The Power of Small Ideas – Time to Start Sweating the Small Stuff
If becoming an ‘innovative’ culture sounds sexy but daunting, don’t despair. While chasing ‘the next big thing’ is one truth about innovation, it isn’t the only and certainly not the best way to start improving innovation capability in your team or company.
Check out these articles that explore the power of small ideas:
No time to read? Here are some key takeaways:
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Think evolution, not revolution: Small ideas have big impact, quicker reward, and are harder to copycat than big ones.
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Innovation breeds innovation: Starting small not only works logistically (easier to implement), and financially (low risk, high return), but culturally. Starting small has a longer term advantage: it builds a track record of implementing and embeds a confidence to share ideas freely; “creative courage”, which is a foundational trait of a sustainable innovation culture. Not to worry, bigger improvements will flow from there.
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Consider clustering innovation: Rather than disruptive, revolutionizing or incrementally improving a product – think about a third way; which consists of creating a family of complementary innovations around a product or service, all of which work as a system to carry out a single strategy. “It’s not searching for some new market. But rather, it is taking that current product and innovating around it to make it more valuable for your customers”.
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Keep it simple: Minimum viable product (MPV)—a term coined by the tech start-up community—applies to innovation as well. Find the the simplest possible version of a product that you can build before you can get it into people’s hands, and start collecting feedback.
A parting thought:
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. —John Steinbeck