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Chapter 5

Summary

This chapter has covered the second element of the Pentathlon – managing
ideas. It has explained how often creativity is misunderstood as being a question
of chance and not something where managers can have a major influence. This
was shown to be a misunderstanding and managers need to look for effective
ways to stimulate constant creativity through the exchange of information and
knowledge. One of the key areas of knowledge is capturing the elusive voice of
the customer. Here, traditional market research has serious limitations and,
therefore, companies need to understand and adopt appropriate enhanced
approaches. Overall, this chapter explained:

• The nature of individual and team creativity with ideas on how to stimulate
  creativity levels.
  
• Some of the most useful techniques to invigorate the process of generating
  ideas for new products and new services.
• The main types of knowledge and how they can be best utilized and, as
  necessary, protected.
• The most appropriate ways to conduct market research into customers’ and
  users’ needs, so that radical innovations can be developed.
• If the strategic goals of the organization focus on achieving product and
  technology breakthroughs, then creative links need to be made between the
  strategy and the generation of ideas. This is the subject of the main case
  study for this chapter, which looks at Texas Instruments.