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Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category

5 tips for better brainstorming

Posted in Innovation, tagged , on October 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

I MENTIONED to a project sponsor the other day that I was about to do a brainstorming workshop, and she laughed at me saying how “1980’s” the word ‘brainstorming’ was. I don’t know what to call it any more, maybe a more sophisticated word is ‘ideation’. Either way, coming up with ideas is an important [...]

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Current volatility as an opportunity for growth

Posted in Innovation, tagged , , , on September 23, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Discussing the local economy, Battelino said the strength of household consumption in terms of spending on services had been strong despite subdued retail sales, with households spending more on services, most notably entertainment, dining out and overseas travel. “At one level this was surprising given the clear signs of caution among households, but it is [...]

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Benchmarking and best practices are stupid

Posted in Innovation, Strategy, tagged , , on September 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

A friend and colleague, Steven Shapiro has a new book Best Practices Are Stupid coming out at the end of the month. He is right best practices really are stupid, but I repeatedly hear managers asking for benchmarking reports. But why are they stupid. An article in the McKinsey Quarterly on Strategy (sorry lost the [...]

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Quick Wins versus Big Wins

Posted in Innovation, Management, tagged , , , on January 21, 2011 | 2 Comments »

LAST month I wrote about Kaizen versus innovation, and how neither is better than the other they are in fact two elements of the same thing. But in any project, whether kaizen problem solving initiative or a completely new innovation there is often a drive to deliver quick wins. Instead of focusing on quick wins, [...]

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Kaizen versus Innovation

Posted in Innovation, tagged , , on December 16, 2010 | 4 Comments »

An ongoing debate is that innovation is better than problem solving. But in reality you cant have one without the other. Innovation is usually large scope change, kaizen is the small continuous change demanded daily. Innovation – that is large scale is scary – the smaller low key circumvents the fear mechanisms. It’s the frog [...]

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Characteristics of innovators

Posted in Innovation on November 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

  In this post at the Catallaxy Files on innovation: An innovator is essentially a change agent, challenging the status quo with the uncomfortable notion that we can do things better. For the innovator trying to make things happen on the ground with customers or though endeavouring to reshape market structures, this requires tenacity, drive [...]

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Innovation station: McDonalds hamming up innovation and succeeding

Posted in Innovation, tagged , , on November 5, 2010 | 2 Comments »

In 2002 McDonalds posted its first ever loss, resulting in the head of the CEO Jack Greenberg. Eight years later McDonalds is back and brighter than ever before, having implemented a slew of innovations since 2002 such as McCafe, salads, espresso coffee and as FAST COMPANY reports there are many others. Many know McDonalds for its bland [...]

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Plan less, experiment more

Posted in Innovation, Strategy, tagged , , on October 6, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Managers, and many business people hate uncertainty, and in order to overcome it they plan… and plan, and plan. But planning rarely helps, because beyond a certain level of actions you run into a high level of uncertainty where any extra time is futile. This is never truer than in strategy. An article in Sloan [...]

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The iterative approach to creativity and problem solving

Posted in Innovation, Process Improvement, Strategy, tagged on September 22, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Today I read an interesting post by the very good Cal Newport, about the concept of not starting and instead focusing on the idea. Actually he advocates focusing on the quality of the idea and not starting to work on it until it has built up such a head of steam that it takes on [...]

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Positive randomness

Posted in Innovation on September 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

The other day I wrote about the perils of optimising, the corollary of not optimising is to have excess capacity which can be used to insulate oneself from unexpected shocks, for example a loss of a key client or job as a result of the GFC. The other alternative is, one now has excess resources [...]

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