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CEO Dr. Cosgrove talks about establishing the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi

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For global businesses, extending their brand and their business on a global scale is a well-known, almost routine strategic process. When a brand is introduced in a new country, different cultural dynamics and business practices play a big role.

For example businesses need to carefully balance maintaining the brand’s core values and messages while adapting core processes and practices for local conditions. The key challenges for executives are how to leverage the strengths of their brand, avoid diluting their hard-earned reputations and make their business work in a totally different culture and environment.

In this final article, based on interviews with Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove, Dr. Cosgrove discusses the challenges and opportunities of exporting the Cleveland Clinic.

GLOBAL PARTNERS: What made you first believe a Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi was a good idea?

DR. COSGROVE: The demand was clearly there. Patients have been coming to Cleveland Clinic from the Middle East for more than 40 years. Royalty, business leaders and ordinary people. By the early 2000s, we were doing about 35 heart operations a month on patients from the Middle East. My predecessor thought we could reduce these patients’ need to travel by meeting them halfway, in England. We considered buying a hospital in London and looked at several opportunities. But it soon became clear that it would be too difficult to do business in England. So we passed.

GLOBAL PARTNERS: What made Abu Dhabi attractive?

DR. COSGROVE: Before Abu Dhabi, we spent about a year and a half exploring a potential collaboration in Dubai, the Emirate next door. During that process, we were approached by Abu Dhabi and the Mudabala Development Corporation. They proposed a unique collaboration. We would share our medical and organizational expertise, and they would build a 5 million square foot, state-of-the-art medical center. They would also pay salaries and a management fee. The benefit was clear. We would be able to bring our model of medicine to a whole new population at no financial risk. At the same time, however, the project posed huge reputational and operational liabilities.

GLOBAL PARTNERS: What was most important from an operations and reputation standpoint?

DR. COSGROVE: From the operations standpoint, we were being asked to undertake a complete cultural transfer of our quality, safety and procedural standards. This isn’t something that happens overnight. So we negotiated a 15 year contract. This gives us time to develop a medical center that will benefit the people of this region for a long, long time.

From a reputational standpoint, we risked diluting the value of our brand and the equity we’d built up over 90 years of patient care. We couldn’t afford to put our name on anything that didn’t reflect the highest standards of medical excellence. Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi needed our DNA. Our solution was to put Cleveland Clinic people in all key leadership positions. They’ll be joined by some of the best physicians from all over the world. We will bring managers and administrators to Cleveland to learn and see how we do things. We’ve got around 200 of our people in Abu Dhabi now with the facility still under construction... within two years, we plan to ramp up to 3,000.

GLOBAL PARTNERS: This is an incredible brand odyssey. Can you tell us where the Cleveland Clinic goes next?

DR. COSGROVE: I can’t say, but nothing would be undertaken without careful diligence. We get an amazing number of requests for international partnerships; one from India last week, one from Korea, one from China. You know, there are very few things the world wants from the United States any more, but healthcare is one of them.

Below is a video of the five million square foot facility for the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi.

GLOBAL PARTNERS: When will that open?

DR. COSGROVE: Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi is now scheduled to open in late 2013.

GLOBAL PARTNERS: How will that be different from the Cleveland Clinic here in Weston, Florida, is it that same concept then, of staffing certain people then hiring locally?

DR. COSGROVE: It’ll be very similar to Cleveland Clinic Florida, Weston, where the demand for our services already exceeds capacity. Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi will be much bigger!

This article concludes our series on CEO Insights, featuring Dr. Toby Cosgrove. Throughout the series Dr. Cosgrove touched on topics that are clearly on his mind and undoubtedly on the minds of all Healthcare Executives.

As you think about his comments, consider the implications for your organization. Is your business focused on the challenges and issues that are most important to your key customers? Are all of your people who interact regularly with customers at all levels, not just CEOs, aware of what’s on the minds of their customer contacts? And perhaps most importantly, can they provide real value to their customers by helping them to address their most urgent challenges?

