Ideo does it. Apple does it.  Innovative companies from around the world do it.

They get unstuck by finding and using the right tools. At IDEO, it may be simply asking “Why?”  Then, again “Why?”  And then three more “Whys” until you get the core of a problem.

The great Dick Orkin used to begin radio creativity sessions by letting everyone tell a story related to the client’s problem or product.  The stories became fodder for radio commercials.

The DNA ...

A few years ago, I led a creative session and I opened with an old Japanese Proverb, “None of us are as smart as all of us.”

I told the group that when I first heard this bromide at an innovation seminar in Chicago, I didn’t have the expected reaction.  I said, have you watched C-span lately?  Have you been ever been on a committee?  Have you listened to talk radio?

Creative collaboration isn’t just a two-edged sword, it’s one of those ...

Recently, I spoke at the IFCA (Insurance and Financial Communicators Association) in Nashville.  I put up a large slide that had a single word: Groupthink.

I asked the audience what they thought of this word.  Was it positive or negative?  Like most groups, they agreed that it was negative.  Then, I boldly said, “my mission to help you begin to see Groupthink as a positive.”

It’s not speaker’s hyperbole.

Typically Groupthink is defined ...

Jean-Marie Dru, CEO TBWA, one of the premier advertising agencies in the world, wrote a terrific book in the mid-90’s called Disruption:  Overturning Convention and Shaking up the Marketplace.

For years, the agency has held “Disruption Days” — brainstorming sessions with clients and agency people to upend conventional thinking through a variety of activities and open collaboration.

Dru writes in Disruption:

“It is a matter of questioning the way things are, of breaking with what has been done or seen before. of rejecting the ...

Imagine opening a new store, stocking the shelves full of a hundreds of products and discovering that consumers buy only one of your products.

The savvy entrepreneur would probably toss most of the shelf-hogging SKUs and let the rainmaker product reign supreme.

And that’s precisely what’s happening in the idea generation field. In a national survey, conducted by Inotivity, there is a surprising lack of awareness of different ideation techniques. This echoes the results our colleagues at SmartStorming received in a 2010 survey.

The ...