How can you create a mindset that generates innovative ideas?

One thing I do to challenge my assumptions is to ask myself the question: "What would "Entrepreneur X" do in this situation?". This "Entrepreneur X" could be a bold business leader like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson. It could also be someone specific to your industry. You've read and listened a lot about these business leaders, so you already have a pretty good idea of their character and approach to business. You just need a question which will guide the thinking outside of your own assumptions.

Listen to your customers to find out what they want and need. Question your team why we can't give our customers what they want and need. What are the barriers. Make the focal point the customer and their experience. Then don't settle, and keep encouraging improvement no matter how small the improvent seems. Reward great ideas and celebrate progress.

Continually asking questions, learning more and finding new answers to old problems is what innovation is all about. Personally, curiosity is what drives me every day. It’s what gets me up in the morning because I’m annoyed that I don’t already know everything. Starting this role here at LEED and ultimately ending up in marketing wasn’t an accident. It’s because I was curious and willing to change the way we looked at marketing as a whole. I asked questions, I tried new things and I was curious about what the outcome would be. Curious people aren’t satisfied with how things are being done and are willing to go to great lengths to find a new answer. Maybe this sounds simple, but I believe this is innovation at its core.

Reverse thinking is a good mind practice that can help you think out of the box. The idea of reverse thinking is promoted by Charlie Munger. It challenges thinkers to look at a problem or situation from the opposite perspective of the desired outcome. So, instead of thinking about how to make product X a success, consider how to make product X a failure. The practice of reverse thinking is quite useful. Our cognitive biases often shield our perspective from undesired outcomes to boost our confidence and rigor. Although our brain works subconsciously to enhance our confidence, this selective blindness often prevents us from seeing the full picture. Challenge your assumptions with reverse thinking. It works wonders.

From my experience, innovation stems from a willingness to question the status quo. I believe that challenging our assumptions and adopting a curious mindset opens the door to fresh perspectives and breakthroughs. From my perspective, continuously seeking diverse feedback and exploring alternative approaches is key to fostering a culture of innovation.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom - is what Soren Kierkegaard said. Entrepreneurs have a lot of both! There are many tools to cope with uncertainty but by far the best set I’ve found is in the book Upside of Uncertainty by Susanna Harmon Furr and Nathan Furr!

In my experience the best way to embrace uncertainty is to genuinely be curious about the answer to new or difficult questions. That curiosity needs to allow for the possibility that your first second and/or third answer/ solution is completely wrong and you’ll have to find a new one. The tough part is developing an organisation-wide culture that allows that curiosity and the unavoidable failures that come with it - instead if a fearful “we always do it this way” culture.

Too many people are content to go through life without taking chances. I was terrified when I started my first company. I knew enough to get going, but there was much that I learned along the way. That experience would serve me very well with other ventures along the way. Yes, you may come up short. Yes, things may not go to plan. Yes, it will sting a little to "fail", but the lessons and skills learned can have a huge potential impact on your personal and professional lives.

To foster this mindset, embrace curiosity and open-mindedness. Seek diverse experiences, collaborate with different thinkers, and don't fear failure; it's a stepping stone to creativity. Cultivate a passion for solving problems and remain persistent. Keep learning, as knowledge fuels innovation.

The heart of innovation lies in embracing uncertainty. I believe that seeing failure as a stepping stone, rather than a setback, fosters a climate where novel ideas thrive. From my experience, cultivating a growth mindset ensures that challenges are viewed as opportunities for learning and evolution.

I love testing any theory on a minimum of 10 people who are potential users. Sometimes also on 10 that is NOT to make sure it really appeals to the right audience. Pareto law is a great measure. If you have 80% who support it - excellent! Also, if there is the same feedback returning 50/60% of the time it definitely needs to be taken care of. Numbers are always great as they speak logic rather then emotions.

Too often, we surround ourselves with like-minded people because it's comfortable, and natural. Unfortunately, this puts us in an echo chamber of stagnant perspectives. Actively seek out people from different industries, backgrounds, and disciplines and ask them their thoughts and experiences regarding the problems you're trying to solve. By entering into conversations with an open minded attitude you may see problems (and solutions!) from a completely different angle.

From my interviews and research, I found people who have "ideation muscle memory", meaning, they can effortlessly ideate. The common factor among these people is that they actively pursue other endeavors unrelated from their main field - such as the chef who is also a painter and a champion fencer, the filmmaker who is also a fashion designer and a makeup artist, the singer who is also a capoeria master. They all attest to their secondary interests making them more creative in their core endeavor.

I LOVE attending conference and workshops! There are many free options available both virtual and in person. I am always listening to podcasts when I workout and the networking events I attend typically allow me to learn something new. DO NOT solely surround yourself with people who are going to agree with you. One of my best friends often challenges my thinking which is appreciated. Have a mindset of wanting to be better tomorrow than you are today. Little bits of knowledge and even small improvements in yours skills will help you become your ideal self.

