Magnetic North

At the taster session on social entrepreneurship Anne Porter spent some time looking at creative techniques that help us move from an insight (Wouldn’t it be great if…I really wish…Why do we do it this way?…) to a viable idea that will have real impact.

We all have ‘decision habits’ and a tendency to classify information in a way that is based on our previous experiences. This leads us to come up with the same type of solution to a problem time and time again, even when it has been shown not to work.

If you attended  the taster session you may remember  discussing the Underpant Gnomes from Southpark who thought they had a fantastic idea for innovation-‘Steal under pants!’.(see presentation) The only problem was they had no idea whatsoever on how to move from their fantastic idea to ‘Profit!’ The real challenge for the gnomes, of course, was that their idea wasn’t that great in the first place.

The idea has to be one that will work. An innovation is only an innovation if it has impact and makes a difference.

Organisations and teams can learn and adopt creative behaviours as part of their day to day work to help find ideas that will work.There are many, many publications on how to unleash creative behaviours, one of the most useful being Thinking Differently produced by the NHS Institute of Innovation and Improvement  www.institute.nhs.uk. It gives some great pointers on how to apply creative techniques in NHS settings.