• Innovative Strategies That Create More Profits

Author: harborcapitalgroupinc

The Blue Ocean Strategy Canvas

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According to Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, “The strategy canvas is both a diagnostic and an action framework for building a compelling Blue Ocean strategy. It serves two purposes. First, it captures the current state of play in the known market space.” 

The canvas allows you to understand where the competition is currently investing, the factors the industry currently competes on in products, services, and delivery, and what customers receive from the existing competitive offerings on the market.

Horizontal axis: what factors competitors compete on. These are the critical promotional factors of the product.

 

Vertical axis: The offering level the buyers receive across all these key competing factors. A high score means the company offers buyers more and hence invests more in that factor. 

The value curve, the fundamental component of the strategy canvas, is a graphic depiction of the companies relative performance across its industry factors of competition. This curve is their strategic profile.

When the competitor’s profiles are all similar, it won’t work to offer a little more for a little less. A new strategy may nudge sales up but will hardly drive a company to open up uncontested market space. Nor is conducting extensive consumer research on the path to blue oceans. Their study found that customers can scarcely imagine how to create uncontested market space.

To shift the industry’s strategy, you must begin by reorienting your analysis from competitors to alternatives and from customers to non-customers. To pursue both value and low cost, don’t benchmark competitors look at differentiation you should resist the old logic of benchmarking competitors in the existing field and choosing between differentiation and cost leadership.

As you shift your strategic focus from current competition to alternatives and non-customers, you gain insight into redefining the problems the industry focuses on and thereby reconstruct buyer value elements that reside across industry boundaries.

Conventional strategic logic, by contrast, drives you to offer better solutions than your rivals to existing problems defined by your industry.

What makes up the definition of value? If the difference is very slight, you may have to create a new value. For example, with inexpensive wines, people had difficulty distinguishing between brands, and the prices were very similar. Therefore, the company had to create a wine with a new, different taste.

 The four actions framework

Chan and Mauborgne developed the four actions framework to reconstruct buyer value elements. Your want to break the trade-off between differentiation and low cost, and to create a totally new value curve. Therefore the key questions to challenge an industry strategic logic and business model are:

  1. Which factors does the industry take for granted that should be eliminated?
  2. Which factor should be reduced well below the industry standard?
  3. Which factor should be raised well above the industry standard?
  4. Which factors could you create that have never been offered?  

Question one forces you to consider eliminating factors that companies in your industry have competed on forever. Those factors often taken for granted may no longer have value or may distract from value. Also, a fundamental change in what buyers value could have occurred. Often companies that focus on benchmarking don’t see these changes.

Question two forces you to determine if products or services have been overdesigned to match competition. If true, they are increasing their costs for no gain.   

Question three pushes you to uncover and eliminate the compromises your industry forces customers to make.

Question four helps you discover entirely new sources of value for buyers, create new demand, and shift the strategic pricing of the industry.

By pursuing the first two questions — eliminating and reducing — you gain insight into how to drop your cost structure. Managers rarely set out to eliminate and reduce factors Rarely do managers systematically set out to eliminate and reduce factors on which they compete. This can result in mounting cost structures and complex business models.

The second two factors, by contrast, provide you with insight into lifting buyer value and creating new demand. Collectively, they allow you to systematically explore how to create value and new experiences across alternative industries and keep your cost costs down.

Applying these four actions framework to the strategic canvas of your industry, you get a revealing new look at old perceived truths.

 The eliminate -reduce – raise – create tool. There is an additional third tool, the — eliminate -reduce – raise – create tool — that is key to Blue Ocean strategy. It is a supplementary tool or analytic to the four action framework. The grid pushes companies to ask all four questions in the four actions framework and then think about how you could create a new value grid. This has some immediate benefits:  

 

  1.  It pushes you to simultaneously pursue differentiation and low costs to break the value-cost trade-off.
  2. Immediately flags companies that focus only on raising and creating, thereby lifting their cost structure and often over-engineering products and services, a commonplace in many companies.
  3. Managers easily understand it at any level, creating a high level of engagement in its application.
  4. It drives companies to scrutinize every factor the industry competes on, enabling them to recognize the assumptions they make in competing in the industry.  

 

 

What Is Blue Ocean Strategy?

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Many founders and business leaders find themselves up against a bloody, competitive marketplace. Maybe your business is seeing its margins shrink, competition getting more intense, revenues stagnant or declining, or even rising costs.

  How do you get out of this challenge and create an uncontested market space with continuous revenues and strategy that makes the competition irrelevant? A strategy and offering with a high-value impact and a low cost. 

At the same time, the economy, markets, and buyers are constantly evolving, so you also have to have a process of continuous renewal.  

 Competition should not be the center of strategic thinking.