For further information on how to create a culture of Trusted Business Advisor contact us or visit our website. And be on the lookout for our e-book, CEO Insights, featuring Dr. Toby Cosgrove and future editions for our CEO Insights series.

CEO Dr. Cosgrove Talks Accountable Healthcare and Unicorns with Global Partners

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Accountability is a key requirement for all organizations. However, healthcare companies and hospitals are more accountable than other industries because they have to improve not only revenue and profitability but patient outcomes as well. For nearly 20 years, Global Partners has worked with leading companies in healthcare and have experienced this challenge first hand.

This combined focus on business, operational and patient results has led to a new kind of healthcare model called Accountable Care Organizations (ACO), a type of payment and delivery reform that seeks to tie provider reimbursements to quality metrics and reductions in the total cost of care for an assigned population of patients.

ACO represents a unique opportunity for the healthcare providers and government to work in collaboration. In our third interview with Dr. Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, we talk about how the Cleveland Clinic, a multispecialty academic medical center and one of the leading healthcare institutions in the world, sees ACO’s and their future in healthcare.

GPI: We’re curious about your view of ACO developments, the viability of ACO’s and what the impact might be on the Cleveland Clinic and technology?

COSGROVE: Are you talking about the Unicorn?

GPI: You mean they may exist but I’ll believe it when I see it.

COSGROVE: That’s right. The first iteration of ACO came from the government. It was modeled on a risk reward ratio. It was totally untenable. No one stood up and saluted it. There were a lot of comments back. After that, it took two years for the government to write what the definition of an ACO was. I don’t think they could change the payment system in the next two years, so that all of a sudden it happens every place. So I think we’re going to be sort of like we are with the electronic medical record. We’re sort of half way into electronic and half way still on paper. So I think the question really is timing and how you plan for an organization like this, how fast that you rollout something like an ACO.

GPI: What will advance the ACO model?

COSGROVE: What we’re really talking about is paying for healthcare in a different way then we have previously. And if that’s going to happen, 50% of that pay is going to have to come from the government.

GPI: What are other key factors?

COSGROVE:  Accountable healthcare is the result of two major things - Pay less as a result of doing more monitoring. The Cleveland Clinic has a lot of quality metrics now. We report 65 metrics to the government and are expecting to report 85 in the next couple of years. So we are working very hard to take cost out of our system through better measurements and reporting.

GPI: Do you have a time horizon for ACO’s to be a reality? When will we see the Unicorn?

COSGROVE: You know, where it falls in the priorities is going to determine how fast we’re going to see it implemented. I think it’s really as simple as that.

Simple wisdom puts complex issues in perspective to create advancements within organizations. In our interview with Dr. Cosgrove, and in our work with leading companies trying to do business better and smarter in a rapidly changing global marketplace, we often see that achieving breakthrough advancements often comes down to determining where they fall in the organization’s priorities.

Whether you are in healthcare or another industry, we are interested to hear how you prioritize and address the complex issues in your organization.

How the Cleveland Clinic Quantifies the Return on Investment of Innovation

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One of the more important topics for any organization today is innovation and, in particular, the results achieved through innovation. While every company sees a role for developing new innovations, many are not able to put in place a process that sustains this discipline and measures its value.

As the educator Laurence Peter, the creator of the Peter Principle, said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up someplace else.”

In this installment of our series of interviews with Toby Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, Global Partners, Inc. discusses how the Cleveland Clinic sees innovation and measures its value, both to the Clinic as well as to the patients it serves.

The Cleveland Clinic is an unquestionable leader in healthcare innovation. We think that all organizations can benefit by understanding how the Cleveland Clinic has created a culture of discipline for innovation. None of us want to end up someplace else.

GPI: Do you have an R&D group within Cleveland Clinic, a so called R&D or an innovation
center?

