Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph.D., President, BrainReactions LLC http://www.brainreactions.com

If growth is priority number one, innovative thinking skills should be encouraged and developed at all levels of an organization. Sure, there should be a great emphasis on external or open innovation and many of innovative ideas can come from your customers or other subject matter experts. Nonetheless, it is the employees of your company who will connect those ideas and develop their own ideas within your innovation system in order to fill your pipeline on a continuous basis. The first place to open innovation is within your organization. Imagine what kind of culture of innovation your firm could have if every employee contributed to the innovation process at a place where his/her unique strengths aligned with your needs? A variety of employees can contribute to each stage of innovation by:

1. Providing insight to your research on problems and opportunities — the starting points of innovation—by sharing the voice of the customer with you.
2. Helping to clarify opportunities and focus on specific problems identified by the research.
3. Providing ideas through brainstorming sessions, individual submissions, or company wide idea generating events.
4. Helping to analyze and synthesize the massive amounts of idea collected by using specified criteria or their own wisdom.
5. Participating in a live or interactive web event where employees can view the concepts they developed, and then help select which ones reach the innovation pipeline.
6. Helping to communicate and advance the leading concepts by contributing their thinking to make the message a memorable one.

Do your team members know simple activities they can do in each of these stages? From our experiences, we have found that it is simple and even empowering to equip people with these tools and show them how to utilize them by practicing with real-life challenges. Participating in innovation is something we all enjoy doing—often a reason for choosing our career. People want to develop ideas! In our program, we have turned college students into innovators for innovation leader P&G™ in a handful of training sessions. By doing this, we increase the number of tools they have in their “innovation thinking” toolbox, and build the strength of those tools, resulting in more and better ideas!

How is “innovation thinking” happening in your organization? Who is doing the “innovation thinking”? The simple vision of an organizational innovation culture is to engage as many people as possible — from within their organization as well as outside of their organization — in “innovation thinking” about the opportunities and challenges that they face. Innovation — for those that practice it at its best — is not about one guy in a garage working on an invention, but rather a process where multiple people are collaborating to develop and validate ideas. The opportunity from the top of the organization is to open and catalyze this innovation engagement.

If opening up innovation and innovative thinking within your organization is an opportunity, how do you develop it at all levels and places? We have found that the best way to do this is not to read a book or to listen to a lecture, but instead to engage in developing real-world innovation. Facilitate employees — step-by-step, activity-by-activity — while utilizing different innovative thinking tools, to create and develop their own ideas. What if each individual in your organization had their own personal innovation project? What if employees, along with their colleagues, were invested in the development process of small group projects on a regular basis? We bet it would be good for the innovation culture, employee retention and, most importantly, growth!

From our experience training innovators for Fortune 500 projects, we have found that the most prolific innovators exhibit many innovation thinking skills, including:

• Systems Viewing
• Rapid Iterating
• Quantity Making
• Judgment Suspending
• Idea Funneling
• Deconstructing and Constructing
• Building and Extending
• Connection Making
• Outside Insight-ing

If your organization is at a place where employees at all levels are engaging in innovation in many contexts — such as organizational improvement, product development, communications, etc. — then the next opportunity is to engage the people outside of your organization to collaborate with the developed and engaged innovators on the inside. This collaboration can be powerful for enhancing both “innovation thinking” and results at all stages.

Dell is engaging customers in submitting ideas to them at Ideastorm.com. Intuit has created IntuitLabs.com to show lead users the prototypes they are working on. This effort provides validation and encourages feedback for further development.

In sum, to grow, you need to innovate continuously and sustain this innovation so new and better ideas flow through the pipeline. To have better ideas you need to have a higher quality of innovation thinking from more innovation thinkers both inside and outside of your organization. You can develop this capacity through simultaneously teaching and engaging employees and other individuals in your innovation projects. Start by having a common innovation system that a variety of employees know how to use. Also, have a common format for ideas and how they advance down the innovation pipeline. Then, provide a wide variety of employees with opportunities for real challenges to help them contribute to innovation for actual projects.

