Innovation takes more than inspiration

In this highly competitive era, companies that provide innovative products and services enjoy a competitive edge.

However, innovation is by no means easy. In particular, employees in the companies' research and development departments may often find it difficult to come up with innovative ideas.

To help companies encourage their employees to think out of the box, Matt Kingdon, chairman and founding partner of an innovation company, gives his advice in an interview with Shanghai Daily.

First, employers have to make sure that their employees are happy at work. For example, they can make the office more pleasant to work in, and provide lots of space for employees to work together and communicate.

From time to time, special meetings should be held for employees to exchange ideas on specific topics or projects.

For instance, a good idea is to hold a one-day idea session to stimulate creative ideas among its employees. Suppose the company is to work on a project on hair design.

First, invite a group of employees who really want to make a difference and have someone facilitate the session. Then, bring as many different kinds of stimuli to the session as possible, such as customers with problem hair or with beautiful hair. And the stimulus can even come from a totally different market, such as a customer with a beautiful dog, sharing his experience on how to make his or her dog beautiful.

After a discussion of an hour or two, employees may first find themselves full of ideas. And after that, it is often the case that they feel they have nothing left. In such cases, it's time to introduce more stimuli.

It's usually in the second or third wave that employees come up with the best ideas, says Kingdon.

Of course, coming up with a good idea is only half-done. The idea has to be realized before it can be called an innovation.

Perhaps how Kingdon's innovation company works is a better illustration.

The company's main business is to help its clients invent new products or services.

When there is a project, there are usually five to six employees working as a team.

They first try to develop a good understanding of the background and details of the kind of product that their client thinks of inventing, such as how much money they are willing to invest in research and development and how strong they want the brand to be.

After that, the employees do customer immersion to collect ideas. They meet and spent time with as many different types of potential customers as possible. They may dine with customers, go shopping with them, or even live with customers to observe their behavior.

After this stage, all the team members may have many innovative ideas of how they're to design the new product. They then put all clues together and get an insight to a big "need" area. Normally, they would arrive at the best idea that everyone likes.

And then they work closely with workers in the client's factory as well as sales people of their client company to make sure that the idea can be realized.

Just as Kingdon says, "Innovation is creativity that earns you money. It's new things that reach the market. If your great ideas don't reach the market place, then there is no innovation."