Innovative Brain Food from New & Improved

Consciously Listen and Speak

Clear communication is one of the critical skills for working well on an innovation team.  It's essential to the innovation process in terms of: a) conveying solutions effectively,
b) diagnosing challenges and opportunities properly, c) ensuring successful implementation, and d) creating brilliant solutions in a team environment.

Yet it's so easy for communication to go awry.  Many years ago, when I worked in the advertising field, I would periodically get phone calls from a recruiter, who would always try to hook my attention by asking something like, "How would you like to work on Nestle" or "How would you like to work on Toyota?"  What he meant was, would you like a job working for an agency working on the Nestle or  Toyota advertising business?  I admit, it did capture my attention, especially if I was having a bad day.

One day, after a particularly stressful one, he called me just as I had walked into my house (coat and hat still on) and proposed his latest opportunity, "How would you like to work on Mars?"

Efficiency, Productivity & Longevity: The survival of an innovation culture

We are constantly asked to facilitate (or train people to facilitate) meetings with creative process to increase efficiency and/or productivity. We do so and are always successful. It's a simple thing really. But.

A provocative book review I was pointed to this morning by dialygood.org got me thinking about a tension that exists between efficiency/productivity and longevity/robustness. It was reviewing a book by Andrew Price entitled: Slow-tech: Manifesto for an Over-wound World  I haven't read it... yet.

The review, published by Resurgence Magazine, starts with the following:

"A central pillar of our society is the drive for efficiency, extracting the most in the shortest period of time is the motivation behind the vast majority of actions in the modern world. As a concept, efficiency is so ingrained in our consciousness that to call it into question can seem counter-intuitive, if not completely ridiculous."

Now that's just the kind of provocation that energizes my innovative brain.

We can facilitate a creative process session that will net gain within a very short time. There is always low hanging fruit, even in the leanest of organizations. But I wonder.

 In the search for the short term gain, do we get ourselves so focused on the quick win that we lose our perspective on long term systems? In the quest to satisfy the shareholder and analysts with quarter on quarter growth, do we end up gutting the system that made our company the great thing it was and feeds its potential to be even greater in the future?

 I think this happens. And its a slow subtle change that we don't notice. One of those boil the frog by gradually heating the water kinds of things. But I think we can do something about it.

Elegant Innovative Solutions

Airplane rides around an airport and an old armored truck called "The Armadillo” don’t sound very elegant, but in fact, they are.

 Whenever a team works on finding solutions, typically there are a range of options that are narrowed down to a final short list.  One of the built-in criteria that is useful for evaluating a solution is whether or not it is elegant.  

 Creativity researcher Susan Besemer talks about elegance as an important subset of criteria for determining if a solution is really creative.  She defines elegance this way in her article, How do you know it’s creative?

Innovation and the Power of Passion

One of the personality characteristics of innovators and innovation leaders has been a challenge for us to nail down. The challenge is one of language.

Words that describe personality characteristics all have pitfalls: meanings taken by the listener that are not intended by the speaker. We've gotten pretty comfortable with all but one characteristic from a language / teaching / communication perspective. We're currently breaking it down into six "improvable" personality characteristics, or six values one might attempt to live. They are:

• Humility, or not being arrogant

• Curiosity, or wanting to learn and know more

• Courage, or being willing to take reasonable risk

• Tenacity, or not giving up easily even if you're alone in your idea

• Integrity, or living up to these characteristics and accepting feedback as a guide to behavior change when you're not

• ????? or ... well what is the mysterious 6th characteristic?

Integrity is critical for innovation -- video shows how...and how not to!

Have you ever worked with someone who said they wanted new ideas, but when you brought them, you were shut down?  That's not integrity, which is one of the critical values of innovation leaders.  Here's our rather irreverent take on it in video form.  Watch and enjoy (and just maybe re-learn):