If you are really ambitious, I believe that rather than setting out to accumulate as many material things as you can, you should be aiming to spread mindset; a point of view. This blog is very much focused on innovation as a mindset, not as a collection of tools and frameworks that anyone can pickup and magically turn him/herself into an innovator. …
in Innovation, Leadership
While most everyone has their own perspective about what makes up a solid foundation for innovation inside organizations, one of the key ingredients necessary for innovation to happen in any type of environment is freedom.…
Last week I shared with you what I call the litmus test for innovation leadership, two questions I ask leaders to get a feel for if they have what it takes to innovate; or create the context for innovation within their organization.
Those two diagnostic questions are key for me when I’m asked to help companies innovate. As I’m always on the hunt for new questions to add to my arsenal, while reading Alan Webber’s book Rules of Thumb I found two more questions that I believe demand attention from leaders:…
in Innovation
In a time when innovation has diluted of its meaning, nowadays anybody can claim to be innovative if all they do is put out meaningless increments, Pot-Tarts can teach some lessons about innovation.
Do you like Pop-Tarts? I love them! They are so good it brings a smile to my face just thinking about them.
A few weeks ago The Atlantic posted an article about the history of Pop-Tarts, and how it hasn’t changed much. Though the company that makes Pop-Tarts has claimed that they have been innovating, since they were first introduced 50 years ago.
What makes Pot-Tarts such a likeable product that has stood the test of time?…
in Innovation, Leadership
Throughout this past year, I’ve been having conversations with innovation leaders from a couple of BIG companies about re-inventing their innovation capability. The pattern of conversation: we’ve had a good run, but feel that our process for making innovation happen is delivering incremental results. Bureaucracy has developed, and so we aren’t taking a lot of risks anymore. How do we shake ourselves out of it?
This is a classic situation of the initial innovation enthusiasm becoming stagnant because innovation’s main killers are not kept at bay: GroupThink and ExpertThink.
One leads to consensus, and the other to unchallenged best practices. In combination both lead to stagnation. Later on, it will become more difficult to innovate because silence and fear will become the norm. Then you will really have a challenge in your hands!…
in Innovation, Leadership
People are the biggest barrier to innovation. Be it the executive who dominates every conversation, the one that talks but doesn’t walk the talk or the one that kills all ideas just because it’s not in his/her best interest. Unfortunately that’s the sad truth about how innovation dies in large organizations; there are people who kill innovation.…
in Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
How does Google do it?
I just finished reading How Google Works, a tell all book by Eric Schmidt’s and Jonathan Rosenberg about their experience working at the innovation powerhouse. It’s a quick read, and much of the material covered, such as how Google manages, makes decisions, innovates and hires, have been well covered in other Google books as well as in the tech media.…