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Resources Versus Success
Success is unrelated to the money and resources you have when you start. “Risk homeostasis” says if you lower risk in one area, you raise it in another. If you have a lot of money, you tend not to take chances. Better to spend the money on several different ideas.
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Raising Rules to the Level of Principles
The three rules are 1) better before cheaper—compete on value, 2) revenue before cost—increase volume or price premiums, and 3) there are no others. Follow the rules even when the data point in a different direction. Examples explain why.
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Why It's So hard to Eliminate Tasks
To maximize productivity eliminate low-value tasks. That’s hard. Some people can’t do it for fear they will pick the wrong one tasks, even though knowledge workers spend 41 percent of their time on tasks that provide little satisfaction and could be delegated.
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The Simple Math of Found Productivity
Busyness costs American business $300 billion in absenteeism, disengagement, and the like. Juliet Funt then adds the costs of just ten minutes of mindless activity per hour, and one mindless meeting per week. Reducing email cc’s, meeting length, etc. have a big payoff.
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The Invisible Habits of Excellence # 4: Make Room for Creativity
Whatever your problem, creativity is the answer. But creativity needs space; it cannot be summoned on demand. Juliet Funt’s creative moments come when she is lying in bed with her kids, waiting for them to go to sleep. Schedule time to just think. Protect that time.
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The Opportunities of Technology
EMC Corporation used an internal social network to solicit ideas for cost reductions and make people feel part of the process.
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Change Perspectives to Think Strategically
Strategic thinking is a skill that can be developed by changing three perspectives.
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3D Printing Is Here
3D printing is no longer the slow, junky process; instead, it’s the path to the future.
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What is 3D Printing?
3D printing is a type of additive manufacturing that creates layers of materials to build a product or part.
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The Versatility of 3D Printing
3D printing has incredibly diverse capabilities that will revolutionize nearly every industry that currently exists.
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The Implications of 3D Printing
3D printing will change how businesses act and interact.
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Pan-Industrial Companies and Their Spheres of Influence
Once companies become pan-industrial, they’ll begin to create new spheres of influence.
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The Implications of 3D Printing on Society
The widespread creation of pan-industrial collectives could have enormous impact on world politics.
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3D Printing Platforms
The complexities of 3D printing will be beyond what humans can manage and will be delegated to software platforms.
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3D Printing Is Changing the Competition
3D printing will give rise to pan-industrial firms, which will in turn create pan-industrial collectives.
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Solving Complex Problems
When faced with a complex problem step back, de-conflict the priorities, and find the root of the problem.
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Innovation: Paint a Picture of the End Game
Innovation begins with collaboration.
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Smartcuts: Accelerating Innovation, Managing Change, & Thinking Differently
Breakthrough innovation happens when we rethink conventional wisdom. But how do you train yourself—or your organization—to think differently? How do you foster an environment where it’s safe to do so, where innovation can thrive without destroying your business? In this clever and surprising keynote, Snow debunks myths of success, shares unforgettable research and stories, and fires audiences up to 11. You will never think the same.
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The Performance Paradox: Less Effort Yields More Results
A NASCAR pit crew improved its time when they were measured on process, not on a stopwatch. Increasing motivation improves performance only to a point. Don’t measure innovation teams on extrinsic goals like number of ideas; concentrate on the process.
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Challenge Your Assumptions to Avoid Confirmation Bias
Army research showed a tendency to focus on evidence supporting an hypothesis and ignore disconfirming evidence. This “confirmation bias” was counteracted by instructions to seek out disconfirming evidence. We should do the same in the innovation world.
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The Importance of Experimenting
A successful experiment is any that helps you understand and shape your hypothesis.
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Problem Solving: Focus on Pains Instead of Gains
People are more interested in solving their pains than in gaining something. For example, people would rather lose their gut than gain six-pack abs. Citibank ATM machines finally took off during a blizzard when banks were closed and stores had no money.
