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Assessment Feedback Reports - Samples | Center for Creative Leadership

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Download our assessment feedback report samples to see how our industry-leading 360 assessments could support development at your organization.

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Feedback is an essential part of innovation. The successful entrepreneurs are the ones who are seeking feedback from their customers, their partners, and their mentors. Understanding the power of feedback is a key step in maximizing your opportunities to grow and innovate. This book walks through 35 principles of feedback and how to ensure the feedback supports positive change.

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The Power of Feedback: 35 Principles for Turning Feedback from Others into Personal and Professional Change

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Praise for The Power of Feedback “Some books are worthy of being recommended simply because of their subject matter. . . . There is no greater force to improve the … - Selection from The Power of Feedback: 35 Principles for Turning Feedback from Others into Personal and Professional Change [Book]

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The Business Model Canvas is one of the key tools for innovating with a new product, process, or service. This tool walks you through 9 areas to plan out through the innovation process, including value proposition, customer relationships, channels, customer segments, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships, and cost structure.

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The Business Model Canvas is a strategic management and entrepreneurial tool. It allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model. This method from the bestselling management book Business Model Generation is applied in leading organizations and start-ups worldwide.

The Business Model Canvas enables you to:

Visualize and communicate a simple story of your existing business model.

Use the canvas to design new business models, whether you are a start-up or an existing businessManage a portfolio of business models

You can use the canvas to easily juggle between "Explore" and "Exploit" business models.

Download your free copy of this whitepaper now

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The Business Model Canvas is a strategic management and entrepreneurial tool. It allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model. This method from the bestselling management book Business Model Generation is applied in leading organizations and start-ups worldwide.

The Business Model Canvas enables you to:

Visualize and communicate a simple story of your existing business model.

Use the canvas to design new business models, whether you are a start-up or an existing businessManage a portfolio of business models

You can use the canvas to easily juggle between "Explore" and "Exploit" business models.

The Business Model Canvas is a strategic management and entrepreneurial tool. It allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model. This method from the bestselling management book Business Model Generation is applied in leading organizations and start-ups worldwide.

Thanks for your interest in

The Business Model Canvas

A self-paced online course with Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur.

Are you trying to improve your existing business model? Or trying to create a new one that can compete in today's market?

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Business Model Canvas - Download the Official Template

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Download the business model canvas template and start planning a business model straight away! Download the pdf template for free | Strategyzer Tools

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Understand the Different Types of Feedback

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Understand the Different Types of Feedback

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Feedback is sort of a necessary evil. No one particularly likes to listen to what they’re doing wrong, and often the words are difficult or confusing to hear. And feedback isn’t especially easy to give, either. But as a leader or coach, it’s your job to provide effective feedback. Constructive suggestions can help your direct reports and colleagues succeed.

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The Most Effective Types of Feedback | Center for Creative Leadership

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How do you give effective feedback? Understand the 4 types of feedback, and which one is best for your situation, and your reviews will feel easier.

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An Evaluation Dartboard is an intuitive tool that provides a quick and easy visual evaluation by participants of events such as workshops, training days, public meetings, etc.

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Collect and organize information big and small.

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Easily create and share online forms and surveys, and analyze responses in real-time.

Create an online form as easily as creating a document

Select from multiple question types, drag-and-drop to reorder questions, and customize values as easily as pasting a list.

Send polished surveys and forms

Customize colors, images, and fonts to adjust the look and feel or reflect your organization's branding. And add custom logic that shows questions based on answers, for a more seamless experience.

Analyze responses with automatic summaries

See charts with response data update in real-time. Or open the raw data with Google Sheets for deeper analysis or automation.

Create and respond to surveys from anywhere

Access, create, and edit forms on-the-go, from screens big and small. Others can respond to your survey from wherever they are-from any mobile device, tablet, or computer.

Build forms and analyze results together

Add collaborators-just like with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides-to build questions together in real-time. Then analyze results together without having to share multiple versions of the file.

Work with clean response data

Use built-in intelligence to set response validation rules. For example, ensure that email addresses are properly formatted or that numbers fall within a specified range.

Share forms via email, link, or website

It's easy to share forms with specific people or with a broad audience by embedding forms on your website or sharing the links on social media.

Security, compliance, and privacy

Secure by default

We use industry-leading security measures to keep your data safe, including advanced malware protections. Forms is also cloud-native, eliminating the need for local files and minimizing risk to your devices.

Encryption in transit and at rest

All files uploaded to Google Drive or created in Forms are encrypted in transit and at rest.

Compliance to support regulatory requirements

Our products, including Forms, regularly undergo independent verification of their security, privacy, and compliance controls.

Private by design

Forms adheres to the same robust privacy commitments and data protections as the rest of Google Cloud's enterprise services.

You control your data.

We never use your Forms content for ad purposes.

We never sell your personal information to third parties.

Find the plan that's right for you

Google Forms is a part of Google Workspace

Try Forms for Work

For Personal (Free)

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$12 USD

per user / month, 1 year commitment info Or $14.40 per user / month, when billed monthly

done

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15 GB per user

2 TB per user

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100 participants

150 participants

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Self-service online and community forums

24/7 online support and community forums

Get a head start with templates

Choose from a variety of surveys, questionnaires, and other professionally-designed templates to kick things off quickly.

Orders

Registration

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Assessment

Orders

Registration

Feedback

Assessment

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Google Forms: Online Form Creator | Google Workspace

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Use Google Forms to create online forms and surveys with multiple question types. Analyze results in real-time and from any device.

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Padlet is an educational technology that provides a cloud-based software-as-a-service, hosting a real-time collaborative web platform in which users can upload, organize, and share content to virtual bulletin boards called "padlets."

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How to Create a Culture of Continual Feedback, Critique and Reflection

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How to Create a Culture of Continual Feedback, Critique and Reflection

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How do you help students reflect as much on process as they do product in project-based experiences? In this interview with Alfie Chung, leader of the social innovation design unit at PolyU in Hong Kong, we explore how to create a culture of continual reflection and feedback. Using a simple, repeatable process, Alfie has students as young as 11 designing and reflecting innovative solutions to problems ranging from traffic congestion to limited exercise activity at local parks. In our short interview, you will learn:

How to provide high-quality feedback for students using simple systems Why to never throw away 'first drafts' How to help students become as comfortable with failure as they are success The simple formula for capturing student's imagination, and retaining it How to use simple prompts to lighten your work load and help students reflect on their own and with peers

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How to Create a Culture of Continual Feedback, Critique and Reflection

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Listen to this episode from Transformative Learning Experiences with Kyle Wagner on Spotify. How do you help students reflect as much on process as they do product in project-based experiences? In this interview with Alfie Chung, leader of the social innovation design unit at PolyU in Hong Kong, we explore how to create a culture of continual reflection and feedback.

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Three things I learned about disruptive innovation

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Three things I learned about disruptive innovation

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In a world buzzing about disruptive innovation and traditional work being turned upside down, what can any one individual do to successfully forge their own way despite all this unpredictability? Ted Graham shares how one fundamental choice can change your path.

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Three things I learned about disruptive innovation as an UberX driver | Ted Graham | TEDxQueensU

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Why good leaders make you feel safe | Simon Sinek

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Why good leaders make you feel safe | Simon Sinek

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What makes a great leader? Management theorist Simon Sinek suggests, it's someone who makes their employees feel secure, who draws staffers into a circle of trust. But creating trust and safety — especially in an uneven economy — means taking on big responsibility.

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Why good leaders make you feel safe | Simon Sinek | TED

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Design Thinking for Complex Environments

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Design Thinking for Complex Environments

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NILUFER ERDEBIL : Founder and CEO of Spring2Innovation
Design Thinking. Nilufer Erdebil is a leading consultant of innovation and design thinking with expertise in telecommunications, defence, application development, project management, and information technology management. Previously, she worked for General
Dynamics, CrossKeys Systems (now Oracle) and Marconi Wireless (now Ericsson) as a software engineer.

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Design Thinking for Complex Environments | Nilufer Erdebil | TEDxOttawa

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Design thinking allows us to look at problems in human-centric ways and think of creative ways to solve some of the complex challenges faced by our society.
Shalu Manan Delivers a talk on the recipe for design thinking and solutions based thinking with the intent of producing desired outcomes Shalu Manan is an MBA in HR & Marketing, a certified Lean Six Sigma Black- belt, i.e. ‘Certified Professional in Learning & Performance’ from ATD and a ‘Senior Certified Professional’ from SHRM

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The Design Thinking Recipe | Shalu Manan | TEDxAnsalUniversity

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Nathan Myhrvold talks about disruptive innovation in Europe 

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Nathan Myhrvold talks about disruptive innovation in Europe 

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Nathan Myhrvold talks about disruptive innovation in Europe [The Science|Business Lecture]

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Introduction to Project Leadership Resource

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Introduction to Project Leadership Resource

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By definition, a project environment is full of change. It’s what we do. But change can feel unsettling for the people going through it, including the project team. Strong leadership skills help guide, motivate and provide direction for project stakeholders.

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PM PrepCast, Agile PrepCast, PM Exam Simulator, PDU Podcast, PM Podcast are marks of OSP International LLC. PMI, PMBOK, PMP, PgMP, PfMP, CAPM, PMI-SP, PMI-RMP, PMI-ACP, and PMI-PBA are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Copyright © 2023 OSP International LLC. All Rights Reserved. Our Privacy Notice: http://www.osp-international.com/privacynotice

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The Keys to Effective Project Leadership

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Improve your project leadership knowledge and skills to get the best out of the environment and the people you work with.

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Coggle is a brainstorming tool that helps you create flowcharts and mind maps, as well as produce beautiful notes which you can then share with others on the team. Overall, it provides you with a better visual of your mind mapping by creating branches as you go through the brainstorming process.

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Coggle is online software for creating and sharing mindmaps and flowcharts. It works online in your browser: there's nothing to download or install. Log in to start diagramming!

Whether you're taking notes, brainstorming, planning, or doing something awesomely creative, it is super simple to visualise your ideas with Coggle. Share with as many friends or colleagues as you like. Changes you make will show up instantly in their browser, wherever they are in the world

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The clear way to share complex information. Coggle is a collaborative mind-mapping tool that helps you make sense of complex things. Create unlimited mind maps and easily share them with friends and colleagues.

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MindMeister brings online brainstorming to a whole new level by allowing you to organize anything from workflows to project planning and ideas. It lets you collaborate with other team members in real time, exchange ideas, discuss any changes using a live chat.

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MindMeister: Online Mind Mapping and Brainstorming

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Create, share and collaboratively work on mind maps with MindMeister, the leading online mind mapping software. Includes apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.

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Here are 25 of the most unique, helpful, and intriguing processes, tips, and tools to help content marketers brainstorm remotely.

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Self-isolation doesn't sound like the optimal environment for collaborative brainstorming. Yet, that's where many content marketers find themselves today.

Can you harness that collaborative mentality to create content ideas, strategies, and more at a distance?

You can pull off collaborative brainstorming for #content ideas and strategies - even in a remote work world, says @AnnGynn via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

"Many of us are used to meeting in person to brainstorm - even if it's just a chance encounter at the watercooler. Video calls can be just as effective. By meeting face-to-face over a (video) call, participants will be more engaged and can benefit from one another's enthusiasm," says Diane Domeyer, executive director of The Creative Group.

Diane was one of over 100 who responded to our call for processes, tips, and tools to help content marketers brainstorm remotely. Here are 25 of the most unique, helpful, and intriguing.

