What April Fool’s Day Teaches Us About Innovation

Braden Kelley is an innovation and change specialist, the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, an InnovationExcellence.com co-Founder, and is the creator of the Change Planning Toolkit™ and a book on the best practices and next practices of organizational change (January 2016 release).

  Innovation  

Did anyone have a good prank played on them or come across a good corporate April Fool’s last month? My favorite this year was from my alma mater, the University of Oregon. (Go Ducks!)

We try to think a little differently at the University of Oregon and specialize in helping the world run a little faster (and more comfortably), and with some of Nike’s founders behind the football team, why shouldn’t they have the world’s most advanced field, say, an LED field?

Watch the video:

The best corporate April Fool’s Day pranks are the ones that are believable and almost seem feasible. What does this tell us as innovation professionals? The insight is that the best corporate April Fool’s Day pranks find a resonance point, a place where the outlandish intersects with what people are ready for, what they may actually desire and what they believe should be possible soon.

Consider asking your innovation teams to design their own April Fool’s Day prank and see where it takes you. Ask yourself questions like these about their designs:

1. What must be true for this to be possible?
2. What stands in the way of this being possible?
3. What would it take to remove the barriers that are preventing this from being possible?
4. Are our customers truly ready for this?
5. What would it take to prepare them for it?
6. What capabilities do we need …

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