TOBY: Yes, we do. Cleveland Clinic Innovations is essentially a tech transfer group. It’s interesting what has happened. The flow of money has gone gradually from devices and pharmaceuticals to IT.

GPI: What are some of the results?

TOBY: We’ve seen it spin off to the creation of about 35 companies, and the spin offs are
increasingly IT solutions to healthcare problems. So we are able to see and measure results from our internal developments for our operations and our patients.

GPI: How do you put in place a process so that innovations are sustainable?

TOBY: We do two things. We’ve established Foundation Medical Partners. It is now a standalone group venture capital fund. The Cleveland Clinic serves as the anchor tenant for investments and provides advice from the doctors. And the second one is the tech transfer which is called Innovations.

GPI: How do you quantify the return on investment (ROI)?

TOBY: This group has gotten about 270 patents issued and about 35 companies spun off and
we’re now doing profitable tech transfer for other medical groups around the country. But it’s
taken us about 10 years to get it to where it is now.

GPI: Do you have any advice for other healthcare companies who are pursuing innovation
within their organizations?

TOBY: Just like a start up, it takes a long time to get innovation within companies off the
ground, but, with the right structure and investment strategy, it gathers momentum and, if
you diversify and place an emphasis behind the areas generating real returns, the percentages can be nice.

These insights from Toby Cosgrove can provide tremendous help to any business, not only in terms of benefiting your own business, but also in terms of adding value for your customers.
The importance of establishing a realistic process for creating new innovations, and one that
can quantitatively measure the ROI of these fresh ideas, cannot be overstated.

We would be interested to hear how your organization tracks its ROI on innovation. How does
the Cleveland Clinic’s approach to innovation provide worthwhile ideas for your company?

How the Cleveland Clinic Treats Patients from Hawaii to Boston Through E-health in Cleveland

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Global Partners, Inc. (GPI) was fortunate to spend time last month with Toby Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic. In our effort to help healthcare companies be leaders in their categories, we believe it is important to listen to the innovations and ideas of those who have accomplished so much. The Cleveland Clinic and Toby Cosgrove certainly fall into that category.

In this interview, we talked with Toby about the Cleveland Clinic’s innovations in E-health.

GPI: The Cleveland Clinic is taking a leadership role in technology so let’s talk about either M-health or E-health.

TOBY: Well, let’s talk about the E-health because I think E probably came before M even in the alphabet. We have electronic connections that allow us to examine patients distantly. Almost anything that can be digitized we can do remotely.

GPI: What does that mean in terms of treating patients?

TOBY: I think we have 30 some sites that do x-rays including three radiologists. So we can do pathology in Hawaii that can be digitized and people can look at specimens. We can do dermatology, so essentially anything that can be reduced to digits can be looked at in electronic format and done remotely.

GPI: How does that raise the standard of healthcare?

TOBY: It is very important, particularly for rural areas. I mean, I think about my hometown, there is no way they are ever going to have a neuropathologist where I grew up. But now, you certainly have access to one. So, there are lots of opportunities along those lines.

GPI: Are you doing these innovations within your organization or are you working in partnerships?

TOBY: The things I have talked about we have done ourselves.

GPI: Do you see expanding into partnerships?

TOBY: We partnered with Microsoft concerning heart failure patients in the EMR…about 300 patients…but it was really their initiative rather than a partnership. We’re looking into doing other things with Microsoft. We’re trying to have them use their cloud computing or their cloud for storage of our x-rays. That’s been our project.

It’s been about a year working with the idea of storing all our films with them - Apple to Microsoft to Mac and then back from Microsoft to Apple to the end user. And the combination of working with Apple and Microsoft is challenging.

GPI: Do you see that as just one step in the future toward remotely working with patient data on a cloud basis?

TOBY: Oh, absolutely, I think that’s where everything is going, especially when you get into the genomics which is going to be a huge data set that is going to be in the cloud.