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Finding the Best Solution: Use Line-Thinking to Connect the Dots
Steve Jobs said creativity is having enough dots to connect—finding solutions in different places. Asking for uses of a brick is different from asking to connect a brick to a random object.
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Innovative Teams: The Four Personality Styles You Need to Have
Innovation is a collaborative process that requires different personalities at each step: analytic people to define the challenge, creative people to generate solutions, people who plan and execute to get things done, and emotional people to manage the change.
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Innovation: Staying One Step Ahead of Your Competition
Innovation isn’t about new products, new processes, or new business models. It’s about adaptability and nimbleness. It’s about staying one step ahead of the competition. Innovation is not an event. It’s a repeatable, predictable, sustainable process.
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Expertise: The Enemy of Innovation
Experts come up with solutions quickly and stop looking for anything more innovative. Breakthrough solutions almost always come from cross-disciplinary teams that look at problems from different points of view.
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Innovation: Spend More Time Defining the Problem (and Much Less on the Solution)
Asking the right question in the right way is the one of the most important parts of the innovation process. Ask concrete questions. Not how do we clean up the Exxon oil spill in Alaska, but how do we keep the oil in the water from freezing?
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The Knowing-Doing Gap
Leaders should both know and do.
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Survival Is Not Mandatory
Survival might not be mandatory, but for organizations that want to beat out their competitors, attention to speed and security is key.
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Execute Or Be Executed
The best strategy is nothing without the ability to execute. Grattan Kirk explains what it takes to deliver on strategy from the top down.
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Admit You Don't Know, Hypothesize, Test, Repeat
Like vegetables, everything gets stale — ideas, strategies, markets, relationships. Unless we reinvent them they will fail. We become more irrelevant every day. The answer we think we know is already obsolete. Admit you don’t know, frame a hypothesis, test it, repeat.
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What vs. How
Apple develops products on the “what” axis, but for every success there are ten thousand failures. For Southwest and Virgin airlines the “how” is more important. Vineet Nayar achieved “impossible” growth by concentrating on the company-customer interaction.
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The Power of 'I Don't Know'
On becoming the new CEO, he was asked, in front of 5,000 employees, “What are you going to do?” He answered, “I don’t know. You know. You tell me.” This transferred ownership to the employees. The job of the CEO is to enable employee performance.
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How to Shift your People from Passive to Purposeful
A call to action includes what, so what, and now what.
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Prudent Risk Taking
Risk-taking is a dance. The risk should be small, to allow for failure.
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Why Organizations Fail to Execute on Their Strategy
We think about goals and people with different parts of the brain. Thinking about one shuts off access to the other. Thus, leaders tend to focus on goals and ignore the implications of those goals for the people who are asked to achieve them.
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Live Event: Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence
This Live Event was initially webcasted on March 6, 2019.
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Live Event: Unlocking Creativity: How to Solve Any Problem and Make the Best Decisions
This Live Event was initially webcasted on February 6, 2019.
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The Link Between Business and Workforce Strategies
Businesses have business strategies but not workforce strategies. The workforce strategy identifies the workers needed to implement the business strategy.
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The Three Elements of a Great Execution
A manager can be a brilliant strategist but not get things done; the world pays for results, not brilliant thinking.
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The Sumo Growth Mindset
If you are the sumo—the big company in your space—entrepreneurs can be great assets. They are risk-takers, true believers, and passionate. The sumo growth mindset leverages their passion and resources to grow your business. Bernie Brenner gives an example.
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Where Does Innovation Come From?
Innovators possess four perceptional habits.
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The Arithmetic of Innovation
It takes 1,000 ideas to find one that can make a difference in the world.
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Partnering with your Competition
Partnering with your competition may sound counter-intuitive and even downright destructive, but Vivek Badrinath shows how this strange relationship can actually help your business be more successful.
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Situations vs. Problems
A situation is not the same thing as a problem, explains William Mitchell, and it shouldn’t be treated the same way.
