Whilst you may not feel as creative as Albert Einstein, Picasso or even Thomas Edison, there has actually been a number of research studies to show that every single one of us has a creative capacity. Given the know-how we are confident that can tap into your innovative side and surprise yourself with how innovative you can be with your ideas.
IT Jobs for Graduates have devised a number of handy tools and tips that can be used both online and offline, to set you on your way of generating inspiring ideas for your student IT innovation awards proposal.
Online Idea generation tips and tools
1) Utilise the web – Surfing the web can offer endless opportunity for you to generate ideas. Sometimes simply just ‘Googleing’ something can develop your thought process and make you think about things you may never have considered before.
2) Forums – In addition to the point about you can generate ideas online with the help of others. Join techie forums on LinkedIn or slashdot for example, where you can bounce ideas off industry experts, which may inspire your thought process.
3) Random photo browser – If you are more of a visual person and find it hard to think of words and phrases to Google, then try the Flickers ‘Random Photo Browser ’ tool. Simply open the page and you will be given a set of random pictures from Flickr. Look at the pictures and find something that inspires you.
4) Online idea generator tool – ‘TDBSpecialProjects Idea Generator’ is a three-wheel tool that gives you random three-word phrases. While three-word phrases may not present you with a concept straight away, it is still a useful tool to help you generate a diverse range of ideas. Look at the random words that are presented to you and see if something comes to your mind.
5) Stumble Upon, Digg, Delicious – These are social bookmarking or news sites which help you discover and share great content. Use these sites to find new trends that are emerging, they will be a good source for you to understand what’s hot in technology.
Offline Idea generation tips and tools
6) Bounce ideas off people – Speaking to lecturers or fellow classmates can be particularly useful because they will already be technologically minded and may help to build on your ideas. Friends or family and can also offer useful input too, it’s amazing what can form when several people put their heads together.
7) Conduct research – Speaking to people who have different job functions in various industries may give you a greater scope on the type of issues real businesses are facing. For example speaking to someone who works within customer services and identifying areas that could improve their daily job may inspire you with an ingenious invention. Try to determine market gaps in areas such as process efficiency or how the business could become greener. The key is to identify a business need in order to propose a solution.
8 ) Think about everyday life – In everyday life there are needs and wants for hundreds of different problems. Think about the problems you face in everyday like and try to understand how you can make things easier for yourself.
9) Don’t re-invent the wheel – Your innovative idea doesn’t necessarily need to be a whole new concept. Take an already existing concept and devise a new and improved system. Or you could add one idea to another to create a new innovation. Apple is a company that fully utilises this concept; combining MP3 technology, mobile phone technology, the Internet and even a camera with the iPhone, which is now taking the world by storm!
10) Analyse key technology successes – Do some background research on technology successes of the past and present. For example look at the likes of Google and Facebook, these companies started in someone’s backyard and now they are global multimillion-pound enterprises. Think about what makes these ideas so great and let that inspire you.
11) Brainstorming – This is our final way to generate an innovative idea. However, as this is a large topic and we want to provide you with all the tricks on how to brainstorm effectively a guide to this will be published in the coming weeks so stay tuned.
Whether you decide to use one method or combine several, the tips and tools above should set you well on your way to generating innovative ideas and preparing your entry for the Student IT innovation Awards
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