Innovators think.

I don't mean they are all super-intelligent. I mean they regularly spend time trying to think of ways of making things better.

‘But wait a minute,' you might reply. ‘I spend my whole day thinking. That's why I'm so tired and crabby every evening.'

Do you, though? How much of your day do you spend thinking, and how much of it do you spend reacting, responding, coping, going to meetings, arranging meetings, managing others, being managed, reading emails, answering emails, talking on the phone, retrieving and replying to messages on your mobile that you missed because you were on your landline, retrieving and replying to messages on your landline that you missed because you were on your mobile … ?

How often do you get to the end of the day and realise that you have not had one spare moment to think?

Usually when I ask groups this question, pretty much everyone in the room puts up their hand.

Innovators don't let that happen. They don't treat innovation as something they do if they have time after they have finished all their work. They realise that innovation is the work.

Prioritise thinking

When I say that innovators think, I mean they prioritise thinking. They realise that thinking is important, so they make sure they do it. They spend time — often a bit of time each day — thinking about how to make things better. They don't do it when they are tired. They pick a time of the day when their mind is fresh and they try to work out how to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity.

I'm not suggesting you spend hours each day staring out the window dreaming of a better world. What I am suggesting is that, while you continue to spend most of your day dealing with today's problems, you also invest a small part of your time — just 1 or 2 per cent of each day — thinking about how to change the things you do to make them better. If you work between eight and nine hours a day, that's about ten minutes a day.

If you accept that your job, your business and your industry will all continue to change, then isn't spending 100 per cent of your time focused on today, and none of it on getting ready for tomorrow, over-prioritising today at the expense of tomorrow?

Innovation always starts with the same thing: it starts with someone having an idea. No matter how sophisticated your software and how clever your systems, ideas come from only one place. They come from us. And the more time we spend trying to think of ideas, the more likely we are to have them. So, if you want to be innovative in your work or in the rest of your life, the first thing to do is to accept that you are going to have to do some thinking.

I once asked an inventor how he came up with his idea and he began by saying, ‘Well, I was doing my thinking and …'

‘Wait a minute,' I interrupted. ‘What do you mean, “doing your thinking.”?'

He explained that each day he would make sure he spent some time thinking about how to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. He didn't always come up with something, but often he did.

He thought about thinking in a similar way to how we think about exercise. If you exercise your body every day, you will get fitter and stronger. He figured that if you exercised your brain every day and practised thinking, you'd get better at that too.

The first step to being more innovative is to commit to spending more time thinking about how you can improve the way you do things.

The problem is that it is now harder to find time to think than it has ever been before.

It wasn't that long ago that you could expect several quiet spots in your day during which there really wasn't anything much else to do but think. It might be when you were walking to the train station, or waiting for the bus, or having lunch in the park, or walking from one building to another, or in a taxi, or walking the dog, or at home when there was nothing good on television and you were too tired to read a book. It was often in those moments that your mind would turn, without prompting, to problems and opportunities and begin to puzzle over them … and sometimes, just sometimes, an idea would germinate.

It didn't necessarily happen because you were mad keen on spending every spare moment you could in methodically working your way through a problem. It was more that there wasn't actually anything else to do, so if your mind wasn't kept active in some way you'd get bored.

So our minds would wander, and we would free-associate and ruminate and analyse and imagine and maybe even overhear someone say something that sparked a thought that led to an idea … that sometimes became the beginning of something.

That's less likely to happen when you are checking your Twitter feed.

Nowadays those quiet moments happen far less frequently. Instead, we pull out our phones and fill every spare moment by reading and answering emails, texting, doing work, checking Facebook and Twitter, watching YouTube, playing games, listening to music … and so on.

I'm no Luddite. I'm as connected and plugged in as the next person, and of course the communications revolution has brought great advantages. On the bus we can now get some work done, or be entertained by music or a movie or by shooting for the next level of ‘DoomFinder 8'. As a result, though, we have far fewer quiet moments for reflection, and those are often when new ideas come to us.

Remember the story of Isaac Newton and the apple tree. Seeing an apple fall from the tree set off some thoughts about the nature of gravitational force. If he'd been answering emails, checking the news or listening to Mozart's latest single on iTunes, his mind would probably have been too cluttered for him even to notice the apple.

The way you use technology is up to you. You control your own access to it. If we let technology rob us of our thinking time, we can't blame the technology. It's our fault.

If, by the end of this book, you have come to the view that you should spend more time thinking, then give yourself the opportunity to do so. Don't jump onto your phone every time you have a quiet moment. Don't crowd your mind by filling it with information that is of no real value to you. If you create some space, then sometimes ideas will come to you when you least expect them, and in the most unlikely times and places.

If you have a problem or an opportunity that you are wrestling with, then go for a walk or a run or sit on a train, and don't do anything else. I'm not saying that a solution will necessarily spring into your mind. I'm just saying that the odds are much better than if you spend every spare minute with your mind engrossed in something else. Create some space for your brain to do its work, and see what happens.

So you should spend more time thinking. But what should you think about?'

What do you think about? Identifying opportunities for innovation

The first step toward being innovative is to identify an area in which innovation might take place. Sometimes the areas in which you need to innovate are obvious. For example, with the rise of social media, many companies recognised that they could use these new platforms for marketing purposes. There was clearly an opportunity for innovation there.

If you are aware that your organisation's supply chain is inefficient, or that its customer service is below par, or that your customers or clients are not as loyal as you might like them to be, then you have identified an opportunity for innovation.

Many innovations occur in areas that aren't obvious, however. Of course, after the innovation comes into existence, everyone who didn't think of it says, ‘Of course! It's so obvious!' Most innovations are obvious . . . after someone else has thought of them. They're not so obvious beforehand. For example, I don't remember anyone in the 1980s saying, ‘The problem with my telephone is I can't carry it around in my pocket'. Today the mobile phone looks like it must have been an obvious innovation, but back then it wasn't.

So if opportunities for innovation aren't always apparent, how do we identify them?

One useful strategy is to turn the question on its head. Instead of asking where there is an opportunity for innovation, instead ask this: where isn't there an opportunity for innovation?

The answer is that the only place there is no opportunity for innovation is where something is absolutely perfect — that is, where you are certain that something cannot be improved upon in any way. So look around your business for products and processes that are so good that you are totally confident they will still be exactly the same in ten, twenty or even fifty years. When you find something like that, then there is no opportunity for innovation there.

But are there many things like that? Think about how many aspects of your job, your business and your industry have changed in the past twenty years. How much of what you do now is done in exactly the same way as it was done twenty or thirty years ago? How many aspects of your business are you completely sure will be utterly unchanged in twenty years' time?

Make a note of every part of your job or your business that you think is perfect and cannot be improved upon in any way. You will then have identified the areas in your business where there are no opportunities for innovation.

As for everything else, all the things that are not on your list — that is where there are opportunities for innovation.

Innovation is not just about the end product or service you supply. You can innovate in any aspect of your business — in your systems and processes, in your marketing, in your supply chain, in how you manage people, in your customer and client service, in how you develop and implement strategy, and everywhere else.

Here are some places to look for opportunities for innovation.

Processes and systems

When you are trying to identify opportunities for innovation, look at all the systems and processes you have in place, and think about whether you can make any of them more efficient.

In almost every workplace there are processes that are so taken for granted that no one even thinks about how efficient or inefficient they are, or whether there might be a better way. It is only when you step back and pull those processes apart that you may be able to see a way to improve them. For example, think about the process of ordering a meal at a restaurant:

1. The waiter shows you to your table and gives you a menu.
2. Sometime later he returns to take your order, but you aren't ready, so he goes away again.
3. You work out what you want to eat.
4. You look around for the waiter.
5. You try to catch his eye.
6. Eventually he comes back and takes your order.
7. He delivers your order to the kitchen.
8. The chef receives the order and cooks your meal.

People have used this process of ordering food for centuries. Most of us take it for granted and never question it, but might there be a more efficient way of doing it?

What if there was a keypad on your table from which you could select your order? Then you wouldn't have to wait until a waiter was free to come to your table. You could order whenever you wanted to. You would just choose what you wanted to eat, press ‘Send' and your order would pop up on a screen next to the chef. Or the restaurant could have an app that allowed you to do it on your phone. Instead of nine steps, the new system would have just three:

1. The waiter shows you to your table and gives you a menu.
2. When you are ready you order via keypad or phone.
3. The chef sees the order and cooks your meal.

You wouldn't have to use it. You could still talk to the waiter if you wanted to, but for impatient people like me the keypad/app would be great, and it would save restaurants money as they would need fewer staff.

Identify your own systems, pull them apart and think about a way of making them simpler, more efficient and less costly. Perhaps one of your systems has ten steps. Is there a way of reducing that to nine, or eight, or seven?

Interactions with people

You can also be innovative in the way you interact with people. Every time you have a conversation with someone that doesn't go perfectly, it's an opportunity to step back and ask, ‘How could I handle that better next time?'

If you have a discussion with a difficult customer, client, manager or colleague, and the conversation doesn't go exactly as you wanted it to, it's tempting to think, ‘Well, it wasn't my fault. He was difficult'.

It might be more productive to take a step back, accept that there will always be a (hopefully small) proportion of people you need to deal with who are difficult, and think about how you can handle it better next time.

Identifying that something you are doing is not perfect is the first step toward improving what you do. It means you have identified an opportunity for innovation.

Notice when you feel bad

Feeling frustrated, angry, impatient or irritated at work is a sign that things aren't working as well as they should be. You might get irritated by a system you have to follow or frustrated by how long it takes to do something. In recognising this feeling, you may have stumbled upon an opportunity for innovation. There may be a way to improve the way you do things.

For example, I am impatient when I order a morning coffee and have to wait. If you walk through a business area before 9 am, you'll see dozens of people waiting for coffee at cafés. If you counted up all the people-minutes that workers spend waiting for their morning shot, you would arrive at a very big number.

The fact that I feel impatient when waiting for my coffee to be made means I have identified an opportunity for innovation. What could reduce my impatience? A shorter wait time. What innovation could achieve that?

Now there are apps through which you can order a coffee, which helps, but the big opportunity for innovation is to reduce the amount of time it takes to make a coffee. A café seems to need about a minute to make a coffee. I reckon that whoever works out how to reduce that time to thirty seconds is going to make a lot of money.

Here's another one. Getting on a plane takes ages, right? I'm happy to sit on the plane for an hour or two, but I get frustrated by how long it takes to get on and off. So maybe there is an opportunity for innovation there. What about putting the doors in the middle of the plane, rather than at the front? That way, when people get on, half of them will turn left and the other half will turn right, and loading should take about half the time.

