Here’s an exercise in connecting up ideas based on a few innovation-related quotes that have caught my attention over the past few days: If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you’re an idiot. That’s Umberto Eco, via Stowe Boyd. This reminded me of a point made […]
One of the long-term themes running through the blog is how to encourage people to be more innovative. This a really tough question because the foundation of innovation is what people believe, say and do. In other words, becoming innovative is about changing the culture of the organization and this is always a long haul. […]
Tom Fishburne makes brilliant cartoons about marketing and innovation, and the one in today’s blog post really rang true for me: You should read Tom’s post, because he raises some important points about the problems with focus groups. I recently talked about some of my frustrating experiences with focus group research as well. The danger […]
I’m reading Douglas Rushkoff’s book on innovation called Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out. It has some intriguing ideas. Here is how he outlines the basic premise of the book: Just last year, I got a phone call from the CEO of a home electronics chain, asking if I could devise […]
Adam Thierer wrote a terrific post today exploring his ongoing major theme comparing internet optimists and pessimists. He has written a series of very interesting posts assessing the arguments of the pessimists that think that the impact of the internet on society is generally bad (e.g. Nick Carr, Andrew Keen, Jaron Lanier), and the optimists […]
Grant McCracken’s latest book Chief Culture Officer is a really interesting one. The basic premise is that for businesses to succeed, they have to be in touch with culture. In defining culture, McCracken doesn’t make much of a distinction between high-brow and low-brow – he’s more interested in the things that real people are actually […]
I had an interesting experience the other week as an editor of an innovation journal. The specifics of the story are a tale of academic corruption but in the broader sense it highlights issues about how academics should communicate their work. Tim is probably freaking out as he reads the blog title but I promised […]
Several reviews of The Social Network hit on an critical innovation point – that the value in a great idea is not in having it, but rather in executing it. The topic comes up because apparently the movie deals a fair bit with the lawsuits brought against Mark Zuckerberg once Facebook became successful. Here is […]
I learned a lot in my first job as a manager. In part because it wasn’t a traditional business, nor a normal management position. My first real job as a manager was being Station Manager at my college radio station. It was an interesting situation. We had about 120 people that worked at the station. […]