Processes for virtual brainstorming

Start with a brief

"A lot is being done on the fly right now, and we are in a constant mode of adapting. But to make a brainstorm as effective as possible, prep the participants ahead of time - ideally, at least a day ahead of time," says Denise Blasevick, CEO of The S3 Agency.

"Providing a brainstorm brief in advance allows people to digest the information, do research, and come armed with questions along with any potential thought starters that can start the brainstorm out with a burst of energy."

Provide a brief a day ahead of remote brainstorming sessions to help people start with a burst of energy, says @AdvertGirl via @CMIContent Click To Tweet

Ask 4 questions

"One way to improve remote brainstorming is by increasing the sharing of information. Aligning your team is very important. The problem is when the brainstorming session does none of that," says James Marques, marketing advisor and founder, Iconic Genius.

He has found that answering these four questions has helped tremendously:

Does it need to be a meeting or a brainstorming session? Know the difference.

Will we need to have recurring sessions?

Is progress dependent on others?

Do we have an agenda?

Wear different hats

Rameez Ghayas Usmani, digital marketing executive at PureVPN, uses multiple techniques, but I think his six-hat technique is the most interesting.

Have each person wear a different color hat or have everyone wear the same color to focus on one aspect. Here's how he breaks it down:

Black- brainstorming content ideas with criticism and caution

White - thinking of content ideas purely based on evidence and numbers

Yellow - positive pragmatic thinking

Red - imagining ideas out of feelings and emotions

Green - creative, unusual, and original thinking

Blue (needed in both scenarios) - moderator

Create a sense of competition

Ollie Smith, founder and editor of EnergySeek and ExpertSure and CEO of the newly formed Card Accounts, uses virtual brainstorming to encourage employees. He pins each employee's name next to their respective ideas on a virtual whiteboard and circles winning ideas with different color markers.

"This a great way of not just motivating everyone to contribute their ideas but also to take responsibility for the project. It also pushes team members to continue to suggest even better ideas going forward," Ollie says.

Work separately together

Grace Judson, a leadership consultant, offers a couple of options that involve solo work.

She labels the first approach as individual work. "Everyone takes 15 to 30 minutes to write out, as fast as possible, their ideas. At the end of the allotted time, the results are forwarded to the facilitator who posts them for evaluation and discussion."

The second option is individual teamwork (she admits it sounds like an impossibility) that follows a great technique called six-three-five brainwriting. "It works with a team of six (you can go as few as four or as high as seven; too few, and you don't generate enough ideas; too many, and the ideas get overwhelming)," Grace says.

Here's how it works:

The first person takes up to five minutes to write three ideas in a designated Google Doc.

The second person opens the shared document and writes their three ideas in five minutes.

The process continues until all six people have shared three ideas in five minutes.

The facilitator collates the ideas for discussion.

"In this way, each person adds their ideas to every document - either piggybacking off what someone else has written or adding their own new ideas," Grace says.

Don't do it all on video chat

You can start with a video call, but that's only one part of a brainstorming session, says Sam Carr, marketing manager at PPC Protect.

Discuss ideas by video, listing them in your project management software or other tool. After the call, have each member comment on each idea and assess it as good or not.

"This feedback lets you raise any critical points or provide extra details for a certain idea without having to bore everyone in the video call," Sam says.

Then the project manager or team leader selects the ideas with the most potential to produce.

Simplify the process

The Growth Engine Co. went entirely online for a recent ideation project with a client. What would have been a two-day, in-person session turned into more pre-work, three real-time two-hour online sessions, and three asynchronous virtual ideation sessions (i.e., group members could work at different times).

Bryan Mattimore, agency co-founder, says they've learned to use as few virtual programs/tools as possible. Getting through global company firewalls and trying to learn unfriendly programs took too much time and hassle.

"We spend a great deal of time creating very simple instructions for the different ideation techniques we use for virtual ideation sessions (semantic intuition, customer wishing, questioning assumptions, worst idea, etc.) ... (E)xercises can be delivered seamlessly via email or Slack," he says.

Use an improv approach

At Beyond Influence, the team gathers with their iPads on a Zoom call to sketch and show their ideas, says CEO John Ramstead.

But to spark the creative sketching, they take an improv approach.

"We use the improv mindset of 'yes and ...' to keep building on each other's ideas. This allows us to come up with ideas that are out of the box. At the end of the session we use the virtual whiteboard to categorize ideas, decide on the best ones, create action steps, and then use monday.com for accountability and tracking," John explains.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
Tips for better brainstorming

Mind your manners

"New ideas are fragile and can be shattered by a hostile or distracted look," says Sam Harrison, author of the book Creative Zing!. "Remind participants that they are being seen by each other, so they should watch body language and facial expressions as ideas are being shared.

"It's hard to be enthusiastic about sharing an idea while others are yawning, filing nails, or flipping through magazines."

New ideas are fragile, says @zingzone, so keep body language and facial expressions in mind when brainstorming #contentmarketing ideas. Via @CMIContent Click To Tweet

Work in bursts

Barak Kassar, co-founder and partner at BKW Partners, says he sees waves of great ideas generated and improved on via online chat or texting. "People shoot ideas, tag, and build off each other, share images, clips, links in real time. But then breaks happen and more ideas come in. That's due to time-zone differences and people taking time to think and develop ideas on their own," Barak says.

Become more visual

At SocialPilot, remote brainstorming has become a more visual activity. Jagruti Bhargav, marketing and communication specialist at the company, explains: "Rather than making spreadsheets of ideas or having a two-hour meeting, we all add our ideas in the storyboard and then come together as a team once a week."

Use the mute button

While video conferencing is a great option, it only works if all participants don't talk over each other and all are given a chance to speak, says Adam Lumb, EN site manager at Cashcow.

Each brainstorming chat should include a host who can mute participants to let others have their say. "This will help to create an orderly and constructive remote session," Adam says.

Don't put people on the spot

Mark Webster, co-founder of Authority Hacker, says brainstorming allows a free exchange of ideas, not a mandated exchange of ideas. Requiring each person to contribute on the spot is "a quick way to instantly wipe all creativity and cause people to freeze up. In a face-to-face brainstorming situation, participants are never expected to come up with ideas off the top of their heads. Online should be no different."

Instead, Mark recommends, allow participants to go away for an hour or so and have the chance to add their ideas to your tracking tool.

Tools for online brainstorming

Now that you've gotten processes and tips for making remote brainstorming better, it's time to explore the tools to help make it possible. Given the ubiquitous presence of Zoom (heck, it's become a verb to many), I don't go into detail about its primary service.

Google Docs

Sadi Khan, content marketing manager at RunRepeat.com, says they find good old Google Docs works best when brainstorming content ideas.

"It's the easiest way to share your ideas, suggest changes, and let other team members rate and comment on these ideas. The comments and threaded chat keep the document clean and everything is automatically saved on the cloud," Sadi says. "Once an idea is approved the document link can be shared with everybody working on the idea (writer, data analyst or designer) to give them an idea of the goals, concerns, and challenges associated with that idea."

Google Hangouts

Megan Marrs, founder of K9 of Mine, uses Google Hangouts, which doesn't require users to download any special tools or create new accounts (as long as you have a Google account).

Meg Marrs of @K9ofMine likes @Google Hangouts for brainstorming #content ideas because users don't need to download special tools via @cmicontent. Click To Tweet

"You can get a good group of folks on for one call and pitch ideas on the fly. It will automatically focus on whoever is speaking and enlarge their face so everyone can see them and will switch to whoever talks next," she says.

The chatbox also works as a great repository for notes and idea summaries at the end of the session. Its screen-share feature allows team members to share articles or visual concepts, Megan says.

Ideaboardz

Aleksi Halsas, chief marketing officer and product owner, Trustmary, says they have been using the "old-school tool" called IdeaBoardz for brainstorming. Here's what they do:

Everyone writes down ideas for x-minutes.

They combine similar ideas.

Then they vote and choose the top one to five ideas.

They create a new idea board and brainstorm each specific idea in it.

Then they combine similar ideas and vote again.

Finally, they discuss the best ideas that came up.

Lucidchart

Chanty CMO Jane Kovalkova says Lucidchart is the only tool they use. "It's great for drawing up different plans, sketches, diagrams, and much more. It's like a virtual drawing board where we can throw our ideas. There are different design elements such as arrows, bubbles, links, layers and much more."

Miro

Miro is a favorite tool for several people.

Michael Chammas, CEO and founder of Makro Agency, says his team conducts all their remote brainstorming with the versatile virtual whiteboard: "It comes with a lot of pre-built templates as well as great features such as sticky notes. You can easily import images, PDF, PowerPoint files, keynotes, etc. When the session is over, you can easily export the entire board to share it with your team."

Anh Trinh, managing editor of GeekWithLaptop, says Miro integrates well with Slack and other instant messaging apps, allowing people to post their ideas anytime from anywhere.

Mural

Online brainstorm and collaboration tool Mural has a digital dry-erase board that all members can contribute to. Matt Zajechowski, outreach team lead at Digital Third Coast, says the tool's sticky-note feature is especially useful for organizing lists, flowcharts, and diagrams that can help align a virtual brainstorm.

Otter.ai

Trent Maw, director of marketing communications at L2L, says Otter.ai is helpful when a subject-matter expert has an idea. "They simply record themselves talking through the key points and share it with the content team," he says.

Pencil and paper

Yes, you can still do pencil and paper in a virtual world. Chad Birenbaum, chief experience officer and co-founder of Duckpin, explains:

"Our creative team went back a little to our old-school roots of sketching with pencil and paper to share ideas and get them across. Too often we rely on software as a crutch and jump right on the computer as opposed to using the computer as a tool. Our best design ideas tend to come from doodling or putting tight sketches together rather than getting lost down rabbit holes of software or design reference websites. After we have our sketch review, we scan our images into our design software and then render them into tight vector graphics."

Slack

Better Proposals dedicates a Slack channel to content ideas. CEO and founder Adam Hempenstall explains: "We have a plugin that lets us vote, so each time someone comes up with a new idea, we can vote on it immediately. We give everyone a 24-hour window to give their vote because we work at different times and in different time zones. Once 24 hours have passed, we either discard or accept content ideas."

Texting

Another old-school tactic, texting is a favorite brainstorm tool for Martha Bartlett Piland, author of the book Culturing Creative. "It takes away the 'fear' of speaking a silly idea aloud. For some reason, the rapid-fire text in instant messaging as a group facilitates more ideas. When you're finished, it's easy to screen capture or print out all the ideas, then curate and plan next steps," she says.

Trello

A card-based project management system, such as Trello, works for Ben Taylor, founder of HomeWorkingClub.com. "All you need to do is create a column for ideas, then anybody on the team with access can submit them," he says. "If the ideas are taken forward, the cards can be dragged along the content pipeline, which can be customized to fit the exact workflow of your website or company."

[email protected] likes @trello for #brainstorming, because it lets ideas move easily through your #content workflow via @cmicontent. Click To Tweet

Ziteboard

The Pollination Project has found Ziteboard to be its favorite brainstorm stool. The online whiteboard with real-time collaboration is particularly helpful because it provides a visual representation of the content they would like to brainstorm, says Lauren K. Terry, director of communications.

