One bright idea is pretty but a collection of ideas put into practice over time, sustainably, is beautiful (and real innovation). Sustainable innovation — a process, practice, and culture of design-driven creativity — might be the most valuable outcome for any organization. Real, sustained innovation is not about creating a single item — product, service, policy …
What regular practice does is reduce the cost of failure and these costs are different in times of disruption. Innovation succeeds because of regular, committed practice. It’s about consistency of effort and persistence. But what happens when we’re constantly being disrupted? The Twenty Twenties will go down as among the greatest periods of disruption of …
The means to developing the ability to create useful, valued products and service comes from learning through doing. What is the best way to learn design? Design something. It’s a bit trite to say this, but it’s true. Someone can be a designer having never taken a design course or completed a degree or they …
The concept of subscribing to something is an attractive way to build in practices to sustain innovative activities. Whether it is for a magazine, film series, blog, wine club, or season ticket package — subscriptions can provide us with a means to engage with things we otherwise might not have due to the sustained exposure …
Learning is at the heart of innovation and works best when evaluation is part of the process to spot what’s actually learned. Learning is a critical part of innovation and evaluation is about understanding its role. There are many definitions of innovation out there. After years of experience, observation, and study I’ve found them lacking …
Winter provides a literal and metaphorical season ripe for sense-making if the other seasons are different Winter creates a natural opportunity to reflect. The cold weather, darkness, and general lack of ability to grow crops has meant that people traditionally spent this season telling stories and making sense of the world as they awaited the …
The time to bring together three fields of practice focused on shaping the future with evidence and imagination is here. Design thinking is about problem-finding, solution-seeking, and creating the things — programs, products, services, and policies — that contribute to the solution. Futures and Strategic Foresight are about examining trends and patterns in a context …
Beforetimes were different than now and what’s next will be different, too. The difference is that one we can design for. The carefree days of standing out in public admiring the possibilities is what attracted me to this picture. There’s no digital things, the man is dressed up, there are flowers, yet he’s also mostly …
Innovators are nothing without maintainers to keep those innovations working: we forget that at our peril. Innovation is what a colleague of mine calls one of those million dollar words that springs to mind all kinds of things that are meant to generate excitement in a business or organization. Beyond the myriad misuses and abuses …
Learning in times of turbulence requires much more than lessons or courses – it requires new systems. I’ve long contended that learning is all about systems. I’ve not backed away from that. However, I’ve also been a part of some rather terrible systems. Post-secondary education is definitely one of them. So, too, has most of …
