Having a hard time innovating? Try to get a walk or talk with someone with a different mindset. The best ideas are created after all when your not behind your desk. That is why my some of my friends and I came up with an idea for a new venture last night when we were having fun together! There are many ways how you can stimulate your brain to make new connections and come up with new ways to solve a problem.

Unfortunately there are also a lot of ways to kill innovation. One way to kill it though is by having too much bureaucracy. Many people think that by defining and planning everything they will come up with innovative ideas. Unfortunately, it does not work that way. This does not mean that you should not have a process installed! I recommend having a process installed for handling ideas and transforming them into succesful products.

A good tool to keep innovative is the stage gate process. I will write more about the stage gate process in the near future.