[email protected] likes online whiteboard @Ziteboard for #brainstorming because it allows for real-time collaboration via @cmicontent. #tools Click To Tweet

Creating the calm in a virtual brainstorm

When you accommodate your brainstorming process and use the most helpful, appropriate tools, you can conceive, exchange, and grow your ideas. Whether you're filling out a content calendar or rethinking your content marketing strategy, a collaboration of ideas will make whatever outcomes are chosen stronger and likely more successful.

How is your content marketing team doing brainstorming these days? Please share your tips and favorite tools in the comments to share with the wider CMI community.
Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used). The CMI editorial team is brainstorming ideas for upcoming blog articles. Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute to the free weekday newsletter to see the outcome. Or send your ideas to .

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Brainstorming Tools: 25 Tips for a Remote World - Content Marketing Institute

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Self-isolation doesn't sound like the optimal environment for collaborative brainstorming. Yet, that's where many content marketers find themselves today. Can you harness that collaborative mentality to create content ideas, strategies, and more at a distance? You can pull off collaborative brainstorming for #content ideas and strategies - even in a remote work world, says @AnnGynn via @CMIContent.

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Imagine that you recently gave some feedback to a team member. You told them that they were good at presenting, but that they could improve the way they handle the questions-and-answers section at the end.

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Imagine that you recently gave some feedback to a member of your team. You told him that his meeting agendas looked great, but he needed to improve his presentation skills.

You follow up a few weeks later to find out why he hasn't made any changes. You discover that he didn't understand what he could do to improve - your feedback simply prompted more questions. He was left thinking "What's good about my agendas that I can transfer to other documents?" and "What's wrong with my presentation skills?"

The Situation - Behavior - Impact™ (SBI™) feedback tool helps you to deliver more effective feedback. It focuses your comments on specific situations and behaviors, and then outlines the impact that these behaviors have on others.

About the Tool

Developed by The Center for Creative Leadership, the SBI™ feedback tool outlines a simple structure that you can use to give feedback:

When you structure feedback in this way, your people will understand precisely what you are commenting on and why. And when you outline the impact of their behavior on others, you're giving them the chance to reflect on their actions and think about what they need to change.

The tool also helps you to avoid making assumptions that could upset the other person and damage your relationship with him or her.

Applying the Tool

Let's look at each part of the SBI™ feedback tool and discuss how to use it to structure feedback.

1. Situation

When you're giving feedback, first define the where and when of the situation you're referring to. This puts the feedback into context and gives the other person a specific setting as a reference.

For example:

"During yesterday morning's team meeting, when you gave your presentation..."

2. Behavior

Your next step is to describe the specific behaviors that you want to address. This is the most challenging part of the process, because you must communicate only the behaviors that you observed directly.

You must not make assumptions or subjective judgments about those behaviors. These could be wrong, and this will undermine your feedback.

For example, if you observed that a colleague made mistakes in a presentation, you should not assume that he hadn't prepared thoroughly. You should simply comment that he made mistakes - and, ideally, note what the mistakes were.

Don't rely on hearsay, as this may contain others' subjective judgments. Again, this could undermine your feedback and jeopardize your relationship.

The examples below include a description of the specific behaviors you might want to address:

"During yesterday morning's team meeting, when you gave your presentation, you were uncertain about two of the slides and your sales calculations were incorrect."

Tip:

Aim to use measurable information in your description of the behavior. This helps to ensure that your comments are objective.

3. Impact

The last step is to use "I" statements to describe how the other person's action has affected you or others.

For example:

"During yesterday morning's team meeting, when you gave your presentation, you were uncertain about two of the slides and your sales calculations were incorrect. I felt embarrassed because the entire board was there. I'm worried that this has affected the reputation of our team."

Next Steps

Once you've delivered your feedback, encourage the other person to think about the situation and to understand the impact of her behavior. (The Perceptual Positions technique can help her to explore how other people may think.) Allow her time to absorb what you've said as well, and then go over specific actions that will help her to improve.

Also, where someone has done something well, help him to think about how he can build on this.
Key Points
The Center for Creative Leadership developed the SBI™ feedback tool to help managers to deliver clear, specific feedback. SBI stands for:

To use the tool, describe the "when" and "where" of the situation. Next, describe the other person's behavior, only mentioning actions that you have observed. Then, communicate the impact of his or her behavior on you and others.

Finally, discuss what your team member needs to do to change this behavior in the future, or, if his behavior had a positive impact, explore how he can build on this.

SBI and Situation-Behavior-Impact are trademarks of the Center for Creative Leadership. For more information on how to use and apply this tool in your organization, check out the Center for Creative Leadership's workshop kit: Feedback that Works.

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The Situation - Behavior - Impact Feedback Tool: Providing Clear, Specific Feedback

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Imagine that you recently gave some feedback to a member of your team. You told him that his meeting agendas looked great, but he needed to improve his presentation skills. You follow up a few weeks later to find out why he hasn't made any changes.

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An innovation culture is part of the corporate culture and determines how much innovation is supported and promoted by management and employees. The culture of innovation is therefore the framework for every innovation activity. If the culture is not positive, it can hinder innovation, even if the idea and the innovation team are still perfect. It is thus a decisive factor in the success of innovation.

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The corporate culture embraces the written and unwritten values, norms and attitudes in an organization that influence the way employees think and act. And an innovation culture is part of the corporate culture and determines how much innovation is supported and promoted by management and employees.

The culture of innovation is therefore the framework for every innovation activity. If the culture is not positive, it can hinder innovation, even if the idea and the innovation team are still perfect. It is thus a decisive factor in the success of innovation.

Leverage to create a culture of innovation

In order to create a positive innovation culture, one must

sensitize employees to innovation and its opportunities.

motivate and inspire employees to engage in innovation alongside their day-to-day business. Be it actively in the role of the innovator, but in which ideas and projects of others are supported.

Provide employees with the necessary information, tools and skills to enable them to innovate.

Provide employees with the necessary resources, structures and space to enable innovation.

The undisputed basis of the innovation culture: Strategic clarity

First of all, the most important thing is that it must be clearly defined which innovation strategy the company is pursuing. From this, we derive what is expected of the organization and what kind of innovation culture is required. The target innovation culture is thus defined, for example, which behavior is expected of managers and employees with regard to innovation. This act requires a clear management commitment.

7 easy ways to create a culture of innovation

First, seven simple ways to enhance the culture of innovation are presented. They are simple because they can be implemented without a great deal of resources or change in the organization. Above all, they require management commitment and the commitment of those responsible for innovation. Then they can be implemented without a few hurdles and have a very positive effect on the innovation culture.

1. Communication of the innovation strategy

The innovation strategy sets the direction and framework conditions. The expectations and goals regarding innovation should be clear to every employee. Therefore, a first important step is to communicate the innovation strategy across all functions and hierarchy levels, for example by means of an information campaign.

2. Cascade workshops for active employee involvement
The communication of the innovation strategy raises awareness, but is very one-sided. Even more important, however, is the dialogue with employees and their involvement.

Through cascaded workshops on innovation across all functions and top-down through all hierarchy levels, the employees are picked up. Jointly, initiated by the manager, it is to be defined,

what innovation means for their field,

what role they play in the innovation process and

what they can contribute to the success of innovation.

In the best case, this results in role models and action plans or influences the job descriptions.

3. Innovation Crash Courses

Everyone talks about innovation, but often employees can't explain what that means for the company and for them and what they can contribute. Being creative and innovative also requires information and skills. Here, broad-based crash courses on innovation are recommended, in terms of content and scope adapted to the needs of the employees. For example, the content and scope of a production worker's information needs are different from those of a group leader in marketing. Contents of the crash courses can be for example:

The optimum length should be between one and three hours and reach and appeal to the widest possible audience.

4. Innovation days

An annual Innovation Day can focus and activate attention on the topic of innovation. All employees should be able to participate. Possible focal points and contents can be the following:

Presentation of the latest innovations

Word of the Executive Board on Innovation

Open day in the innovation department

Hackathons and idea workshops

Barcamps on innovation topics

Information events on innovation, e. g. innovation process, innovation methods

Awards ceremony for innovation.

The Innovation Day can also take place online. Above all, it is recommended for internationally active companies because it is not possible to bring all employees together in one place. Whether offline or online, the visibility of top management is a very important success factor.

5. Creativity workshops

In addition to providing information and raising awareness of innovation, it is recommended that employees be directly involved in the innovation process in the form of creativity workshops. Teams working together across all functions work on innovation questions and develop new ideas and solutions. If the workshops are well moderated and the topics are exciting, an immense attraction will be created and people will be inspired and mobilized for innovation. Of course, it is also very important that the ideas don't end up in a drawer, but rather have an effect, otherwise every commitment will be lost.

6. Pitching contests

In the form of a competition, all employees are asked to develop ideas. They can then be piped in front of the management. In addition, there is a pre-pitching training to get the best possible result.

A jury consisting of management and internal as well as external experts nominates the top ideas. However, the winning ideas can also be selected by employee voting. The best ideas are then awarded and processed further.

Pitching contests have very many advantages, such as visible management commitment, broad internal media effectiveness, ideas are discussed and developed, employee mobilization, fun and of course the development of excellent ideas.

7. Innovation Awards

Innovation contests, whether in the course of a pitching contest or whether the best innovation ideas, innovation teams or innovation projects are awarded, always have a very strong impact and attention. But above all not because of the objective prize, but because of the public recognition that the employees receive from the company. In addition, prizes and awards mobilize other employees and encourage them to think about innovations.

And 3 further possibilities for a positive innovation culture

These three options are very effective, but rather demanding and difficult because they require significant change and change in the organization. They can only be implemented with full commitment across all levels and require additional resources.

8. Corporate venturing

Based on the pitching contests or within the scope of an idea management, every employee can contribute his business idea to the company. In the course of corporate venturing, employees receive budget in the form of money and time and support from management and experts, enabling them to pursue their business idea within the company.

If the business plan developed in the first step is released, the employees are removed from their departments and can set up their company for the company.

9. Working time for innovation

3M and Google are among the most innovative companies and are known for the fact that every employee spends around 20 percent of his or her working time on innovation and working on his or her own ideas.

This measure is very effective, on the one hand, on the culture of innovation, because it demonstrates impressively from above how important innovation is for the company and, on the other hand, it mobilizes an enormous potential for innovation.

10. Innovation Labs

Innovation Labs are outsourced innovation forges. They are decoupled from day-to-day business. As a result, the resources dedicated to innovation are not consumed by day-to-day business, and the usual obstacles and barriers to thinking are removed by distance under the motto "everything is possible and permitted".

Innovation Labs can be organizational innovation units, but also a physical place where everyone can go, use the infrastructure and develop their creativity. Creative rooms, tools such as 3D printers and workshops are available for the development of ideas and prototypes.

Conclusion - 10 measures to create a culture of innovation

There are many ways to fine-tune the culture of innovation and make it positive. This does not always require immense budgets and well-thought-out five-year plans with hundreds of measures. You can also start small, harvest the first "Low-Hanging-Fruits" and build on it.

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10 Measures to create a culture of innovation

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The corporate culture embraces the written and unwritten values, norms and attitudes in an organization that influence the way employees think and act. And an innovation culture is part of the corporate culture and determines how much innovation is supported and promoted by management and employees.

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Brainstorming is part of design thinking. You use it in the ideation phase. It’s extremely popular for design teams because they can expand in all directions.

