Brainstorming and Innovation

I remember taking a Critical Thinking course a while back and having a lesson where our teacher talked about "finding the pain and fixing it." He was an entrepreneur himself so took the lesson from a business standpoint. We talked about how "finding the pain" can be one of the best ways to provide a valuable service that can become a successful business. This week in class I had the chance to brainstorm and think about business ideas. At first I really struggled with this assignment, we had a list of questions to help spark our thinking and over time I was able to come up with a list of 20 simple business ideas and 20 "big ideas." It was a neat experience that helped me broaden my mind to the possibilities that are out there. Chances are not all of them would end up being successful, but they would offer experience and provide additional insights into what would ultimately be successful.

Innovation is something we encourage all employee's in our department to participate in. We have found that employees who are actively engaged in working hard each day are typically the ones who can point out when they see something that just isn't working quite right. The question is raised and then they, along with co-workers, have the opportunity to improve the process. As great as this sounds it is actually a huge struggle to get employees involved. Through reviewing HMM's information about creativity and brainstorming I have gained a few thoughts about what we can do differently.
1. We need to make the teams more official and provide the time needed to accommodate the thinking process.
2. We need to bring in other resources. I always strive to get a new employee involved as they will bring a fresh perspective, but in addition we need to bring in resources from other departments.
I enjoyed this reading because it helped me gain new insight into the innovation process and what I can begin doing differently.

$100.00 Challenge update
We have been working hard to find customers. We have one family that will be having a photo session next week, and hopefully a few more lined up. We are looking into other resources that are available for advertising. There is a Tooele Classifieds page through Facebook that only people in the Tooele area can join. We will plan to post an advertisement on there and see what happens!