FEATURE
Focused programmes that employees can join creates and demonstrates a culture that is incentivising idea generation and creation . A programme builds consistency in how you act on ideas and understanding that ideas have a pathway to success . It also has a huge added benefit of teaching and embedding new critical skills into your business , such as creativity , problem solving and critical thinking .
Reward failing fast and failure
Steve Jobs was famous for asking his staff to tell him what they had failed at ; he knew that ; ‘ You gotta act . And you ' ve gotta be willing to fail , you gotta be ready to crash and burn , with people on the phone , with starting a company , with whatever . If you ' re afraid of failing , you won ' t get very far .’ Nothing will kill idea generation faster than fear of failing . Your senior team members need to walk a fine line between recklessness and risk-taking , but you will never have a creative ideas culture without facing the fear of risk . Start rewarding those that are brave enough to fail fast .
The key is having the right processes in place to quickly kill the wrong ideas and develop the good ones . As part of an entrepreneurial focused training programme , look at how you can review an idea with the explicit purpose of killing the ones that either don ' t align to your overarching business strategy or where the customer problem and need can ' t be richly articulated . For the few you have left , it ' s about finding clever ways to pilot ideas in a fast and controlled manner without going all in .
Data shows that nine out of 10 products fail , and usually , this is because we ' ve not adequately reviewed and made the space for quick fails . In today ' s world of ‘ No Code , Low Code ’, you can build an MVP without a single line of code , reducing risk and cost . Learning how to test an idea continually and be open to moving it forward through specific gates or failing fast makes the process much more powerful and effective . Having a straightforward gaited structured programme makes it much more challenging to lose great ideas and push through bad ones .
If you aren ' t coming up with great ideas , the chances are your competition or even a new player in the space will be and quickly end up eating your breakfast . The more organised and focused you can be on creating a safe , creative culture for brewing ideas , the better . Having a recognised structure and training process to help build an ideas culture will only help you formalise an approach to new idea generation to unearth future business and revenue lines . x
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