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Not Just Shareholder Value but Societal Value
Business leaders have to think deeply about purpose, the purpose of their company, the mission of their company, not just relying on shareholder value.
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Trust Your Leaders to Grow the Business
Mr. Gooch explains that growth is supported through delegation of responsibilities and non-interference with daily management with the exception of when it is needed due to the life-cycle of the organization.
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Find Possibilities, Then Execute
Dan Glaser asked his managers to pursue possibilities, not probabilities. Possibilities leave the future open to be created, the landscape to be defined by wide-open opportunity.
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Innovation Vs. Sheet Music
If your boss gives you a “sheet music” assignment, where all the notes are spelled out, you can still add your creativity. Innovate around the melody and chords. John Kao gives an example.
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Explain Why, Then Get Out of the Way
Leaders should frame a need for creativity and innovation by explaining what it is, why it’s important, some ideas about how it could be done, perhaps some expectations, with emphasis on the vision that propels it. Then get out of the way.
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Judgment and Creativity
Freedom from judgment is important at the beginning of the creative process. People who brainstorm understand this. But at some point the tree must be pruned in order to move from openness to closure. That requires judgment.
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Alone then Together: Building More Creative Meetings
Forty years of research on brainstorming confirms that creative ideas are best developed in two cycles. Encourage participants to spend quiet time alone before sharing their thoughts, then repeat — time alone followed by group brainstorming.
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The Case for Open Innovation
Open innovation adds academia, industry, and innovation marketplaces to innovate better, faster, and more cost effectively.
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Open Innovation: The Power of Diversity
Diversity is the power of open innovation.
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Leading Through Critical Thinking
Leaders today need better critical thinking and problem solving skills—a focus on what questions to ask and how to approach the answers to those questions.
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Why You Should Care About Simplification
Companies that embrace simplicity have more satisfied customers and gain an edge over the competition.
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What Leaders Can Learn from Athletes
Unlike most managers, athletes prepare mentally, emotionally, and technically. Mental preparation includes visualizing what to do in different situations.
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Aligning Decisions
Laree Kiely discusses the importance of aligning decisions with the overall organizational strategy.
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How to Innovate Right Now
Reward behaviors that foster innovative, like risk taking, collaboration, and inquisitiveness. Companies that reward outcomes, like a new product launch or a successful proposal, find that their employees stop taking risks, collaborating, and being inquisitive.
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Innovation: Paper Versus Reality
Crazy ideas on paper get shot down, but sometimes are winners. Tamera gives examples, especially Tough Mudder, which was shot down as crazy by Harvard professors. Today, millions compete in Tough Mudder. Give “crazy” ideas a chance to breathe life.
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Throw Ideas Away
Put a wastebasket on a table and hand out index cards. Ask participants to write ideas on the index cards, and then put the cards in the wastebasket. Keep going until the index cards are gone. Then sort the cards. The first ideas will be obvious, then they get innovative.
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Poker and the Art of Management
The logic of poker is the logic of business. Husband your resources but put everything behind real opportunities.
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Effective Risk Management
First, identify the risk. See if you can eliminate it. If you can’t eliminate it, try to contain it. If you can’t contain it, keep an eye on it. If it still goes wrong, have a Plan B. Also, change the culture to reward eliminating risks before they become real. He calls that “Prelimination.”
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Setting Clear & Achievable Goals
Roger Parry shares the secret of setting easily understood goals that will challenge your people without disheartening them.
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Sense Making In Strategic Planning
To make sense in a strategic plan: 1) get outside points of view, 2) allow space for the conversations to take place, 3) state your beliefs in the plan and the strategy based on those beliefs, then ask, 4) Do we still believe that? What happens if we’re wrong?
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Risk Taking Is Disruptive
There is a disconnect between a desire to innovate and the innovation process. You can’t scale down when you take risks; you need capacity and capability. Leaders should model risk taking and reward risk takers. Leaders should know how they show up in the world.