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Brainstorming is the most frequently practiced form of ideation. We recommend that you use it along with Brainwriting, Brainwalking, and Braindumping. Here, you'll learn the best practices from the very best experts from d-school and IDEO as well of the father of the Brainstorming technique, Alex Osborn.
Brainstorming is a great way to generate a lot of ideas that you would not be able to generate by just sitting down with a pen and paper. The intention of brainstorming is to leverage the collective thinking of the group, by engaging with each other, listening, and building on other ideas. Conducting a brainstorm also creates a distinct segment of time when you intentionally turn up the generative part of your brain and turn down the evaluative part. You can use brainstorming throughout any design or work process, of course, to generate ideas for design solutions, but also any time you are trying to generate ideas, such as planning where to do empathy work, or thinking about product and services related to your project.

Learn the Best Practices from the Experts Themselves

Here, you'll learn the best practices from the very best experts from d-school and IDEO as well of the father of the Brainstorming technique, Alex Osborn. IDEO is a hugely successful international design and consulting firm, which uses the Design Thinking methodology to advance innovative design in products, services, environments, and digital experiences. The d.school celebrates Design Thinking, and it's one of the most - if not the most - celebrated and recognised sources on Design Thinking and ideation techniques. d.school is a design school based in Stanford University in cooperation with the German Hasso Plattner Institute of the University of Potsdam.

Brainstorming (or just 'brainstorm', for short) has remained the cornerstone of the creative industry for decades and has evolved over the years as experience and learning developed from its variety of applications. Brainstorming essentially relies on a group of people coming together with their prior knowledge and research in order to gather ideas for solving the stated problem. It evokes images of exploration, experimental thinking, and wild ideas. However, all too often it takes the form of controlled sessions where dominant figures assert themselves over others and creativity ends up getting stifled. Or, in other cases, the facilitator does not succeed in helping the team steer towards the goal by keeping the user, the user's need and the team's insights about them in a problem statement - also called Point of View - at the front of the team's minds.

In the following, we'll let you in on some amazing brainstorm rules which will help keep you from falling into these traps, and instead facilitate innovative and effective brainstorming sessions.

Best Practice Rules for Effective Brainstorming
Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Idea generation, or Ideation, is an art form, which is dependent on appointing an experienced facilitator and having an experienced team. However, we're all here to learn, and here is how you can start learning to become a successful facilitator of brainstorming sessions. Brainstorming is about setting a safe, creative space for people to feel like they can say anything and be wild-and know that they will not be judged for doing so-so that new ideas can be born. The following are some rules, principles, and suggestions so you can make brainstorming sessions much more user-oriented, effective, innovative - and fun.

1. Set a time limit

d-school emphasises that the facilitator has to be intentional about setting aside a period when your team will be in "brainstorm mode". In this time frame, it's the sole goal to come up with as many ideas as possible, and during this period judgements of those ideas are prohibited. Typically, a Brainstorm will take around 15-60 minutes. It can be shorter or longer, depending on the difficulty of the problem and the motivation and experience of the group.
Best practice tip:

"Invest energy into a short period of time, such as 15 or 30 minutes of high engagement. Get in front of a whiteboard or around a table, but take an active posture of standing or sitting upright. Get close together."
- dschool, Bootcamp Bootleg

2. Start with a problem statement, Point of View, How Might We questions, a plan or a goal - and stay focused on the topic

Alex Osborn, the father of the Brainstorming technique, emphasises that brainstorming sessions should always address a specific question or problem statement (also called a Point of View) as sessions addressing multiple questions are inefficient. Begin with a good problem statement or question. Design Thinkers and other ideation specialists have further developed this approach into the art of framing problem statements via methods. Specifically, these are " How Might We " questions.
You can read and download the full guides below about how you can define your problem statement by using the Design Thinking method called Point Of View and how you can start ideating by asking "How Might We" questions:
Best practice tip:

"Write down clearly what you are brainstorming. Using a 'How Might We' (HMW) question is a great way to frame a brainstorm (e.g. HMW give each shopper a personal checkout experience?)."
- dschool, Bootcamp Bootleg

3. Defer judgement or criticism, including non-verbal

The facilitator should always set a positive, unthreatening tone and tell participants to reserve criticism for a later critical stage in the ideation process. A Brainstorming session is not the time and the place to evaluate ideas, and you should avoid executional details. It's crucial that participants are feeling confident by being in a safe environment so they have no fear of being judged by others when they put forward wild ideas. You should create equal opportunities for all participants. The best ideas often come from practitioners, students, and people who dare to think differently - and not necessarily only from the highly skilled and experienced managers.

"Have playful rules: Critiquing or debating ideas can quickly sap the energy of a session. Many IDEO conference rooms have brainstorming rules stenciled in 6-inch-high letters on the walls; for example, 'Go for quantity,' 'Encourage wild ideas,' 'Defer judgment,' or 'One conversation at a time.'"
- IDEO, The IDEO Difference

Best practice tip: The facilitator should suspend judgement. This way, participants will feel free to generate unusual ideas. As a facilitator, you will find that it can even be a great idea to prohibit the word "no". You'll be surprised to see how effective this tool is and how it helps open up minds and creates a collaborative, curious, and friendly ideation environment. And you'll find that it's pretty fun too when team members have to initially say "yes" to even the weirdest ideas. Giving out half-thought-out ideas or strange suggestions is normally not socially accepted, is socially frowned on and leads to people holding back in normal situations. Brainstorming deliberately gives permission to be "stupid" and "child-like".

"Creative spaces don't judge. They let the ideas flow, so that people can build on each other and foster great ideas. You never know where a good idea is going to come from, the key is make everyone feel like they can say the idea on their mind and allow others to build on it."
- OpenIDEO, 7 Tips on Better Brainstorming

4. Encourage weird, wacky, and wild ideas

These new ways of thinking might give you better solutions.

"It is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one."
- Alex Osborn, the father of the Brainstorming technique

"Wild ideas can often give rise to creative leaps. In thinking about ideas that are wacky or out there we tend to think about what we really want without the constraints of technology or materials. We can then take those magical possibilities and perhaps invent new technologies to deliver them."
- OpenIDEO, 7 Tips on Better Brainstorming

5.Aim for quantity

Aim for as many new ideas as possible. The assumption is that the greater the number of ideas you generate, the bigger your chance is of producing a radical and effective solution. Brainstorming celebrates the maxim "quantity breeds quality".

6.Build on each others' ideas

As suggested by the slogan "1+1=3", Brainstorming stimulates the building of ideas by a process of association. Embrace the most out-of-the-box notions and build, build, build. Be positive and build on the ideas of others. Brainstorming works well when participants use each other's ideas to trigger their own thinking. Our minds are highly associative. One thought easily triggers another. When we use the thoughts of others, then these will stop us getting trapped by our own thinking structures.

Best practice tip: Try to say and encourage others to say "and" instead of "but". It takes practice, but this little trick works surprisingly well.

7. Be visual

Best practice tip: At IDEO, they encourage you to use coloured markers to write on Post-its and put them on the wall-or sketch your idea. Nothing gets an idea across faster than drawing it. It doesn't matter how terrible of a sketcher you are! It's all about the idea behind your sketch. And d.school has two great ideas for you:

"There are at least two ways to capture the ideas of a brainstorming:
1. Scribe: the scribe legibly and visually captures on the board ideas that team members call out. It is very important to capture every idea, regardless of your own feelings about each idea.
2. All-in: Each person will write down each of his or her ideas as they come, and verbally share it with the group. It is great to do this with post-it notes, so you can write your idea and then stick it on the board."
- dschool, Bootcamp Bootleg

8. One conversation at a time

Listen to each other and elaborate on each other's ideas. Don't get obsessed with your own ideas. You're here to ideate together.
You can download and print our template with the 8 rules for effective Brainstorming and use it as your and your team's guide:
Should you Forget Brainstorming?

Brainstorm, as great as it can be, has some obvious weaknesses, most of them human factors. Whenever a group of people gets together to work collectively on anything, we inevitably find some members dominating over others. Introverts take a back seat and prefer working away in a quieter self-reflective manner, while extroverts, especially egoistical ones, put a stake in the ground and try to own the show. Research published in the Administrative Science Quarterly in 1958, Does Group Participation When Using Brainstorming Facilitate or Inhibit Creative Thinking?, seeks to understand whether individual brainstorming or group brainstorming sessions produce better results. A storm of debate ensued in 2010 when News Week posted an article referencing this research and making a call to " Forget Brainstorming "with others rebuffing this claim and affirming " Don't Forget: Brainstorming Works". Though the results of the study were based on limited parameters, they do indicate that if group-brainstorming conditions are not properly met, they can fail more easily.

We agree that poorly facilitated face-to-face brainstorms do stifle creativity. We agree that, even when brainstorming is done right, people could sometimes still generate ideas faster when they work alone. However, if you want creativity, it's a major mistake to keep your team members in solitary confinement where they can't "waste time" listening to and building on the ideas of others.

Here's the problem: Most pieces of research on brainstorming are rigorous but irrelevant to the challenge of managing creative work. For starters, comparing whether creativity happens best in groups or alone is pretty silly when you look at how creative work is actually done. At creative companies like IDEO, people switch between both modes so seamlessly that it is hard to notice where individual work ends and group work starts.

Should Your Team Brainstorm as a Group or as Individuals?

Best practice: Switching between the two modes of individual and collective ideation sessions can be seamless-and highly productive. Alex Osborn's 1950s classic Applied Imagination gave advice that is still relevant: Creativity comes from a blend of individual and collective ideation.

Brainstorming (group sessions) has three siblings which you should get to know: Braindumping (individual sessions), Brainwriting (a mix of individual and group sessions) and Brainwalking (another mix of individual and group sessions).

It's often a good idea to do individual ideation sessions like braindumping, brainwriting and brainwalking before and after brainstorming group sessions.

Braindump - Individual Brainstorm
Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
One of the best ways to progress to more advanced levels of ideation is to start by getting everything that's currently clogging the neural pathways out in the open and freeing up some cognitive space for other synapses, connections, and mixtures to get through. David Allen, author of the world famous " Getting Things Done" methodology, swears by the braindump as a means to free up mental energy and allow freethinking. Holding onto your own thoughts, unfinished tasks, or unexplored ideas creates mental blockages and prevents freethinking. Furthermore, Braindump is an amazing technique to help quiet employees get a voice.

Best practice

If you were the facilitator, you'd brief ideation participants upfront on the problem statement, goals and important insights from previous research and findings.

Then ask all participants to write down their ideas as they come.

It's important that each participant does this individually - and silently.

Provide participants with sheets of paper, idea cards or traditional Post-it notes. Sticky notes are great, because they allow people to write their ideas down individually - one idea per note.

Give participants between 3 and 10 minutes to get ideas they have been thinking of off their chests.

After reaching the time limit of approximately 3-10 minutes, each participant will say a few words about his or her ideas and stick them on a board or wall. You should avoid initial discussions about notes when team members are presenting them. Ideas that come out of early braindump sessions should be shared verbally with the entire team in order to spark new streams of thinking or combinations of ideas.

While sticking the ideas up and presenting them, the group will also group duplicates together.

When all team members have presented their ideas, you can select the best ideas, which you can continue to build and elaborate on in other ideation sessions. There are various methods you can use such as " Post-it Voting", "Four Categories", " Bingo Selection", " Six Thinking Hats", and " Now Wow How Matrix ".

