Archive for: November, 2009

Must read innovation stories of the week: Why pursuing innovation usually fails

in Must reads of the week

Today’s business leaders and organizations are argues Adam Hartung, they’re trained to be effective and efficient and that’s why there’s a high failure rate of innovation initiatives.

We all know we need to innovate. But we just can’t help ourselves. Everything we’ve been trained to do as business leaders is about staying on course–even when headed straight for disaster. Rather than do something different, we batten down the hatches and sail into calamity like Captain Ahab. Management is more comfortable putting everything at risk by doing what it has done before than sailing in a new, more hopeful direction.

 

Adapt and achieve

in Strategy

Omen IV: The Awakening hd

 

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc divx Adaptability is the best skill you can have. Basketball is a game of rhythm, you set the pace at which you want to play and force the other team to adapt. If your familiar with basketball drills, in basketball practice we have what’s called rolling waves where the goal is to score the most times to stay on the court, the challenge is to play teams that constantly change players so you never face the same team twice. The game is continuous and doesn’t stop until your team loses and then the winner keeps playing.

 

This makes it very interesting because not only does your team have to adapt but your opponent also has to adapt to their new members. It forces you to play everyone differently as opposed to accepting how the game should be played, you change the game by modifying the rhythm and never showing the same play over and over again.

The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion! release

 

The 8th Plague psp

Improvisation is your best weapon.

 

The Hearse dvd

The point is you don’t want to fall into predictable patterns of play, never using the same play again because it worked before but rather make it difficult for your opponent to read you by changing your approach continuously.

 

The ability to play outside other’s experience is THE supreme skill in any strategists arsenal because your opponent will never know what you’ll do next. Change your approach continuously and accept that .

 

Key takeaway: Blood Diamond video

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Storm of the Century video

Must read innovation stories of the week: How to innovate everyday

in Must reads of the week

How do you innovate everyday? There are , but there are enough ways to try and come up with your own.

Innovation is more than brainstorming or idea generation. To be truly innovative, you have to DO something different. But ‘doing’ innovation is a different story, it doesn’t come naturally to most people. Yesterday I introduced you to , a book that shows you how to ‘DO’ innovation and I encourage you to buy it but for now here are a few links that can help you get started ‘doing’ innovation. 

 

Weekend innovation tip: Lessons for business from the top 10 good brands

in Innovation tips

What makes the best brands special? PSFK studied 10 brands and published a report on the The Scorpion King . Below I’ve are some lessons for business from those 10 brands.

 

Over the Top dvdrip

buy Jezebel

GOOGLE.

Experiment rapidly and embrace failure.

APPLE.

Rage and Honor movie Every aspect of your brand should be as good as the product.

ZIPCAR.

Stop selling products, start selling services.

GOOD MAGAZINE.

Set the agenda and let your customers spread the conversation.

AMAZON.

Identify parts of your business that could be offered as additional services.

FACEBOOK.

Create a playground and let your customers define your offering.

Wind Chill

VIRGIN.

Think big, think small. Amaze customers with your audacity, and please them with your attention to detail.

TWITTER.

The House on Turk Street video Book of Blood

The Holiday download

Stay flexible, allow your audience to dictate how your products or services are used.

IKEA.

Take a wider view of the shopping experience, making each step along the path to purchase simpler and more enjoyable.

SKYPE.

download Problem Child

Reach scale with free product, make money from premium services.

Build innovation into the core of your business

in Innovation
.!.

Imagine that your organization is an innovation powerhouse. Imagine that other companies adopt your strategies and not the other way around. Imagine that every single person in your organization is hailed as an innovator. Too good to be true right?

Not so.

The Grifters trailer Peter Pan rip

18 Year Old Virgin Author Rowan Gibson and Peter Skarzynski set out to jumpstart your innovation efforts in their book . Distilled from various examples of companies that ‘DO’ innovation, they present a blueprint that we can use and also ‘DO’ innovation. But before you set out to ‘DO’ innovation you want to start with creating the conditions to foster innovation, then develop the skills you need to innovate and then a process to bring it all together and produce new products and services. Innovation to the core shows you how!

Pragmatic is the key word to describe the contents of this book, written as a guide this is THE best book I’ve read on enterprise innovation and have recommended it more times than I can remember. I actually used the chapter on business model innovation to give a friend of mine a big picture view of his and brainstorm new approaches to compete.

Over the Top rip

If you’re familiar with Gary Hamel’s work from Competing for the Future, Leading the Revolution and The Future of Management you’ll absolutely want to read Innovation to the Core. Most of those insights are presented here in such a simple way that any startup or lone entrepreneur, small business that wants to grow, the mid-size business and the corporate juggernauts can put to use.

It has a 5 star rating at Amazon and with good reasons. The people, the skills and the process it’s all here.

You should on Twitter and let him know what you think.

14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas

in Innovation

Excerpted from , which I recommend you read, 14 ways to get breakthrough ideas:

A Few Good Men dvdrip

18 Year Old Virgin download

Genova release

Ready or Not trailer

 

  1. Follow your fascination
  2. Immerse
  3. Tolerate ambiguity
  4. Make new connections
  5. Fantasize
  6. Define the right challenge

  7. Listen to your subconscious
  8. Take a break
    Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen divx
  9. Notice and challenge existing patterns and trends
  10. Hang out with diverse groups of people
  11. Brainstorm
  12. Look for happy accidents
  13. Use creative thinking techniques
  14. Suspend logic

A Fish Called Wanda movie

There is no normal. Everyday is a crisis

in Wisdom

reinvent yourself

 

There is no secret formula to mastering change but we can start by accepting that . Last week I was in Ninjutsu class and sensei said something very interesting that got me thinking:

Humans have been in crisis everyday since we created fire. 

He was referring to the fact that ninjas were trained to adapt and survive, but there’s something much deeper we can learn from this.

Ninjutsu was born in a time of turmoil in Japan and by it’s nature is fluid and non-linear, it was created on the assumption that war is unpredictable and so you must adapt to changing conditions intuitively.

As a society we are faced with tremendous challenges right now because as humans we fall into the mindset that some events are preceded by other events, this is flawed.

Instead of thinking of the world where the present is determined by the past, we must adopt the mindset that change is continuous and unending. is an art of war and in war there isn’t a normal state, you have to be constantly adapting and changing to circumstances which are out of your control. It is less and art of prediction and more of anticipation where you become part of your surroundings as much as your opponent.

Enough psp

You reinvent yourself by adapting to what’s happening around you and gain power by being able to constantly shift and adjust. By being fast and non-linear we stay ahead of our opponents and adapt to opportunity because standing still means death.

So what we should do is not wait for the storm to pass but act and behave as if the storm is always here.