GPI: So you are happy with the solution. Do you worry about some of the security issues that Washington is raising about the cloud?

TOBY: I think the paranoia in Washington is much greater than the reality.

All of us at Global Partners, Inc. get inspired by Toby. Listening to the innovations the Cleveland Clinic are doing, we’re able to see the future of healthcare a little more clearly. How do you see E-health in the future of your organization?

4 Ways the Cleveland Clinic Represents the Model for Hospital and Healthcare Innovation

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By: Paul Hesselschwerdt and David Sanderson

Global Partners is beginning a series on the Cleveland Clinic. It is based on a recent interview with Toby Cosgrove, CEO. We chose the Cleveland Clinic because we believe it is a role model for best healthcare practices and innovation. 

The Cleveland Clinic is celebrating its 90^th anniversary this year. This multispecialty academic medical center is ranked as one of the top 4 hospitals in the United States by U.S. News & World Report and #1 for cardiac care.  

It is apparent to us, early in our discussions with Toby, that the Cleveland Clinic is much more than one of the nation’s premiere hospitals. It has been, and is, a model for better standards in healthcare in the U.S. and around the world.

Here are 4 ways the Cleveland Clinic serves as a model for hospital and healthcare innovation and why we feel fortunate to be able to talk with Toby.

1. A GREAT HEALTHCARE SYSTEM, LIKE ANY GREAT CORPORATION, STAYS TRUE TO ITS ROOTS: The Cleveland Clinic was founded in 1921 by four physicians on the concept of group practice in medicine which was relatively new at the time. Only the Mayo Clinic and military units were known to follow this model. The vision of the Cleveland Clinic then was “Better care of the sick, investigation of their problems.” Today, with over 36,000 employees and revenues of 4.4 billion dollars, the Cleveland Clinic is ranked among the best hospitals on fifteen specialties. Its excellence is still based on the same adherence to group practice principles as when it was founded.
2. THE eCLEVELAND CLINIC “MY CHART” PHR PROVES PATIENTS CAN MANAGE THEIR OWN HEALTHCARE: The ground breaking eCleveland Clinic “MyChart” PHR offers patients '24/7' access to their medical record, the same record the physician sees. Researchers at Cleveland Clinic extracted demographic and usage information on more than 60,000 users proving Personal Health Record use does result in patients better managing their own healthcare.
3. A GOOD BUSINESS MODEL HAS TO BE A GOOD HEALTHCARE MODEL: The Cleveland Clinic works so well as a hospital because it works so well as a business. Its doctors are on salary. This eliminates the competition for patients between departments, and the incentive for doctors to perform additional tests and procedures. The system also "drives our quality up," Cosgrove says, because it frees doctors to concentrate on their practices, not the minutiae of running a small business. "Day after day for 30 years I did nothing but fix hearts," he said. "That's how you get good at something."
4. CORE VALUES OF A GOOD HOSPITAL SYSTEM ARE TRANSFERABLE GLOBALLY: The Clinic announced plans to operate a world-class specialty hospital in Abu Dhabi, UAE, to be built and owned by the UAE government. This facility is scheduled to open late in 2012. The core values of the Cleveland Clinic reflect a physician-led medical facility, served by Western-trained, North American board-certified (or equivalent) physicians. “There is no reason the Cleveland Clinic's core values and competencies cannot be transferred to other parts of the world,” Toby said. He also indicated plans to expand into other markets abroad including Austria and Singapore.

We believe the Cleveland Clinic, with Toby Cosgrove as the CEO, is setting the standard for healthcare innovation. Do you?

Why There Has Never Been a Better Time to Pursue "Ideation" – Free eBook Available

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Now is an ideal time for progressive companies to become more proactive and take the initiative to create new, innovative ideas. The need for fresh thinking is especially intense today as companies seek new growth opportunities during this unsettling transformative period of global business development. Whether it is product or commercial innovation, brainstorming new ideas will be critical for many businesses to sustain their growth, and for some, even to survive.

