Visceral Innovation

Combination.  In order to innovate, you must often combine something in an unexpected way with another thing.  The easiest examples are ones where a management or production technique are ‘borrowed’ from another industry and used in new ways.  One great example is the Dyson vacuum cleaner, where the original idea came from saw mills using cyclone ventilation to remove sawdust particles.

An easy way to make combinations with your product or service is to consider emotions and how these can be built into them.  This can be very easy because you can look at what other industries are doing and apply it to yours, especially industries where emotion is very important.  And often, many products and services ignore emotions and sell only benefits.

Think about i-Pod advertising and the emotion of the iconic advert with the person dancing around with their white head phones on.  How could you apply a similar idea to your legal, accounting or tax service? (I didn’t say it would be easy!)

The way to apply this is to suspend judgment for a time and think, ‘If I were going to do this and knew it was all going to work, what crazy ideas could I come up with?’  Be sure not to stop yourself, as an unworkable idea may give way to an idea that could be used.

Let me know how you get on.