Extremely Creative People Have Many Unusual Habits

When you have an idea, you’re driven by an inner force. Creative people get into their own world, and we don’t know what happens in their heads. What we do know, however, is that creativity means nothing without persistence and effort. Plus, some habits. Creatives have specific habits that help them turn creativity into a daily routine.

Are you continuously trying to create new social media posts, Instagram photos, blog posts, articles, press releases, and promotional strategies? Have you paid attention to your creative process when creating these things?

Here are 17 habits of creative people. They can inspire you to do things differently and find a way to keep the creative process going.

Collaboration

Maybe a painter could work alone, but even they need to get inspired by other people. There’s no great novelist who didn’t rely on an editor and publisher. Jack Dorsey didn’t create Twitter alone. For a modern creative business, you need to get an outside perspective, which might shift or support ideas.

Me time

“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”

– Aldous Huxley

When you want to understand your ideas and get deep into your mind to test them, you’ll naturally gravitate towards solitude. Does this mean you have to be an introvert to be as creative as you possibly could? No. Extroverts can be just as creative as introverts. The key to success is in the balance.

Creatives need both socializing and solitude at different times. They depend on the surroundings if they want to get better ideas, but they also need their time to reconsider their own opinions and dig deep into their creative hub.

Preparation

If you thought that the most creative people could start creating in a matter of seconds after getting an idea, you were wrong. Dan Pearce, a resume writer at Careers Booster, explains that a creative project needs systematic work.

“When we have an idea, we have to find the existing thoughts and patterns that led to it. When I write a new project, I have to connect the dots in my own mind, and then connect them with the ideas of the client. That process takes time and effort. Most of all, it takes planning to bring everything together,”

– Dan Pearce.

Conservation of ideas

Sometimes you get an idea in the middle of the night. You think: “This is great; I should start doing something about it.” In the morning, you start your usual day and continue with the current project. Later, you’ll be left only with the impression of your idea. You know you had something, but you lost a particular element that was very important: the excitement.

That’s why creative people write down their ideas. Every single one of them. Have you seen Dostoevsky’s notes and doodles? The writer used to write down all ideas before transforming them into the novels we still read and love.

Movement

Yes, it’s a habit. Haruki Murakami, one of the most appreciated and inventive novelists of our time, commits to an intense running schedule. This is what he said in an interview for the Paris Review when asked about the structure of a typical workday:

“When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4 a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9 p.m.”

You need physical strength to carry the burden of creativity. When an idea tortures you, you’ll spend many hours and days working on it. Just like Murakami, you need a habit that brings you to a healthy, energized body.

Routine

“I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism,” “I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”

– Murakami continued in the same interview

Routines are not as bad as we think they are. They are not killing our creativity; they are supporting it.

Flexibility

Creativity is not a 9-to-5 job. Let’s take Murakami’s routine as an example again. Did you notice something unusual there? He wakes up at 4 a.m. and works in the very early morning. He probably experimented a bit and found that his mind works best in that chunk of the day.

Analyze your own circadian rhythm to find out how you function in different parts of the night and day. Then, follow the lead and create when you’re most inspired.

Wondering

“People love Facebook. Hmm, I wonder why. I wonder how I could use their love for social media to create something new for them.”

Do you see the point in this mental concept? Curiosity is what drives ideas.

Creative people have a habit of intense conversations with themselves. They wonder, and they try to find the answers within.

Observing

The world is your greatest inspiration. Marcel Proust’s incredible memory was triggered by a madeleine.

“I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.”

This was no ordinary cake. Nothing is ordinary in this world! A single ray of light can inspire you to create something beautiful; you just need to notice it. Observe!

Reflection

Whenever you see something interesting, you should wonder if you could apply it to what you’re doing. If you’re in the marketing niche, you can get inspired by novels, paintings, nature… anything. Reflect on your impressions and think about how you can accumulate new ideas from them. Then, write those ideas down.

Daydreaming

What’s creation without imagination? Routines are good, and commitment is even better. But, sometimes you need to unleash your mind, so you can observe how it works when you don’t control it. You may find beautiful ideas hidden there.

Embracing obstacles

Have you heard about posttraumatic growth? All people suffer, but some of them find ways to express the experience of trauma through beautiful creations.

Posttraumatic growth is characterized by greater personal strength and the identification of new possibilities. When you’re at a low point in your life, try to find those new possibilities. Turn the struggles into a foundation for growth.

Traveling

Hemingway used to live in different countries throughout his life. He needed to meet different people and explore their culture and drinks, lots of drinks.

Traveling opens your viewpoint. It makes you see, explore, experience, wonder! That’s what creativity is all about, isn’t it?

Accepting Failure

Resilience is an important personal strength that keeps creatives going. The creative process often comes with repeated failures. You need to test different approaches, and many of them will be total failures. Then, you’ll find the one that works.

Self-expression

What is creativity, anyway? It’s a form of self-expression.

Take Allen Ginsberg’s tip: “Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.”

You get opportunities to express your unique ideas, desires, and character through every single project you work on. Use it!

Losing track of time

Have you had a creative moment so great that you couldn’t sleep, eat, or do anything else for days? You lost track of time and simply followed the flow. Yes, creativity can do that to you. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi gave an inspiring TED talk on that flow.

“There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though, difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger. And once the conditions are present, what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake.”

Mindfulness

We don’t know exactly when meditation originated, but we can assume that people had that ability and need to work with their own minds… forever. Today, we have scientific proof that meditation helps us learn and remember, but it also makes us introspective and self-aware. Do you notice the connection with creativity?

A great number of Fortune 500 companies, including Apple and Google, offer mindfulness and meditation classes for their employees. Why?

Because meditation supports the creative process. It brings you to a place where you’re alone with your thoughts, and you can finally understand yourself. The process of such achievement is long and needs hard work. That’s why you need to turn this into a habit.

The bottom line

Creativity is a blessing, but it can also become torture if you don’t know how to express it. When you adopt certain habits, you’ll be able to support the process and find the best way to bring it to action. Hopefully, adopting the habits of creative people from this article will lead you to a better, more creative state of being and working.

Leadership Competencies: 10 You Should Not Live Without

The key to successful leadership today is INFLUENCE, not AUTHORITY. What would you say are the most significant leadership competencies?

Check out our thoughts on team leverage.

Are they ones that you continue to hone and develop? Do they hold the keys to future successes in leadership?

I have been in the military and business world for forty years and often get asked what I believe are the most important leadership competencies. It takes time and practice to be a top line leader. You are not borne with leadership competencies. And you are never done developing them.

My experience leads me to this list of 10 business leadership competencies that most successful leaders all share. They rank as the most significant to success as a leader in my perspective.

Related: The Zen of Abraham Lincolns Leadership Lessons

If you want to be a better leader, work on continuously developing this list of leadership competencies:

Inspire and motivate

No matter how good you are, you will only be as successful as your team. So … getting the most from each team member is critical. We call this being a multiplier leader.

Multiplier leaders know the importance of bringing out the smarts and capabilities in everyone around them.

Balancing listening

Part of the balancing is going beyond hearing to develop your full sense of listening. This includes watching body language and observing emotions. If you don’t listen in this way you’ll miss plenty of opportunities to learn and connect with others.

Another part of the balancing is knowing how to exhibit strategic silence, i.e. knowing when to stay quiet. Great leaders understand the impact of words that can hurt, anger, or create fear. They know that when they say too much, others stop speaking and creativity and inclusion are a lost cause.

