ideas

The human brain needs to suppress obvious ideas in order to reach the most creative ones

Getting buy-in for your ideas from front-line workers

The illiterates of the future will not be those who cannot read or write. They will be those who cannot learn and relearn.- Alvin Toffler

Mastering the technique of selling ideas to upper management is not just a vital part of your responsibilities as a lab manager. “[Selling your ideas] has the potential of providing you with opportunities for professional growth and career advancement,” says Glen Fine, chief executive officer at Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (and a former lab manager).

The University of Chicago’s research accelerator, Arete, is running its own experiment—how to bolster promising and novel research ideas before their merit has been recognized. Arete has created the Big Ideas Generator to help get those early stage ideas into motion. 

This ACS skill builder video discusses some of the best practices and pitfalls of idea generation.

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Effectively selling your ideas and those of your staff members to upper management is often what separates good lab managers from great ones. Failure to accomplish this is the main reason excellent ideas fall by the wayside. To sell ideas, you need to tap into the same creativity you and your staff used to conceive them.

A new study suggests certain types of funding which provide more freedom and focus less on near-term results lead to more innovative and influential research.