Quantum Computing, Zen Philosophy and Space-Time
The up-and-coming field of quantum computing, currently in a prototype phase, will probably be an innovation with exponential and wide-ranging impacts in the power and speed of information technology. There are some interesting parallels between the behavior of quantum computing particles, or qubits, and basic principles of Zen Buddhist philosophy. Like modern physics, this article employs a “space-time” concept of innovation, with implications for the process and intensity of new idea development within organizations.
How to Encourage Employees to Have a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Having the right work-life balance is integral to maintaining one's health. A poor work-life balance can have serious ramifications, including chronic stress and burnout.
Zen Philosophy for Stretching Innovation Space-Time
The non-duality principle of Zen philosophy suggests a more intensive approach to the dimensions of innovation “space-time.” Business teams should stop following a simple sequential procedure in which new ideas are accepted or rejected almost as soon as they arise. Instead, they should take extra time and create a “learning space” or study environment for all of the new ideas in place of the typical reactive, judgmental, for-or-against decision-making process. Connections between these ideas may lead to further innovation opportunities.
Pre-suasion: How to Influence With Integrity
Professor Robert Cialdini has spent his entire career researching the science of influence. This has earned him an international reputation as an expert in the fields of persuasion, compliance, and negotiation. On this week’s episode, Robert discusses how to enlist the support of your senior managers prior to making an important presentation, how companies can boost their sales productivity by up to 60%, and what we can learn from Warren Buffett on communication.
How to Engage Team Members from Different Branches
Employees located in the same office generally have no lack of interaction and can discuss their projects and demanding tasks together any time. But those who work in different branches and different cities may face real problems with team work. The same happens with those who work remotely and don’t have a physical office. Among the growing number of startups along with big international organizations this problem is growing. Roughly 87% of organizations admit that engagement is one of their top challenges that should be addressed in a proper manner.
Managing Risk and Shortcuts for Project Managers
Project managers are often dealing with loads of stress coming from all fronts, such as the pursuit of deadlines. Pressed by senior managers to deliver, project managers may find themselves resorting to risky shortcuts to make ends meet. Here are some ways to manage these risky shortcuts in project management.
The Most Powerful Question In The World of Business
Michael Bungay Stanier, Founder of Box of Crayons, teaches the principles of how to do less hard work and more good work to managers around the world. In this interview he explains why coaching can transform not only the person receiving the coaching, but also the coach; he reveals what he believes is the best coaching question in the world, and why it is so powerful and AWEsome. And finally, he unpacks habits, how to develop new ones, and their importance in the world of work.
Why Top Executives Do Not Get Innovation – and What to Do About It
Many leaders of corporate innovation efforts struggle to get the support they need from executives higher up in the organization. Top executives can be skilled at talking the talk about innovation, especially in public venues, but frequently fail to walk the walk when it comes to making key choices that determine whether an innovation project will happen or die on the vine.
15 Innovative Meeting Formats that Boost Creativity and Strengthen Engagement
How to organise a meeting in such a way that they result in creativity and energy? How to ensure that people are actively participating instead of being only passively attending meetings?
Defeating the Corporate Antibodies
Change is frightening to many elements inside the typical organization. Change threatens people’s power, their status, their egos, and, in some situations, even their jobs. Change can make someone’s expertise obsolete and thereby make them obsolete as well. Because people are afraid of change, innovation efforts often cause the eruption of corporate antibodies that fight to kill innovation and maintain the status quo.
A Roadmap for Building Corporate Innovation Capabilities
What should a roadmap that helps you develop corporate innovation capabilities look like? How do you bring new thoughts and approaches together with current and past initiatives (both successes and failures) and turn this into a single framework? How do you keep pushing and developing your organization to become more flexible and agile without losing out on the current overall efforts and expected results?
Riding the S-Curve with Whitney Johnson
“Companies don’t disrupt, people do,” says Whitney Johnson, who is best known for her work on driving corporate innovation through personal disruption. She discusses the four things that help you know whether you’re on the right or wrong S-curve and shares examples of how to disrupt a constraint in a company environment. Tune in for more insightful advice.
Creating an Innovation Network with Rob Wolcott
As Co-Founder & Executive Director of the Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN) and a Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Rob Wolcott knows a bit about networking and the politics of innovation. In this episode of Innovation Ecosystem Rob shares practical advice for intrapreneurs who are looking to get stuff done from within the middle of the organization. And for growth leaders of businesses, he also has some great tips about where to get your inspiration!
The One Skill that Innovators Forget
Most innovators cultivate traits like creative risk taking, positive reinforcement and strategic planning. However, there is another branch of innovation in which innovators still require a great deal of training.
Innovate as a Team? Work on Your Psychological Safety!
To be able to use the full potential of innovation, psychological safety within teams and organisations is essential. Psychological safety is the shared belief that it is safe within the team for interpersonal risk taking. There is a direct relation between a psychological safe climate and performance of the team. (Edmondson 1999)
12 Tips for New Business Owners in the First 12 Months of Their Company’s Life
If you are starting a new business you may be feeling a little overwhelmed by the number of decisions you need to make. You may wonder what secret tricks successful business owners used to ensure that their companies grew in the right direction. Here are twelve tips that you should use in your first twelve months in order to make sure that your company has the best chance to succeed.
Innovation: Knowing Where to Begin
Let me see if this situation sounds familiar: you’ve promised your boss that you’ll generate at least one percent growth over last year. You’ve been racking your brain with ideas about how to improve your product or develop a new offering or finding new efficiencies which will help your margins, but the few ideas that you’ve come up with haven’t had legs and pages keep coming off the calendar.
