Archive for: October, 2013

5 Lessons Learned From 10 Years of Blogging

5 Lessons Learned From 10 Years of Blogging

I’m fast approaching the 10 year anniversary of Game-Changer in a few weeks. Yes, I’ve been writing here for 10 years! Time flies. I remember when I started blogging and had 16 different topical blogs at one point; insane. That was me finding my way around my interests and deciding what to focus on and learning how to blog with a how to create a blog article; otherwise I was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

The case for discovering what business you are really in

General Assembly 2013

General Assembly 2013 (Photo credit: Paradise Nazarene)

What business are you really in?

Most can’t answer this question. And if they do, it is a rather functional driven answer such as: we make vacuums.

How meaningful and memorable is that?

I was reading through a note about General Assembly, a co-working space, and how it is shutting down it’s co-working services for entrepreneurs and instead focus on education:

Q&A: Babak Forutanpour on how to start a grass roots innovation program in a big company

How do you start a grassroots innovation program within your company? In the following interview, you’ll learn how simple it really is.

I had the opportunity to interview Babak Forutanpour, the Internal Innovation Lead of Qualcomm’s Flux, an employee run open innovation program. In a wide ranging interview he shared with me his experience in starting an innovation program inside Qualcomm, as well as the fantastic results they’ve achieved. What started as an 8 person experiment, four years later is a global initiative.

Below, I’ve summarized some of the answers.

How can I allocate time for innovation activities?

How can I allocate time for innovation activities?

Before will, skills and tools, what aspiring innovators need is time. It is a delicate topic because within organizations, the preference is for employees to keep the machine’s wheels turning as efficiently as possible. This leaves no time for reflection and play.

So, what to do?

The Idea Box: On command creativity tool for creatives and non-creatives

A few days ago, I provided you with some questions to find hidden pain points. Well, after finding those pain points, the next step is to ideate ways to alleviate those pains.

How do you start?

Steve Jobs famously said that creativity is just connecting things. And he is right, combining ideas is one the most productive ways to generate non-linear solutions. Below I’ll show you a well known creative technique that is designed to help people generate creative combinations.