About the author: Darin Eich, Ph.D. is President of BrainReactions LLC and founder of InnovationTraining.org. BrainReactions Innovation Training can help you create a program to teach, facilitate, engage, and guide your team step-by-step through this innovation system and over 30 different interactive activities to help you generate ideas and solve your challenges. Email Dr. Darin Eich at darin.eich@brainreactions.com

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Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph.D., President of BrainReactions LLC http://brainreactions.com

Innovation is creativity with a purpose. It is not only creating new ideas but doing so with a specific intention in mind and with plans to actually launch the developed and realized ideas into the world. There are elements of both creation and action. Innovation should be simple, understandable, and open for a wide variety of people to engage in the process. Innovation is becoming more open, less closed door R&D sessions, and more engagement of actual customers, stakeholders, subject matter experts, and employees at all levels in the process. Many organizations know how to launch and sell their products and services but are “fuzzy” on the front end of the innovation process: the stages that deal with creating, analyzing, and developing ideas. That is why it is known as the “fuzzy front end.” The key to making this important beginning stage of the innovation process less fuzzy and more practical is through articulating a simple system with activities that a wide variety of stakeholders and collaborators can understand and engage in. The fuzzy front end should be more kitchen table and less scientific lab.

Having a clear system is equivalent to systematically generating ideas on purpose. I will share with you what we have learned while developing a simple “front end of innovation” process that we have been training people in from over 200 companies at InnovationTraining.org. We encourage you to learn innovation through doing it. You can practice and use this process to develop and communicate your big idea in a more systematic and effective way. The projects we have done for a wide variety of companies from P&G and the UN to solo entrepreneurs all use a similar system and activities. They all started with a problem or opportunity, led to brainstorming questions, continued with ideas, and led to selection and development of the best ideas…just like you catalyze your own projects in your own organization.

If you want to develop an innovative idea for your project, where do you start? Start with a proven system of innovation best practices. The diagram above shows the steps involved in a basic innovation system that you can use as a starting point. You will then go about this purposefully with a process or system to develop your ideas into more validated and robust concepts. You would typically generate multiple ideas and then synthesize relevant multiple ideas logically together in the form of a well-developed concept.

It is important to capture and store all of these ideas in one place. Also, great innovations are not solitary work. They are the result of collaborations. Involve others to help you generate ideas, develop the concept, validate the concept, and communicate the concept so that it is meaningful and memorable. An example of the front end of innovation can be found in a brainreactions.net private online brainstorming room, you can pose your question, provide background information, visuals in the form of a photo or video, and generate ideas. With the online brainstorming room you can include up to five brainstormers and these brainstormers can not only generate ideas but also vote, select, and sort the best ideas to move forward and develop. This is a way to involve collaborators in your innovation system.

An important start to an innovation project is to crystallize the problems and challenges that you intend to solve. You must pose important questions that are grounded in the problems or opportunities for innovation. Google launched a campaign that solicited concept ideas to change the world. To use Google’s Project 10^100 framework as an example, they offered seven suggested categories and questions:

1. Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
2. Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
3. Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
4. Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
5. Health: How can we help individuals le ad longer, healthier lives?
6. Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
7. Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?

These are examples of categories and related questions to start. These categories were selected because they offer real problems and opportunity. These are starting places, if your vision is to “change the world” then the seven Google categories and questions may be beneficial starting places for you. Odds are that your questions and categories may be different and related to the problems or opportunities that exist for you or your organization, specific to your mission. These starting places are big questions of their own or can catalyze sub-questions for you to purposefully generate ideas on.

Action to take: Clarify a simple system you will use to innovate. Use the model we are presenting or customize your own. Know that you are engaging in a system to innovate and what that system is. Identify and write down the areas you would like to innovate in. These are problems or opportunities. Research them. Create questions to ask.

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About the Author:

Darin Eich, Ph.D. is President and founder of BrainReactions LLC that provides innovation training through InnovationTraining.org

This activity is a part of BrainReactions Innovation Training. BrainReactions Innovation Training can teach, facilitate, engage, and guide your team step-by-step through this innovation system and over 30 different interactive activities to help you generate ideas and solve your challenges. You can learn our techniques and activities to do again and again on your own and contribute to a sustainable culture of innovation within your organization. Email Dr. Darin Eich at darin.eich@brainreactions.com to inquire about bringing training and facilitation into your organization or to do an event to capture the ideas of your employees, customers or stakeholders.