Foster teamwork

Peter Drucker made an interesting point when he said that leaders don’t train themselves not to say “I.” He’s implying that leaders innately work with others and let the team get the credit. They don’t force themselves to say “we.” “We” is natural for them, and it’s the way they’ve always thought.

It can be negative for an organization to have an “employee of the month” or a “who gets credit for what” attitude. You work as a team when you don’t care who gets the credit.

So the next time you see someone with a resume that states, “I accomplished x” or “I did x,” it should send up a few warning signals.

Collaboration

It’s important to know it is OK to ask for help, advice and constructive criticism. There are very few places where a lone wolf leader can be effective. Decisions are complex, and it takes a village of smart people to help make them. Leaders who aren’t inclusive may find that their organizations lack creativity.

No fear of daring choices.

There’s never one formula to achieve something. Don’t be afraid to take a leap; even if the outcome is not ideal, it provides you with the opportunity to learn the next time around. Step out of rigid mindsets and explore new ideas outside your comfort zone.

Leadership competencies … boost team self-esteem

We have written on employee attitude on several occasions. Employee attitude is so critical that it can’t be overemphasized. It trickles down from employers. Your business can never be what it can be if you don’t focus on employee happiness.

No matter, you’ll have dozens of people criticize you. Customers, current and former employees (whether you know it or not), and family and friends may give you constructive criticism. It can be stressful to hear or read, and it can be easy to pass on criticism to employees. But it doesn’t help. As a leader, you should ensure employees have high self-esteem in their job.

Leaders should make employees feel good about themselves. Constantly criticizing and pointing out the flaws in an employee is a sure fire way to decrease morale and performance.

**Leadership competencies … m*aintain work-life balance***

While completing certain tasks and achieving success is the ultimate goal, it’s important to have a work-life balance so you don’t burn yourself out. Lots of leaders espouse this balance, but only a rare few actually walk the talk. Great leaders can’t say this and then work 60 or more hours per week (or more!).

Continuous learning

If you’re not developing yourself, you’re coasting. If you’re coasting, it means you’re going downhill. Don’t get comfortable. Continue to learn and develop. Continuously. Those around you will follow your lead.

Lead with questions, not directions

Rarely tell staff what to do. While that may seem the easiest way, it’s more beneficial to help by allowing them to figure things out for themselves. The real learning is created within the team by ensuring that we’re asking the right questions.

Patience

Many leaders are intolerant of others who might do things differently or at a pace the leader finds unacceptable. Action-oriented leaders may have a tendency to jump to conclusions before things are thought through.

The lack of patience can manifest itself as anger or decisions that aren’t fully thought through. Be patient and reflective and always set aside thinking time. It is imperative for success.

The bottom line

A simple reminder … business leadership competencies, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it … it takes lots of consistent practice. You need to dive into the pool as soon as possible.

Customer engagement improvements are worth the effort.

Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration?

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?

Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

Build an Effective Team by Being a Talent Hound

Success Enablers of Highly Creative Leaders

Secrets to Becoming a Remarkably Mindful Leader

Leadership Characteristics That Improve Influence

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business.

13 Motivators for Creating a Change and Adaptability Culture

Your success with building a change and adaptability culture in your business depends not only on coming up with great ideas and making them happen but also on establishing the culture with employees. No business attribute is more important today as that of an adaptability culture, as many, many businesses are on the brink of irrelevance … unless they change as fast as change itself. You need to have and try many creative business ideas as often as possible … take to heart what Peter Drucker had to say in the quote shown above. That is why this needs to be a part of the culture of your business.

It’s also important to recognize that culture comes from the people—it is the people. Think about the individuals within your organization—what are their personalities like? Who are they outside of work? What tickles their fancy? All of these things lend to the culture of your organization, and ultimately your products

We live in a business world accelerating at a dizzying speed and teeming with ruthless competition. As most of the tangible advantages of the past have become commoditized, creativity has become the currency of success. A 2010 study of 1,500 CEOs indicated that leaders rank creativity as the No. 1 leadership attribute needed for prosperity. It’s the one thing that can’t be outsourced; the one thing that’s the lifeblood of sustainable competitive advantage.

Unfortunately, most companies fail to unleash their most valuable resources: human creativity, imagination, and original thinking. They lack a systematic approach to building a culture of innovation and then wonder why they keep getting beaten to the punch.

Creative change and adaptability could become the main strengths of your company and the pillars of its long term growth and success.

Here are some useful tips on how to help move toward a change and adaptability culture in your business:

Encourage curious, imaginative minds

We are big believers in change and adaptation. They contribute heavily to creative minds. We’re first curious about something, and it’s that curiosity that drives us to create new ideas. Try to think of inventors who created something without first being curious or imaginative. Difficult isn’t it?

Create a spirit of collaboration

Your employees should feel like members of one big family. They are the biggest assets of your business.

Creativity doesn’t often happen in a vacuum. As the author Steve Johnson says, chance favors the connected minds. When people are together, talking, laughing, thinking, exploring — they’re going to throw out ideas. These ideas trigger something in someone else’s mind, and it snowballs. Before long, this group of folks has developed a creative change that wouldn’t have been possible without the collective collaboration.

Don’t fall prey to the myth that only some people are adaptable and you’re not one of the chosen few. We are all adaptable; it’s just a matter of figuring out in what way. So find things you’re curious about and that are interesting to you, use your imagination a little, stay motivated and work at it, and surround yourself with others who are doing the same.

Foster adaptability

Creativity drives change and adaptability and can be taught. There are many courses that teach people different creative techniques. Give your employees the opportunity to acquire skills that will help them become more productive and proficient in what they are doing.

Encourage new ideas to flourish

People should be encouraged and inspired to openly and freely share ideas for change. There should be no censorship in the creative process and in ideas for change. Welcome everyone to contribute with their ideas for improving, from the couriers and drivers to the top managers.

Maximize diversity

Ziba, a top innovation-consulting firm in Portland, has an “Ambassador Program,” which allows employees to spend three months working in other disciplines, known as “tribes.” During that time, the ambassador team member participates as part of those teams.

This helps to create an understanding of another world. That diversity of thought and perspective, in turn, fuels connection and adaptability. It also translates to better business results.

Diversity in all its shapes, colors, and flavors helps build a culture of change. Diversity of people and thought; diversity of work experiences, religions, nationalities, hobbies, political beliefs, races, sexual preference, age, musical tastes, and even favorite sports teams. The more diversity the better.

Encourage Autonomy

We all prefer control over our environments. According to a 2008 study by Harvard University, there is a direct correlation between people who have the ability to call their own shots and the value of their change and adaptability. An employee who has to run every tiny detail by her boss for approval will quickly become numb to the environment of change.

Granting autonomy involves extending trust. By definition, your team may make decisions you would have made differently. The key is to provide a clear message of what results you are looking for or what problem you want the team to solve. From there, you need to extend trust and let them do their best work.

Start small

ITW is a diversified manufacturing company that produces a wide array of products from industrial packaging to power systems and electronics to food equipment to construction products. It is a highly profitable company nearly 100 years old. Yet this big, old company, which is nestled in a traditional industry, thinks small.

The leaders at ITW believe that being nimble, hungry, and entrepreneurial are the ingredients for business success. As a result, any time a business unit reaches $200 million in revenue, the division “mutates” into two $100 million units.

Like an amoeba, the unit subdivides so it stays hungry and nimble. The company would rather have 10 independently run and innovative $100 million units than a single, bureaucratic, and clunky $1 billion unit. Guess what? It’s a great environment of change and adaptation.