 A focus on competition all too often keeps companies anchored in a competitive struggle. This focus puts the competition, not the customer, at the core of their strategy. As a result, companies’ attention gets focused on benchmarking rivals and responding to their strategic moves, rather than focusing on how to deliver a leap in value to buyers. 

In W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne’s book, Blue Ocean Strategy, they explain how to shift from competing to creating a new market space, making the competition irrelevant.

The aim is not to outperform competitors; it offers a quantum leap in value that makes the competition relevant. The focus is on creating value, not positioning against competitors. Just because competition is doing something does not mean it’s connected to the buyer’s value position.

  The more a company focuses on the competition and strives to match their advantages, the more they look like the competition.

Industry structures can be shaped.

Most people feel that an industry’s structure is a given. Therefore if the industry structure is fixed, they have to build their business based on it. Consequently, your strategy performance becomes a zero-sum game for one company’s gain is another companies loss because there is only one marketplace. 

By contrast, Blue Ocean’s market strategy shows how strategy can shape structure in an organization’s favor to create a new market space. A market space the company can own.

Unlock your creativity

Creativity is not a black box. Blue Ocean strategy allows you to develop underlying analytic frameworks, tools, and methodologies to systematically link innovation to value and reconstruct industry boundaries. And at the same time, maximize opportunity and minimize risk. 

For example, tools like the strategy canvas and six paths reconstruct market boundaries to an unstructured problem in strategy and allow you to create Blue Oceans systematically.

Why is the Blue Ocean Strategy of rising importance?

Competition in existing industries is getting more fierce and pressure put on costs and profits increasing. These forces have not gone away. On the contrary, they have only intensified. Today, companies are increasingly required to reimagine their strategies to achieve more value at a lower cost.

 The rising influence and use of digital megaphones

The extraordinary growth of the internet and social media has become close to ubiquitous around the globe. It has shifted the power and credibility of messages from organizations to individuals. Therefore, your offering needs to stand out as never before. That’s what gets people tweeting your praises. 

A shift in future demand and growth

When people worldwide talk about growth markets of the future, Europe and Japan hardly get mentioned. Even the United States has increasingly taken a backseat in terms of future growth prospects. Instead, today China and India, and Brazil, are growing rapidly in importance. 

These rising economies represent new demand and represent oceans of new potential competitors with global ambitions. 

With a simple website today, any business can have a global storefront. Also, people from anywhere can raise money via crowdfunding. Services like Gmail and Skype make communication costs free or meager cost. Trust in transactions cannot be rapidly and economically achieved by using services like people and companies you know. Also, vetting suppliers across the world is relatively quick and easy.

And there are search engines, the equivalent of global business directories, that are free. As for international advertising, there’s also Twitter and YouTube, where you can market your offering at no cost. 

With today’s low cost of entry, companies anywhere in the world can participate in international markets and offer their wares or services. To stand apart from these overcrowded markets, you need to be creative and have value innovations commensurate with your value.

Additional information on Blue Ocean Strategy and making your competition irrelevant.

This introduction is just the beginning of defining and exploring the Blue Ocean Strategy. ClickVisor provides the information you need to meet the challenges and opportunities that will help you build a successful business with continuously growing revenues.  

 

 

Part Two: Turning Creativity Into Innovations

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This article continues our discussion of creativity and innovation. In Part One, we talked about the creative process. In part two, we are going to talk about turning creativity into innovations.  

Creativity is coming up with novel, useful ideas

Innovation is creativity for commercial ideas

I need to start this section on innovation with a word of caution. Fear (of an uncertain outcome) is often the reason people don’t implement their ideas. You have to accept some risk with something new.

Start By Asking Good Questions

 Ask lots of questions starting by rethinking your market, products, and services and the value customers get from your products and services. Also, how you frame the question matters, even flip the question around, for example, positively to negatively. For example:

Where are you in the process of going from selling to innovators and early adopters to the late Mainstreet market? Each of these steps has different problems and opportunities.

In the early stages of marketing, is your market niche too broad-based? Does your niche include people who talk to each other, so they tell others about your unique product or service?  

What “value” are your customers looking for when they buy your product.? Do they all have the same “value”?  BMW is a luxury car, and its customers are looking for “the ultimate driving machine.” Rolls-Royce, made by BMW, is also a luxury car, but its value is “super luxury” and prestige. 

The questions you ask are related to the problem or opportunity but don’t limit your overall perspective.   

 Some Paths To Creativity And Innovation

  1. An intuitive approach (based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning) is recommended by Stephen Schwartz, a futurist.
  2. You need to master the craft you are to get the perceptions and judgment you will need.
  3. Continue to believe there is a solution to your problem
  4. Be willing to surrender your biases so that you can look at new ideas.
  5. Have a technique to look inward (meditation, relaxing) to get an instant picture.
  6. Focus and concentrate on your question, problem, or opportunity. 
  7. Explain your insight and repeat the process for additional ideas.   