Again, I feel frustrated when I get off a plane and find there's a long queue to get a taxi. There are lots of taxis and lots of passengers, but a bottleneck occurs at the point of where the people get in the taxis. One day I was waiting in the queue feeling frustrated and I tried to puzzle out a solution. By the time I got to the head of the queue I had one. It's not that complicated, but it would take a bit of redesign of the loading area. It's kind of hard to describe without a diagram, so I'm going to leave it as an exercise for you. How would you design a way to get people into taxis at the airport more efficiently?

Look out for things that make you feel irritated or frustrated at work. Whenever you identify one, make a note of it. There may well be an opportunity for innovation there.

A method for innovation

1. Once a week, for an hour or two, as you move through your work day, note as many things as you can that you suspect could be done better. Each time you find one, don't try to solve the problem immediately. Just make a note of it. For example, you might suspect that the way your organisation runs its internal communications, or the way it handles customer complaints, or an aspect of its marketing, is less than perfect. Identify as many imperfect things as you can. Be as specific as you can about where you think the problem or opportunity lies.
2. Each day take five or ten minutes and do this: Write down one of the opportunities for innovation that you have identified, at the top of a blank page, and think about how to improve things. Do this when your mind is fresh, not when you are exhausted. Thinking up new ideas is hard, so give yourself the best chance by doing it when you are alert. Try to make sure you're not interrupted. If you're at your desk, try to ignore your computer and phone. Maybe you should leave the office and go for a walk or sit in a park.
3. Don't put too much pressure on yourself to come up with a great idea straight away. It's not easy! You might feel stupid and frustrated, but don't worry, that's normal. Just try to tease out as many ideas, or even part-ideas, as you can. American scientist Linus Pauling said, ‘The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas'. I would add this: ‘The best way to have lots of ideas is to spend time trying to think of them.'

There's no guarantee that simply by spending time trying to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity, you will come up with a usable solution. But it is far more likely than if you don't spend time thinking about it.

Habitual thinking

Where do ideas come from? Are there things we can do during our precious thinking time that will help us to come up with better ways of doing things?

When we start trying to think of better ways of doing things and nothing immediately comes to mind, we often feel stupid and frustrated. Where are all the brilliant ideas? How did that flash of inspiration so quickly turn into something banal?

Don't worry. That's normal. Brilliant ideas don't usually leap into your head the moment you start looking for them. Be patient, and be kind to yourself. If nothing comes straight away, don't beat yourself up and tell yourself you're incapable. It takes a while to break out of habitual thinking.

I don't know who coined the term habitual thinking, but I first heard it used in a speech by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor of business at Harvard Business School. She said, ‘Mindless habitual thinking is the enemy of innovation'.

What is habitual thinking? Imagine you live in the city and you start a new job. Each day for the first week you drive a different way to work to try to discover the quickest route. On Monday you go one way, but you find there's too much traffic. On Tuesday you go another way, but there are too many sets of traffic lights. And so on, until eventually, after five days, you work out the quickest route. So you drive that way every day for the next twenty-three years. Each morning when you get in your car you don't think, ‘Hmm, I wonder which way I'll go today?' You just automatically do exactly the same thing you did yesterday. You're not asleep, because you're in control of the car, but you're just going through the motions. You're not questioning or challenging anything about the route you take. Your trip to work has become habitual.

We all spend a lot of each day engaged in habitual thinking.

How much of your day follows a similar routine? When you wake up do you go through pretty much the same series of steps before you leave home? Do you go the same way to work? Do you spend much of the day doing variations on tasks that you have done many times before? Do you eat lunch in the same place? After work, do you go home and do similar things?

If a large part of your day is spent in a habitual way, don't feel bad. It's normal. Often we work out what the best or most efficient way to do something is (like travelling to work) and then we keep doing it that way. It makes sense.

Most of us have days that follow pretty much the same pattern. Even the way we greet people is habitual. Someone says, ‘Hi. How are you?' You don't stop, think hard about the question, and then give them an honest answer. Instead, you just say, ‘Good, thanks. How are you?'

Much of work is habitual. For instance, when a problem arises for the first time, we work out how to solve it. Imagine a company that makes and sells hammers. One day, for the first time ever, a customer complains that the day after they bought their hammer, it broke. The company would have to work out how to react. Do they give the customer a refund? Do they give them a new hammer? Do they deny liability and insist that one of their hammers would never break so quickly unless it was used incorrectly?

Eventually the company will work out what to do. When, six months later, another customer makes a similar complaint, the company doesn't need to work out how to solve that problem again. They have already done that. They can simply implement the same solution as last time. They now have a ‘what to do when customer complains that their hammer broke' procedure.

We create systems and processes to make order out of chaos, and so we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time something happens. That makes sense. It's smart. Organisations work out the best way to deal with recurrent events, then ensure that that procedure is followed every time. As the organisation grows, it implements best practice. If a customer complains, they put the ‘complaints-handling procedure' into action. If an employee's parent dies, they implement the ‘compassionate leave procedure'. If they are about to introduce a new product, they follow the ‘launch a new product' process.

Again, this makes sense, but there is a danger. Habits, processes and systems can lead us to assume that the way things are is the way they have to be. If much of your life is habitual, then eventually you will probably stop questioning what you do, and instead just do it. If you became an electrician, then for the first few months or years you might periodically ask yourself why you became an electrician and whether you really want to be an electrician. Eventually, however, you would probably get used to the idea that you were an electrician and stop asking those questions.

The problem with habitual thinking is that it can lead us to close our minds to other ways of doing things, and cause us to miss opportunities. If we drive the same way to work every day, sooner or later we stop wondering whether there might be a quicker way. If every time a customer complains that their hammer broke we just automatically implement the ‘customer complains about a broken hammer' procedure, then sooner or later we stop thinking about whether that is the best way to handle the problem. Instead, this happens:

‘Why do you handle customer complaints about broken hammers in that particular way?'

‘Well, because that's the way we handle complaints about broken hammers.'

Are there things you do in your business that are justified by similarly circular logic? ‘We do things this way … because this is the way we do them.'

I used to take my kids to play in a big, wild park. There was a playground there but also trees, bushes, fallen logs and a hill for them to explore and muck around in. One day we were there I saw a mother and son in the playground. The boy was playing on the equipment and then, perhaps seeing other kids exploring the rest of the park, he headed off for the trees. He was nearly there when his mum spotted him, quickly chased after him and then pointed him back to the equipment. ‘No, no,' she said sternly. ‘We play in the playground.'

We all get into the habit of seeing things in a particular way. She equated playing in the park with using the playground equipment, and she was so set in her way of thinking that she didn't see that exploring the rest of the park could also be a fun and valuable experience.

Here's an example of habitual thinking, and seeing beyond it, from The New Inventors.

In the first decade of this century there was drought over much of Australia; water restrictions and conserving water were issues that everyone, even people who lived in the city, was aware of. Yet every day we would all turn on hot taps and watch the cold water run down the sink. We would stand there looking at it as it ran down the plughole, every now and then testing it to see if it was warm enough. Finally, when it was, we would put the plug in.

We didn't think we were wasting water. We were just trying to get rid of the cold water that had been sitting in the pipe, so we could get to the hot water we wanted.

Lloyd Linson-Smith realised that every time we waited for the hot water to run we were wasting water, and he wanted to find a way to save it. So he invented a thermostat that goes into your water pipe. It measures the heat of the water and, if it is below a certain temperature, it diverts the water to a holding tank. With his invention, when you turn on the hot tap nothing comes out until there is hot water. Then the next time you turn on the cold tap, the cold water you just saved emerges.

We all recognised the need to save water, yet none of us saw the cold water that came out of the hot tap as water we were wasting. We just saw that cold water as something we had to get rid of to get to the stuff we wanted — the hot water. We were all so much in the habit of seeing the cold water that came out of the hot tap as an inconvenience that we were unable to see it in any other way.

Somehow Lloyd had been able to step back and see that water differently. Where the rest of us had seen inconvenience, he had seen an opportunity for innovation. When I saw his invention, I had lots of questions:

• How did he manage to identify the cold water coming out of the hot tap as an opportunity for innovation?
• Why hadn't I ever recognised that when I turned on a hot tap and watched the cold water run down the sink, I was actually wasting water.
• If I was missing this opportunity for innovation that was right in front of my eyes, what other opportunities for innovation was I failing to see?
• Finally, and most importantly, how could I learn to see those opportunities?

It seemed to me that Lloyd had somehow managed to see something that most of us take for granted — cold water coming out of a hot tap — in a different way. He had looked at it with fresh eyes, and managed to break out of habitual thinking.

It's really easy to get set in our ways and to see things in one particular way only. When we do this, without even realising it we are closing our minds to other ways of doing things.

How often do you react to an event automatically and follow a process without questioning whether it is actually the best way to handle the matter? That's habitual thinking.

When we start a new job we spend less of our time thinking habitually, because everything is new. We see everything with fresh eyes. Then, as we gain experience and become familiar with the processes and systems, we grow more comfortable. The first time something happens we go, ‘Oh no! What do I do now?' The second time we go, ‘Oh no! What do I … wait … this is the same as happened last week. I know what to do'. The tenth time it happens we roll our eyes, sigh and go, ‘Not again'.

What that means is we gradually stop questioning things and instead begin to accept that the way things are is the way they have to be.

We need systems and processes, but we also need to find ways to step back from them. To be innovative, we need to find ways to break out of habitual thinking and start questioning things again. If we don't do that, then we don't see the cold water we waste every time we turn on a hot tap. We just don't see it.

There are almost certainly things that can be improved in your organisation. The first step is to see them. I want to outline some specific strategies that you can use to try to break out of habitual thinking.

Eight ways to break out of habitual thinking

Think about the difference between walking the same route you take almost every day (to work, to the train station, to the shop, to the park with your dog) and walking around a place you have never been before.

They are very different experiences. When you walk somewhere you have never been before you look hard and notice everything — you are very aware of your surroundings. It's a different experience from walking to the corner shop and back.

We need to learn to look at our business with fresh eyes, as if for the first time. Here are some ways of doing it.

1. Question everything

Recently one of my kids asked me, ‘Why is a chair called a chair?'

Of course, I had no idea. I realised that calling a chair a ‘chair' was something I took completely for granted. I had never questioned why we use that word. Children, on the other hand, have relentless curiosity and question everything.

