InnovatorsDigest

New "Plan-a-Date-to-Innovate" Calendar with Over 100 Innovation Events

Innovators seeking unique opportunities to learn at workshops, webinars, conferences and experiences should check out our new calendar by clicking HERE.

Find out the dates of leading-edge conferences such as the World Future Society's Conference, Pine & Gilmore's thinkAbout, a 2-day/4-webinar series called Accelerate-to-Innovate,  plus convenient low-cost Questionate-to-Innovate & Decorate-to-Innovate webinars.

Additionally, you will find dates for webinars, networking events, training workshops and certifications for innovation trainers, facilitators and coaches. Click HERE to link to the calendar. Bookmark this page to review the calendar often as it is updated weekly. Download a PDF of the calendar by clicking HERE.

NEW Innovation Tool of the Month Club.com Provides Innovation Stimulus

CLICK to Learn About a New Club for Innovators!

www.InnovationToolOfTheMonthClub.com

20 Questions to Increase Digital Engagement

Internet marketing experts Leland Harden and Bob Heyman authored, Digital Engagement, to help people understand how internet marketing can capture customers and build brand loyalty. The book contains a superb 2-page "Digital Engagement Scorecard" that is ideal for identifying innovative growth opportunities by leveraging the internet.

Harden offered the following 20 questions to get started on the path towards better digital engagement.

20 Questions to Increase Digital Engagement
1. What is digital engagement?
2. Is your site instrumented for measurement, and which web analytics tools should you consider?
3. What metrics should you be watching? What should you be measuring?
4. How can you protect all relevant domain names?
5. How can you aggressively protect your brand on search engines?
6. Should you be using more than just Google in your search program?
7. What is entailed in doing effective search engine optimization?
8. What are the best ways to use blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts or webinars to reach customers?
9. What should you consider when you set up a corporate blogging initiative?
10. How do you identify and recruit important influencers of your customer base?
11. How can you empower your customers to be effective word of mouth/word of web marketers for you?
12. How can you incorporate best practices of web video on your site?
13. How can you make a video go viral?
14. How can you make sure your web videos help your search engine rankings?
15. How can you make your online advertising more effective?
16. How can you easily gain incredible competitive intelligence on the web?
17. How you can use social networks to reach customers?
18. How should I utilize virtual worlds in my marketing initiatives?
19. What questions should I consider for the mobile web?
20. What are some of the best practices being utilized by companies using Web 2.0 tools?

Naturally, the book begins to answer all of the above questions. You can purchase Digital Engagement from Amazon.com by clicking HERE.

Investigate-to-Innovate with Solutionman's 7 Favorite "Needs, Wants, & Wishes" Questions

Gerald Haman devoted about 20 years to fine tune and perfect just SEVEN questions. Indeed that’s a long time, but innovators discovered the questions keep getting better.

Customers named the 7 questions, “Haman’s Investigator Questions” or HIQ. HIQ became famous as innovators have used the questions to generate thousands of ideas. Adidas used Haman’s Questions to develop award-winning sport shoes. Valvoline used Haman’s Investigator Questions to create breakthrough automotive products. AT&T used HIQ to better understand customers and tailor product offerings. Microsoft used HIQ to plan a successful conference for thousands of people.

While studying instructional design in graduate school at the University of Minnesota, Haman realized that one of the most important questions, instructional designers should ask was: “What should people know, and when do they need to know it?” That single question evolved into 7 questions as Haman helped customers apply the original instructional design question to designing innovative products, services and experiences.

Haman’s Instructional Design Question
(1990 Original): What should people KNOW, and WHEN do they need to know it?

Haman’s 7 Innovative Investigator Questions (2009 Version)

1. What should people BE? 
2. What should people KNOW?
3. What should people FEEL? 
4. What should people HAVE? 
5. What should people DO?
6. What should people THINK?
7. What should people SENSE?

Over the years the questions and their order have changed and evolved as innovators realized the questions could be used by nearly anyone for almost any goal, challenge or problem. Most people start out by asking a few traditional questions such as “What’s your goal? or What are the problems?” However those questions may not provoke people to think deeply or broad enough. Go ahead and experiment by using Haman’s Innovative Investigator Questions for your next meeting, interview or survey.

For owners of Haman’s KnowBrainer Innovation Tool, the questions will look familiar as they are included in the Investigate Stage of the tool.

Affiliate-to-Innovate: 60,000 LinkedIn Innovators in Groups Can Use NEW Discussion Forums

 LinkedIn just released a valuable new feature that allows Group members to engage in discussions about innovation, creativity and other interesting topics. Articles from Innovator's Digest will be linked to some provocative questions in Group Discussion areas. 
Get ThinkedIn by joining in our innovation conversations via the LinkedIn Groups that now include over 60,000 innovative minds.

Click Below to Join Our Top 24 LinkedIn
Innovation Groups & Join the Discussions!

1. InnovationPeople Network Group
2. Marketing, PR, Word of Mouth & Buzz Innovators Group
3. Green & Sustainability Innovators Group
4. Sales & Selling Innovators Group
5. New Product & Service Innovators Group
6. Meeting & Event Design Professionals Group
7. Experience Economy "Pine & Gilmore" Innovators Group
8. Fundraising & Philanthropic Innovators Group
9. Learning & Education Innovators Group
10. HealthCare, Medical, Pharma & Biotech Group
11. Brand Innovators & Branding Leadership Group
12. Technology & Mobility Innovators Group
13. Communication Innovators Group
14. Innovation Idols Group
15. Futurists & Anticipatory Scientists Group
16. TRIZ Innovation Tool Group
17. Portfolio Magazine's ThinkTank Panelist Group
18. Leadership & Change Management Innovators Group
19. Chicagovators Group of Chicagoland Innovation Leaders
20. SolutionPeople Innovators Group
21. Thinkubator Creative Meeting Environment Innovators
22. David Allen's "Getting Things Done" Group
23. illumination.com Innovators Group
24. InnovatorsDigest.com Innovation Network

Do you want your free subscription to Innovator'sDigest? Click HERE to subscribe and receive innovation news that includes questions used for LinkedIn Innovation Group Discussions.

