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Get Creative! - Building Innovation

Posted by Anonymous on 8/11/2005 at 4:15 AM ET 125 Points
Listen Closely. Get Creative is an excellent article about getting creative or dying! We have seen Apple do it, now it's your turn.

Get Creative! How to Build Innovative Companies

I don't want to push my wagon but back in 2002 I suggested observation as a research technique to find new innovative products for my company. It was knocked on the head. Oh well, stop complaining virago, your time will come - maybe!

I don't think executives follow their instincts enough and creative ideas. We are all too busy following the metrics, CEO's agenda's and getting those incremental sales increases.

The Creative era is here, and are you ready for it?
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  • Posted by steven.alker on 8/11/2005 at 5:41 PM Accepted
    That’s a bit of a bummer to pose to a Brit!

    Between the English, the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh, we’ve given the world (Given is the correct word as you’ll see) most of the things that stop the rest of you from having to live in a cave, watching a goat for evening entertainment.

    The age of innovation has always been with us and here’s what happens.

    British bright spark comes up with a really good idea.

    Bright spark develops the idea and gets the p**s taken out of him by his colleagues, friends and the vicar.

    Bright spark touts the idea round various banks and is told to go away and think of a nice safe business instead. Like manufacturing something that someone else already makes.

    Bright spark touts his idea round big business who look at it and tell him that because they didn’t think of it first, it won’t possibly work and there’s no market, so take your new fangled television set away, Mr Baird.

    Bright spark gets fed up and sells to idea to an American with an un-British dress sense and a very un-British attitude to risk.

    Bright spark buys a nice bungalow and learns to grow marrows.

    American guy goes to his local bank, who lend him the gross domestic product of Nigeria to get the product off the ground and three years later he buys Larry Ellison’s yacht from the profits he makes exporting the bright spark’s idea back to Britain where it sells like hot cakes.

    OK, I’m biased but nothing over here is sacred. VW have bought Bentley, because no one in the UK would invest enough money for them to build new cars. The result, a Bentley which sells by the thousand, does 208 miles an hour and is going to save VW, never mind the other way round.

    The other result: Henderson has told me that if I buy one, I’ll have to find a new chauffeur as he’s not driving around in a glorified Beetle.

    Toodle-pip

    Steve Alker
    Unimax Solutions
  • Posted by steven.alker on 8/11/2005 at 11:29 PM Member
    Dear Virago

    It’s kind of you to have a regard to the possibility that I am one of those innovators who have been ignored or rejected by a sclerotic British establishment which is incapable of developing its own talent, but that’s not the case.

    Sarcasm – well yes, but not as the lowest form of wit, more of an internationally understood sense of humour!

    I’m a salesman, marketer and a businessman, rather than an inventor, so I tend to negotiate my way through to getting something done about the things I take an interest in.

    What worries me and the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) and the British Academy of Invention is that in Britain, we are incapable of nurturing talent and profiting from it. Trevor Bayliss and James Dyson, two inventors who have, despite a total lack of local support, found the wherewithal to become multi millionaires out of their ideas (Dyson’s bag-less vacuum cleaner was rejected by no fewer than 7 UK appliance manufacturers and all the high street banks – he’s now worth £800M) without any formal backing from a major UK manufacturer, bank or government agency. Most other inventors give up and their ideas go abroad.

    The current estimate is that we have lost £165 Billion in revenue from inventions which originated here but were taken up and marketed by foreign companies.

    We also have a terrible tendency to destroy our heroes. A guy makes good, we applaud him. He gets rich, we snipe at him. He makes it to the top and the press, egged on by the great British public start to rake through everything that can bring the guy down. He dies the death of a thousand cuts. The Yanks and the Aussies don’t do that, do they?

    So, I applaud your initiative to encourage people to get creative – maybe my compatriots are ready to listen. On a selfish note, I hope that not too many of them have the same ideas as I do. I got my first Porsche from a good sales idea when I was 27 and my Ferrari from a novel marketing service 7 years ago, so there’s not much resentment around just yet!

    Good luck and here’s to you getting an honorary Knighthood (They’re called Geldof’s these days) for changing the British character.

    Steve
  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 1/12/2006 at 9:24 PM Member
    Anthony,

    I tried to send you an email, but it bounced. Error was "domain name system error: host 219.234.86.16: mail exchanger not found".

    If you get this, drop me an email so I can resend the message.

    Peter
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