Companies that can stay more curious and nimble, have a better ability to change and adapt more easily. They have a stronger sense of urgency and are not afraid to embrace change. They put their curiosity, imagination, and creativity to work

Motivate by sharing

Most of the time, you’ve got to want to be adaptable. You’ve got to work at the change to be able to change.

But every once in a while someone will walk into my office, look around at the walls and ask how I came up with some of the ideas. Or we’ll be in a meeting and something will click for me as I’m scribbling in my little black notebook.

What most people don’t know is that I actually work on it. Yes and I actually practice. I think people think you’ve either got it or you don’t, but I think everyone adapts in their own way.

So I started doing things to challenge myself to change. Sometimes they were business-related. Other times they weren’t. And now I have an arsenal of things that I do on a regular basis to stretch my mind. It’s trying to make creative thinking and practice a consistent habit.

Passion starts with leaders

Believe in what you preach. Give yourself 100% to the cause. Be honest if you want to be accepted. Lead by providing the example. Do not just lead – inspire!

With a team full of passion, you can accomplish just about anything. Without it, your employees become mere clock-punching automatons.

Celebrate even small successes

Social norms in any culture are established by what is celebrated and what is punished. Consider more narrowly how they function within an institution. Nearly every business’s mission statement includes words about “innovation,” yet risk-taking and change are often punished instead of rewarded.

Rewards come in many forms, and often the monetary ones are the least important.

Celebrating change and adaptation is not only about handing out bonus checks for great ideas—although that is a good start. It should also be celebrated with praise (both public and private), career opportunities, and perks.

In short, if you want your team to be creative, you need to establish an environment that celebrating their successes.

Foster risk-taking

Zappos as a company is known as much for its culture as for its innovative business model. The company has built a business that is growing rapidly by allowing individuals the freedom to take creative risks without that overwhelming sense of fear or judgment.

They tell their employees to say what you think, even if it is controversial. Make tough decisions without agonizing excessively. Take smart risks. Question actions inconsistent with our values.

Another interesting example: A software company in Boston gives each team member two “corporate get-out-of-jail-free” cards each year. The cards allow the holder to take risks and suffer no repercussions for mistakes associated with them.

At annual reviews, leaders question their team members if the cards are not used. It is a great way to encourage risk-taking and experimentation. Think this company comes up with amazing ideas? Absolutely.

Foster a change climate

Always look for alternatives, improvements, and non-standard ways of solving problems. Many of ideas that your team will come up with will be unfit, some of them will be excellent and a few will be brilliant.

Sometimes one brilliant idea is all it takes to make huge business success.

Readily accept mistakes and failure

There is no success without failure. Ask any successful person and they will confirm that they have failed in life but that their failures made them stronger and even more determined to go on. It is perfectly OK to fail as long as we learn from our own mistakes. Your employees should not fear failure because it will kill their desire to create new and unusual ideas.

In many companies, people are so afraid of making mistakes that they don’t pursue their dreams. The simply follow the rules and keep their heads down, which drives nothing but mediocrity.

James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson Vacuum cleaner, “failed” at more than 5,100 prototypes before getting it just right. In fact, nearly every breakthrough innovation in history came after countless setbacks, mistakes, and “failures.”

The great innovators and achievers weren’t necessarily smarter or inherently more talented. They simply released their fear of failure and kept trying. They didn’t let setbacks or misfires extinguish their curiosity, imagination, and ability to change.

Failing means taking risks and increasing the rate of experimentation… and exploring. Some bets will pay off; some will fail. The key is to fail quickly. The speed of business has increased dramatically and every minute counts. The best businesses try lots of ideas and let the losers go quickly and with no remorse.

As you can see, some of these ideas do not take much time and money to implement. Start from small and transform your company step by step. Creating a change and adaptation culture is a process that takes time, but as the first creative ideas become reality, and the first results show up, both you and your employees will appreciate the positive effects.

The bottom line

No one has all the answers. A company where only management makes decisions is a surefire way to send A and B players away to other companies. As some companies get bigger, they tend to limit employee freedom.

The employees are less and less involved in key decisions and their impact on the business is drowned out. It becomes a part of the culture. Employees go to work, do what they’re told, and just help someone else achieve their dream. The worker’s impact on the business is minimal and they become “just another employee at just another company.” And for some people, it’s all they want: go into work, take orders, do the job, and wait for the clock to hit 5:00 P.M.

But this is not what the best employees want.

So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of collaborative innovation. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.

It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with adaptability, change, innovation and creativity efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.

When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Beware These 17 Disastrous Myths of Innovation Research

How does your organization come up with new ideas? And how do they use those ideas to create successful new products, services, businesses, and solutions? To be most successful, you must do reading and study to eliminate these myths of innovation research.

The problem is never how to get new ideas into your mind, but how to eliminate the old ideas.

We tend to think of innovation as an individual effort. It’s much easier to visualize someone like Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, in a flash of inspiration, coming up with a brilliant idea than it is to imagine a vast, collective effort. Yet make no mistake. Innovation is a team sport and great innovators are great collaborators.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo mission which put a man on the moon, one of the vastest collective efforts in history. It involved 400,000 scientists, engineers, and technicians working across government, academia, and private industry. It was, above all, a public effort that mobilized resources across all facets of society.

Check out our thoughts on building innovation.

Do you always drive to work the same way? Most likely. Do you read the same type of publications? Often. How about TV and the Internet? Watching the same group of shows or using the same set of websites is also a common habit. When you do this, how do you feel? You get a lot of familiar and comfortable feelings.

But true innovation often doesn’t make us comfortable. It makes us uncomfortable. And yet, it is in that discomfort that the new ways, the new ideas, and the new feelings come to light. When you drive to work via a different route, you see different places and sights. If you go to the newsstand and peruse the magazines that you never otherwise look at, you will see things you simply would never think about otherwise.

Given these results, let’s examine these myths of innovation:

People love change

Myth

Many people believe everybody loves to change and be changed.

Fact

The simple fact is that there is a ton of people who resist any change. They are very risk-averse, and change makes them very uncomfortable.

Innovative research … rewards

Myth

Many people believe that the best ideas come where the best incentive rewards are offered.

Fact

Daniel Pink discussed research in his book “Drive” where rewards were shown to have a modest effect on generating new ideas at best and negative effect in the worst situations. Pink demonstrated that with the complex and more creative style of 21^stcentury jobs, traditional rewards could lead to less of what is wanted and more of what is not wanted.

Completely new

Myth

The belief is that most innovations are composed of totally new thoughts.

Fact

The simple fact is new ideas are built from the combining of older ideas. The novelty comes from the application of the idea or combination of idea and application, not the idea itself.

Innovative research ideas … experience and expertise

Myth

Team members often sit back in the hope that the smartest or most experienced among them will come through. Smart is certainly important, as is experience, but the best innovations come from those on the fringes of the subject area or an entirely different subject area expertise.

Fact

Those who continuously come up with the newest ideas are ones who are great at cultivating minds from different fields and can most efficiently connect the dots. Old lessons from a different field applied to the new field.

*Innovative research technologies … collaboration***

Myth

We can certainly find many examples of teams where cohesiveness abound, but innovation was severely lacking.

Fact

But the simple fact is that conflict is equally as important as cohesiveness in generating ideas. Many companies build conflict into the ideation process for this reason.

Innovation rarely happens in a vacuum. As the author Steve Johnson says, chance favors the connected minds. When people are together, talking, laughing, thinking, exploring — they’re going to throw out ideas. These ideas trigger something in someone else’s mind, and it snowballs. Before long, this group of folks has developed a creative change that wouldn’t have been possible without the collective collaboration.

