OCTOBER. For a Smart Company

In the video that THD shares this month, José Antonio Marina asked himself about the intelligence and tells us about his research on how the mechanisms of creativity work. He concludes that the mechanisms of creativity follow a single scheme, and that this is the same whether to create a work of art, to invent techniques to innovate or to organize a business.

At this optimistic point, Marina introduces as a relevant factor in its investigation the effect that exerts the social environment to block or encourage intelligence and creativity. The same effect can be applied to organizations: the environment marks the becoming and the future joint intelligence capacity that can reach a company.

SEPTEMBER. How to Lead Innovation today

The leadership of the late twentieth century was based on the ability to envision the future and take the organization or the team to achieve this vision. Today, in VUCA world, visions and visionaries no longer work. This is what tells us Professor Jay Rao in the video which originates this news -courtesy of THD and available here during October.

How to lead when predict and forecast is a hard work? How to lead in an uncertain world?

Entrepreneurs and age

«We need some gray hair», once referred to needingg someone with more experience. But I haven’t heard that expression in a very long time.

The most common image of an innovator is that of a kid developing a great idea in a garage, a dorm room or a makeshift office. This is the story of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple.

In reality, though, these examples are the exception and not the rule. Consider this: The directors of the five top-grossing films of 2012 are all in their 40s or 50s. And two of the biggest-selling authors of fiction for 2012 Suzanne collins and E.L.James- are around 50.

According to research by Alex Mesoudi of Durham University in England, the age of eventual nobel Prize winners when making a discovery, and of invetors when making a significant breakthrough, averaged around 38 in 2000, and increase of about 6 years since 1900.

May. Tell me Innovation Stories

Storytelling is a very effective way to learn and transmit culture. So we learn as children and find our identity in our family. Storytelling can also be a very effective way to generate change out of such an environment and launch into a more uncertain and ambiguous world.

A family environment meets our expectations and gives us satisfaction. When our environment falters, the expectations are not met and we tend to get frustrated. This frustration creates an energy that, well channeled, can help not only to adapt to change, but also influence it to create conditions that are more favorable to us. The story might go as follows.

Innobasque global innovation day 2015

El próximo 3 de Junio se celebrará el Global Innovation Day, es la gran cita de la innovación vasca. Un encuentro de los protagonistas de la innovación para establecer contacto y conocer experiencias.

Un espacio abierto, dinámico y participativo que ofrece conocimiento especializado, conexiones y oportunidades.

El Global Innovation Day es un “evento de eventos” que incluye diferentes tipos de actividades:

• Conferencias: con Josie Gibson, Albert Cañigueral, Pilar Jericó y Fran Chuan…entre muchos otros! 
• Talleres
• Txokos de la innovación
• Showcase

Objetivos:

Innobasque puso en marcha esta iniciativa en el año 2011 con los siguientes objetivos:

• Poner en valor la innovación vasca.
• Posicionar Euskadi como territorio innovador.
• Facilitar un espacio de intercambio de conocimiento y networking.
• Conectar con la innovación global.

Para más información e inscripciones haz clic en el enlace

MARCH. Innovation Activist

For each innovative action, there are thousand articles written on the subject. The reason is that Innovation is not yet a developed discipline, like Marketing, Quality or Chemistry. Therefore, many people feel entitled to talk about it and – consequently – still more people feel confused when taking action because there is no proven successful approach.

When we feel bad, we tend to share it with those we trust. Probably, we get some kind of advice until we end up visiting the doctor to get a diagnosis of what is wrong. The analyses will detect what is not working and the doctor will recommend what steps to take to get cured.

If our company is not as innovative as we would like it to be, we can meet (as the people in the video do) as a Leadership Team to review the business strategy and reflect about it for as long as we want. However, nothing will be more effective than an analysis to detect our problems, or better said, our opportunities. Once the current situation is clear, developing an action plan to improve it, is a no-brainer.

Innovation Is Just A Step Away

Innovation requires change. Changing the world is an empowering vision for many people and companies. How many of us however are ready to accept this may require changing ourselves first?

One single step can be a life changing experience. It can happen anywhere at any point in time of life. There is no need to penetrate the wild forest, travel to no-man’s land to fight against dragons or board a spacecraft to Mars. Actually, the most difficult journey we probably have to make in life may be just taking one step. Those who dare taking the risk can experience the most amazing discoveries of life.

From The Renaissance time 500 years ago, mankind has made tremendous progress in the quality of life by managing science and intelligence. Since then knowledge has grown immensely, and with the appearance of internet, there seems to be no limit to the information at hand. IQ (intelligence) has been the focus of most prestigious awards in recognition of the contributions made to progress. Most of us have trained our brains to think in order to thrive, or at least be able to survive, in this environment.

JANUARY. What can we find around the Culture?

Aligning a definition of culture is something complicated. There are almost as many definitions and interpretations of culture as writers in the field. We particularly like one we got at a conference we attended some time ago: Culture is the observable part of an organization, department or team. We take the freedom to add: It is the what and how an organization spends its time and resources. Both things are easily observable.

Once we agree on this, we wonder –and ask you– what is the effect of the leadership style, the chosen strategy and the way of exploring and facing unknown territories in the culture of an organization.

Based on our experience, we suggest the following sketch to define the foundation of culture:

The DNA of Innovation

In the introduction to his book «Thinking, Fast and Slow», Daniel Kahneman tells us that in order to make a good diagnosis, a doctor needs to catalog lots of diseases, each one linked to an idea of the possible causes, symptoms, development and consequences, and the necessary interventions to cure or at least mitigate the disease.

Learning medicine consists in part of learning the language of medicine. A deeper understanding of judgments and choices requires a richer vocabulary than is available in everyday language. This experience leads the physician to consciously think about the disease, its diagnosis and its treatment.

However, most of the impressions and thoughts that arise in the mind of the doctor, do it without knowing how they got there. It is the result of their intuition based on their own experience and previous knowledge. The book is about the most common mistakes of intuition. Fascinating!

Design Thinking provides the tools and techniques needed for creative problem resolution.

Last November IESE, within the course Design Thinking & Innovation Management, conducted the first simulation developed in Spain of Desing Thinker of Ideo, and was led by Professor Joaquim Vilà.

Simulation game Design Thinker, created by a Canadian company, ExperiencePoint, in collaboration with IDEO, to get a meaningful hands-on experience with design thinking.

Design Thinker runs as workshop where teams are challenged to flex their creativity to solve a realistic and complex design challenge.

INNOVATION PROCESS & DESIGN THINKING

 

The simulation took place in the new multi-purpose, flat room (inaugurated this last October in the North Campus of IESE). In it students worked in a teams of 6 people to tackle a realistic innovation challenge from start to finish in a short period of just 4 hours.

Each participant explored each phase of the design thinking process (inspire-ideate-implement) and immediately applied the learning using a highly visual and intuitive set of templates, tools and technology-enabled collaborative dashboard. By stepping through the Innovation Process, students engaged with the terms, techniques, and thought patterns that would normally take several weeks to learn.

The main skills developed and applied in the Design Thinker simulation include: user observation, formation and evaluation of insights, user experience analysis, framing of opportunities, brainstorming techniques and basic prototyping & experimentation.