How to find ideas for challenging times
Luke Johnson | Monday, 23 June 2008
What tools does a fledgling business have to cope with challenging times?
Well, one of the great merits of emerging companies is that they are flexible and willing to try new ways of doing things: new products, new services, new ways to save costs. That is where ideas come in: they are the raw material of change - and the only fuel needed to generate them is imagination.
Most of us believe ideas are random, occurring only to a privileged few. But a wonderful little book called A Technique for Producing Ideas , which can be read in an hour, suggests otherwise. It was written in the 1940s by an advertising copywriter called James Webb Young, and its formula is both simple and applicable to many sorts of problem. The central premise is that any new idea is in fact only a fresh combination of old elements, plus the ability to see new relationships between known facts.
To produce ideas, the author suggested a series of five steps: first, you gather basic information - both general and specific - about the product or conundrum; next you need to ponder the facts so collected; third, once you are exhausted with obsessing about the problem, rest and forget the matter temporarily, and distract yourself with something else entirely.
Then follows the eureka moment, when an unexpected answer presents itself to you. This should come out of the blue, after the mind has mulled over the issue.
The final stage is where you examine and test the idea, and improve it.
When we launched our restaurant chain Strada, we offered free bottles of filtered water on the table. It was a relatively modest gesture, but no one else was doing it and diners remembered it. Seemingly small factors can differentiate a brand from the crowd and provide a competitive advantage. Channel 4 has always named its digital channels in a distinct way: E4, More4, Film4 - and shortly 4Music. Each has its own personality and audience profile. Other broadcasters have just named theirs 1, 2, 3 and so on. The big success of the relatively new Dave channel has shown that viewers like something with character: it helps it to stand out.
New ideas offer hope and excitement, a hint of limitless possibilities, the promise of something better. As W. Somerset Maugham wrote: "I am never so happy as when a new thought occurs to me and a new horizon gradually discovers itself before my eyes. When a fresh idea dawns upon me, I feel lifted up, apart from the world of men, into a strange atmosphere of the spirit." Not only artists and writers enjoy this sense of elation: inventors and entrepreneurs too can experience a transcendent sense of achievement when they realise they have an idea whose time has come.
Theoretical concepts are all very well, but what every successful business needs is competent execution. Ultimately, you cannot patent an idea and protect it from replication by a rival. You have to implement the idea; then it becomes an invention. For innovations to work, they must be carried out in a determined manner. That is easier for an owner-leader than for an organisation with diffuse power. Large corporations are not well suited to creative breakthroughs, in spite of all their spending on research and development. Committees tend to resist threats to the status quo because the new often disrupts the old.
Management consultants have introduced devices such as brainstorming and mind-mapping to help foster creativity among staff within a business. They can be effective, but perhaps the most remarkable advance in recent times has been interactive feedback from the web via digital communities and social networks. Companies are increasingly using their customers to help design their products and improve their offerings. This is a type of mass collaboration - as outlined in the book Wikinomics - that can be a powerful resource for even small companies, thanks to the viral nature and low cost of the online world.
Given the testing economic climate, a measure of reinvention is probably called for among many companies right now.
(The writer is chairman of Channel 4 and runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm.)
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Well, one of the great merits of emerging companies is that they are flexible and willing to try new ways of doing things: new products, new services, new ways to save costs. That is where ideas come in: they are the raw material of change - and the only fuel needed to generate them is imagination.
Most of us believe ideas are random, occurring only to a privileged few. But a wonderful little book called A Technique for Producing Ideas , which can be read in an hour, suggests otherwise. It was written in the 1940s by an advertising copywriter called James Webb Young, and its formula is both simple and applicable to many sorts of problem. The central premise is that any new idea is in fact only a fresh combination of old elements, plus the ability to see new relationships between known facts.
To produce ideas, the author suggested a series of five steps: first, you gather basic information - both general and specific - about the product or conundrum; next you need to ponder the facts so collected; third, once you are exhausted with obsessing about the problem, rest and forget the matter temporarily, and distract yourself with something else entirely.
Then follows the eureka moment, when an unexpected answer presents itself to you. This should come out of the blue, after the mind has mulled over the issue.
The final stage is where you examine and test the idea, and improve it.
When we launched our restaurant chain Strada, we offered free bottles of filtered water on the table. It was a relatively modest gesture, but no one else was doing it and diners remembered it. Seemingly small factors can differentiate a brand from the crowd and provide a competitive advantage. Channel 4 has always named its digital channels in a distinct way: E4, More4, Film4 - and shortly 4Music. Each has its own personality and audience profile. Other broadcasters have just named theirs 1, 2, 3 and so on. The big success of the relatively new Dave channel has shown that viewers like something with character: it helps it to stand out.
New ideas offer hope and excitement, a hint of limitless possibilities, the promise of something better. As W. Somerset Maugham wrote: "I am never so happy as when a new thought occurs to me and a new horizon gradually discovers itself before my eyes. When a fresh idea dawns upon me, I feel lifted up, apart from the world of men, into a strange atmosphere of the spirit." Not only artists and writers enjoy this sense of elation: inventors and entrepreneurs too can experience a transcendent sense of achievement when they realise they have an idea whose time has come.
Theoretical concepts are all very well, but what every successful business needs is competent execution. Ultimately, you cannot patent an idea and protect it from replication by a rival. You have to implement the idea; then it becomes an invention. For innovations to work, they must be carried out in a determined manner. That is easier for an owner-leader than for an organisation with diffuse power. Large corporations are not well suited to creative breakthroughs, in spite of all their spending on research and development. Committees tend to resist threats to the status quo because the new often disrupts the old.
Management consultants have introduced devices such as brainstorming and mind-mapping to help foster creativity among staff within a business. They can be effective, but perhaps the most remarkable advance in recent times has been interactive feedback from the web via digital communities and social networks. Companies are increasingly using their customers to help design their products and improve their offerings. This is a type of mass collaboration - as outlined in the book Wikinomics - that can be a powerful resource for even small companies, thanks to the viral nature and low cost of the online world.
Given the testing economic climate, a measure of reinvention is probably called for among many companies right now.
(The writer is chairman of Channel 4 and runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm.)
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