If you want to find opportunities for innovation in your business and to take advantage of them, try to reawaken the curiosity you had as a child. Question everything you do. Pull it all apart and ask, ‘Could there be a better way of doing things?'

Some great innovations have come from questioning the unquestionable.

The first wheelbarrow was invented about 2000 years ago. The wheelbarrow is a well-engineered, functional device that is very good for transporting heavy stuff over short distances. The weight is distributed so that it's reasonably easy to push, even with a heavy load. However, when you have to tip the load out, some of this weight comes onto your arms, and after emptying it a few times they start to hurt.

But there's no point in thinking about how to solve that problem, is there, because surely, to empty a wheelbarrow, you have to tip it out? I mean, people have been tipping out wheelbarrows for 2000 years. If there was a better way, then surely someone would have thought of it by now.

John Steber was a builder who came on The New Inventors in 2004. He put a hinge on the front of the tray of the wheelbarrow, and some releasable catches on the back of the tray. As you pushed the wheelbarrow along, the clasps held the tray in place. When you reached your destination, you flicked a lever on the handle to release the clasps, stopped, lifted the handles up a little way and then stopped abruptly. The momentum caused the tray to flip forward and empty itself. Using John's wheelbarrow, you can tip out a load without having to lift the handles high and take the weight on your arms. It's a lot easier.

John solved a problem that had been around for 2000 years. He did it by questioning something that no one else had questioned. He asked, ‘Is there a way of emptying a wheelbarrow without using your arms to lift up the handles?'

Every day in business we try to answer lots of little questions: How can I get all this work done by lunchtime? How can I make that customer happy? How can I keep my boss satisfied?

Take some time to step back and ask bigger questions, just as John Steber did. Instead of asking, ‘How am I going to get this job finished in time?', ask yourself, ‘Are all the tools and systems I use to do my job as good as they can possibly be? If they aren't, how can I make them better?'

Question all your tools, all your processes and all your systems. Step back, take a breath and ask, ‘Could there be a better way?'

You may often find that the answer is no. But occasionally you will discover an opportunity for innovation, and a way to take advantage of it. If you question fifty things in your business and discover just one or two that can be improved and therefore create ongoing efficiencies, then I would suggest that it is time well spent.

Here's another example of questioning everything.

A 14-year-old schoolboy named Suvir Mirchandani, from Pittsburgh in the USA, was trying to think of ways to cut waste and save money in his school as part of a science project. He noticed that students received a lot of paper handouts. He started thinking about the cost of the ink that was used in the printing, and wondered if there might be a way to reduce ink consumption.

He noted the most commonly used letters of the alphabet and set them in four different typefaces: Garamond, Times New Roman, Century Gothic and Comic Sans. Then he enlarged the letters, printed them on separate pieces of paper and weighed each piece of paper. The weight of each piece of paper was identical, so any variation in the weight had to be due to the different amount of ink used by each of the different fonts.

Suvir discovered that switching to Garamond font with its thinner strokes would result in much less ink being used. In fact, he found that if his school district switched all of its printing to Garamond, it would be able to reduce its ink consumption by 24 per cent and save as much as $21 000 each year! He also calculated that if the US Government set all its printing in Garamond it could save $136 million per year, and that if all the US state governments followed suit, that would save an additional $234 million.

All from changing the type font.

Fonts are right there in front of our eyes all the time, and so is the need to be efficient and cut costs. Yet most of us never think much about fonts, much less question their impact on the bottom line.

How many things are there in your business that no one ever questions? Look at them all and see if you can identify some opportunities for innovation.

2. What assumptions are you making?

We all make assumptions about how the world operates. We assume that the sun will come up tomorrow, we assume that it will take about the same amount of time to get to work today as it did yesterday, we assume that if we are in a hurry, we'll get stuck behind a car driving at thirty kilometres per hour.

In business we make assumptions about what customers and clients want, about the best ways to reach them, about how our industry is changing, about the best way to run the business, and many other things.

Assumptions help us make sense of the world, save time and inform our decision making. However, sometimes the assumptions we rely upon become invalid. For example, we used to assume that the quickest way to find out something was to look it up in an encyclopaedia. That is no longer correct.

In retail, up until ten or fifteen years ago it was usually safe to assume that your competitors were those who sold a similar product or service to you and were geographically proximate. If you owned the only electronics store in town, then you could assume that that fact alone would pretty much guarantee that as long as you ran a reasonably competent business, you would get the bulk of the business in the area. If you sold electronic goods in Newcastle and they were 10 per cent more expensive than those in Sydney, you could assume that not many people would bother to drive two hours down the highway to get the cheaper goods.

The advent of online retail has meant that those assumptions are no longer valid, because competitors no longer need to be geographically proximate. They can be anywhere.

We used to be able to make certain assumptions about how dissatisfied customers might behave. If they were unhappy with something, they might — might — go to the trouble of calling up, or writing a letter to the company, but that would take a fair bit of effort. If they wanted to write, they would have to write a letter, address the envelope, buy a stamp and post the letter, and it was safe to assume that a fair proportion of unhappy customers wouldn't bother to go through all those steps. Even if they did, it was a communication that was only going to be read by those within the company. Of course, a dissatisfied customer might tell a few friends, but they would probably soon forget about it and move on. So, from the company's point of view, the worst thing that could happen wasn't really that bad.

Then social media arrived and those assumptions were no longer valid. Suddenly, if a customer was dissatisfied they could tell the world, and they didn't even have to buy a stamp. They could use Facebook, Twitter, an online forum or all three, and they could do it all while they were waiting for the bus. Worst of all, sometimes they could post a lacerating critique of the company on the company's own website!

The mega-trend was a shift in power from the retailer to the consumer. Retailers who wanted to stay successful had to quickly rid themselves of all their outdated assumptions about how the customer–retailer relationship worked and replace them with more relevant ones.

The assumptions that can safely be made about staff are changing, too. Until relatively recently it was often safe to assume that a high percentage of staff would choose to stay with a company for a long time, provided they were reasonably satisfied with their pay and opportunities for promotion. Now it is much more common for people to move between jobs, and even careers, and there is a greater awareness of work–life balance issues and flexible work arrangements. As a result, some assumptions that employers used to be able to make about their workforce are no longer valid. To be able to employ the best people, employers need to ensure they are not making decisions and developing strategy based on outdated assumptions.

So what assumptions are you making about:

• your business
• your relationships with your customers
• what your customers want
• the loyalty of your customers
• the best way to market to your customers
• the best way to advertise to your customers
• your relationships with your suppliers
• what your suppliers want
• who your competitors are
• what your staff want?

One assumption that many of us make is that we assume that the way we do things is the way things should be done. That is, the mere fact that we do things a certain way leads us to assume that it is the best way of doing them.

For example: ‘We use X as our lawyer, because X is the lawyer we use.'

Maybe X is the best lawyer for your organisation. If X has been representing you for fifteen years and knows the company and your history, and has a relationship with you, those are all important factors. But don't assume that just because X is your lawyer, that fact alone necessarily means that X is the best lawyer for your company. Instead, question your assumptions.

One way to identify and take advantage of opportunities for innovation is to identify your assumptions, and then challenge them. If you find an assumption that doesn't stand up to analysis, then it is time to work on developing a better way of doing things.

The development of inflight entertainment provides an excellent example of an innovation that came about from challenging an assumption. In the old days, air travellers would watch videos on a screen that hung from the ceiling in the middle of the aisle, so everyone had to watch (or not watch) the same thing. The next step was a screen set into the back of the seat in front of you, so you could watch what you wanted when you wanted to. Then the airline started handing out tablets on which you could watch their content.

Throughout this evolution, one assumption was constant: that if you wanted to watch the airline's content, then you had to watch it on the airline's device. And until recently, that was a necessary assumption for the airline to make.

Times change, however.

A few years ago Air Canada, working with IBM, thought about how most people now carried their own device onto the plane, and they decided to challenge the decades-old assumption that the only way to watch the airline's content was on the airline's device.

Why, they wondered, couldn't people watch the airline's content on their own device?

They already had an Air Canada app, so they added a feature that allowed wireless streaming of inflight entertainment to the passenger's device. All passengers had to do was download the app before take-off, then they could watch the airline's content on their own computer, tablet or phone.

The benefits for the airline were that they saved the cost of buying, installing and maintaining screens for every seat. Their planes were also lighter because they didn't have a screen installed in the back of every seat, which lowered fuel costs.

It all came from challenging one basic assumption: that if you wanted to watch the airline's content, you had to do it on their device. Once they realised that that assumption, formerly perfectly valid, had become outdated, the rest was pretty logical.

Here's another example of challenging assumptions, from The New Inventors.

When people with reduced mobility are confined to bed, they sometimes develop pressure sores, which can be painful and lead to infection and even gangrene. Traditionally, one way of preventing pressure sores has been to move the patient regularly, but that can be painful for the patient and physically demanding for the nurse or carer.

The assumption has been that if a patient is unable to move themselves, then someone else has to move them. That sounds logical, right?

Hannah Piazza had been a nurse for thirty years when, one night, she treated a young woman who was very ill and had to be turned every hour to prevent bedsores. Each time the woman was moved it caused her pain. Hannah decided to try to think of a better way.

What she came up with was a bed that could be programmed to move very slowly in tiny increments in a rocking motion throughout the night, so that, without waking the patient, their weight would be regularly shifted. Instead of a carer moving the patient, the bed they were lying on moved them.

Hannah had questioned the assumption that a patient had to be moved by another person. Was there another way of approaching the problem? Babies are rocked in the cradle, so why not rock an adult very gently in the same way?

It seems logical now, but the big step was to question the underlying assumption.

3. Technology is not always the answer

Innovation begins with an idea and often leads to the creation of a new technology that becomes an accepted part of our lives. The chair, television and the car are all examples of ideas that eventually became new technologies.

Sometimes, however, we can get a little obsessive over new technology. For example, recently we went out to a restaurant and the waiter took our order on an iPad. To be honest, it took a bit longer than usual, but that was okay. It impressed the kids. Curious as to what the next step was, I watched the waiter after he left our table. He walked over to the kitchen, called out to the chef, and then started reading our order from the iPad while the chef grabbed a scrap of paper and scribbled it down.

It was a great illustration of how just having the latest technology doesn't achieve anything. It all depends on how you use it.

A lot has been made of ensuring that all high-school students have a computer. Some seem to think that as long as they all have a computer, everything else will fall into place. Just having a computer doesn't help a student to learn better. The computer only starts to become useful when new ways of teaching are developed that take advantage of the things a computer can do. What's the point of a student having a computer if they are just using it to do the same things they used to do with a pen and paper? It's not the technology that's most important. It's the method.

