Creativity and Innovation: How Can Companies Do it Right?

Another Friday, that means our latest episode has dropped! Beth Storz of Ideas to Go (ITG) joined the Twinning Strategy team this week to talk about how to shake up companies and get them to think 'outside the box.' Innovation  faces a lot of headwinds in organizations--personally I spent a decade trying to convince my colleagues that my ideas were worth entertaining instead of dismissing them outright as a poor use of resources. (Spoiler alert my project not only worked, it has gotten a fair amount of attention from the scientific community in my space). How do we shift the conversation from the negativity bias that Beth describes in our episode? Her approach with ITG, go through the exercise of starting from the positive of an idea rather than blowing it up before half the people in the room have had 30 seconds to consider it. For me what resonated: the concept that going too far and reining an idea in is likely to be more innovative than starting from the boring and trying to 'spice it up.' I see this as a corollary to the quote ascribed to Einstein "The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them." We can't innovate by just thinking about our products, processes, data, etc. through the lens of what we have been doing for years or decades.

Instead, we need to create space for a conversation between the dreamers and their counterpart innovators who can take the blue-sky idea and turn it into a practical approach that captures the essence of that idea. In that way, we can get to having 'hatching dinosaur eggs' in our kids oatmeal (listen to the podcast) not just another flavor that won't convince any 5 year old to try a new food.