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One of the most common questions I get asked by senior managers is “How can we find more innovative people?” I know the type they have in mind — someone energetic and dynamic, full of ideas and able to present them powerfully. It seems like everybody these days is looking for an early version of Steve Jobs. Yet in researching my book, Mapping Innovation, I found that most great innovators were nothing like the mercurial stereotype. In fact, almost all of them were kind, generous, and interested in what I was doing. Many were soft-spoken and modest. You would notice very few of them in a crowded room. So the simplest answer is that you need to start by empowering the people already in your organization. But to do that, you need to take responsibility for creating an environment in which your people can thrive. That’s no simple task, and most managers have difficulty with it. Nevertheless, by following a few simple principles you can make a huge difference.
Via The Learning Factor
Ever try rushing from a solo project into a team brainstorm? Switching gears on the fly isn’t easy–even when the thing you were doing alone is just as much a creative task as the thing you’re suddenly try to do in a group. Ayse Birsel understands why. “When we’re working alone, it’s more contemplative. You only have you and your ideas, and there’s not somebody else there to judge you,” says the cofounder and creative director of design studio Birsel + Seck. In collaborative environments, she points out, “It can get competitive [and] really chaotic,” so it’s smart to “let people know ahead of time that the process could get messy, so trust the process.” How do you prepare people for creative collaboration, though? Birsel has a few warm-up techniques up her sleeve. Here are three of them, none of which take longer than three minutes.
Via John Evans
If ever there was a time when one person could singlehandedly create the Next Big Thing, it's long gone. Now, collaboration and connection is king, which on the surface makes sense—the more ideas we can share with each other, the faster we'll arrive at something important. Except, new experiments suggest, that intuition is wrong: Having everyone's ideas on the table all at once can actually stifle innovation.
Via David Hain, donhornsby
Those of us who work in the tech sector get excited about new innovations every day. It’s part of why it’s such a fun industry to work in. But the success of Johnson Controls tells us something important about the key to a long life in the tech sector. What matters is not technology by itself, but what technology can do for people.
Via David Hain
Businesses face the dilemma dividing resources between protecting the current value chain and developing new value propositions that in time replace the old
Leaders are always in search of that
“Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the ‘things’ that we sell, rather than the individual, social, and cultural experiences that they engender and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name.” – Bill Buxton Every day, innovation accelerates as technology blurs the borders between physical products and virtual experiences. Society is increasingly mediated by technology. Never before has there been such impetus to be everywhere and do everything all at once. The design process can reconcile technology’s practical function and its influence upon society, helping us to imagine the art of the possible.
Via Stephania Savva, Ph.D, Mark E. Deschaine, PhD
Recently it seems that innovation is a buzzword on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Need happier employees? Innovate! Need bigger profits? Innovate! Need better leadership? Innovate! Over the past six months I’ve explored hundreds of news stories, white papers, and blog posts focused on why and how leaders might foster a culture of innovation. Unfortunately, innovation is too often be touted as a silver bullet solution without even defining what innovation is. Some folks have taken a stand against innovation, given its use as a catchall strategy. Yet I stand firmly in support of innovation as a focus for making better organizations and happier teams. I believe that what is most important is not that we “innovate” for innovation’s sake, but that we create cultures of innovation in our organizations -- cultures that supports risk-taking, reflection, and real collaboration. Out of the hundreds of strategies for and stories of innovation, I believe there are ten key lessons we can draw out to support us in creating cultures of innovation in schools and districts. Why ten lessons? David Letterman, obviously.
Via John Evans
It’s an old line, but David Skok said it bears repeating: Skok is digital advisor to the editor-in-chief of the Boston Globe, and a former Nieman Fellow. He spent his year at Harvard studying and collaborating with the creator of disruptive innovation theory, Clayton Christensen. They co-authored an article about disruption in the news industry. …
Via Marielvi Piñero
Digital innovation is giving rise to new business models. Uber and Airbnb are household names today, when not so long ago we were all learning about the sharing economy. The regulations don’t always evolve as quickly as technological change — at least that’s the perception. So what should policy makers and regulators do? Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor Kevin Werbach, who wrote a policy brief about the topic for the Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative, recently shared his insights into that question with Knowledge@Wharton.
You need that space to come up with the right questions before you apply all of your energies to answering them.