Do you want to learn more about systematic innovation? The Systematic Idea Generation for Innovation 4 part online workshop series has been popular with 200 different companies seeking to learn the language of innovation and generate new ideas. You can start this webinar series today at http://innovationtraining.org.

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Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph.D., President of BrainReactions LLC http://brainreactions.com

Sometimes we assess our professional lives and realize that we have just been operating a metaphorical machine for an extended period of time. This machine may not even be a real machine but what we discover is that our work, our organization, or our processes have become a bit stagnant or repetitive. We lose our excitement or even hope for the future because nothing is changing. We are doing the same thing every day, every month, and every year and this has become bothersome. We are doing precisely the same service, making the same product, doing the same marketing, giving the same speeches, and asking the same question every month and every year. When this repetitive stagnation happens it not only adversely affects our professional life but also seeps into our personal life. Hey, most of our personal lives revolve around our professional lives anyway, so when that isn’t good, little else is. What people need is change. This is the first thing. Staying in ruts is no fun, getting out of them is.

But change for what? Just change for the sake of change? Well, if we are stagnant, sometimes even change for the sake of change is a good thing because it starts an action. It will add a little bit of air and movement to break the stagnation and stops the mold from growing. But what is powerful, what can be downright compelling, is change when you have a vision, change when you see a potential for a purpose, change when there is a goal that attracts you and others like a magnet. When there is a new challenge, this awakens something in you. It may be fear, but that usually comes about first anytime change happens. So, connected to that fear is excitement and also a newfound hope and perhaps, invigoration, in your professional life. This vision, this purpose, this goal gives you a destination to strive for. It gives your mind a reason to start thinking again. This can be invigorating for anyone!

What is the ultimate for a person’s professional life is this thing called innovation. Innovation is changing. Innovation has a goal, a goal to get better. Innovation can happen in a lot of different contexts. You can innovate new or existing products. You can innovate your marketing. You can innovate your services. You can innovate your business processes. You can innovate your organization as a whole. Most compelling, motivating, and inspiring is that you can also innovate yourself as a person. Yes, all of these things have the capacity to change, to grow, to develop, and to improve in slight ways and in ways that you can’t even tell the difference!

Work and organizations can be stifling. People complaining about their jobs and companies are as common as conversation. Some of the people who work at the large established bureaucratic organizations are full of great life though. This is because they work in innovation. They are concerned with innovating products, services, and everything else. They look to innovate everything they see and realize that they, with others, have the capacity to actually do it. They have that challenge, that goal, that purpose, and that vision in their professional lives and I can see the difference in these people. My conclusion: innovation is good for a person and involving yourself and others in innovation in your organization and life is a positive change.

Where do you go from here?

1. Assess. Is your professional life stagnant? Is there a lack of change or growth in the stuff that you do and in your organization, heck…in your own life too?
2. If you assessed that yes, change is needed…well change for what? What can be changed for the better? A product, service, process, organization, or you? Perhaps all of these things could use innovating.
3. What is the purpose connected to a vision connected to a goal for this change?
4. Start innovating.

OK, so what does “start innovating” mean? To say “I’m going to innovate” is exciting, certainly. Saying this to yourself in the mirror each morning is a little weird but will probably have some good effects. I’m a leadership geek. I’ve studied leadership for a number of years and it is a really fuzzy thing that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Innovation is similar to leadership. They both have some similar meaning and they both get a “huh” response when you ask people for a definition. What I’ve found to be helpful is to take this fuzzy concept and break it down into its parts. So for innovation, let’s break it down into some different stages. Many different organizations and individuals define innovation in different ways, have different systems, and have different parts of these systems. In general though, some similarities exist.

Let’s break it down simply.

