Innovation LOVES Contraints!

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It sounds counterintuitive, but creativity and innovation LOVE constraints!

I discovered this first-hand during the 15 years that I produced the longest-running, highest-rated, and most award-winning regional comedy TV show in the United States. Here’s just one example: One day, we had the opportunity to tape a comedy sketch with Michael Jordan (this is when he was still playing with the Bulls). But there were some constraints: we had only a 5-minute window with MJ, the sketch would have to be shot ...

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Is Your Idea Too Obvious? Great!

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Have you ever seen a new invention/product/service and said to yourself, “Well, duh! Anybody could have come up with that. In fact, I had that same idea months ago!”?

I know—it’s practically a rhetorical question, right? I mean, we’ve ALL had that experience. We’ve ALL come up with the “great” idea, but dismissed it as being too obvious. “Surely someone else has already invented this.” We’ve ALL come up with the obvious idea.

And yet, “someone else” is the one cashing the ...

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Innovation from Left Field

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Innovation Trick #47: The Article out of Left Field.

Let’s say you have a challenge, or an opportunity, that could use an innovative idea — but nothing’s coming. Your innovation well has run dry. What do you do?

Try this trick. Fire up your Google machine, open your tablet, or pick up an actual magazine and read an article. ANY article. The only stipulation is that this article should have NOTHING to do with your challenge/opportunity. It could even be an article ...

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The Surprising Way Heinz Built Their World-Famous Brand

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You see it so often you probably don’t even notice it anymore.

Heinz 57 Varieties.

You see it on bottles of ketchup, jars of pickles, cans of baked beans.

Heinz 57 Varieties.

Which begs two questions: Are there really 57 varieties? And, if so, 57 varieties of what?

The answers, respectively, are: no; and, it doesn’t matter.

That brilliant slogan, which made Heinz a world-famous brand, was created when a person connected two dots that nobody else ever had before.

It happened in 1896 when Henry John ...

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