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Utilize Creative People
Companies don’t need to hire more creative people; they need to support the ones they already have.
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Fixation and Imitation
Reusing other people’s examples results in imitation, not innovation.
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Devil's Advocate in Innovation
You can use the position of devil’s advocate to propel advances in innovation.
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How Predictions Kill Innovation
It’s impossible to accurately predict which ideas will turn into blockbusters.
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Using Distance to Unfocus
Creativity is boosted by periods of “unfocus,” which can be achieved through social, temporal, and physical distance.
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Nonlinear Thinking Enhances Creativity
A linear mindset can stand in the way of the creative process.
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Be Honest About Obstacles
Learning about struggles and success is more encouraging than just learning about success alone.
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Creating More Problems Than Solving
Companies that are constantly experimenting are also constantly presenting solutions for their customers.
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Strategy Is a Verb
Aristotle's ancient virtues can be used as a modern strategic guide to business.
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Solving Problems
In rushing to develop a solution, it is easy to miss the real problems.
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Your Business Is The Training & Development Of Your People
Put your people first. ServiceMaster Chairman Emeritus William Pollard explains why it's critical for businesses to make the training and development of its people a top priority.
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Defining Progress
A vision without action is a dream. Doing is action; action is progress. Make sure your innovation projects don’t succumb to dream status.
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The Seven Responsibilities of an Innovation Leader
Seven identifiable responsibilities set you on the path to accomplishing the foremost responsibility of your organization: progress.
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Inspire Innovation Progress
Grow your innovation toolkit by adding these tips to inspire creative progress.
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Innovation Agenda
Creating an innovation agenda is just the tool you need to quickly clarify the often complex decision of where to start and how to get started on a project.
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Create and Support Teams
Innovation teams get their strength from the diversity, dedication, and energy of their members.
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Watch Your Competitors And Challenge Your Strategy
If you can't invite your competitors to share their strategies with you, do the next best thing. Philip Kotler shares the story of how IBM invited Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy - or a reasonable look alike anyway - to discuss how Sun is going to "bury" IBM.
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Integrated Leadership
Is it possible to have both a successful business and personal life? According to William George it is, but there are trade-offs to be made.
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Strategic Thinking in Tactical Times
Joe DiVanna had a diverse group of 30 people write a 45,000-word book on strategy in 24 hours.
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Driving Strategic Change Through Successful Project Management
Execute your strategy in a series of projects while it's being developed.
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Cautionary Tales for the New World Manager
Plan in reverse; decide where you want to be, then plan backwards to see how to get there.
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Risk Management
Don't ask for risks. Ask instead for people's fears.
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Profitable Strategies and Plans
Patricia Wheatly Burt explains her six-point strategic plan.
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Healthy Risk-Taking
Taking the right kinds of risks contributes to an inspiring company culture that drives innovation. Discover what you need to build a healthy risk-taking framework.
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Self-Motivation through Interrogative Self Talk
When we are trying to motivate ourselves, we typically use positive self-talk. “I can do this!” A better approach is to use interrogative self-talk.
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How to Succeed with Strategy
Many organizations fail to execute on strategy because of flawed implementation. Here are four tips for succeeding with strategy.
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Conduct a Pre-Mortem
A pre-mortem pretends you have already failed, asks for all the reasons why, and eliminates the reasons so you don’t have to do a postmortem.
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Innovation means Execution
Tim Sanders discusses how true innovation also means execution of the ideas.
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When and Where Do You Do Your Best Thinking?
Where do you do your best thinking? Chances are, it isn't at work.
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Ask Killer Questions
People go into meetings looking for answers without asking the right questions. Ask better questions to get better answers.
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How to Lead Your Team Through Disruptive Innovations
Overcoming disruptive innovation requires leaders to define reality, instill hope, and encourage exploration.
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Conclusions on Double Digit Growth
Michael Treacy summarizes what he has learned from his research and experience about growth.
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Reinventing Product Innovation
Michael Treacy explains how companies must reinvent the way they manage product innovation if they want to be successful.