You can download and print the template where we've summarised how to create a successful Braindump session: Author/Copyright holder: Victor Roa. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0 Sticky notes are great for braindump sessions, because they allow people to write their ideas down individually - one idea per note. After reaching the time limit of approximately 3-10 minutes, each participant will say a few words about his or her ideas and stick them on a board or wall.
Brainwriting
Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Brainwriting is a technique where participants write ideas onto cards and then pass their idea cards on to the next person, moving those cards around the group in a circle as participants build on the ideas of others. Participants perform this technique in complete silence-and they are forced to build on, instead of criticise, other participants' ideas. The cycle can be repeated multiple times and can be applied to chunks of the problem being addressed, depending on the need. The beauty of brainwriting is that it levels the playing field immediately, and it removes many of the obstacles of group brainstorming. With traditional verbal brainstorming, the number of ideas which can be expressed at once is limited, and the time it takes to get through a number of ideas is much longer, which results in many participants forgetting or becoming confused while others shout out ideas. This is especially so for those who are shy or introverted or who may be at a disadvantage due to being less senior or unfamiliar with the specialisations being discussed.

Brainwriting is an excellent starting point for ideation sessions, and can serve as a means to maximise the initial braindump, or as a way to refocus if other ideation methods go haywire. Before the chaos of group ideation muddles people's thinking, help them get their initial thoughts out in the open with an introductory brainwriting session and use the results later to build on further with other techniques.

Best Practice

If you were the facilitator, you'd brief ideation participants upfront on the problem statement, goals and important user insights from previous research and findings.

Encourage participants to jot down ideas on their idea cards for 3-5 minutes before passing on their ideas when you make the call.

Ideally, participants pass on idea cards 3-10 times depending on the problem statement and goals.

This all happens silently and without any interference or communication.

Encourage participants to push themselves for more ideas at least a couple of times, in the few minutes they have, in order to maximize the output and variation.

You should stoke the session with encouragement and provide questions or statements which push participants to think outside of their comfort zones.

The cycle can be repeated multiple times and can be applied to chunks of the problem being addressed, depending on the need.

After ending the cycle, each participant will briefly verbally present the thoughts on the idea card he/she ends up with by the end of the cycle to the rest of the team-in order to spark new streams of thinking or combinations of ideas. If you were the facilitator, you would often be taking notes on a white board.

When all team members have presented their idea cards, you can select the best ideas which you can continue to build and elaborate on in other ideation sessions. There are various methods you can use such as "Post-it Voting", "Four Categories", "Bingo Selection"and "Now Wow How Matrix".

You can download and print the template where we've summarised how to create a successful Brainwriting session:
Brainwalking
Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Yes, you read it correctly-don't worry, though; it doesn't involve soles touching souls. Brainwalking is very similar to brainwriting with one small but highly impactful difference. Instead of passing idea cards or notes from one participant to another, participants have to get up from their seats and move to another spot around the brainstorming table or even to another table altogether. Bryan Mattimore came up with this technique; he's a specialist in the art of ideation and facilitation. Mattimore has many years and thousands of sessions of experience conducting ideation sessions. In his book Idea Stormers, he describes brainwalking as the: 'single best technique to use to begin an ideation session'.

Brainwalking gets people out of their seats, gets them moving, keeps energy levels up and mixes things up enough so that the group as a whole does not get stuck delving too long down the same one-way street, without a quick exit or U turn available. Brainwalking works best when it is easy to flip or to start from scratch.
You can download and print the template where we've described the best practice for creating a Brainwalking session:
As we can see, one ideation method leads to another, and another... and the methods themselves are areas open to creative interpretation and disruption.

Know Your History

Alex Osborn was an advertising executive who created the technique we know today as brainstorming. He invented the technique as a response to the stifling environment of executive meetings and with the goal of freeing up creative thinking in order to facilitate ideas to flow more easily. Alex Osborn presented the brainstorming technique in his book, How To Think Up. Alex Osborn authored several books on group creative thinking, including Your Creative Power, How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas and Applied Imagination, and he was a pioneer in the field, laying the ground for what we call ideation today.

Alex Osborn developed a system that still applies to our modern ideation methods and includes such principles as deferring judgement or criticism and aiming for a larger quantity of ideas as opposed to a focus on quality. He also impresses the importance of an experienced facilitator and on combining group brainstorming with separate individual ideation sessions. As much as the modern understanding of brainstorming may conjure up ideas of randomised chaos with an untrained, poorly facilitated group just shouting out whatever comes to mind, the technique Osborn developed has many rules and principles, which need to be respected in order to achieve success.

"Creativity is more than mere imagination. It is imagination inseparably coupled with both intent and effort."
- Alex Osborn

The Take Away

Brainstorming is the most frequently practiced form of ideation. We recommend that you mix it with Brainwriting, Brainwalking and Braindumping and other ideation methods. Idea generation is an art form, which is dependent on appointing an experienced facilitator and having an experienced team. However, we're all here to learn, and here is how you can start learning to become a successful facilitator of ideation sessions. Ideation sessions are about setting a safe, creative space for people to feel like they can say anything, be wild, and not be judged - so that new relevant ideas can be born. The following are the rules, principles and suggestions to help you make brainstorming and other initial ideation sessions much more effective:

1. Set a time limit.

2. Start with a question, a plan or a goal - and stay focused on the topic.

3. Defer judgement or criticism, including non-verbal.

4. Encourage weird, wacky and wild ideas.

5. Aim for quantity.

6. Build on each others' ideas.

7. Allow one conversation at a time.

References & Where to Learn More

Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: visualpun.ch. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0

IDEO, The IDEO Difference, by Catherine Fredman, 2002.

Alex Osborn, How To Think Up, 1942

Alex Osborn, Applied Imagination, 1953

d.school, Bootcamp Bootleg.

Donald W. Taylor, Paul C. Berry and Clifford H. Block, Does Group Participation When Using Brainstorming Facilitate or Inhibit Creative Thinking? In Administrative Science Quarterly Vol. 3, No. 1, Page 23-47, 1958.

Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. Forget Brainstorming, 7/12/2010.

Jonathan Vehar. Don't forget: Brainstorming works!, 2010.

David Allen, Five Simple Steps that Apply Order to Chaos.

Dave Gray. Brainwriting. Gamestorming A toolkit for innovators, rule-breakers and changemakers, 2010.

Bryan W. Mattimore, Idea Stormers: How to Lead and Inspire Creative Breakthroughs, 2012

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, Change by Design, 2009

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Brainstorming is the most frequently practiced form of ideation. We recommend that you use it along with Brainwriting, Brainwalking, and Braindumping. Here, you'll learn the best practices from the very best experts from d-school and IDEO as well of the father of the Brainstorming technique, Alex Osborn.

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Build Trust That’s Crucial for Success Resource

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Build Trust That’s Crucial for Success Resource

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Boost productivity, energize employees, and increase your bottom line by building effective collaboration skills.
Collaboration is key to any team’s success. But what do you do when teamwork doesn’t work? You can’t afford the loss of productivity, the depletion of energy, or the drain on the bottom line.

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Collaboration & Teamwork Skills | Collaboration Skills | CCL

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Does your organization struggle with collaboration and teamwork? Our solutions strengthen leaders' collaboration skills so they perform better on a team.

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A Pilot Study of Virtual Teamwork Training Resource

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A Pilot Study of Virtual Teamwork Training Resource

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An overview is provided of a model for incorporating virtual teamwork training and identifying factors that contribute to the use of an electronic collaboration system. Additionally, theoretical constructs of the research model, including the research questions and hypotheses for the study, are included.

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Creating a Culture of Innovation: Focus on These 3 Factors

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Creating a Culture of Innovation: Focus on These 3 Factors

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When we think of innovation, we think of imaginative and original creations that solve problems and offer solutions. In truth, while creativity is at the root of innovation, creativity doesn’t guarantee innovation.

And what is the difference between creativity and innovation, anyway?

Think of it this way: Creativity is the ability to generate novel and useful ideas, while innovation is the successful implementation of creative ideas.

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3 Factors that Create a Culture of Innovation | CCL

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Do you know how to turn creativity into innovation? Discover the 3 factors that can create a culture of innovation in your organization.

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Courageous Cultures provides a road map to build a high-performance, high-engagement culture around sharing ideas, solving problems, and rewarding contributions from all levels.

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Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates

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Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates [Hurt, Karin, Dye, David, Amy Edmondson] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates

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MITRE’s Innovation Toolkit is a collection of proven and repeatable problem-solving methods to help you and your team do something different that makes a difference. The Innovation Toolkit (ITK) is a publicly available, handpicked collection of proven approaches and methods to help your team be more innovative. Derived from human-centered design practices, the toolkit helps teams think creatively, frame problems, build consensus, and ask the right questions. Use ITK to spark insightful conversations, capture meaningful results, and guide creative problem solving.

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Tools

The Innovation Toolkit (ITK) is a publicly available, handpicked collection of proven approaches and methods to help your team be more innovative. Derived from human-centered design practices, the toolkit helps teams think creatively, frame problems, build consensus, and ask the right questions. Use ITK to spark insightful conversations, capture meaningful results, and guide creative problem solving.

Click on a circle below to begin exploring the five tool categories, or click the BROWSE button to see the whole list.

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The Innovation Toolkit (ITK) is a publicly available, handpicked collection of proven approaches and methods to help your team be more innovative. Derived from human-centered design practices, the toolkit helps teams think creatively, frame problems, build consensus, and ask the right questions. Use ITK to spark insightful conversations, capture meaningful results, and guide creative problem solving.

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How do you define innovation? And how can you make it understandable and saleable to your organization’s senior management team?

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The first major issue to be tackled by our distinguished panel of innovation practitioners is innovation itself. How do you define innovation? And how can you make it understandable and saleable to your organization's senior management team? As expected, our panelists shared some keen insights and practical strategies that you can benefit from.

1. How do you define innovation?

The actions required to create new ideas, processes or products which when implemented lead to positive effective change. While invention requires the creation of new ideas, processes or products, innovation moves one step further and requires implementation of the inventive act. Innovation also implies a value system which seeks to derive a positive outcome from the inventive act. For example, actions which lead to a negative performance metric would not be considered innovative, even if they met the requirements of novelty and enabling actions.
- Marc Chason, Motorola Labs
Innovation is creating new value and/or capturing value in a new way. Value is the key word, stressing the difference between innovation and invention. The definition is simple, easy to memorize and also good enough to encompass innovation in all the value chain.
- Victor Fernandes, Natura
Innovation is something new to your business that fills an untapped customer need. Ideally, the innovation builds a new market.
- Jonathan Rowe, Gene Express Inc.
An innovation is an idea that has been transformed into practical reality. For a business, this is a product, process, or business concept, or combinations that have been activated in the marketplace and produce new profits and growth for the organization. I differentiate radical and disruptive innovation from the incremental kind, since the latter can happen if the company is simply great at what it already does. True innovation is far more than an extension of what is done normally, and while being different, uses capabilities that exist in a company or are augmented by strategic alliances. Therefore, something is an innovation not simply because it is new to that company, but because it is simply new.
- Dr. Makarand "Chips" Chipalkatti, Osram Slyvania
Innovation is a process to bring new ideas, new methods or new products to an organization. Unfortunately, in the past, in America, innovation has been limited to looking for a "big" idea to advance an organization's competitive position. Management seems to be always looking for the "silver bullet," a new "I Phone, etc.," while true innovation is involving every single employee to look around their work area to identify small problems around them and to be empowered and responsible to solve them. The average Japanese company receives 24 ideas per worker per year and saves $4,000 per employee. From this process of involving all employees in continuous improvement will come daily improvements in quality and productivity and miraculously great commercial ideas will also "pop" out.
- Norman Bodek, PCS Inc.
If you're looking to launch your own innovation awards program or a Shank Tank-style pitch event, you'll want to learn how to launch a crowdsourcing campaign. IdeaScale is hosting a virtual lab during which you can configure your own crowdsourcing challenge in 45 minutes on November 18th at 10:00am PST. Join us!

