True but it should link back to a corporate strategy, initiative or project. Otherwise that would all we do. Its all about managing the business churn.
I’m coming in a little late here, but having just skimmed over everything, I don’t have an issue with the word the idea as long as we understand that their relativity value is very low. People that tend to put a high level of import on ideas tend to have very few of them. In most cases, organizations that have talented people have a surplus of ideas. The challenge (as has been pointed out above) is sorting them, identifying a group that deserve further development, eliminating them again, and then refining the right few further. I find that running ideas through a combination of alignment with brand principles, market feasibility, and manufacturing feasibility tends to thin the crowd. It doesn’t have to be a super formalized process, but i does need to be communicated so that everyone isn’t just fighting for their own idea or two, in which case the loudest person usually wins. I’ve seen bad things happen that way!
When I propose an idea or concept that is accompanied with more risk than people are comfortable taking I’m up front about it and tell people that if it is a success they can take all of the credit and if it’s a fail then I’ll take all of the blame.
I have no problem with the word “idea” but “ideas” certainly don’t translate to innovation. Innovation is actually bringing ideas in to the world. It takes a lot of hard work. Ideas don’t necessarily take much work.
What really irritates me is when engineers and other professions call us the “idea” guys, and the creative ones, as if they don’t have any creativity or ideas themselves. Many of them bought in to this left-brain society so hardcore that they don’t even use their right-brain. Creativity is part of the human experience. Everyone is creative in some way or another. As designers we certainly are on the more creative side, but in general we just have a more holistic balanced approach that I think more professions should have.
Ha, as a variation of this, the head of engineering of a group I was at in a past life actually asked me to sign a document saying I would take the blame in the event that the product we were developing failed in real world application. He was shocked when I immediately told him that I would gladly sign such a document and asked me why. I explained that if it failed, and it wouldn’t, I would get credit as the person trying to push the boundaries, and if it succeeded, not only did the document prove I should get the credit, but it was also a death warrant for him as it showed him to be blocking the development of anything new… He did not make me sign the document, the product did not fail, and I was happy to share the glory.
Do you mean fail commercially or physically? If commercially that’s a pretty heavy bet as countless things could do it from sales to marketing, distribution, logistics etc. that aren’t in your control. …
I could not agree with you more. Absolutely. As my boss says, there is no innovation until people have actually adopted the commercialized design and it is changing behavior. Ideas are not innovation. The term “innovative idea” is difficult for me for that reason. Coming up with unique, novel, thoughtful, and creative ideas is key, but impossible to judge if they are innovative until they are put to use.
Agreed, though I’m sure they meant it as a compliment. Right brain and left brain are not a binary system, they work in concert with one another! We tend to biased, and there is a continuum to that bias, but I think it might be impossible to be one or the other completely!