Dr. Travis Bradberry, a co-author of “Emotional Intelligence,” offers advice on the habits of exceptionally creative people.

  1. Give yourself time to produce junk. Every idea will not be a breakthrough.
  2. Don’t take failure seriously. Commit to a process. You want to see things that others don’t see. New ideas are bringing together two old ideas. Connect and combine.
  3. Force yourself to create consistently. Don’t wait for the idea to come to you. Creativity is a process.
  4. Create for yourself, not just for money. You are more creative when it’s for yourself.
  5. Be Productive. You are never more than one great idea away from a breakthrough
  6. Focus and concentrate on your issue or opportunity.  
  7. Explain your idea, and then start the process over again.  

Here are a few more that I believe are important:

  1. Creative people don’t make decisions quickly; they delay and defer
  2. Attitude more important than intelligence
  3. Stay with the problem until you get a  solution.
  4. Look for alternatives rather than an answer
  5. Create a hypothesis so you can test your idea
  6. You find the answer you are seeking, or you learn.

Turning Creative Thinking Into Innovation

Following are some critical points of Guy Kowalski, Silicon-Valley based author, speaker, and entrepreneur, which are essential to turn ideas into innovations.

  1. You need the desire to change things, not just make money. Create value for your customers. 
  2. Have a core story or Mantra about why you are doing this “project,” not a fluffy mission statement.  
  3. Make sure you have a clear perspective about what you are doing. Your goal is to change the curve (make a big jump, not an incremental jump) and then keep improving your product or service over time so you can lead the market forward.   
  4. Roll The dice. New products are risky, but you have to take risks if you make significant changes. 
  5. Don’t worry, be crappy. Don’t wait for everything to be perfect. Ship things.
  6. Let customers use your product the way they want to and learn from it, Apple introduced the Mac computer as a spreadsheet machine, but customers used it as a page maker. 
  7. Make your product for a specific audience. You only care about the ones who like the product.  
  8. Churn (keep innovating: 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc.) 
  9. Strive to keep your product or service unique and valuable.   
  10. Perfect your pitch. Customize it for every audience. 

Conclusion

This information and Part One will hopefully give you some background on creativity to begin using some of the creative tools in the strategy and innovation section. Go there and pick a technique and try it. I think you will be surprised at the number of results you get. 

See also Part One, “Why Everyone Has The Capability To Be Creative.” 

Next, try to use some creative techniques on a problem or opportunity you have. 

 

Why Everyone Has The Capability To Be Creative

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Why Everyone Has The Capability To Be Creative

Let’s Start With A Little Humour

Humor is by far the most significant behavior of the human brain. Humor indicates the nature of an information system that gives rise to perception and how you see the world better than any other mental behavior. Existing perceptions set up in one way can suddenly be reconfigured in another way. Humour is the essence of creativity.

Story from Winston Churchill

“If I were married to you, I should put poison in your coffee. “

“And if I were married to you, I should drink the coffee. “

We are born creative; we have to learn how to turn concepts and ideas into innovations. We can only recognize ideas that have a logical link back to the original point. Therefore, all valuable creative ideas must be logical in hindsight.  

Why We Need Creativity

Creativity opens up the entire world to us. It helps your business grow with new strategies, products and processes, and new marketing strategies.  

Creativity can make things better. Without creativity, we cannot make full use of the information and experience that already exists is readily and is locked up in old structures, patterns, concepts, and all perceptions.

Our Two Types Of Information Systems

We have both a passive system and an active system. In passive systems, information and the recording of that information is passive. Any activity comes from an external organizer that relates the data and moves it around. Language on the left side and creativity on the right side of our brain

In an active system, the information and the recording are dynamic, and the info organizes itself without the help of an external organizer. Our nerve networks in the brain allow incoming information to organize itself into a sequence of temporary stable states that succeed each other to give a series of related events.  

Over time, the sequence of activity becomes a sort of preferred path or pattern. Once established, these patterns are most valuable because they allow us to recognize things. Then, once a pattern has been triggered, we see things in terms of our previous experience.

So whenever we look at the world, we see the world in terms of our existing patterns. These existing patterns are why analysis alone doesn’t produce new ideas. The brain only sees what it is prepared to see –our existing information and patterns. So when we analyze data, we can only pick out the ideas we already have.

Asymmetry

However, if we entered the pattern from a different point, we could follow that point back to the starting point. It is this asymmetry pattern that gives rise to both humor and creativity. In telling a joke, we are moving along the known pathway. Suddenly we are shifted to a new viewpoint, and immediately we see a different path we could take. 

