We believe that people are creative by nature, but are rarely taught effective and broadly applicable strategies for targeted innovation. We therefore offer short workshops in general creativity, as well as providing creative input and/or facilitation for special sessions and ongoing programs.

Our preferred approach is to use existing client issues as a venue for developing enhanced innovation skills. "Innovation" is used here to mean practical embodiment of ideas that can and will be translated into valuable new products, services or business methods. Issues map onto opportunities through diverse processes and functions, from research and engineering through manufacturing, finance and supply-chain management to sales and marketing. Each position and stake-holder can offer a different and valuable understanding of products and services, behaviors and benefits. 

Most of us are familiar with the method of brainstorming—and with the challenge of filtering out useful signal from the considerable noise often generated with it. We offer a more comprehensive and structured approach that begins with a rigorous elicitation of criteria that both guide efficient concept generation and ensure that resulting ideas will be able to pass smoothly along the development pipeline. This task is not always easy or comfortable, but has consistently been assessed by client groups as one of the most valuable business activities they have encountered.

Having established these boundary conditions, we then employ several concept-generation methods—as well as drawing on the client's historical knowledge—to produce a set of candidate solutions. This diagram illustrates part of the process called morphological analysis—a formal way to talk about "the box."

There is always some kind of a box; there are always constraints. Our task is to make the box fit us, instead of the reverse. This can mean making the box larger, filling it differently, changing its shape, or adding more boxes. This language is only metaphor; in workshops, we explore practical ways to understand and implement these approaches.

The next step goes far beyond a simple accept/reject filter. That approach can be wasteful: of ideas almost good enough, of participants' time and energy, and of available historical knowledge.

Instead, we use and teach simple methods of logical typing to extract the best features of each "almost" idea, in ways that permit them to be recombined for optimal global solutions that satisfy many parties and may lead to valuable IP and extensible product or brand platforms.

This process can be efficient, engaging and motivating. Further, it almost always leads to solutions of real value that draw on the best of both prior knowledge and genuinely new creative thinking.