Innovation: The Who's Where's and How's

So, here is the thing...communications is about sharing. We humans are “wired” to communicate. I read once (albeit about 10 years ago) that about 67% of what people talk about on mobile handsets is what they call “gossip.” Call it what you want; gossip is communicating and everyone participates in it. Hear me out. Take “THE media”, the big, scary media, they communicate to us inane things that we really don’t care about but yet they do such a good job of imbedding us with it via the many outlets that even people like me, totally devoid of any interest whatsoever in Tiger Woods and much less Golf, have me talking and writing about it. So there, gossip IS communications. So, back to Twitter; Twitter is about a new way to communicate and document. It is a new way to share with the World and a new tool for us to use judiciously. At first I was not seeing the value of Twitter but then I immersed myself in its potential and discovered that it was up to us – the human race - to use it in away

Reflecting back on some of my writings about how Innovators have a distinct set of skills that are very different from what our MBA culture promotes, here comes affirmation of these thoughts from the December 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review and Mr. Christensen himself and his associates. The title of the piece is: “The Innovator’s DNA.” Yep, discovery skills are important and distinct and they are: Observing, associating, questioning, experimenting, networking. So, smash together Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole new Mind” + Frans Johansson’s book “The Medici Effect” + Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and you get the same insights. ( A lot more work of course, but fun!) Proof yet again that new ideas are nothing but packed vectors emerging from the greater collective ethos and there really are no “pure” ideas. Perhaps, that is, for the wheel J

I get a kick out of people talking about hard vs. soft skills and the preeminence of the former over the latter. In a World of evolving globalization and all the derivations therein such as Glocal ; Global Village, Primitive Global, World Citizen, etc...the abilities to relate, build consensus , persuade across differing cultures and personal and business practices/nuances are more important than ever -the subject of multiple posts in this blog. I would say now that the preeminence is flipping to soft vs hard. Why? From my vantage point technology (hard) is nothing without creativity (soft) and value building/generation skills (soft). It reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with the Founder of a startup right after the tech bubble had exploded and I was looking for a gig. It was circa 2002 and I was trying to secure a business development consultancy. The conversation went something like this: "I would love to use you right now but now I need to focus on hard skills&quo

I hear in NPR this am about the transition that you, the movie industry, will have to go through with the digital revolution. As one that has been imbedded into your space over the last few years and living in your world; I can only say that it will be painful. I know this because we Telecom people have experienced the disruption that digital has caused on us over the last 10 years and we see many parallels with your industry. But, don’t despair fellow movie executives. We are here to help you if you will listen. We have been through this and we can give you a lot of advice and here is but one piece: Think of your industry not just as a provider of entertainment and look for other ways to categorize what you do. Play what/if scenarios and and/yes scenarios. For example, one of the big discoveries of what Telecom does (sadly retrospectively) is that we “enable creativity.” If we had known this at the beginning of the digital attack on our industry, who knows, perhaps we would be Google.

So, this is where this thought originated. I was talking to a colleague about how stupidly we have have organized ourselves inside companies. We " comparmentalized " our thinking and have created these static and vertical buckets: "product development", "product management", "public relations", "marketing"etc... What we have not created and need to create are "passion" and "creative" management theories that aggregate these skills/abilities into tiger/virtual teams with members that are passionate about the tasks at hand. In my experience, the first step in selecting a tiger team member is to find those that have the passion. How do you do this? You "shop" it around and those interested will raise their proverbial hands and will want to participate. Moreover, however, Innovation managers need to be very cognizant of the effects management policies will have on people's creative drives; the management et

Last Friday I attended an early venture breakfast where young companies go on stage and present their business plans in an effort to secure funding. The audience was mostly venture capitalists, all with different investment stage philosophies. Some like to come into the early stages, some mid and some when companies are fully matured and are looking to scale after achieving cash flow positive status. I have gone to many of these over the years and it is a fascinating process that everyone in Innovation management should be exposed to; it presents us with a unique opportunity to experience a drastically different perspective and energy. It is, in short, a new ecosystem that needs to be understood well, specially if one works with young companies as I do. I found that these entrepreneurs could also learn a thing or two from other – more corporately focused "intrepreneurs." One is that they need to be much better at evangelizing their ideas and in the process of doing so words a