In the fast paced environment of global business, mobile technologies, and ever-expanding expectations of customers - clients and stakeholders developing and sustaining innovation is key to success. How you encourage and promote a culture of innovation, especially during strategic planning, is always a critical topic for any leader. One often overlooked path to innovation is deep partnerships and healthy relationships with your internal and external business and functional partners.
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This blog post is the second part in a series that shares our reflections on building an experimental culture in governments - see Exploring the unobvious: An overview for an introduction. In our previous post, we discussed how governments tend to explore only a small, fairly predictable subset of solutions. We argued that they need to get outside their comfort zone and explore the unobvious to develop better outcomes. So how do you go about exploring this space of the unobvious? The good news is that there are multiple ways to explore and develop unobvious solutions to the problems that governments are facing. The methods mentioned below (read this post for a more in-depth look at this diagram) are all contributing, in different ways and at various phases of the development process, to building new understanding and creation of solutions.
Via David Hain
Steve Jobs famously said that creativity is just connecting things. But anyone facing a creative block knows it’s a lot harder than grabbing ideas out of thin air. Creativity is a complex process. There’s no “creativity gene” or section of your brain responsible for creative thought. We can’t choose to turn creativity on or off. As the Atlantic reports, many studies have found that creativity happens unconsciously and beyond our control. Yet despite its elusive nature, creative thought has become an increasingly important part of our lives. Basic tasks are being automated. Competition is getting more fierce. And your ability to come up with novel ideas is now one of your greatest skills. So whether you’re feeling distracted, out of ideas, or are coming up against a creative wall, here are some creativity exercises to help get the juices flowing.
Via The Learning Factor
One of the keys to any successful business, regardless of its size, is innovation. Developing new ideas is the fuel which will keep your business up to date. Innovation will keep operations, products, and services fresh. Adding this fuel will make your business more competitive. According to a study from PwC, an overwhelming 93 percent of business executives believe that “organic growth through innovation will drive the greater proportion of their revenue growth.” But, what exactly is innovation? The answer to this question can and will vary depending on your industry or market.
Via The Learning Factor
More and more companies are realizing they must reinvent their cultures by infusing innovation into their DNA. Unlike startups that get to shape culture from scratch, established companies must transform existing norms, values, and assumptions in ways that inspire everyone to innovate — not just at the top of the organization, but at all levels. One company that’s making headway on that goal is CSAA Insurance Group (CSAA IG), one of the insurance companies affiliated with the 55 million-member American Automobile Association (AAA). With almost 4,000 employees, CSAA IG has embarked on a systemic approach to create a pervasive culture of innovation. The tactics being used by CSAA IG are all ones that leaders in other companies can apply to their own innovation culture change efforts.
Via The Learning Factor
In the digital era, even companies that have distinguished themselves as disruptors cannot afford to rest on their laurels.
Via Marielvi Piñero
Why culture is so important to the success of your company.
Via Anne Leong
Strategic and organizational factors are what separate successful big-company innovators from the rest of the field.
Via Paco Corma Canós
Research from Jean-Philippe Deschamps, Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at IMD, indicates that there are at least nine possible models of
Via Marielvi Piñero
Wargaming is a competitive scenario exercise that allows teams to delve deeper into identified opportunities, threats, and potential market outcomes. Wargames provide a means to gain a better understanding of market shifts and how they will impact competitor actions. Some examples of questions in the innovation process that can be answered with wargaming include:
I was recently asked the following question: How do you respond to educators who say “the idea of being called upon to develop an innovator’s mindset and to innovative scares me . . . I have the op…
Via Aggeliki Nikolaou, Mark E. Deschaine, PhD
I often speak of my own experience with FrontlineSMS, which took about three years to really get going, and – if I’d taken funding and committed to deadlines and deliverables early on – how it would likely have not made it that long. As a product, maybe it just needed three years to bed in, to take hold in the imagination of its users, for news to filter down. If that’s the case, then speeding up the process through an accelerator of some kind would have been counterproductive, and perhaps also have led to an early demise. Sometimes things just take time. It begs the question: How many potentially great products have died prematurely because they weren’t given the time? Or because they were rushed? What proportion of projects do accelerators kill compared to those they genuinely accelerate?
Via David Hain
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It takes psychological safety, diversity, teamwork, and mission.