And if you're a leader looking to cultivate innovation culture and mindset in your team, diversification of inputs may include interdepartmental cross pollination. Be willing to break the walls and cultivate a great working relationship between your team and other departments, especially if the two departments are working closely. Innovation focuses on 3 areas: A-how value is created, B-how value is delivered to clients and C-how money is made. So if you are at point A on the business model, engaging with a team at points B & C can spark your creativity. One thing to remember is that you're all on the same team. No silos.

Yes! First of all, prototypes are great as 70% of people are visual learners and the more you involve people and speak their language the faster they will resonate with you. In my personal experience sometimes I used to spend 40 minutes explaining to people what we were aiming to do and they were curious enough to get to the next phase, and at the same time after only 2 minute video of the prototype they were getting beyond excited and impressed. Also, the specific feedback related to it was 100% spot on.

Let go of the notion that your businesses value is going to be conveyed by the product itself. That comes much later. Words, pictures, and sounds will paint your value proposition even before the prototype - get to the point where you can have a customer say - I’d like to see the product in hand and then build. More importantly people will buy into your value proposition wayyy before your product. Today AI tools can help you mock-up even faster than before - use Stable diffusion or DALLE2 to make product images - there are many other solutions out there.

Be in movement could contribute for the innovation, you could have a lot of inputs with the feedbacks and the experiments, then you could take your own decision for a great output in all you are working in. 😁🥇

It's the perfect time to create prototypes in today's world of AI tools at our fingertips. I know for me, building a chatbot as a sample for someone so they can see what they are signing up for beforehand gives them a true feel for what the final product would be like and it's a lot easier to get someone to pay for something they already got to test drive!

Getting an idea out of your head is really important. Writing it down, making notes. Once you do this you have started a project rather than a swirling mind bound idea. Each time you take an action it is further toweards actual creation.

Whether it’s a Fortune 500 company, a small company or startup, I am a believer of encouraging small teams to brainstorm, collaborate and present ideas to grow revenues or improve the company. You can gamify it by turning into a contest or rewarding the most innovative ideas. Regardless, encouraging cross functional small groups to collaborate on new ideas can help build an innovative culture.

Having a clearly defined, possibly time-bound, process to rapidly ideate, prototype and validate new innovations, such as a hackathon or service jam, can really help bring diverse teams together fast to collaborate and co-create innovations. For established teams, scheduling innovation sprints can really help to focus everyone’s attention and energy on responding to the innovation challenge.

Collaborating and co-creating is the most fun part for any project. Listening to others and feeding off each other's excitement is what keeps things moving forward!

Build your contacts and help others. When you need help in return you will have better relationships to pursue your ideas & plans. Build your network.

Importantísimo. He visto el título y he pensado totalmente de acuerdo. Los equipos multidisciplinarios son muy importantes e interesantes. Cada una de las personas aporta su punto de vista y siempre es de valor todas las opiniones. Seguimos colaborando y cooperando para seguir adelante el mundo

It’s really critical to make time for proper evaluation or debrief. This must be done objectively without attachment to ideas or their performance (or otherwise!), and without making success or failure personal. And remember, lessons are only learned if they’re actually applied.

I have known too many people who continue to make the same mistakes over and over. Almost as though they were oblivious to what was going on around them. I take time every Friday to review my week, understand if I achieved the goals I had and make adjustments to my process as needed. While you don't have to obsess daily about your process, you should have time to review and understand what works and what doesn't. Something that may have made a TON of sense last year might be irrelevant this year (technology, changing marketing conditions, etc). Reflecting and Learning is important to the process.

Reflecting and learning are necessary steps for your continued growth. They should be a part of any plan you have. It's like having a QA test run on yourself. Make sure you learned from your mistakes and always look for ways to be better, learn faster and use your failures as a measure of your growth. Fail forward fast.

Be grounded & have the hunger Creating value is directly relatable to the problems and opportunities on the ground . One needs to understand lay of the land . So be grounded. And equally have the hunger to build and solve the issues in face of all the hurdles . Hurdles are nothing but learning opportunities in one’s quest.

Additionally, start putting white space in your calendar for creativity and thinking. Many of us have a tendency to fill out calendars, and leave blank spots open for meetings, connection calls, or errands. From a neuroscience perspective, prioritizing time each week to let your mind just think, dream, and create goes a long to towards fostering creativity and innovation.

Have fun and laugh. Joking with colleagues or even playing short games can help you and your team break away from the pressures of your work and create the mental capacity needed to think creatively. Furthermore, playing games with your team not only bonds you but can also help release you from the restriction of worrying about making mistakes during the creative brainstorming process.

Innovation is often packaged as this buzzy and exclusive pursuit, and often associated with the Silicon Valley startups and techie businesses such that you may think to be innovative you need to be an App, or a tech enabled business. Virtually any business can be innovative, the key is in understanding where you are positioned on the business model; is your role associated with Value Creation, Delivering Value to customers or Revenue Generation..? Identify your spot and then think of how you can make the process Fast, Effective, Profitable, Deliver High Value...you renew (innovate) what you already know how to do or rather what needs to be done. This also means it doesn't matter what your job title is, a secretary, quality controller or CEO