See our article on Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking

Best mousetrap

Myth

The saying goes that if you have the best mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

Fact

This path is not the usual case, however. Often the best innovations are rejected initially. There are many examples … here are two good ones. Kodak invented the digital camera and never took it to market. Smith Corona built a superb word processor and yet decided to stay with the typewriter, its bread and butter.

Epiphany

Myth

Many assume that the best insights come to us in a flash of brilliance.

Fact

The best ideas typically require a time of incubation in our subconscious. We do best when we constantly shift from one task to another to allow our minds to do something different for our best idea germination.

Best ideas win

Myth

The cream always rises to the top. And the best innovations are like cream.

Fact

But the simple fact is that the best ones are not necessarily or readily recognized as the best. Most often, they never get to the winner’s circle.

Your genes

Myth

The best ideas come from the best combination of genes.

Fact

No evidence supports an “idea” gene or personality type. On the other hand, there is a wealth of evidence that shows there is potential inside of everyone. The best place to see this is in young children.

Lone wolf

Myth

Most people tend to believe that the best innovation comes from single, very smart individuals.

Fact

The truth is that most breakthrough innovations come from collaborative teams. For example, Thomas Edison had 15 other inventors working with him. Likewise, Michelangelo had 13 other painters helping paint the Sistine Chapel. The best teams are diverse and include both new and more experienced collaborators.

Ok, now we have overcome these myths on innovation, here are some useful ways how to help move toward a more innovative culture in your business:

Be a detective

Creatives and innovators always have enquiring minds. Are you and the team asking enough questions to get deeper and understand the problem as much as you can?

Myths of innovation … foster adaptability

Change and adaptability have a great ability to drive innovative thinking. Innovative thinking is best when built around a process and can be taught. There are many courses that teach people different innovative techniques. Give your employees the opportunity to acquire skills that will help them become more productive and proficient in what they are doing.

Foster risk-taking

Zappos as a company is known as much for its culture as for its innovative business model. The company has built a business that is growing rapidly by allowing individuals the freedom to take creative risks without that overwhelming sense of fear or judgment.

They tell their employees to say what you think, even if it is controversial. Make tough decisions without agonizing excessively. Take smart risks. Question actions inconsistent with business values.

Here is another interesting example: A software company in Boston gives each team member two “corporate get-out-of-jail-free” cards each year. The cards allow the holder to take risks and suffer no repercussions for mistakes associated with them. At annual reviews, leaders question their team members if the cards are not used. It is a great way to encourage risk-taking and experimentation. Think this company comes up with amazing ideas? Absolutely.

Readily accept mistakes and failure

There is no success without failure. Ask any successful person and they will confirm that they have failed in life but that their failures made them stronger and even more determined to go on. It is perfectly OK to fail as long as we learn from our mistakes. Your employees should not fear failure because it will kill their desire to create new and unusual ideas.

In many companies, people are so afraid of making mistakes that they don’t pursue their dreams. The simply follow the rules and keep their heads down, which drives nothing but mediocrity.

James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson Vacuum cleaner, “failed” at more than 5,100 prototypes before getting it just right. In fact, nearly every breakthrough innovation in history came after countless setbacks, mistakes, and “failures.” The best innovators and achievers weren’t necessarily smarter or inherently more talented. They simply released their fear of failure and kept trying. They didn’t let setbacks or misfires extinguish their curiosity, imagination, and ability to change.

Failing means taking risks and increasing the rate of experimentation… and exploring. Some bets will pay off; some will fail. The key is to fail quickly. The speed of business has increased dramatically and every minute counts. The best businesses try lots of ideas and let the losers go quickly and with no remorse.

Divergent thinking

Try the quantity approach to innovations. Use brainstorming to improve divergent thinking. Study and then connect ideas to get new ideas.

Add play to the equation

When looking for fresh new thinking to solve a problem, shake things up by adding some fun and play with the process. It always can shed the stress and pressure on a team

Experiment

Do as much experimentation as you can. Don’t worry about failures and allow the team to question any and all assumptions and consider even the craziest ideas.

The bottom line

As we change at a faster and faster pace, ideas adequate yesterday are no longer are good enough. And with digital disruption facing an increasing number of industries, most firms must come up with the best ideas for change or move to a slow failure. The myths of new ideas must be set aside to let the new idea facts take over.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of business. Find him on Twitte r, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

17 Myths of Innovation You Must Avoid To Be Competitive

How does your organization come up with new ideas? And how do they use those ideas to create successful new products, services, businesses, and solutions? To be most successful, you must eliminate these myths of innovation.

The problem is never how to get new ideas into your mind, but how to eliminate the old ideas.

Do you always drive to work the same way? Most likely. Do you read the same type of publications? Often. How about TV and the Internet? Watching the same group of shows or using the same set of websites is also a common habit. When you do this, how do you feel? You get a lot of familiar and comfortable feelings.

But true innovation often doesn’t make us comfortable. It makes us uncomfortable. And yet, it is in that discomfort that the new ways, the new ideas, and the new feelings come to light. When you drive to work via a different route, you see different places and sights. If you go to the newsstand and peruse the magazines that you never otherwise look at, you will see things you simply would never think about otherwise.

Given these results, let’s examine the myths of generating creative innovation:

People love change

Myth

Many people believe everybody loves to change and be changed.

Fact

The simple fact is that there is a ton of people who resist any change. They are very risk-averse, and change makes them very uncomfortable.

Rewards

Myth

Many people believe that the best ideas come where the best incentive rewards are offered.

Fact

Daniel Pink discussed research in his book “Drive” where rewards were shown to have a modest effect on generating new ideas at best and negative effect in the worst situations. Pink demonstrated that with the complex and more creative style of 21^stcentury jobs, traditional rewards could lead to less of what is wanted and more of what is not wanted.

Completely new

Myth

The belief is that most innovations are composed of totally new thoughts.

Fact

The simple fact is new ideas are built from the combining of older ideas. The novelty comes from the application of the idea or combination of idea and application, not the idea itself.

Experience and expertise

Myth

Team members often sit back in the hope that the smartest or most experienced among them will come through. Smart is certainly important, as experiences, but the best innovations come from those on the fringes of the subject area or an entirely different subject area expertise.

Fact

Those who continuously come up with the newest ideas are ones who are great at cultivating minds from different fields and can most efficiently connect the dots. Old lessons from a different field applied to the new field.

Collaboration

Myth

We can certainly find many examples of teams where cohesiveness abound, but innovation was severely lacking.

Fact

But the simple fact is that conflict is equally as important as cohesiveness in generating ideas. Many companies build conflict into the ideation process for this reason.

Innovation rarely happens in a vacuum. As the author Steve Johnson says, chance favors the connected minds. When people are together, talking, laughing, thinking, exploring — they’re going to throw out ideas. These ideas trigger something in someone else’s mind, and it snowballs. Before long, this group of folks has developed a creative change that wouldn’t have been possible without the collective collaboration.

See our article on Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking

Best mousetrap

Myth

The saying goes that if you have the best mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

Fact

This path is not the usual case, however. Often the best innovations are rejected initially. There are many examples … here are two good ones. Kodak invented the digital camera and never took it to market. Smith Corona built a superb word processor and yet decided to stay with the typewriter, its bread and butter.

Epiphany

Myth

Many assume that the best insights come to us in a flash of brilliance.

Fact

The best ideas typically require a time of incubation in our subconscious. We do best when we constantly shift from one task to another to allow our minds to do something different for our best idea germination.

Best ideas win

Myth

The cream always rises to the top. And the best innovations are like the cream.

Fact

But the simple fact is that the best ones are not necessarily or readily recognized as the best. Most often, they never get to the winner’s circle.

