Monthly Archives: September 2011
What do we love most about working in innovation? The long hours? The inspired clients? The successful launches? The fast failures? I think not. I think what the people I know who work at innovation love most about it is the premise. Innovation by definition is about the introduction of something new — starting with what Jerry Hirshberg called the “seedling” of a new idea. All of this — our commitment to exploration, our innate curiosity, our profession’s philosophical and yes, moral stance, makes Liz Ryan’s post on Bloomberg/Businessweek even more chilling. In my Organizational Development days we used to call the kind of managers Ryan outs “the frozen middle.” That is putting it kindly. They are innovation killers. These statements are draconian, and worse, ignorant. Yet we have all heard them. They make us shudder, because they are the simplest, fastest way to kill the human spirit at … Continue reading
Maybe it has been a tough week. Maybe it has been a tough you don’t even remember how long. This weekend, give yourself a break, and remember these things: Continue reading
One of the best things about the blogosphere is bumping into original thinkers like Venessa Miemis. Continue reading
The rewards come through an organization that emerges from today’s ‘uncertainly’ equipped to be more resistant, flexible and agile. It has a greater chance to seize emerging opportunities quicker, at tomorrow’s new innovation speed. Renewal is not an easy journey, but becoming more and more critical to do on a regular basis. Continue reading
This video from BNet has author and Innovation Excellence contributor Stephen Shapiro talking about whether best practices are stupid and whether they are key to innovation or not.
New research suggests that you are likely to be more creative when you imagine the problem is someone else’s instead of your own. Evan Polman and Kyle Emich describe their studies in their April 2011 article that support this conclusion. In one study, 262 participants were instructed to draw an alien for a story that they would write, or alternatively for a story that someone else would write. When drawing an alien for someone else’s story, they produced a more creative alien. In another study, 137 students were instructed to picture either themselves or a stranger stuck in a tower and to think of a way to escape using only a rope that did not reach the ground. Of the students who imagined a stranger in the tower, 66 percent found the solution—divide the rope lengthwise and tie the pieces together—compared with 48 percent of those who pictured …