Innovation is relative. I often hear the question asked, "Is that innovative? Because I think this other company has done it before." However, I define innovation as anything new - or different - that changes the game for YOUR company. Leveraging what someone else has done is a perfectly legitimate innovation strategy. We need to always keep the end-game in mind and that's competitive advantage. Don't rule it out because you think it does or doesn't qualify as innovative. Just ask yourself, "Will it make a positive difference?" If the answer is, "yes," then go with it.
- David Silverstein. Breakthrough Management Group
Having a view of the future landscape of consumer wants and needs - whether known or unarticulated - and developing solutions that grow your business while fulfilling or altering the lifestyle and behavior of your target consumers.
- Troy Geesaman, Laga
I have found it most helpful to define "business innovation" (as distinct from general innovation) as the "creation and capture of new value in new ways." This definition has made innovation more actionable and measurable in business terms and makes it inclusive of "new" offerings and value propositions (new services or products), "new" methods (new technology applications or business processes), and "new" business models (new channels, partners and financial models for capturing value from innovation investments.
- Ron Jonash, Monitor Group

Our Analysis

At first glance, the responses from our experts about the definition of innovation appear different and divergent. A closer review show that they are in violent agreement but just stated in different ways. It makes sense why the definition of innovation is still misunderstood.

All the experts pointed out that innovation must (a) deliver some positive outcome whether it is tangible value, creation of a new market or a competitive advantage and (b) that the actions required to deliver this value must be new to the company.

Some experts mentioned that innovation applied to stakeholders across the value chain, while a few focused on end customers and markets. What is clear to us is that these narrower boundaries are more defined by the work experience of our experts. Since all our experts are working in the innovation space, we combined the responses to say that innovation does apply across the value chain.

Perhaps, the simplest definition of innovation is creating new value and/or capturing value in a new ways.
- Hitendra Patel/Chuck Frey

2. How do you make innovation practical and saleable to senior management?

This is indeed non trivial. Of course, it is necessary to make the financial case first of all, particularly in mature, well established companies. It is also necessary to show strategic alignment, an aspect often overlooked in companies excelling at managing the status quo. An additional complication in large companies, is that the innovation is unlikely to make a significant dent in the financials of the company, often bearing fruit only beyond the time horizon of senior management. The greatest complicating factor for innovations that take the company into adjacent and new areas, is that there is no penalty for doing nothing, particularly in periods of financial success.

There is no simple prescription. It is a composite of many steps resulting in cultural change within the organization. There has to be a leader who is determined to take the organization to new heights. The metrics that apply to senior management need to include new top-line growth, and not just bottom-line calculations. Risk tolerance and failure tolerance has to be encouraged. Finally, the rank and file must be given a voice, must be heard, and rewarded for their initiatives - even "failed" ones. It is only by empowering employees from top to bottom, by a disciplined cultivation of entrepreneurial initiatives which are aligned with corporate strategic goals, will true innovation emerge.
- Dr. Makarand "Chips" Chipalkatti, Osram Slyvania
Saleability to senior management is related to an innovation definition clearly linked to value. To make innovation practical to senior management, it is important to show them that innovation is a manageable inside any organization, linked to strategy, process, resources, organization and culture. Innovation capability can be built inside any organization, in any business, in any part of the value chain; it is not linked only to invention, technology or R&D, but is clearly linked to new value creation and capture of value in a new way.
- Victor Fernandes, Natura
There's a saying I once heard that went something like this, "Your processes are perfectly designed to give you the results you are getting right now." More often than not, an organization's present state is not where that organization wants to be. On top of that, cost cutting and Lean Six Sigma can only help you with what you are currently doing, and add no value to the customer.

I have found it useful to take a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Strategy Map approach to visualizing the present state, future state and desired state. By using a strategy map and a BSC, a one page document can be created to show where the organization needs to go, why the current state won't get you there, and why innovation is needed to move more value to the customer.

A Strategy Map and BSC typically have four perspectives on your business; Financial, Customer, Process and Learning/Growth of the employees. These are mapped with measures and metrics into each other to show what you need to give your employees for them to be able to deliver flawless processes, to thrill your customer, and lead to strong financial growth. When the current state of an organization is placed into this strategy structure, the vulnerabilities are seen and the growth potential is typically flat. I would then create an Innovation BSC (there is literature from PalladiumES on this) to show the process possibilities, the impact on the current state and impact on Financials. By doing this, senior management only needs to see 1-2 pages (have backup information if necessary).

Before presenting to senior management, practice this pitch with supporters of your idea as well as the unconvinced. Make sure it is easy to understand and obvious why the change is needed. Allow some buzz to be created so you have supporters and various levels.

When creating an innovation BSC, you may find that some of the processes and customer deliverables that are imbedded in your organization are of no value to the future state (think IBM and hardware in the late '80s early '90s). This is the difficult challenge, as there is likely a VP in charge of this work area (and likely s/he sits on the leadership team). Don't be shy about first bringing this fact to that VP. If you can convert that person to a champion of change before sharing the new state with the leadership team, it may make that person look like an unselfish team player.

Innovation can happen in a large corporation. The challenge is to overcome the processes that have been in place. By creating convincing strategy maps with positive customer experiences and strong financial endpoints, a convincing argument for innovation can be made.
- Jonathan Rowe, Gene Express Inc.
The key here is to visualize the gaps. Numbers and data can support a story, but in most cases an illustration will have the impact needed to influence senior management. Leverage your internal resources or external agency partners who are gifted at design and visualization to make your story compelling. Success will prove the investment worthwhile.
- Troy Geesaman, Laga
I have found that making innovation saleable and practical starts with the definition above and then requires a clear connection to explicit strategic objectives and targets and a clear and measurable connection to individual and team metrics. It almost always requires that senior management (or the board of directors) must have an investment mindset about preparing for what's next and a clear vested interest in benefitting from increases in company growth and value. It also requires simple processes for making these connections and building on systems and processes that are often considered to be the enemy of innovation (e.g., stage gate or Six Sigma). It also requires at least a willingness to think and act differently to create and drive new platforms and engines for value creation and capture. We have found it most saleable when tied to an explicit growth gap that there is a mandate to close.
- Ron Jonash, Monitor Group

Our Analysis

The tone taken by each of our panelist around this question confirms that this is not an easy task. One expert even suggested that it may require replacing senior management.

However, we did extract three themes that could be valuable for all the readers:

1. Create or confirm a case for change (e.g., a burning platform or growth gap)

2. Talk about innovation in terms of tangible results to help create a better future

3. Provide a step-wise approach to getting to these results and make the journey credible through anecdotes, past successes and even visualizing the story.

The good news is that more and more strategy departments and CEOs have already selected innovation as one of their strategic pillars for growth. The bad news is that there are other pillars that are easier to implement and the innovation pillar is being neglected.
- Hitendra Patel/Chuck Frey

In the next interview:

How do you source and manage ideas to come up with the best innovation opportunities for your company?

Feedback?

Please share your comments below, where we hope to create a lively discussion about the ideas and strategies outlined in this "virtual roundtable" interview.

Published by Chuck Frey, InnovationTools, and Hitendra Patel, The Center for Innovation Excellence & Leadership, Hult International School of Business

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How do you Define Innovation and Make it Practical and Saleable to Senior Management?

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1. How do you define innovation? The actions required to create new ideas, processes or products which when implemented lead to positive effective change. While invention requires the creation of new ideas, processes or products, innovation moves one step further and requires implementation of the inventive act.

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The Innovator's Toolkit Team 3 References

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Canva is a graphic design platform, used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content. The app includes templates for users to use. The platform is free to use and offers paid subscriptions like Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise for additional functionality. Presentations can be shared in order to collaborate with friends or colleagues.

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Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool. Use it to create social media posts, presentations, posters, videos, logos and more.

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Slack is a proprietary business communication platform developed by American software company Slack Technologies and owned by Salesforce from 2021. Slack offers many IRC-style features, including persistent chat rooms organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging.

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Slack is a new way to communicate with your team. It's faster, better organized, and more secure than email.

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The Innovator's Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth (Resource)

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The Innovator's Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth (Resource)

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If you're a business leader, a new product developer, or an inventor, The Innovator's Toolkit is one handy guide you shouldn't be without. It presents fundamental tools and concepts for innovation and includes methods and strategies for improving products and service or creating new ones.

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David Silverstein is founder and CEO of Breakthrough Management Group International, a consulting and training organization focused on innovation, Six Sigma, and business excellence. His articles have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Worth, Investor's Business Daily, BusinessWeek, and other media. For more information, visit www.BMGi.com.

Philip Samuel is Chief Innovation Officer atBreakthrough Management Group International, a frequent public speaker, and an executive coach on innovation, Six Sigma, and Lean practices. He is also coauthor of Design for Lean Six Sigma.

Neil DeCarlo is a veteran business author and publishing consultant. He has written more than 200 articles and papers on performance excellence, and is coauthor of Insourcing Innovation, Six Sigma For Dummies, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Lean Six Sigma.

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An innovation guide for business leaders, managers, and new product developers. The Innovator's Toolkit explains all the fundamental tools and concepts anyone involved in innovation should be familiar with--especially methods and strategies for improving products and services and developing new ones.

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The Design Thinking Toolbox explains the most important tools and methods to put Design Thinking into action. Based on the largest international survey on the use of design thinking, the most popular methods are described in four pages each by an expert from the global Design Thinking community.

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The Design Thinking Toolbox: A Guide to Mastering the Most Popular and Valuable Innovation Methods

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The Design Thinking Toolbox: A Guide to Mastering the Most Popular and Valuable Innovation Methods [Lewrick, Michael, Link, Patrick, Leifer, Larry] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Design Thinking Toolbox: A Guide to Mastering the Most Popular and Valuable Innovation Methods

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Trello is a leading project task management software with built-in collaboration tools to work with your teams. It’s lightweight, simple, and straightforward to use. It uses boards, lists, and cards to create tasks and stay organized. Users can collaborate within the cards, share files, and leave comments.

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Capture, organize, and tackle your to-dos from anywhere | Trello

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Make the impossible, possible with Trello. The ultimate tool to boost your productivity. Escape the clutter and chaos—stay efficient with Inbox, Boards, and Planner from anywhere, even on mobile.

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10 Best Project Management Tools for Every Project (Resource)

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10 Best Project Management Tools for Every Project (Resource)

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Project management tools are the project manager’s answer to manage projects. Simple projects require nothing more than a checklist while other complex ones require proper planning, assigning tasks, setting deadlines, making sure that everyone sticks to them, and tracking the time spent.

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4. Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects is a popular offering from Zoho that helps businesses keep track of tasks, collaborate, bug tracking, and run intuitive reports. The online project management tool offers features like Gantt charts and the ability to billable hours on multiple projects simultaneously. Zoho Projects also boasts a very impressive suite of communications tools, including real-time chat and forum pages

Many users say the Gantt charts are cumbersome to use and reporting breakdown may not be sufficient for large teams. You can share documents from within the tool.

Pricing: Zoho offers several choices when it comes to a subscription plan:

There's a forever free version with basic features and limited users

The Standard plan costs $3 and has features like custom statuses and issue tracking. It supports up to 10 users.

