Innovative Brain Food from New & Improved

We Can Help You Lead Innovation for Results

DOWNLOAD OUR FREE WEBINAR   

 

 Are you feeling a little lost as you try to lead innovation in your organization, community or home?  If you have questions, we may have the answers.

 Download our free webinar, "Leading Innovation for Results".

 New & Improved  hosted an energized conversation on what it takes to lead and overcome challenges in your innovation efforts. In this free, one hour webinar, Chuck Dymer, Owner of The Idea Loft, joined Bob Eckert, CEO New & Improved, and Natalie Jenkins, Director Organizational Development at New & Improved, in exploring:

• What leadership talk supports innovation?
• Can you have innovation without leaders?
• Does innovation go beyond products and services?
• Is "Innovation Culture" merely a fancy term for good management?
• How would you describe an innovation culture?
• What can leaders do to cultivate an innovation culture?
• Where do you find the time and money to do more innovation?
• How does a leader get buy-in for more innovation?
• What can we do to minimize risk involved in innovation?
• What should we measure to ensure that innovation is on track?

 If you share any of these questions, or just want to learn more about creating an innovation culture download our free webinar, "Leading Innovation for Results".

 In our webinar, we also offered a few tools that will help you in your innovation efforts:

•  If you want to learn how to promote your ideas read Pitching Ideas: How to sell solutions through the bureaucracy.
• An innovation effort may have failed because the key drivers of innovation were not in place. Alternatively, an innovation effort may have failed if all key drivers were in place, but the team focused on one or two of the drivers relative to the others.  In Most Innovation Efforts Will Fail, we summarize the twelve drivers of innovation so that you can be sure to consider them in your innovation efforts. 

If we missed a question or challenge that you face, please send it to Natalie Jenkins at njenkins@newandimproved.com.

 

Can't Raise the Price of Your Product?

A key to creative problem solving is to phrase problems as questions.  We liked this idea so much we wrote an white paper on it and produced a movie (ok, a video).

 Think that you cannot afford to purchase new technology which will make your company more productive?  Don't say, "We can't afford that!"  Instead, ask "What are the ways to could finance this purchase?"

For 70 years, Coca Cola did not raise the price of a bottle of Coke.  It cost a nickle.  There were several reasons including a contract that fixed the price of Coca Cola syrup indefinitely! and vending machines that were designed to take only one coin.

Coke tried many solutions including petitioning the President Eisenhower to issue a 7 1/2 cent coin that could be used in their vending machines.

Obviously, Coke was able to succeed wildly despite these constraints.  Learn how they did it.

We would like to think that Coke asked, "how might we increase revenue if we cannot raise prices?"

 

 

 

 

Wake Up and Warm Up Your Creative Mind

A client recently asked how to get their creative mind going first thing in the morning.  We equate this with getting the day started in a positive, productive and engaged manner.

Creativity is naturally influenced by the work and play we do with our mind and body.  Therefore, starting the day by engaging both the mind and body is a smart way to warm-up and prep your creative mind for success.

First thing, right out of bed, get your body moving.  One of our partners, for instance does 20 push-ups and 30-40 squats, another begins with 20 minutes of yoga, yet another splits wood and loads his wood fired boiler before heading in to the office.  All of this physical activity gets blood moving to the brain, stimulating the mind.  What might be all of the ways for your to get your body engaged?

Next, drink a glass of water (as a general rule people are dehydrated and the first bodily function that suffers from any level of dehydration is the mental/cognitive function-got to keep the brain hydrated).  And, hey, you're thirsty after getting your body moving anyway, right?

Lastly, take a bit of time (30 seconds to 10 minutes) to focus your attention; this can be anything from simply answering the questions, "What is today about?" or "What am I focusing on today?", to doing 10 minutes of meditation/focused mental concentration, or even any sort of brain puzzle... the point is to get blood flowing by activating various areas of your brain.

3 Easy Steps to Wake up your Creative Mind:

1. Move your body
2. Drink water
3. Mental focus

If you want to get more specific about mental focus you can activate your brain's left hemisphere and right hemisphere.  You can activate the left hemisphere by playing word games, like rhyming and speaking fluidly with free association (the left hemisphere contains 2 primary language centers,  Broca's area and Wernicke's area and, though the entire brain is engaged in language in many ways, the specificity of word structure activates more in the left hemisphere).  You can activate the right hemisphere by free associating with mental/visual images of objects, spaces, or maps (the right hemisphere focuses more on spatial, object and big picture understanding, though again the whole brain can be involved).

Advanced Mental Focus:

1. Play with words and talk to yourself (but not in the grocer store)
2. Imagine spatial things and relationships

Taking the extra 5-10 minutes in the morning will yield positve mental and physical energy to set up your creative energy and thoughts for the day.  Now your mind is warmed up and ready to apply creative problem tools and techniques to help to spark new thinking.