It’s true that being among the first to take on innovative new products and methods developed by someone else can give your business a competitive advantage. Famously, Apple’s first iPod was developed almost entirely outside the company by cleverly managing the company’s partnerships with suppliers. But this kind of advantage can be short-lived when your suppliers start selling to your competitors too (or, as in Apple’s case, producing their own versions of your products).

Many business owners think of innovation as separate from the rest of their business, something they need different people for. In fact, an essential for successful innovation is understanding your customers, so those people who most come into contact with customers are often the best sources of innovative ideas. The key is building a company culture in which innovation is seen as part of everybody’s job. 

The term “brainstorming” was invented in the 1950s and it became a popular way for organisations to try to solve problems by gathering ideas spontaneously contributed by their teams. The idea is that because random ideas spark other ideas from the team, brainstorming enables a group to produce something greater than the sum of its parts. But after six decades of independent scientific research, there is very little evidence for this, and a number of other ways of producing effective ideas have come into use.

Good ideas are out there for anyone with the wit and the will to find them, according to Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell. There are ways of tipping the odds of finding them in your favour. Some of these we’ve already discussed - creating a culture of innovation, being customer-focussed, and borrowing other people’s ideas and redeveloping them. Defining problems you want to solve is another strategy. Einstein said, “If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would take 19 to define it.” Hard work is needed too. “The harder I work, the luckier I get,” said Samuel Goldwyn in reference to coming up with ideas for blockbuster movies.