Creativity and innovation: should we try cucumber with our ice lolly?

When I was in Myanmar recently I bought a poster entitled: ‘The food that shouldn’t eat together’. On this I learn that such combinations as star fruit and chocolate, plum and green peas, land crab and mushroom or cucumber and ice lolly should not be used in food combinations.

When looking for innovative inclusive business models, I think that challenging received wisdoms and trying some new combinations may be a good start. Businesses tend to be very good at a relatively few things. They succeed because they are better than their competitors at identifying and honing, products and services that deliver what their customer want, where they need them, at the right price and quality. If you suggest that they move beyond their areas of competitive advantage they may struggle to come up with new ideas. They may not know how to reach new low income customers, or what these customers want. They may not even know that these potential customers exist.

NGOs, however, can be very good at understanding the needs and aspirations of poor people. They also have systems for reaching poor people with the services, and products, that they are calling for.

In a series of workshops in Bangladesh we explored the idea that a ‘new combination’ for inclusive business innovation might be to start the innovation process with the NGOs – as a way of discerning, through them, the wants and needs of poor people as potential consumers of goods and services. This also challenges what may be a received wisdom in our field – that to innovate a business model we should talk first to a company.

In our workshops we helped some NGOs to brainstorm new business ideas that may help to unlock business potential.

To find out how we did it, look at the new project resource ‘Creativity and Innovation: creating new opportunities for inclusive...’ .

Cucumber with your ice lolly, anyone?