Tag Archives: Creativity

Innovation posts of the week: If you want employees to be innovative, encourage it

in Must reads of the week

Rethink your business by what you know not what you do

in competition, Innovation, Strategy

I was talking with a friend business owner this weekend about growth opportunities. Our conversation took a turn when he expressed to me that it’s hard to compete when there are a lot of other businesses offering the same thing he does. Well my friend, it doesn’t have to be that way.

For the sake of being practical, we humans like to categorize everything to most simple things, rules of thumb. They work for awhile, but the problem is that sooner than later they become rules we follow and we never stop to think why we actually follow them.…

Declare war on yourself

in Creativity, Innovation, Strategy, Thinking

assumptions

Being unconquerable lies within yourself.

The guys asked me for some blogging tips a few days ago and I posted some at BM that I’m sure will rattle some cages. One of the actions steps at that I recommend at the end of the post is to ‘declare war on yourself’, or more commonly known as .

Assumptions are the shortcuts, rules of thumb, conventional wisdom, common sense, stuff we take for granted, ordinary thinking that as humans we use to get through daily life, which work for awhile, but they soon become stale truths, like weights holding us back from new ways of seeing, thinking and behaving.

Assumptions get us stuck in a never ending loop of repetition, and you know that leads to more of the same.…

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.…

Weekend innovation tip: Think BIG like a kid

in Innovation tips

 

I watched one of my favorite movies of all time last night, .

Here’s a perfect example of how thinking like a kid again opens all types of possibilities for creative output when navigating a world where most people are used to the same old ideas. If you’ve seen the movie watch it again, you’ll notice all sorts of things that are happening inside your company right now that if you brought in some fresh thinking it’ll alter they way you see things.

 

This scene is specially telling, instead of reading marketing reports the boss prefers to go watch people at toy stores. Bingo!

 

Don’t be afraid to !

Must read innovation stories of the week: Mental models determine business models

in Must reads of the week

Much like humans have mental models that determine their beliefs about how the world works, businesses have business models that do the same. And, just how us humans get stuck in our own thoughts if we don’t feed ourselves new experiences, business models become irrelevant when they don’t evolve.

, and this means you have to start with the culture in your organization and how they view the world. You need to work on questioning the assumptions your culture has about how the world works, so it can start thinking about how it can work better for you.

. Want a new business model? Check your mental model first.

Innovation: respect the process

in Innovation, Strategy

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Master the instrument, master the music, then forget all that shit and play. – Charlie Parker

Some say innovation is predictable, I agree. But to a larger degree it is not because you can’t really tell where it’s going to come from and who will be holding all the cards. Right now you’re probably in the ‘innovate or die’ mindset, you’re also probably feeling frustrated because you’re reading blogs, following innovation consultants on Twitter to try and do innovation but you are not getting anywhere.

Let me help clear things up for you, . It needs to be nourished, it needs to be practiced, it needs to be mastered.…