Employee Innovation Training – What Approach Works Best?
As organizations increasingly focus on building corporate cultures that are more open to new ideas, they are examining ways that they can engage a range of employees in innovative thinking and actions. In the past, the answer to this kind of effort was to run a challenge and pat yourselves on the back for a job well done.
How Innovation and Authenticity Complement Each Other in a Corporate Environment
Authenticity and innovation are two of today’s biggest corporate buzzwords. They are often considered as separate values, but in reality they have much in common and in this article we will examine the areas of overlap and potential leverage benefits.
Navigating the Make versus Buy Decision: A Crowd Sourced Check List
Product managers facing the make versus buy decision for their organization have a lot to consider. Biases abound. In this article, the innovation architect Doug Collins shares what was on the minds of senior product management leaders on this topic when they convened, recently. Their top 10 factors follow below.
A Compelling Value Proposition: The Missing Tool in Your Lean Startup Kit
Eric Reis first introduced the concept of Lean Startup in 2008. Today Lean Startup is deployed far beyond entrepreneurial circles and is taking root in large, complex organizations looking to improve their new product success rates – and in the process build lean cultures. This is very good news. Too often the processes corporations use in pursuit of innovation can actually erode their capability to innovate. Still, when applying the principles of “Build – Measure – Learn” to initiating Lean practices in corporations, there is room for improvement…and possibly even for a pivot.
How to Achieve More Effective Performance Appraisals
Roughly only half of all companies conduct annual performance reviews. Of the fifty percent of companies that do tend to provide consistent and reliable feedback to their employees. However, it can be awkward at times to tell someone on your staff that they aren't doing a good job or attempt to offer constructive criticism without sounding condescending. What are some ways to make a performance appraisal more effective and less awkward for yourself and the employee?
Shouting the Innovation Message (Finally): The Growing Importance of Internal Communication Planning
In the past year or so corporate innovation leaders have clearly taken an “ecosystem” perspective to their innovation activities. What this ultimately means is that they view all of their program’s activities as a connected whole and driving towards higher-level goals, often aligned with broader cultural change.
Knowing You, Knowing Me: Innovation as Transparency
What is happening in the world of innovation these days? In this article, innovation architect Doug Collins reflects on what he heard and learned at the Chief Innovation Officer Summit in New York this month. In short: do not underestimate the value of transparency that the practice brings.
Communicate to Innovate: Tips from the World of Improvisation
Effective communication is at the heart of innovation: harnessing insights from customers, partners and co-workers, sharing ideas, building upon points of view, advocating and gaining support for one’s innovations all require razor sharp communication. Interestingly enough, communicating effectively is a two-way street. The sender and receiver of information are both responsible for landing it appropriately, and both sides need to actively participate. Two simple, but powerful behaviors that can help increase the efficiency of communication are listening and declaring.
Toward a Coherent and Self-Sustaining Innovation Framework
Innovation leaders today don’t have an easy job. Tasked with bringing Innovation to their organization, they often face a variety of interpretations of innovation throughout the organization, a lack of comprehensive understanding of what innovation really entails, and what it requires to truly embed innovation in a way that it sustains itself.
5 Management Mistakes You Don’t Realize You’re Making
The dictionary defines management as, “the process of dealing with or controlling things or people.” Sometimes, managers don’t understand why their team does not function cohesively. Below are five management mistakes managers don’t realize they’re making and tips to avoid these missteps.
Enhancing a Startup Culture in a Corporate Environment
There is little doubt that startups are dominating leadership discussion in many sectors of the economy, and have even become a source of admiration in popular culture. Whether driven by the hopes of “unicorn” valuations and lucrative exits or by the desire for more informal, collegial working environments, startups are more prevalent and attractive to existing and potential employees than ever. In fact, in a recent Accenture survey, only 15% of the class of 2014 would “prefer” to work for a mature, established organization.
Cultivating Idea Stakeholders
In many organizations, big ideas cause change, and thus they tend to encounter a significant amount of resistance and inertia. The solution, according to Jeffrey Baumgartner, is to cultivate idea stakeholders. Read on to learn how to build support for your big ideas.
Customer Intimacy and Empathy are Keys to Innovation
Just because a company is spending money on research (such as markets, customers, or new technologies) and development doesn't mean they will get innovation. Innovation, as with advertising, training, or many other organization investments, depends on the quality of the investment as much as the quantity of resources put in it. A high proportion of innovative new products, services, and companies flop. That's often because managers build better mousetraps without first making sure there are any mice out there. Or that people still want to catch them.
7 Strategies for Sustained Innovation
Sustained innovation comes from developing a collective sense of purpose; from unleashing the creativity of people throughout your organization and from teaching them how to recognize unconventional opportunities. Here are seven strategies for sustaining innovation in your organization.
Want to be more successful? Develop an attitude of service
If you desire greater success in your life, look for creative ways to increase your level and quality of service to others. Read on to learn some practical ideas and strategies that you can begin using today to increase the value you provide to others.
Presenting Innovation in a Way That Gets to ‘Yes’
As the global economy has improved and CEOs get past their hunker down/cut costs/survival mentality, the question of how to drive growth begins to dog them. But getting senior management to take action on innovation often needs a catalyst, and a solid strategy for getting them to say "yes" to innovation.
Selling your Ideas: A Critical Executive Skill
Building the buy-in for your ideas is a key determinant of your success, both inside and outside of your organization. How do your idea-selling skills stack up? Here are some tips on how to improve them!