Archive for: February, 2012

What if you did things wrong?

in Innovation

Dolls are supposed to be cute right? Not so according to UglyDolls. They designed their dolls to be the opposite of conventional wisdom.

UglyDolls might have asked themselves: What if we designed our product the wrong way? What if we made dolls that are ugly instead of cute?

According to WSJ, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School is trying to capture mistakes like this, with the idea that making mistakes on purpose is something that all of us could be taught. Today the business school named the winners of its first Brilliant Mistakes Contest, which awarded prizes (including Southwest Airlines tickets, free courses and conference tickets, and lunch with a contest judge) to people whose mistakes were the most productive.…

Leading with questions

in Leadership

As leaders we have all the answers right?

Wrong!

We don’t. And we know we can’t possibly know everything. That’s why we’re always learning by asking questions, reading, tinkering, observing and listening.

But also influencing others by the questions we ask.

Here’s a short story:…

Every strategy should Make a Difference

in Strategy

Isn’t it kind of old to see the word ‘differentiate’ on proposals? I mean, any strategy should be different. And adding the words ‘different’ to proposals doesn’t necessarily make it different. Difference is in the actions. Not the words.

Here’s a thought: Let’s frame differentiation as creating memories.

Look at the video below:…

Innovation must reads of the week: If we had a blank slate

in Uncategorized
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Why don’t more people disrupt themselves?

in Behavior, Innovation

I spotted this tweet by fellow Renegade @stevekoss in response to this tweet by @wadhwa:

One word: Inertia. But I also think it’s because people don’t know what reinvention even means. And since reinvention doesn’t happen in a heart beat, people have a hard time identifying anything that changed for the better.…

Engage in sci-fi thinking to understand what makes people tick

in Creativity, Innovation, Leadership
Shock diamond

Image via Wikipedia

Last week I gave a workshop on how to mine social networks for insights. I used Facebook’s Fan Pages as a use case. Many of the participants were surprised as they didn’t visit Fan Pages and thought most were spammy. They also said they didn’t like it when brands suddenly went off topic because businesses should be serious, not fun (dominant assumption calling to be turned upside down).

And boy were they surprised with what I told them next……

Innovation must reads of the week: How to think about the future

in Must reads of the week
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