Our recent ideation campaign has been consolidated and is now available in a free ebook entitled 5 Essential Steps for a Successful Ideation. This reflects our rich experience helping companies gain a fresh perspective and novel ideas for their business, plus tips from other professionals as described in their articles and blogs:

“Inventing Big Ideas” by David Dunn
“Schumpeter – Think Different”, The Economist
“Ideation Success Formula: Eight Suggestions” by Gregg Frale
“10 Strategies for Bringing Structure to Ideations”, from Dynamics of Innovation

Click here to download the FREE eBook - 5 Essential Steps for a Successful Ideation. We hope this can help you start developing a new culture of innovation in your company. As always, we appreciate your feedback and suggestions.

Samsung - Asia's Fastest Growing Company

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In light of our recent "Growing Your Business in Asia" series, here is an example of a company growing their business not only in Asia, but worldwide. This recent article about Samsung, titled Asia's New Model Company, provides a number of insights about the fastest growing company in Asia.

Click here to view the article.

Completing the Ideation Process – The Challenge of Execution

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By: Jay Gronlund

You have now finished all the preparation and conducted a spectacular ideation session (see parts 1-4), yet here is where most companies fail. Yes, great ideas, but did you forget about an adequate reallocation of resources (e.g. budgetary, time, priorities, etc.) and management commitment to follow up for ultimate success? Here are the most common challenges, plus worthwhile tips on how to resolve them:

Implementation:  Making It Happen – At the end of the session, a thorough and realistic assessment of the viability and financial potential/ROI of the ideas is crucial. Then the real challenge comes into play. In most companies, the best managers are usually overwhelmed with too many mandates and activities, so the last thing they want is another responsibility. Such an overload situation will never result in successful development or commercialization of any idea. It is up to senior management to anticipate this possible conflict and adjust accordingly. Here are some important initiatives to ensure effective implementation:

• Sustain Idea Generation/Refinement Efforts – Ideation should be ongoing. Far-sighted companies often use a special ideation session as the stimulus for establishing a corporate culture that is more focused on innovation. A new responsibility like this should involve HR and senior management support, including incentives and appropriate resource allocation. Since all initial ideas require further financial and market research analysis, the idea refinement and execution stage should be well planned with a schedule of follow-up meetings and progress reports.
• Criteria for Judging Each Idea – Good ideation sessions evoke high levels of emotion, which is important for motivating a team effort, but it can sometimes obscure the harsh realities of product/service feasibility, market acceptance and adequate financial ROI. A worksheet with criteria should be prepared before the ideation session to help gauge the true potential as these ideas are developed. For example, here are some sample questions:
• Does it solve a real problem – what advantage does it create?
• Is the message/image consistent with the core brand?
• What are the risks in implementing the idea?
• Is the competition doing this? How different?
• What is the ROI? Estimated 3 year monetary payback, for example?
• What kind of further research or market testing is required?
• Is there any risk of patent infringement?
• How do we measure success?
• Developing and Committing the Best Resources – With senior management’s full support, a high urgency development program must follow the ideation session. This means sufficient funding, selecting ideal HR resources (Peter Drucker stated, “you put your best people on tomorrow’s business”), and even customized training. A good way to evaluate and project the ultimate viability of an idea is to conduct a simulated sales initiative, e.g. “strategic account management” training workshops for sales and marketing managers.

IN SUMMARY: Smart ideations can determine the future performance, even the survival of a company.  Are you prepared to take bold action to prepare for tomorrow? What do you need?

