via ted.com
Big problems require expensive solutions right? Wrong.
Here's a great talk by Rory Sutherland on how the small details amount to have the biggest impact. The talk is well worth your time!
#Innovation Radar: 12 Dimensions of Business Innovation (PDF)
How to brainstorm more effectively
Four parts of every designer's process that can be optimized to come up with better ideas faster:
* Strategy: Relating what you've been tasked to design back to a client's stated business problem.
* Articulation: Knowing what questions need to be answered through ideation.
* Ideation: Answering those questions via brainstorming activities such as timeboxing—the use of short, structured sprints to reach stated ideation goals.
* Synthesis: Mixing and matching the ideas created during your brainstorm to create even better ones.
How to create cultural change
Great presentation and well worth watching. Here are the main ideas to create cultural change:
1. Try something new.
2. Create a group identity.
3. Welcome newcomers.
4. Be relentless.
5. Be relentlessly happy.
Don't invent, Reinvent
To use a musical analogy, Apple's specialty is the remix. It curates the best ideas bubbling up around the tech world and makes them its own. It's also a great fixer, improving on everything that's wrong with other similar products on the shelves.
via fastcompany.com
Steve Jobs has been quoted as saying:
"Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."
The above quote represents a core piece of their strategy, none of the products they've released have been new to the public, they've just been better and different versions of what came before.
Criteria for Intelligent Failures #innovation
The concept of intelligent failure makes a difference here. Sitkin's criteria for intelligent failures are:
They are carefully planned, so that when things go wrong you know why They are genuinely uncertain, so the outcome cannot be known ahead of time They are modest in scale, so that a catastrophe does not result They are managed quickly, so that not too much time elapses between outcome and interpretation Something about what is learned is familiar enough to inform other parts of the business. Underlying assumptions are explicitly declared These can be tested at specific checkpoints, identified in advance, since planned results may not be equivalent to outcomes.
via blogs.hbr.org
From Sim Sitkin's Learning through failure: The strategy of small losses
Kobe Bryant: Imitating Greatness
There's a lot of useful discussion around the business case of 'imitating' as a business strategy, the fact is everyone imitates. If we had robots running businesses from their desks then it would be a different story but as long as there are people running businesses, imitation will continue to be adopted.
Do as Kobe Bryant does, practice selective stealing. Take some pieces and adopt them to whatever it is you're doing to be better.
How To Get People To Pay For Content
Answer: Focus on access. Make more content available, on more devices, in the most convenient ways possible