Your genes

Myth

The best ideas come from the best combination of genes.

Fact

No evidence supports an “idea” gene or personality type. On the other hand, there is a wealth of evidence that shows there is potential inside of everyone. The best place to see this is in young children.

Lone wolf

Myth

Most people tend to believe that the best innovation comes from single, very smart individuals.

Fact

The truth is that most breakthrough innovations come from collaborative teams. For example, Thomas Edison had 15 other inventors working with him. Likewise, Michelangelo had 13 other painters helping paint the Sistine Chapel. The best teams are diverse and include both new and more experienced collaborators.

Ok, now we have overcome these myths on innovation, here are some useful ways how to help move toward a more innovative culture in your business:

Be a detective

Creatives and innovators always have enquiring minds. Are you and the team asking enough questions to get deeper and understand the problem as much as you can?

Foster adaptability

Change and adaptability have a great ability to drive innovative thinking. Innovative thinking is best when built around a process and can be taught. There are many courses that teach people different innovative techniques. Give your employees the opportunity to acquire skills that will help them become more productive and proficient in what they are doing.

Foster risk-taking

Zappos as a company is known as much for its culture as for its innovative business model. The company has built a business that is growing rapidly by allowing individuals the freedom to take creative risks without that overwhelming sense of fear or judgment.

They tell their employees to say what you think, even if it is controversial. Make tough decisions without agonizing excessively. Take smart risks. Question actions inconsistent with business values.

Here is another interesting example: A software company in Boston gives each team member two “corporate get-out-of-jail-free” cards each year. The cards allow the holder to take risks and suffer no repercussions for mistakes associated with them. At annual reviews, leaders question their team members if the cards are not used. It is a great way to encourage risk-taking and experimentation. Think this company comes up with amazing ideas? Absolutely.

Readily accept mistakes and failure

There is no success without failure. Ask any successful person and they will confirm that they have failed in life but that their failures made them stronger and even more determined to go on. It is perfectly OK to fail as long as we learn from our mistakes. Your employees should not fear failure because it will kill their desire to create new and unusual ideas.

In many companies, people are so afraid of making mistakes that they don’t pursue their dreams. The simply follow the rules and keep their heads down, which drives nothing but mediocrity.

James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson Vacuum cleaner, “failed” at more than 5,100 prototypes before getting it just right. In fact, nearly every breakthrough innovation in history came after countless setbacks, mistakes, and “failures.” The best innovators and achievers weren’t necessarily smarter or inherently more talented. They simply released their fear of failure and kept trying. They didn’t let setbacks or misfires extinguish their curiosity, imagination, and ability to change.

Failing means taking risks and increasing the rate of experimentation… and exploring. Some bets will pay off; some will fail. The key is to fail quickly. The speed of business has increased dramatically and every minute counts. The best businesses try lots of ideas and let the losers go quickly and with no remorse.

Divergent thinking

Try the quantity approach to innovations. Use brainstorming to improve divergent thinking. Study and then connect ideas to get new ideas.

Experiment

Do as much experimentation as you can. Don’t worry about failures and allow the team to question any and all assumptions and consider even the craziest ideas.

The bottom line

As we change at a faster and faster pace, ideas adequate yesterday are no longer are good enough. And with digital disruption facing an increasing number of industries, most firms must come up with the best ideas for change or move to a slow failure.

The myths of new ideas must be set aside to let the new idea facts take over.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of a business. Find him on Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks

Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking

Amazon and Managing Innovation … the Jeff Bezos Vision

The Secrets to Building an Innovative Culture

How to Change the World … Amazing Results To Shoot For

Our agency focuses on creativity and innovation among a few other topics. From time to time we’ll post interesting tidbits on creative thinking in general. Occasionally a few on how to change the world by business adaptation and change.

What we see depends on what we are looking for.

As background, my perspective on creativity is very simple.

It is not about invention. Rather it is about collecting and connecting dots — bringing together two (or more) ideas to create an altogether new idea.

Related post: Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks

We often think of innovation as inventing new things, but we may be smarter to think of it as recombining old ones. The truth is that important breakthroughs usually come from combining ideas from different domains. Often combining very different, sometimes weird ideas.

One famous historical example is that of the discovery of genetics. In 1865, when Gregor Mendel published his groundbreaking study of inheritance of characteristics in pea plants, it went nowhere. It took nearly a half century before the concept was combined with Darwin’s ideas on natural selection to unleash a torrent of innovations in medicine and science.

A more recent example is the Apple ecosystem. There were plenty of digital music players around when Steve Jobs and Apple launched the i-Pod. Note he also combined his player with i-Tunes, which made content both more accessible and palatable to music companies. He then threw new products into the mix – the i-Phone, i-Pad and now Siri – creating more combinations and even greater value.

Marrying ideas has been around for ages, quite literally. One of the greatest invention of all? One contender is Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. Before Gutenberg, all books had been copied by hand or stamped out with woodblocks. Around 1450 in Strasbourg, Gutenberg combined two ideas to invent printing with moveable type. He coupled the flexibility of a coin punch with the power of a wine press. His invention enabled the production of books and the spread of knowledge and ideas throughout the Western World.

Are you looking for more details of generating more innovative business ideas by combining 2 or more different ideas? Consider these areas to stimulate your thinking:

How to change the world … new business models

Business models are often neglected when considering new ideas for your business. They shouldn’t be. One of the best examples of an innovative business model is from Safelite Auto Glass. What’s innovative here you may be thinking? It’s simple. An auto glass repair business that comes to you for your repair. Saving you time and convenience. A value proposition and business model that is hard to top.

Another good example is EBay, reflecting a new model and application of supply, demand and sales.

How to change the world ideas … collaboration

Nearly every new idea is a synthesis of other ideas. So a great way to generate ideas is to force combinational possibilities from collaboration with other people of diverse professions and skills.

Get your team together and brainstorm how you could mix and combine your existing and new ideas together. Combine products with those from wildly different sources.

How to change the world … multi-use

Can you come up with new product ideas that have multiple uses? Doesn’t have to be complex. For example imagine a drill, with bits for multiple uses, such as drill, sander, cleaner, screw driver, etc.

Extra function

What do you get when you combine a camcorder with an iPod? A digital camcorder that uses a hard drive rather than tape. Up to 7 hours of video on one hard drive. Plus you can do simple edits on the camera – like deleting scenes, even if they are in the middle of your “tape.” You can set up playlists (like on the iPod). Plus downloading to your computer is as simple as using iTunes. No need for the tape, which slows data transfer significantly.

Combine product and service

This is an easy one to think about. Picture the smart phone product and then envision all the services this product provides by the millions of apps that the smart phone can provide. Absolutely mind boggling, isn’t it?

Dual function

This combination is a little more difficult to imagine. But this really only means there is more upside in this area, yes? Couple of wild dual function products we would use as examples here. The first one is an inflatable sleeping coat that doubles as a sleeping bag. It makes camping in the great outdoors a little more convenient. A second example is a jet ski that converts to a dune buggy with the simple push of a button.

Adding function to packaging

A simple example of this is the use of milk cartons to display missing persons’ picture and description details. Can you imagine a better place to get this kind of attention?

Weird combinations

Combine products with those from wildly different sources. Take it to the extreme. The more bizarre the combination the more original the ideas that are triggered. An example is the combination of a bridge and canal overpass for boats and walkers.

Make it work differently

Take a product and think of an absurd way to make it work.. For example, in the developing world batteries are expensive and electricity is unreliable. Imagine a reliable radio that people could wind up by hand. It exists and has transformed the availability of information in many of the poorest regions of the Earth. Think of what you would get combining a suitcase with a trolley? Simple, a suitcase on rollers. Another example? Combine a bell and a clock to derive an alarm clock.

