Innovatia

How to have an innovative idea in three simple steps

Quick: come up with an innovative idea! If you’re anything like most of the thousands of executives and graduate students I’ve coached over the last baker’s dozen years, panic alarms just went off. “You can’t just do that,” you might think. “Innovation doesn’t obey instructions – or follow rules.” But the truth is, the creative process is hard- ly a mystery – in fact, it can be broken down It’s a common misconception that ideas come from nowhere, pouncing on unsus- pecting ideators unannounced. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Brilliant ideas come to those who have de- veloped something of an obsession for a par- ticular problem, and so the question begs to be asked: “What’s your problem?” The simple way to discover your problem is the aforementioned bug list. I’m not referring to errors in lines of code. This is an assign- ment we’ve been giving students at Stanford since the 1960s, long before computer pro- gramming entered common parlance. into three simple steps. Step 1: Make a bug list Want to generate a game-changing idea? Stanford University’s Jeremy Utley delves into the three-step process of fostering innovation.

INNOVATIA

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INNOVATIA

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