Stage 1: Identify the opportunity or problem that will lead to the innovation. This requires some hard thinking and some research. What exactly is it that you are trying to innovate? Is this the correct thing that you should be going for? Make sure that the “innovation for what?” question is answered here and gather a fair amount of information. This is your background research stage.
Stage 2: Formulate questions. Because you’ve done stage one you should have a much more thoughtful understanding of the situation, problem, or opportunity. Start breaking that problem down into it’s pieces and formulate corresponding questions. So, if the problem is that nobody knows about your organization and thus cannot do business with you, a simple “how can we get more people to know about our organization?” is a question that can be broken down into “who do we want to reach”, “what we want them to know,” “how do we communicate this message,” “how can we use the internet to communicate this message,” etc. There are a lot of ways you can break down the problem once you’ve gone through that first stage of understanding it and thinking about it.
Stage 3: What I like best; it is the “coming up with a bunch of ideas” stage. You do just that. Take each question, organize them in a way from more general to more specific, and come up with a bunch of ideas for each. Utilize many different ways of coming up with ideas from just writing some down on your own to using a group brainstorm if possible. The goal here is to literally come up with hundreds of ideas.
Stage 4: Make meaning of all those ideas you came up with and analyze them.
Stage 5: Develop some solid concepts in greater detail.
Stage 6: Test out those concepts and develop them further based on feedback.
Stage 7: Take action and do what you had set out to do in the first place. Execute the marketing plan to increase awareness about your organization, if we refer back to the previous example.

Innovation is fun work and also challenging work. It is much easier to do if you can break it down into the stages and take each stage at a time. Many times organizations start but don’t finish. So do each step at a time and make sure you move up the steps and finish and actually take action! If you go through the stages what you will be taking action on should be pretty good because you studied and clarified the problem, you formed great questions, gathered a number of ideas, made meaning and analyzed the ideas, developed solid concepts, tested those concepts and improved them even more. This leads to a breakthrough innovation! Start innovating!

No Comments | BrainReactions News, Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Open Innovation, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

BrainWaves is a quarterly e-periodical for people who are interested in how organizations cultivate individual and group creativity. Each issue of BrainWaves features information and perspectives about individual and group ideation; how businesses and not-for-profits actuate the best ideas; and reports on remarkable innovations that promise novel solutions to intractable problems. Brainwaves is produced and edited by BrainReactions, producer of “outside insight” — ideas for organizations conceived by outside professional brainstormers and from online brainstorms using BrainReactions.net. BrainReactions also provides innovation training to help companies and individuals generate more and better ideas. 

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In This Issue

• Innovation and New Product Development in Do-It-Yourself Healthcare
• Healthcare Innovation using the Web
• 100 Tips for Improving Your Creativity: Top ideas from 15 different brainstormers
• Frost & Sullivan’s GIL conference on Growth, Innovation and Leadership
• Use short online surveys to gain direction and validation from your stakeholders before generating new ideas

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Contributed by Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions LLC

The healthcare industry has been quite resilient to economic downturns and is expecting to see a growth in the market largely due to the large, affluent and aging “baby boomer” population. Several technological innovations are springing up in the healthcare industry to take advantage of this growth. This article is a showcase of innovations in the healthcare industry that are Internet based.

I have presented below online healthcare innovations in various categories that could help consumer patients and medical practitioners.

1. Online access to physicians and health experts:
http://www.hellohealth.com/ The site allows you to talk to health experts, schedule appointments with doctors, do virtual meetings with them and even do follow-ups online.
http://www.zocdoc.com/ Free website that helps you find and schedule appointments with local doctors. http://www.justanswer.com/ Ask a question and get an answer from qualified health experts or doctors. This site is not free, but is quite inexpensive to use.
http://www.americanwell.com/ Online care for consumers that provides 24×7 access to physicians. The cost of using this service is not clearly indicated on their website.
http://www.freemd.com/ Interact with a virtual video doctor who asks you questions about your symptoms and makes a recommendation to you.

2. Tools for self-service healthcare management:
http://www.sugarstats.com/ Helps you keep track of your sugar levels to manage your diabetes on your own.
https://www.mymedlab.com/ Helps you schedule and order clinical tests on your own. You can go to a local lab to give a sample and get the test results online.
http://doublecheckmd.com/DTHome.do Helps you find out if any symptoms or abnormal lab tests are caused by drug interactions or side-effects.
http://engagewithgrace.org/Questions.aspx Helps you answer 5 basic questions and lets your relatives know your preferences in case you are debilitated in a terminal illness.

3. Medical information repositories and search engines:
The following sites provide a large amount of information on various symptoms, diseases, preventions and treatments: http://www.webmd.com, http://www.medpedia.com/, and http://www.healia.com/

4. Support groups/Patients helping patients:
People suffering from the same ailment can learn from each other and find a support group that helps. Sites like http://www.inspire.com/ and http://www.patientslikeme.com/ provide that.
http://www.ratemds.com/social/ The RateMDs site helps you review and give a rating to your doctor. The aggregate ratings and rankings for doctors are also available for you to check out.

