Page 46 - Free the Idea Monkey

You get the idea. The Monkey’s gifts are not, and should not be,
limited to the marketing department, although that’s where the unin-
spired often think they should live.

HELPING THE MONKEY
Spend enough time around innovation and you become aware

of a startling analogy: ideas are just like children. Ideas need a lov-
ing set of parents to conceive them, encourage them, challenge them
and protect them until they are ready to stand on their own. Born as
simple insights, good parenting will produce products, services and
business models that literally change the world.

My experience is that all Monkeys
find great joy in conceiving an idea, but
only the most practiced know how to
expertly actualize their ideas. Just like
ideas need parents to guide them, so too
do Monkeys need help guiding the best
ideas to market.
Unfortunately, because of departmental silos, most innovation
processes use multiple sets of foster parents instead of a dedicated
set of idea parents. So, what started out as an innocent insight
with nothing but potential winds up being a weak idea that never
becomes what it could have been: brilliant.
Enter the Idea Monkeys. The Monkey’s role is to have the idea and
to become—or inspire—the key parenting figure(s) that will drive the
best ideas into existence.
How? The best companies
establish a small core innovation
team—made up of all the key
departments necessary to take a
product from idea to marketplace
(so yes, finance and manufactur-
ing people are members)—that
stays with the insight all the
way from discovery to launch.

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