Advice on Nurturing New Ideas: Continuation of the ED Innovation Series

Successful innovators know how to nurture their own and other people's ideas. We have been looking around and found some very useful advice offered from Robert Tucker, the author of Driving Growth Through Innovation: How Leading Firms Are Transforming Their Futures (Berrett-Koehler Publishing). Here is what Tucker suggests:

1. Give yourself periods of "dream space": Give yourself some time for reflection and thinking. Decisions are often made hastily, without considering alternatives. Incubate your ideas and be willing to dream. Watch out for the constant meeting trap, which is quite common in economic development.

2. Enhance your environment for maximum creativity. Surround yourself with people and things that stimulate your curiosity and creativity.Talk to people in other professions. Step outside economic development for a few minutes each day.

3. Seek out idea people. Most idea people get some of their ideas in interaction with other idea people. Ask people how they come up with creative ideas.

4. Audit your information intake. Which newspapers, magazines, newsletters, e-zines and trade publications do you read? Is your information diet broad enough? Broaden your idea sources beyond the economic development field.

5. Focus on the sources of ideas. Where do they come from? Who generates them? Who heralds new idea? Sometimes the people creating the idea are not always the people you will hear the idea from.

6. Look for ideas by studying problems. Ask questions that probe why something is problematic. If you want to keep and attract businesses in your area, find out what they need and find an innovative solution.

7. Devise a system to capture new ideas. If your mind is as busy as mine, you run the risk of losing a good idea or two because you don't write it down or capture it in some other way. Journals are great for this purpose. That's how I do it.

8. Talk to the skeptics. It's ok to talk with those that agree with you and like your ideas, but don't stop there. Sometimes we learn the most valuable lessons from those who are skeptical of our ideas.