Here is an example from Phil Davis, a U.K. author. You could think of this process as the old telephone system. 

  1. The telephone operator connects two different people. By combining two patterns of thinking, you can create new ideas.
  2. Established patterns are the enemy of creativity (there is only one way)
  3. Tools are there to break these patterns  

We can only recognize ideas that have a logical link back to the original point. Therefore, all valuable creative ideas must be logical in hindsight.  

In summary, the brain is a beautiful device for allowing incoming information to organize itself into patterns. Once these patterns are formed, we use those patterns in the process known as perception. The patterns are not symmetric. This lack of symmetry gives rise to both humor and creation.

An Illustration Of The Time Sequence Process  

We collect information over time. The information does not all arrive at once but in dribs and drabs. At every moment, the system tries to make the best use of the information available. This system resembles individuals, institutions, corporations, and cultures.

 As we receive information:

The first letter is A

A is followed by T to give the word AT

The following letter is R, which is added AT to give RAT.

Letters representing incoming information and the total available information make up a word.

The following letter is E to give the word RATE.

The next letter is G, which gets added to give a GRATE.

So far, the new information has been easily added to the existing structures.

The following letter is T. There is no easy way to add T to the pattern. You can only form a new word by going back and disrupting existing structures to reassemble the letters to give TARGET.

In this example, we can see how the time sequence of arrival of the information sets up structures that have to be disrupted to put things together differently. This process is a helpful definition of creativity. Without creativity, we cannot move forward in such a system.

After a while, these items of information are no longer separate letters in the game. For example, the cluster RAT has survived so long that it has become a solid piece and resists disruption. And why our basic perceptions resist disruption.

Some Characteristics Of Creative People 

Tina Seeling, author and professor at Stanford, offers these characteristics of creative people:

  1. Knowledge of an area. You need to work with information. Pay attention to things.
  2. Imagination (reframe the programmed issue). Example 5+5=10. But many other ways to get to 10, 1+9, etc. Connect and combine things. Challenge assumptions.
  3. Attitude needs to be positive,
  4. Habitat (rules people you work with, physical space)
  5. Resources (money, time, etc.) When thinking, don’t limit yourself.
  6. Culture. You need to infuse creativity into the entire organization. You call failure “data.” Rapid prototype and experiment again.

Conclusion

Bottom line. The nature of creativity: If you don’t put your idea into action, the idea is of no value.

See also Part Two: “Turning Creativity Into Innovations.” Comments and questions are appreciated.

 

How To Create Value Monopolies, Part Two

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The source of sur/petition

Sur/petition goes far beyond housekeeping. Getting things right within the organization (cost control, quality) is undoubtedly essential, but this merely gets the baseline right. Classic competition is part of housekeeping, though it is also concerned with getting the baseline right. 

Quality and prices have to be correct. There is a slight overlap between product differentiation and sur/petition, but the overlap is not considerable.

Sur/petition is not so much concerned with differentiating changes in the product as it is with the uniqueness of the value provided. There are several ways in which value monopolies were established in the past. Some are still as important as they ever were, but others have become less important over time. The following are some of the ways you can establish value monopolies.

Physical uniqueness

There is only one Mona Lisa and only one Van Gogh irises. Their price may fluctuate with the market, but their unique value will remain. A retail store built in a prime location may, over time, lose its special status. 

Technological uniqueness

Patents are an obvious example of a value monopoly. Intellectual property is crucial and should be protected. The pharmaceutical industry has the most patent protection because of the long development time required.

 Outside of the pharmaceutical field, sur/petition through technology is much less secure. Technology may only provide a six-month to one-year lead time, and except for exceptional cases, lead times may be reduced further. 

There’s also the problem of very high technology development costs with a small, narrow market. This problem is happening in the chip market as more chipmakers focus on specially designed chips vs. the broad commodity chip market. You can keep up your margins but also progressively reduce your market.  

Also, new products are being developed that are not technology breakthroughs but new applications of technology. The application can be more valuable than pure technology. That is why there is a need to treat concept development as seriously as technical development. 

Name recognition

The extent to which the name of a politician, company, brand, author, Etc., is familiar to the public. Name or brand awareness and brand recognition lead to Brand Trust.  

Dominance

Occasionally, a corporation becomes so dominant that it provides sur/petition by its position alone. This dominance is undoubtedly true for Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Facebook.  

A dominant position is a good base for sur/petition, but it needs to be continuously used. Boeing may be somewhat complacent about his dominant position, which is always much more vulnerable than it looks.  

