Austrian-American scientist Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase ‘Neue kombinationen’ or ‘new combinations’. This concept was also in some sense dealt with by Einstein as – Combinatorial Play and Steve Jobs as- ‘connecting the dots’. The reason, we mention this today, is that the concept has been revived a little by THNK – School of Creative Leadership as an innovation and leadership tool for senior managers and candidates in executive positions. THNK has created a tool for digital innovation, which uses the concept of ‘new combinations’ for leaders and managers.
Here are the key features of the THNK.org’s new combination tool for leaders and senior managers:
- About 50 ingredients and strategic ideas from different online and digitally disruptive businesses have been isolated and made a part of the new combination tool
- The tool helps leaders and manager ‘connect the dots’ for their businesses or ideas. Examples may include: crowdsourcing, geo-location, capacity optimization among others
- Neue Kombinationen tool gives a framework of different strategies to the leaders and then it is up to them to translate it into a vision for their business or company and construct a new creative idea
- The idea mapping is inspired by Matt Daniels’ work on webrecipes
Review after trying out the Neue Kombinationen tool
While the description may have seemed a bit abstract, I had to try out the tool to see what it may bring about and test it. So, this is how it works. Every time, I click on ‘go’, the tools gives me combinations of new ‘ingredients’ that I can use to come up with a new and pretty ‘innovative’ line of thinking, perhaps for a new product or business, I may not have thought about.
Every single time, I managed a go, the responses varied and gave me something really interesting to think about. Imagine the options that can come up with:
Plan -> tagging -> real time or aggregate ->visualize -> network or motivate -> inspire -> mobile.
These are all fantastic thoughts, and already got me thinking about a new Kickstarter campaign, besides also thinking about what could we do differently as a company. It is a fantastic idea generation tool in my opinion, something that helps us find the dots as well as visualize options to join them together in ways that our business can have real impact and we are able to create value.
Personally, I urge all leaders to give it a try. As an innovation and leadership tool for senior managers it’s simple and yet extremely powerful.
Vantage Point is happy to share findings on innovation and creative leadership from the original article that was posted by THNK.org authors Edo and Berend-Jan. This has been done in collaboration with the THNK team, as we believe this is going to be helpful to our readers who are in senior management jobs themselves and often work on matters of creative leadership and innovation.