5. Electronic health records on the web.
Many companies are getting into the space of helping consumers get secure access to their electronic medical records. The following three companies are the major innovators in the field:
http://dossia.org/, https://www.google.com/health and http://www.healthvault.com/

6. Managing costs of healthcare:
https://www.changehealthcare.com Helps consumers track their healthcare bills, compare costs of prescriptions and doctor visits so they can save money.
http://healthcare.intuit.com/ Free health expense tracker that integrates with health insurance plans from Cigna and UntedHealthCare.

7. Social Network for doctors:
Doctors can find valuable insight from connecting with each other and collaborating on certain cases. These social networks are exclusively for physicians: https://www.ozmosis.com/home http://www.sermo.com/

The various web based healthcare innovations featured here are just beginning to scratch the surface of what’s possible in the healthcare innovation landscape, especially given the pervasiveness of the web today. We expect to see more valuable tools in the future as the internet matures and as technology entrepreneurs focus on capitalizing on the growing healthcare market.

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Contributed by Dr. Darin Eich, Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer at BrainReactions LLC

A BrainReactions.net brainstorm launched by UKJohn (John Tunney) on “100 Tips For Improving Your Creativity” achieved its stated goal. It generated 100 ideas from 26 different brainstormers. The description of this brainstorm was: “I thought it would be interesting to ask BR Tool users for their creativity tips. Any input is welcome - be it favourite techniques, authors, websites, attitudes you think are essential for creative thinking, etc.”

The following are some of the most popular ideas from 15 different brainstormers tagged with the username of the creative global idea generator from BrainReactions.net. Note that the wording of the ideas, including any typos, have been kept intact below in an effort to maintain the originality of the idea as presented by the author:

Go beyond the word that describes the solution to purpose of the solution, e.g. instead of saying “I need a job,” say, “I need an income.” That frees you from confining boundaries. Ask yourself, “What’s the true purpose of this solution? Is there an alternative way to get that?”
-David_Payne

Ask every question you can think of related to the task at hand, problem or opportunity. This “drilling-down” will ALWAYS produce high-quality possibilities and answers – and crystallize your idea, problem or opportunity so you can produce very clear responses.
-ThoughtOffice

Try using outrageous similes to spark your imagination. Think up some, or read some fiction - either good or bad - to see what kinds of “word pictures” authors have crafted. Two I wrote last night: “ditched them like an empty pack of Marlboros” and “parted out like so many broken down Chevy Citations”. Play off the imagery that is inspired and try making some “like a” phrases of your own.
-Dlock

Mindmap your concepts…it is amazing to see all of the little ideas that relate together to make a big idea. This helps to integrate your ideas and helps you develop more robust concepts in the future
-Djeich

Don’t try to innovate in a vacuum. Look around at similar problems in different fields, and see what elements apply. Often, parts of a solution can be found.
-FreshThinker

Read biographies of high achievers in any field and emulate their thought-process.
-Anandvc

Keep a record of ideas, problems and thought experiments. Refer to the record regularly and sometimes memorise the items so that you can think about them at any time at any place.
-UKJohn

have a time limit, say by 10th of this month i should generate 10 ideas. this competitive thinking will enable you to be focussed and will help generate more ideas.
-soorya

Leverage the 4 fundamentals of Innovation: FUNDAMENTAL 1 - Innovation happens at the intersection of domains and fields, FUNDAMENTAL 2 - Breakthrough ideas come from playing with ideas and forming new connections, FUNDAMENTAL 3 - Incubation is a powerful and important part of any innovation process, FUNDAMENTAL 4 – Brainstorming is a skill to be practiced and perfected
-ThinkCubologist

Switch to unlined paper for all of your meetings, brainstorming sessions, and notebook idea entries. It will subconsciously - and consciously - free you to think differently and more expansively. Also, it facilitates more visual drawing of ideas - not just linear verbal descriptions - which is particularly useful for novel, emergent ideas that are still in the process of forming. Once people experience unlined, they don’t go back
-CreativeEmergence

Go to a nice and new environment where you feel happy and excited, and synergize with interesting people there;this gets the creative cells sparkling. Feeling good and sharing your thoughts open many windows of opportunities. The impossible becomes possible.
-Stephens

