Author Archives: Braden Kelley
How should firms develop the organizational structure, culture, and incentives (e.g., for teams) to encourage successful innovation? When it comes to creating an innovation culture, often people make it far too complicated. If you’re part of the senior leadership team and you’re serious about innovation then your job is simple – reduce friction. If you’re serious about innovation and you’re not a senior leader, then your job is to do what you can to convince senior leadership that innovation is important. Then, gently help your execs see the areas of greatest friction in your organization so they can do something about it. Continue reading
I had the opportunity to attend the Front End of Innovation a couple of years ago in Boston and of the three days of sessions, I have to say that unlike most people, my favorite session was that of Dr. Clotaire Rapaille. The author of “The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do”, Dr. Rapaille extolled the crowd with his thoughts on ‘codes’ and ‘imprints’. Continue reading
What is the role of social media in innovation (either inside or outside the organization)? Social media serves an incredibly important role in innovation. Social media functions as the glue to stick together incomplete knowledge, incomplete ideas, incomplete teams, and incomplete skillsets. Social media is not some mysterious magic box. Ultimately it is a tool that serves to connect people and information. I’m reminded of a set of lyrics from U2′s “The Fly”: Continue reading
In order to build a culture capable of encouraging innovation or creativity (or both), you must first do an inventory of the psychology and mental models in play in your organization. One great way to do this would be to build an ‘anti-innovation checklist’ or an ‘anti-creativity checklist’. If you start watching the vocabulary that people use in meetings where ideas are being discussed, the behavior of senior leadership as it relates to these areas, and most importantly – how people respond – you’ll get a better sense of where your organizational challenges lie with respect to innovation and creativity. Wouldn’t that make such an exercise of great value to an organization? Continue reading
‘Who should be responsible (if anyone) for trend-spotting and putting emerging behaviors and needs into context for a business?’ I believe this question should really be broken up because there are three VERY different (and incredibly important) pursuits intermingled here: Continue reading
When companies, non-profits, and governments create products and services that better meet customer needs, there is less waste of human capital and natural resources, and everyone wins. That’s why my mission for many years has been to: “To make innovation and marketing insights accessible for the greater good.” So, how can you help Innovation Excellence achieve this mission I laid out many years ago? Continue reading
A few years ago I came across this quote from Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo: “My job is to find the potential in something that others can not see, to secretly pour our resources into them and turn them into hits before anyone else catches on,” The quote was too long to fit in Twitter, so I thought I would share it here because I love the insight. This is the key to successful innovation captured in a single sentence. This quote also highlights one of the most important jobs of a CEO – to lead innovation: Continue reading
