Basadur Applied Innovation

01/27/2025

Finding Problems Sparks Innovation

Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, had the ability to discover a problem others would not be able to come up with. In our Simplexity process this is called problem finding. Most people are able to come up with solutions when someone else provides them with the problem, fewer can discover important problems to be solved. We call this generating. Land was very much a generator. Some years ago, a Life Magazine cover story elaborated on his process.

To read the full story CLICK BELOW and find out this week's valuable MinSight!



https://www.basadur.com/finding-problems-sparks-innovation/

01/21/2025

Go Beyond Your Thinking Style Limitations

During turbulent times, the organizational development team of a large health insurance company had been tasked by senior management to develop a new business strategy. But each time the team was about to submit a proposal, one or more of the members would insist on revisions to make the strategy better. Administration of the Profile revealed that the team was entirely made up of conceptualizers. (Only their administrative assistant was an implementer). A typical conceptualization style is to defer moving forward until the problem is fully understood and defined completely. In this case, information from outside the company frequently changed, such as new government regulations, so the team would stop to increase their understanding and conceive an altered strategy; the previous strategy was not perfect anymore. This cycle would repeat. What was happening was they were relying only on conceptualization skills to handle the shifting information, and the team was paralyzed.

To read the full story CLICK BELOW and find out this week's valuable MinSight!

https://www.basadur.com/go-beyond-your-thinking-style-limitations/

01/14/2025

Government efficiency without cutting jobs?

Can the government become more efficient without job cuts? True innovation requires more than cost-cutting—it’s about engaging employees in all four thinking styles: generating, conceptualizing, optimizing, and implementing. Leaders who balance these styles can redefine processes and drive impactful change. Learn how a culture of innovation goes beyond short-term fixes to deliver sustainable solutions that leapfrog old routines.

👉 Explore how to transform challenges into opportunities with the right thinking styles.

To read the full story CLICK BELOW and find out this week's valuable MinSight!

https://www.basadur.com/government-efficiency-without-cutting-jobs/

Discover how Basadur Applied Innovation empowers government efficiency without cutting jobs. By leveraging all four thinking styles—generation, conceptualization, optimization, and implementation—leaders can foster a culture of innovation that transcends routine cost-cutting.

01/07/2025

What’s Stopping You? Four Boilers from Eight.

At Procter & Gamble, my team in the Management Systems division routinely conducted creative problem solving (later defined as Simplexity) workshops to help manufacturing engineers increase efficiency, improve quality, and accelerate plant productivity. To ensure the training would stick and be applied back at their home plant, the engineers had to bring an important plant problem to solve during the workshop. I remember one workshop in particular. We organized the attendees into teams of five to help each other work through each of their problems by applying the problem solving process. One team was stalled and was having difficulty moving through the problem definition step. One of their members insisted that he already had an answer to his problem, “How might I enable my plant to go to four boilers from eight?” Upon arrival at the hotel, he had met a fellow participant from another plant who told him they had already gone from eight boilers to four. So now he thought his problem was already solved because he could apply the same solution at his own plant.

To read the full story CLICK BELOW and find out this week's valuable MinSight!

https://www.basadur.com/whats-stopping-you-four-boilers-from-eight/

12/24/2024

From the Basadur Team...

12/10/2024

Creativity as a Process

Studying and discussing creativity can be difficult and complex, because no single, agreed-upon definition of this quality exists. Researchers have taken many different approaches to its study. Under the identification approach, researchers have developed cognitive and aptitude tests to identify more or less creative people. Others have studied personal characteristics trying to connect personality traits to creative behavior. Another approach is to study organizational or environmental factors that are likely to inhibit or nurture creative performance (such as goals, incentives, motivation, and freedom from time pressure). A third approach involves deliberate improvement: can we train people and make them “more creative” or better able to use their innate creativity. In a fourth approach, researchers have focused on evaluating and assessing the product of creative efforts: What makes a more or less creative product, whether it is a car or a story? They have established criteria to make the assessment.

To read the full story CLICK BELOW and find out this week's valuable MinSight!

https://www.basadur.com/creativity-as-a-process/

12/03/2024

What Do You Do When You Don’t Know What To Do Next?

When the horrific September 11, 2001 disaster occurred, a global aerospace and airplane engineering company found itself especially hard hit. In October, the top seven senior leaders met at their monthly roundtable meeting. Instead of trying to come up with a plan, the CEO did something very unusual, something that most CEOs would never do. He admitted to his team, “I don’t know what to do next.” His team immediately jumped in to help. They had been trained in the Simplexity creative problem solving process and rather than “hunker down” into a defensive shell, they decided to deliberately use innovation to rebuild their business on their own terms.

To read the full story CLICK BELOW and find out this week's valuable MinSight!

https://www.basadur.com/what-do-you-do-when-you-dont-know-what-to-do-next/

11/26/2024

Don’t Bring Legal, We’re Trying to Get Around Them

Sitting at my desk at Procter and Gamble, one day a call came in from one of our brand groups. They said, “We need your help to solve a nagging problem. We have some very ambitious advertising claims we want to use on television, but the claims are very controversial and we’ll need to get the legal department's approval, and legal is tough. We’re trying to figure out a way to get around legal and get these claims on television.”

To read the full story CLICK BELOW and find out this week's valuable MinSight!

https://www.basadur.com/dont-bring-legal-were-trying-to-get-around-them/

11/21/2024

In my job as a professor at McMaster University, I had the opportunity to travel to Japan and find out more about how Japanese companies manage innovation. Among other things, I discovered they all had great expertise in engaging their employees in problem solving. They taught their employees to think differently about organizational problems. A mind shift was created for employees to see problems as golden eggs, as opportunities to innovate. This would start by being discontented with the company’s products, services, and processes and wanting to make them better.

To read the full story CLICK BELOW and find out this week's valuable MinSight!



https://www.basadur.com/problems-as-golden-eggs/

11/12/2024

Deferral of judgment is the gateway to innovative thinking and building trust. Research shows that the following thinking skills can be learned:
Avoid making premature negative judgments (both when working alone
and with others)
Do not jump prematurely to a conclusion as to what the “real problem” is
Demonstrably value and welcome other points of view as opportunities to
strengthen a solution, rather than as an ego threat
React positively to new ideas
Pause to deliberately try an unusual approach rather than automatically
relying on traditional, established approaches
When approached by someone, with a new thought, always give credit for thinking first and then discuss the idea afterward.

These behaviors trigger a safe space for innovative thinking and a new culture for faster, better problem solving and genuine trust.

To read the full story CLICK BELOW and find out this week's valuable MinSight!

https://www.basadur.com/defer-judgment-and-build-trust/

11/05/2024

Ivy Tech Executives Master Training to Embed Simplexity

Min Basadur and Tim Basadur traveled to Indianapolis to train the leaders of Ivy Tech on how to engage their employees and teams to solve their own work problems. The backbone of the Simplexity System is the Innovative Results Equation:

Innovative results require:
The right content (knowledge)
A process of working together innovatively
Process skills (diverging, converging, and deferral of judgment within and between each process step)
Process tools (such as the “Why What’s Stopping?” Analysis and Challenge Mapping)
Profile styles (Generator, Conceptualizer, Optimizer, Implementer) for breakthrough thinking

To find out what happened with the team, read the full story CLICK BELOW and find out this week's valuable MinSight!



https://www.basadur.com/ivy-tech-executives-master-training-to-embed-simplexity/