kSensei Blog

Innovate on Purpose: The politics of innovation

You may be wondering what “politics” and innovation have in common. I was thinking that innovation in many firms is a proof of the “tragedy of the commons” concept in economics - but no one wants to read a blog post about economics, and much of the challenge of innovation is about beauracracy and culture, not economics.

Wikipedia quotes Aristotle as saying that “That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it”. Likewise, innovation, while “important” to many different groups and functions within an organization, seems to suffer from a lack of attention and focus.

A Problem Shared Is a Problem Solved

Not so long ago, companies created departments to create innovation. But the result was often that innovation was turned into a state secret. The only people who knew what was going on — and therefore the only people who could really contribute — were the Chosen Ones inside the innovation department. Not surprisingly, this approach limits both the quantity and quality of ideas so companies have started to search for new ways of developing new ideas.

FO Fast Company

ChiefInnovatorOnline.com: Better Isn’t Enough - You have to be different

Almost every corporation on our planet is on a quest to outperform its rivals in two key business activities – improve the performance of current business, and create the future for the business. The trouble with this is that few organizations do this well – they are either good at continuous improvement or good at innovation, but not good at both in a strategic, tactical and deliberate way.

Good Morning Thinkers!: Google’s 9 Rules

Google’s nine principles of innovation. These rules are:

1. Ideas come from everywhere
2. Cheer everything you can
3. You’re brilliant, we’re hiring
4. A license to pursue dreams
5. Innovation, not instant perfection
6. Data is apolitical
7. Creativity loves constraints
8. It’s users, not money
9. Don’t kill projects, morph them

First on Good Morning Thinkers!

Communication Nation: Hacking the Human OS

Hacking the Human OS is a series of posts that investigates the mechanics of the human mind. Understanding your Operating System (OS) will help you think better, and help you get better, more consistent results from your interactions with other people.

Innovation as Language Action

By learning seven foundation practices, anyone can produce innovations intentionally.

Innovation as Language Action propose a framework for identifying the linguistic distinctions and specific skills involved in taking new technology inventions into the broader market.

It defines “invention” as the actual creation of a new technology, and “innovation” as the process of technology adoption - for example, the Wright Brothers invented flight at Kitty Hawk, but the innovation in flight was the DC9, 30 years later. PC/M was an invention in operating systems, but MS-DOS was the innovation - it spread broadly and became the standard for future developments in the industry.

Dr. Peter Denning and his co-author, Robert Dunham, detail seven specific elements of an innovation framework:

* Seeing opportunities
* Envisioning new worlds
* Offering new games
* Executing plans and tools
* Producing adoption
* Sustaining infrastructure
* Leading with care, value, power, and focus

First on What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Sam Ramji of the Microsoft Emerging Business Team

Mapping Emotions

People are shying away from the next “best thing” and opting for products that “work for me.” As a result words like “emotion” and “personal meaning” are finding their way into corporate strategic briefs, in places where words like gigabytes and baud rate used to reside. Even new descriptions of great design — “easy,” “accessible,” “affordable,” “empowering” and “personal” — reflect on the person rather than the object.

Emotional Mapping is a design process that uncovers feelings and attitudes towards products. It gathers information on why people prefer one product over the other. It identifies key attributes, tangible and intangible, overt and subtle, conscious and subconscious, that help connect products and people. This insight can focus a design team’s creativity, add clout to the creative process, and result in more innovative, radical and successful ideas.

InnovationMarketers blog: Methods of generating new ideas for entrepreneurs

Summary: Even with a wide variety of sources available, coming up with an idea as the basis for new venture can still be a difficult problem. The entrepreneur can use several methods to help generate and test new ideas including focus groups, brainstorming and problem inventory analysis.

These are some of the key methods to help generate end test new ideas by Steven Pierce.

Leonardo da Vinci: Qualities of a Genius and How to Think Productively

According to Thomas Alva Edison “Genius is ninety nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration” this mean that you must be more on hard work than wishing to be someone. Even if you’re not a genius, you can use the same strategies as Aristotle and Einstein to harness the power of your creative mind and better manage your future.

These eight strategies encourage you to think productively, rather than reproductively, in order to arrive at solutions to problems. “These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history.”

InnovationMarketers blog: Creative Problem Solving

So, you have a problem that you need to solve quick. You have agonized over this issue for hours, days, months, or even years and you still can’t resolve it. Well, don’t worry my friend; the answer is already within you. You simply need to call forth your creative energy in order to bring the answer into your focused mind.

