Understand and empathize with consumers of your product to stimulate innovation.
“Internalizing the values of your users makes innovation easier, but getting there is hard …the goal is not to ask them what we should design, but to gain insight, absorb it, and translate it into a language our clients understand. Without that insight, any attempt at innovation is no better than a wild guess.”
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663453/true-innovation-starts-with-the-user
“If we can see that questions are linked to innovation and problem-solving, why are so many of us reluctant to ask them?….”
“A recent University of Michigan study found that people in business are generally loathe to raise questions—primarily because they fear that anyone who asks fundamental questions will be perceived as incompetent or uninformed. And if anything, this problem seems to worsen over time as people gain more experience and expertise in their fields. After all, experts know they’re supposed to supply answers, not more questions.”
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663429/innovation-starts-by-questioning-the-right-assumptions
Comedian Jack Benny: ‘When you are speaking, timing is not so much knowing when to speak, but knowing when to pause’
Seven types of pause:
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663337/method-what-s-so-funny-about-innovation
“people remember the people details not the thing details”
http://herd.typepad.com/herd_the_hidden_truth_abo/2011/02/people-stories-vs-thing-stories.html
