Innovation Engine: Driving Execution for Breakthrough Results

CHAPTER 9

Sourcing Radical Ideas

At some point, you will have exhausted all the good ideas from within your company. For sustainable growth, you will need to access radical fresh ideas that can catapult you to the next business model. This effort requires deliberate reimagination. By looking at trends and convergences, you can put new ideas into your innovation pipeline. Here are important resources, ideas, and methods to help you create disruption in various industries and some important macro trends that may impact your business within the next five years.

Ideas, ideas, ideas!

Ideas are the starting point for all innovations. The bigger the idea, the more radical the innovation.

In our experience, whenever we begin to work with an organization, we see it has plenty of ideas. The issue is that the organization can't find them, or don't know which to select, or have no clear method to materialize them for results. Finding small and safe ideas is somewhat easier than large radical ideas.

As described step by step in earlier chapters, let's say you begin to install your innovation engine. In the first year, you will find plenty of ideas, both small and big. If you find 500 ideas to fill your pipeline, there should be at least 100 worthy of exploring. Of these, at least 25 will be very interesting and worthy of experimentation. Of those, two or three ideas should be extremely large. Most everyone at the senior level will like these but will be hesitant to jump in. (If you've implemented ...