4 Ways Tech Is Innovating Ongoing Education for Businesses
Today's forward-thinking companies know that giving their employees access to ongoing education opportunities is an excellent way to prepare them to deal with changing circumstances in their industries.
Emotional Intelligence: Why is It Pivotal to Good Leadership?
Emotional Intelligence has long been known for being one of the main qualities of a good leader. Psychologist and journalist Daniel Goleman wrote “What Makes a Leader”, a popular article from 1998, where he lists emotional intelligence as one of the main leadership components.
The Future of Innovation: Learning to Lead with Heart
Design Thinking (DT), (also known as human-centered design) is an innovation process used to evolve products and services in business and social impact sectors. World-renowned companies like Apple, Google and GE use DT for business solutions, and top-tier colleges like Stanford, Harvard and MIT teach DT to students looking to solve the world’s biggest problems.
5 Tips to Drive Innovation in Your Small Business
It’s a fast-paced business world out there where innovation is the name of the game and a powerful tactic that ensures long-term success. After all, if your company is not innovating and reinventing its processes across the board, then you’re falling behind.
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.
How to Improve Your Company’s Productivity
Maintaining productivity and positivity in the workplace is an ongoing struggle for many businesses and employees. The grind of 9-to-5 life weighs on people and makes it hard to find excitement and motivation throughout the day.
The Six Step Innovation Lifecycle
Innovation isn’t a one-time project. It’s a continuous activity. Which is why we are seeing numerous organizations adding an innovation department to their company infrastructure. In fact, in a recent survey of our client base, we were surprised to learn that almost 40% of our customers operate out of a dedicated innovation group.
The Five Types of People You Need to Facilitate Innovation
Having the right people on your start-up’s team – especially in its early days – can mean the difference between unparalleled success and embarrassing failure.
7 Innovative Approaches to Educating Your Team
Innovation can’t happen without education and inspiration. Stagnation is the absence of creativity, and far too many teams aren’t using education as a way to keep the fresh and creative ideas flowing.
How to Become a Business Linchpin: The Desirable Skills and Tools of Successful Workers
Some years ago, I had read Seth Godin’s book, Linchpin, which detailed the importance of becoming a critical component of the workplace environment. I’ll spare you the details, but the idea was to learn and apply as much as you could so the business was reliant on your efforts.
Why is Crowdsourced Innovation Perfect for Nonprofits?
When the United Way told the story of their crowdsourcing program, Edwin Goutier, Innovation Lead at Unitd Way, said that one of the things that he hears a lot is that people don’t think of the United Way (or nonprofits in general) as innovative.
How Can Your Business Manage Freelancers Better?
According to one survey, about 45 percent of all working people in America telecommute at least part-time. Most important reasons why this is so being the fact that this kind of work allows one to adjust their work hours to their day-job and in this way become a stream of side-revenue. Therefore, it is more than clear that remote workers, freelancers in particular, are becoming a significant portion of the workforce you cannot afford to neglect.
How to Drive More Innovation In Your Workforce
Let’s face it, creativity separates humans from the rest of the animals. Our species has opposable thumbs and with that, it seems, the inborn drive and ability to alter our environment. No wonder the topic of innovation ability provokes such primal emotions. Yet — like speed, intelligence or artistic talent — innovation talent is NOT distributed evenly across humanity. Given this truth, what is the best approach to driving more innovation in your workforce?
Want to Build a Culture of Innovation? Then Seek Out Your Innovation Agents
‘No man is an island, entire of itself’ runs the saying and it should probably go on to say that no concept should be introduced in isolation either. In the VUCA world, we’re all challenged with constantly trying to do something new, to create lasting change, transformation and disruption. That challenge means it helps to have others on your side, adding their enthusiasm, energy, perspective and creativity to the mix. Why… because if there’s one truth about innovation, it’s that it’s definitely not a solo sport!
How do We Nurture Innovators?
More and more companies are looking to understand and identify innovation talent. Why? Because if companies understand how to encourage original thought and reward innovation efforts, they’re more likely to stay relevant and at the top of their game. Not to mention that they’re far more likely to attract and retain top talent that is interested in working for a company that is forward-thinking and rewards creative effort.
A Commitment to Diversity is a Commitment to Innovation
The more you allow disparate ideas to mingle and collide, the more you maximize your chances for true innovative thought to emerge. Learn all of this and more in a complimentary white paper about why innovators want to nurture workforce diversity.
Are Legacy Approaches to Talent Inhibiting Your Innovation Efforts?
The legacy approach to talent selection involves matching education, length of experience and functional skills to the role. All of this makes sense as a baseline, and for well-established professions. But, we argue, selecting talent for innovation requires a whole new approach. Companies must recognize specific innovation skills that drive business outcomes. Yet today, most lack the tools to do so.
