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Creative Accomplishments

Innovation Essentials: Which Direction is Your Flywheel Turning?

2017-04-10T21:46:58-06:00By |Innovation Behavior, Innovation Culture|

In his acclaimed bestseller, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about what he calls the “Flywheel Effect.” He describes how small actions and decisions, made over a period of time, add up to sustained momentum and success for great companies—like small nudges building momentum on a flywheel. I agree and riffing on his metaphor, I would add that our flywheel can be turning in either direction. It’s possible that a series of seemingly small decisions and incremental actions can gradually undermine our success. So the key question becomes: Which direction is your flywheel turning?

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Innovation Essentials: Persistence is Overrated

2017-04-10T21:46:58-06:00By |Innovation Behavior, Uncategorized|

There’s a prevalent and long-perpetuated myth about innovators, that they are persistent; they don’t give up. Renowned innovators like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison have even said it of themselves, crediting their success in part on their persistence. But it’s at best a poor choice of words and at worst a fundamental misunderstanding of what innovation entails, even by some of its best practitioners.

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Innovation Essentials: Testing Our Intuitions

2017-04-10T21:47:08-06:00By |Innovation Strategies, Personal Innovation Skills, Uncategorized|

Great innovations are often based on powerful intuitions, but we all know examples of someone thinking they have a great intuition and being misguided. So where does intuition fit into innovation and how do we know when we can rely on it?

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Always On Innovation

2017-04-10T21:47:09-06:00By |Innovation Behavior, Uncategorized|

If we want sustained robust innovation in our companies and economies, at the very least we need to stop treating our creativity like something with an on/off switch. We need to recognize creativity as the sustained cognitive function it is and the sustained business function it needs to become…always on.

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Two Ways to Think About Innovation

2017-04-10T21:47:09-06:00By |Innovation Behavior, Innovation Culture, Leading Innovation, Personal Innovation Skills, Uncategorized|

People in the wrong frame of mind can undermine even the most thoughtfully designed innovation processes. Folks in the right frame of mind can overcome many imperfections in those processes. Systems and processes are important in business, but they’re no substitute for enhancing the way people think.

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The Best Figure-Outers Win

2017-04-10T21:47:09-06:00By |Innovation Behavior, Personal Innovation Skills, Uncategorized|

Whenever we must extend beyond what we already know, it’s fundamentally the same cognitive exercise, whether we’re trying to cure disease, invent a new kind of financial instrument, win a promotion, launch a coup, or win someone’s hand in marriage. It all comes down to the ability to figure out; it’s the ultimate transferable skill.

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