Can large firms pivot? There are examples of firms that have, but not a lot of them. It’s a challenging process in the best of times, but they often try to do it in a crisis, which is even tougher. Your best strategy is to start experimenting now.
When people say that their organisations are risk-averse, often they actually mean that they are variance-averse. This causes problems over the long-term, but experimenting and innovation can help you avoid these problems.
You should start a blog right now. It will help both you and others learn, and it will help you build a skill.
The innovation posts that caught my attention this week highlight the importance of asking better questions, and using an experimental approach to improve our innovation skills.
Should “innovation” only be used to refer to big, world-changing ideas? No. This is actually a dangerous approach to innovating. The biggest hurdle is actually getting started – it’s more important to put effort into that.
DK interviewed me for a podcast last week – this bit on how to use experimenting build your innovation culture is my favourite part from it.
Here is a simple process that will help you innovate more effectively.
My weekly roundup of great reading – the theme this week is that innovation is hard, but here are some ideas that can make it an easier journey.
When new ideas arrive, it might be easy to see that they will eventually win. But when should you adopt these ideas? It’s a hard question to answer.
How do we innovate in a risk-averse culture? By realising that a culture is something that we create ourselves, through our interactions with people daily. When we change the way we act, we start to change out culture.
To build our innovation capability, we need to have a clear purpose, and a strong community. We also need to integrate innovation with our strategy. The posts that grabbed my eye this week all address these issues.
Mistakes are fine, as long as we learn from them. Here is what I learned from one of my recent ones – about, ironically, a friend of mine that teaches us how to think better!