Cost of entry

CMOS chips require less power than standard chips but require heavy capital investment. The cost of entry is high and requires continuous injection of development funds; there is protection from newcomers. However, existing cash flow has to cover these development costs.  

Once something is established, the cost of displacing it may be huge. The keyboard’s design, which was to slow down typing, is still the prominent keyboard today. We could design a much more efficient one today, but the cost of introducing it would be huge.

Brand image

The most traditional way of getting a value monopoly is through the brand image. McDonald’s does very well despite its many competitors. Heinz tomato ketchup continues to be a favorite. Familiarity, availability, dependability, and public image are essential when other values are similar.

Although brand images are a useful way of gaining recognition, there will probably be an even greater need for them in the future. However, it will become increasingly difficult to sustain them as quality improves and consumers become more conscious of their values. 

Segmentation

 Specific niches, segmentation, and market focus have always been ways of gaining a sur/position. At the very least, they give a company a good starting position. Even when others enter the same area, there is still an initial advantage, provided management can keep up the quality.

As always, there is an initial advantage and the importance of follow-through. It is possible to have market segments that are even too specific. Then, there is the same problem as with very specialized products. The market may be tiny. Having a dominant position in a small market may not be good enough. If the market gets bigger or seems lucrative, others will undoubtedly take a good look at it.

Protection or plus

Above were some of the more traditional methods of getting value monopolies. Some of them are forms of protection, like patterns and cost of entry. A few are based on uniqueness. The rest have to be based on some sort of a plus.

The plus factors will come from careful attention to integrated values. For example, Domino’s Pizza was based directly on this concept. People who want pizza do not feel like going out to get one, so Domino’s delivers to their door. 

Perrier is another example of integrated values. Perrier introduced the concept of designer water and kept up the pressure to remain the market leader. People are becoming more health-conscious. The two-martini lunch was going away, so what were you going to have for lunch? Water made you seem very cheap and often tasted awful. So consumers were crying out for the most expensive possible way of drinking water, and Perrier satisfied that need. It became not only socially acceptable but even a mark of sophistication.  

One of the worst reasons for not doing something is that it might hurt existing businesses. But that is where sur/petition may be found in new concepts.

 

Competition vs. Sur/petition, Part One          

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Competition is for survival. Sur/petition is for success.

Competition is the critical ingredient in free-market economics. It prevents monopoly pricing and ensures that consumers get the best deal. It also ensures that producers make every effort to be efficient and to provide quality. if not, they risk being driven out of business by a producer who offers better prices or quality. 

The purpose of the competition is to benefit the consumer by keeping prices down and quality up. The competition also helps the economy by ensuring the most efficient use of resources and encouraging enterprise. New businesses with better ideas, prices, or quality can enter the field and compete against those already in it. Then there is a great deal to be said for competition.

The competition benefits the economy as a whole and consumers. Only part of the benefit of competition is for the producers. To be sure, producers are driven to greater productivity and efficiency, but these benefits are not reflected in greater profits, only in survival.

Companies put much effort into competing with one another, but the result may be merely the same existing market share for each. However, the competition allows the more effective producer to increase market share at the expense of the less efficient producer, sales volume may go up, but margins and profits may not.

In short, competition puts pressure on the producers. You have to be competitive to survive. Just as labor costs and environmental concerns or pressures on producers, so also is competition.

Sur/petition

Sur/petition is concerned with how you move forward from the baseline. Physical monopolies are illegal in many countries, and value monopolies are not. Value monopolies are for the benefit of the producers and are also in the interest of consumers. Companies are now moving away from survival economics and toward value economics.

Value economics means that consumers can choose what value means for them. You decide to buy something because you value it. Today, sur/petition and value monopolies are very much in the general economic interest. Value economics is about creating opportunities for spending money as you wish. 

So value economics, sir petition, and value monopolies benefit the economy, consumers, and producers, which contrasts a competitive economy. 

Classic competition certainly needs to be there; otherwise, the benefits of value economics will quickly disappear. But once the classic competition is in place, it is no longer sufficient. We also need sur/petition to make value economics work. Sony Walkman is a good example. Sony kept improving and improving the Walkman and is still the leader today. The real value of the Walkman story is not in recognizing its creation but in its potential success and running with it. They did not sit back and relish their success. They started producing model after model. There are over 100 other competitors offering very similar models, but Sony is still the leader.

Some people are disillusion with innovation because they claim they put in the development costs and open up the market, and then new companies jump in and take all the profits. That is what happens if you sit back. You have to create your own race against potential new competitors, which is what sur/petition is all about.

See also, How To Create Value Monopolies, Part Two

 

 

Solve Problems And Gain Insights Intuitively 

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Intuitive techniques allow you to tap into your unconsciousness and find the ideas that you already have. To solve a problem, you have to believe that you already have the answer in your unconscious. 

