I ran across a great quote today from Ernest A. Jones about creativity and commercialism. As usual with these sorts of things, it’s nearly impossible to track down the original source, but here is the quote: Only for the phony is commercialism-the bending of creativity to common utility-a naughty word. To the truly creative, it […]
There are no innovation shortcuts. I was reminded of this when I ran across the Crispin Porter + Bogusky Employee Handbook. Here is what the 2004 version looked like: Crispin Porter + Bogusky employee handbook View more presentations from whatidiscover The firm has been reasonably successful, and the Handbook makes it sound like a pretty […]
If you have been reading this blog for a while you will know that a lot of the research work that Tim and I do looks at the link between networks and innovation. When we talk about networks, we mean all sort of ways that people and businesses can connect to each other. For example, […]
Conventional strategy theory tends to equip firms badly for 21st century competition. One of the great myths in the MBA strategy toolkit is the concept of sustainable competitive advantage that is endowed to a firm through access to a relatively unique internal resource. Most strategy textbooks talk about particular resources such as knowledge, relationships and […]
Better business models lead to better businesses. One critical part of building a better business model is getting your value proposition right. An excellent value proposition means that you have to be excellent at, well, something. But what? One framework that John uses a lot in his classes is this from The Discipline of Market […]
I was running an executive education class last week for a group of people from an engineering firm. At the course dinner, we had a speaker from a cutting edge research group within the firm who described a bunch of technology that will completely transform their industry when it hits. The reaction of the class […]
You are responsible for getting your ideas to spread. How can you do this more effectively? The first step is to connect ideas creatively – this is the fundamental creative act in innovation. Here are some thoughts on this from Noam Chomsky, discussing the role of education in an excellent post from Maria Popova: You […]
This is just off the top of my head, so I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but here are some of the jobs that I’ve had: Strawberry picker, warehouse worker in a pottery factory, church janitor, , house painter, circuit board assembler, babysitter, lawn mower, DJ, radio assistant music director, college food services worker, feed mill […]
Business school academics spend a lot of time doing statistics with the objective of trying to find the most important factors for making innovative work teams and businesses. This is hard because innovation is very rarely caused by one thing and sometimes what is causing innovation in one group will inhibit innovation in another. For […]
When I’m doing public talks, one of the big misconceptions that I have to work around is the idea that innovation is only about making new stuff – that you can only innovate if you’re making things like iPhones. Schumpeter defined innovation as the formation of new connections which drive economic growth. In The Nature […]
Innovation is an evolutionary process. Here is John explaining what that means: <p. Generic evolutionary processes have three parts – generation of variety, selection, and replication. This maps on to the three steps in the innovation value chain. The Innovation Value Chain also has three steps – idea generation, idea selection and execution, and idea […]
There are obstacle to innovation everywhere. Risk aversion, lack of resources, lack of enthusiasm, not enough time, not enough ideas, too many ideas – the list is potentially endless. You can help your organisation be more innovative right now (today!) by answering these four questions: What is one idea that I can execute right now […]