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Organizational DNA for Strategic Innovation
Strategic innovation requires organizational innovation or transformation in every respect — the organizational DNA.
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Overview of the 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators
The ten rules for strategic innovators derive from three basic ideas. The new business must 1) forget the old business, but 2) be connected to the old business, which 3) requires learning how to resolve the differences.
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Creativity and Execution
Innovation is creativity multiplied by execution.
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Achieving Growth in Challenging Times: Focus on the Job of the Customer
If you segment only on products and customers you tend to end with one-size-fits-none products. If you understand the customer’s experiences, however, you can provide everything the customer wants and nothing the customer doesn’t need.
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Combine Operational Knowledge with Strategic Vision
Strategy is about deciding what goals you need to achieve, then bringing together resources and opportunities to create a coherent whole that provides competitive advantage.
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The Greatest Enemy of Execution
The greatest single enemy of execution is complexity.
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Gaps in Execution
Gaps occur between plans, actions, and outcomes.
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The Power of Clear Direction
When asked to choose between growing revenue and renewing the technology base if push came to shove, a CEO told the entire company, “When in doubt, technology comes first.” The example demonstrates the power of clear direction.
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Kill a Stupid Rule
Brainstorm, “What rule should we kill or change and why?” Some rules can’t be killed, but can be changed. Everyone puts a sticky note for a rule on a white board that plots implementation (easy/hard) by impact (low/high). Kill at least one rule on the spot.
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Kill the Company
Assemble a highly diverse group of employees and ask, “If you were the competitor, what would you do today to put us out of business?” Post the threats on sticky notes. Then ask how to counter these threats. Answers will help keep the company ahead in the future.
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Innovate with Open-Ended Questions
Instead of, “How can we improve our products and services,” ask, “How might we…,” “How should we…,” or “In what ways can we…” Think of questions ahead of time. For example, “If you were a competitor, what two things would you do to put us out of business?”
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Setting Metrics for Innovation Programs
Metrics help calibrate your efforts and provide a clear path for remedy. Lisa Bodell gives examples of input, development, and output metrics. Metrics signal that innovations are welcome. Too many metrics, however, set handcuffs instead of guardrails.
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Forced Connections
Use the attributes of an unrelated object when you’re running out of ideas. For example, Lisa Bodell uses a bag of popcorn to apply “light,” “fun,” and “natural” of the popcorn to help design a table, then a magic marker for ideas to help design a new shower.
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Wildcards
Ideas are rarely implemented according to plan. Use wildcards to help your team adjust to unexpected changes. Give them ten minutes to plan something, but pull a wildcard after seven: no money, no time, a market shift, etc. New constraints encourage innovation.
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Connecting the Dots of Innovation
The Competing Values Framework describes how to unite an organization to create four types of innovations.
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Innovative Teams Do Have An 'I'
Innovative teams require conflict, because conflict provokes innovation.
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Let Adversity Fuel Innovation
Steve Lundin provides two examples of how you can use down time to innovate.
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Rapid Prototyping to Drive More Successful Innovation
Mistakes are bound to happen. Better to learn from them right away.
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Creating an Innovation-Friendly Environment
To create an environment that's friendly to innovation, decrease the clutter and noise.
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Prioritize and Collaborate to Execute Strategy
The advice sounds obvious, but is typically ignored. If you start something new, stop something else. Keep initiatives to the top two or three. If we don’t collaborate when we reach the C Suite it’s because we view it as a competition; I won; you lost.
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Disruption Is the Only Path to Growth
A business model — value proposition, resources, processes, and profit formula — is designed not to change. The only way to lead in both the original market and a disruptive market is to establish an independent business.
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To Innovate, Ask What the Customer is Doing
When you’re trying to innovate, ask what the customer is trying to accomplish.