Related post: 13 Requirements to Improve Business Performance

In your business (or life) how can you combine two ideas together to create something new? Stuck for ideas? Read magazines and rip out pictures or words that you find interesting. This is a great source of new ideas. Force yourself to make combinations.

In doing this, you may get an idea for a new product, a new service, or a new career.

Why not try it with your own products to drive innovation in your business?

So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is entirely up to you.

It’s up to you to keep improving your continuous learning. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.

When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Do you have a lesson about making your lifelong learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.

More reading on business challenges from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

Adaptation … 5 Awesome Business Examples for Study

9 Secrets to the Chipotle Culture and Employee Engagement Success

6 Ways Biases Destroy Decision Making Results

Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

Visualizing Ideas … Is This Skill Holding You Back?

Isn’t it time for you to take action? You and your team have identified an idea that can make all the difference. It can represent the mother of visualizing ideas for the business and its results.

It’s your Disney World, your iPad, or your DVD player. OK, it might not be that big, but it will be a game changer for you.

Visualizing ideas.

It looks gigantic; it is bold, and it is not like anything you have tried before. You’ve certainly been innovative before, but nothing this significant.

So you are excited, and a bit scared; but you know it is time to act.

But you have fears and reservations. You know there are lots of unknowns.

Check out our thoughts on building innovation.

As an example, consider the case of Microsoft, which failed horribly to adapt to mobile computing. In fact, when the iPhone came out, CEO Steve Ballmer dismissed it, saying, “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.”

Other attempts to adapt to Apple’s innovations, such as the Zune music player, didn’t gain traction either.

Also, change takes time. Sometimes, lots of time.

Consider the case of electricity. The electric motor and the dynamo were discovered by Michael Faraday in the 1820’s and 30’s. It wasn’t until 1874 that Thomas Edison set up the first the first electric power plant, Pearl Street Station and it still took another 40 years for electricity to have a significant economic impact.

On average, it takes about 30 years for a major discovery to take its full effect. One reason for the lag is known as the “Valley of Death,” which is the gap between scientific discovery and the development of a viable commercial product that can compete with existing technologies on price, convenience, and performance.

Our agency focuses on creativity and innovation among a few other topics. From time to time we’ll post interesting tidbits on creative thinking in general. Many have been posted on how to generate innovative ideas for business adaptation and change.

As background, my perspective on creativity is very simple. It is not about invention. Rather it is about collecting and connecting dots — bringing together two (or more) ideas to create an altogether new idea.

Related post: Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks

We often think of innovation as inventing new things, but we may be smarter to think of it as recombining old ones. The truth is that important breakthroughs usually come from combining ideas from different domains. It often results from combining very different, sometimes weird ideas.

So let’s get back to game-changing ideas. Here are the things you can to improve the chances that your big idea, becomes a big success.

Visualization ideas … collaboration

Nearly every new idea is a synthesis of other ideas. So a great way to generate ideas is to force combinational possibilities from collaboration with other people of diverse professions and skills.

Get your team together and brainstorm how you could mix and combine your existing and new ideas together. Combine products with those from wildly different sources.

Have an end state vision

When Disney World opened, the media asked Roy Disney what Walt would think if he could see it (he had died after work had begun, but long before completion). Roy responded, “You don’t understand. Walt had already seen it – that is why it is here.”

Make sure you and everyone on your implementation team have a clear picture of what you are creating. Invoke all of the senses in creating that vision. Some people do an OK job of this at the start, but you will be far more successful if you maintain that vision, and engage people in seeing it.

Doing this keeps everyone focused on the same goal and provided energy and excitement when the challenges come.

Idea visualisation.

Visualizing ideas … multi-use

Can you come up with new product ideas that have multiple uses? They don’t have to be complex. For example imagine a drill, with bits for multiple uses, such as a drill, sander, cleaner, screwdriver, etc.

Consider an example of Internet Privacy

Running a business today almost certainly means having a digital presence, and being connected to the Internet. While the benefits of this transformation are many, the security issues are still a daily challenge, with many solutions in the marketplace to address them.

Now internet service providers can sell the browsing habits of their customers to advertisers. The move, which critics charge will fundamentally undermine consumer privacy in the US.

Yes, internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are free to track all your browsing behavior and sell it to advertisers without consent. ISPs have access to literally all of your browsing behavior – they act as a gateway for all of your web visits, clicks, searches, app downloads and video streams.

This represents a huge treasure trove of personal data, including health concerns, shopping habits and porn preferences. ISPs want to use this data to deliver personalized advertising.

Looking for a valid VPN solution?

Faster decision speed

The idea is big, and so you must move big. Your big step might be an announcement or proclamation that makes it hard to back down from later. Your big step may be altering your budget or eliminating other activities to focus on this idea. Historically, there have been military leaders who landed on shore and burned the boats, or crossed a river and burned the bridge. Bold moves like this focused their teams on success and removed the option of retreat. What bold move do you need to take on your game changing idea?

Extra function

Visualizing ideas … dual function

Visualize concepts.

This option is a little more difficult to imagine. But this only means there is more upside in this area, yes? A couple of wild dual function products we would use as examples here. The first one is an inflatable sleeping coat that doubles as a sleeping bag. It makes camping in the great outdoors a little more convenient. A second example is a jet ski that converts to a dune buggy with the simple push of a button.

Weird combinations

Combine products with those from wildly different sources. Take it to the extreme. The more bizarre the combination, the more original the ideas that are triggered. An example is the combination of a bridge and canal overpass for boats and walkers.

Maintain momentum

Bold moves are important as we have already discussed. But single bold moves are never enough. Success comes from a continuous succession of small steps taken daily or hourly all focused on achieving the goal.

Consistent action gets things done but also builds momentum. And momentum builds both results and energy. Make sure you keep moving forward, never stopping in the quest of the goal.

Combine product and service

This is an easy one to think about. Picture the smartphone product and then envision all the services this product provides the millions of apps that the smartphone can provide. Mind boggling, isn’t it?

Build a vision

The vision is critically important, but so is the reason why it matters to reach the vision. Make sure people understand at a deep level the value that will come from completing this big important project. A compelling why can drive people through nearly impossible situations and overcome incredible odds. Your project implementation may need that sort of drive, and you won’t find it without a powerful and motivating reason why.

Adding function to packaging

A simple example of this is the use of milk cartons to display missing persons’ picture and description details. Can you imagine a better place to get this kind of attention?

Prepare for potential disruptions

With any project, there will be a setback, challenges, and obstacles. But if you are implementing a game changing idea, the obstacles will likely come sooner and be bigger. While you won’t be able to anticipate all of them, you can identify some likely obstacles early.

Taking time to think about them, and plan for overcoming them isn’t negative thinking, it is mental preparation for battle. If your idea is worth it, you need to be ready to battle those obstacles. Prior planning will make you most prepared and ultimately successful.

Pay less attention to critics

Yep, if your idea is big, you are going to have critics, naysayers and those who are trying to “help.” These people are only trying to dissuade you from your goal. There is a difference between feedback that is intended to help a team succeed, and that which simply steals energy reduces hope and saps energy.

As a leader, you must know which is which and insulate your team from the critics. Either that or openly defy them.

The critics don’t see your vision and don’t understand. They don’t have to – only you and your team must. Don’t let anyone steal your dream and vision.

