Are You Smarter than a PhD?
“Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” is an entertaining show. In the world of innovation, the biggest question is, “Are you smarter than a PhD?” Here’s what I mean… In Personality Poker we address four primary innovation styles. The spades are the ones who are, as we would say in Boston, “wicked smaht.” We […]
Speaking @ NASA
Tonight I am speaking at NASA’s annual inventors awards banquet. I’m honored to be speaking there again. For those of you who missed it, here was my last presentation to NASA. That time I had only 6 minutes! This time I have a whopping 20 minutes. Click the bottom right button on the video player […]
You Failed! What's Next?
Last week, I had 3 conversations with 3 different companies. And each had a complaint about the same group of people: lawyers. If you think about it, innovators and lawyers have completely opposite objectives. Innovators want to grow the business. They believe that risk and failure are a natural part of the innovation process. Their […]
Redefining Failure
I view life as a series of experiments. When you look at it through this lens, failure means something completely different. One definition of an experiment is: “A test or investigation, especially one planned to provide evidence for or against a hypothesis.” The only way an experiment can fail is if you don’t get the […]
Measures: Will You Get What You Want?
I recently spoke with a new client who shared with me their innovation measures. When I looked at their measurement system, I immediately saw flaws. But before addressing these imperfections, let me first provide you my perspective on innovation measures. In general, there are three types of measures associated with “challenge-based” innovation (be sure to […]
There is No GPS for Innovation
OK, after 2 weeks of sleep deprivation due to manuscript deadlines, I am now back in action here. The final version of the manuscript went to the publisher on Saturday. I then played Personality Poker in Memphis with nearly 100 representatives from Penguin’s gift sales on Sunday. These individuals sell books into non-traditional bookstores, […]
NESTA Open Innovation Conference Videos
Last week I spoke at an event hosted by NESTA – the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts. The day focused on Open Innovation and had some spectacular speakers including Cheryl Perkins (the former Chief Innovation Officer for Kimberly-Clark), Karim Lakhani (an open innovation guru from Harvard Business School), Stefan Lindegaard (a […]
Is Crowdsourcing Disruptive?
There was an excellent post by Hutch Carpenter. In the article, he asked the question – “Is Crowdsourcing Disrupting the Design Industry?” He makes an excellent case for the value (and pitfalls) of crowdsourcing design work – especially from the perspective of the designer. As readers of this site know, I have used design crowdsourcing […]
LG Electronics Open Innovation Competition
Last year, LG Electronics ran an open innovation competition in search of the next generation cell phone. If you did not enter last year, you have another chance to win $20,000. According to their press release… LG Mobile Phones, the fastest growing mobile phone brand in North America, is partnering with crowdSPRING, an online marketplace […]
Open Innovation Design
Nearly 2 years ago, I used open innovation to develop the logo used on this site. I am now using open innovation again to help redesign my Personality Poker cards. As you know, later this year, the Personality Poker book will be published by Penguin’s Portfolio imprint. The publisher designed the book cover (we aren’t […]