Adobe Kickbox, a Step-by-Step Guide to Innovation


adobe kickbox

A lot of small business owners have big ideas. The trick is turning those big ideas into the next big thing.

Innovators at Adobe think they can help businesses of any size turn those good ideas into real products or services with a concept called Kickbox.

Adobe Kickbox is a project that started internally at Adobe. But now the company is making Kickbox an open-source project available to help any business, for free. It’s essentially a step-by-step guide to innovation. . . in a box. And Adobe has made it available as a free download (box not included).

Once the downloaded files are printed, innovators can use the guide as a means to put an idea through the proverbial wringer. Adobe Kickbox is a six-step process and a new step can only be reached when all the activities of the previous one are completed.

On its official website, the company explains:

“It is both a process for individuals and a system for deploying that process across an organization at scale. It’s designed to increase innovator effectiveness, accelerate innovation velocity, and measurably improve innovation outcomes.”

At Adobe, Kickbox is literally a red box with materials inside to help employees turn their big ideas into real products. Adobe even includes $1,000 on a pre-paid credit card for its employees to fund their ideas through the Kickbox process. (The money isn’t available with the free download, sadly.)

While offering your employees $1,000 may not be in the budget at the moment, any small business can come up with another incentive for its employees to help them get their good ideas off the ground. What a relief not to be the only one who has to innovate anymore.

Here’s a video showing the Adobe Kickbox process in action:

Adobe says that Kickbox is a process that can be used for a company of any size, from a large enterprise to a solo-preneur.

Mark Randall, Adobe’s chief strategist, vice president of creativity and overseer of the Adobe Kickbox project, told Small Business Trends: “Yes. Kickbox was designed to guide solo innovators and small teams through the process of turning their ideas into reality.”

Adobe encourages its employees from every department to consider picking up one of its red boxes. The idea is a good idea could be lurking inside of anyone.

On the official Adobe News blog, Randall writes:

“At Adobe, we believe anyone can be an innovator and you never know when — or where — creativity will strike.”

Image: Adobe

2 Comments ▼

Joshua Sophy Joshua Sophy is the Editor for Small Business Trends and the Head of Content Partnerships. A journalist with 20 years of experience in traditional and online media, he is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He founded his own local newspaper, the Pottsville Free Press, covering his hometown.

2 Reactions
  1. Adobe really takes innovation to the next level. You can see it with their products. Photoshop has become a new word because their products are so useful that people cannot live without it.

  2. We are super excited about this program and have recently started delivering and coaching it for large companies. We have had to modify it for other companies in this way:
    – We have included the $1,000 cards in the full-service program cost so that companies don’t have to get approval. This is not an issue for every company but it is for about half.
    – We have created some development and testing options for companies that are not software or web-based, so that they too can validate concepts.
    – We added detail and materials for exercises and content in the training workshop as it was very dependent on Mark and Adobe stories.

    If curious, you can read some more on our offering here…
    http://humanisteq.com/kickbox-innovation-programs/