Identify the hidden opportunities for innovation within your organization
Solve180 is founded upon the basic hypothesis that most organizations and organizational units contain within them a wealth of opportunities for high-impact innovation that are often relatively simple to unlock, but that tend to be overlooked.
The reason that these opportunities are overlooked is related to a generalized lack of awareness about the approaches we use when solving problems. We often unconsciously decide to solve problems with a traditional deductive approach, without necessarily considering the limitations of this approach and without considering what alternatives might exist. The consequence is that some problems are only solved partially if all all, and that the real innovation they could have generated is missed. The section “The Problem” explains this argumentation in further detail.
Solve180 helps organisations discover their hidden innovation potential by:
The section “The Solution” explains how Solve180 can help unlock your organization’s hidden opportunities for iinnovation.
Example: How a hidden opportunity for innovation can transform your perspective on your business
The story reflected in this video is included here to illustrate a simple but fundamental idea: Sometimes a problem persists for years and even generations without being solved in a satisfactory manner. Often, this is because we unconsciously repeat the deductive approaches to problem-solving that we are used to without realizing that a different perspective is needed. Once you revisit the problem with the right approach, even apparently trivial problems can generate transformative insights about the business.
In the video, the problem that has survived for ages is the anxiety children suffer when they are being transported to surgery on a gourney. Highly qualified professionals have worked on this problem for ages. However, it is not until recently that the old assumptions were reconsidered: assumptions about anxiety being inevitable and gourneys being the only acceptable way of transporting a patient to an operating theater.
Revisting “old” problems with the right approach can unleash significant learning to fuel innovation. This is because you take a fresh look at assumptions that you have held sacred for too long. Some of these assumptions will prove to still be valid, but some of them will not. In the example, it turns out that anxiety is not inevitable, that alternatives to gourneys do exist, and that medication is not the only way to reduce pre-surgery anxiety.
Correcting these assumptions will obviously help you solve the problem at hand, but – sometimes more importantly – may also drive transformative innovations that you did not foresee.
For more business-relevant examples, please refer to the section “Examples“