New and Improved Innovation Blog Site

Creativity And Innovation: The Spitting Contest

 There is an interesting competition of sorts that goes on in the innovation field. It tends to sound like “My innovation model is better than your innovation model.” or “Design thinking is more comprehensive than creative problem solving.” or “TRIZ techniques are more useful than DeBono methods.” Or the inverse of any of these statements. We've heard every variation. This is all good, innovation fostering conversation. But we have a warning.

A Sippee Cup? No. A Sipsee? No, a CPSI. A What?

“What the heck is a Sip-see?”  It’s a question many of us who are long-time attendees at CPSI (pronounced Sip-see) asked once.  And it was a question that made a huge difference.

I attended my first Creative Problem Solving Institute when I was wrapping up my graduate degree in creativity and innovation.  And like most near graduates, I was confident that I knew all there was to know about creativity.  Ah, if only I could say that I wasn’t arrogant AND ignorant. Unfortunately, I was (fortunately, now I’m perfect.  As if!)!

Since there’s always way more to learn, year after year I keep returning to CPSI in order to teach, but mainly to learn more about creative thinking tools and techniques, problem-solving methodologies, and how it affects innovation.  Many of the New & Improved-ers attend regularly for the same reason.  Again, and again.

Lessons Learned from the Great Wall of Chocolate

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Next time you're at P.F. Chang's China Bistro, order the lettuce wraps (chicken or vegetarian), and pay attention to the fact that profits are up 38% compared to a year ago.  The innovation at this restaurant chain is not necessarily the food, although it is "Chinese" food consciously designed to appeal to the mainstream American palate, as noted by Newsweek.  It's the fact that given the current economic situation, they've taken a creative look at everything in the store to figure out how to run things more productively.  They haven't raised their prices, or discounted aggressively, they've figured out how to work more efficiently through cross-training, scheduling, and other low-profile strategies.

Planetary Level CPS and the Gator Brain

CPS. To most readers here, it means Creative Problem Solving. Before our Partner Bob Eckert came into this field, he was the director of Drug Abuse Services in the Northern Adirondack mountains -- to him, CPS meant Child Protective Services. Now, he would tell us that we need to do CPS to do CPS at a  societal Level. Heck, even at a planetary level. If you're curious about how to do that, read on:

Innovation and Maturity

 Here's a proposition:
Because innovation usually requires the efforts of many people to accomplish, people skills are a variable of the innovation equation that must be explored. And when we say "people skills" we're talking in code about maturity.  Key skills that we define as symptoms of maturity are:

Getting to those New Years Innovation Resolutions

Like many of us, we at New and Improved always had a wish list of items that we hoped to get to some day.  At the beginning of the year, we compiled this list a.k.a. "The New and Improved Resolutions."  Unfortunately, our daily responsiblitiies would get in the way and the list yellowed as it hung on the wall next to our computers. 

 One of our goals was to provide online training.   When one client, who had their travel budgets slashed, asked us if we had any online training courses to avoid having people fly to get together for training. We didn’t. But it spurred us into action and we do now! (See it here.) Yes, it required hard work of many people and investment, but since we’re not rolling in cash, it forced us to find an experienced partner who could help us efficiently build a very solid offering that fits our research and philosophy.