Goofy Innovation Techniques

Note:  This article is updated at Goofy Innovation Techniques.

If your team or company isn’t thriving with innovation, it’s not a big surprise.

In the book, Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of building Breakthroughs, Larry Keeley, Helen Walters, Ryan Pikkel, and Brian Quinn explain what holds innovation back.

Goofy innovation techniques are at least one part of the puzzle.

What holds innovation back is that many people still use goofy innovation techniques that either don’t work in practice, or aren’t very pragmatic.  For example “brainstorming” often leads to collaboration fixation.

Via Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of building Breakthroughs:

“Part of the Innovation Revolution is rooted in superior tradecraft: better ways to innovate that are suited for tougher problems.  Yet most teams are stuck using goofy techniques that have been discredited long ago.  This book is part of a new vanguard, a small group of leading thinkers who see innovation as urgent and essential, who know it needs to be cracked as a deep discipline and subjected to the same rigors as any other management science.”

The good news is that there are many innovation techniques that do work.

If you’re stuck in a rut, and wondering how to get innovation going, then abandon the goofy innovation techniques, and cast a wider net to find some of the approaches that actually do.   For example, Dr. Tony McCaffrey suggests “brainswarming.”  (Here is a video of brainswarming.)  Or check out the book, Blue Ocean Strategy, for a pragmatic approach to strategic market disruption.

Innovate in your approach to innovation.

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