IdeaFestival

"Vuja de," growth business

Fast Company on "vuja de ," the ability to see the same situation with fresh eyes. It's a sly take on that familiar feeling. Seeing the familiar, differently, should be a growth business. 

 

Wayne

 

Tags : business+of+innovation, Fast+Company

The uncertainty management principle

The October 24th issue of Time Magazine features several pieces on technology as well as a very interesting article on Steve Jobs and Apple. In this piece Jobs demonstrates his keen understanding of high-speed innovation through many of the strategies he deploys at Apple including relentless concurrent engineering. But he also manifests a surprising "command and control" attitude concerning certain facets of the company. Of course there is a tendency to attribute the company's success in part to these control mechanisms--perhaps. But I view this myopic use of  control as a danger sign over the long-term for any company  or organization that relies on innovation for its competitive edge.

This type of approach goes back to a (comfortable) Newtonian perspective that sees the world as a kind of machine ultimately susceptible to management and control. But as Will Rogers said" It's not what we don't know that's the problem, it's what we know that just ain't so". To sustain success requires a certain (uncomfortable)abandonment to uncertainty and chaos in an organization.  Otherwise the wheels of innovation and risk-taking begin to brake down as the life blood of the organization --its creative flow is interrupted and stifled.

Kris Kimel

Great(er) expectations?

Seth Godin today made, as he often does, a tremendous point. While the Web can match even the most obscure buyer with a willing producer, the expectation stakes are raised. The product or service can't be ho-hum.

Lead, follow, fellowship

Via Johnnie Moore, this post from Deaglan on fellowship. Johnnie points out that we all want to be leaders. But who wants to be a follower? Applied to a group of people it's an either/or framing of the issue and not terribly attractive.

As Deaglan notes, the word fellowship has a long history of use in faith communities as a way to describe an interaction between equals. It's nice to see it resurrected alongside leadership because it speaks of mutuality and equal regard, qualities that too often are in short supply.

Used appropriately, it can also replace the bumper sticker sentiment "lead, follow or get out of the way" with another, much more satisfying emotion,

"Welcome."

Business theatrics, business success

Guest host Tom Kelley has finished his tour at the Fast Company web log, FC Now. His collected posts shed a little more light on his notion of role playing in organizations. Because innovation and creativity are so important to business success -- not to mention at IDEO, Kelley's company -- new methods for capturing that innovative potential are being explored and increasingly used. With "Faces of Innovation," Kelley offers companies help in the fight against the scene stealers, who play a negative role in the creative battle.

Likewise, the actors at On Your Feet explore business improvisation. Storytelling, too, has great potential to uncover the creative impulses at work in organizations, as Steve Denning knows. Whatever the method, there is a trend toward integrating story, narrative -- theater, if you will -- into business to map and amplify the creative dynamics at play.

Science writers blog, are blogged

"Content strategist" Amy Gahran has posted an audio file of the "Blogs and RSS" session at the 2005 conference of the National Association of Science Writers. Amy was a participant in the session, which she describes here, and maintains the popular web log Contentious. The audio file and a one page handout of hers are also available at Contentious.

Amy also has a low tolerance for tortured English, particularly from writers who should know better.

A Not So Random Thought

Winston Churchill wrote that "The further backward you look, the further forward you can see." I agree and have always found history a vastly unappreciated and under used strategic tool. In this sense it strikes me that history used appropriately is in fact a game changer. 

Kris Kimel

Make better decisions. Play video games.

Too bad kids today spend so much time video gaming. All that time spent in the pale glow of a monitor, wasted, forever gone.

Right?

Not exactly. Video gaming could contribute to better decision making according to Fast Company. It reminded me that I recently read a terrific article about the book Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever in Delta airline's Sky magazine. The Delta magazine article targets the skeptical boomer manager with its title, Gamers aren't Weirdos!

Read it. You won't waste your time, guaranteed.

Two categories added to the web log

Today I added two new categories, leadership and the business of innovation. I have been interested in what makes a leader a leader for some time - and in particular what makes a leader in an age when  most facts are available to most people, when what's knowable can be known in an instant.

I've also, as part of this forum, become very interested in the role of innovation and creativity because of its importance to today's economy.  A quick Google web log search turned up quite a number pages on the business of innovation. Fast Company is well represented there. A Technorati tag search, however, did not yield any posts tagged with those words, which I found a bit surprising.    

Wayne

Leadership practice flows from ideas, understanding

Here is quote that I'd like to find again. I think it's from Leading-Forward, a leadership web log I recently found, but I can't find it there. Let me know if you know where it came from, particularly those of you that may be better versed in leadership literature.

One error we make when looking at the practices of successful leaders is we tend overestimate the importance of leadership practices and underestimate the importance of the underlying and coherent view of the world and what you find important.