Michael Michalko, in his book, “Thinkertoys,” explains how Intuitive techniques show you how to take advantage of your right brain’s capability to perceive insights all at once from your unconscious. The following discussion is based on his study of intuition and problem-solving.

Using intuition means paying attention to your feelings and knowing their accuracy and how well you apply your intuition to your problem. Here are some examples of using intuition. 

“George Washington solved his most difficult problems during the revolutionary war with intuition. He would instruct his orderlies not to let anyone disturb him while he relaxed and intuited decisions.’ Another example is Conrad Hilton, who is bidding for the Stevens Hotel in Chicago. He offered the number and won the world’s largest hotel by $200.”

Successful managers often use intuition. Present an intuitive manager with a company’s financial report, and s/he will accurately assess the firm’s strengths, weaknesses, and future. Present the same manager with a personal problem, and s/he will evaluate the situation and intuit the solution and possible courses of action.

Five ways managers use intuition

Harvard business professor Daniel Isenberg studied 16 senior managers in major corporations. He spent days observing them as they work, interviewing them, and having them perform various exercises designed to figure out what made them successful.

He identified five different ways successful managers use intuition to:

1 Help them sense when a problem exists

2 Rapidly perform well-learned behavioral patterns

3 Synthesize isolated bits of data and experience into an integrated picture

4 Check on the results of rational analysis. They search until they match their gut feeling and their intellect.

5. Bypass in-depth analysis and come up with a quick solution. Charles Merrill of Merrill Lynch once said that he was right 60% of the time if he made decisions fast. If he took time, analyzed the situation, and decided carefully, he would be right 70% of the time. However, that extra 10% was seldom worth the time.

Intuitive people develop superior insight that enables them to perceive whole situations in sudden leaps of logic. John Mihalasky and a Douglas Dean at the new year New Jersey Institute of Technology discovered that 80% of CEOs whose is profits doubled over five years had above-average intuitive powers.

The blueprint for achieving intuition

The two basic principles of intuition are: it must be developed and should be incorporated with reason.

1 It must be developed. Strive to be aware of your intuition daily. When do they occur? How do they feel? Practice your skills by making guesses before a situation is thoroughly analyzed.

To condition your mind, ask yourself some “yes” and “no” questions to which you already know the answers. Observe how you get the answers. You may see a yes or no. NO matter how your answer comes; concentrate on getting future answers in the same way.

Do the same with choices. Start by thinking about a choice you have already made, and imagine the options you had when you made a choice. If you think of the choice you have already made, observe the word, phrase, image, or symbol that represents that choice. Remember how you got the answer, and focus on getting future answers in the same way. Pratice making a few simple choices you haven’t made before.

2 combine intuition with reason. In an interview, Jonas Salk, the scientist to discover the polio vaccine: “I’m saying we should trust her intuition. I believe that the principles of the universe are revealed to us through intuition. And I think that if we combine our intuition with our reason, we can respond in an evolutionary sound way to our problems. Affective, creative conceptualization requires that one incorporate reason and logic as well as intuition and feeling.”

The exercises on the following pages will re-introduce you to your intuitive senses.

Problem-solving

Professor George Turin, of the University of California at Berkeley, states that the components of solving problems with intuition are:

1 The ability to know how to attack a problem without knowing how you know.

2 The ability to relate a problem in one field to seemingly different problems in unrelated areas. The ability to see links, connections, and relationships between ideas and objects.

3 The ability to recognize the crux of the problem.

4 The ability to see in advance a general solution to the problem.

5 The ability to identify solutions because they feel right. The ability to focus on what may be rather than what is.

Experts at the intuitive problem-solving approach can rarely provide an accurate account of how they obtained their answers and may be unclear on what aspect of the problem they focused on before the insight.

Brainwriting

Brainwriting is a way to solve problems using intuition. Find a quiet spot and relax. Write out your particular challenge and concentrate on it for a few minutes.

Write down some pertinent questions about your challenge: What is in my best interest? What should I do? Are there other alternatives? Which alternative is preferred? And so on. And wait for the answer. 

It may come as a voice in your mind, or you may seem to be communicating with someone else. Try to write down your answers as they come. Don’t analyze or think. Write whatever occurs to you. Keep asking questions, and keep writing the responses until the responses stop. Finally, read and review what you have written. The answer to your challenge may be there.

Summary

Strive to be aware of your intuition daily. Think about choices you have made and observe how you recognized the answer. Try making some simple choices you haven’t made before. 

Practice will help you when you don’t have the time to do a deep analysis and make a quick decision and accept the consequences. 

