7 Ways to Outsmart Your Brain And Be More Innovative
You are alive today. You were alive yesterday. You were alive the day before that. This is good news from a survival perspective. Unfortunately it is bad news from an innovation perspective. Your brain is wired to keep you alive. Your brain makes the assumption that because you were alive yesterday, what you did previously is […]
Stalin Was Right…Statistics Don’t Matter
Back in 1995, I was driving Accenture’s (then Andersen Consulting) business process reengineering practice. I traveled the world helping companies downsize. Although downsizing wasn’t the objective of reengineering, it was often the outcome. While working on one particular project, I knew that 10,000 people were going to lose their jobs as a result of our […]
How Playing a Game Changed My Life
In my book, “Goal-Free Living,” I talk about the importance of Seeking Out Adventure. Trying new things is one avenue for enhancing your creativity. As Steve Jobs once said, “Creativity is just having enough dots to connect. Dots being ideas or experiences.” He claims that people who are more creative have had more experiences. Well, […]
Overcoming Writer’s Block
For the past couple of months, I have suffered from writer’s block. I have not been motivated to write. That is until this week, when I wrote five articles in three days. My rut has ended. Why? The issue stemmed from my inability to find interesting topics. More accurately, it was from my inability to […]
What is Your Deep Structure?
The other day I was speaking with a CEO who wanted me to help facilitate a conversation around the crafting of the company’s purpose statement. I asked her, “Why do you want to do this?” She explained that she wanted everyone on her team to fully understand and be aligned behind the purpose of the […]
Beyond the 4-Hour Workweek
The 4-Hour Workweek (by Tim Ferris) is the ultimate book title. Who doesn’t want to work only 4 hours a week?* I was hooked by the title, but disappointed by the premise. In a nutshell, the book suggests that if you work 50 hours a week, you should outsource 46 hours, leaving only 4 hours of […]
TopCoder is Tops
TopCoder is one of the best-kept secrets in open innovation. I had the pleasure of spending time with them. They are a fun bunch that is passionate about what they do. After a full-day deep dive in their Connecticut offices, I traveled to Orlando to spend two days at their “TopCoder Open,” a competition they […]
SUCCESS Magazine – Innovate or Die
The October issue of SUCCESS Magazine recently hit the news stands. The cover story – Innovate or Die – is 3 pages dedicated my perspectives on how to innovate more effectively. If you get the physical copy (with CD), you will also find a 23 minute audio interview with me and the publisher, Darren Hardy. In […]
3 Steps for Creating Leverage in Your Business
“Work smarter not harder.” This dreadfully overused phrase is meant to address the apparent lack of time, money and resources we experience in our work and personal lives. But how do we translate these words into something actionable? Here are three methods I have used in my business to accomplish this: 1. Focus on what […]
Laziness is the Father of Innovation
If necessity is the mother of invention, then laziness is sometimes its father.* Some of the greatest innovations were developed by people who were too lazy to do a particular task. Professor John Atanasoff, along with graduate student Clifford Berry, built the world’s first electronic-digital computer back in the late 1930’s. Why did he do […]