The breakthroughs come as teaching methods evolve to take advantage of all the new ways of learning that a computer enables. For example, maybe having computers will allow students to spend less time in the classroom with 25 others and more time learning on their own or in small groups. Instead of always having to hand in a written essay for English or History, they might now be able to hand in something that has more complex audio-visual elements. If a student is at home sick, can they log in and be virtually present in class? How can the fact that students can now collaborate using Skype, email, wikis and instant messaging be used to improve learning?

Some frame it as a debate about technology, but it should be a debate about learning methods. The question isn't, ‘How can we make sure that every high-school student has a computer?' The question is, ‘How can we improve learning, and what role can computers play in that?'

Technology is no better than the brains that thought of it and the hands that created it. When we are looking for ways to improve our businesses and we identify an opportunity for innovation, these days it can be tempting to think, ‘I'm sure if I just wait a bit, some new technology will come along and solve this problem'.

Sometimes that's right. But not always.

Let me give you an example.

Ed Evans won The New Inventors Invention of the Year award in the show's final year. He was a cattle farmer who had been injured when one of his cattle charged a stockyard gate that he was behind. The animal charged the gate, and the gate rocketed open and hit Ed hard.

Ed knew that every year many farmers were seriously injured in this way, and that some had even been killed. While they know they shouldn't turn their back on an unlocked gate when there are cattle about, farmers get busy, so every now and again they do. Even if they are facing the gate an animal can move so quickly that there's no time to get out of the way.

Ed started thinking about a solution. He could have looked at new technology; perhaps a gate that automatically shut and locked itself, or an alarm that went off whenever a cow was within five metres of the gate, or even some fancy new type of gate that would open if a human hand released it but not if a cow charged it.

Instead, Ed used a piece of technology that was over 3000 years old: the hinge. He put a hinge in the middle of the gate, so when a cow charged it, instead of the gate slamming straight back and hitting anyone who was on the other side, the hinge would cause the gate to ‘break' in the middle and fold back in on itself, like a folding door. This meant that in many circumstances the farmer wouldn't get hit at all. Even if they did get hit, because much of the force would have been absorbed by the gate folding back in on itself, the blow would likely cause less injury.

Cattle farming has been around for about 6000 years, and hinges for about 3000 years. I'm not sure when the first person was injured by a cow charging a gate, but it's clear that the solution to this problem had been technologically available for a long time. It wasn't a lack of technology that stopped this problem being solved. It was a lack of innovative thinking.

Here's another example. At conferences, it's always hard to get people back into the room on time after morning and afternoon tea. It's not because they're evil or slack. It's just that they get involved in conversations and want to keep talking. Event organisers try loudspeaker announcements and playing music, but people often ignore them. If it hasn't already been done, no doubt someone will soon try sending all the delegates a text message saying, ‘Please come back in! We're about to start!' The most effective way to get everyone back inside doesn't rely on any new technology. The most effective way is for someone to walk around ringing a little bell and looking people in the eye. It works because, while it's easy to ignore a disembodied sound coming from a loudspeaker (or a text message), it's hard to ignore a real person without feeling you are being rude.

Maybe there are some challenges, or opportunities, in your business that you are assuming can only be solved by new technology. Perhaps that assumption is holding you back from really examining the problem closely, and looking as hard as you can for a solution that you can implement with technology that already exists.

When you do invest in new technology, remember the waiter with the iPad, and high-school children and their computers. Keep asking yourself if you are using the technology in the smartest way possible, and taking full advantage of everything the technology can help you to do.

4. Reframe the question

Sometimes, when trying to come up with an innovative way of doing things, we get stuck. It happens to everyone. We identify a problem to be solved, we do some quality thinking and we come up with … nothing. Every solution we think of has a fatal flaw, and as our frustration mounts we begin to think this problem is one that simply does not have a solution.

Sometimes we're right. Some problems don't have a solution.

When you think you have found a problem that has no solution, try reframing the question. That is, take the question you have been trying to answer and ask it again in a slightly different, perhaps slightly less ambitious, way. Often this can open up some new ways to explore an answer.

Here's a great example from the world of self-combusting hay bales.

If hay bales get hot enough, they can spontaneously combust. On hot summer days the temperature in the middle of a hay bale can rise to the point where the bale bursts into flame. Han Van Wyc read about a farmer whose haystack caught on fire; the fire spread and caused the farmer $100 000 worth of damage. Han decided to try to think of a solution. He asked this question:

‘How can I stop hay bales from overheating?'

It was the logical question to ask. If he could stop them getting too hot, then they wouldn't ignite. He tried to think of a way of preventing the inside of the bale from going over 60 degrees Celsius, when combustion can occur. Would shading do it? But the bales could be anywhere on the farm. What about watering? Again, there were practical problems.

Whichever way he looked at it, he came up against problems. Perhaps it was one of those problems that just didn't have a solution.

Then Han did something brilliant: he reframed the question.

He started to look at the problem in a different way. If he couldn't work out a way to stop the hay bales overheating, then maybe he could work out a way to let the farmer know when they were overheating. What if he could develop a system that somehow warned the farmer when the temperature inside the bale was approaching 60 degrees Celsius? If the farmer knew when one of their bales was getting dangerously hot, then they could just carefully pull apart that one bale to allow the heat to dissipate, and all would be well.

That wouldn't be quite as good as inventing something that would prevent the bales from overheating, but it would still be pretty useful.

This is what Han invented. He took a hollow pipe and in one end he introduced a plug made from an alloy that melts at 60 degrees Celsius. Behind the plug was an orange rod. You push the end of the pipe with the alloy plug and the orange rod into the middle of the bale, and leave the other end of the pipe sticking out of the bale so that the pole points slightly downwards. When the bale gets dangerously hot, the alloy plug melts, which allows the orange rod to slide down the inside of the pipe until it sticks out of the side of the bale, clearly visible to anyone passing.

All the farmers need to do is to regularly drive past all their hay bales and look to see if any have an orange rod hanging out of them. If they find one that does, they know it's getting too hot, so they quickly (but carefully) pull it apart before it combusts.

The important point is this. Han got stuck. He couldn't solve his problem. He could have given up, but instead he reframed the question to make it slightly less ambitious. Yes, it would have been better if he could have found a way to stop the hay bales from overheating, but failing that, the next best thing was to think up a way of finding out when they were overheating.

If you have identified an opportunity for innovation, or a problem to be solved, and you get stuck, then try to reframe the question you are asking. Perhaps there is another, slightly less challenging question you can ask that will still lead you to a useful solution.

For example, imagine a retail company was trying to answer this question: ‘How can we increase our online sales via our website?'

Say they came up with a number of ideas, but for one reason or another none of them were successful. They could decide to give up, or instead they could reframe the question. Instead of asking, ‘How can we increase online purchases?' they could ask, ‘How can we get more people to look at our website, and stay on it for longer?'

If the company could get more customers to look at their website, and increase the time customers spent on it, that might well lead to an increase in online purchases.

Coming up with strategies to get more customers to look at the website, and to stay on it for longer, isn't quite as good as devising a strategy to increase online purchases, but it's still pretty good, and it's a lot easier to achieve. The company could upload entertaining videos, interesting information, competitions, themed games and quizzes. They could ensure that attractive offerings for online purchase were displayed near the entertaining content, and see if that led to an increase in purchases.

Reframing the question is something we often do without even realising we are doing it. Remember when you were in high school and had a crush on someone? The question you might have asked yourself initially was, ‘How can I get that person to be my girlfriend/boyfriend?' But that was probably too ambitious, so you reframed the question to one that was a little easier to achieve: ‘How can I get her/him to go on a date with me?' Sometimes even that question was too audacious, so you reframed it again to, ‘How can I get her/him to notice me?'

In your business, look for problems you have been unable to solve, or opportunities you have been unable to take advantage of, and see if you can reframe the question that you have been asking in a different, slightly less ambitious, way. If you can't work out a way of getting everything you want, that doesn't mean you should give up. There may well be a way to 80 per cent, or even 50 per cent, of what you want.

5. The solutions might be right in front of your eyes 

Today we are exposed to more information than ever before. To prevent ourselves becoming overwhelmed, we try to organise all this information by creating something like a filing system in our brain. Each bit of new information that comes in is unconsciously filed away in the appropriate place. For example, if you discover you are putting on weight, that piece of information gets filed under ‘health' (or, if you are vain, ‘appearance'). If a new supermarket opens up down the road, you file that under ‘shopping information'.

That all makes sense, but sometimes the silos we create are so rigid that they stop us from connecting different pieces of information in ways that might help us to find solutions to problems. Breaking down the silos, and looking for connections between different pieces of information, can help us to come up with some unexpected and useful ideas.

Here's an example of how silos can prevent us from solving problems. The other day I was looking for a book, I, Claudius by Robert Graves. When I was a kid I watched the television series and read the book, and I decided I wanted to re-read it. I looked through our two bookcases, but couldn't find it. Increasingly frustrated, I searched them again, and then looked everywhere else I thought a book might have got buried. Eventually I gave up and went back to working on my computer in my office.

That evening I told one of my kids that I had lost the book, and she said, ‘I've seen that book. Your computer monitor is sitting on it'.

At my desk I plug my laptop into a monitor, but the monitor is a bit low so I put three books under it to make it higher. The books are facing spine out, so the entire time I was sitting at my desk feeling irritated about not being able to find I, Claudius, it was literally right in front of me. I was looking straight at it.

Why didn't I see it?

In my mind, books belong in the bookcase. If the book I was looking for wasn't in the bookcase, then the only other thing that could have happened, I figured, was that someone had left it lying around after they had read it. I only thought of the book in one way — as something you read.

That piece of information — that a book is something you read — was so rigidly ingrained in my mind that I simply didn't see the objects that my monitor was balancing on as books. Because they weren't doing what books were supposed to do then, according to my information filing system, they weren't books. They were things I sat my monitor on to make it higher.

Kids, however, often haven't yet learned about putting every piece of information in a little box, so my daughter's thinking was more flexible.

Sometimes the solution is right in front of us. We just need to learn how to see it.

Here's an example from The New Inventors. Lincoln Morris was an HSC student who had a friend whose family were trying to farm bass in a dam. Bass eat tadpoles, small fish, insects and other small creatures, and his friend's family were trying to find a viable food source for the bass they were farming.

Lincoln's friend had told him that when playing tennis at night he had seen moths clustering around the lights. He wished there was a way to use the moths to feed his bass.

