Innovation Inspiration

There are a zillion tools for Innovation, but how do you know which to apply when? How to remember which tools you have in your toolkit? In the heat of the moment, when changes to your industry, technology or life as we know it create extra pressure on you and your team to dig deep into your innovative solutions drawer and pull off a "win," where can you turn for inspiration?

As an artist, I wrestle with this challenge with every project. I love the idea of "slow and steady wins the race," but to be honest, I need a looming deadline, a do-it-before-someone-else-does idea, or a critical moment to fully release my creative juices. The problem is, if the heat is too high, I sometimes choke on the smoke and have a hard time seeing my way to the starting line.

Over time, I have stumbled across a few strategies that help me get past the chokepoint and down the exit slide toward some kind of finish line. I often return to these strategies when I work with a group facing a similar challenge.

My innovation process goes something like this:

1.) Settle down and breathe. I can't help anyone if I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Meditation, a quick stretch, a cup o' tea, relaxing music, staring at a photo of a place I love, whatever gets me to my "happy place" but doesn't take so long that I lose my productive window of time.

2.) Turn the firehose on myself. Whether the project is a new subject to me or old, I deluge myself with stimuli about it in every format I can find. If I'm looking to create a logo, I research other logos in the industry, look for videos, icons and speakers on related topics, search the shopping websites for products related to the industry and see what the manufacturer's logos look like, and draw, draw, draw. I start a folder and dump everything I like into it so I can scroll through, add to and solicit more ideas from my client team, friends and family. I had one client who sent me a photo of a pillowcase he liked, which influenced the style of the final logo. It's an idea immersion.

3.) Sort and sift. The part of the process that can (and perhaps should) take the most effort is the part where I spin all that great straw into gold. This involves work, rework and iteration. The first solution is never the best. Maybe the fifth will be, or the tenth, twelfth or twenty-seventh. That can be the hard part to explain to a client, and a good reason to return to Step 1 regularly. It's also a good reason to make sure the client is prepared to seek the final solution in layers, narrowing down the direction gradually.

SCAMPER is an idea generation tool. The letters stand for 

Substitute. 

Combine. 

Adapt. 

Modify. 

Put to another use. 

Eliminate. 

Reverse. 

These concepts are attributed to Alex Osborn, best known as the inventor of brainstorming. Bob Eberle, developed the mnemonic SCAMPER.