Go Random. Where ever you are think of at least seven things… anything, no rules. Write those things down without judging or sensoring. You may use visual, auditory, musical or personal reference, For example, the next thing someone says or the next thing you hear on the radio, song or talk show subject. List those seven things and relate them to you end result. How, Why is it related to your issue. Why? This process opens fresh new pathways to success.
-Huemankind

Consider the opposite: Turn the problem upside down; imagine trying to achieve the opposite; reverse the relationships
-Graham

Backwards script-writing: imagine the result of your idea. how will it look? how it will influence on your market? then, go backwards and look for more ideas to make it happen.
-Ranencarmel

Build a rough prototype. It will help focus your goal and serve as a platform for generating more ideas in creating and extending.
-Emooney

Visit the online brainstorm at http://brainreactions.net/brainstorms/1753 to review the ideas, select good ones, and sort to view the most popular. You can also still add your own tips for improving your creativity.

No Comments | BrainReactions News, Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Gen-Y ideas, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

BrainWaves is a quarterly e-periodical for people who are interested in how organizations cultivate individual and group creativity. Each issue of BrainWaves features information and perspectives about individual and group ideation; how businesses and not-for-profits actuate the best ideas; and reports on remarkable innovations that promise novel solutions to intractable problems. Brainwaves is produced and edited by BrainReactions, producer of “outside insight” — ideas for organizations conceived by outside professional brainstormers and from online brainstorms using BrainReactions.net. BrainReactions also provides innovation training to help companies and individuals generate more and better ideas. 

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In This Issue

• Help others Hear and See your Innovative New Concepts
• The Flying Cart Story: Building a business and creating features based on researching customer needs
• How you can take advantage of the recession by starting a business
• Frost & Sullivan’s conference on Growth, Innovation and Leadership is going global!
• Rapid Innovation: The Potential to Utilize Social Media and User Generated Content Create Strategic Competitive Advantage, Differentiation and Elite Brand Experiences

No Comments | BrainReactions News, Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Marketing to college students, Marketing to young women, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Contributed by Dr. Darin Eich

I like this “cone of learning” visual. I understand and remember it more because it is something I see instead of just read. It is visual. This has relevance for innovators when they are trying to advance their creations by communicating them to others. When we are communicating our concepts people will “get”, retain, and learn more if you don’t just let them read or hear, but also see… or better yet hear and see. How can you tell and story and show people your innovations?

We are hosting a webinar series where we will teach people brainstorming and concept development through guiding them practically along the stages of the BrainReactions system. We will help people hear, see, and do. Most of us are communicating our creations on the web. Instead of just text why not try letting others hear and see? It is easier now to create your own videos that can do just this. Even a short rapidly created video will increase the potency of your communication over written words. Instead of a paragraph of text about the webinar series I will use one of the communication innovation tools and let you hear and see so that at the webinar you can do to learn and create more! Take a look at what even amateur video producers can create with basic software:

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Contributed by Rishi Shah, CEO and founder of FlyingCart.com - Flying Cart is an easy way to create an online store and sell products. Currently they help over 6,000 businesses create, market, and manage their online store.

A long time ago (August 2005) I had an idea about how great it would be to go into any major retail store, buy something, and it would remember what you bought. You could then enter in your email address and after a few weeks the retail store would email you suggestions based on your previous purchase. I reached out to every major retailer I could find. Using Hoovers and Google Finance I was able to easily find the key people (CEO’s and VP’s) to ask about this idea. After getting hundreds of “No, Thank You” or “Who are you?” or “Call us in a year,” I decided to approach small business owners.

I walked up and down State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. State Street is known for having 30 or so small niche boutiques. I asked each store owner if they were interested in my idea. A few said yes but they were more interested in just a really easy way to create an online store where they could sell their products. I heard this over and over again. After doing some research I found a few “create online store” solutions did exist but they were extremely complicated and I have a technical background!

Because I heard the problem and need directly from small business owners, I was pretty convinced that an easy to use online store was a solid idea. I was able to get a client to sign a contract with me as a beta customer. Now that I had a client and a solid idea I needed to develop the product. I posted a job ad looking for an experienced programmer on Craigslist.org. This is how I found a talented business partner in Margo Baxter. She liked the idea and we were both excited to work on it.