Two thoughts. One on innovation management, the other on innovation casting: 1) In a globalized world where virtual and matrix management is becoming the rigor, we need to change how we manage processes and people. One thing is for certain, however. Personality, energy conveyance and the ability to stimulate, motivate and persuade are still relevant and I would argue more so. The only difference is that now these attributes need to be projected via digital means: video calls, conference calls, the written word on emails, etc…What does this mean? It means that communications and interpersonal kills are more important than ever and need to developed even more so. How to improve on these: attend improvisational sessions, take acting lessons, learn how other cultures communicate and take media training…This just for starters. 2) My wife and I were brainstorming yesterday as to why Facebook users have (some of them) this incessant need to update their profiles constantly. The answer we came

Trying to tap into the zeitgeist is not an easy thing, but as someone said (paraphrasing): one can never be wrong in trying to bring the future forward. I am starting to hear and read a lot about empathy. (Yes, that human quality that rumor has it we all possess but has been somewhat suppressed by our acquisitive culture.) Books are being written about it and one that I read recently is www.wiredtocare.com/ , a book written by Dev Patnaik, an innovation consultant/guru and all around nice guy. So being someone that likes to look for evidence (anecdotal of course) in real life – you know, life is it happens here and now, visceral, raw, cultured & civil- I have been listening and have found evidence that people are thinking a little more empathetically. I won’t deny it, most of the people exhibiting this new found awareness are what I call “new life agents”; people that are a bit more advanced in terms achieving a holistic humanist vision regarding the whole spiritual/life/purpose/b

One of the “global” themes that cut across my opinions and writings is that nothing will remain static and everything will becoming dynamic. From how we build cars to how we relate to our customers and children. Why? Because communications technology and Innovations are making it so and telecom carriers are a critical piece of the puzzle in enabling this “dynamism.” As such they need to continue to shift their thinking from “network based” to “creative enablement.” But I digress. Everything – and I mean everything - out there is subject to the static vs. dynamic dichotomy and enterprises need to adapt to this paradox. For starters we need to develop different and more dynamic KPI’s (key performance indicators). This became evident the other day in an exchange I had with some innovation colleagues on the question of entrepreneurs vs. "intrepreneurs" (those inside corporate environments “doing” innovation- iPhone anyone!) and which are more effective and which add more value to

Well, you know what they say...Instead of complaining do something about it....Well, I have been complaining about the lack of "peripheral" vision that our executives and leaders have displayed over the last few years so I have been promoting the idea of acting and improvisational workshops for adults. Nothing new, really, but I think there is an untapped demand for such workshops here in Northern VA (NOVA), where we are somewhat guided by staid and stale thinking. The challenge, of course is to get people to recognize this deficiency and for them to come out and experience the mind shaping (and blowing) benefits of improvisational workshops. For those in NOVA and that are interested in attending; please direct your browser to www.creativecauldron.org , and search for "In the Moment" Adult workshop . The workshop will run every Thursday for a month. Full disclosure, I am a board member of Creative Cauldron and will be taking the class myself.

I was having a chat with a recruiter the other day and of course I took the opportunity to share my insights into his industry. Let me just say that one of the big, gigantic, jumbo mega trends out there and is that nothing - nothin - can or should remain static. Static is dead and dynamic is in. Why, you may ask? Because technology (mostly informational) has created the ecosystem to make everything dynamic; there is no industry out there that cannot benefit somehow from the adoption of new informational technologies to make their relationship with its employees or customers much more dynamic, real and transparent. Needless to say the “recruiting” industry is one that is absolutely ripe for dynamism starting with how they engage the new generation of workers and how they properly engage the tail-end of baby boomers that have been frustrated by their leading edge cohorts (now retiring) that have intensity and pent up energy, packed with immense knowledge in their brains and with a desire

Just when one thinks no one is listening - or reading- one gets a couple of emails from friends as to why I have not published. First let me say THANK YOU. It is truly an honor for all of you to take the time to read what I write. At the risk of running into an existential wall, one is always questioning if there is true value on what one has to say and getting notes from some of you confirms that – well – perhaps there is something there. Thanks again for your time. Life is busy and getting busier with all sorts of new demands on our time, a lot of them driven by new technologies. Dedicated attention is definitely becoming a paramount commodity which should be accorded its proper amount of respect. With this in mind, let us talk about “engagement energy”. As is always the case – at least with my odd psyche- my insights are developed from multiple vectors and the two most relevant ones on this occasion occurred during a high performance driving (www.driversedge.org) school for teenager

The move from text to visual is clear; we are in the middle of it. What is also clear is that attention spans are becoming shorter and that "movement" and "snappiness" in visual communications is becoming a must. This will be the new normal. A new and interesting perspective regarding the synergy of these trends, is that they will become essential if a business is to be able to communicate adequately with its new workforce which is now composed of digital natives that have grown up accustomed to these traits. This past Monday I participated in the Streaming Media East event in NYC and in an after-show get together (sponsored by investment bankers I might add) I got into a conversation with the CEO of a company that basically helps companies distribute information effectively behind its firewalls. He is the one that brought this point to the forefront and it is absolutely right on. It is a known fact that these new generation of workers do not abide by the old rule