How to Make Your Business More Innovative
Are you trying to think of ways to make your business more innovative? Innovation has become a vital part of success for business. Technology has made it easy to expand globally, reach a larger target audience and significantly boost profits, but it’s also brought a lot more competition. This means that to keep up, businesses need to ensure they’re innovative and capable of consistently delivering new and exciting products and services.
6 Potential Roadblocks to Innovation
Does it feel like your efforts in innovation lately have been…lackluster? Are you finding that your team just isn’t coming up with the great ideas you know they can produce? If your business is feeling stale and stagnant, you obviously want to know why, so you can make changes. Innovation efforts aren’t always simple and easy—and there are definitely some roadblocks that can come up along the way. Don’t get discouraged if you run into any of these common problems—you just have to be determined to prevent and work through them whenever possible!
9 Ways to Convert Employees into Intrapreneurs
Companies that encourage and reward intrapreneurship have a great advantage when it comes to retaining the best talents - especially important in today’s creative climate. Here are a few ways that your company can turn your employees into highly-engaged intrepreneurs.
The Frustrated Innovation Team: What Should They Do?
Many executives talk a lot about innovation, but they don't really know how to make it happen. A corporate innovation team asks themselves: How do we "educate" our executives on innovation management and develop stronger corporate innovation capabilities together?
Supporting Innovation with Autonomy and Accountability
Innovation tends to thrive in an environment where there are less bureaucratic restraints and an appetite for calculated risk. However, without a structured management system in place, experimentation can go awry and great ideas risk falling by the wayside. This is where accountability and autonomy can provide the essential framework to support the innovation process to its full potential.
Creativity is Key: Tips on Avoiding Groupthink
It’s awesome when everyone agrees, isn’t it? Yes—and no. Most of us have, at some point, fallen into the trap of groupthink to avoid conflict and promote harmony in a group, whether at school, work, or on a committee. Groupthink has its perks: everyone feels comfortable, and there’s no risk of tension among members. It’s safe. Easy. Unfortunately, it can also kills creativity and innovation.
How Improvisation can Boost Innovation
If you have an innovative culture already in place (meaning you’re working with stuff like agile project management, design thinking, lean, etc.) perhaps it’s time you consider Applied Improvisation Training. If instead you are a static and uncommunicative company, Applied Improvisation may even work against your innovation efforts. Edoardo Binda Zane explains more.
Executing on Innovation – The Required Key Ingredients
Innovation: We all have seen the biggest, most successful companies talk about it and share their success stories. We have read about it in the latest business journals and magazines. We all want it in our organization but the right recipe with the right ingredients is often elusive. In this article we will share different views and discuss key ingredients required to create, execute, and innovate in your organization.
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.
Innovation Fitness: Measuring It to Maximize It
To gauge the innovation capabilities of an enterprise, it is helpful to apply a systematic method for assessing the quality of, and the relationship between the various and distinct dimensions that drive all functions of the enterprise. As with a sports team, simply having talent does not ensure success. It is the quality of the team work which ultimately elevates or hinders the level of their play.
Your ‘Innovative’ Workplace is not Enough
The term “innovative workplace culture” is increasingly clichéd, with little thought about what it means in practice. And yet a successful workplace culture is a business imperative for companies expected to lead the way in design and innovation in today’s experience economy.
The Idea Game Helps Teams ‘Battle’ to Produce the Best Ideas
The Idea Game is a new group brainstorming tool that corporate teams can use to generate fresh ideas and insights. Developed by Swedish creativity consulting firm Realize AB, it provides a variety of creative stimuli using a card deck and game board to generate ideas, and "idea battles" to help identify and improve upon the best ideas.
How Human Behavior Can Skew Innovation
A variety of human group behaviors can undermine innovation. For best results, we need to be aware of them and mitigate those that can derail innovation efforts.
Why Diversity is the Mother of Creativity
Diversity is the key to creativity. Not just diversity in your workforce, but in your personal life, the teams you form and the managers whom you hire and promote, explains Jeffrey Baumgartner.
How to Leap over the Shortcomings of Traditional Group Brainstorming
Brainstorming can be effective if it is performed properly. In this article, Jeffrey Baumgartner explores some of the weaknesses of traditional brainstorming and explores several potentially fruitful alternatives.
15 Foundations for Facilitating Creativity in the Workplace
Here are lessons learned from 12 years of creative facilitation in business, from creativity expert Michelle James.
How Thinking about your Business as a Collection of Franchises can Unleash Innovation
Fostering a sense of ownership among employees can unleash tremendous capacity for innovation, says Edward Glassman. Like franchisees, who own their independent businesses but operate within a well-defined structure or system, empowered employees tend to be more entrepreneurial and committed to helping the organization to thrive.