Lincoln thought about this and then got to work. He built a pontoon, shaped like a small catamaran, and from it hung long UV lights about 20 centimetres above the water. When the lights are turned on and the pontoon is pushed into the water at dusk or after, the insects cluster around the lights and the fish swim to the surface, stick their heads out of the water and eat them. The fish now have a plentiful source of food.

Lincoln and his friend had come up with the innovation by putting together two bits of information that the rest of us would never have thought to associate:

1. Insects are attracted to light.
2. The fish like to eat insects.

Once those two bits of information were next to each other, the solution became clear; put light near the water, and the insects would flock to it. The solution to the problem was right in front of their eyes, and their minds were flexible enough to allow them to see it. Sometimes simply putting two different pieces of information next to each other can suggest a solution to a problem.

6. Is the answer in your data?

Today we can access more data than ever before. Used the right way, analysis of that data can offer you great insights and help you to be innovative in what you do. Use data the wrong way, and you can find yourself drowning in numbers, graphs and spreadsheets.

So how do you get the insights without drowning in the data?

A lot has been said about ‘big data'. Data itself does nothing. It is only potentially useful. What is important is the quality of our analysis of it. Rather than jumping into the data in the hope that an insight will ‘appear', often a better strategy is to first come up with a specific question you want an answer to.

Say your question is, ‘Why aren't more people making purchases via our website?' You can use data to discover:

• how many people are visiting your website
• where they are from
• whether they are existing customers or others
• what areas of the website they are visiting
• how long they are staying there
• what areas of the website they aren't visiting.

Using the data to find answers to these questions may shed light on what people are doing and not doing on your website, why more purchases aren't being made and some strategies to address that.

Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma in the US used their data to find the answer to a very specific question. They knew there was a relationship between attendance at their zoo and the weather. What they didn't know was the exact relationship.

With help from IBM and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they analysed their past attendance figures and weather data and were able to come to a better understanding of how the two factors interacted. Now that they knew more about this relationship, they were able to make better decisions about rostering staff. If they knew that Monday was going to be sunny, they could roster more staff in the expectation of getting lots of people. If it was going to rain on Tuesday, they could roster fewer staff.

Remember how it began. They knew there was a relationship between two factors — the weather and attendance — but they didn't know exactly what that connection was, so they used data to discover more about it, and as a result were able to make better decisions and use their resources more efficiently.

Are there some relationships between different factors in your business that you are aware of but unable to evaluate or quantify accurately? Is your business seasonal? Are there peaks and troughs in which you can't quite see a pattern? Could an analysis of your data help you to see patterns that you are currently unaware of?

Another American zoo, Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, wanted to know how their visitors spent money during their visit, so they analysed data from all their food outlets. One of the things they looked at was the times of day that visitors bought food. They already knew sales tailed off after 3 pm, and as a result they started to close some of their food outlets after that time. However, from their analysis they discovered that there was a spike in ice-cream sales in the hour before closing time. That makes sense. Families walk around, they have lunch, they walk around some more, then toward the end of the day the kids get tired and start complaining. To save the day, Mum or Dad quickly suggests an ice cream. Everyone cheers up, and the ice cream gives the kids just enough energy to make it back to the car.

Once the zoo had that insight, the change it suggested was obvious: they knew to keep all their ice-cream outlets open right up to closing time.

Remember, they were looking at something specific: how and when their visitors spent money. The more they knew about that, the more likely they would gain an insight that would allow them to improve the way they did things. Remember also that once they had the information (ice-cream sales peak toward the end of the day), the course of action became obvious (keep ice-cream outlets open right up until the zoo closed).

So, when analysing data, try to be specific about the information you want to obtain. What questions about your customers, or your business, do you want to know the answer to? Work out the questions you are going to ask before you jump into the data.

Perhaps you can use data to get a clearer picture of exactly what it is that your customers want. Upworthy is a media site dedicated to finding, writing and producing news content. They wanted to learn what factors influenced people's decision either to read a story right to the end or, having lost interest, to click away partway through. They analysed their website traffic data to find how long people stayed on stories, and from that information they were able to work out at what point in the story readers lost interest and left.

They discovered that a story containing humour was likely to keep people reading for longer. Again, once they had the insight, the course of action it suggested was obvious. Now, even in serious stories, they try to include humour.

They also learned that suspense keeps people reading, so now they try to structure their stories in such a way that people want to know what is going to happen next.

By collecting and analysing ‘attention minutes' data, each week they can see which stories successfully engage readers and which don't. When stories don't engage readers, they can see where the story lost them and work out how they could do it better next time.

Are there insights you can gain about your own clients and customers from analysing their behaviour? Are you able to find out when they lose interest, or become disengaged?

There are lots of organisations that could use data to improve what they do. For example, schools want their teachers to be as good as they can be. In fact, we all want that. But how often do educators collect data from the people who know more about their teachers than anyone else, the students? Many schools rarely or never ask students for feedback on their teachers, and yet that information could be incredibly useful in helping teachers improve.

Getting the feedback wouldn't be hard. At the end of the year students could be asked to rate their teacher out of 5 in different areas; patience, control of the class, how much they shout, and so on. Of course, you would need to be careful when interpreting the answers of ten-year-olds, but if 80 per cent of the class said they thought their teacher shouted too much, that would surely be useful feedback for the teacher to have.

When I was at school I thought the worst times were when I was bored. Back then I thought, and I still think now, that if a large proportion of students are bored, something isn't working properly. Schools could gather data on boredom, and then try to eliminate it, in this way:

1. Ask students to list the parts of the school week in which they get bored. Is it in assembly, maths, history … ? Encourage them to be honest.
2. Whenever a part of the week is identified as being boring by more than 25 per cent of students, there is an opportunity for innovation.
3. The next step would be for teachers to think about how they can make that part of the week more engaging for students (while ensuring, of course, that the students learn).
4. Once there are no longer any parts of the week in which more than 25 per cent of students are bored, repeat the process, but this time act whenever there is a boredom rating of more than 15 per cent.

What can your data tell you about your customers and clients? What can it tell you about what they want? And about what they don't want? Do the insights you gain into your customers and clients suggest any changes you can make that will make your business more attractive to them?

7. Think like a customer or client

It's easy to say that your business is ‘customer facing', that it ‘focuses on the end user' and so on, but how often do you actually spend an hour in the shoes of one of your customers or clients? The best way to make sure that your business is as customer-friendly as it can be is to regularly experience your business as a customer.

For example, a bookstore owner once told me that once a week he entered his own shop as a customer. When he came in and looked around as a regular shopper, he found that he would often think of a way to make some sort of improvement to the layout of his store. Even though he was in the store every day, he gained these insights into how he could improve his customers' experience only when he stood in their shoes.

Sometimes in business all the processes and systems we use seem to make sense, and it is only when we experience them from the customer's point of view that we recognise they could be better.

I once met an executive of a large retail food chain who said he visited customers at home and looked in their cupboards and their fridge for insights into how they shop. Then he went shopping with them. He was committed to getting as close as he could to his customers so he could understand how and why they made decisions.

Here's an example of a process that looks good on paper, but as soon as you experience it as a customer you realise it's terrible.

A few years ago my credit card expired. The bank sent me a new card, and then I had to try to remember all my direct debits and change them over or else my payments would fail. If I forgot to inform the insurance company of my new card details, they would eventually email or ring me, and I would apologise and give them the new card number. (Now this process seems to occur automatically, which is a good innovation.)

One of my direct debits was to a charity. The month after I got my new credit card they rang me and said, ‘You missed your payment'. Their choice of words really irritated me. My donations were voluntary, but they made it sound like I owed them money.

What they should have done was to thank me for my previous donations and then draw my attention to the fact that the previous payment hadn't gone through. Instead, they used a script that was appropriate for a business, but not for a charity. The relationship between a business and a customer is very different from the relationship between a charity and a donor. If they had put themselves in their customer's shoes, they would have realised that donors don't like to be treated like debtors.

Here's a wonderful example of thinking like a customer. For several years I hosted the Australian Clean Technologies Competition, an Australian Government initiative that offered mentoring and other assistance to new technology companies, including many whose innovation involved a better or more efficient use of energy. There were some amazing entries, including a plant fertiliser made from recycled glass and a technology that harvested the heat from the sunlight that came through office, home and even car windows, then converted the heat into energy that was used to power the air conditioner.

The program was designed as a competition and the further through the competition an innovation progressed, the more assistance it got. In 2012 the competition was won by a company that supplied lighting to businesses.

What's so innovative about that? Quite a lot, actually.

A few years earlier, they had realised that the lighting industry was changing. Ever since electric lighting had been around, people had pretty much wanted only one thing from a lighting company, and that was lighting products.

This century, however, electricity prices have gone up and people have started to become more concerned about the environment. Suddenly people want more than light from a lighting company. They also want to reduce the amount of money they are spending on electricity, and to reduce the amount of energy they use — to go green (or at least, to be seen to be going green).

Those who started enLighten figured that these two new trends — rising electricity prices and increased awareness of the environmental cost of electricity — were unlikely to be reversed. So they started to think about what they could do for clients to help them to reduce their electricity bills. They realised that many workplaces kept lights on all the time in areas where there were people only some of the time — for example, in car parks, corridors, toilets, stairwells and fire escapes.

Many people remember a parent nagging at them to turn the light off when they left a room. Yet companies were spending lots of money lighting areas even when there were no people in them.

EnLighten saw the beginning of a trend toward increased demand for lighting products that saved electricity. They calculated that the trend was going to continue and grow, then they thought like their customers. If electricity was going to keep getting more expensive, then what sorts of products would their customers want? Clearly, products that helped them to save electricity and cut costs. How could businesses do that? By doing what kids are told to do at home: ‘Turn the lights off when you leave the room.'

Once enLighten had worked out what their customers were going to want, all they had to do was to put themselves in a position to supply it.

EnLighten developed a suite of products that businesses could use to reduce their electricity bills while still properly lighting areas when there were people using them. These included motion sensors that would switch lights on and off when a person arrived and left a room or area, as well as timers and dimmers. You have probably been in a toilet, stairwell, corridor or car park where such products are used.

Here's another great example of thinking like a customer. Chemists, or pharmacists, sell healthcare products —
medicine, vitamins, shampoo, mosquito repellent and so on. Why, then, did I see one that sold toy buckets and spades? That's got nothing to do with healthcare!