The cancellation of my trip to Germany today this week prompts me to write this blog entry and connect a couple of insights that have been swimming in my mind. The first is how inadequately prepared we are to deal with this basic and “distant” threat. I say “distant” because our social institutions have taught us to sort of be dismissive of these things as if we were above them. I have been very forceful and critical of these facts (in particular towards our religious institutions) in my writings. We dismiss our basic nature and instincts to our peril. The terrifying side of our dismissive attitude as a species is that we leave behind unresolved challenges. The list is long and expansive: birth control, teen pregnancy, sex education, drug legalization, public health preparedness, financial regulation, the environment, etc…These are fundamental ecosystems that have to be addressed and reformed but have not. We move on to the next thing, drunk with our self congratulatory and ego-centere

Having just come back from international travel and being an spectator to the latest fear mongering that the Mexican drug cartels will invade the USA and kill us all, it never ceases to amaze me how wantonly unsophisticated some of the thinking of our citizenry really is. Even our supposed leaders – to my dismay - exhibit similar characteristics. Yet again, more evidence of the emotional sinkholes that some of citizenry has become. We simply cannot get past the emotional thinking traps spouted by irresponsible talking heads via our shiny flat screens now casting their images in fine, bombastic details. We have lost our ability to think critically and analytically- period. Please, please, people start thinking. Take classes that teach improvisional thinking, understand statistics, read history and understand why things are the way they are. Discover that we drive the violence in Mexico via our drug consumption. Understand that we spend $60 Billion on the war on drug for the sake of 35 M

What does it say when one's name is reduced to a letter? I am a Dale Carnegie graduate which in his teachings emphasized that a person’s name is one of the most important sounds one will ever utter in the process of making friends and influencing people. So what is one to do now, call people by their first letter? If so, then isn’t it presumptuous to assume that I may want to be addressed by the letter A. This is clearly some kind of trend that we can aggregate under the concept of “reductionism” driven – in my humble opinion- by our need to deal with the crushing amount of information being piped into our brains…I have seen this trend evolve over the last year and it seems to be gaining speed. Innovators out there: take notice. On clubs and clicks- In our attempt to synthesize and filter reality, one has to look inwards at times and ask behavioral questions of ourselves. The other day, I did exactly that regarding my lack of interest with clubs. My adult life has been punctuated

I was in Germany last week and the combination of jet lag, little sleep, dinners, meetings, trade shows, etc..really killed me. It has taken me 4 days to fully recover from the fog that I have been in since getting back Friday night. For the first time in my career, I fully felt the effects of this travel. I could see and feel physical changes. As I looked in the mirror over the weekend, I could see my facial muscles change and show a face that I did not recognize. Further, my disposition was sour much to the displeasure of my family. Note to travel policy decision makers: Travelling in cattle class for business has a huge impact on the health of your employees and paying for business class is probably a good investment, specially on overnight flights. The static old guide of allowing business class based on "flight time" does not work. It could be the getting old thing, it could be the "out of sequence" that everything becomes when one is travelling across time zon

I was at an Innovation conference 2 weeks ago and amongst the many insights that I was able to capture, a few were fairly obvious and a few not so obvious . One that seems over the top obvious is that the term "luxury" (and the whole in your face "treat yourself because you are special") marketing mantras (are you listening Lexus and Range Rover?) are dead. Yes, dead. News Flash: It is really no longer cool to drive a big SVU and own a big house. It is really not cool to be narcistic and market to these incstincts. We have entered a new era (not fast enough, really) of wholesomeness, empathy, respect, truth, trust, firmness. For a lesson on a company that has captured this new ethos, look at what Hyundai is doing. They certainly got the message and are acting on it. In any case, I hope I am right. Now we need for this to "scale" to the rest of spoiled humanity. The second not so obvious is that we - the people - are the greatness impediment to progress

As I sit here working from home I am hearing a piece on the radio about new research that finds that when one exercises it prepares the mind to be more receptive and positions it in a “better state of equilibrium” for receiving information. Further, the research also found out that kids that have the hardest time focusing learn better after exercise and occasional mini exercise breaks during the school day. The resulting research was so positive that a school system in the state of North Carolina here in the USA, has adopted its recommendations and is already seeing some results. Of course we all sort of knew this at the margins. For example, I think best when I am walking and I write stories in my mind when I am riding my road bicycle. After these insights I started thinking of ways to be more active at work and one of the ideas was to have standing work stations. I do not particularly like sitting down all day in front of a computer, so I looked around, observed people and different

