Category Archives: Innovation

Why aren’t we funding management innovation?

Jorge in Innovation

After meeting with a client yesterday, I was reminded of this quote:

“Semco has no official structure. It has no organizational chart. There’s no business plan or company strategy, no two-year or five-year plan, no goal or mission statement, no long-term budget. The company often does not have a fixed CEO. There are no vice presidents or chief officers for information technology or operations. There are no standards or practices. There’s no human resources department. There are no career plans, no job descriptions or employee contracts. No one approves reports or expense accounts. Supervision or monitoring of workers is rare indeed… Most important, success is not measured only in profit and growth.” – Ricardo Semler

This scares the hell out of everyone and so no one believes this is possible (it is). And because no one believes it, they will never try. …

What specific behaviors should be rewarded to drive innovation?

Jorge in Innovation, Question-To-Innovate, Questions

This is the tenth of a series of weekly posts where I will answer a few common questions about innovation. Please feel free to add your own response. Also, if you have any questions you think we should discuss, let me know.

Organization get the behaviors they reward. And this is especially true when it comes to innovation. Let’s suppose you want to become more innovative (who doesn’t?), where would you start? Everyone will start at the front end of ideation. But before you go there, ask yourself these questions:

What would encourage people to share their ideas?
What would encourage them to act innovatively?

The answer: trust.…

Innovation R’Us: A DIY future

Jorge in Innovation

After an 8 year hiatus, I went back to Disneyland last weekend. If you’ve read my Twitter profile, you know I’m a Disney Fanatic. Disneyland, for the most part, is still the same magical place as 10 years ago with a few tweaks here and there.

One peculiar thing I did notice though was that at the end of the Star Tours ride, as you exit to the Star Wars Store, there is a DIY Lightsaber Workstation. Parts of Anakin, Darth Vader, Darth Maul and Luke’s lightsaber are scattered around this huge table. You can combine the parts to create your own lightsaber.

This is Young Padawan’s Paradise.…

Innovation challenges in laggard markets

Jorge in Economics, Innovation

A culture challenge

Early this year a Groupon copycat was in my office building: Grupongo.

I don’t know if they exist anymore but they’ve since closed operations in Tijuana. I have no insight into why they closed operations, but I do have an idea since I got to talk to the Regional Sales Manager a few months before.

See, Tijuana is a conservative market. The nature of Groupon, and all its copycats, is that it stimulates randomness. It lowers the barriers to doing things you’ve never done before. This happens easily in markets where diversity exists.…

What can innovators do to improve the chances they’ll encounter serendipity?

Jorge in Innovation, Question-To-Innovate, Questions

This is the ninth of a series of weekly posts where I will answer a few common questions about innovation. Please feel free to add your own response. Also, if you have any questions you think we should discuss, let me know.

Here is a question from yesterday’s #innochat about Serendipity and Innovation. People contributed some great answers, some of which I aggregated below.

My response: Let loose, discover, follow your nose not what people say, embrace chance in every single way. Adopt a “so what, let’s do it” mindset and see what happens. No holding back!

Download the full #innochat transcript.

Uninnovation: Stuff that sucks is ripe for innovation

Jorge in Innovation

Innovation is about fulfilling needs. And there are common products we use everyday that don’t completely fulfill those needs. Take the scissors in the picture above. They cost me $3 USD and they broke after 10 minutes of use.

No way to fix them because what held them together was a screw through a piece of plastic!

Maybe Office Depot made these scissors for the “less than ten minutes of use” market. Or maybe they didn’t care who or what they are going to be used for. Maybe the said “we don’t need to do 3 million hours of real world testing” to make sure they work under all circumstances like Jawbone did with Up.

Or maybe, like most, they’re not in it to make the best product out there. Which is probably true.…

A signal that you won’t ever innovate

Jorge in Creativity, Innovation

Last weekend my company, Blu Maya, held a small conference at our office building. The theme of the conference was the process of animation. The event was great, but it could have been even better. Here’s why…

One thing that stood out for me the most, was how most people don’t go to conferences/talks unless it is about their core topic of interest. This is not new, I was expecting this human dynamic to happen. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so obvious.

For example, if I invited a non-animator/artist to the conference and asked them if they were coming, it was normal to hear them say: No, because I’m not an animator.

Really?

Others thought that animation means drawing cartoons. And therein lies the challenge with developing a culture where everyone innovates. If you don’t breakout, you won’t grow. Sure, specializing deeply in one topic is gratifying. But even most people don’t dig deep into a topic and reach a level of mastery. So this is asking too much.

Because creative ideas are born at the intersection of other ideas, you need to develop fluid intelligence to innovate and remain relevant. And, the only way to do that is to develop as many skills as possible. These ideas will not flow from your mind if you hang around the same old box. Go out there and seek new knowledge.

Here’s another way to look at it, do you think every activity we do can be approached creatively? If you answer yes, then you surely want to know everything there is about the creative process. Including how people outside your core topic solve problems creatively.

For most people, this is asking too much. And here’s why:

That’s right, you have to fight your brain’s tendency to take shortcuts. It is best you become aware of how the brain works and not take it for granted. That way you are prepared to “shock and awe” it. Go ahead, take a chance. Surprise yourself. You might find something you thought you weren’t looking for by attending a different type of conference, reading an unknown book or talking to someone you are indifferent to.