Innovative Ideas

I was thinking about this last night because I am irritated by companies using innovation as a buzzword, and don't like how companies are still talking about the leading edge and coming up with new product ideas by locking designers away in rooms, because this is all corporate BS.

Innovative ideas generally come from necessary. So the need to solve a problem is always a good source of innovation, but the people who encounter these problems are generally people at the lower corporate level so their ideas never get hared.

Another very good source of innovative ideas is from the power users. So if it is a piece of software for example, talk to the users who use it all the time and ask them what they think of the software, and if they say "I love the software, but wouldn't it be cool if..." then you have a prime innovative nugget there that must be investigated or at least considered.