Innovate... FASTER!
ThinkSolveDo
NPD is really a balancing act. You are looking to bring the new into
the old. That is not always easy. People abhor change and difference
and new. Ask them and they will lie and tell you they love new. But dig
deeper and see what you find. Ask them, "which brand of gum do you
chew and for how long", or "Pepsi or Coke and for how long". You
learn pretty quickly that people do not like, look forward to or enjoy
change BEFORE IT HAPPENS.
Knowing this allows innovators to take some steps to make sure their
innovation will succeed. This means researching, experimenting and lots
of it. To bring your new invention to life you must 1) make sure it
will work TODAY (not years from now), 2) making sure it is really
INNOVATIVE (not being launched by 50 other companies next week) and 3)
speaks to your target market (meaning they will buy/use it)!
To get that research many people go to the internet through Netscape,
Internet Explorer or AOL. But real research needs a little more bang
than that. Let me tell you about a few tools I use that turbo charge my
research.
I just found "kart00.net". It creates a "mind mapesque" search
result that can show you connections you might miss using a normal
search engine. Simply place your search words in and bingo... you get
this nice image of pages and how they relate to the words you are
searching. You can also roll your cursor over the icons shown and often
it will show you an image of the page for you to consider before you
jump to it. Very cool!
Next I enjoy working with ViewPoint Toolbar (available from
Viewpoint.com). It shows you thumbnails of search results. That really
gives you a chance to see many pages of info before you start clicking
based on words only to find off base sites. I found it cut time off my
research and made it more enjoyable to search. It does not let you turn
it off from the options bar and needs a few improvements but all in all
it seems to be a great product.
Finally I just started playing with a product called FirstStop
Websearch (available from http://www.firststopwebsearch.com/visual/).
It searches many search engines, as do other products and services I
have seen like dogpile.com, but it also shows an image of the page it
finds. This is similar to the Viewpoint toolbar but you get a deeper
search. This product is software you purchase while the others are free
but if it saves you time it is well worth the money.
Tools like this can help you find information you did not know existed
and also get you more of it faster. Innovation can now be brought to
life more quickly because you will spend less time researching and more
time innovating.
ThinkSolveDo
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