 

Create New Concepts Before Your Competitors Do 

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Design thinking aims to create new thoughts about the solution or answer we seek and then visualize and shape those thoughts into concepts that will result in new strategies or tactics. It is how we solve problems and create new or improved sources of revenue.  

Wikipedia defines concepts as abstract ideas or general notions occurring in our minds, speech, or thoughts. A concept is challenging to describe, but we need to look for them, design them and use them. This discussion is based on information from Edward de Bono and his books on thinking.

A concept consists of two parts: the concept and its implementation. Concepts are essential but very difficult to generate. However, In hindsight, almost all successful concepts seem obvious.

An idea is how you put a concept into action. For example, traveling along the road is a concept. Still, you have to do something specific in practice, such as walking, riding a bike, or driving a car.

 A Concept vs. Perception

There is a difference between perception and a concept. Perception is seeing a group of things when we look at the world we haven’t named, like flowers or mountains. A concept is a group of things with a purpose or benefit like sales tax, traffic control, or a restaurant.  

There are some exceptions. The restaurant is both a description and a concept, it sells people food, and there’s a place to eat it. The purpose and benefit are apparent. 

Forming concepts

With perception, we can only receive information in the patterns that we have already formed. So, an analysis of data is unlikely to create new concepts. However, we can select from concepts we already have. However, you can form a new concept by modifying or improvement of an existing concept. Also, a simple piece of information can give rise to many concepts, but they will come from concepts we already have in our minds.

The critical point is the need to do conceptual work in our head and not just wait for information to provide concepts because that is unlikely to happen.

Business use of concepts

Many businesses are impatient with concepts and prefer “doing things rather than thinking.” However, the world is getting crowded with products and services, so creating new concepts is critical as we move into the future.  

A new concept is unquestionably the best and cheapest way of getting added value out of existing resources. Businesses have been approaching concept development haphazardly. They wait for someone else to develop the concept and then jump in with a similar copy.

In the future, we must take concepts more seriously. Major companies spend billions on technical research, but new concept creation is as important as technical resources. 

Conclusion

Learning how to analyze information and make decisions is not going to be enough. These skills are necessary for maintenance management in a competitive market. But, in a globally competitive market, you need to shift part of your focus to conceptual thinking in addition to analysis and decision making. 

Why? Because analysis of information can never yield the concepts hidden in data. Also, we now know from the research into self-organizing information systems like our mind, we know what we need to do to get creative concepts.

Also, because the brain was not designed to be creative, we have to use methods that are “not natural,” like the random word method, to generate innovative concepts.

For a quick start to creating new concepts, check out the information on the Random Word method to get creative concepts and ideas. It is easy and powerful.

 

Creative Results From Your Team  

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Creative Results From Your Team

As someone who has been in many “brainstorming” sessions, I can’t tell you they don’t work, but I can tell you they don’t work as well as some other methods. The Six Hats method makes much more sense. It is easy to use, structured to include everyone, and the processes make the meetings more productive.

The Six Hats method allows us to think in parallel to explore a subject in a constructive rather than an adversarial way. 

The Six Hats method of thinking, created by Edward de Bono, author, and professor, challenges all those at the meeting to fully use their minds and not just negatively. Someone who is against an idea being discussed is expected to honestly and objectively still see the values in the proposed concept.

The framework of the six hats might seem to complicate discussions and make the meetings last much longer. But the opposite is true. The use of the six hats method significantly reduces meeting time. Sessions progress in a natural, orderly way from getting initial information to creating concepts and ideas. 

After using this method a few times, you will be able to get many creative ideas in a setting that is not only productive but also team-building. Plus, you will get results in a fraction of the time it usually takes for such a meeting. 

Following are the six hats:

 The Blue Hat is the person who organizes and controls the meeting.  It is used right at the beginning of a discussion to decide the focus and what sequence of hats the session will use. The conference does not have to be conducted in the order presented here, but this order is the most logical progression. The blue hat reminds people of the hat in use during the meeting if they stray away for some reason. The Blue Hat is also used at the end of the outcome, summary, and next steps.  

The White Hat is concerned with information.  What information do we have? What information is missing? What information do we need – and how are we going to get it?  If conflicting information is put forward, there is no argument. Both versions are put down in parallel and then discussed when that information needs to be used. 

Red Hat has to do with feelings, emotions, and intuition. Under the Red Hat, all participants are invited to put forward their feelings. In a regular discussion, you can only put forward these things if they are disguised as logic. There is no need to justify or explain them. They exist and can therefore be put forward. The Red Hat is very brief and simply allows these things to get out on the table.  

Black Hat is for critical thinking. What is wrong with the idea? What are its weaknesses? The black hat looks at the downside, why something will not work, the risks, and dangers. All the negative comments made during a meeting are concentrated under the Black Hat. The Black Hat is beneficial, but it has a defined time and place.   

