Where do ideas come from?

I was chatting to a client yesterday about the topic of my last blog, 'Creative Minds', and he said, "Jayne, where do ideas come from within an organisation?" My answer: "Anywhere!"

Smart organisations know how to tap into the creative minds of their people. They know that it's absolutely critical during times of economic pressure, to proactively encourage creativity in order to be able to think differently about the challenges they might be facing. Rather than relying on one or two key people to do the thinking, they understand that new ideas are being thought of all the time, in all functions and at all levels of management. The key is to get to those ideas. How? By making sure that these ideas have a 'voice'. This means establishing a culture of creativity which includes having effective structures and systems in place to enable people to suggest their ideas and to be rewarded and recognised for their creative iniative.

Think about creating a process to capture the creative ideas of everybody within your organisation and consider how you will reward and recognise their creativity.