We asked our first beta client many questions and pitched them a lot of feature ideas. All they said they wanted was an easy online store they could manage themselves. At first we didn’t really think the bigger market would want a featureless cart so we went on to build in many features. The results were months and months of development and a product that was over bloated. We decided to take a step back and re think things. After a lot of long nights we decided to rebuild the product except this time with simplicity and only the essential features in mind.

MARKETING WITH NO MONEY
While Margo was cranking out code, I knew we needed more than one client to make a business. So we created a nice looking website showing off what we were developing and an email sign up form so people could be alerted when we launch. The form was essential to us and we were able to create an initial demand before we launched the product. Building a form is simple to do especially with Wufoo.com. Once we launched the site we hit the web world hard and tried to get any free publicity possible. We spent months looking up open directories and submitting Flying Cart to it. A few of the best directories we got into were go2web20.net, feedmyapp.com, wikidweb.com, and DMOZ.org. We wrote press releases and submitted them to any free press release website we could find. The best press release sites for us were ecommwire.com and free-press-release.com. We also wrote to hundreds of blogs personally one by one asking them to write about us. Luckily Mashable.com, BusinessWeek.com and Entrepeneur.com wrote about us. After 3 or so months we had 400 clients waiting to be invited into Flying Cart to open an online store. This kept us extremely motivated to keep building the product.

Flying Cart officially launched in Aug. 2007. We had a dead simple easy to use product. We had a few paying customers but needed more to survive. We knew that marketing would play a key role in acquiring more customers.

REACHING OUT
Before launching Flying Cart we did some major research on eBay to uncover customer wants and needs. We knew there were millions of frustrated eBay customers. We hit their forum boards and asked around what their major problems were. One major problem we heard was eBay’s outrageous fees. They hated giving a cut of their profits (eBay charges anywhere from 3-9% of the final sale amount). We decided that we would give our customers the ability to take home 100% of their profits and we would charge a flat low monthly fee instead.

ADVERTISING
In order to get more traction on the web we decided to sign up for Google Adwords and starting purchasing keywords like “Shopping Cart Solution” so our ad would appear when someone searches for it. Google Adwords was great and it helped us lock down some good customers at a very affordable price.

HELPING CUSTOMERS
Although Google Adwords was getting us new customers our biggest strength was old customers referring new customers. This is when it struck us. Let’s take care of our customers and our customers will take care of us! Let’s ask our customers what they want and need and build it for them!

CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Our best feature was our customer support - everyone liked our personal attention and fast responses. Over the last two years we learned how to create better customer service. We allow our customers to set up phone calls with us so we can figure out what is wrong with the store or even give them advice on how to market their products online.

GETTING FEEDBACK
We are constantly asking our customers for feedback. At any point the store owner can submit feature suggestions, take a survey that we post in our newsletters, and communicate with us on our blog. Margo and I can still name each one of our customers and the features they came up with. This feedback drives the development of new features and how we communicate about our business to others.

HELPING CUSTOMERS MAKE SALES
We found a repeating pattern in our business. Customers with no sales cancel. So we went to work. We researched every possible tool we could integrate that would make our customers products more visible on the Internet. We added the ability to add all your products to be indexed by Google Product Search with a click of a button. We created on demand sitemaps for each store and alerted Google, Yahoo, and ASK about it. We reached out to TheFind.com to index each one of our stores in their major shopping directory.

Unfortunately, no matter how many automated marketing tools we added the overall success of the online store lies in motivating the actual owner and teaching them what it takes to be successful. A few months ago we launched a store check list. 20 tips they must do to get their online business rolling. We guide each store owner through marketing tasks like publishing a press release to design guides so they can create a trustworthy beautiful looking online store.

RECURRING SALES
The most important thing to any business owners is recurring sales. Keeping cash flow alive. Our solution was to launch a mini social network inside each store. Each store owner has a “Fan Club”. Old and new customers are given the opportunity to join the store fan club, upload a picture, and create a mini profile. The store’s fans can communicate directly with the store owner right on their store. This way the store owners can find out directly from the customers what they like, want, and need. This creates a lasting impression and turns each customer into a fan.

