Tag Archives: Innovation

3 lessons about how to do rapid prototyping from the Nordstrom Innovation Lab

I just came across this video of how the Nordstrom Innovation Lab created, tested and built an iPad app in just one week with the intent of enhancing the eye wear buying experience. I thought I’d share this with you as a follow up post to the three part series I wrote on how to leave small thinking behind.

Though the video was posted almost three years ago, it is still quite relevant for rapid prototyping towards innovation.

There are a few things that I want to bring to your attention about rapid prototyping:…

What’s your question?

Jorge in Creativity, Innovation

If you’re planning on designing your own wedding, we’ve got a treat for you for you today! Bronte Dwyer, a stellar wedding stylist at Foreva Events in Australia, is sharing her secrets—everything it takes to make the wedding day magical. Paired with ethereal photos by Ivy Road Photography from a recent styled editorial, we’re certain you’ll walk away inspired and prepared to tackle your wedding design with newfound knowledge in your pocket! GWS out…over to Bronte!

Designing a wedding is not a small job. It takes creativity, boldness and an eye for detail. The truth is, every single detail of your wedding will contribute to the overall look and feel of your wedding. Details such as the colour of your plates, the texture of your flowers and the shape of your chairs are all important pieces of a puzzle which together will create the overall picture of your wedding.

So how do you make sure all of your wedding elements work together? We have a few tips and tricks we want to share with you, to make styling your wedding easy. We hope that by the time you finish reading you will feel confident to get started designing the wedding of your dreams, but before that, you better check out these bachelorette experiences.

Choose the Right Colour Palette

Your colour palette is one of the most defining decisions your will make when it comes to designing your wedding. Start by thinking about what colours you and your partner love. Look at your wardrobe, what colours do you like to wear? Look at your furniture and home styling, which colours stand out? Look at the pictures you’ve saved of weddings you love and notice the colours. Do you prefer lighter, soft colours or darker, strong colours?

Choosing the right colour palette for your wedding will determine the overall look and style of your wedding. Sometimes it’s easier to to choose one colour you love, then pair it with complementary colours. When pairing colours, make sure you don’t go overboard. You might be thinking, “But I love pink, purple, orange, green and blue”. Great, but let’s try to narrow that down for your wedding. Try starting with one central colour and two to three complementary colours to pair with it.

Remember, it’s not just the obvious elements like flowers and stationery that bring colour into your wedding. Elements such as the background of your venue and the furniture materials used will also contribute to your colour palette. For example, if your wedding is in an outdoor York Maine wedding venue you’ll have green or blue with trees and the sky, and if it’s inside the colour of the walls will become a part of your colour palette as well. It’s also important to think about the tones of materials you would like to use. What colour metal, what type of stone, what colour wood will you use? Where possible, try to incorporate only one tone of wood, metal and stone and stick with that material throughout your wedding design.

Remember to consider the contrast of tones in your colour palette. Unless you’re going for a completely light look, we’d recommend having at least one dark or medium tone colour in your palette in order to have contrast. This will bring the lighter elements to life.

Finally, it’s important to let your colour palette guide your decision making. Before deciding on any element of your wedding, put it through the filter of your colour palette to ensure it will work with your overall style. If you really want to have an eye for detail, don’t include any element that doesn’t fit with your colour palette. You’ll be amazed at how applying this one simple step will help your wedding design stand out.

How do you identify innovation champions in an organization?

Jorge in Innovation, Leadership, Question-To-Innovate, Questions

How do you identify innovation champions in an organization?

Unlike scrappy startups, and maverick organizations, innovation doesn’t happen with a snap of a finger in traditionally managed organizations; it needs fearless leaders.

As I mentioned in last week’s question-to-innovate, innovation is a team game, and there many types of people who can fill those roles. Today, I’ll touch on the “who do we unleash to make innovation happen?” part of the equation.

Most likely you are in a traditional organization where management still rules the day, bureaucracy can stand in the way or enable innovation. Let’s imagine that you’ve talked about and agreed that innovation needs to become more than simple talk in your organization. To make this happen, you’ve decided to unleash the hounds: the fearless and passionate people who don’t follow the rules that you’ve sat on the bench.

Still, who among these mavericks can really push through?…

How to conduct an outside industry benchmark for innovation

Jorge in Innovation

To generate radical ideas, approaches and strategies, benchmarking withing your industry is not particularly valuable. You must look outside your industry and business. Only with outside-industry benchmarks can you overcome paradigm blindness and create game-changing ideas.

I’ve written before that traditional benchmarking is stupid because, frankly, it leads to me-too ideas. Not only that, but it also shifts you into a never ending fixed mindset. A more strategic way to benchmark, is to look outside your industry for ideas. This logic of innovation is “lift and shift.” That is, search for great ideas in unrelated fields, lift them out of the context in which they took shape, and shift them into your company.

This topic isn’t new, but just like ethnography, it is still a rarity in the business world.

The main obstacle to outside-industry benchmark is implementation because business practices are quite different from one industry to another.The key is how to transform those practices to fit your industry.…

Are all innovators alike?

Jorge 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!…

Q&A: Sangeet Paul Choudary on how open business models are changing how businesses compete

Jorge in entrepreneurship, Innovation, Interviews, Strategy

This is part two of a Q&A with Sangeet Paul Choudary on platform businesses and open business models. In part 1, he answered some questions about platform businesses.

Sangeet Paul Choudary writes the blog Platform Thinking which has been featured on leading publications and research labs including WSJ, HBR, WIRED, FastCompany and the MIT Centre for Digital Business. He is an innovation analyst and consultant who has lectured at leading academic institutions like MIT Media Labs and INSEAD and consults leading startups as well as traditional firms making the transition to digital platforms. He is a mentor at leading accelerators like 500Startups and serves on the advisory board of leading platform startups.

Follow him on Twitter at @sanguit. To know more about Sangeet, visit http://platformed.info/sangeet-paul-choudary/ and sg.linkedin.com/in/sangeetpaul‎.…