Robin Hanson suggests that there are at least five reasons to be less creative when it comes to new product development (“The Myth of Creativity,” BusinessWeek, July 3, 2006):

1. Many big ideas and innovations tend to stay around for a long time. Smaller changes to those big ideas will likely benefit industry the most.
2. The big ideas that result from creativity often go unimplemented. Effecting change requires resources. Most businesses just don’t have the resources available to put the new innovation into action, especially given the large risk.
3. Looking back, many of the most useful product innovations are a direct result of a utility problem, not a creative idea.
4. Creativity is often thought to be its own entity that is meant to control the thinker. In business, it’s best to never lose control.
5. Productivity can suffer when product development is guided by creativity in innovation. More time ought to be spent learning what to do with the existing innovative ideas rather than trying to think of more new ones.

Ed. Note: It’s true, that creativity can easily get out of control. But, at the same time, creativity is too important to ignore: it can be a significant source of competitive advantage. Creativity always needs to be grounded in problem solving and creativity for creativity’s sake is always dangerous. The better strategy is to be aware of the pitfalls and prepare well in advance for effective implementation.

I often get asked how products like Facebook do it—grow so fast and so organically. Facebook possesses four messaging attributes that can be difficult to come by individually, let alone in one package:

1. A universally appealing value proposition
2. The network effect (where the value proposition grows even stronger as individuals bring their friends into the fold)
3. A user experience that is second to none (yes, amazing design is a messaging variable)
4. A “price” that is free.

Even still, the growth of sites like Facebook is never 100% viral, because media support is always present—a factor caused, of course, by their rapid growth rates.

Your employees and colleagues have a wealth of experience and lots of ideas. So why aren’t your brainstorming sessions generating the results you want?

According to Michael Myser, there are three simple rules you need to follow to ensure success:

First, brainstorming sessions are structured events that produce valuable results. Define what you want to accomplish ahead of time, and communicate the goals in advance. It is extremely important that participants have time to mentally prepare.

Second, set specific session rules, including time limits and ways to resolve arguments and criticism.

Third, make sure you have a leader. This should be a person that the brainstorming participants feel comfortable (so even far-out ideas are embraced) and willing to keep things on track (Michael Myser, “When Brainstorming Goes Bad,” Business 2.0, October 2006.)

According to a McKinsey & Company study, more than 70% of senior executives said that innovation will be one of the top three drivers of growth for their companies.

Unfortunately, at the same time they also said they were “generally disappointed” in their ability to promote it—but they knew intuitively that any sustainable effort must be grounded by their company’s people and culture.

A few years ago,BusinessWeek recounted how, in a joint survey with the Boston Consulting Group, one thousand senior managers ranked slow development times as the number one obstacle to innovation. Innovation, the publication said, is about selecting and executing the right ideas and bringing them to market in record time (Jena McGregor, “The World’s Most Innovative Companies,” BusinessWeek, April 24, 2006).

A critical success factor is so essential to achieving a desired outcome that if it’s missing, or falls below an acceptable range, your project is destined to fail.

D. Ronald Daniel of McKinsey & Company started the discussion about critical success factors in 1961, and Jack Rockart of MIT gave it renewed and expanded life in 1986. Every aspect of your business has at least some critical success factors. What they are depends on what you’re trying to do and its scope. They can apply to one specific task, or they can apply to your business in its entirety. They can be specific and unique or they can be broad and universal.

Once in place, critical success factors become ideal “filters” for subsequent decision making.

The second stage (out of three) of my career was spent in high-tech hardware and software companies, where learned something about supply-chain and distribution-channel innovation.

By now globalization was in full swing, and I was witness to the transition from heavy vertical integration to heavy outsourcing. I saw how to use infrastructure and component costs to strategic advantage. One company I worked for, while it was a much smaller entity, drove an entrenched multibillion dollar industry leader into bankruptcy. It developed a single-minded channel strategy, fueled by lower prices enabled by lower manufacturing costs in Taiwan.

Our competitor was stuck with direct-sales overhead it just couldn’t shed fast enough, and the numbers caught up with it. It was an eye-opener: The unique power of the supply chain in all its glory.