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The real desperate need for innovation

A desperate need for social innovation is where we should focus our energies.

Our past business models are not sustaining us, to take us forward. We have made this ‘rod for our own backs’ by producing thousands of competent managers, risk-averse not risk-taking managers, with our business leaders continually looking over their shoulders or in the rearview mirror who has become a short term in most of their actions. Governments still take ‘adversarial’ positions.

Business still seeks short term results. The end result of much of the activities of the past decade has led us to build a ‘failure framework’, one more sustaining old model being layered on top of other equally outdated approaches, and not the ones that can shift us truly up a gear or two, into a new age of prosperity. Continue reading “The real desperate need for innovation”

People buy meaning not product

A little while ago I was talking to the Marketing Director of one of the leading consumer goods companies here in Europe and we began talking around his question “where does design fit in innovation and consumer goods?”
I started this with posing the premise back “What do things really mean?” For example we need to have a clear vision of what good food means to us. We need to seek out and define a new meaning through, perhaps, design. So the question then became “how do you give meaning to things?” We innovate by making sense of these things- “People don’t buy product they buy meaning” Continue reading “People buy meaning not product”

The Hidden Human Dimension of Innovation

Why do so many of us get fixated on new technologies, discoveries, inventions, the process, the structures, and even the art of creativity within innovation?

Certainly, each of these has an important contributing part to play in building a coherency for innovation, but the ingredient that tops them all and is often forgotten or assigned as the afterthought is people. People making innovation work, all the rest are the enablers to help them.

The Australian Business Foundation published a report last year- the Hidden Human Dimensions of Innovation (http://www.abfoundation.com.au/research_knowledge) and in part of a speech given by its Chief Executive, Narelle Kennedy at an Innovation 2009 conference she spoke of this people factor. Continue reading “The Hidden Human Dimension of Innovation”

Where consultants contribute to innovation

Consultants contribution to innovation activity.

I have been concerned for quiet some time about the ‘state’ of the consulting industry when it comes to innovation. There are simply far too many out there offering pieces of the innovation equation. If I was a client I’d be getting fairly hacked off- different people, different approaches, styles, methods of working and that nagging feeling it does not fit any bigger picture.
How do we resolve this?
Combining all these islands of knowledge into some form of combined force would be a healthy step but before we go there I was thinking about what does an innovation consultant contribute and where?
Here are my opening thoughts on this: Continue reading “Where consultants contribute to innovation”

Seven deadly sins of bloggers

The Seven Deadly Blogging Sins to Avoid

I am a reluctant blogger, I tend to be someone that ‘reacts’ to others blogs. According to a ‘limited’ feedback I have been encouraged to start my own blog. I might regret this so I decided to provide as my first blog a piece of advise that I will try to avoid falling into, as typical sandtraps:
The Seven Deadly Sins of bloggers and aspiring thought leaders that we need reminding about.
1. Isolation
Blogging in increasing isolation and not having enough people reading and reacting to what you are suggesting. Then getting increasingly strident to gain people’s attention forgetting that too much sensationalism does not hold the attention long and thoughtfulness rules the day. Continue reading “Seven deadly sins of bloggers”