Consistent with the belief that it is our obligation to constantly reformulate how one looks at things via new perspectives and asking questions around the peripheries of what we do, I would like to propose a new way to visualize how we motivate people. If I look back at the things that I have done to get new Innovations adopted during my career, I find some recurring themes. One of them has to do with the evangelization process that one has to compel when a new Innovation is positioned inside an organization. In a somewhat circuitous route, I believe that the way to get people to want to support your ideas is by stimulating their “initiative” gene, if there is such a thing. So, how does one design an organization to provoke individual initiative? Here are a few conditions that are a must: 1) the organization has to be flexible enough to allow employees to deploy their initiative without fear of retribution, of stepping on other department’s toes, or fearing that they can loose their

So here is the thing…It seems as though with all this communications technology out there – please, let me count the ways: phone (talking), email, IM, Twitter, SMS, web email, Facebook, linkedIN, community portals, etc… people seem to be in touch less, at least as it concerns the digital immigrants. You know... us old folks...that is, anyone not born since Microsoft has been a life force. This frustrates the heck out of me because I have members of my communities that do not exercise their communication muscle via these new technologies. They are stuck on the old world and use that “talking” medium to the exclusion of everything else…”Oh, I don’t know how to text”, goes the old refrain…Well, LEARN…”Oh, I am just too tired to call at the end of the day” Well, send an SMS or email or twitter or IM, saying so! Please, here are a few insights on this subject in no particular order of importance; just top of mind thoughts: 1) Communication is not just about talking on the phone; it is also

Just the other day I was invited to speak locally at a competitive intelligence conference. These practitioner were very intrigued by the whole concept of innovation and the philosophical efforts therein to accelerate and harmonize the process of producing product and services that people actually want.( Let us remember that 80% of product launches are failures). In my view (and theirs) timely competitive intelligence should be an important part of the “innovation algorithm.” Sources of competitive information cover the gamut and range from web sites, to analyst reports, to primary research to web searches. There is one source, however, that is often overlooked and that is a company’s own internal activities. The larger the organization the more competitive intelligence that is available for analysis, mining, comparing, etc… The difficulty is in capturing and sharing this information. Therefore the easy and high level answer is to implement a knowledge management/sharing platform inte

As I was doing a little work this weekend, I was listening to a talk show in NPR radio. The host was Diane Rehm and the subject was a book called The Survivors Club, authored by Ben Sherwood a researcher. (For those international colleagues that are not familiar with NPR, it stands for National Public Radio, a free service that is funded largely by individual contributors). The author set out to research why and how humans respond to survival situations and as it inevitably happens with new research, some very interesting information and ideas emerged from the book. One of them is the development of a test available at http://www.thesurvivorsclub.org that aims to predict our individual responses to survival situations. It turns out that there are specific patterned behavioral responses that all of us fall into. The majority of us (about 80% according to the author) fall into the freezing response, which, it turns out it’s not the most favorable to dealing with survival/emergency si

In the pursuit of a semi-intellectual discussion on Innovation and the perceived value of the same with the current generation of CEO's , a question was posited about the new generation of CEO's and their ability to absorb and retain new innovation theories. Further, the specific question was asked: will the increased education make them more receptive to these ideas? (paraphrased). My respond was the following (and it is something that I have noted before): It is not about more education at all. This is a fallacy; we know this now more than we ever wished. Witness the havoc - on a global scale - caused by the highly educated Wall Street crowd with their new MBA's from brilliant educational institutions like Wharton, Harvard, etc... There is a difference between being "educated" and "cultured." What we need is more cultured facilitators (we need to stop calling them leaders, because if you believe in the power of human creativity to innovate, then wh

"They all work for me” he said.. In my world a slice of life is an occasion where ones soul is nurtured and enriched with new insights and discoveries. It should be the task of all of us to find meaning on those small moments that to most go unnoticed and un-contemplated. This is the stuff of new learning’s and insights. Here is an idea: what if life is nothing but a sequence of new beginnings, all of them motivated by new learning’s? My latest slice of life episode was a conversation I had with a taxi driver on the way to the airport. His name was Farooq and he had very interesting life lessons distilled from a difficult life on the road. You see, his philosophy was that all people around him, all of us humans going about our life movements, those of us that interact with him and his taxi. All of us, doing the mundane things of existence, all of us work for him. He went to explain that by these interactions and by his positive and non-judgmental reactions to them he is facilitati