It’s now a common sight. Parked on many a city or suburban footpath, there is an endless line of motor scooter riders eagerly waiting to make a lunch delivery to a stream of hungry and expectant customers.
Once on the move, they can be seen on roads courageously swerving and dangerously ducking in between numerous obstreperous cars as they make their way to the consumer’s destination in record time, complete with the goal of optimum distribution efficiency.
The nutritious product inside the branded brown paper bag they carry could be any cuisine, the rider is ambivalent, as long as the precious food contents arrive intact and unspoilt, just as it departed the door of the restaurant.
These distinctive conveyors of food serve a similar mechanism to those that seek creativity to foster a culture of innovation in the corporate office. The only difference being the contents, and the mode of transport.
Like all devourers of nourishment, businesses need a constant supply of ideas, and a trusted and reliable approach for creating them.
In a restaurant, a qualified chef is used to create and assemble the requisite gourmet ingredients, whereas a business can use a range of culinary techniques such as crowdsourcing, or brainstorming, to generate their creative inputs. However, in order to avoid a potential unsavoury gastronomic ideation mess that will negatively pollute the employee’s palate for innovation, a skilful Director of Innovation is required to filter, align and masterfully coagulate the ideas into a useful form for the business to consume, and ultimately rely on for ongoing cultural sustenance.
Now, not all employees will have the same tastes in ideation, so creativity mastery is required to flavour and accommodate their individual eating requirements. During this process, communicating the contents of the ideation menu is particularly important to inspire their hunger for the new thoughts being generated.
Enter the “ideation scooter” whose primary objective is to deliver the creativity developed throughout the organisation in bite size morsels that each employee can happily chew, and then swallow, with an endless desire for more. It’s important to note, that many deliveries may be indeed be required in order to get the innovative messages across, and then continually replenished.
So next time your see a food delivery scooter, take a moment to think about the contents being transported, the establishment that created it, and the lucky individual who is eagerly wanting to devour it. The “it” is ideation in motion, and something your business should have an appetite for in wanting to eagerly consume.