MOVING FORWARD
We aren’t slowing down. Feature suggestions are always coming in. The hard part is deciding which idea to focus on. The way we look at new feature ideas now is the amount of impact it will have. Before we take on any new feature idea we ask ourselves one big important question: Will it help our customers out?

No Comments | Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Contributed by Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions LLC http://www.brainreactions.com

I have been an entrepreneur as long as I can remember. I started my first company, Pyxoft Infotech Pvt Ltd. at age 17 in India. I went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in my second year in the US, was involved in my second start-up, OZ Innovations and we went on to sell the product internationally in a retail chain of over 72 stores. I was also fortunate to have been named as one of the “Top 5 Entrepreneurs Under 25″ by BusinessWeek and also featured on CNBC TV’s “Young Turks.” Now is as good a time as any I have seen to become an entrepreneur.

This is a great time in life for you to start a new business, especially if you do not have the responsibilities of a family or the pressures of a house mortgage payment. Starting a new business has become much cheaper today because office rent, cost of advertising and cost of employees has gone down. You probably also have a group of friends who would like to work with you and all of you can pool your startup money together. Some of you have ideas, but are hesitant to act due to the fear of making mistakes. Let me assure you that everyone makes mistakes when starting a new business. What is needed to succeed is the will to recognize your mistakes and to fix them quickly. As I learned from my mentors during my internship, “Fail fast to succeed sooner!”

Some of you may not yet have thought about any ideas for a business you can start. My company, BrainReactions http://brainreactions.com, is in the business of identifying new opportunities for entrepreneurs and companies by generating creative new ideas. We not only generate ideas professionally for clients, but we also teach people methods of being more innovative systematically so they can create useful new ideas for their unique situation. Perhaps we can share some business ideas with you here. Although the general sentiment today is quite negative, this is in fact, a great time to use the recession to your advantage.

Not all businesses are suffering in the recession. According to Barry Moltz’s recent survey, about a fifth of all businesses are such that they actually do better in a recession. Such businesses, called “countercyclical businesses”, present great startup opportunities right now. Businesses that help people save money generally tend to be in this category. For example, in a recession, people prefer to buy more groceries or eat cheaper food than eat at a fine dining restaurant. Insurance agents that can save people money on their car insurance premiums also do well in a recession. Funnily enough, in India, astrologers tend to have an increase in clients during a recession. Could you, perhaps, create a new product or service that helps people save money or reduce wastage in their homes and offices?

For new entrepreneurs, it is easier to set up service-based businesses that have a low startup cost. Businesses like web design, tutoring, delivery, event planning service, and a travel booking service are some examples.

Since you are reading this article on a computer, I would assume that you enjoy the Internet and are open to ideas for online entrepreneurship. Sites like eLance.com and odesk.com provide opportunities for freelance writing, graphic or web design, programming, and even simple tasks like data entry and virtual assistance. Similarly, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk at mturk.com pays people for completing simple tasks online as well. If you are good at photography, you can upload good quality photos to iStockPhoto.com and get paid royalties. Metacafe pays users to upload videos that are popular. Sites like ReviewMe.com and PayPerPost.com pay you to write reviews of websites on your free blog. Speaking of blogs, Squidoo.com and eHow.com pay a revenue share to people who contribute articles to their site. SpringWise.com has a database of unique business ideas from around the world that you could spend hours reviewing. The web is a huge resource of business ideas and for reaching out to other entrepreneurs who are available for providing guidance and help for your new business.

To get more new business ideas, I would recommend traveling to a new place that you have not been before, perhaps to a different country if you can. Experiencing a new place and culture can give you tremendous amount of fresh inspiration for new ideas. Also, check out the book called “Successfully launching new ventures” by Dr. Bruce Barringer which features BrainReactions as a success case study in its second chapter. Furthermore, you can double your chances of success by learning the fundamentals of systematic innovation through a four-week online course we deliver via webinars at http://www.innovationtraining.org or get recordings of the training sessions. You can walk through activity by activity the steps to create a solid business concept or new product idea.

I hope that after reading this article you will rethink your career and normal daily job-hunting and actually use some of the ideas and resources that I have shared in order to create your own successful business and create new jobs for our country and our world.

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About the Author: Anand is the CEO of BrainReactions LLC, a company that helps companies and entrepreneurs with innovation. Anand has a degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Computer Engineering. He holds 8 issued U.S. utility patents.

No Comments | Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this