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Proctor & Gamble: A Major Transformation
Proctor & Gamble simplified an inefficient matrix organization to one that placed equal emphasis on maximizing profits, increasing sales, and reducing costs. The new organization succeeded because it encouraged people in different areas to work with each other.
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Design Thinking and the Problem of Fixation
In the ideation stage of design thinking, it's easy to get trapped into a single idea—a problem known as fixation. Mike Roberto presents techniques to overcome this problem.
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Selecting the Best Idea
Selecting the best idea seems like the right thing to do, but it can cause problems down the road. Find out how to choose the right ideas to take forward.
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Instinct, Debate & Data Make The Best Decisions
To make wise decisions, you need to consider several factors. Gavin Patterson describes those factors and helps leaders see how to incorporate them in their decision-making process.
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Setting The Tone For Customer Advocacy
Customer advocacy cannot be the responsibility of the CCO alone. As Jeb Dasteel shares, every person in an organization must believe and participate in customer service to create a successful culture of wooing clients.
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The Importance Of Balancing Strategy & Operations
Every team needs a good balance of experience and abilities in order to be successful in the long term. Don Vanthournout highlights how strategy and operations work together.
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Leveraging Networks To Change The Competitive Landscape
As Andrew Ray bluntly puts it, "A competitor is not always a competitor." Here he shows how investing in networks can change the competitive landscape.
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Delivering Financial Data Promptly
Believing the impossible is possible, Ulf Lilja shares how Sony Ericsson implemented a one-day close.
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Avoiding Self-Delusional Planning Assumptions
The self-delusions in strategic planning are: 1) recasting a big challenge as a small one; 2) assuming customers will buy our products and services; and 3) using placeholders to disguise absence, e.g., we will find ten customers in such-and-such market area.
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Overview: Blue Ocean Strategy
Blue Ocean is a strategy to move from the red ocean of bloody competition to uncontested market space.
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The Creativity Killers: How Control and Restriction Can Lead to Destruction
A company can build a culture of creative thinking, but there is a counterculture that fights against that creativity, Gaia Grant says. Here, she identifies and details the seven key killers that can destroy creativity.
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To Innovate Celebrate Failure
To get your team to think innovatively, says Sujaya Banerjee, you must first remove the fear of making mistakes.
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Decision Tools: Value x Effort
To make good decisions, use a simple framework in the decision-making process. Ian Metcalfe shares how easily a two-by-two grid can be used to achieve effective, immediate solutions.
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From Creativity to Innovation: Discover, Dream, Design, Decide, Do
Creativity, Ian Metcalfe explains, is part of the innovative process. In this lesson, Metcalfe details five mindsets that make up a collaborative model of innovation.
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Systems for Innovating: Google and Whirlpool
Google allows employees to do anything they wish during 20 percent of their time. Google also has systems for floating ideas up the hierarchy. Whirlpool uses “innovation rooms” to generate new ideas, with systems to translate ideas into action and estimate their value.
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Strategic Planning: Respond Intelligently to Happy Accidents
We’re told it’s better to be proactive than reactive, but the world is not predictable.
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The Golden Circle: The Three Essential Elements of Organizational Success
Three concentric circles are WHAT we do, HOW we do it, and WHY, with WHY in the center, and HOW on the outside.
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Strategic Thinking: The Difference Between a Leader and a Manager
Leaders see the big picture, how things are connected to the future, and how to get out of the box. Managers concentrate on the here and now.
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Three Approaches to Strategy Development
You can do what your competitors understand, or do what they do, but to establish a competitive advantage do what your competitors don’t understand and can’t do.
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The Role of Managers in Strategy Formation
People at different levels need to think in terms of different time horizons.
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Strategic Flexibility
Separate the people who make strategic commitments from the people who manage strategic uncertainty.
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Do the Impossible: Innovation Begins with Belief
Noah Blumenthal shares a story of a delayed flight and a flight attendant that turned something thought of as impossible into a possibility with some creative thinking.