The Express plan is priced at $4 and supports up to 50 users. You'll get features like recurring tasks, Gantt charts, and timesheet approvals.

The Premium plan starts from $5 and supports up to 100 users. It includes features like task automation, business rules, resource utilization, and budgeting.

The Enterprise plan is priced at $6 and has no cap on the number of users. Custom roles, global Gantt charts, inter-project dependencies are some of the features available.

All plans are per user per month.

5. Wrike

Wrike is a cloud-based project management tool that simplifies project planning, helps track your team's work, monitor deadlines, and collaborate easily with all stakeholders. It offers a lot of advanced features like task management, Gantt Charts, a real-time newsfeed, and more. You can prioritize tasks to push the crucial tasks forward and make sure deadlines are met. There are also plenty of integration options which makes it a powerful project management suite.

The sheer number of features can be a bit overwhelming for most new users and the unintuitive interface is of little help. It's ideal for different teams within the organization like marketing, software development, and professional services.

Pricing: There's a freemium version with limited functionalities and up to five users. Paid plans start at $9.80/user/month. There's also a Business plan priced at $24.80/user/month. It supports features like subtasks, Gantt charts, time-tracking, and workflows.

6. Monday.com

Monday.com combines a visually appealing interface and useful project visualizing tools into intuitive, simple project management software. It's flexible and offers a transparent way to organize your work. There are project templates on top which you can build your own boards. There are plenty of display options available like the map view and the calendar view.

One common reason for dissatisfaction among customers is the lack of recurring tasks. The mobile app is clunky to navigate for some users. They also offer great security, robust features, and easy customization.

Pricing: The pricing system is overly complicated. There's no freemium plan and you'd have to spend time investigating the number of users, automation, and integration actions you'll need every month. Paid plans start at $39/month for five users.

7. ProofHub

ProofHub gives a centralized workspace for task lists, workflows, Gantt charts, discussions, calendars, and documents. It helps you plan, organize, and keep track of your team's tasks. It also makes collaboration easy within teams as well as with external clients. There are plenty of reports like workload and resource reports.

With an emphasis on simplicity, ProofHub has very few integrations and very limited task management. It's good for both freelancers and businesses of all sizes.

Pricing: ProofHub has no cap on the number of users and offers a flat fee irrespective of the number of users. There are two plans: the Essential plan is priced at $50 per month while the Ultimate Control plan costs $99 per month.

8. Clarizen

Clarizen is a highly rated online project management software meant for mid-to enterprise-sized businesses. The system is web based project management only, so the lack of a mobile app may limit usefulness for some teams. Users love the robust reporting features and ability to track resource use, but it lacks a to-do list and time tracking.

The learning curve is a bit steep because it has specific ways of managing workflows. Clarizen is best suited to enterprise-level project managers, IT organizations, and professional services teams that require powerful, flexible, and intuitive web based project management software.

Pricing: Pricing is not publicly available but is available upon request.

9. Airtable

Airtable puts the best features of spreadsheets and databases together. It's customizable and easy to use and works well for businesses of all sizes. It lacks robust reporting features which might be problematic for some users.

You can store information in the database which can be used for task management and project planning. Many users love the versatility of data organization that's possible with Airtable's spreadsheets. There are multiple views like Kanban, list, grid, and calendar.

Pricing:Airtable has a free plan that supports essential features like rich field types, multiple views, and collaboration. Paid plans start at $10/user/month for companies with higher data storage requirements. Their Pro plan offers advanced features like custom branded forms, personalized views, and domain restricted sharing.

10. Kanban Tool

Kanban Tool is a good entry point to agile development. It allows you to visualize your workflow and offers seamless time-tracking functionalities. It makes collaboration and task tracking easy with notifications, reporting, and team management features.

It provides features like reporting, document sharing, native mobile app, and more which are ideal for medium and large businesses. Kanban tool also offers enterprise users the ability to host the software onsite.

Pricing: It's not geared towards freelancers, but there's a free plan for up to two users and supports two project boards. Paid plans start at $5/user/month and support unlimited boards. The $9/user/month plan for enterprises has advanced features like time-tracking, reporting, user management, and process automation.

11. Zenkit

Zenkit is a widely-respected project management solution that allows you to stay on top of your data right from research and brainstorming to collaborating on it. It is specifically targeted at teams that prefer an agile approach to the work they do. However, it also supports traditional approaches to project management.

Zenkit is a solid project management tool that offers multiple views, reports, and resource-management capabilities and hence is always on the radar of those seeking a versatile answer to their project needs.

Pricing: Zenkit offers a Personal plan that's free to use as well as three paid plans:

The feature-set and number of projects supported increases with a tier with the Enterprise plan offering maximum customizability for large organizations.

12. MeisterTask

MeisterTask is an online project management tool for collaborative teams that work together in real-time. It offers an activity dashboard, backlog management, customizable fields, file sharing capabilities, and more.

It offers a visually-appealing user interface although its revision management capabilities could improve.

Pricing: MeisterTask offers four tiers: Basic, Pro, Business, and Enterprise.

The Basic plan is free and supports up to three projects.

The Pro plan costs $4.19/user/month while the Business plan costs $10.39/user/month.

The Enterprise plan features customizable pricing.

13. ClickUp

Clickup is a cloud-based offering that bills itself as an all-in-one project management tool. It stands out for its comprehensive feature set that includes even docs, goals, and an inbox.

Modularity is a major strength of ClickUp. It offers add-ons called Click Apps that allow for rich customization.
Pricing

The free plan offers 100 MB storage and unlimited tasks and members.

The unlimited plan costs $5/user when billed annually and includes unlimited storage, integrations, etc.

The business plan costs $9/user when billed annually and includes Google SSO, goal folders, custom exporting, etc.

The enterprise plan involves custom pricing and includes increased API limits, a dedicated success manager, white labeling, etc.

14. Paymo

Paymo bills itself as a modern and intuitive work management solution for small businesses and remote teams. It includes advanced task management, planning, scheduling, collaboration, invoicing, and time tracking features. In essence, it allows one to keep track of the entire lifecycle of a project without the need to use and pay for multiple apps.
Pricing

The annual plans offer two additional months of use.

The Small Office plan costs $9.95/user per month when billed annually.

The Business plan costs $15.79/user per month when billed annually.

15. Teamwork

Teamwork is a Kanban-based project management tool. It offers more advanced reporting features than Trello within a similar drag-and-drop interface. It allows for branding accounts with custom company identities. Further, it allows the disabling of features for specific projects.
Pricing

The free plan allows for 5 users and offers 100 MB of storage.

The Pro plan costs $10/user/month when billed annually.

The Premium plan costs $18/user/month when billed annually.

Custom enterprise pricing is also available.

What to look for in an online project management tool

To help you, here's a list of the top six features of project management tools you absolutely can't live without if you are going to lead a successful project.

1. Kanban board

Kanban boards are workspaces used to visualize your project, and they are immensely helpful in successful project management. The kanban board utilizes a simple board and card system, allowing everyone on a team to have visibility, not just on individual tasks, but on the larger picture of team activity. Citizen development is a great example of using a kanban board with no code.

Originally created by Toyota Motors for its manufacturing facilities, Kanban has been adapted and utilized across multiple sectors for the last several decades. Kanban board can be in physical spaces like a whiteboard or in digital spaces which can be created in the kanban board software.

2. Task management

A project is a collection of tasks that must all be completed in order to accomplish a single goal. Some of those tasks are sequential or dependent. Some can be completed simultaneously. Each task needs to be assigned to a person or persons on the project team. The more complex the project, the more tasks there are to manage.

Though it doesn't sound very glamorous, task management is a crucial part of project management, and it's important to have tools that assist in managing tasks effectively.

3. To-do lists

The good old-fashioned to-do list. Simple though it may be, it does help you and your team get the job done. Of course, it's far more effective to store your to-do list in a central, visible location that every team member can access easily.

A good project management software should include a to-do list, ensuring that everyone on the team can check in and see what's been accomplished and what's left to be done.

4. Time tracker

Every aspect of your project takes time, but when you get to the end of a project, it's sometimes hard to know who spent how much time on which tasks. Confused yet? It gets more complicated if you have a similar project coming up; you feellike you should know how much time to allot to each project task and phase, but if your team wasn't able to track their time previously, it's a bit of a guessing game. A good time tracker helps with accurate billing, insightful team management, and careful planning.

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15 Best Project Management Tools for Every Project Managers [New List of 2023]

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Here's a curated new list of the top 15 best project management tools for 2023. It's guide people who are new to project management.

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20 Best Innovation Management Tools-Choosing the Right One (Resource)

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20 Best Innovation Management Tools-Choosing the Right One (Resource)

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Innovation management has been a hyped topic in the past decade or so due to its value in bringing game-changing ideas and molding the way we do business. From getting ahead in your industry to utilizing the creativity of your work force, managing innovation is something to be aware of.

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If you're here for just the list of 20 best innovation management tools, click the link to jump directly there. However, we strongly recommend you read on to find out why and how of successfully choosing and using an innovation management tool.

Innovation management has been a hyped topic in the past decade or so due to its value in bringing game-changing ideas and molding the way we do business. From getting ahead in your industry to utilizing the creativity of your work force, managing innovation is something to be aware of.

For a quick recap in terminology, innovation management is not to be mixed with idea management, although some may think they are synonyms. Idea management refers to managing ideas themselves, and although the grand goal is to ultimately create something usable, the concept covers the act of gathering and developing ideas. Innovation management, on the other hand, refers to the broader act of sculpting ideas into actual innovations. The actual process that takes an idea from its infancy into a successful product or service.

Innovation management doesn't just happen on its own. Just like a ship needs sails along with a dedicated captain and crew who know how to use them, managing innovation requires a tool and motivated people to use it. A dedicated tool for innovation management is a tremendous help in achieving concrete results for your efforts, as well as keeping the entirety of ideas, discussion, categorization, and process manageable.

"Just like a ship needs sails and a crew, managing innovation requires a tool and motivated people to use it."

For this reason, as a part of our innovation management post campaign, we've decided to write this comprehensive article on finding the right tool for managing innovation.

Why Is Innovation Management Important?

So why is innovation management so important you cannot walk two steps without hearing the word?

Before I understood the concept, I also perceived it as just business lingo that doesn't really have much to do with anything tangible. But that was just because I didn't understand it well enough or how crucial doing it with intent and determination is for a company to thrive in the long run.

Now, let me share the wisdom from countless hours of research and firsthand experience with customers.

Incremental vs Radical Progress

Especially larger companies often solely focus on developing their products and services in an incremental and sustaining manner. The problem with doing so is that it is safe and much easier than giving breathing room for any new idea to grow, be the idea however radical. In fact, one common factor among companies pursuing incremental growth is that they lack innovation.

Not only in the sense that it doesn't exist to begin with, but actually inhibiting it. New and bold ventures are downright discouraged through quarterly quotas and oversight to maximize efficiency.

A conscious effort to manage innovation is a necessity for creating an environment where new, radical or even disruptive ideas can be brought to life. Without it, many groundbreaking ideas will never see the light of day.

Of course, not to sound naive, for a large organization to suddenly adopt innovation it requires much more than just making the choice to do so, but that's another topic entirely. To focus on the broader point, the fact of the matter is that innovation management is crucial if you wish to create something new and not just build another layer on the old until it looks like the leaning tower of Pisa.

Innovation management is crucial if you wish to create something new and not just build another layer on the old until it looks like the leaning tower of Pisa.

