Originally published on MichiganRadio.org

The creative, the visionary, and the just plain out there.

That’s the goal of Michigan Radio’s new project, The Next Idea.

The on-air and online project will focus on creativity and innovation and ideas to move Michigan forward.

We’ll be featuring this project here on Stateside and we will look to you and ask for your ideas.

Here to tell us more is the Next Idea’s executive producer Joe Linstroth, and Jeff DeGraff, a clinical professor of Management and Organization at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Listen to our conversation with Linstroth and DeGraff below:

DeGraff says, to him, innovation means having the ability to make something better and new. He’s interested in seeing how people make an inquiry into problems.

Linstroth, talking about The Next Idea, says what he’s looking for are people with ideas – people with the passion and ideas to change the status quo.

The big question for Linstroth and DeGraff is “How do we move the state forward?”

It’s a question Linstroth says needs to be broken down into more manageable sections.

For help, the project will recruit contributors from across the state and from a variety of backgrounds –including from big corporations and academia, incubators and non-profits — simply anywhere someone has a potentially revolutionary new idea to make Michigan a better place to live and work.

Linstroth and DeGraff say they plan on rolling out the project in the beginning of December.