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The Six Questions to Organizational Clarity
A leadership team must create organization clarity by answering six critical questions: why do we exist beyond making money, what are our basic values, what business are we in, how will we succeed, what is our priority right now, and who must do what for this to occur.
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Diversity and Creativity Drive a Culture of Innovation
People typically rate themselves differently for creativity and intelligence. Sir Ken Robinson, however, thinks creativity and intelligence are closely related.
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How Leaders Foster Innovation
Organizations need a strategy for innovation—a process for developing new ideas on a regular basis.
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Creativity is a Collaborative Activity
Creativity in organizations is driven more by teams than by individuals.
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Being A Customer-Driven Organization
A customer-driven organization understands not only what a customer is trying to do, but also the full perspective of the customer’s process, including why.
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Deep Customer Understanding
To understand customer needs, consider all the stakeholders.
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Organizational Growth: Look Beyond your Four Walls
To be competitive, companies need to look beyond their own four walls.
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Think Before You Plan
Planning by itself is not strategy; leaders need to spend time thinking to build a successful scheme.
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Jumping Uncertainty Gaps
The success or failure of jumping uncertainty gaps depends on how far you jump. Max McKeown shares examples from the Lego Group as a lesson in risk-taking.
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Becoming More Strategic
To become a better strategist, start asking why things are the way they are.
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Lead Like an Innovator
The ability to lead like an innovator comes from a mindset that focuses on discovering the unknown and a persistence to see through things that have never been done.
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From Tactics to Strategy
First, make sure you have great reporting. You need a dashboard and exceptions. Others need to look at everything; you don’t. Then worry less about efficiency and more about effectiveness — less about what and more about why. Force-rank your priorities.
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Aligning Groups
Working faster isn’t enough to keep up with the speed of disruption. Agility and a common way of working are also key.
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Sharing Ideas
One of the best ways to communicate ideas is by creating simple drawings—you don’t even need to be an artist.
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Working Backwards From a Win
To capture a win, plan backwards from your goal.
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Stay Ahead of Disruptive Innovation
To stay ahead of disruptive innovation, know everything about your core and find other people to know everything else.
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Getting Out of an Innovation Rut
The best way to escape an innovation rut is to bring in others to pull you out of it.
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Innovation Programs at Crown
Dan Abramowicz candidly shares his thoughts about the successes and failures of some of Crown's innovation culture initiatives.
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The Top Three Things New Managers Should Do to Stimulate Innovation
Unless people are given explicit instructions to be innovative, they'll probably play it safe and go with the status quo.
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Rotations Stimulate Innovation
Rotations can stimulate innovation in intangible but dramatic ways.
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The Other 95 Percent of Innovation
With incremental innovation, organizations make everything they do better.
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The Fuzzy Front End
Taking high risks during the early concept phase—the fuzzy front end—can yield high rewards in the end.
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Eliminating Bad Profits (the enemy of growth)
“Bad profits” are profits that are inconsistent with the golden rule.
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Two Myths about Creativity
Labels block creativity. The biggest blocker, however, is fear. We let fear talk us out of reaching our creative potential. We may have a great idea in a meeting but hold back from fear.
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Creativity is Learned
We may understand the need for creativity, but not see ourselves as creative.
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Facilitate Creativity Using Role Storming
Role storming is brain storming in character. Assign people roles. This is fun and removes the fear.
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The Power of Diversity
Diversity drives innovation, which provides a competitive advantage. Volvo asked a team of women to design a car. Women don’t like to open the hood; when they do, it’s usually to add washer fluid. The solution was to add washer fluid on the side, as we do gasoline.
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Problem-Solving with the Power of Play
Turning problem-solving into a game taps into the power of play to engage others in brainstorming.
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Problem-Solving with Curiosity 2.0
The business world is demanding answers faster than ever, and curiosity is what leads to great solutions.
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Problem-Solving Using Informal Networks
Posing problems to informal networks generates valuable support for problem-solving.
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Check the Checker: Don't Make Assumptions
In business, you can never assume. When you assume, problems can arise.
