New and Improved Innovation Blog Site

Your Story Isn't My Story: How to Understand Why No One Understands

Amazing how two people can see the same thing and conclude something entirely different.  And THAT has a serious impact on an organization's ability to drive change, in your ability to sell an idea, and a team's ability to coalesce around a vision.

A simple illustration.  Recently, in the middle of the night, there was a significant explosion and fire at a small electrical substation at the end of the street (no one was injured, no property damage).  My spouse reported the next morning hearing several trucks in the alley, which I had completely slept through.  However, via my main source of news (Facebook), I learned of the explosion and fire from a neighbor's post.  Roused from sleep by the noise and lights (which lit up the night sky), his first thought was, "Asteroid!"  How silly, right?

CEO Study Finds "Creative Leadership" Most Important Quality

More than integrity (52%), global thinking (35%), and influence (30%), the 1500+ CEOs interviewed by IBM for their bi-annual study said that creativity (60%) was the most important leadership quality necessary for the next five years.  The CEO's also said that the ability to deal with complexity was the biggest challenge they faced. 

We believe that there is a direct correlation between those two insights, as creative thinking and innovation leadership (which we've been preaching and teaching about for a couple of decades) is critical when dealing with tough decisions and complexity.   One of the other things the CEO's noted was the importance of making decisions quickly given the increased complexity and overwhelming data that exists.

Core Principles of Innovation for Results – DOWNLOAD this FREE Webinar now!

A new breakfast drink made by mixing orange juice and coffee.  Truck shock absorbers that use cornstarch and olive oil inside.  Using sugar and dish soap to keep down dust on desert airfields.  Inflating a flat tire using the fizz from a 2 liter pop bottle.  If you’re not sure which of these are real and which are bogus (fake), then you must have missed our most recent webinars. (Don't worry we recorded it!)

Download It Today! ... CLICK HERE

In our latest webinar, Bob Eckert and Jonathan Vehar reviewed the core principles of creative thinking necessary for innovation.  With some fast talking (and significant editing), they were able to distill the essence of our Two-Day Training in Creative Thinking and Innovation into one easily digestible hour that is educational, informative, and perhaps a bit of fun.

View It for Yourself! … CLICK HERE
(Please be patient while the file downloads).

Available on Kindle! More Lightning, Less Thunder: How to Energize Innovation Teams

More Lightning, Less Thunder illuminates a contrarian approach to creating innovation in your organization and strikes at the heart of what electrifies successful teams. Prepare for a fun, provocative read that will help you get results!

More Lightning, Less Thunder inspires the fundamental behaviors and attitudes necessary to bring innovation into the world. Whether you are a leader or a team-member, this book will help you and your colleagues work more effectively together to think creatively, create innovative results and deliver top- and bottom-line improvements.

(Start reading today by visiting our posting on the Kindle Store at http://amzn.to/clyK8S )

Open Innovation: Created by Systems, Powered by Culture

Just back from the Marcus Evans "Open Innovation" conference, my mind reels from the various learnings and insights.  This conference featured speakers from companies as diverse as Northrup Grumman and Southwest Airlines, National Institutes of Health and Rio Tinto Alcan, Intuit and Weyerhaeuser.  All of the speakers had key insights that expanded my awareness on the subject of open innovation (OI).

What's OI? Largely credited to a book by Henry Chesbrough entitled, (wait for it) "Open Innovation," this is a phenomenon where the traditional closed model of seeking new ideas from only within the system (e.g. your department, your division, or your company) is broken open.  Using Open Innovation, ideas come from other people, other departments, and even outside of the organization, and ideas are also licensed out to other organizations when they fit other organizations better.

Strategies for Open Innovation

During lunch on the second day at the Marcus Evans Open Innovation Conference, I had a conversation with Tony Tomazic, Consumer Innovation Director at Humana, about the aspect of the conference that we both found a bit frustrating: just what the hell is open innovation? 

Now in Tony and my defense, we knew what is was walking in (heck, he was one of the expert speakers!), and we weren't alone asking this question: the nine other people at my lunch table (all of whom were responsible for open innovation in their organizations) were wondering the same thing.  We found that the various presenters at the conference all had different approaches to it, everything from totally open crowd-sourcing to blind submissions via the internal network.  And the presentations were wildly different depending upon the perspective of the speaker.  What a great intellectual stew in which to be immersed!

For the record, I love questions that challenge my fundamental understanding of the basics. 

Given this question rattling around in my head, eventually the following two-by-two matrix popped out:

In this diagram, there are two axes: X) where the ideas come from and Y) how to obtain participants. The x-axis looks at whether the source of the ideas is from the inside or the outside of the organization.  Internal sources might be anything from a "suggestion box" to sophisticated internal idea management systems that stay just within the company intranet.  External sources would be systems that go outside of the organization to find industry experts, partners, researchers, or inventors.