What does it take to innovate? We look at the basics and what they mean for individuals and organizations looking to do it. Innovation is often equated with its products, not its process. That’s one of the reasons it’s often mis-understood and poorly done at an institutional level because the emphasis is placed on the …
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 …
The global pandemic situation has provided us with a lesson in complexity by giving us much to see, learn, and do if we pay attention. It’s been said that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. Our personal, social, and organizational preparedness plans are …
Marketing is largely about identity and stories about identity. Marketers want to influence what you do (choose, use, purchase, etc..) and how you experience what you do when you do it. To do this, they know the importance of design and the stories to accompany that design. Design, when done well, is partly about creating empathy with those who are to benefit from the products of design and the best products out there are ones that apply empathy and guide behaviour at the same time. Storytelling is the vehicle that links them together.
Systems thinking requires spectrum thinking. People must be able to see things on a gradient, rather than in absolute compartments. Students can’t be faulted too much for having a hard time with this when they are graded based on letters where a B+ is a 79 and an A- is one percentage point higher, yet the mere presence of a B (anything) on a transcript can mean the difference between an award, admission, or a job and not.