The answer is that the people in that chemist were thinking like their customers. The chemist was near the beach. They sold sunscreen, probably a fair bit of it. They also sold sunhats. They realised that if their customers wanted sunscreen and the beach was only five minutes' walk away, then those customers might also want a beach hat. And they might be going to the beach with their kids and want some beach toys. So, they figured, customers would come in for sunscreen, and then see the hats and the buckets and spades and maybe buy them too.

What they did was to work out what other things their customers might want, and then supply them. If their customers wanted sunscreen, then there was a good chance that they might want a hat and beach toys too. The fact that plastic toys aren't what a chemist traditionally sells didn't matter.

If a customer or client is doing business with you, what else, apart from the goods or service that you sell, might they be after? If you supply running shoes, then your customers might also want sweat bands, energy drinks and a cap. If you supply plumbing services, your customers might also need a handyman. If you supply airline flights, your customers might want a hire car or accommodation at the other end. Customers and clients want their life to be as easy as possible. Generally, that means dealing with as few companies that supply goods or services as possible. So make life easy for them: work out what else your customers might want, and supply that too. It doesn't necessarily mean that if you are a plumber you should also become a handyman. Instead, you could find a good handyman, and enter an agreement with him or her whereby you try to scout work for each other.

Put yourself in your own customers' or clients' shoes, and think hard about the answers to these questions:

• What do your customers really want?
• How is what they want changing?
• What will your customers want more of in four years' time?
• What will they want less of in four years' time?
• How is your relationship with your customers changing?
• How might it change more in the next four years?
• What trends do you see in your industry?
• Which of those trends are likely to continue and to grow over the next five to ten years?
• What new demands will those trends create?
• What products and services will satisfy those demands?
• What can do you do to put yourself in a position to provide those products and services?

Try to pay more than lip-service to thinking like a customer. Experience as many parts of your business as you can from the point of view of your customers. Go into one of your stores and buy something. What were the good parts of the experience? What were the bad parts?

Telephone your business with a problem that a customer might have and see how easy or difficult it is to get your problem solved. How long were you put on hold for? Was the first person you spoke to able to help you? Did someone have to call you back? If so, how long did it take them to do so? What parts of the experience of dealing with your company impressed you? Which parts could have been handled better? Did you feel that people were doing their best to help, or that you were getting the runaround? Did you feel that that the people you spoke with genuinely wanted to help but were hamstrung by inflexible procedures and systems?

When you find something that could have been done better, the bad news is you have a problem. The good news is that you are now aware of it, and you can think about the best way to improve the way you do things.

Go to your website. How easy is it to find what you want there? Imagine you are someone who is considering doing business with your organisation. What parts of the website impress you? What parts are unclear or unhelpful?

Sometimes websites concentrate too much on showing everyone how clever the company is and not enough on clearly explaining how it can help clients and customers. Putting yourself in the mindset of your customer will help you to focus on what they want and how your company can provide it.

Think about how you can improve your customer's experience. For example, some courier companies have introduced an innovation that allows customers to track the location of their parcel online using a consignment number. This benefits the courier company because if people can check the progress of their parcel for themselves, then they don't need to call the company. In addition, knowing that they can easily find out exactly where their parcel is gives customers peace of mind and so improves their experience.

Getting the customer to take one extra step

Before a customer does business with a company, they take a number of steps. For example, before someone buys a product from a company's website they have to:

1. want to find the website
2. find the website
3. look at the home page
4. find the product they want
5. be satisfied that this product meets their needs
6. be satisfied that the price is competitive
7. be satisfied that they can afford it
8. select the item
9. go through the checkout process
10. pay for the item.

Similarly, a number of steps must also be taken before someone engages a plumber, a management consultant or a lawyer. For example, before a client engages lawyer A they:

1. recognise the need to contact a lawyer
2. must be aware that lawyer A exists
3. decide to contact lawyer A
4. (usually) have an initial contact in which they are satisfied that lawyer A might be someone they want to do business with
5. book an appointment with lawyer A
6. decide, after an initial meeting, to continue the relationship
7. reach agreement on fees.

How does a customer or client start to do business with you or your organisation? Break it down into a number of steps. Think like a customer and go through each of those steps. Are any of them tricky, difficult or in any way uncomfortable? If so, you have found an opportunity for innovation.

Think about ways that you might be able to make it easier for a client or customer to take each step.

Here's an example. Ten years ago newspaper headlines were designed to give you the gist of the story. For example, if the government's budget was unpopular, the headline might read ‘PM's Horror Budget'.

Now, with so much news consumed online, one of the steps that online news providers want their customers to take is to click through to as many stories as possible so they view more advertising. Whereas headlines used to be informative, now they aim to be intriguing. To write a headline that gets customers to take that extra step and click through to the story, today's headline writer has to be very good at thinking like a customer and working out what combination of five to ten words will most likely entice them to click on the story.

A news.com.au lead story in 2014 showed a head-and-shoulders photo of a young man in his twenties. The headline read:

I was intrigued. Who was Rhys? Why did we need more people like him? What terrible thing would happen if Rhys, and those like him, stopped doing whatever it is they do? So I clicked.

Rhys, apparently, was a bricklayer and the story was about how Australia was in danger of facing a shortage of bricklayers. I read the first couple of lines and then shut the window. I'm sure a bricklayer shortage is important, but if the headline had been something like ‘Australia faces shortage of bricklayers', I would never have clicked through. I'd been manipulated into taking the next step, and I had to admire the cleverness of the headline writer who had found a way to make a story about bricklaying intriguing. He or she had thought like a customer.

Here's another one. A recent story on a news website was headed something like ‘The one big secret to losing weight'. I clicked — and discovered that the one big secret to losing weight is to eat less. Not that big a secret, really, but they still got me to click.

So what will make your customer take the next step? What is going to make them decide to commit? Think like a customer to find out. Get right inside their heads, think about what they want, then give it to them.

Ask yourself, ‘What am I trying to get customers to do?'

Then ask, ‘How can I make it easier for them to do it?'

For example, imagine your customers were in a competitor's store. What would you like them to do? Ideally, you would like them to run out of your competitor's store as fast as they could and straight to your nearest store. Yeah, right! As if that's going to happen!

Innovation does not have to involve a break-out idea, but sometimes it does. This story illustrates what you can achieve when you start asking yourself simple questions about what your customer really wants.

Meat Pack is a shoe store in Guatemala. They sell the big brands, sometimes at a discount, and have lots of young customers. They wanted to come up with a new promotion that was innovative and surprised their customers, so they developed a new feature for their app called ‘Hijack'.

When GPS tracking technology recognised that one of their customers was entering a competitor's store, it triggered an opportunity for that customer to earn a discount at a Meat Pack store. The app would flash up ‘99%', then ‘98%', then ‘97%' … and so on. The quicker the customer got out of the competitor's store and found a Meat Pack store, the bigger the discount they could get. If they got to the Meat Pack store when the app read ‘65%', they were entitled to a 65 per cent discount. If it took them a bit longer and they arrived when the app read ‘28%', they were entitled to a 28 per cent discount.

So people would walk into other shoe shops, then pull out their phone and immediately turn around and sprint as fast as they could to the nearest Meat Pack store!

It's a brilliant idea, and very clearly shows that Meat Pack knew how to motivate their customers. What did their customer want? Good shoes at a discount. And if they had to run to get them, they would.

Here's an example of a business not bothering to think like a customer.

Someone I know was looking for a new financial adviser. She got a recommendation from someone she trusted and looked at the company's website, which was full of information about how the company helped clients to make good decisions and increase their wealth and financial security. My friend was impressed and went to look for information about the people who ran the company.

She looked all over the site but couldn't find any information about the people who would actually be advising her. There was just an email address and phone number for her to call to get more information. So my friend shut the window and looked elsewhere.

What she wanted was some information about the people who were going to be telling her what she should do with her money. She wanted to read that they were properly qualified and had lots of experience advising people. In short, she wanted to be made to feel safe.

The company had made a mistake. On their website they had concentrated on showing everyone how clever and successful they were. That's good. But if they had put themselves in their client's shoes and thought like a customer, they would have realised that they weren't just selling financial advice — they were selling trust. My friend was not about to trust her life savings, the money that was going to keep her secure and comfortable in her old age, to a business. She was going to entrust it to people, and she wanted to find out a bit about those people. When she couldn't find that information, she didn't feel safe, so she was out of there.

So ask:

• What are you really selling? Trust? Convenience? Peace of mind? Excitement? Think of it from a customer's point of view.
• What do your customers or clients want to find out that will make them feel safe doing business with you?
• What do your customers or clients fear? What will cause them to back off?

Get inside their heads, because then you will realise what you need to offer them to get them to commit.

When something goes wrong it's an opportunity

Recently one of our electronic devices stopped working. I rang the manufacturer and they assured me that someone would call me back in an hour. Someone did call me back, but it was four days later. They had damaged their brand in two ways — firstly, by taking so long to call back and secondly, and more significantly, by making a promise they did not keep. That stuff matters. Customers remember.

Go right through every type of interaction that your organisation has with its customers and clients, and ask:

• Is there any way we could make this better for the customer or client?
• Is there any part of this process that could irritate a customer or client and damage our brand? If so, how can we fix it?

If you supply a good or service to customers or clients, usually your interaction with them is as brief as the customer or client can make it. For example, no one wants to spend more time buying a new phone, vacuum cleaner or car than they need to. They do it as quickly as they can, then they get out of there and hope it is a long time before they have to come back. That's normal. Similarly, people will spend no more time with their accountant, IT consultant, plumber or lawyer than they have to. People just want to get their problem solved as quickly as possible and then get on with their lives.

When something goes wrong, however, the interaction between the customer and the business has to resume. For example, imagine that a customer buys a new computer, then three months later something goes wrong with it and they have to send it back to the manufacturer. Between the time the computer develops a problem and the time the customer gets their computer back, all fixed, they will form a strong impression of the company. If the company acts like it cares, tries to minimise the inconvenience to the customer and treats the customer well, then, even though the company sold the customer a computer that broke, the customer may end up thinking more highly of the company than they would have if the computer had not failed.

If, however, the customer feels like the company doesn't care and shows no sense of urgency in fixing the problem, or the customer feels that they were treated badly, they will probably remember that the next time they buy a new computer.

When thinking like a customer, look at every aspect of what happens when things go wrong for your customers and clients. Then ask how you can improve the process. How can you make your customer feel like they are being cared for and that the company understands the inconvenience the problem has caused? Can you supply a temporary replacement product? Can you ensure that the faulty product is repaired and returned as soon as possible? Can you give the customer a gift voucher by way of apology? Can someone simply ring the customer to apologise personally?

