Imagine this scene. A group of people at UPS are in a meeting about how to reduce fuel costs. One person suggests, "how about we eliminate left turns?" What do you think the reaction was? What would it be at your company? How would you have reacted? My guess is that there would probably be a lot of 'yeah but' and 'the problem with that is' going on.
So just what has been the result of working to eliminate and/or dramatically plan routes that have no left turns? UPS reports that it has "shaved nearly 30 million miles off already streamlined delivery routes, saved 3 million gallons of gas and reduced emissions by 32,000 metric tons of CO2 - the equivalent of removing 5,300 passenger cars off the road for an entire year."
So what is the lesson here? This story is less about saving fuel and more about how some of the best ideas may at first sound crazy, difficult to implement, or even impossible.
What can Brown do for you? Hopefully they have delivered a great lesson on the power of listening to and encouraging ALL ideas.
Innovative ways to get into college - a classic and must read
As a parent of two young children, I often wake up in the middle of the night in complete panic about the future cost of college. When I look at the potential amount of money it
may take to enable my kids to get through a four year education at ...
William Shatner - Bad actor, innovative genius, and inventor of the Blog
Stardate zero seven, zero one, fifteen. Captain's log.
Or is it 'Captain's Blog?' It just hit me - did William Shatner invent the Blog? Could the 'Captain's Log' be the precursor to the 'Captain's Blog.' The man never ceases to
amaze me.
I once heard a comedian say that Shatner lives every man's dream ...
Gilligan's Island - how a 3 hour tour changed innovation
When I ask people why they don’t share ideas a re-occurring response is that they have a concern they ‘will say the wrong thing’ or look foolish. This further cements my belief that
innovation can actually be quite easy if companies and organizations create the needed environment and culture to ...
Did you know that the address for the Tiger Woods Foundation is 121
Innovation, Suite 150 Irvine, CA? It’s true.
Did you know that Tiger Woods was signed by Apple Computer, a
leader in innovative product design and implementation, to be the
spokesperson for Apple’s most recent operating system, ...
Companies need to stop trying to schedule idea generation and brainstorming and create an environment where creativity happens spontaneously. Too often the process of coming up with an answer to an issue is, ‘get people in a room and let’s brainstorm some ideas.’ Why limit idea generation or brainstorming to ...
Here is a section from my book, Mustard DOesn't Go on Corn! At the end of the passage there is a link to a talk by Sir Ken Robinson that echos these thoughts.
Question: What can we do as a society to promote innovation at an early age?
This week's Blog is devoted to a very simple subject - do the right thing. The basic lesson is if a person does the right thing, more people will want to work and collaborate with that person, more ideas will surface, and innovation will continue to be easy.
What you can learn about innovation from Jerry Springer, Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera
Imagine a person suggests an idea that you may not necessarily agree with. What is the natural reaction? It most likely will be ‘the problem with that is,’ or ‘that won’t work because,’ or some other similar phrase. And then what happens? We are no longer in a conversation – ...
