Prayer for Haiti

We are all overwhelmed with the needs in Haiti, but where do we start. We believe firmly that we start with prayer. That is what we are doing in our church and in our family and we would ask you to join us in that. Jon has created a 30 Day Prayer Guide for Haiti with Eric Foley as part of their work with .W (doers of the Word - www.dotheword.org). Take a minute to visit Eric's blog and download the prayer guide. And please be sure to share here how you and your family are responding.

Anchor and Twist

So many times when we come up with a new idea, we then go about trying to sell it to the world. We make powerpoints, design logos, create descriptions, write case studies and on and on.

Two of my favorite innovation writers (Dan and Chip Heath - who wrote Made to Stick) have a new concept that I think can really help missions innovators. The call it Anchor and Twist.

The concept is very easy. Instead of trying to explain your new idea from scratch, you start with something people know, relate it to your idea and then add the twist. This allows people to quickly relate your idea to something that they have seen before, but creates the distinctive quickly. This is tricky, but can be very powerful.

Lets take a very easy example. We recently purchased a small high definition flat panel television. For some the difference between analog and digital is still a bit unclear. But try this, "The picture looks like what you see on your flat panel computer monitor at work only it has an antenna hookup in the back." Almost everyone now has flat computer monitors, so they know what those are. But none of theirs have a place for an antenna to hook up. So you anchored your idea in something they knew and twisted it to describe the new item.

Lets us a missions example. As many of you might know, a staple in communicating missions in North America has been the "dinner event." They are banquets where people come to hear about what God is doing around the world. These tools were and still can be very effective for awareness and communication. One of the centerpieces for a missions banquet is always the "compelling video." Lets say I am trying to introduce our YouTube videos and explain how they might be used to communicate to people interested in missions. I could either go into a long explanation of online video, the demographics, the stats etc, or I could say, "Putting our missions videos on online videos on sites like YouTube are like a virtual missions banquet with a 24/7 program." I have anchored the YouTube video in a familiar concept for many people involved in missions but twisted it with they reality that they are available all the time.

What innovative concept are you working to present today? How could you apply this concept of "Anchor and Twist" to help people understand and grapple with it more effectively. Remember that the amount of work you do up front to define and explain will go a long way towards adoption as you work with you idea.

World's Most Innovative Companies

As we search for the innovations that will drive this century of mission work, we have to look everywhere. The next great missional idea might come from the most unlikely place - a business, a government program, a friend, a small group discussion.

So in the spirit of looking deep, you need to check out FastCompany's Fast 50. This is their list of the 50 most innovative companies. Just reading this list will give you many new ideas.

Enjoy!

Using and Innovating

One of the misconceptions that I see out there about innovation is related to using innovation vs. creating it. Many people will take a new innovative tool, use it and claim that they have innovated. What they have done is very good and admirable, but it is not innovation.

For instance, our Communications team at HCJB Global was one of the early ministries to really embrace YouTube to share videos. That was a good move, but not an innovation. That was using someone else's innovation.

The key to innovation is that you have to take a challenge/opportunity and apply a creative solution. It gets messy because it can look many different ways.

Let me give you another example. While our early use of YouTube was not innovative, we soon realized that the true power of YouTube for a mission agency was not in showing videos from our YouTube Channel as much as it was creating a video repository for our many missionaries/staff to use.

Once we changed our strategy and began to feed video to dozens of blogs, web sites and email campaigns, our use of YouTube became innovative. We had a challenge: How do we help missionaries and departments share what is going on visually? We developed a new solution: Turn our YouTube videos into a repository designed to help missionaries and departments repurpose it for their own audiences.

So as you understand what true innovation is, take the opportunity to stretch your mind and use existing tools to create new solutions for the ministry challenges in front of you.

The Courage to Ask the Question

So many times when we think about the challenges of innovation and creative thinking, we get focused on the brain power that is necessary or the creativity that will be required.

But what about the courage just to ask the question. Some of the questions that you have to ask if you are to innovate are scarry. They are revolutionary . . . silly . . . ridiculous . . . outlandish even. But that is how innovation happens - when you are brave enough to ask the questions no one else will ask.

In the Innovation in Mission book, Sam Chaing of TWR dared to ask the question, "How do we get Bible software to Chinese pastors?" When he first asked that question, it sounded impossible, but the asking was what opened the door to the innovative solution.

So what questions do you need to be asking today???