Previous: What You Should Include to Make an Ideation Session a Success

Part 1: The Ideation Process: What it is, Why Important and Management Commitment
Part 2: 4 Examples of Key Tasks to Prepare for a Successful Ideation Session
Part 3: Who Should Participate in an Ideation Session – Importance of Diversity
Part 4: What You Should Include to Make an Ideation Session a Success
Part 5: Completing the Ideation Process – The Challenge of Execution

What You Should Include to Make an Ideation Session a Success

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By: Jay Gronlund

Now that you’ve laid the ground work and have the right direction and people (see first three parts), you must carefully craft the ideal setting and ingredients to get the most from your ideation session. Here are the most critical elements that will improve your chances for creating superior ideas, even the “Big Idea”.

The Actual Ideation Session – By the time the real 1-2 day session starts, the participants should be eager to express their thoughts and preliminary ideas. Inevitably there will be some who view a 1-2 day session as a waste of their valuable time. This is why a convincing, relevant preparation and the shrewd choice of participants are so important. The session should be designed so that the participants have fun, too. Certain games and other “energizers” are always undervalued in ideation sessions. Research has shown that humor and laughter can release endorphins, which help people relax, improve their recall and yield better results. While every ideation session will be different depending on its goals, there are several common elements that should be considered:

• Professional Facilitator – Some companies are reluctant to spend money for an outside expert in these “cost-control” times, but it is critical to have a neutral and empowered professional to facilitate (but not manage) the session.  Good ideas don’t come from deep analysis, but from an environment and approach that breeds openness, curiosity, novelty, fun and risk taking. An experienced facilitator will have the tools and techniques to keep people generating ideas, even when they think they’ve run dry.
• Key Components for Ideation Session – Generally the ideal number of participants should be around 8-14, comprising a mix of creativity styles and varying expertise. Having the CEO present can be risky, but if so, he/she should take a back seat or supportive role to the brainstorming efforts, generally adding a constructive perspective or insight wherever appropriate. If possible, the session should be held away from the main office in a well-lit, comfortable room (sunshine is best) with whiteboards or flipcharts and post-it notes, including 1-2 support personnel to record the ideas and help organize the notes on the walls, and most important, plenty of relevant props – e.g. competitive products, benchmark analogies, examples of customer feedback or perceptions, novel packages from other industries, etc.
• The Anatomy of a Typical Ideation Session – There are many formats for an ideation session, depending on the purpose and who will attend. When the participants have to travel, a session should be designed to last at least two days, usually with individual meetings before and after.  My most recent ideation session started on a Monday afternoon with a discussion of the problem/opportunity brief, the objectives and some mind-opening case studies and analogies to stimulate their creative energy. Then a full day of ideation on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning devoted to a summarization with refinements of some ideas, prioritization and a follow-up game plan (conducted jointly with senior management).
  
  Another approach might involve a series of shorter ideation sessions over several days or weeks. For example, 2-3 hours to generate an abundant collection of initial ideas (100+), subsequently organize and cluster the ideas by type (e.g. new product or package, marketing, service oriented, strategic positioning, etc.), and then let these preliminary ideas incubate in the participants’ subconscious for a while to digest and expand upon. An ideation workbook with these ideas defined in clusters should be circulated for review and additional embellishments. After a few days, conduct another “upgrade” ideation session over a half day, to further refine, expand upon and then narrow down the list to around 65-75 good ideas, for example. This should be followed by further scrutiny, cutting and prioritization in more upgrade sessions, ideally reducing the list to around 15 solid ideas.
  
  Within any ideation framework, there are 7 other factors to consider:

