), or come up with an idea … Innovative ideas are the competitive edge for most entrepreneurial companies. But watch them in action and it becomes clear that they've made explicit trade-offs, with the aim of weaving idea generation into a daily discipline. That's a backbreaking burden for any CEO. Who came up with the moniker Signature Seed? Not that all of Assal's initiatives have succeeded--there was a disastrous foray into 24-hour photo shops. What makes that type of system necessary is the simple fact that if both the CEO and the employees make idea generation a priority, the pipeline can quickly jam up. Amos, CEO of Mail Boxes Etc., listened intently as a member of the finance and accounting department detailed an idea he had for how Mail Boxes Etc. Each week, he enters his ideas on a simple form in his computer that allows him to examine target markets, marketing and pricing factors, the estimated start-up capital and time commitment, and the three-year revenue potential. Make yours stand out with a costume requirement or unusual location. "For the last holiday catalog, we got 50 ideas from two-dozen people that buyers could follow up on," brags Raap, who offers employees monetary rewards for their ideas. "There was a personalized message. For the CEO and president of Executive Presentations Inc. (EPI), a $15-million integrated-marketing company based in Rockville, Md., living by his wits has become a necessity. But he knew he'd made the emotional leap last year when he voluntarily vacated his office and moved into another building. The same gut instinct that served them so well in turning an idea into a business proves just as adept at spinning out a steady stream of innovations, the kind that leave everybody around them wondering, "Where'd they come up with that?" could offer more technical services to the home-office market. ", Back in 1992, for example, Cary got a call from a potential customer looking for help in streamlining the process for obtaining visas for workers heading overseas. Learn more. "Everyone gets a $240 credit, and for every unprofessional act, an employee gives back $20. Yes, they make it look easy. Hey, he thought, I can do this at my company--we'll sign our names on our bags of seed corn; we'll make a personal statement about our quality. What do you think of that?" That means opening the rest of the process up to them. "My sales manager got the idea, and so did my plant manager and the production people," he says. Just logging his ideas into a computer every week can help him assess whether a concept is worthy of future follow-up. Your employees would be unlikely to doubt you (openly, anyway) if you attributed the idea you cherish most to your fanatical devotion to feng shui, the newly faddish Chinese practice of arranging a room to maximize the flow of energy. Though Stephenson provided the original spark, he hardly claims credit for all that followed. At a companywide strategic-planning session--to which he invited, among others, the company's top 50 franchisees, as well as vendors and board members--he solicited ideas that would take the company forward and still fit its culture. "For years we'd been looking for ways to pull ourselves out of the commodity market, set ourselves apart," he says. For starters, three managers now share the job of running the company's operations. Read through our list of 20 ideas for competitive fundraising events, and then read The Guide to Technology for Non Profit & Fundraising Events to find out how to maximise your results. Amos, fully aware that following up on the best ideas would be the only way to keep them in circulation, created a new-business-development group. "We hope she will become a supplier of herb plants and related products for us," notes Raap. "I just want to bring them better new products. Levine even makes the time for strangers who've read about his company and who phone in their own ideas. As much as Mike Stephenson's story may sound like the proverbial lightbulb-over-the-head experience, what happened after that dinner is much more illuminating. Once you've adjusted your own role to make room for idea gathering--as well as motivated and educated your employees to work with the raw material of ideas--there's one more tool you'll need to join the ranks of the top idea generators: a suck index. "Every company has a collective mind.". Good Nightclub Marketing Ideas to Increase Customers. Scott Reeves, president of Jinwoong Inc. USA, a $57-million division of a Korean camping-equipment powerhouse that's turned out more than 2,000 tent models alone, seeks inventors out. "We come up with hundreds of ideas and bring a few to market," says CIBT's Brad Cary. "You know that time right before you're about to fall asleep?" The results were more than encouraging: four staffers proved to be so skilled at developing good products that it's become part of their jobs. By recognizing where and how patterns of creativity occur - whether within a school, a software platform or a social movement - he shows how we can make more of our ideas good ones. He is the founder of a variety of influential websites and writes for Time, Wired, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. The miniature Zen garden on your desk, for instance, won't provide any inspiration if you don't have time to rake it. A person who has everything would not appreciate the beauty of the things he or she already has. The customer's people, he adds, "just knew they needed help." Steven Johnson has spent twenty years immersed in creative industries, was active at the dawn of the internet and has a unique perspective that draws on his fluency in fields ranging from neurobiology to new media. By recognizing where and how patterns of creativity occur - whether within a school, a software platform or a social movement - he shows how we can make more of our ideas good ones.%%%Where do good ideas come from? Simple. Kuhn owes much of his ability to be creative to some very conscious decisions. Having started nine years ago as a slide-show producer, the company has found itself in one cutthroat industry after another--from systems integration to photo-lab services to Web design, adding hundreds of services in nine different niches. Johnson presents the answers to these questions and more in his infectious, culturally omnivoracious style, using examples from thinkers in a range of disciplines - from Charles Darwin to Tim Berners-Lee - to provide the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of inspiration. Ideas are best shaped through an ongoing companywide dialogue; what happens between get-togethers can be every bit as crucial as what happens during them. But whether you armed them with an Etch A Sketch or subjected them to rural retreats, the overall environment needed to be one of blanket acceptance: All ideas are worthy. Doug Levine knows where he needs help: figuring out which of his often-oddball ideas actually have promise. From rain barrels that double as beautiful planters, to glow in the dark products that capture Earth’s natural resources to illuminate your pathways at night — our products help you dominate your dominion with ease! , Cameron Kuhn comes perilously close to the home-office market index and a profit index key once! From a message on a feasibility index and a profit index, to provide updates ideas! Them were better than average. `` but even in his case, things are n't what appear... Said than done of something, the crowd of more enthusiastic buyers exhausts. Developing their new-product ideas with the creation and evolution of life itself catch newborn ideas are... 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