Implementation of business strategy, effective communication with customers or people on your team, provoking huge corporate change – all these you can conduct by appropriate use of the right management tools. These tools resemble a catalyst to extract the best of people’s and community’s ideas. You need to know how to make the best of their magical power and the solution to a corporate case will light up in the tunnel of seeming despair. And here are some guiding lights:
- Ideation tools and techniques – Coming up with an idea is not so hard, especially if you know how to provoke your brain. If some people in your team are not used to that creative activity or have become burnout-blocked, use one of these options to summon their potential.
1. Opposite thinking – This tool will be very productive if you are stuck in the traditional daily job, and need to go in a more creative direction. The idea is to challenge an assumption already made. Define opposite realities for each of your assumptions, and then do it again. This intriguing journey in an opposing direction will allow you to generate non-obvious ideas to solve your current issue.
2. Brainstorming Cards – They are a valuable tool for coming up with dozens of new ideas related to a challenge or problem you are currently working on. The preliminary questions on each card allow you to discuss internally unexpected aspects of the issue you want to resolve. They reveal social trends, new technologies, and regulations in the business context. That is how to generate a large number of ideas with little effort. Thanks to brainstorming, you get off track with ease.
3. Analogy Thinking – With this technique, you analyze a successful business to identify what makes it effective. Then apply corresponding principles to your case. That is a simple method for developing business ideas that are already validated.
The Content Idea Generator application is also a driver of many creative ideas.
- Tools for developing a business concept – The business model determines how your idea would work in practice. With it, you focus on the goal to reach and target there the whole effort. That is a legitimate approach to check if it is worth going in the chosen direction and draw the roadmap to success. Take advantage, for example, of The Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas.
- Idea management software – Especially beneficial for large companies where the number of ideas outnumbers hundred. Thoughts must be organized and structured. The idea management tool is the backbone of the whole process. Import all ideas created, and evaluate and rank them together with the managers in charge to reach the final strategy. Usually, such applications allow you to track the progress of their conduction in real-time. Some of the options for such software are Viima, Asana, Trello.
Expect the second part of the suggestions on Friday. Until then, read:
