Innovation articles
How can you determine if part of your business should be innovated on or not? Many companies and leaders become afraid to make a decision because they are afraid it might not work out. Ironically, not making a decision if often the worst thing you can do, as it is guaranteed not to change or [...]
A few weeks ago, I saw an article in Fast Company about the layoffs at IDEO, one of the world's most respected Design Thinking firms. In fact, IDEO was one of the pioneers of Design Thinking back in the late 1970s, but the process of using Design Thinking as part of innovation work really exploded [...]
People are afraid of failure. In fact, people tend to avoid failing publicly wherever possible, especially in the workplace. This can result in people and projects trying to hide failure, or avoid trying things which challenge them at all so that they are less likely to fail. There are deep-rooted evolutionary reasons why we feel [...]
I recently developed a new perspective on the difference between incremental and transformational innovation, and it has reshaped the way I think about growth and progress in business. When you are working on incremental innovation, the focus is on improving something your company already makes. This is typically a product or service that has an [...]
Don't fall victim to confirmation bias. If you set up your innovation experiments to just prove or confirm what you hope to find, you will miss out on the sort of valuable information and insights you can use to actually make your solution better. Instead, focus on continuously improving. Improve. Don't prove.
Have you ever wanted to buy something, but the person selling wanted more than you thought it was worth? That person might have been suffering from the Endowment Effect. The Endowment Effect is a cognitive bias where people who own a good to value it more than people who do not. It was popularised by [...]
Recently, I was speaking with a corporate client about a challenge they were having with their innovation process. They had just run an idea-generation challenge and received a decent number of responses from their employees about new innovations they could pursue. The issue was that the company now had no idea which of the ideas [...]
One of the biggest questions I am getting from businesses at the moment is what the potential impact of a recession or the slowdown of the economy might have on their innovation efforts. And according to a new report by Innovation Leader and KPMG USA called "Benchmarking Innovation Impact, from InnoLead." (available for download from [...]
Is it better to have grit, or know when to quit? A few weeks ago I was listen to an excellent episode of the Innovation Show podcast, with guest Annie Duke. It was about her new book "Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away", and there was one topic they spoke about which [...]
Hi there, With 2022 almost behind us, a lot of companies and teams are planning their next steps for 2023. This is especially true for venture and innovation teams, who let's face it, many of whom had a very tough 2022. With the global economy stalling and fear of an upcoming recession, many companies have [...]
