Category Archives: Questions

Can you create value if you’re not curious?

in Innovation, Question-To-Innovate, Questions

Can you create value if you're not curious?

Not as far as I’m concerned.

For as long as I can remember it’s always dawned on me that late adopters are not innovative. I mean, how could they be if they are not curious. I know, I know. Sometimes being late to the game is great. There are hundreds of examples of companies that were late to the game and ended up changing the game. Apple, Google and Facebook immediately come to mind.

But I think that curiosity drives the kind of creativity that leads to breakthroughs. To breakthroughs that create value. A simple formula I have is:

Curiosity = Value creation…

Are you giving away too many ideas?

in Innovation, Questions

Should you give away ideas to potential clients before making a deal?

Ideas are a dime a dozen and coming up with them is really easy. Sometimes too easy. And as someone who is in ‘ideation mode’ all the time, I freely give them away to potential clients. A few of my partners don’t like this. It makes them uncomfortable because they think that we give away too much before we close the deal. It’s not strange to see that our proposals lay out an almost step-by-step strategy with as much details as possible.

The way I’ve always looked at it (and also because I think most of the proposal I’ve ever received all look alike and look more like a recipe for anyone) is that you make proposals with the intent of differentiating yourself too. With that mindset, your proposal should also ‘look and feel’ different.

But the issue is how much is too much?…

How are you connecting the dots?

in Creativity, Innovation, Questions

Connecting the dots. It’s all about connecting the dots. And it’s never been more important and more relevant than it is today in this information overload world we live in. Or is it?

I don’t claim to have all the answers on how to connect the dots but I recently received an interesting comment regarding this unknown activity and it got me thinking about it. My buddy basically says that those of us who engage in curation/filtering are crazy.

Why?

Because since we curate information that we find useful for others, we’ve got ideas to spare. We’ve got ideas about how to have ideas and then some.  And if you curate information about diverse topics, we have ideas about stuff that doesn’t make sense to the majority of people. And this makes others feel overwhelmed because we can criss-cross from one topic to another.

On that last point is where a lot of ‘dot connecting’ happens.…

What’s a simple way to get started in innovation?

in Creativity, Innovation, Question-To-Innovate, Questions

What's a simple way to get started in innovation?

Or should I say, how do you start moving in the direction of making something better? First of all, don’t outsource your creativity to someone else, you already have it. Innovation is a habit, get this in your mind because you WILL have to make some minor changes in your routines.…