How We Innovate, a Presentation by Aaron Eden

Aaron Eden, Innovation Coach

At the May Café, innovation coach Aaron Eden talked to us about how Intuit is building innovation and entrepreneurial thinking into their workplace, and using creative brainstorming techniques to explore solutions.

He led us through an exercise where we interviewed a partner about a product: ladders. We had a couple minutes to ask lots of "why" questions about their most recent experience using a ladder.

Next? Go broad. Think of as many ideas as you can, independently from your interviewee. Aaron handed us fat markers and post-it notes and we scribbled ideas about how to improve ladders -- some crazy, some not.

Then you sort, from most useful to least useful and sketch out the concept using his simple form:

This is a very simplified version of the process. We learned a lot about how to listen to the problem, then capture the broadest set of ideas possible, and then narrow by different criteria.

If you want to know more, Aaron shared his "How We Innovate" presentation with us.

The next Café will cover Grantwriting for Businesses (yes, businesses), and Nonprofits.