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Innovation Labs and Other Great Ideas To Help Your Company Innovate

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Innovation is one of themes important aspects to businesses and the general rule within a great many industries is ‘innovate or die’. This ethos is not just exclusive to small businesses but it may prove to be more important that small businesses continue to innovate, compared with the bigger companies. In the last few years alone we have seen some heavyweight companies go under thanks to their failure to innovate, companies like Blockbusters, Woolworths and more recently, Toys R US. If these occupancies are not immune to the dangers which a lack of innovation brings, neither is your small business. With this in mind then, let’s take a look at some of the ways that your business can push for more innovation.

Innovation Lab

An innovation lab is a great way for you to cut down theme which idea development takes, and encourage your team to be more innovative in their approach. It could be easy for you to get your team together in a room and try to encourage them to be innovative but if you use the same space for this as you use for meetings and collaborative work, you could actually be inhibiting creativity. In light of this then, an innovate lab is the perfect solution, a neutral space where you an your team can meet to find new and exciting ways in which you can do business.

Innovation Management Software

Another great option which you could look at in order to push for more innovation amongst your team, is to use innovation management software. This type of software allows your team to all work individually on their ideas and share it with the entire company in a  split second. As a manager or owner, this means that you can have access to see these ideas grow and watch as more people throw in additional and supporting information. The software allows ideas to be taken from a  concept right the way through to fruition without the need for endless meetings, emails and conversions. Ideas can be quickly decided upon as to whether they are good enough and you can also attach a great amount of supporting information to the ideas process.

Risk

The thing that most drives innovation within a business is the company’s willingness to take a risk when necessary. In simple terms this means that if your company is prepared to give an idea a go, it means that even if it fails, you will be creating an environment where the staff and the leaders within the business, will be thinking in a more innovative way, safe in the knowledge that the business is prepared to give it a go if the idea is good enough. Creating this kind of environment is perfect in terms of getting your team in the right frame of mind, and ensuring that you are doing all that you can to take the innovation which you have in the business, and using it to find success.

Brendan Wetzel’s Top Tip for Children’s Illustrations

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Children’s book are always filled with art and illustration. According to illustrators like Brendan Wetzel, this is due to the fact that it speaks more to them, particularly since they cannot read yet. Through the art of illustration, characters get personalities and emotions can shine through. They say a picture paints a thousand words, and that is true for children as well.

Brendan Wetzel on Why Children Need Illustrations

Children are notoriously impatient and they often struggle with keeping their attention on a single page for long periods of time. They prefer having a glance and making up their own mind about a story. If an author writes a children’s book, or a magazine targeted at children, therefore, they must enter into a solid partnership with their illustrator if they are to be successful. Hence, they must also know where to find good illustrators and familiarize themselves with their work.

A good artist will be able to immerse a child in their images in a way that captivates them. In the world of children’s literature, this is actually a two way street. For instance, an author could write a book and ask an artist to come up with images, and any images that are not chosen can inspire the author to write another story. Sometimes, illustrators become so skilled at what they do, that they start to write their own stories to accompany the images that they have made. These are the ones who can create true magic, using both images and words to tell stories.

There is a very big difference between the illustrations needed for medical writings, journals, articles, and regular literature. Those that are created for children are truly unique, because they enable to tell a story in a single image for those who cannot read. For adult writings, images are a point of reference, rather than the story in its own right. Good artists also understand the visual processing capabilities of young children, sticking to simple shapes and primary colors for the very young, and going more in depth as the child ages. They also use a range of different mediums, such as paper cut illustrations and acrylics, and different types of inks, such as pastels, water colors, color pencils, dark markers, oil paints, and so on. A good artist is able to adapt their personal style to the theme that they are working on, creating something that is both unique and fit for purpose.

Some children’s illustrators have become global sensations. Interestingly, many of these came from the Netherlands. For instance, the recently deceased Dick Bruna created the Nijntje (commonly known as Miffy) character, made solely from simple shapes and primary colors. Anton Piek, meanwhile, worked on the Brothers Grimm stories and his drawings were eternalized in the creation of an entire theme park with a magical forest in which children can literally immerse themselves in Piek’s drawings. While many of us remember authors, it is perhaps time that we started to remember illustrators as well.