Tag Archives: google

Are we overly obsessed with disruptive ideas?

in Innovation, Question-To-Innovate, Questions

Are we overly obsessed with disruptive ideas?

If you disrupt and can’t sustain, you don’t win. – Gary Pisano

Disruptive innovations that throw industries into chaos hog the spotlight. We are all transfixed by Google’s Moonshot attempts at either changing transportation, how we interact with objects and people that we believe those are the only innovations that matter.

Academics and consultants like coming up with fancy ways of describing certain types of behaviors and outcomes, and when it comes to innovation incremental and radical are such they use to describe and compare between small plain-vanilla innovation and radical or disruptive innovation.…

Innovation lessons from Google’s self-driving car

in entrepreneurship, Innovation, Strategy

google driverless car

A few days ago Google showed off their very own self-driving car. But unlike their first prototypes, which were custom rigged SUV’s and cars with Cummins Holset turbochargers from known manufacturers, it isn’t built around a driver behind the wheel. Rather, it’s built around safety; without any driver.

Chris Urmson, Director of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project said:…

Failure isn’t the goal, it is a means for innovation

in Innovation

innovation at google x

Last week I wrote about how you can ask yourself one question to innovate how you innovate: What can we learn from ___company___ about __challenge__?

I then posted some ideas from Amazon and Google that help them drive innovation, which you can use for inspiration. Well, here’s another idea you can use to get you thinking, and it may sound like a cliche but it is really the principle that sets any innovative company apart from non-innovative ones: reward failure.…

Jeff Bezos: Failure can’t be separated from invention

in Innovation
Jeff Bezos - Caricature

Jeff Bezos – Caricature (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

How do you maximize people’s potential to drive innovation? As Bob Ross says, “We don’t make mistakes, only happy accidents”. So, let employees make happy accidents.

This is what happens at the world’s most innovative companies, one of which is Amazon.

There are many lessons we can learn from Jeff Bezos about maximizing people’s potential to drive innovation. For example, in his annual shareholder letter, Jeff Bezos closes the letter with some final tips on what lets the company continue to lead. One is that invention comes from everybody, not just senior leaders. A lot of those ideas are going to fail. That’s not a bad thing:…

Are all innovators alike?

in Innovation, Question-To-Innovate, Questions

Are all innovators alike?

Nuances and details are lost in the sea of bullshit that is media and human irrationality, and an outcome is one of the most dangerous things humans do: build people up to more than they probably are.

Sure, the world needs heroes that carry a positive narrative that others can latch on to and get inspired to make a story of their own. My heroes are Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan. You have your own, for your own personal reasons.

And just like you and I have our own motivations for why we do something, what we do and how we do it; so do other potential innovators.

Truth is, that in a world where people are fitted into boxes, everyone has their own creative style. Some people are more systematic than others, and some of us are more intuitive. I believe that failing to understand this distinction between people is a huge innovation obstacle!…

Why settle for average? Steal from the greats to be great

in Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
strategy as uniqueness

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nevenka/3061982219/

The challenge with copying uniqueness is that is takes a relentless commitment to excellence.

Whenever I’m asked about innovation, a list of names always comes up: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook.

Why, I always ask, are these the ones that always come up?

Nothing wrong with bringing up those companies, but surely, there are others. This is an issue when discussing innovation, because there is a very narrow view about what innovation looks like. And, when this gap in definition exists, people naturally look around for examples of what it looks like. They can’t imagine anything else.…