Innovation or cool idea?

I attended a workshop at the Chiesman center a few weeks ago on actualizing ideas. I met Helen Merriman, director of SD Center for Enterprise Opportunity, at this workshop and she invited me to the 9clouds presentation then. I consider myself to be an idea person, and am currently developing the follow-through to actualize some of my concepts. 

Creativity v innovation. How do you know your really cool idea is an innovation? John Duschinsky, founder of Be the Change, helps us determine the difference with ClassR

C         Capability

L          Legal and Brand?

A         Achievable?

S          Scale

S          Sustainable

R         Route to market

Capability—can we do it? The real difference between a good idea and innovation is the capacity for change. 80% of all new non-profit projects involving change FAIL due to lack of capacity to implement the change

Legal and on Brand? Is the idea legal in that country? Does it ‘enhance’ the brand?

Achieveable—Is it possible? Is this a realistic goal?

Scale—What is the scale? Is it appealing, can it be scaled to the objective?

Sustainable—is this sustainable? Will it keep going with minimal effort?

Route—What is the best route to the market?

Tom’s Shoes   

The innovation: how can I do good and make money? The more good I do, the more money I want to make. He looked at the model of shoe building and thought...what if...for every pair I sell, I make two and give one to a child with no shoes?

How do I market these shoes? He chose to involve people, consumers, in the Doing of Good Deeds and the shoes just sell themselves. Recently celebrated 1 millionth pair of shoes distributed.(=1 million donors)

Integrating good into everything is a good goal J

Fundraising and development teams are Agents of Change. Kodak made 35mm film only, until digital cameras came out, that is. The market environment changed, so the company adapted. 

Why do I want to innovate everything? Plug the gap with profiles. Is this a new market entry? Is this a native market? Does my brand have potential outside the native market? Is this efficient?

What business do I want to innovate? Read several businesses like my idea and reflect how each can help me. 

Key questions: what market am I actually in? Charity? Education? Children? Mothers? The example he used was Parker Pens. Parker Pens is a high-end retail item. Their board assumed they were in the pen market because they make pens. When retail customers who bought a Parker pen were asked why they chose that item, they invariably said they purchased the nice pen as a gift. Parker Pens was in the gift market, not the pen market. So they innovated a new style of packaging that encouraged purchasing their product as a gift. 

For our project, what is our market? Are we collecting clothes or are we helping disadvantaged community members get ahead? I like the idea of integrating Good Deeds into everything we do. Tom's Shoes is a great business model, but far too grand.

I enjoy the personality tests we've taken and learned a lot about myself in the process. I tend to adapt current information and templates to whatever need I face. For example, the four month calendar that I used to organize a diaper drive in October with one co-worker. I was unable to articulate my vision for the calendar. We began planning our diaper drive about mid-September but we were able to use the template by changing the dates and using the other information to help keep it organized as we flew through the process. I sent the calendar out to everyone because I have learned it is easier to adapt a current tool than it is to re-invent the wheel by starting over and that was one way to contribute to the over-all group. Rather than innovate a creative new way to organize a drive, I'll take a back seat on this one I guess and continue researching. I will have to work on packaging. Packaging in this instance is the delivery of my idea or request and I have a language to learn :) 

I am in the helping people market. I don't know much about clothes, well, other than what I like to wear. I don't feel that I would be effective at advertising for the clothing market because I am rather disconnected from it. I do feel that my particular skill set could be useful in the people-helping market because that is my passion. One of my passions. And I am (slowly) gathering the skills I lack to express my abilities in a useful fashion.