Business innovation and strategy were central topics when the Brainzooming blog's precursor started in 2007. Since then, the content covered in the blog has grown and changed, but there's a concerted effort to stay true to its initial strategic theme.
Following up the recent summary article with links on social media strategy, this list covers new business innovation articles from 2010. Most appeared on Brainzooming initially, but some were published exclusively as guest Brainzooming blogs on other websites.
Beyond this comprehensive list, another key business innovation reference on Brainzooming is the post "Taking the NO Out of Business InNOvation," an overview of ten common situations blocking business innovation across companies.
INNOVATION STRATEGY
- Before Wild Creativity, Get Grounded in Strategy First - Don't get creative until you understand what really matters in your organization.
- Strategic Connections – 3 Tips for Identifying More Opportunities - Ensure your strategic decisions are infused with more and richer possibilities to lead to success.
- Innovation Metrics – A Whole-Brain Strategy - A model for examining 6 fundamental metrics to track your efforts.
- Collaborative Innovation Efforts (guest post on Blogging Innovation) - 6 fundamental strategies for driving collaborative approaches.
- 30 Ideas for Using Social Networks to Help You Be More Innovative and Catalyzing Innovation Strategy with Social Networking – 10 More Ideas - Two articles (the first a guest post on Blogging Innovation) on how social media can shape a vibrant innovation strategy.
- The Strategy of Fear – Who Are Your Competitors? - Are you afraid of competitors or are you using information about them to improve what you do?
- Making Your Competitor’s Strategy Decisions for Them - Beat competitors to great innovative opportunities by forcing their hands and wresting control of their own strategic decisions.
- Business Strategy – Creating Plan B - Does your strategy include alternative approaches if something goes wrong? How compelling is your plan B? Really?
WHOLE BRAIN THINKING
- Strategic Business Success – 3 Critical Perspectives - It takes more than one kind of thinking for innovative success. It takes three!
- Not Even One of These Things Is Not Like Another - Ensure you have the diversity you need for innovative thinking. If you don't, stop the show!
- Strategy Challenges? Share Them with a Great Strategy Team - A handy checklist for the left- and right-brain mindsets you want on your strategic team.
- Strategic Thinking, Implementation, and Master Doers - The important roles and interplay between strategic thinkers and doers.
INNOVATION TECHNIQUES
- Finding Creativity Amid Change – Stretch Yourself - Push your organization into decidedly new and different territory to build new capabilities.
- The Value of Brainstorming for Innovative Business Ideas - Why brainstorming is productive, if you go into it with accurate expectations.
- Everything’s Open for Discussion? How’s that Work? - How to handle someone trying to derail an "any idea is up for discussion policy" through a personal agenda. A guest post on author Gary Unger's blog.
- Innovation in Your Plans? Capture Bunches of Ideas - Work on generating ideas all the time. When you do, don't let any get away.
- Strategies for Capturing Ideas – Guest Post by Franis Engel - A guest author offers specific techniques for capturing ideas so you won't lose them.
- 1 Simple Strategy for Improving Time Management - Using time limitations to make sure you're making progress on innovation.
- Don’t Overthink It? 5 Key Questions for Quick Decisions - Questions that balance being strategic with the need to make a quick decision and keep moving.
- New Year's Resolution for the “Over-Thinker” - Guest post on TalentCulture highlighting how entrepreneurs can move ahead quickly and decisively with innovative efforts.
- The Constraint of Completeness - You can undercut the impact of communicating a new effort by sharing too much detail.
- Social Media Strategic Planning with a LARGE Group - A video showing The Brainzooming Group planning method in action with a very large group.
- Prioritizing with Pain - Building downsides into a prioritization exercise yields more realistic results.
- Strategic Opportunities – How to Effectively Prioritize Them - At some point, you have to select the best opportunities and move forward. This video covers a prioritization strategy we use frequently.
- Innovation Strategy with a New Audience - Start your efforts with a new audience by first observing and listening.
MARKET-DRIVEN INNOVATION
- 6 Strategies for Staying Ahead of Customer Needs with Innovative Business Ideas - Insight-driven ways to innovate ahead of customers.
- A Strategy for Predicting the Future More Accurately - Incorporate input from customers who are already "living the future" into your innovation strategy.
- Identifying Early Stage Innovation - A Blogging Innovation guest article addressing 8 strategies to better identify and forecast early stage innovation.
- Win New Business from Competitors with a Nuisance Strategy - Taking an outrageously focused, outrageously nasty view of a competitor can lead to outrageous success.
- Zero Moment of Truth – The Google Perspective on a Strategic Customer Engagement Concept - Customers interacting with brands in new ways at different times provides challenges and opportunities to be more anticipatory with innovation strategies.
- Innovative Strategy for Online Social Communities – Five Takeaways - Online communities can contribute customer insights to help shape innovation strategies.
INNOVATION CHALLENGES
- Don’t Let Fear of Change Block Innovative Business Ideas - Incorporating emotional appeals to counteract fears about changes arising from innovation.
- Is Your Brand Headed for Trouble? 5 Strategic Warning Signs - Five business situations which can spell trouble for current and future plans.
- Marketing Budget Yoga – A Strategy for Succeeding with Less - There are ways to work around limited marketing funds and still be innovative.
- Stealth Innovation Strategy – Hiding Innovative Business Ideas - There are times it makes sense to take your development efforts underground to innovate in a protected environment.
INNOVATION IN PRACTICE
- What the World Needs Now – Innovative Ideas from TEDxKC – Part II - Full presentation videos and written highlights from the presenters at the August 2010 TEDxKC event.
- Customize a Customer Brand Experience Very Simply – An example from the Milwaukee Museum of innovating with what you already have to customize a consumer's experience.
- Innovation Strategy Successes – 3 of Kansas City’s Business Winners - Highlights from a panel discussion among Kansas City entrepreneurs on what they're doing to create innovation in their organizations.
- 7 Extreme Creativity Lessons from “Cake Boss” - The reality TV show "Cake Boss" yields a number of lessons to push for more radical creativity.
- Untangling Your Brand Attributes for Greater Value - How an industrial company can stop cutting itself off from product developments by changing how it views its brand attributes.
- Domino’s, Conan, and 3 Fundamentals for Communicating Big Brand Change - When you innovate, it's always tempting to market against what you used to be. It's not a good idea, and isn't necessary if you're smart strategically.
- Strategy and Prioritizing Crowdsourced Oil Cleanup Ideas - Challenging the solution prioritization approach BP used to address the Gulf Oil Spill.
- Turnaround Innovation - Another Blogging Innovation guest post about how even a string of successes can turn sour if an organization's culture doesn't really change.
- Creative Ideas and a Destination for Them - A very simple, subtle way to send a creative message to customers. – Mike Brown
For an additional innovative boost, download the free Brainzooming ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to enhance your creative perspective! For an organizational boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.
