We run into obstacles every day. Frustration and impatience can hinder our ability to seek simple connections for simple solutions. Instead, we should tap our experiences and resources to develop both practical and brilliant innovations for everyday life.
New ideas, which are often developed off existing trends and behaviors, can be generated from scratch. The things we don’t like, that bug us the most, are great places to start. Chances are if it bothers you, you’re not alone—providing a perfect target demographic for a potential product.
By defining what bugs us and implementing the Red Thread Approach, we can take a simple idea and turn it into a profitable innovation. Debra Kaye, with thirty-plus years of industry experience and author of new coming book Red Thread Thinking, provides a practical guide to help make the connections—or threads—needed to make brilliant insights and innovations.
In this video, Kaye utilizes Red Thread Thinking to creatively solve an everyday problem: pricey hybrid cars. While acknowledging their role in a cleaner environment and reducing our dependence on foreign oil, she is bugged by the steep prices. Technological advances will undoubtedly bring costs down in the future, but that doesn’t provide a solution now.
She suggests, with the help of her animated red thread, a partnership between a car manufacturer and utility company, with the latter proving a loan up front as incentive. To make the initial price more affordable for the consumer, the lender could calculate the gas money an average driver would save and price those savings into the car up front.
In video, you will see how Red Thread Thinking is a playful, yet effective, approach to innovation. Tapping your own knowledge and resources is the key to success. It’s a matter of pulling the right threads and knowing how to connect them.
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