An Ideas Searcher Can Help Managers Innovate

Most managers are very busy.  They are rushed off their feet with a myriad of deadlines, objectives and demands from their bosses, their colleagues and their teams. They operate in a fast moving, analytical, judgmental world of data, facts, discussions, arguments, negotiations and decisions.  So it is hard to switch modes when the time comes for them to work with the team to think creatively and use their imaginations.  It is difficult to change gears from left brain thinking using hard critical analysis and argument – to right brain thinking, suspending judgement and instead using intuition, imagination and initially bizarre ideas to conceive radical new approaches.

One way to overcome this common problem is to appoint someone whose job it is to help managers find ideas.  Bristol Myers Squibb is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.  One of their employees has the title – Ideas Searcher.  Her job is to source ideas for challenges that people bring to her.  She might run a brainstorm meeting, organize an intranet competition, bring in panel of students or search the internet.  Depending on the challenge she will look outside or inside but one way or another she will help you find some great ideas for your problem.

In a typical year she will run 20 to 30 different major idea generation campaigns.  For example when the patent on the drug Glucophage was about to expire she ran a campaign to find ways to promote sales.  She organised employees to walk around wearing sandwich boards saying ‘We’re fighting diabetes and we need your help.’  She solicited ideas from staff at meetings and over the intranet.  Over 4000 ideas were generated and over 400 were seriously evaluated. (Robert B Tucker, Driving Growth through Innovation, 2008)

Who is the Ideas Searcher in your business?  Do you have someone who can displace a group out of their comfort zone and get them thinking about things in new ways?

Having someone whose job it is to drive idea generating programmes can liberate creative thinking and drive innovation.  They can select from a variety of techniques to put together an energising campaign for any big topic.  The original sponsor may feel inhibited about running some crazy events and in any case they are too busy to give it the time that is needed.  The Ideas Searcher can devote the time and energy to make it happen.

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This post was previously published on Destination Innovation.

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