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Think Again...

Malcom Gladwell at his best.... http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

The Nascent Power of Video

So you ask…how can video help me and my organization prosper? How can I get that pesky ROI to talk to me and my CFO? While I am fascinated by video and its entertainment potential, I am even more fascinated by its potential for education and knowledge transfer. Well, here is a hard fact confirmed by a couple of friends of mine that are both brain scientists (I know, right, cool company I keep :-)). So, here it goes. If you desire to be good at a certain activity that is recordable, learning that activity will be accelerated by 20 to 30% if you see yourselves performing that activity on video. So, let us say you are a piano player and you are having a difficult time learning a sequence. What you would do is record yourself doing the sequence the correct way and then viewing the video multiple times. Or, let us say you are a cyclist and want to improve your pedal stroke or posture, well, record yourself doing the activity the correct way and watch yourself on video. We are primarily vis

Observations, Insights and Suburbia

Yeah, I know, I have written about this before: about how we need to refresh our perspective on a daily basis. I realized how hard it is to maintain this ethos the other day as I was travelling into the District of Columbia with my son at the wheel. As we go about our daily routines I think our brains fall into complacency mode. It makes sense, I suppose. Not being a brain scientist but having read research on the matter, our brains seems to accommodate to the sameness of the routine and seems to block new inputs. In any case, here is the situation. My son was driving our new Mazda 3 ( btw , an awesome "little" car) and as we entered DC and we are sitting at a traffic light he makes the observation that the light posts for the traffic signals are placed on the street corners to the left and right and do not hang over the center as in most suburban environments. While this observation may not seem radical to most, to me it is since I had missed it. First it shows that subur

Digital: Disrupts absolutely & creates resolutelty.

Immersion and hyper-learning new concepts, ideas, business models absolutely leads to new ways of thinking that with time mature into new ways of seeing. One aspect of Innovation is developing a quick sense of how things will change purely from observing how people adopt and use technology. From there one can play "what if" scenarios and of course try to capture as many different scenarios as possible. I have been on record saying that the digital revolution will impact everyone and everything. But sometimes one has a hard time conceptualizing the exact "hows" even after extensive scenario development. Here is one that I just read about and that basically blew me away. Of course, I never developed deep scenarios in this particular industry, but nevertheless, I was stunned by the finding. It turns out that digital natives are very comfortable with having friendships online; their sense of having to see, feel and be present in three dimensional space is not necessary

Its Official: Hybrid Brainstorming is better than...

The beauty of science is that you can actually design a hypothesis, test it, measure it and quantify it. http://mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/56/4/591?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=innovation%2C+idea+generation%2C+brainstorming&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT So, you were wondering if group brainstorming sessions are affective as a new idea engine? Well, here is some good research that tell us that while effective, hybrid sessions composed of first doing individually and then doing a group session is much more effective. There is a lot more there of course; 56 pages, actually, for those deep researchers that want to know the fine details... Have fun reading....

Don't forget the organizational re-development...

You know how it goes, new ideas and innovations are agreed and implemented but most enterprises forget to adjust the organization to serve them. In a world where "static" is akin to death, a dynamic organization that can adapt and change itself quickly is paramount in order to succeed . At the very least, organizations need to mirror market developments and behaviors and they need to do this by inserting flexible structures that can adapt virally to new ideas and approaches. Think about this: companies use the term "divisions" to speak about how they are organized, the very word sounds divisive. It is all about you do this and I do that and if any new creative approach or idea is thrown up our way we will deal with it the best we can. This results in the opportunity getting lost (at worse) or parsed (at best). Instead I propose that organizations be arranged to respond to complex deals first and easy, commodity type activities, second. One way to do this is to hav

Not too far off future...Really! Courtesy of Cisco

Atypical Management of...Creative Energy

It occurred to me the other day that our business institutions are being run via the famous triple C's; command, control and communications. This insight came to me after a conversations I had with a friend when he asked me the question: Is your company accommodating your creative energy? I was surprised by the question and more surprised by the answer, which could be an entire chapter in an Innovation book. While this command structure works well in the field of battle, it does not in an environment where people are asked to exercise their creative impulse. This old-new relic from our military complex does - I dare say- the opposite; it refrains humans from fully exploiting their creative wellspring. Companies are simply not structured to accommodate the ever expanding energy of creative individuals. I am not sure what structures are the best in this regard - there are many - but this is one of the very things that the Innovation movement is trying to address. I think Google has i

The power of small gestures

My last Saturday AM was very atypical. The call came in at 6AM informing me of a devastating earthquake in Chile where most of my family resides. I have lived through many earthquakes and thus I am intimate with all the facts around them. I have studied them, analyzed them and like most Chileans, have learned to live with them and dare I say dismiss them. This call from a Chilean friend was different. “This is a big one”, she said with a disconcerting shake in her voice as she also announce its magnitude “an 8.8.” Upon hearing these facts I went into emergency response and frantically and simultaneously turned on the TV, mobile phone and my PC. I accessed Facebook and twitter and started to seek information via the web, text, TV, all mediums. I called on the fixed line to try to reach my parents, both in their mid 80’s. I redialed several times; it was still early I told myself, so the lines will probably not yet be saturated. On the third try I did reach them. All is good and the fami

The life giving power if Insights…

I love new insights. I am hungry for them. They are a drug for me. If for no other reason than to try to get ahead of the future. Who would not want that? In my world, new insights are the basic ingredients for new ideas. Without them the status quo remains as is: static. With them, there is dynamism. The more insights, the more they can be mushed together to develop aggregated knowledge, theories, philosophies, products, platforms... Why can’t our political system understand this? Here is one source for them to check out www.ted.com. Here is a golden source of fantastic insights from global brilliant agents of change. Come on, go crazy. Whenever you are down, need inspiration, need to clear your mind, go and start your thinking anew…

The negative side of Momentum.