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Problem Solving: Keep Asking Why
To solve and prevent problems, it’s important to ask why and keeping asking why.
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Managing for Market Share or Profit
The pursuit of market share over profit can be deeply entrenched.
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The ROI of Creating a People-Centric Leadership Model
Based on Stern Stewart economic value added (EVA) analysis, their annual shareholder value has grown 15 percent-plus since 1988. When you give people an inspiring vision, responsible freedom, and celebration along the way you get exception results.
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Understand Your Competitive Advantage: The Singer Story
Singer trained 60,000 people world wide to sell sewing machines, but didn’t see that their advantage was their sales force, not their machines; they could have sold other household goods. By contrast, IBM transitioned from punched cards to information solutions.
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Strategy 101: Focus on Assumptions
A strategy includes a vision, the environment, assumptions and beliefs, a strategy, and a plan to execute that strategy. Focus on the assumptions and beliefs.
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Competing Smarter: Do What Your Competition Isn't Willing To Do
How do you get your people to innovate? You start by looking at the competition.
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Managers Need to Understand their Customer's Business and Strategy
Align your business model with your customer’s strategy and the business outcomes he is trying to achieve.
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Challenge Your Orthodoxies
Write down your core beliefs about consumers, how you operate, and how you make money. Then flip them. What if they weren’t true? What would we do differently? Marla Capozzi gives examples.
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Where Executives Struggle in Innovation
Executives struggle in 1) setting the focus for innovation, e.g., twelve initiatives is too many; 2) setting the outcomes that define success; 3) insufficient attention and governance; not encouraging debate; and 4) too much attention to process.
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The Importance of 'Why' in Innovation
Incentives like recognition, working with a certain leader, and monetary rewards are associated with unsuccessful outcomes. What works is to explain why the innovation is needed. That builds trust and purpose, and commitment to reach the top of the mountain.
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Requirements for a Successful Innovation Team
First, clearly define the problem to be solved. Second, assemble the right mix of deep technical expertise. Third, the team needs resources, but not too many; they need to be experimenting and getting to the next level. Fourth, leaders should be engaged throughout.
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Innovation Often Isn't Innovative
Innovation has its fads—open innovation, business model innovation, etc.—and the fads usually don’t work. Leaders apply tools designed for other problems, like process maps and stage gates. Teams often change the idea to fit the process rather than the reverse.
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After You Complete an Orthodoxy Exercise
After you question some basic beliefs, you can focus on questions you should ask. Change your perception to be more creative. Use analogy brainstorming; how would Google attack this problem? How would constraints change your attack? Test as quickly as possible.
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Finding Time for Innovation
Innovation requires debate, reflection, and learning. These take time. 3M and Google provide time, which allows “collisions” with people, and time to read something that sparks an idea. If there are only two dots in your head there’s only one way to connect them.
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Funding Internal Innovation through Budget Reallocation
To innovate organically requires P&L dollars, which are the most difficult to get. But if companies think about inputs in addition to outputs, they may find diminishing returns, overinvestment in core products, duplication, and other opportunities for reallocation.
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Strategic Planning and Alignment
The business plan and strategic plan should be the same.
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Real Creativity and Innovation Happens in Networks
The idea that creativity and innovation comes from individual geniuses is a myth; they always come from networks.
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S.O.A.R
S.O.A.R. is a results-oriented method of strategic thinking and planning that has proven to be highly successful in a variety of industries and organizations.
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The 5D Cycle of Appreciative Inquiry
To create amazing, positive change, follow the 5Ds: define, discovery, dream, design, and destiny.
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How Does Innovation Really Happen?
Innovation may come not from thinking outside the box, but from finding the right box to think in.
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The Innovation Economy and the Future of Business
The innovation economy of the future will be based on infotech, bioscience, nanoscience, and cognitive technology.
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Creativity Involves a Leap
The creative process involves a leap to connection rational with irrational parts of the brain.