Build enthusiasm and passion

If no one tends the campfire, it will run out of fuel and burn out. A once blazing fire becomes a pile of smoldering ashes. At the start of your project, if you had a clear vision with a compelling reason why you had a raging fire.

As a leader, you must maintain that fire. If you do the previous steps, you will be keeping the enthusiasm, energy, and belief higher. The work will be hard, energy will wane, and if you aren’t careful, you will have helpless, useless ashes.

The bottom line

Make sure you stoke the fire for the team, and for yourself.

So if you want to find a truly great innovator, don’t look for the ones that make the biggest headlines are that are most inspiring on stage. Look for those who spend their time a bit off to the side, sharing ideas, supporting others, and quietly pursuing a path that few others are even aware of.

When you take the actions, we have discussed you will be more likely to see a positive result than if you don’t. Your ggame-changingidea is worth the effort. So make it happen.

Need some help in improving the innovation process for you and your staff? Innovative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors? Or maybe ways to innovate new products and services?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options for innovation workshops to get noticeable results.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of business. Find him on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

More reading on creativity and innovation from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks

Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking

Amazon and Managing Innovation … the Jeff Bezos Vision

The Secrets to Building an Innovative Culture

Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

Collaboration: The Cheat Sheet of Great Secrets on Co-Creation

Ken Sawyer once said: Collaboration drives creativity because innovation always emerges from a series of sparks … never a single flash of insight. Collaboration and co-creation secrets? Well, maybe just not well known.

Check out our thoughts on team leverage.

We are great believers that collaboration and co-creation among businesses and between companies and customers hold much promise for future growth.

There is an opportunity for collaboration and co-creation all along a companies’ value chain, whether it be customers, other businesses or suppliers.

Let’s examine some examples along the value chain.

Collaboration … working with customers

There’s plenty of research showing that under the right circumstances and conditions customers and users can develop innovations which are both novel and have greater value for the users that what the company’s own developers come up with.

Still, there hasn’t been overwhelming agreement on how best to get it done.

A recent study by Anders Gustafsson at BI Norwegian Business School and Karlstad University in Sweden demonstrates that profitable co-creation with customers centers on the nature of the communication and interaction between the company and its customers.

The researchers were after answers to two questions: How should companies communicate with their customers? When is it profitable to listen to what they say?

They tested four hypotheses:

First, that customer co-creation characterized by high-frequency communication will lead to increased product and market success.

Second, that because companies often take an overly dominating role, a more evenly distributed dialogue will lead to more beneficial outcomes of an innovation process.

Third, that collaborative process of face-to-face communication and openness in critical aspects of a project will facilitate successful development of future services and products.

Finally, that new offerings will be more successful if they account for needs that have been identified from user experiences.

The researchers conducted a survey of 334 managers who all had experience with innovation to create new products and services. They selected 284 real development projects that they divided into two main groups:

207 of the projects dealt with minor improvements of products or services, while the remaining 77 projects dealt with the development of radically new products or services not previously known to the market.

The study confirms that companies can achieve better results in new product development if customers are given the right pre-requisites for participating actively in the company’s development processes. Better results were defined as enhanced creativity, improved user value, and a more successful launch.

Collaboration in the workplace … listening

No big surprise here. For minor improvements to products and services, it is advantageous to talk frequently with the customers and have two-way communication between the company and customers.

The researchers also saw that it’s wise to listen carefully to what the customers actually said. Users will often know better what is needed to make them even more satisfied with products and services.

Customers will also be able to tell you what types of improvements they are willing to pay for.

When not to listen

When a company aims to develop a product or service entirely new to the market, on the other hand, you should not listen too much to the customers’ specific proposals.

The researchers say that companies that listened too much to what customers said were less successful with radical innovations than those which placed less emphasis on the contents of conversations.

“The customers base themselves to a great extent on previous experiences. The really radical solutions are difficult to imagine in advance based on experiences with current products,” Gustafsson points out.

Sounds a bit like Henry Ford’s famous century-old quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” And no survey was needed on that thought, was there?

Collaboration examples … other Businesses

Here is a great business to business collaboration and co-creation example that was derived from a common objective of sustainability of product containers. In 2009, The Coca-Cola Company created the Plant- BottleTM, a plastic bottle partially manufactured (30%) with plant-derived materials (like sugar cane and molasses) and byproducts of sugar production in Brazil.

These plants were chosen based on environmental criteria to ensure that they do not interfere with local crops. The remaining 70% of each bottle is made with materials derived from fossil fuels, such as petroleum.

The Coca-Cola Company is now striving to manufacture a bottle made of 100% plant-derived materials and plant residues. In fact, they have already developed a prototype, and are now collaborating with Heinz to use their bottling factory. The Coca-Cola Company has planned to invest $150 million in Plant BottleTM, to develop the next generation of technology for extracting sugar from plant residues such as plant stems, tree bark, and fruit peel.

It is also working to make the new container water and carbon neutral. Heinz has made a major investment in the project, although the company has not revealed any details. It is hoping to take a step further towards its own goal of reducing emissions, waste and energy consumption by 20% by 2015.

Heinz had already used 120 million PlantBottlesTM in the USA in 2011. The material in these new containers shares many properties with that of the original plastic (PET): it is amenable to carbonation of the liquid container; recyclable; weighs the same; has the same lifetime; shares the same appearance and chemical composition; and is suitable for water, juice and carbonated beverages.

The bottle is 100% recyclable: the resulting byproducts can be re-used to manufacture more bottles or to make other products, such as furniture or clothing. More opportunities for collaboration and co-creation. For example, The Coca-Cola Company and furniture maker Emeco have established a smart collaboration to manufacture the Emeco 111 Navy Chair, a chair made of 111 recycled bottles.

Where there are a need and a will of partner collaboration, companies will find a way.

Suppliers

Is growing the pie via supplier collaboration an impossible task? No, quite the opposite. But you have to collaborate more upfront on strategies. And finding an equally willing partner.

Consider one example. Over the last five years, Jimmy Dean’s has expanded its frame of reference beyond just breakfast sausage into convenient breakfast meals that provide longer lasting energy. A great collaboration with its food manufacturer.

This niche partnership delivers a breakfast like what you’d get at a fast-food restaurant with sausage at its center. In that time, Jimmy Dean’s tripled its frozen breakfast sales with triple-digit millions in growth. But the business category overall grew from $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion, with Jimmy Dean’s driving nearly two-thirds of all the growth.

It’s a great example of what can happen when companies and their supplier bases stop fighting over splitting the pie and instead find a way to increase the share. In this case, the growth was stealing sales that might otherwise have gone to fast food establishments.

We offer these additional collaboration or co-creation recommendations that are independent of the partner type you are collaborating with (from the Art of Innovation by Tom Kelly):

Shoot the bad ideas first

Study the things you know won’t work. They will help you understand why they don’t work and give you more alternative options.

Have a bias for action

Move to implement experimentation with your best ideas as soon as possible. The mere process of actualizing will create more ideas and thoughts on solutions.

Use lots of media

Try as many types of media as possible to explore your prototype options. Examples include drawings, graphics, foam … any means to learn quickly.

Iterate often

Create short feedback loops. Don’t go long without experimenting and testing your ideas.

Expect your design to change

Rarely does your first prototype become your final design?

Remember this, if you are as impatient as I am, look to your colleagues, your friends, your customers, other businesses, and to suppliers to challenge you to reach new heights. Tap into the parts of your brain you may not use every day. The parts of your brain you may not even realize you can tap into.

Most of all, reach out to others to collaborate. The sum of group collaboration is always greater than the work of each individual.

Do you have any comments, questions, or experiences on collaboration to share with this community?