The lament from a friend of mine went something like this: "I feel that I have been sold the wrong bill of goods for years now. From buying into the materialistic version of happiness, to being a participant in self-aggrandizing conversations as if I was here for no reason but to make other people’s egos bigger, to isolating myself and my family in the suburbs as if that is the center of the universe, to spending lavishly on my house and my lawn for what? I don't know. To spending more, ever more, to having to drive everywhere…it all is starting to feel hollow..." This got me thinking about the power of momentum and how hard is to stop and start a shift to a new way of seeing and being. The existing momentum has been going on for half a century now? The power of momentum can be so strong that it can eliminate ideas before they take root. Further, its power can be so strong that it can make natural, common sense ideas seem revolutionary. Case in point is the effort by Mich

Disruptive DNA: You are either born from it and if not, learn fast.

Here is the challenge. If a company is born from disruption, it is in their collective DNA. If not, I assert that companies have a “dormant” DNA sprouting in some islands of disruption that are fertile for exploiting, development and mentoring. So, how does one go about waking and growing a dormant DNA? First one accepts this fact and second one goes on a massive mind “finding” effort with a very clear understanding of the challenge. There is enough here for a nice and long juicy consultancy engagement from the likes of McKinsey, Bean and Corp and this is exactly what most companies do. They go and run for the hills, spend massively and force down ”brilliant” findings which are insights gained from internal resources in the first place. This need not be the case, however. Knowledge has truly been unleashed. It is everywhere and can be generated almost overnight. One need only go into LinkedIN, for example, start a group and ask questions. The results are simply mind blowing. The point

More on Motivators and Carrots and Sticks

Interesting research paper cited on Jan 16 Th edition of The Economist titled: Carrots dressed as Sticks. Basically, they experimented on ways to tweak and maximize the effect of economic incentives. It turns out that the value we attach to " possessions " is good for incentives if they are designed with this allure. So, think of it this way. Instead o f saying: "if you can achieve this goal, I will give you $1k at the end of the year", one should say: " The $1k are yours right now but you will loose it if you do not meet your goal." "The fear of loss was a greater motivator than the prospect of gain" The results were consistent and persistent according to the article. Funny thing, the human mind. And, further evidence that how one says things may be as important as to what is said.

A quick reflection on the book Drive, by Daniel Pink

In Daniel Pink’s latest book, Drive, he talks about the self determination theory (or SDT for short and in keeping with the “reductionism” trend). It turns out there is a global network of researchers working on this theory based on human needs. The big finding - quoted directly from the book – is that “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined and connected to one another.” Further, the book states that when that drive is liberated, “people achieve more and live richer lives.” I thought about this claim and reflected on past projects that I have been involved with and further, looked at the “flow” of these projects. “Flow”, by the way, is another concept that Dan discusses in the book and that he challenges us to analyze in ourselves; how best do we achieve this flow and how can we enhance it, that is. I did this and found some interesting insights. My flow was severely restrained when I encountered breaks in communication - and I will go further and s

Keep on Fighting....

How fair is a fight, when all the power of momentum, negativity and denial is tilted to one side? Ask Obama this question and his answer is: keep on fighting. At the end of the day his job is mind-shifting, a very difficult thing to accomplish in the age of outrageous right wing commentators and supreme court decisions. Not unlike what some innovators out here experience. In many instances the advancement of Innovation management theories in corporations can be a colossal fight. The combination of institutional momentum (what I call "stagentum" stagnation-momentum) , corporate antibodies and old guard practices can become formidable barriers to new ideas and innovation. How fair is the fight when the power of decision making is with people that don't believe in what one does? How fair is fight when we are ridiculed because we are doing things outside the box? Or we are to "touchy- feely "? Like I have said before, Innovation is as much an exercise in mind-shi

I know, I know...but insights can come @ any time and multiple times....

I can't resist, when I discover an insight I tend to over analyze it. Excuse me if this may be one of those instances. In percolating Daniel Pink's new book "Drive" I find that his treatise of "economic" systems and "social" systems and the combustive clash of both, provides an effective analytical framework to analyze the specific cultural nuance of "genuineness". Consistent with other writings on this subject, there is a difference between the "what is in it for me" cultural ethos and the "I am a genuine human agent that will engage with someone because they inspire me or like them" ethos. So, hear me out... If you engage with someone in a social context and then try to transport that to an economic context for the "what is in it for me" ethos, that is not genuine. Period. I think the other way around is a genuine engagement because of the outward transparency and maybe , just maybe, if there is positive en