How do you do this? It is easy. You simply utilize creative problem solving, that’s how. Creative what? Creative problem solving. You see, creative problem solving is the powerful act of utilizing internal out-of-the box creativity to solve everyday problems.

Creativity that is already inside of you and the good news is that it can be done by anyone with any type of problem. It matters not if you’re a toddler or a sassy sexy citizen, it matters not if you are a housewife or a neurosurgeon, you can solve problems creatively and you can do it without stressing out. All you have to do is follow these basic creative problem solving steps by Stephen Pierce

a million monkeys typing » New: The Crossroads Form

Methods for brainstorming about projects are often hard to implement. Some of them are so needlessly complex that it’s difficult to be creative and free-form with your thinking. Mind-maps (and mind-mapping software like NovaMind and Inspiration) can be useful, but they take some getting used to, and often work best when several people are involved. Others, like the D*I*Y Planner Brainstorming template (basically, an empty grid for note-taking and doodling) are too free-form, and the lack of structure and prompts may do little to help bust your creative blocks.

Douglas Johnston introduce here a draft for a new form, which he is calling (at least temporarily) “Crossroads”, that you can use to capture and expand upon your ideas.

InnovationMarketers blog: 10 Innovation Strategy Tips

Innovation does not magically occur within an organization. Rather, an organization must adopt an innovation strategy in order to successfully foster innovation. For the innovation strategy to succeed, it must align with organizational values, objectives and the strategic focus.

What are the best ways to achieve this? Here are 10 successful steps for creating an innovation strategy

by Stephen Pierce.

Harvard Business Review Online | Managing for Creativity

Over many years, the leaders of SAS Institute have distilled a set of principles for getting peak performance from creative people. Among them: Value the work over the tools, reward excellence with challenges, and minimize hassles.

Fast Company | A Problem Shared Is a Problem Solved

Not so long ago, companies created departments to create innovation. But the result was often that innovation was turned into a state secret. The only people who knew what was going on — and therefore the only people who could really contribute — were the Chosen Ones inside the innovation department. Not surprisingly, this approach limits both the quantity and quality of ideas so companies have started to search for new ways of developing new ideas.

One new idea is distributed or open source innovation in which customers (or anyone else for that matter) are the co-producers of the products and services they consume.

Source: Fast Company

Oxford Muse - The Future of Networking

Mas que interesante articulo sobre el futuro de las redes. Theo Zeldin, quien escribe este artículo analiza el boom del análisis de redes, desde otra perspectiva, la de un historiador, identificando cuatro nuevas visiones de cómo usar el desarrollo de redes para crear un nuevo perfil de hombre para el nuevo milenio.

Zeldin sostiene que es necesario desarrollar nuevas redes basadas en la imaginación, en la memoria, en una nueva clase de vida privada y en la experiencia.

Redes basadas en la imaginación porque es necesario encontrar múltiples relaciones, conexiones, explicaciones al mundo que vivimos.

Redes basadas en la memoria, porque es necesario, acopiar los recuerdos de todos y de cada comunidad y civilización para poder trazar estrategias eficientes basadas en las experiencias previas, sean de éxitos o fracasos.

Redes basadas en una nueva clase de vida personal, porque es necesario desarrollar nuevas relaciones entre hombre y mujer, que destierren los estereotipos actuales de relación entre el hombre y la mujer, camino a una nueva relación de iguales.

Y finalmente redes de experiencias porque hace falta probar distintos trabajos y contextos para desarrollar nuevas relaciones de conocimiento. Debemos evitar ser especialistas y experimentar la vida en banda angosta.

“Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.”

Wernher von Braun

Creating Passionate Users: Rubberducking and Creativity

Sobre como contarle a un osito de peluche tus problemas en voz alta, puede ayudarte a encontrar la solución a tus problemas.

Revelador e interesante, además de gracioso.

The David Allen Company

Sobre la creación y ejecución de ideas para aumentar nuestra efectividad.

HBS Working Knowledge: Innovation: Entrepreneurial Hospital Pioneers New Model

A “Robin Hood” cardiac hospital in India–which charges wealthy patients, yet equally welcomes the destitute–is an exciting example of entrepreneurship in the subcontinent, says HBS professor Tarun Khanna.

A Better Scheme for Strategic Planning

The lengthy, top-down methods of yesteryear are unsuitable for these volatile times. Here are tips for a nimbler, more creative process