This brings us to our next point, sustainability.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

It is an inevitable fact that organizations which lack innovation are fragile when you zoom out in the scale of time. It is a bumpy road in terms of sustainability if all efforts are towards reaching a comfortable plateau in incremental growth and paying shareholders their dividends. Instead efforts should be steered towards investing in growth to avoid the being overthrown by something better and more efficient when the current product or service is no longer able to keep up with time.

Innovation management (read, "innovation") increases adaptability. It is a way to not only keep the current product or service competitive, but also a gateway to even being at the frontier of building something game-changing yourself.

For example, Nokia was at the forefront of developing the still rudimentary touch-screen technology and combining it with a functioning smartphone while Apple and Samsung were still considered infants in the phone industry. However, instead of leading the smartphone race, the colossus crashed due to a slow reaction to a new reality in the handset game. Instead of executing increasingly bolder moves and developing and trying on all fronts (in their case, platforms) - as should be done in the face of radically changing market - they trusted the old platform and their status to keep them afloat. In hindsight, the signs were there and so were the creativity, brainpower and resources to push through; even come out stronger on the other end. They were only missing the ability and knowhow to manage it.

Using All Available Resources

This one may be obvious, however still quite an important point to make.

Simply put, it would just be pointless not to use all that raw creativity lurking in the silent masses of the organization. Instead of letting it go to waste, or rather not utilizing it, wouldn't it be wiser to do something about it?

Many smaller firms or startups rarely have enough collective knowledge or creativity to go around. Thus, it wounds to see huge organizations that have the ability to think 5 steps ahead and see them settle for 1.

So, where do we go from here?
"It wounds to see huge organizations that have the ability to think 5 steps ahead and see them settle for 1."

Now that we know innovation management is important, how do we put this exciting information to use and make it happen?

Well, you don't start handing out post-it notes and yell: " Innovate people! " unless you really enjoy gathering crumbled up post-its in your office.

By far the best and easiest solution is using a specifically designed tool for managing innovation, and there are a lot of tools out there. This just ignites the dilemma of " How do I know which tool is the right one? " Well, read on to find out!

Next in turn is our best list of innovation management tools on the web.

We've gathered the 20 best innovation management tools that exist. We've done the research for you! All you need to do is read on and find out which ones pique your interest.

For the first nine more popular tools we have added descriptions on who the tool is suitable for and pros and cons lists to aid you in your decision. In addition, we've also looked up which ones offer free trials and/or versions.

By free trial, we mean a demo of the product for a fixed time, whereas a free version can be used indefinitely but with limited features or capacity.

1. Qmarkets
Pros: Cons:
Qmarkets is an enterprise software that is designed to work as a complete innovation management package for larger organizations. Although it may be able to do some heavy lifting in terms of innovation management, it falls short in the areas of intuitive use for the end user.

Unintuitive due to a heavy feature load

Requires extensive knowledge to use

Mobile version doesn't work well

Problems with multi-language support

Free version: No

Free trial: Yes

2. Ideawake
Pros: Cons:
Ideawake is designed as a precision innovation management tool that is good for beginners. Where it lacks in features, it makes up for in practicality. However, larger organizations may find this tool insufficient for versatile needs.

Free version: No

Free trial: Yes

3. Viima
Pros: Cons:
Viima is an all-in-one innovation management tool which can easily be used by from startups to larger organizations. Viima stands out of the bunch in its ease of use and visual appearance that help keep participants motivated and intrigued. Viima has been designed to be an intuitive self-service SaaS tool, but also includes access to experienced and quick-responding customer support.

Free version: Yes

Free trial: Yes

4. Inno360
Pros: Cons:
Inno360 is an innovation management software that specializes in creating disruptive innovation in an organization by searching for opportunities and ideas on the web. While this approach is fresh in terms of using the web to create new disruptive ideas, in terms of usability the platform isn't designed for heavy internal innovation.

Free version: No

Free trial: Yes

5. Co:tunity (InnoFunnel)
Pros: Cons:
While Co:tunity's InnoFunnel is more of an idea management tool, it is included in this listing due to its versatility. Co:tunity works well when customized for smaller projects. However, is not designed for heavy lifting due to the structure of the workflow.

Free version: Yes

Free trial: Yes

6. Accept Mission
Pros: Cons:
While Accept Mission is also an idea management tool, due to its unique nature, we decided to include it in this listing as well. Accept Mission is a brainstorming tool that specializes in using a gamifying approach to get people innovating. Although it makes participation fun, it is unfortunately quite limited in it flexibility and versatility.

Free version: Yes

Free trial: Yes

7. Exago SMART

Exago SMART is an enterprise innovation management software that offers ready solutions for various use cases. Although it works well for the given purpose even with a large number of people, it lacks in customizability.
Pros: Cons:

Free version: No

Free trial: Yes

8. Crowdicity
Pros: Cons:
For an idea management tool, Crowdicity is also equipped for innovation management. However, where it specializes in flexibility and practicality, it lacks in versatility. All features are designed to keep the customer experience effortless. Although this is good for a specific use case, an additional tool is needed if you want to expand your scope of innovation management.

Free version: No

Free trial: Yes

9. IdeaScale
Pros: Cons:
IdeaScale is an idea management tool that alike for innovation management, focuses on providing an effortless set up and experience for users. Although it does these things well and with even a heavy participation, it isn't designed for customizability. If you're looking for an easy and fast way to set everything up, it does just that. If you think your innovation management goals might shift at some point, it may require an additional tool.

Free version: Yes

Other innovation management tools you may find interesting: 10. Inteum 11. Favro 12. Idea Drop 13. Babele 14. Innovation Platform 15. HYPE Innovation 16. SoapBox 17. OneDesk 18. SAP Innovation Management 19. iEnabler 20. @Work
Free trial: Yes
Didn't find the perfect one on the list?

Choosing The Right Tool
This is why we've decided to also include a process of finding the best tool for your specific needs:
Finding the right tool isn't always as easy as picking one off a list. It can be a tenacious process when done with care, yet quite simple when you break it down to its elements.

1. Chart & prioritize your goals

2. Research & shortlist vendors

3. Start piloting

4. Keep at it!

Chart & Prioritize Your Goals

The logical first step is to take a breather and ask yourself: " What do you wish to achieve? " Besides the broader agendas, such as: aiming to stay competitive and agile, what are the smaller and more achievable things in your scope? Write them down and give it some time.

This is an important reflection in the beginning of the process as it aids in finding a tool with the right characteristics and features earlier on. Also, this helps understand your industry-specific goals better.

For example, if we're talking about a software company that has high reliance on crowdsourcing, the tool should definitely allow very transparent ideation. However, if a microchip company only wishes to gather employee input on a secretive product, it's best to have the option of making the platform airtight.

Research & Shortlist Vendors

Now, with the strategic goals clear in your head, it's time to start doing research on vendors and what they're offering. This takes time and may even be a little stressful, however, it's best done with care as to not be blindsided later on.

Although we recommend using our list in the sense that we've cherry-picked the best of the best, if you didn't find one on it that clicks, other impartial lists with innovation management tools from A to Z can be found online (For example, Capterra). I recommend you read objective reviews, get familiar with the features, characteristics and use cases, and keep an eye out for free versions.

Although our first and foremost goal is to help you find the vendor that suits your needs best, naturally we at Viima feel that ours is the best tool out there for just about any use case and can back up that claim by offering a free Basic plan that you can use with an unlimited number of people.

After you've gathered enough candidates, shortlist the most promising ones and we are ready for lift-off.

Start Piloting

This is the part where it gets fun!

It's time to start trying out the software, one at a time if need be. From experience, it may take a few tries to find the right one. However, you shouldn't eliminate the possibility of finding it right off the bat.

Finding software with free versions or trials comes in handy as this makes it easier to try them out without commitment. Also, free versions are a good indicator that the vendor believes in their software enough to get you hooked.

Keep At It!

Although the earlier step might've felt like a logical end to the process of finding the right tool for innovation management, this is one is crucial in terms of increasing the possibility of one day finding said tool.

In other words, it may end up being an exhausting ride if the perfect tool just doesn't seem to exist.

All I can say is: " Keep at it! " You will get there one way or the other. However, if you try out dozens of tools with intent to succeed and still are left staring at empty palms, it might be worth it to go back to the drawing board with your goals and tune them to be more achievable, (not that setting the bar high is ever a bad thing.)

The worst thing you can do is give up on trying to find it or start your pilot with a freefall mentality: " It will take care of innovation for me. "

It won't.
But before that, here's a quick recap:
The reality is that whether you find your chosen tool or not, it's hands-on work if you wish to succeed. In the next chapter I'll show you how to muster through once you find something that potentially sticks.

Using an Innovation Management Tool

Okay, let's say you now have a tool at your disposal that seems to do just about everything you want it to. Like us at Viima, they may even be open to making special arrangements to customize it for your specific needs.

How do you get it to work in the long run? What if people lose interest or nothing tangible ever sprouts?
It is hard to draw a fully generalized guideline for the best practices in using an innovation management tool. However, the following things work in most cases:
If people lose interest or nothing useful comes out, there are two possible reasons for this: One, you're doing it wrong. Two, you have the wrong tool

Both can be fixed by making a course correction. If the tool is too inhibiting, go back to the process of finding a tool and find another one. If the tool does anything you want and more, the problem is probably on your end.

Re-evaluate your goals: Crystallize your strategic priorities as to what you wish to achieve with the tool?

Don't manage it all yourself: Share responsibilities for different areas of process oversight and make the responsibilities clear. Do follow-ups.

Build the hype: Don't just send out a mass email stating that a tool now exists, it's open, and you should use it. Give time for people to get excited. Use all channels at your disposal to blast (with finesse, of course) information about your new and exciting venture. Let them wait to participate and feel privileged to do so.

Incentivize: Throw in incentives to motivate people. Of course, for many just getting to participate in making a difference is a huge motivator. However, pushing people to walk that extra mile may require a golden star. Avoid monetary incentives, such as gift cards, as these rarely work in the long run and motivate the wrong way. Instead use intrinsic incentives, such as "original ideator gets to be on the team to make the idea happen", as these build real commitment.

Check-ups: Make weekly or monthly check-ups a mandatory routine in your innovation management process. Ask the people of responsibility (which you have assigned) to compile information on their areas of responsibility and use this information to find out what works and what doesn't. Build on what you learn.

Don't give up: This point is same as the last step in finding the right tool. However, it is just as relevant here. It is of paramount importance that you do not give up or think that the process or tool will take care of itself. That is when things will start to fall apart. Many failed ventures (often blamed on the tools) are due to the false notion that it will take care of innovation on its own. Only relentless dedication will get you to the finish line and beyond.

Final Thoughts

In a nutshell, finding the right tool requires research, patience and hard work. Once you get the ball rolling, it's only a matter of time until you reap concrete benefits from your efforts.

I hope this thorough guide helps you find a tool that works for your needs. If at any point you feel lost or hit a dead end in your search for a tool, refer to this guide or contact our knowledgeable team. We're always happy to help with all matters related to innovation.

Also, if you're interested in piloting an idea or innovation management software, you might want to refer to this guide, which has actionable tips and a checklist designed to help you in the process.

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20 Best Innovation Management Tools - Choosing the Right One

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Trouble choosing the right innovation management tools from the hundreds out there? Our extensive guide is designed to not only be the best list on the web, but provide you with the skillset to make an educated decision. Read on to find out how to do it right the first time around!