Archive for: December, 2011

10 Most Popular Innovation Posts of 2011

Jorge in Innovation

2011 is over. Lots of blog posts were written this year, lots of new and interesting friends were made, lots of ideas were crystallized and lots of value was created.

It was fun looking through the archives to find those posts everyone liked the most. It was fun to revisit them and re-read the comments you left. I still feel like it was just yesterday that I wrote them. Man time goes by very fast!

Here then are the 10 most popular posts of 2011 (+ 2 more) in no particular order.

Thank you for sticking around and I look forward to learning more from you in the next year.

Happy 2012 🙂…

The importance of workplace diversity for innovation

Jorge in Innovation

Click for larger image

My friend and business partner Christian Laborin created the above illustration for someone very special to him. He put it on his Facebook cover and very shortly the comments came in. Including Jose Zelaya, a friend from Disney Studios, stopped by to give his two cents: There is so much love in this illustration!

Bingo!

Everyone notices different things.

What do you notice?

Disassemble and Re-Imagine!

Jorge in Innovation

The 7-yr-old is bored. So I set fire to all her Xmas presents and said, “Reassemble!”

— Heather B. Armstrong (@dooce) December 27, 2011

While the above quote is funny and makes sense for the average Joe, if you’re an innovator and is bored with the status-quo there’s only one solution: Disassemble and Reimagine.

For example, last weekend I went to the movie theater to see Mission Impossible 4. It’s a good movie, but I’m not going to talk about that. What I want to tell you is what I noticed about this particular movie theater. First, the screen. It was sharp. No bubbles. Just sharp. Beyond that, apart from basic styling, nothing else is different about it. It looks like every other movie theater. Heck, it sounds the same way too. And it’s basic function remains the same: To go watch movies.

And this is where it gets interesting: Something that remains un-changed and boring for a long time is an opportunity for an innovator.…

If you’re not happy, I’m not happy

Jorge in Strategy

A few weeks ago we gave back some money to a long time client because they are not happy with our work. Thing is, I was already prepared to say: You know what, don’t worry about the rest of the outstanding balance. If you’re not happy, we’re not happy.

That’s all that matters.

It’s one thing to say that you aim to delight your customers/clients and make them happy, but it’s another thing to not be able to do it. It hurts when a client wants to move in a different direction because you didn’t exceed their expectations. These are the types of things that you don’t want happening. Don’t see happening.

All I could do is apologize and say: Sorry I let you down.

My client wasn’t expecting this type of behavior. Why?…

Merry Christmas from the Game-Changer

Jorge in Uncategorized

Dear reader,

As always I’m changing up things here a bit and instead of posting a picture of a Christmas tree, I posted this one of Jack Skellington and his gang.

I wish you a Merry Christmas!

From periodic innovation to relentless innovation

Jorge in Innovation

How can your company become a relentless innovator? How do you sustain innovation over long periods of time like Apple, 3M and Google?

Jeffrey Phillips of Innovation Consultancy OVO, persuasively writes that the way to create a sustainable innovation capability in large organizations is by turning what keeps your wheels running, middle management, into innovation Champions.

Not easy. But that’s the main premise of the book. And it is this reason alone why I think this is a must read book. While there are other authors who have touched on the topic of management as an inhibitor to innovation, Jeffrey really goes a lot deeper.

Other books on innovation either deal with the pretty part of ideation or they’re all over the place. Relentless Innovation is easy to read with many interesting case studies and practical advice. This is a very focused book and addresses the ‘how’ to create culture of innovation within a large and complex organization.…