Last year the National Academy of Engineering got a project going called the Grand Challenges for Engineering. The idea is an interesting one: "create a list of the grand challenges and opportunities for engineering facing those born at the dawn of this new century." The Academy solicited the input of scientific and engineering experts as well as the general public.
Consider doing something like this for your firm. What big, unsolved challenges do you see in your industry? How about just within your firm? As you continue to provide a product or service, can you also be looking beyond your immediate requirements toward a wall that has yet to be scaled? Can you take that creative brainpower that's working for you and develop answers to the challenges you face?
Where would your suggestions for great challenges come from? Well, some will probably come from you, say, from your experience in the field, or from your professional reading, or from your interaction with other professionals. Some ideas will of course come from your employees, and you should pay close attention to these, because these are the ones they're probably going to be most interested in tackling. You could also solicit some from your customers. After all, their demands are the ones you're currently meeting, so get an idea from them about what they will likely be looking for in the future.
One critique of the project is that there's no context, no real guidance when it comes to identifying the challenges, and so the suggestions seem to be all over the map. Coming at this from the context of your industry, your firm, or a narrower specialty within your firm, should provide you some focus and allow you to come up with challenges that are suitable for your Creatives.
Once you have some suggestions, make sure to include them in your strategic planning. Try to put some resources against them...Google had the idea of requiring its workers to spend a percentage of their time working on projects outside their day-to-day, so see how you can allow your Creatives to allocate time to work on these new challenges.
Maybe it seems crazy to go looking for new challenges when you already have plenty to do. Still, if you do it within reason, it can be a very good thing for your firm. You don't have to save the world with a project like this, but you will still end up doing something to keep you Creatives interested in the job. You'll give them a chance to do something new, which is what Creatives enjoy, and in doing so you give them a good reason for staying with you rather than changing jobs. So take a look beyond your Inbox and see what opportunities might be out there. You never know...in addition to finding an interesting challenge, you might also start working on something that will be profitable for your firm in the end. And that's not a bad thing, either.
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