Tag Archives: Innovation

Innovation and Diversity

in Innovation

This is a guest post by Dr. Ralph Ohr. Dr. Ohr has extensive experience in product/innovation management for international technology-based companies. His particular interest is targeted at the intersection of organizational and human innovation capabilities. You can follow him on Twitter @Ralph_Ohr.

networks of innovation

A while ago, I came across the following tweet by Gary Hamel:

Tomorrow’s management systems will need to value diversity, dissent and divergence as highly as conformance, consensus and cohesion.

It reflects well the fact that businesses range in increasingly dynamic and complex environments, imposing accelerated and mostly unforeseeable change. The most promising way for organizations to face this unprecedented discontinuity is to develop an ability to adapt to changing conditions and emerging opportunities: Adaptability.…

Innovation must reads of the week: The Breakthrough Bias

in Must reads of the week
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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…

Chief Error Generation Officer

in Innovation

Awesome tweet by Tom Peters. It reminded me of the movie K-19 Widowmaker.

There are a few scenes in the movie K-19 The Widowmaker, which stars Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, where Ford (the captain of the submarine) starts a number of drills to test the crew’s ability to execute under pressure. These drills, simulate situations that might go wrong. How about starting a fire in the crew’s sleeping quarters? How about shutting down the torpedo bay? How about jamming the sonar? All at once. What do you do?

The thinking goes, if you can test your edge, you can execute under extreme pressure.

This is what Tom Peters is referring to. Not someone who just wants to make people feel uncomfortable (although that’s true too) just for the heck of it, but a more strategic role of accelerating learning.…

Innovation must reads of the week: Time to redefine “innovation”

in Must reads of the week

 

Mandatory Innovation

in entrepreneurship, Innovation

Have you heard of Krav Maga?

If you have, that’s really cool. If you haven’t, then you’ve seen Matt Damon use Krav Maga to kick butt in the Jason Bourne movies.

Krav Maga is a fighting technique that is practiced all over the world. It originated in Europe but was refined in Israel, where the International Krav Maga Federation is located. What’s interesting is that Krav Maga is taught to every Israeli soldier. And every civilian.

Remember that in Israel, every citizen goes through basic military training.

This got me thinking as I was watching the Human Weapon episode of Krav Maga. Just like it’s mandatory for Israeli’s to go through basic military training, what if we made it mandatory to teach every civilian entrepreneurship?

Sounds crazy right?…

Ubiquitous to Anomaly: A useful way to begin the creative process

in Innovation

As innovators:

  • We’re on the constant lookout for novelty.
  • We want/need to know what’s happening in the world and what might change it.
  • We’re not really concerned with debating what’s already here.
  • We simply identify what’s already here and think about how we might change or replace it.

Innovation skills require ‘connect the dots’ skills. And today, if you’re in charge of innovation at your organization, you are living in information overload. There’s just no way around it. You have to be able to filter and connect the unconnected. That’s the challenge. How do you do it?

I don’t claim to have the answer to this problem, but I do have a very simple method to jump-start my brain.…