Yellow Hat focuses on the positive. What are the benefits? How could it be done? What is the value? Traditionally, our education is primarily about critical thinking. We are never really exposed to developing forward-thinking concepts. For example, the ability to find value in anything, even things we do not like and will not use. Nevertheless, we should, honestly and objectively, find value in things. Without sensitivity to value, creativity can be a waste of time.

Green Hat is directly concerned with creativity. When the Green Hat is in use, participants are expected to make a creative effort or keep quiet. Most people do not like keeping quiet, so they make an effort. This effort means looking for new ideas. It means considering alternatives, both the obvious ones and new ones. It means generating possibilities. It means modifying and changing a suggested idea, possibly through the use of lateral thinking tools.

Conclusion

That is all there is. A simple method that allows everyone to think together to explore a subject and generate new concepts and ideas on how to move forward in a constructive rather than an adversarial way.  

Try to use this method in a small group first, so you get the hang of it. It may take a couple of times to get it right. But, once you have the method down, it’s easy to use and productive.

Let us know how it works for you.

 

 

 

 

The Random Word Technique/A Creative Tool For New Ideas

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It is our perceptions that control emotions, and emotions control behavior. If your perception changes, you have no choice; your emotions and behavior will change also. The random word technique helps you change your perspective, so you see concepts and new ideas differently.  

The mechanism of the mind

We can now base thinking on the way the mind works. In Edward de Bono’s book, “mechanisms of the mind,”  he describes the mind as a self-organizing system. Based on this self-organizing system, he designed the lateral thinking process.

The asymmetric patterning behavior of all human minds gives us creativity and humor. That is why we have excellent thinking (landing on the moon, fly faster than sound, computers, etc.) The interaction of our asymmetric mind is what gives us the ability to do creative thinking.

Perception

Perception is far more important than logic. Logic is excellent but not enough. 

We have made significant achievements in science, technology, and engineering. We need to supplement our existing thinking methods with perceptual thinking, creative thinking, and design thinking.  

The formal tools of lateral thinking

Lateral thinking means moving across established patterns of thought instead of moving along them. For example,  if there is an obvious route in one direction, we are naturally blocked from taking other unknown ways. (The dominant pattern).

The lateral thinking tool requires that we block the obvious path (A to B). It may be the best way, but we will seek alternatives (drilling oil wells from vertical to horizontal, for example).

Focus is important:  

What do you want to focus questions? What problem do you want to solve? Where do you want new ideas? There are two types of focus:

Purpose focus: a problem to solve, a process to simplify, a conflict to resolve, a product to improve. Etc.

Area focus: the general area in which you want new ideas. This area could be the market, the industry, or your market niche, for example. The random word tool is very useful for area focus because it works even with no defined starting point. 

The focus area may be broad or narrow. You want new ideas about your focus objective (purpose or scope).  

                          C wallet

A______________________________B

                         Restaurant

Therefore, to get new ideas, you need to get your mind off the traditional path A to B (the pattern already in your mind) and move laterally across the path to point C, a new starting point. For example, a random word disrupts the known pattern and asymmetrically opens your mind to a new pattern, pathway or idea.  

In the random word technique, point C would be a random word you connect mentally to the focused area. This process allows you to create multiple new concepts or ideas about your targeted focus area.

Select Random Words

Select the random words to use as your new starting points. There are several ways to get random words. One of the best ways is to use the dictionary. Open the dictionary to a random page and then put your finger on a random word and select the closest word (a noun). Choose about five more words. Write them down. 

Be sure you know the definition of each word because you will associate the characterizations of each word with your focus question  Work quickly through each of the words, but don’t judge your responses at this time. Each idea response represents the possibility of a great idea. You are going to spend about 5-10 minutes exploring each random word. 

For example, focus: on a new restaurant. 

Random word: wallet.

One concept would be a restaurant where people order food, pay immediately, and take the food elsewhere to eat vs. ordering in, eating the food at the restaurant, and only paying after eating. 

A restaurant where people are charged by the amount of time they spend at the restaurant. 

A restaurant known for one special, unique and expensive dish served at one particular time every day.  

Concepts

There can be functional or operational concepts to describe the way something is done. There are usually several levels of concept, from broad to detailed.

There can be value concepts (why is this a value?) Or purpose concepts (why are we doing this?) And descriptive concepts.

The importance of concepts is developing alternatives and new ideas by extracting the concept and looking for ways to deliver this concept through a specific idea. Ideas are the way of putting the concept into action.

Try it out

Try it on a focus of yours. The more you do, the more you learn and the more ideas you will get.

Let us know how this works for you or if you have any questions.