Unlocking Idea Flow: 5 Ways To Fuel A Constant State Of Innovation

Innovation means different things to different people

Innovation means different things to different people.

On a granular level, it means creating new things out of old things. More generally, innovation can mean doing things in a completely new and different way.

Early in my career, I worked for a big advertising agency, running accounts for brands part of Fortune 500 companies like Kodak, Pizza Hut, and Zantac75 (and yes, after working on Pizza Hut it was ironic to listen to focus groups of heartburn sufferers who ate too much pizza and therefore needed Zantac75).

There were processes and protocols and “formulas” (rules) for how to do things. I worked in account management which was often considered the least “creative” part of the business. We were the client managers, the taskmasters, the doers. We stayed out of the way of the creatives so they had plenty of room to come up with ideas. But in big agencies, true creativity was sometimes hard for even the most creative of creatives because working with big, corporate clients meant everything needed to be tested and proven (more rules).

The challenge with innovation in big companies is that true creativity requires speed and agility and the…