Recently, we conducted a survey on Collaborative Innovation. My friend and co-contributor, Andrea Meyer shared results of the personal benefits of Collaborative Innovation. Quite impressive! We also asked people what they’d suggest as a first steps. Many wonderful recommendations were given and two main themes emerged: Get management – executive management – corporate sponsorship with
Last month, my friend Whitney Johnson wrote a great post about entitlement being an innovation-killer. Please read it if you haven’t. I’m sure we all know examples of this in many aspects of our lives. In some corporate cultures, Innocide is brazen and in others incredibly polite and subtle. Perhaps the subtlest of all is Suinnocide – killing innovation within us.
Seriously! You know when you have an idea for a new business, product, service or process and you tell someone and they pick it apart? They tell you all the reasons it won’t work. You get really really peeved and annoyed and say to yourself, “They just don’t ‘get it’.”? Frustrating isn’t it? A few weeks ago, I
This article originally appeared in Harvard Business Review We think about networking as a very modern notion, with our accumulation of virtual “friends,” “followers” and people-who-might-be-useful-to-us-someday. To me, it is just an extension of what my people, my family have been doing since 70 AD – making critical connections that enable both our survival. The tools
Last Sunday’s New York Times front page (22Jan12) features “How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work” about the loss of American jobs overseas and the implications for our middle class. I’ve been thinking about the 2nd, 3rd order effects of outsourcing, especially now that some companies are either doing or seriously considering insourcing. In November, I spoke
I believe mentoring is a gift for the mentee and the mentor. Throughout my career, I’ve been blessed with incredible mentors who, perhaps unknowingly, taught me how to mentor. It’s something I take seriously and joyfully. It is a paradox – an incredibly selfless thing that is also very selfish. Recently, my mentoring has increased. In addition to mentoring Brown
Heretical isn’t it? I’m just starting to wonder if some StatusQuo-itis isn’t seeping into innovation discussions. Seems more people are sounding a bit more prescribed than experimental in their advice and counsel. I hear more ‘should’, ‘ought’, ‘the’ than ‘could’, ‘can’, and ‘a’; more ‘best practices’ than ‘here’s a way’. There are some great ways to do spur
Ever know anyone who will explicitly say he/she doesn’t think innovation is important? No! So listen carefully for the magic word – “but”. Some of you know how much I love to challenge the status quo so here’s my theory: Status Quophiles see the glass as half empty and want to make sure it
At Bell Labs we used to say, “How much did you pay for that data?” Most market research projects – for strategic planning and innovation (my passions) or even incremental product development focus on getting the facts. Lets take a look at an example: One college in America, who I shall not name, states on their
Leading indicators are critical for innovation, and the more eyes looking, the better because you look at an opportunity from more perspectives. My friend, Jackie Hutter, calls this “Lens Shifting”. It made me think of this picture: These men are all working on the same physical plane, but for one it’s flat, for another uphill