CIDA - the Creativity and Innovation Company 

"Creativity is the generation of new ideas - Innovation is the successful exploitation of good ideas"The Chemistry Society, 2004            

CIDA was set up in 2000 initially to develop the entrepreneurial skills of creative people.  However, over the last ten years, quite organically, CIDA has become increasingly involved in the Innovation agenda.  We recognise the new thinking, the new ways of operating and the new styles of business and civic leadership that are essential for business to survive in the Knowledge Economy. 

- Every CEO will at least give lip service to the idea that the world is moving faster and that we need to do a better job at innovation.  But if you go into an organisation and ask people to describe their innovation system, you get blank looks. They have none.  (Gary Hamel, Harvard University)

Working in partnership with EDG, one of Silicon Valley's leading Innovation consultancies, CIDA is developing new approaches to innovation, helping to unleash the creativity in every workforce but giving it a structure.  Within this structure, it becomes possible to distinguish between important ideas and those that are merely interesting.

In Toyota, for example, consistently identified as one of the most innovative companies in the world, the 6000 employees at one plant produced 70,000 new ideas for improving their products and processes.  Because of their commitment to systematised innovation processes, 99% of those ideas were implemented!  Put simply, an idea without a market is simply an invention!

- Companies 'find it difficult to manage their innovation processes systematically'. They rely on 'spontaneous or ad hoc creativity and charismatic senior professionals'

- 'Most ideas do not come as a flash of inspiration to a lone genius inventor; they come from how people create, combine and share their ideas.' (Innovation Nation, NESTA)

Innovation is a collaborative process. No idea is so good that it isn't improved by the input of others.  Through our process, the managers who make the decisions and the people on the front line who create the innovations all come together.  Innovation is for everyone.  Innovation today arises in an increasingly networked global environment, where ideas grow and build and collide with ever increasing reach and speed.  Ideas are no longer constrained by intellectual discipline nor geographical location - and amazing and unexpected results ensue.  Democratisation of the internet means the age-old hierarchy of creation, distribution and commercialisation has been exploded.  Music and media lead the way, producing new ideas, new content, new access. 

Our Government and social institutions are feeling the impact.  The pressure to meet the expectations of an ever more sophisticated electorate, a more demanding citizenry, more discriminating communities no longer content to accept what's given, means these institutions are having to find new ways of doing and, critically, new ways of communicating.  No longer unchallenged in the exercise of their powers, these huge, unwieldy organisations that create the infrastructure of our society  - government bodies, schools and universities, healthcare and justice systems - all are being forced to rethink their roles, their ways of working and their relationships with their communities.

To paraphrase Einstein, 'The kind of thinking that got us into this mess is not going to get us out of it!'

Not many companies have their own T-REX.  Google does.  It stands in all its stunning magnificence in the gardens at their headquarters. Why?   Because there is something about being the top of the food chain and the biggest predator the world has ever known.  But even the largest and most powerful can become extinct if they don't adapt and evolve. 

In CIDA, we can help you with that evolution. 

Current clients who have already benefited include companies from many different sectors, financial, education, digital, environmental, entertainment and communications.  In the public sector, local authorities, regeneration companies and housing bodies are all currently working with us.

Give us a call today -  01484 483143