3 Steps to Innovation

Of the many companies out there who have reformed their horrible customer service records in the past few years, Dell have really caught a wave. They like Apple figured out they don't own their customer. The customer owns the interaction, and should be allowed to shape the products.



So how can we innovate within our sector, and company? Can we take lessons from Silicon Valley without appearing utopian and naive?

Every company outside of the ancient whales (AT&T etc) will have good management *somewhere*. In my particular case our Sales department wins more work than we can handle. By solving a problem in their world you grab attention, and maybe get yourself a very useful contact on the way.

Step 1: The Sounding Board. Until you find your key contact, who's going to tell you if your ideas suck? This is where twitter and a good network comes in handy. Good ideas will prompt responses.

Step 2: The Nugget. Senior Management has a short attention span, and a PA sifting through emails. Ideally you want a killer nugget to throw in person, but if like me genius tends to strike at 3am, a punchy little email will do it. Something about the competition innovating, and how you could steal their clothes? A way to cut out the workload for smaller clients? The Nugget grabs attention and may lead to the meeting

Step 3: The Meeting: Take a book to be reading before the meeting, "What would Google do" is a good start. If you strike it lucky your meeting will be that mania filled "this is where the company should be" affairs. If so you have found yourself an ally with genuine stroke in the company.

Now you need funding and a business case for innovation. This is the fun part. Being Generation Z and very visually motivated that shouldn't be a problem for you though ;)