stayed out you would have had to figure out how to enjoy it and to decide between the many possible options: walk in the park, sunbathing, etc.

Many people have the same attitude to new ideas. Such ideas are intangible. They involve effort, decisions, actions and investments. In the end the idea may not be successful. It is hardly surprising that people prefer to talk about innovation rather than do anything specific about it.

CREATIVE DIARY

Suppose you ran a corporate ‘Creative Diary’ in which you listed the new ideas and then followed what was being done about each idea. What would the entries look like?

What is your organisation actually doing about creativity? Very often I am told that an organisation has ‘more ideas than it can ever use’. I am always a little suspicious about that reply because it suggests that the ideas are not very good. You can never have too many ideas. The idea you get next may be superior to all the others you had before.

As an individual or as an organisation ask the simple question: What am I (are we) doing about new ideas? If you answer this question honestly, you should get some surprises.