Team 4, I found a really good article on strategy in business week. The name of the article is "Innovation Perspectives - The Three I's." The article is one of a series of articles that address specific actions to make your business more innovative. The three I's mentioned in the article are introspection, immersion, and ideation.
Introspection is a self examination of your business or understanding what business you are in. To do this you must think at a fundamental level. The second I, immersion, or to immerse yourself in all aspects of your business. As stated in the article, "you need to imagine yourself as having just landed on Earth from another solar system and you are trying to learn about your business as if you knew nothing about it at all." This would address all internal and external factors of your business. Finally, ideation, which is basically brainstorming. The article says to take your team off site to a relaxing environment to talk and share ideas with each other. Then hold formal meetings to address those ideas and expand upon them. The key with ideation is to spend time away from the office.
I thought this really tied into our class discussion on formulating a strategy because it addresses the three big strategic questions: 1."Whats the company's present situation? 2.Where does the company need to go from here? 3.How should it get there?
Nice post, I can identify with the ideation concept. There have been several instances where we have come up with ideas or solutions to problems at work while we were out at lunch or taking a business trip. Just something about getting out of the office that stirs the creative juices.
ReplyDeleteGood recap of the article and tied it into the class. I like that idea of spending time away from the office and just generating ideas. It's good to not just change your mindset but actually change the physical environment. The introspection concept is great too, it can be easy to get caught up in the current events and not the industry and business as a whole. Then once you are in the office you expound upon them and see what you came up with.
ReplyDeleteI like the Ideation concept mostly because I can relate to the more relaxed atmosphere.I find myself slightly more motivated to suggest new ideas around peers that I am more comfortable with. Like Zack noted it has a lot to do with the change of atmosphere that might make a more casual conversation a bit more effective.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a cool article. And I completely agree. When I first started my job, I was in an entirely new line of work. I went from selling school uniforms for 2 years to moving circuit boards down our production line. I was in a whole new atmosphere and had no experience, so I was able to see things in a completely new way. I asked a lot of good questions that people who had been in the business 20 years had never thought of. It is definitely nice to have a fresh pair of eyes so that they can see things from a different perspective.
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