Think Out Loud is a blog brought to you by the team at ThinkTank - a catalytic consultancy specialising in strategic marketing, branding and innovation based in Cork, Ireland.
It is certainly refreshing in the Cork advertising space to see the broadsheet Irish Examiner making a bold move with the development of their hard hitting and thought provoking billboard and print ad campaign.
Developed by Dublin based Chemistry advertising the campaign promotes the Examiner’s “Special Investigations” supplement that tackles several of Ireland’s socially taboo subjects -including alcoholism, mental illness, clerical abuse, human trafficking, suicide and pornography.
When it comes to innovation we often focus on the sexy part – coming up with the ideas! In this insightful Harvard Business Review video Vijay Govindarajan, Tuck School of Business professor, talks about why innovation is so hard to implement and what you can do about it. Innovation is all about commercializing creativity and Vijay explains why companies need to forget about the past if they want to create the future. In his new book The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge with Chris Trimble – he explains how companies need to build separate innovation teams that a are separate from the operating engine of the business. This is important if you want to let go off organizational baggage and introduce new skills and fresh perspectives. You can follow Vijay on Twitter right HERE!
Good design is good business. Yet it’s amazing how few good business people recognize and understand the commercial value of good design.
Think about how every day poorly designed products and services add complexity instead of simplicity to our lives. The tortuously convoluted language used by the financial services industry, the non-intuitive features on electronic gadgets that most of us will never fathom, big call centres that tell you what they can’t do instead of what they can, antiquated recruitment practices that tick boxes instead of identifying talent and newspaper layouts that are cluttered with ads all fighting for attention like kids on a sugar rush! The universe may contain intelligent design but many products and services certainly do not!
After conducting 1500 in depth face-to-face interviews with CEOs and public service leaders around the world – “creativity” was identified as the single most important leadership competency for the successful business of the future.
The report suggests that creative leaders should “embrace ambiguity,” “take risks that disrupt legacy business models,” and “leapfrog beyond tried-and-true management styles.” Coming through the worst economic downturn in their professional lifetimes, when managerial control and process ruled the day, this indicates a remarkable shift in mindset. It’s a sea change from a rational ‘scientific’ management approach built around efficiency and control to a creative ‘intuitive’ approach – based upon agility, adaptability and emotional intelligence.
With the acceleration of the pace of change – global trends are reshaping the business landscape and are forcing companies to either adapt or die. At ThinkTank, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how companies can become more creatively evolved.
“Out there in some garage is an entrepreneur who’s forging a bullet with your company’s name on it,” Gary Hamel, a leading business strategy writer and consultant, has written. “You’ve got one option now — to shoot first. You’ve got to out-innovate the innovators.”
Unfortunately most organizations have an in built defence mechanism against new ideas. People don’t like change so immediately find reasons why ideas should not be considered. The problem is that if you don’t start anticipating the future you could be run over by it.
Many SME’s would acknowledge that they need to become more innovative but just don’t know how to start or where to begin. ThinkTank sat down to map out 4 practical ways SME’s can generate ideas, capture insights and successfully implement a game changing innovation strategy.
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