"One pager" about KN3W IDEAS - Process, Tools and Training

1. John Gerrie, the founder of KN3W IDEAS® is not your typical Main Template
innovation guru. He has lived with the real challenges of managing
major global brands and businesses, with board or management
committee responsibilities across 4 continents. He understands how
innovation can drive a company’s success, and he also understands how
often businesses can get bogged down and waste valuable resources
picking the wrong ideas to work on.
Most recently John was the head ‘ideas-guy’ at Reckitt Benckiser plc, a
global consumer goods company with dominant market positions in over
60 countries with global brands like Dettol®, Nurofen®,
Mortein®, Lysol®, Harpic®, Vanish®, Airwick®, Woolite®
Finish®, Gaviscon®, Lemsip® and many more. Reckitt have
been the star performer in their sector, with double digit
earning growth for the last 10 years driven by an
innovation program that delivers close to 40% of its net
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revenue from products launched in the past 3 years.
John was the architect of the Reckitt Benckiser front-end of
innovation process, and led an ideas team that delivered
over £750m in new product ideas annually.
Since leaving Reckitt Benckiser, John has been researching and testing a new approach to the front-end of
innovation. A more reliable and consistent way of finding the right things to do, with less wastage working
on the wrong things. And working on the wrong things is not that uncommon. Several major studies and
John’s own experience confirms that on average about 45% of the projects in most company’s innovation
pipeline are the wrong ideas, ideas that will never make it to market, or will fail after launch.
And the reason is simple;
We start with an idea. So often under That is why KN3W IDEAS starts with the Task Templates
pressure to come up with the big idea, we problem not the idea. By getting behind the
jump to conclusions, we think we understand issues in the business and into the heads of your
how the idea will appeal to the customer, customer the KN3W IDEAS process uncovers
without really understanding what the the right problems to solve.
customer needs, or more importantly, what
problems the customer wants to solve.
Fixedness. Like it or not, our thinking is That is why KN3W IDEAS uses systematic
inadvertently limited by our experience, our problem solving and not brainstorming. The
environment and our beliefs. This human KN3W IDEAS systematic problem solving
phenomenon is sometimes labelled paradigms, technique has its foundations in TRIZ, and
stuckedness or fixedness – “a psychological identifies the blocking and enabling factors
inertia that prevents us from being able to and the contradiction present in any dilemma,
easily see new ideas and solutions beyond our and then uses a set of twelve operators to
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experiences, knowledge and beliefs” trigger thinking that is not limited by fixedness.
We simply do not use the whole
organisations brain. Why? Human nature, That is why KN3W IDEAS uses a patent
egos and competition. More often it is the way pending tool kit containing a set of templates
we work, particularly in typical brainstorming and tools designed to get people thinking
sessions where often the loudest voice together, in an environment where everyone
dominates and the more introverted has their own thinking space, but experiences,
participants are left without being heard. ideas and thinking are shared.
The KN3W IDEAS process helps organisations not only to think differently, but to think together to pick the
right ideas earlier in the innovation process so that valuable resources are not wasted working on the
wrong ideas. KN3W IDEAS combines the best elements across a wide variety of innovation theory and
techniques into one easy to use process, all driven through a set of patent-pending templates and tools.
John’s book “Solving the Right Problems with the Right Ideas” not only explains the theory behind KN3W
IDEAS it contains valuable case studies and a complete set of the tools and templates, plus a full tutorial to
get you started.
KN3W IDEAS also runs regular 1day “Introduction to KN3W IDEAS” training, and 3day “Live-action
KN3W IDEAS workshops” which can be customised for any organisation.
KN3W IDEAS is building a network of accredited facilitators and partners.
If you are interested contact KN3W IDEAS at info@KN3W-IDEAS.com or call +61 2 99862615
Solving the Right Problems with the Right Ideas TM