Many executives seem to think that opportunities dried up when the dot.com world crashed. They act like innovation, the ability to identify and implement opportunities to add value to customers, rests on huge financial investments in technology. Fortunately, this forecast is all wrong. Innovation is a repeatable process, a tool that can be applied everyday by anyone in any organization. The key is to look at situations from the customer's perspective, identify what is important to them in a given situation and then find an opportunity to deliver what they want. When you do this, opportunity seems to rain on you all day long.

Here are ten situations and opportunities for adding value to customers selected from daily observation:

1. Highway congestion during rush hour is a tremendous hassle. If stadiums can have retractable roofs to meet different weather conditions, why not have highways that have additional lanes going in different directions at different times of the day. For example, a 10 lane highway could have eight lanes going into the city in the morning and eight lanes going into the suburbs in the evening.

2. Why when you go to the airport do you have to stand in line to get a seating pass and stand in line to get on the plane? If they can send an electronic ticket, why not just include the seating assignment with it? They could check our identification and collect our ticket as we walk onto the plane.

3. Why do grocery stores make it so hard to find the items you want? The signs at the top of each row are only helpful if you are at that row. Why not create a map that each shopper gets when they walk in, or why not have electronic maps where shoppers put in the item they want and the map tells you what aisle the item is in?

4. Why not order pizzas on-line? All the restaurant needs to know is your address, phone number, size, make and toppings. E-mail an order and avoid making phone calls.

5. If the computer can organize e-mails by the name of the sender, why not have voicemails that are organized by the person's name? That way if you have 30 messages, you could quickly go to the individual that you really needed to hear from.

6. If cars have directions delivered via satellite, why not have weather reports and traffic conditions delivered as well. If the computer knew which direction you were heading in, then it could be linked to a traffic reporter in a helicopter and disseminate the information to drivers on an as needed basis.

7. If you can go to the grocery store and pull out one can of soda and the others slide into position, why not have a similar situation in your office or home where you pull out one pen from a slot in the wall and the others slide into place? That way you don't have to have cups of pens sitting on your desk and getting in the way.

8. Wouldn't it be helpful if light bulbs had a sensitized system for letting you know 24 hours before they were going to burn out? That way you could replace them before you were literally sitting in the dark.

9. Why not have new furniture stores right next to the Salvation Army stores? You could drop off your old furniture and then step right in and buy your new furniture.

10. Why not have one standard ballot for all nationally elected positions? It would be separate from local races. It would simply have the names of the candidates, and one big dot per candidate to push out. Keep things very simple and straightforward.

Send questions to Dan Coughlin at The Coughlin Company, Inc., a firm specializing in enhancing the effectiveness of top performing executives, groups and organizations.

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