It’s up to you to keep improving your learning and experience with collaboration efforts. Lessons are all around you. In this case, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.

When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.

Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your creativity, innovation, and ideas?

Do you have a lesson about making your creativity better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff ’s teamwork, collaboration, and learning? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a teamwork or continuous learning workshop?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

The key to successful leadership today is INFLUENCE, not AUTHORITY. What would you say are the most significant leadership competencies?

Check out our thoughts on team leverage.

Are they ones that you continue to hone and develop? Do they hold the keys to future successes in leadership?

I have been in the military and business world for forty years and often get asked what I believe are the most important leadership competencies. It takes time and practice to be a top line leader. You are not borne with leadership competencies. And you are never done developing them.

My experience leads me to this list of 10 business leadership competencies that most successful leaders all share. They rank as the most significant to success as a leader in my perspective.

Related: The Zen of Abraham Lincolns Leadership Lessons

If you want to be a better leader, work on continuously developing this list of leadership competencies:

Inspire and motivate

No matter how good you are, you will only be as successful as your team. So … getting the most from each team member is critical. We call this being a multiplier leader.

Multiplier leaders know the importance of bringing out the smarts and capabilities in everyone around them.

Balancing listening

Part of the balancing is going beyond hearing to develop your full sense of listening. This includes watching body language and observing emotions. If you don’t listen in this way you’ll miss plenty of opportunities to learn and connect with others.

Another part of the balancing is knowing how to exhibit strategic silence, i.e. knowing when to stay quiet. Great leaders understand the impact of words that can hurt, anger, or create fear. They know that when they say too much, others stop speaking and creativity and inclusion are a lost cause.

Foster teamwork

It can be negative for an organization to have an “employee of the month” or a “who gets credit for what” attitude. You work as a team when you don’t care who gets the credit.

So the next time you see someone with a resume that states, “I accomplished x” or “I did x,” it should send up a few warning signals.

Collaboration

No fear of daring choices.

There’s never one formula to achieve something. Don’t be afraid to take a leap; even if the outcome is not ideal, it provides you with the opportunity to learn the next time around. Step out of rigid mindsets and explore new ideas outside your comfort zone.

Leadership competencies … boost team self-esteem

We have written on employee attitude on several occasions. Employee attitude is so critical that it can’t be overemphasized. It trickles down from employers. Your business can never be what it can be if you don’t focus on employee happiness.

Leaders should make employees feel good about themselves. Constantly criticizing and pointing out the flaws in an employee is a sure fire way to decrease morale and performance.

Leadership competencies … maintain work-life balance

Continuous learning

If you’re not developing yourself, you’re coasting. If you’re coasting, it means you’re going downhill. Don’t get comfortable. Continue to learn and develop. Continuously. Those around you will follow your lead.

Lead with questions, not directions

Rarely tell staff what to do. While that may seem the easiest way, it’s more beneficial to help by allowing them to figure things out for themselves. The real learning is created within the team by ensuring that we’re asking the right questions.

Patience

Many leaders are intolerant of others who might do things differently or at a pace the leader finds unacceptable. Action-oriented leaders may have a tendency to jump to conclusions before things are thought through.

The lack of patience can manifest itself as anger or decisions that aren’t fully thought through. Be patient and reflective and always set aside thinking time. It is imperative for success.

The bottom line

A simple reminder … business leadership competencies, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it … it takes lots of consistent practice. You need to dive into the pool as soon as possible.

Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration?

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?

Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.

More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

Success Enablers of Highly Creative Leaders

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business.

Unfortunately, most companies fail to unleash their most valuable resources: human creativity, imagination, and original thinking. They lack a systematic approach to building a culture of innovation and then wonder why they keep getting beaten to the punch.

Creative change and adaptability could become the main strengths of your company and the pillars of its long term growth and success.

Here are some useful tips on how to help move toward a change and adaptability culture in your business:

Encourage curious, imaginative minds

Create a spirit of collaboration

Your employees should feel like members of one big family. They are the biggest assets of your business.

Foster adaptability

Creativity drives change and adaptability and can be taught. There are many courses that teach people different creative techniques. Give your employees the opportunity to acquire skills that will help them become more productive and proficient in what they are doing.

Encourage new ideas to flourish

People should be encouraged and inspired to openly and freely share ideas for change. There should be no censorship in the creative process and in ideas for change. Welcome everyone to contribute with their ideas for improving, from the couriers and drivers to the top managers.

Maximize diversity

Ziba, a top innovation-consulting firm in Portland, has an “Ambassador Program,” which allows employees to spend three months working in other disciplines, known as “tribes.” During that time, the ambassador team member participates as part of those teams.

This helps to create an understanding of another world. That diversity of thought and perspective, in turn, fuels connection and adaptability. It also translates to better business results.

Encourage Autonomy

Start small

The leaders at ITW believe that being nimble, hungry, and entrepreneurial are the ingredients for business success. As a result, any time a business unit reaches $200 million in revenue, the division “mutates” into two $100 million units.

Like an amoeba, the unit subdivides so it stays hungry and nimble. The company would rather have 10 independently run and innovative $100 million units than a single, bureaucratic, and clunky $1 billion unit. Guess what? It’s a great environment of change and adaptation.

Companies that can stay more curious and nimble, have a better ability to change and adapt more easily. They have a stronger sense of urgency and are not afraid to embrace change. They put their curiosity, imagination, and creativity to work

Motivate by sharing

Most of the time, you’ve got to want to be adaptable. You’ve got to work at the change to be able to change.

But every once in a while someone will walk into my office, look around at the walls and ask how I came up with some of the ideas. Or we’ll be in a meeting and something will click for me as I’m scribbling in my little black notebook.

What most people don’t know is that I actually work on it. Yes and I actually practice. I think people think you’ve either got it or you don’t, but I think everyone adapts in their own way.

So I started doing things to challenge myself to change. Sometimes they were business-related. Other times they weren’t. And now I have an arsenal of things that I do on a regular basis to stretch my mind. It’s trying to make creative thinking and practice a consistent habit.

Passion starts with leaders

Believe in what you preach. Give yourself 100% to the cause. Be honest if you want to be accepted. Lead by providing the example. Do not just lead – inspire!

With a team full of passion, you can accomplish just about anything. Without it, your employees become mere clock-punching automatons.

Celebrate even small successes

Rewards come in many forms, and often the monetary ones are the least important.

Celebrating change and adaptation is not only about handing out bonus checks for great ideas—although that is a good start. It should also be celebrated with praise (both public and private), career opportunities, and perks.

In short, if you want your team to be creative, you need to establish an environment that celebrating their successes.

Foster risk-taking

Zappos as a company is known as much for its culture as for its innovative business model. The company has built a business that is growing rapidly by allowing individuals the freedom to take creative risks without that overwhelming sense of fear or judgment.

They tell their employees to say what you think, even if it is controversial. Make tough decisions without agonizing excessively. Take smart risks. Question actions inconsistent with our values.

Another interesting example: A software company in Boston gives each team member two “corporate get-out-of-jail-free” cards each year. The cards allow the holder to take risks and suffer no repercussions for mistakes associated with them.

At annual reviews, leaders question their team members if the cards are not used. It is a great way to encourage risk-taking and experimentation. Think this company comes up with amazing ideas? Absolutely.

Foster a change climate

Always look for alternatives, improvements, and non-standard ways of solving problems. Many of ideas that your team will come up with will be unfit, some of them will be excellent and a few will be brilliant.

Sometimes one brilliant idea is all it takes to make huge business success.

**Leadership competencies … m*aintain work-life balance***