Who Wants To Participate In A New Years Innovation Revolution?

"The best way to predict the future is to create it" - Alan Kay

What are you going to do in the new year to be more innovative? There is no better time than right now to start the year off with a bang and add a pop of creativity into your New Year's resolutions.

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman stated, “Laziness is built deep into our nature." Innovating does not come naturally to us as one of our greatest emotional challenges is fear. Fear of failure, fear of looking bad, fear of losing our job, fear of change, and fear of anything different are all intertwined in our cognitive processing and often prevent us from experiencing an abundance of positive change.

Innovation is hard because it naturally takes us out of our comfort zone. Don't let that stop you, however, from achieving awesome levels of success this year. Start by making a conscious decision to change your perspective and then step out in faith and start innovating.

Are you in the zone? To help you get there here are a few ideas from highly innovative individuals noted in a recent Forbes article. that will get your creative juices flowing and inspire you come up with your own innovation resolutions.

I want to create a Curious Novice Conference. All the speakers should be people who can reframe conventional problems through the eyes of a curious novice. "I will hold weekly conversations with millennials to understand how they dream. We have enough twenty somethings in Wipro! I have had enough conversations with them to know that we should have a Curious Novice Conference this year. They have such innovative solutions for problems that experienced professionals can’t reframe." @AbhijitBhaduri

To help me generate new ideas and different ways of thinking, once a day I reach out and talk to someone in my social network who I know may have the opposite view to mine in a specific current event or controversial subject, which I know that person is particularly interested in. While it is uncomfortable for some people to debate and disagree, if done in a friendly way I think it is a a key ingredient necessary to be innovative; I often see people get set in their ways and become too insular. Try to avoid that by reaching out and engaging in friendly debates to remain sharp in your thinking. @VCSerge

There is a desperate need for better ways to make sense of the world. My enthusiasm for 2015 is to bring good quality critical thought to the public dialogue of the wicked problems we face. Most of these “debates” – covering diverse topics from GMOs to climate change to water to radicalism and violence to gender and racial inequality to poverty, disease and hunger can be characterized as ideological positioning. I’ll be slower to offer opinions, and more deliberate in crafting, explaining arguments and presenting ideas. I’ll explore thought processes, challenge poor logic, and gather evidence more rigorously, so that ideas can be contested rather than ideologies narrowly protected. I will pay particular attention to views contrary to my own so that I can critically challenge my own ideas and positions. Most of all, I will share the experience, not just the conclusion. @ShaunCoffey

One idea I am considering for the new year is to use my favorite local coffee house as a small business innovation center. The owner recently added a meeting room with a couple of large white boards providing the perfect venue for me to gather entrepreneurs together to share ideas and push ourselves to act on them.

Another idea I have is to incorporate a short brainstorming meeting early on with new clients and use the game DisruptUs to get them into the mindset of creativity and innovation.

Now it's your turn. What can you do this year to incorporate more creativity and innovation into your business? I'd love to hear from you so feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

If you are ready to be more creative in your business and would like professional guidance in doing so please contact me (The Innovation Coach) for a free consultation at FierceJ@gmail.com