Beyond The Whiteboard & Sticky Notes
Design thinking is much more than its tools. It’s time to look at what it actually does and how to go beyond the tools to see its real impact.
September 2020
Agile Innovation?
An agile approach to innovation is intended to be flexible and dynamic, but it can also be flaky if we’re not careful. Agile is one of those great cover words — like pivot — that allows us to hide our failings. Failure in innovation work, as I’ve written before, only comes from a failure to …
Innovation: The Art and Science of Change Series
Innovation can be quite the buzzword — but what does it actually mean in practice? What knowledge, skills and tools do we need to actually DO innovation? I get asked that a lot and when the world seems to be transforming before us more people are asking: how do we shape some of these forces …
Innovation: The Art and Science of Change Series Read More »
Middle Ground
When ideas and opinions push to the extreme finding where the middle ground is becomes an innovation challenge. Darling I don’t know why I got to extremesToo high or too low there ain’t no in-betweensAnd if I stand or I fallIt’s all or nothing at allDarling I don’t know why I got to extremes The …
Journeys for Uncertain Destinations
How do we think about the journeys through complex situations when we are unsure of a destination? There is a saying that the journey is the destination which speaks to the value of learning by doing — praxis — and how much it means to those who seek to create things. What happens when we …
The Folly of Foresight
Seeing the road ahead isn’t the same as doing something to get there: it’s a lesson that foresight and strategy aren’t the same things Seeing the future isn’t the same as meeting it with preparation. “These lineups were scary” said one woman who had twice before attempted to get a COVID test at a Toronto-area …
The More Things Change
Aphorisms about change and stability abound and the truths they tell can set us free if we listen. We’ve all heard the aphorisms. The only constant is change. We need to change to stay the same. The more things do change, the more they remains as they are. These paradoxical statements have truth to them …
Innovation’s Fear Factor
The fear of failure are reasons why our best work never sees the light of day ; gaming can make us braver. It seems absurd to imagine an organization devoting months of staff time, attention, and money to a project that has been executed perfectly only to have it never launch. Welcome to the world …
Sensemaking, Design and Innovation
We can’t change what we don’t understand and can’t understand what we can’t make sense of. Design is the discipline of innovation. Innovation is the means of taking what we know and learn and transforming it into value. Sensemaking is what allows us to derive meaning from what we see and experience. Together, these three …
Mistaken Expertise
When we confuse expertise in one thing with another we risk distrusting experts altogether and losing what they bring. An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until finally he knows everything about nothing. This tongue-in-cheek quote from Henry Mintzberg has much truth to it. As I’ve developed as a …