If the impression the customer is left with is, ‘Wow! Something went wrong, but they really did everything they could to take care of me', then the customer is likely to come back. If their impression is, ‘They did what they had to do under the warranty, but they didn't seem to care about how much hassle it all caused me', then they might not.

8. Plan for failure

Often when we have carefully put in place thorough and efficient systems, procedures and rules, we convince ourselves that everything will now be all right. But what if something goes wrong? Have you planned for failure? If something goes wrong, will the result be a minor inconvenience, or a major disaster?

A lot of people wonder why aeroplanes still have ashtrays in the toilets, given that smoking has been outlawed for years. Are they just really old planes? Has the airline not bothered to remove them? The reason the ashtrays are there is in case the airline's systems don't work and someone breaks the rules. If a passenger decides that, despite the clear prohibition, they just have to smoke a cigarette, where are they going to do it? Probably in the toilet. How are they going to get rid of the (possibly still smouldering) butt? They might try to flush it down the toilet or they might put it in the waste bin, which might be full of used paper towels. That could start a fire, which, in a plane high in the sky, would be bad. The airline provides an ashtray in the toilet so if anyone does flout the ban on smoking, they at least have somewhere safe to dispose of the butt.

The airlines haven't presumed that their rule will always be followed. Instead, they have been smart enough to assume that it will occasionally be broken, and asked this: when the rule is broken, what can we do to make sure that nothing really bad happens?

I try to avoid putting a glass of water on the same surface as my computer. I'm not especially clumsy. I can't remember the last time I knocked over a cup or a glass. But if I do knock one over, I don't want it to ruin my computer. By ensuring the glass and the computer aren't on the same surface, I'm planning for failure. When I do knock over a glass, it's not going to be a disaster.

Look at your own rules and ask: when they are broken, what are the consequences ? When the breaking of a rule could have an unpleasant or harmful result, see if you can plan for failure and do something that will minimise those consequences.

Pull all your systems and processes apart, and work out what will happen if each part of a process or system fails. Where you identify significant potential consequences, plan for failure and think about what you can do to minimise them.

Four reasons why we don't think enough

I hope that by now you have been persuaded, if you needed to be, that thinking about how to make things better is a useful, productive and necessary part of every business. Why, then, don't we do more of it?

When I speak to audiences about innovation, I often ask them why they think we don't spend more time thinking about how to make things better. These are the most common responses.

‘I don't have time'

This is the most common reason people give for not spending more time thinking about how to improve their business, and it's perfectly understandable. People aren't joking when they say they're busy. But if you spend all your time on today's problems, and none of it on getting ready for tomorrow, I suggest you need to adjust your priorities. Things are going to change. They always have done. If you don't work out how to make your business better, in five years' time it may have slipped backwards.

So how do you find the time? It's all about attitude and priorities.

The reason why people say they are too busy to think about ways to do things better is because at some level, conscious or unconscious, they don't see innovation as being as important as the rest of their work. They see it as something extra, something that you do once all the real work is done.

If you think something is important, then you make time for it. Have you ever heard someone say this? ‘I did all the work getting the customer interested, overcoming their objections and getting them ready to commit, but once I had done all that I was out of time, so I didn't actually sell them the car, even though they were really keen. Hopefully they'll come back tomorrow and I can do it then.' No one would ever say that, of course, because everyone knows that making sales is vital to any business.

Unfortunately innovation is easy work to put off. Thinking about ways to make things better doesn't feel as urgent as closing a deal. But coming up with an innovative idea can be far more valuable to your business than closing one deal or making one sale.

When you feel like putting innovation off, remind yourself that everything is going to be different ten years from now, and that your business is either going to be making the changes or getting left behind by them.

If you think innovation is important, find time to work on it. I'm not talking about devoting half your life to innovation — just 1 or 2 per cent of your work time. Schedule ten minutes a day for thinking about how to improve what you do. It's not much. Put it in your diary. Do it at the same time each day, and make sure you don't take on any other commitments at that time. When your thinking time comes around, turn your phone off. Maybe it will work better for you if you get out of your normal workspace.

It's hard to create a habit, but it's not hard to keep a habit. I do twenty minutes of yoga every morning. It's not hard to make myself do it, because it's a habit. I've been doing it for two and a half years, so now I don't even think about not doing it. But creating the habit was really hard. I needed to be really determined. I didn't like doing the exercises. They hurt. A lot. But I just made myself, and then after about a month it stopped being an incredibly hard thing that I had to make myself do, and simply became a habit. Now it's just what I do when I wake up. I don't even think about whether or not I want to do it. I just do it, like cleaning my teeth.

The good thing about creating a habit is that you don't have to have a battle every day about whether or not to make the effort. Negotiating with yourself can be really energy consuming and time wasting. You spend all this time arguing with yourself, and by the time you finish the argument you could have been half finished.

If you want to spend more time being innovative, take the negotiating out of it and just make one simple rule: that you will spend ten minutes a day trying to think of ways of doing things better. That way you don't need willpower. You just need to follow the rule.

That's how I wrote my first novel for children. I realised that after we put the kids to bed I used to watch television for an hour or so, and that I could use that time for writing. So I made one simple rule: I would not watch television until I had finished working on my novel. Every night, instead of watching TV, I wrote. I didn't have to agonise over whether I was going to write, or when I was going to write. I just made it real simple. After the kids went to bed, instead of watching TV, I wrote for an hour.

If you have the motivation to spend more time trying to be innovative, that's great, but you're only halfway there. You also need the determination to create a habit. Starting the habit will be hard, but once you embed it, keeping the habit will be much easier.

‘I'm just not creative'

People often make this claim to rationalise why they don't spend more time thinking about better ways of doing things. Here's my response: Yes, you are! When you were a kid you used to paint and draw and make up games and pretend to be other people and other creatures all day long. That was your job! You really want to try to tell me that none of that was creative! If you were creative as a kid, then you can be creative as an adult. Maybe you haven't been exercising your creativity as much lately as you used to, but that doesn't mean it's gone away. Your biceps don't go away if you don't exercise them. They're still there, and when you start exercising them again, they grow.

I blame the advertising industry. It perpetuates the myth that some people are creative and others aren't by labelling those who do a particular job ‘creatives'. The implication is that everyone else isn't.

I have met hundreds of people who have come up with fantastic inventions, great innovations and smart ways of doing things better, and many of them were people you wouldn't necessarily immediately identify as creative. Some were quiet, shy, logical people; some probably wouldn't do great in an IQ test; and many do jobs you wouldn't necessarily associate with creativity.

Labelling yourself as ‘not creative' can be a cop-out. Deciding that you are not creative is your escape clause. You don't have to go through the difficult process of staring at a blank piece of paper and trying to fill it with new ideas, because you've already decided you are incapable of coming up with anything original.

Often when people say they are not creative, what they really mean is that they lack confidence. Even when they do think of an idea, as soon as they hit an obstacle — and there will always be obstacles — they feel as if they have just discovered proof that they are incapable and give up.

Stop worrying about whether or not you are ‘creative'. It's not the most important factor in being innovative. The most important factor is determination. I've said before that innovators aren't inherently different from the rest of us, but there is one thing they usually do better than most others. They will wrestle with a problem relentlessly, without giving up, for much longer than the rest of us. When a problem gets difficult and we don't feel like we are getting anywhere, most of us stop. Innovators keep going. They are determined enough to keep failing for longer than the rest of us. And in doing so, sometimes they succeed.

Creativity is overrated. Determination and perseverance are underrated.

When I'm writing a novel I don't wait for ‘creative inspiration'. I look at a blank page and start writing down the first idea I can think of that seems like it might be half decent. Usually it's not very good, so then I work really hard to make it better. If I sat around waiting for the perfect idea, I'd never get anywhere. Everything good I've written has started out being not very good. Then I rewrite it and rewrite it, aiming to make it better each time.

In the innovation workshops I run, I ask people to identify opportunities for innovation in their business and then to think of ways of taking advantage of those opportunities. As far as I am aware, in all those workshops no one has ever — ever — been unable to come up with at least one idea to improve the way that they do things. Hundreds and hundreds of very different people — nurses, event organisers, schoolkids, managers, bankers — and they have all been able to think of some sort of innovative idea to improve what they do. And I only give them about six minutes to do it!

Don't worry about whether you are more or less creative than other people. Just look for opportunities for innovation, and then wrestle with them until you have something. If you don't think that what you come up is very good, that's okay. See if you can make it better.

‘Innovation isn't part of my job'

Another reason people give for not spending more time thinking of ways to improve what they do is they think that innovation is not part of their job. Yes, it is. Whatever your job is, coming up with ways to do it better should be a part of it.

I understand that many organisations think the job of the person who, for example, makes widgets is just to make widgets. But smart organisations recognise that they need to be continually improving the way they make those widgets, and they make it clear that everyone in the organisation should be trying to think of how to do just that.

Of course, many organisations don't do this. I'll discuss this in more detail in chapter 7, but for the moment let me emphasise that innovation should be part of everyone's job. Everyone should always be trying to think of better ways of doing things.

The previous three justifications are commonly given by people for not thinking more about how to do things better. However, I think the biggest reason people don't think more is this:

‘Thinking is hard!'

No argument here. Thinking is hard. It really is. If you take my advice and identify some opportunities for innovation in your business and then write one of them at the top of a blank page and start thinking about it, what comes next?

You find yourself staring at a blank piece of paper, and if a great idea doesn't pop immediately into your head, you probably start to feel frustrated and stupid. Before too long you'll probably find yourself thinking, ‘This is too hard. I can't do it'.

Here's the thing. If that's what's happening, then it means you're doing it right.

Thinking is hard. It just is. It's hard for everyone.

The terrifying blank page

When I'm writing a children's novel, at some point I get up to page 165. I think to myself, ‘That's pretty good'. Then I turn to page 166 and it's blank, and usually I have no idea how I am going to fill it. Before too long I start to feel stupid and frustrated. The good news is that it's normal to feel this way. I've interviewed many authors, including some very famous and big-selling ones, and I usually ask them if they still find writing hard. Almost all of them say they do.

These days, most mornings we're confronted by a checklist of about thirty-eight things that we have to do. It's not often that we find ourselves staring at a blank page, and when we do, it can be intimidating.

Innovation requires us to think of something new. In most jobs, most of the time we do variations on tasks that we have done many times before. Usually we are reacting to things and generally it's easier to react than to act, because the parameters of what you have to do have already been set. For example, if your boss sends you an email asking you to do three things, you react by doing them. Of course, that's not always easy, but it's more structured than staring at a blank page and trying to think of a new idea. When we challenge ourselves to spend time trying to think of new ways to improve our business, it can feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar and daunting. Sometimes, because it feels that way, we leap to the conclusion that we mustn't be any good at it. Don't!

