Simple enough to start. Comprehensive enough to keep using.

Last week I launched the incub8ideas Resource Hub.

Eleven practical resources, built to help founders, entrepreneurs and SMEs explore ideas, challenge assumptions and make better innovation decisions.

Someone developing an idea for the first time should be able to enter the Hub without already knowing all the questions they ought to be asking.

The resources introduce those questions in a practical, straightforward way and, importantly, in an order that helps make sense of what can otherwise feel like a fairly daunting journey.

But simplicity does not mean simplistic.

For experienced entrepreneurs, established SMEs or businesses already familiar with innovation and product development, the same resources provide useful prompts, different perspectives and a way of challenging assumptions that experience can sometimes embed.

That is really the point.

You do not need to be an innovation expert to start using the Hub.

And you do not need to be new to innovation to get something from it.

There is a journey running through it

Innovation often starts with something quite intangible.

An idea.

An opportunity.

A problem worth solving.

The difficult part comes next.

How do you talk about it without giving too much away?

How do you look at it objectively when you are already emotionally invested in it?

How do you turn something that exists largely in your head into something you can see, challenge, explain, fund, plan and eventually deliver?

That shaped the sequence of the Hub.

It starts by creating the confidence to talk about an idea, then progressively helps make the thinking more visible, add timing and direction, explore funding and commercial reality, build a pathway forward and consider the relationships needed to make it happen.

The resources are designed to be used selectively and in sequence, while recognising that innovation rarely follows a straight line.

Part of a bigger picture

The Hub is also connected to Innovation³ (in³), derived from the three peaks of Skiing Uphill – The Innovation Black Run:

Inspire. Invent. Innovate.

Across those three peaks sit 27 insights into the journey from idea to reality.

The book brings them together, the Innovation³ Blog mirrors them individually online, and the Resource Hub puts selected parts of that thinking into practice.

Over the coming weeks I’ll explore each resource individually, looking at the principle behind it, the relevant in³ insights and how the resource can help put that thinking to work.

First up is Nothing Disclosed Accidentally™.

Because before an idea can evolve, we need to be able to talk about it with confidence.

In the meantime, explore the incub8ideas Resource Hub and see where your own journey takes you.

Innovation Simplified™

Practical tools. Shared insight. Better conversations. Stronger ideas.