New and Improved Innovation Blog Site

The Rules for How to Generate Ideas...And How Not to!

This week on New & Improved TV, we've decided to focus on how to generate ideas.  Our irreverent troupe of intrepid corporate players give it their all to make the point that criticizing ideas does not encourage creative thinking. 

Shocking, I know.

You might call this one, "Generate Ideas! The musical!"

The Lightbulb Goes On in Malawi

Just another heart-breaking story from Africa.  Scarce water and food and no income, so a boy is kicked out of school because he can't pay.  So he decides to build a windmill, is regarded as the local nut-ball, and a few years later proves them all wrong.  Now he's traveling the world and attending a prestigious Leadership school in South Africa.

He's a great example of:

- tenacity despite having no supplies, resources or even tools (you think you have resource problems; he had to make his own screw-driver)

- curiously finding out as much as he could about windmills until he succeeded

- courage to pursue a dream no one believed in

Click here for the full story from CNN.com. 

How to Get People to Do Something They'd Rather Not- (Part 2)

Anyone else frustrated by people who can't seem to get their trash into a garbage can?  It makes me crazy, so I'm one of whose weird people you see picking up garbage while walking my dog along the golf course.

There are penalties for littering, but they don't seem to help (at least not where I walk).  How would you get people to stop?  Sure, you could tell them, "don't mess with Texas," since that campaign works.

But what if you don't live in Texas? 

Here's a quick video that shows another approach.  By the way, for those that don't speak metric, 72 kg = 158 pounds, and 41 kg = 90 pounds:

Brain Food for Thought That Feeds The Hungry

Many people talk about solving world hunger, but how to you do it?  By taking responsibility to feed one person at a time, in whatever capacity you can.

Our friends at Kraft Foods are encouraging people to volunteer with an interesting offer: watch their video, and they'll donate money to feed the hungry.

You can only imagine that this effort started with one person at Kraft looking around and saying, "All this food, and so many hungry people. How might we make a difference?"  Click on the video below, find out more, and ask yourself the same question: how can we make a difference for the benefit of many?  What are some of your ideas?

How to Get People to Do Something They'd Rather Not- (Part 1)

Given a choice between the stairs and escalator, which do you really take?  Most folks take the escalator.

Now if for some reason you wanted in promote a more active lifestyle, how would you get the majority of people to take the stairs?  Well, standard motivational theory says to pay them or reward them with some form of incentive.

Or, you could try an alternative approach, as shown by this fun video:

~ FREE WEBINAR ~
Facing the Challenges of 2009 and the Next Decade
with Mark Pover and Bob Eckert
(Tuesday, October 20^th, 2009 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm EST.)   

Join Mark Pover, former CFO of Virgin Health Miles, and Bob Eckert, CEO of New & Improved, as they discuss detailed, case-based solutions for today’s financial executives’ top business priorities.

Learn how to:

• Control enterprise-wide operating costs

• Attract, retaining and managing the right talent  

• Leverage your existing resources to do more with less  

• Drive pragmatic innovation to improve the revenue stream

Russ Schoen, partner of New & Improved, will moderate.

Sign Up Here: http://bit.ly/4mn1b0

The CFO, Innovation & Hitting the Numbers

Gary Hamel asserted in an interview with CFO magazine in 2000 that finance officers are the enemy of innovation. But!

We're spending more and more time with Chief Financial Officers these days than ever before. Why? According to some research done by CFO magazine, more than 85% of financial executives expect their companies to have to adjust to the post recession economy by shuttering or selling business units, deal with a significant increase in competitive challenge, and adapt to new and unwelcome business regulation.

Our friend Mark Pover, CFO at Virgin HealthMiles, puts it this way: "In the rapidly changing environment that we're seeing, you have to be innovative in how you approach those changes - those who embrace the unknown as opportunities are the ones who achieve and succeed. Panic will kill you every time. Remember, we've all seen this before and I guarantee you we'll get through it and then we'll see it again - take this opportunity to learn."

Pover and other forward thinking CFO's we are working with see the need for two major responses to this emergent condition.