Start Here for Creative Leadership
How can leaders fight apathy or indifference in the workplace and create an environment where creativity and innovation can naturally flourish?
Four Ways to Manage Creative Employees
Often managers make two distinct and completely opposite sets of mistakes when they’re tasked with managing highly creative employees. By means of their leadership approach, they either don’t acknowledge the uniqueness of their creative employees or they take the recognition too far and essentially create inappropriate expectations and division within their workplace.
Try Using the Institutional Yes
When new ideas are voiced in your company is the typical response ‘yes but…’? If so, you’re really saying ‘No’ and closing the door on new ideas and open-minded employees. Paul Sloane says we could all learn a lesson from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by implementing the Institutional Yes.
Disappointed By Innovation Results? It’s The Culture!
Though companies invest into innovation they like results less and less. There seems to be a glass ceiling for driving innovation, which neither new tools and processes nor innovation consultants seem to crack. It is time to face the elephant in the room: company culture and its impact on innovation performance. Top management needs to learn deal with it. Then company culture will become a driver of innovation rather than getting in the way.
Inspiration Versus Aspiration: Two Approaches to Innovation Leadership
Inspiring leadership is what we have all been led to believe creates successful businesses. The fact that history is dotted with examples of successful companies which businesses study closely for clues their own leaders can emulate, clearly shows that we believe there is a formulaic style of leadership which is key to a thriving business. If only it were that simple. Kate Tojeiro, founder of progressive leadership consultancy, X-Fusion, takes a closer look at two key types of leaders.
How Appreciative Inquiry Can Help you to be More Creative: Interview with William E. Smith, Ph.D.
Appreciative inquiry gives us the power to transcend current models, thinking, judgements and structures, so we can realize more of our creative potential, explains William E. Smith Ph.D, President of ODII. Bill is an innovative thinker and practitioner in the field of leadership, organization and social development. He's developed new, creative approaches to organization for multinational corporations, governments, and villages all over the world.
How Improvisational Techniques can Benefit Innovators
The techniques of improvisational performance can be applied in helpful ways to any situation where people are collaborating to innovate or build something, says improv expert Kat Koppett.
How to Master Innovative Leadership
Innovation obviously requires creativity. That much everyone agrees on. However, it has a secret ingredient that must not be left out: Leadership. All innovators have to play leadership roles, whether they are in formal executive positions, or quite the opposite. In this article Alexander Hiam delves deeper on how to master innovative leadership.
Ideas Move The world!
Are you someone who is always coming up with great ideas? If not, do you think it's possible to learn and train to become a better idea worker? IMD Professor Bill Fischer believes you can.
The future of creativity is relational
The future of creativity is relational, based upon engaging and connecting with others, according to author and consultant Peggy Noonan.
25 Tips for Innovation Session Facilitators
An ideation session is most rewarding when the facilitator skilfully encourages the participants and monitors the process. Gijs van Wulfen together with FORTH facilitators have compiled a list of 25 tips to help facilitate successful ideation meetings. Do you have more?
Put down the iPad: How to Set Rewards for Collaborative Innovation
Engaging in collaborative innovation by participating in activities such as ideation challenges can put community members at odds with the carrot-n-stick incentive and power structures that exist in every organization, including those that ostensibly support a culture of innovation. As the sponsor of your organization’s program for collaborative innovation, you can structure rewards in ways that give your community members the space and resources they need to pursue ideas to fruition. In this article, community architect Doug Collins helps you think through the process of defining a rewards structure for a basic ideation challenge that respects the innovators and collaborators who contribute.
Four Points to Consider as the Business Sponsor of an Ideation Challenge
Your organization holds you accountable for the profit or loss of one of its brands, channels, or regions. Maybe you oversee the business as a whole. You have an opportunity to apply collaborative innovation as a means to engage a wide swath of colleagues on resolving a critical business question with you. Should you proceed? If you do proceed, what points should you keep in mind to ensure you make productive use of your time and the time of your community members? In this article, community architect Doug Collins covers the four critical points to consider as the potential business sponsor of an ideation challenge.
How to Communicate the Value of Idea Management
The success of an organization's idea management program is at the mercy of its supporters - the employees. The innovation team and top management must effectively communicate their goals to employees so they understand what's expected of them and feel confident that their ideas will be taken seriously. Enno Scholz walks us through this communication process.
4 Steps to Design-Inspired Innovation: A Primer on Design Values For Business Leaders
What can design really teach business leaders about how to run their organizations? And where does it fit into the ever-evolving lexicon around innovation? Nicole Chen sketches out the top four values that business leaders should adopt from design thinking.