Innovate Where You Differentiate
This article originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum site, and is today’s Wednesday Work Wisdom… I subscribe to the 20/80/80 principle. The idea behind this concept is to focus your energies on the 20 percent of those activities that create 80 percent of the value. This can mean concentrating on the customers that […]
Voices of Experience Transcription
Here is the transcription of my interview with Theo Androus on the “Voices of Experience” CD, which is sent to professional speakers around the world. Alternatively you can listen to the audio recording. THEO ANDROUS: We kickoff this month’s edition of VoE with speaker, author, and innovation expert Steve Shapiro. Steve’s latest book is titled […]
The Sum of the Parts is Not Always Greater When Working in Teams
Today’s Friday Fun Fact… I was recently at a seminar where the instructor asked a very straightforward question of the participants; one that everyone in the room should have been able to readily answer. However, what followed was complete silence. Crickets. Why is it that once we are assembled into a group such as this, […]
ABC News Transcription
Here’s the transcription of my ABC News interview posted on my blog yesterday… Tory Johnson: Best practices are supposed to help your business be more efficient, but our guest today says that your company guidelines could be wasting your time and stifling your growth. Stephen Shapiro is the author of “Best Practices are Stupid: 40 […]
ABC News to Celebrate 700 posts
Today’s Monday Morning Movie marks my 700th blog entry. To celebrate, I decided to share an older video of mine that many may not have seen: my ABC News interview. In this 5 minute video, Tory Johnson asks me about 5 tips from my book, Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition. Here’s […]
Avoid Target Fixation (transcription)
Here is the transcription of my Monday Morning Movie… Although I’ve never been in the military, I’ve worked with military groups. There is a term that I believe they use called “Target Fixation.” Target Fixation basically means that if you focus too much on a target, you might end up hitting that target. If you […]
Avoid Target Fixation
Today’s Monday Morning Movie… The military knows the dangers of something called “target fixation.” This is where you overly focus on the enemy, and as a result you subconsciously end up crashing right into them. The same thing occurs in business. When we focus on the enemy (the competition) we subconsciously end up replicating what they […]
Beam Me Up, Scotty
In my Monday Morning Movie, I talked about the Power of Positive Constraints and how implementing structure can help us become more creative. Shortly after posting the video, a friend of mine, Brad Kolar, offered up a perfect example of an innovation derived from the Power of Positive Constraints: The teleportation machine used in the […]
Types of Crowdsourcing
Today’s Wednesday Work Wisdom… Yesterday I spoke at an event called Crowdopolis. The topic was crowdsourcing. This has become one of the hot buzzwords in business. Companies of all sizes are dipping their toes into crowdsourcing. But what is it really? Well, crowdsourcing is a lot of different things and can’t easily by lumped into one small […]
The Power of Positive Constraints (transcription)
Here’s the transcription of my Monday Morning Movie… This morning I want to talk about the power of positive constraints. In the world of innovation, there seems to be this belief that we’re supposed to let everybody be free thinkers and let them do whatever they want. But, this actually destroys innovation. We need structure. […]