Innovation is hard! It's a lot harder than answering an email. It's supposed to be. Try not to be intimidated by the blank page. Believe it or not, there have been many times in your life when you have been confronted by a blank page, and you have filled it.

At school you would have been faced with many blank pages that you filled with stories and ideas and essays. Perhaps when you finished school your future was a blank page, and you had to work out for yourself what you wanted to do. Probably there have been other times when the course ahead has been unclear, but nonetheless you have worked your way through it.

Think about the organisation you work for. It may have begun with someone who didn't know what to do next, who thought hard and eventually decided to do something new and start the business you now work in.

Your favourite book, your favourite film, your favourite piece of music — they all came from someone staring at a blank page and wondering how they were going to fill it. The great thing about a blank page is that there is no formula, no status quo, no assumptions, no ‘right' way of doing things. There is just you and your thoughts. Some very good things come from filling blank pages.

Most of us work in jobs in which we follow a process or method to accomplish most of our tasks. Some industries, however, have in-built blank pages. Advertising, for example. They have process and systems, but they also have to keep thinking up new ideas. A client might say, ‘We want a thirty-second ad for our new chocolate bar. Show us what you've got in two weeks'.

So in advertising they are forced to be innovative. They have to stare at a blank thirty-second spot, and work out an intriguing, informative and entertaining way to fill it. Innovation is an essential part of their job.

Release the pressure

One reason why some people never fill those blank pages is they put too much pressure on themselves to come up with a great idea right away. Don't hold out for a great idea. Just aim for some sort of an idea. You can worry about whether it's great or not later. The important thing is just to get something down. Getting something down is useful for a few reasons:

1. It builds confidence. Once you have proved to yourself that you are capable of having a new idea, then next time it might be a bit easier.
2. Sometimes an idea that initially doesn't look very good grows to become something of value.
3. Coming up with any kind of idea is good practice. Even if that idea doesn't end up going anywhere, just going through the process is useful. Most innovators failed before they succeeded, and from each idea that didn't blossom they learned something. The more you practise exercising the innovative part of your mind, the better.

Challenge yourself, or your team, with a blank page. Pick a problem or an opportunity, write it at the top of a blank page, and think. If you get distracted or bored, that's okay. Just pull yourself back to the task at hand. Don't worry about having good ideas. Just have ideas.

Get bored

If you are trying to be innovative and you can't think of any ideas, you might start to feel bored. That's when some people stop. Keep going! If you do, your boredom might even help you to come up with an idea.

In 2014 Dr Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman from the School of Psychology at the University of East Lancashire did some experiments to try to learn more about the relationship between boredom and creativity. They asked forty people to come up with different ways they could use two polystyrene cups, a task that required some creativity. Then they asked forty different people to complete the same task, but before this second group did so, they had them copy phone numbers out of the phone book for fifteen minutes, a deliberately boring task.

The second group, who had done something boring first, came up with more creative responses than the first group.

They did a second experiment with three groups of thirty people. Group 1 did just the creative task. Group 2 copied out phone numbers and then did the creative task. Group 3 had to do something even more passive and boring: before they did the creative task they had to read a list of phone numbers.

The researchers found that, again, the people in Group 1 were the least creative. They also found that those in Group 3 who had just read the names were more creative than those in Group 2 who had to write them out. The conclusion they drew was that a more passive boring activity like reading can stimulate more creativity. Dr Mann said, ‘Boredom at work has always been seen as something to be eliminated, but perhaps we should be embracing it in order to enhance our creativity'.

If you start trying to think of an idea and get bored, don't worry. Firstly, it's normal. Secondly, if you persist then the period of boredom may well be followed by a period of enhanced creativity.

What if you're stuck?

It's not unusual to get stuck when trying to think of new ideas. Imagine how many times the inventors of the telephone or the car or the electric light or peanut butter got stuck. It's a normal part of the process, so try not to beat yourself up. Here are some strategies that might help when you get stuck.

Break out of habitual thinking

Go through the strategies outlined earlier in this chapter to help you to break out of habitual ways of thinking.

• Question everything you do. Could there be a better way?
• What assumptions are you making?
• Maybe technology is not the answer (or maybe it is).
• Are some insights available from analysing your data?
• Would it help to think like a customer or a client?

Here are some other strategies.

Load up with information

If you are trying to think of ways to improve the efficiency of your supply chain, then find out as much as you can about it. Read everything you can find, talk to people who know more about it than you do, and find out how other organisations run their supply chain.

The more you know about an area, the more likely you are to be able to come up with some ideas to improve it. In addition, the time you spend collecting information about the area you are trying to improve is time that your mind is thinking about it, and the more time you spend thinking about it, the more likely you are to come up with an idea to make it better.

Give your mind some time and space — disconnect!

Earlier I talked about how smartphones and connectedness, while useful in many ways, have reduced the frequency of quiet moments we used to get throughout the day in which to think. Ideas often come when we least expect them, when our minds are disengaged and free to wander and make connections between seemingly unrelated things. If you are stuck, find some time each day to disconnect electronically, turn off and daydream. Maybe while you are on the bus or walking home, or at lunchtime. If your mind is always cluttered and busy, it's hard for a new idea to find room to grow.

Exercise

Get outside and go for a walk or a run. Whenever I go for a walk or run I always have a least one idea. It's not always a great idea, but it's usually something that helps a bit. It may be for a book I am writing or a speech I have to give. Take something with you to record any ideas that occur to you. I take my phone when I run, and then leave a voice message. The only problem is that when I get home and play it back, usually all I hear is panting!

If you exercise in a gym where there are televisions on, or you always have headphones on and music playing, give yourself some quiet time. Don't crowd thoughts out.

Often the payoff comes later

When I started doing stand-up comedy, I was working full-time as a lawyer. Every Saturday afternoon I sat at my desk and tried to write jokes. It wasn't much fun. Jokes are really hard to write and often at the end of two or three hours I'd have nothing usable. Sometimes I would spend ages wrestling with a concept that I thought was funny but be unable to find the right way of turning it into a joke that an audience would laugh at. I would think I had wasted my time but then, often, sometime in the next day or two, I would see or hear something that would show me a fresh way of looking at it, and suddenly the way to tell the joke would be obvious.

Coming up with innovative ideas can be like that. You might not get an idea during the ten minutes you devote to trying to think of one, but the more time you spend trying to think of ideas, the more likely it is that one will come. Just let the problem or opportunity sit, keep it in your mind, and something might come to you on the bus home, or in the shower, or while you are walking to work. You might hear someone say something, or read or see something, that triggers a connection.

Stay with it, and keep open

When I do public speaking workshops and I talk about humour, I tell people that the most important thing is to be open and on the lookout for it. It's the same with ideas. Be patient. Stay open, keep the problem and opportunity in your mind, and something might come to you at the most unexpected time.

Sleep with a pen and paper by your bed in case you think of something before you go to sleep. If you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, write it down, but make sure you make it legible. I once woke up in the middle of the night with a perfectly formed joke in my brain. Without turning on the light, I wrote it down on my pad. Next morning, no matter how hard I tried to decipher it, it was just scribble. I think one of the words might have been banana. Or maybe bandana. I still think about that joke. I know it was brilliant.

While I was writing this book it was always in my mind, and as a result I was constantly open to seeing new examples of innovation, or seeing how incidents in my own life were relevant to the topic I was writing about.

Talk to someone

Sometimes sharing a problem, an opportunity or a half-formed idea with someone else can open doors. Maybe the other person can help to advance your idea or solve your problem, but even if they can't, the process of sharing it might help you to clarify your own thoughts. As you discuss the problem with someone, something new might occur to you, or a question that the other person asks, or a comment they make, might spark something.

Once you have an idea, expand it

Once you have an idea, try not to think about all the reasons why it might not work. Just focus on growing it. Brainstorm. Write down as many thoughts as you can about your idea without stopping to judge them.

Ideas often come from soft, dreamy, creative and imaginative thinking. It's important not to get too bogged down in detail too early. Just let the idea come and try to grow it in whatever direction it goes.

Soft mind, hard mind

Once you have done that, it's time to get a bit more hard-headed. We need a soft, dreamy mind to come up with ideas, but then to iron out all their problems and to start getting our ideas closer to becoming a reality, we have to get a bit more hard-headed and strategic and focus on the details. Engage with all the practical problems that your idea presents, and try to solve them.

Then actively look for more problems. It is better that you find them now, rather than someone else finding them later. Share your idea with others and ask them what problems and opportunities they see. If someone points out a problem that you hadn't thought of, try not to get defensive. Instead, look for solutions.

Try to work out how much time and money it's going to take to develop your idea. How much will it cost to trial it? How much to implement it?

Then try to work out how much money the idea could make or save. Don't do any of this on gut feel alone. Do the sums. There's no point spending a lot of time and money developing an idea that isn't going to save as much money as it costs to implement. The idea might be brilliant, elegant and revolutionary, but if it's not going to help the bottom line, then it's probably time to set it down and move on to the next one.

If you think your idea might be viable, then work out the mechanics of its implementation. Go through all the stages of your idea, from start to finish:

• How will the idea work? Have you got everything covered, or are there some gaps? If there are, can you figure out how to fill them, or do you need some help? If so, who might be able to help?
• List all the problems your idea might have, and then think about how you might be able to overcome them.
• If you get stuck on a problem, share it with others and see if they can offer a different perspective that helps.
• If you are still stuck, step back and assess the problem. Is the problem fatal to the idea or just a minor detail? If you cannot solve the problem, will the idea still have value?
• What is the next thing you need to do to grow your idea? (More on this in chapter 3.) How much will taking that step cost? What are the potential benefits of taking that next step? What other steps will need to be taken to make your idea a reality?
• If your idea is implemented, what will it mean for the people in your organisation? Who will implement the idea? Will the idea's implementation change anyone's job? If so, what does it mean for those affected?
• What will your idea cost to implement? Try to cost it, in time and money, as best you can. What will it cost to run?
• What will be the benefits of implementing the idea? Again, try to arrive at a reasonably accurate estimate of how much money implementing the idea will make or save. If you can show that your idea is going to make or save more money than it costs, it's going to be a powerful argument in favour of its implementation.
• Who do you need to convince to advance the idea? Anticipate all the objections that others may have, and work out what your response to them will be.