Presenting ideas

Innovation: "The profitable implementation of ideas."

There are a lot of ideas out there. The manner in which these ideas are presented to individuals can influence where they end up: Are they taken on board and implemented? Or ignored and thrown in the trash?

Ideas often come from customers themselves. Yesterday I was in this great health store here in Taipei and I tried one of their vegetarian lunches for the first time. The food was basically some organic rice, raw vegetables, herbs etc. All covered in a tangy tomato sauce. It was awesome.

Prior to yesterday, I didn't even know that this little store did lunches. This was partly because the store only has two tables: it doesn't look like a restaurant. Of course there was a menu on the wall, but it was in Chinese, which I can't read. That poster could have been anything.

So my idea was to tell the owner that he could take some photos of the meals, which would make it easier for the many foreigners to choose one of these delicious, healthy lunches. But would this guy listen to my idea and do anything with it? Will his ego get in the way?

I had to sell him the idea. Here were a couple of choices I had:

1. Say to him: "You know, you should put photos of the food on the wall. I can't read Chinese."

2. Or: "There is this other restaurant near here that gets a lot of lunch-time visitors because the foreigners and tourists like the fact that there are photos of the meals on the wall. It's packed."

You can pretty much be sure that option 2 has more chance of being taken on board by this guy because a) it didn't insult his intelligence/hurt his ego and b) it appealed to his emotions -- the other restaurant is making a killing and I want a piece of the action!






innovation management in Asia