Success is Dangerous

It's that time of the year again. Dan and his senior management team are at their annual strategic business meeting. They're feeling pretty good having just come off of a few years of success. As they get into the their planning discussion, a sinking feeling starts to come over the team. Where's the 2008, 2009, 2010 growth going to come from? Do they have enough in the pipeline? Has success inadvertently led them into the danger zone? Have they taken their eye off the "innovation ball?"

Hit it out of the park, by infusing an innovation culture into your organization. Below is a Part I excerpt of the "LEADING INNOVATION Question Bank" covering process (based on SolutionPeople's Accelerated Innovation Process) and designed for leaders who want to enable, inspire and drive innovation. Stay tuned for excerpts from Parts II & III covering the other aspects of culture such as strategy, communication, reward & recognition, structure, learning & development, and work environment.

LEAD-to-INVESTIGATE

1. What mechanisms, processes & methods are we using to determine what is needed, wanted or wished by our customers?
2. What percent of our strategy should be focused on incremental innovation versus breakthrough innovation?
3. How should we fund, resource and organize our innovation strategy?

LEAD-to-CREATE

1. How might we collaborate with customers, suppliers, partners, employees, academia, or competitors?
2. How might we form whole-brain teams for diversity of thought?
3. What innovation tools might we provide?

LEAD-to-EVALUATE

1. How could we evaluate ideas, prototypes, and concepts?
2. Who could be on the evaluation team?
3. How could we nurture ideas, but know when to stop developing them if necessary?

LEAD-to-ACTIVATE

1. What internal and external networks must be created & leveraged to bring our product or service to the desired market?
2. Who from the "investigate, create or evaluation team" must be included?
3. What roadblocks must I, as a leader, work to eliminate? 

Corinne Miller - Innovation Consultant, Facilitator, Trainer & Coach at SolutionPeople
Email Corinne

7 Improvements in the NEW KnowBrainer 4.0 Innovation & Creativity Tool

In 1989, Gerald "Solutionman" Haman released the Pocket Innovator, a tool FORTUNE magazine called "The World's First Creativity Tool." Tools created by Solutionman are now being used by over 100,000 people in 30 countries. The experience has paid off. Solutionman has released the NEW version 4.0 of the KnowBrainer Innovation & Creativity Tool.

Order KnowBrainer 4.0 tools for $98 at the SolutionStore and give them to your employees, families and friends. One company ordered 500 tools to distribute at a company meeting and everyone found the tool to be much more valuable than the traditional meeting handouts. The KnowBrainer's compact card-deck fan format puts the gift of inspiration for innovation in the palm your hand! Award-winning inventor, Solutionman, will be happy to include an autographed note card with tools ordered as a gift!

If people have an iPod, then they will enjoy getting the world's first innovation application for the iPod and iPhones – the PodBrainer. Computer users will appreciate the new FlashBrainer™ software also available at the SolutionStore.

What is "New and Improved" in Version 4.0?

1. Improved Content - 20% of cards were changed
2. Better Questions - Applied Questionation™ methods to formulate more provocative questions and added "Think" to popular "Be, Know, Feel, Have, Do" question cards
3. Clearer Directions - Instructional design facilitates better thinking and transition between Stages
4. Enhanced graphics - Improved color coding system
5. Innovation™ Process "Steps" are Renamed "Stages" - Provides opportunities to include "steps" within each Stage and integrates better with product development "Stage-Gate" models
6. Integrated with Software & iPod & iPhone eTools - Identical content to new FlashBrainer™ software and PodBrainer™ for iPods
7. Packaging Contains New ISBN# and Bar Codes - Convenient for distribution via book stores and Amazon.com

The Best Question to Be Asked by An Innovator

For over a decade, I've been asking people, "What's your favorite question to be asked by innovative people?" I've studied hundreds of responses and the trend is undeniable. The 3 most frequently used words in most of the questions are NEED, WANT and WISH. As a result, I've developed a simple, yet powerful question that I frequently ask people when I first meet them. I think this is the ultimate question to ask people in order to discover how you might help them. Six simple words can provoke and inspire some deep thoughts.

"What is NEEDED, WANTED or WISHED?"

Needs Are Different from Wants.
Three words (Needs, Wants, Wishes) may seem synonymous but they can provoke very different responses. What people think they need may not be what they want, and conversely, what some people want may not be what they need. Therefore, it is important to ask people what they need and want.

The WISH Word Inspires Dreaming.
When I attended a Synectics workshop I discovered the importance of phrasing problem headlines that began with the "I wish…" phrase that connects with desired experiences.

The Question is a KnowBrainer.
For graduates of my innovation training workshops and owners of the KnowBrainer innovation tool, you now know how I've incorporated the "Needs, Wants, Wish" question into the Stage 1 of the Accelerated Innovation Process and card #10 of the KnowBrainer.

Investigate-to-Innovate Exercise:

1. Identify 3-5 people you want to help
2. Ask them, "What do you need, want or wish?"
3. Take notes and distinguish the differences between needs, wants, and wishes
4. Create ideas to help them address their needs or wants, or make their wishes become reality

Idea-lly, Gerald "Solutionman" Haman