Inside established organization innovation is killed before it even gets a chance to make its case. The reasons are many, and while there are many Sins of innovation,from my POV the one that kills most projects focused on transformational outcomes are ones where there needs to be a fixed “process” for achieving those outcomes.…
Archive for: April, 2015
Innovation needs outsiders. Here’s how to source them
in Innovation
The most interesting ideas, the ones that span boundaries, are found and at the intersection of domains. This isn’t a new insight, but it is one that is rarely taken into account inside most businesses.
True to form, established businesses suffer from the Curse of Knowledge: I already know what I need to know. The expertise on which they built their business blinds organizations from creating the future, it’s the reason many businesses that were thriving at the beginning of this century are no longer with us.
How do you break free from the Curse of Knowledge?
By shifting perspective……
Are you a Chief Idea Killer?
in Innovation, Leadership
Much of what we think stands in the way of innovation is in our control: our attitude.
In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way; that’s an attitude most traditional organizations don’t have. I’ve made reference to this fact quite a bit in the past, and is a common topic of discussion among innovation wonks. One way to know if you are standing in your own way is to look at your organization from the perspective of “what are we doing to block innovation?”.
For example, do you have an organizational chart that looks like this?
Probably. This is how an organization where management is the enemy of innovation looks like, it’s also why most organizations can empathize with the following sketches:
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done. pic.twitter.com/SpLD9Oiuvf
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) January 30, 2015
there's no safety in the status quo, so disrupt or be disrupted. pic.twitter.com/UANsggx6sQ
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) February 10, 2015
Can you see how your organization is deliberately killing innovation?
Bottom line: The default state of all new ideas is “NO”. New ideas have to be protected, they need to be given room to breathe. As a business leader, your jobs is to jumpstart progress by enabling innovation. They way to do that is to provide purpose, challenge and support; then get out of the way. That’s how you give ideas oxygen.
H/T: Vala Afshar.
Importance of having a culture
in Innovation, Leadership
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Period. Because strategy is in your every choice. Culture, in your every action. The topic of culture is one that is dear to me, so much so that I think and write about it as often as I drink Gatorade; which is almost every day.…
For our youth to thrive, it matters how we teach them to view failure
During our discussion about The Future for Youth, one of the main points we touched on was “risk aversion”. And though we see a trend towards more entrepreneurs, the truth is many of them are not entrepreneurs.
Why?
Because most entrepreneurs fail and leave it at that. But real entrepreneurs view failure as a prerequisite for learning; that’s the difference.…
Any business that has not yet been totally disrupted by the existence of the internet will be
The internet, arguably the greatest invention of all time, is just starting to shape our world. New ventures are dreamed up every day to take advantage of it’s power, and legacy businesses are being disrupted because of it; the business world has been reshaped and redrawn since the inception of the internet.
What does this disruption look like? Here are a couple of clues……
For innovators ignorance is an asset
in Innovation
Most every business that I’ve consulted for asks me a variation of the same question: how can we innovate?
Unfortunately, that’s the wrong question to ask. The correct question is: what’s currently stopping us from innovating?…