Who does the best job of being a giraffe? 🦒A giraffe, of course! 😆 A giraffe will fail at being the best lion in the pride. Similarly, be you... NO ONE can be YOU better than YOU. I've found this approach invaluable in my own business. I can't compete with the lions...

I often find myself in discussions with individuals eager to drive innovation within their organisations, and in these conversations, I've noticed trends. Despite the abundance of literature on the topic, navigating innovation can be confusing due to varying...

What do you do for fun? If you want to be more creative and innovative, you want to be like a T. You need to develop deep expertise in what you do, in your job role (like an I), but also be exposed to things beyond it (like the top bar on the T; go broad). By finding...

Your ability to communicate has a huge impact on your ability to successfully innovate. Through your choice of words, you can either make a problem that you want to innovate around seem confusing, complicated, or unimportant, or clear, straightforward, and vital to...

Two contradictory beliefs about creativity have existed at different times throughout history: rationalism and Romanticism. Why does this matter if you want to innovate? Because the people you work with will likely have different underlying beliefs that get to the...

Do we overuse video calls when a simple audio call could be better? I spent much of my time when I was a marketing manager for a global life sciences company, in pre-Covid times, dialing in for audio meetings with colleagues located across Asia, the US, and Europe....

There is a Chinese proverb: When the sage points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger. The finger is innovation, the moon is the vision and goals that you've set for your organisation. Is your organisation fixated on the finger, confusing it for the goal? A key...

Innovating is like walking into a dark room that you’ve never been in before. You can't see ahead. You take small steps to feel your way. You're alert and actively seeking information from all your senses. You take off your shoes to get more detailed information from...

While "Fail fast"  has become a common mantra in the innovation world, it's overly simplistic and vastly misunderstood. I've always felt uncomfortable about this saying, but I didn't have the words to explain why I felt that way, that is, until now... Thankfully,...

You’ve decided your organisation needs to be more innovative. One important step is to select the right individuals to become your Innovation Champions. Once trained, these Champions will become the driving force behind your innovation initiatives, guiding and...

Innovation is about finding new solutions to important problems. Given this, it might seem obvious that you should take the time to deeply understand the problem you are trying to solve. It was clearly something that Albert Einstein thought was important: "If I had an...

Innovation is something different that creates value. You can innovate internally, such as improving employee engagement, or externally, such as improving how you deliver services to customers. Every organisation loves to say that they are innovating but how do YOU...

If you want innovation to happen within your organisation, it's important that everyone has a common understanding of what innovation is and how to do it. I have addressed what innovation is in another article. In terms of how to innovate, you need a simple and...

Does your organisation run creative ideation sessions? One of my pet hates is walking into a creative ideation session in an organisation without a clearly defined problem to solve, or objective. In these sessions, everyone is excited, with coloured pens in hand &...

Do you see the white vase with the black background or the black faces with the white background? In this classic Rubin's vase optical illusion, whilst there are two perspectives, you can only see one at a time - the vase or the faces. However, you can shift your...

  Your organisation needs to be more innovative to achieve its goals, so what do you do? If you haven’t already, you might hire an innovation consulting firm to train a small group of employees to become your Innovation Champions, a select group of individuals...

If you google “types of innovation” you will see a huge variety of responses. Whichever version of types you choose to adopt, you must ensure that understanding the types will have practical value in helping your organisation be more innovative so that it can achieve...

When seeking to innovate, one of the most critical steps is taking the time to deeply explore and define the problem. This is where understanding the concept of problem hierarchy becomes essential—it enables you to reframe a challenge in ways that open up entirely new...

Having a common understanding and language for concepts is key to collaborating well to achieve success. Imagine if our ideas for what a party looked like were completely different but we were set to create one together. My assumption is that we will invite 3 or 4...

If you want innovation to happen within your organisation, it's important that everyone has a common understanding of what innovation is and how to do it. I have addressed what innovation is here. In terms of how to innovate, you need a simple and easy-to-understand...

This article was originally published by B&T. Perfectionist? If you are, you are not alone. A recent study has found that millennials are the generation most predisposed to perfectionism (1). Perfectionism is a personality characteristic in which people set...

This article was originally published by SmartCompany. Albert Einstein famously said: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” People are generally pretty good at generating...