• Building on Momentum from Preparation – An obvious starting point is to discuss the fresh perceptions and ideas that each participant brings to the ideation session.
• Make Ideation Ongoing – Smart companies recognize that the real value of organizing these ideations is to make their internal culture more innovative, i.e. to add creativity to everyone’s mandate (Google employees must allocate 20% of their time for creating new ideas).
• Ideation for Different Goals – Traditionally most ideation sessions are focused on new products, but more companies are using this for strategic purposes – e.g. different business models, new growth initiatives, re-positioning their corporate or product brands, etc.
• Customer Perspective – Any ideation should be shaped around current and future perceptions from their customer, making sure that all ideas would be relevant for them and competitively distinct. The use of smart market research, past or future, can be a critical building block for ideation.
• Think Long Term/Future – Another useful focal point is to ask what the company or product portfolio should ideally look like in 3-5 years. Within a framework of category and competitive threats, trend building exercises are invaluable for identifying new ideas and growth opportunities, especially when the group is split up into teams. 
• Other Exercises – There is a host of various techniques to keep the creative juices flowing, each encouraging “out-of-the-box” thinking. Assuming some of the participants will ultimately lead the implementation, simulation exercises that involve role playing or case studies can be very effective (customized training can be combined with these endeavors, too).
• Building on Each Idea – Usually the “seed” of an idea is created at first, but to make sure each can be developed to offer real value, key positioning dimensions should be added – e.g. for which customer and his/her needs, the relevant benefit or promise of added value, and the key features that would make this promise credible.

Next: Completing the Ideation Process –The Challenge of Execution
Previous: Who Should Participate in an Ideation Session – Importance of Diversity

Part 1: The Ideation Process: What it is, Why Important and Management Commitment
Part 2: 4 Examples of Key Tasks to Prepare for a Successful Ideation Session
Part 3: Who Should Participate in an Ideation Session – Importance of Diversity
Part 4: What You Should Include to Make an Ideation Session a Success
Part 5: Completing the Ideation Process –The Challenge of Execution

Who Should Participate in an Ideation Session – Importance of Diversity

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By: Jay Gronlund

The previous two parts outlined some useful steps to prepare for the ideation session, but ultimate success often depends on identifying the best people for this important event. 

Getting the Right Mix of People – Ideally you should strive to get creative diversity to generate a broad range of distinct ideas, -- i.e. a cross pollination of different thinking styles, both innovators and adapters, left and right brained, and include the select managers who will eventually be in charge of developing and implementing these ideas. Clay Christensen from the Harvard Business School recently wrote a book on “The Innovator’s DNA”, which lists 5 habits of mind that characterize what he calls the ideal “disruptive innovator” (with examples):

1. Associating – The talent for connecting seemingly unconnected things is crucial. Marc Benioff got the idea for Salesforce.com when swimming with dolphins and thinking of enterprise software through the prism of online businesses such as Amazon and eBay. Christensen estimates that business people are 35% more likely to sprout a new idea if they have lived in a foreign country.
2. Questioning – Sharp innovators are constantly asking why things aren’t done differently. David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue and Azul, wondered why people treated airline tickets like cash, freaking out when they lost them, whereas customers could instead be given an electronic code.
3. Observation – Closely related, the knack for recognizing different approaches and forms of behavior can stimulate new ideas. Corey Wride came up with the idea for Movie Mouth when working in Brazil, which uses popular films to teach a foreign language, when he noticed that the best English speakers had picked it up from film stars, not school teachers.
4. Networking – The best innovators also tend to be great networkers, hanging around venues or events where they can pick up new ideas. Michael Lazaridis came up with the idea for BlackBerry at a trade show, when someone pointed out a Coca-Cola machine that uses wireless technology to signal that it needed refilling.
5. Experimenting – They also like to “fiddle” with both their products and business models. A marketing manager at IKEA realized the value of self-assembly when he adapted to the task of fitting furniture into a truck after a photo-shoot by taking the legs off, and a new business model was born.

Next: What You Should Include to Make an Ideation Session a Success
Previous: 4 Examples of Key Tasks to Prepare for a Successful Ideation Session

Part 1: The Ideation Process: What it is, Why Important and Management Commitment
Part 2: 4 Examples of Key Tasks to Prepare for a Successful Ideation Session
Part 3: Who Should Participate in an Ideation Session – Importance of Diversity
Part 4: What You Should Include to Make an Ideation Session a Success
Part 5: Completing the Ideation Process – The Challenge of Execution