Your Brain on Innovation. Without inclusion there can be no creativity.
The desire to be accepted, included and to fit in is as strong as the need for food, water and air. George Ainsworth-Land, author of Grow or Die: the Unifying Principle of Transformation, said organizations must grow or die, and growth depends on innovation. Most of us would heartily endorse this statement and believe the best organizations find new and original ways to add value to their products and services.
The most admired companies continually find better methods to engage their employees, form creative alliances with their suppliers rather than the tired, adversarial relationships of the past, and create fresh ways to attract and retain stakeholders. As a consequence, they flourish. There is no question innovation is fundamental to organizational success. One key to overcoming resistance to innovation and change comes from our increased understanding of a brain region known as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (DACC).
Facebook's Learning Hack. How does the world’s No. 1 social network rapidly develop learning for a young tech-savvy workforce?
By taking a page from the hacker’s book. Between the scandals rocking British tabloids and repeated breaches of banks’ customer information, hacking has a deservedly bad reputation of late. But there’s also an often overlooked upside. At Facebook, the California-based social networking giant, hacking is also an important way for employees to learn and grow, said Stuart Crabb, the company’s director of learning and development.
“It enables people to have a limitless horizon,” he said. Hacking Gets a Bad Rap In software and hardware engineering, there are two kinds of hackers: black hats and white hats. It’s the latter that serves as the inspiration for Facebook’s hackathon, a marathon contest once every six weeks that allows programmers to showcase their skills, test new ideas and develop new products. Hacking as an L&D Tool.
eLearning. Input Recording Password. Who do you need on your side to innovate? I was glancing through my Twitter feeds looking at all the good ideas that flow through the many people I follow.
One in particular caught my eye, which was about How to Lead a Business Revolution. Having grown up a fan of Thomas Jefferson and many of the other "founding fathers" who had the vision, and the guts, to challenge the status quo, I'm always interested in what helps a revolution succeed. And make no mistake, innovation in many firms is a revolution. Thomas Stewart, in the article linked above, notes that a senior GE executive told him that you need three constituents on your side to lead an effective revolution: the broadcast stations, the schools and the police.
In less radical terms more suited for innovation, we can create analogies for these groups. Let's consider these three factors in slightly more detail. Second, consider education. Finally, win over the "hearts and minds" of the people who control the processes and the rules. Messaging, education, hearts and minds. Common Purpose International - Leadership Development - Home. Blogging Innovation » Profound Innovation. “Welcome, O life!
I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” – James Joyce I was meditating on these words earlier this week, re-reading (although not quite for the millionth time) Rollo May’s The Courage to Create, when luck put me in touch with Dishaa and the Presencing Institute‘s core process of profound innovation. Dishaa is the Hindi word for direction. It is an initiative ran by Common Purpose in partnership with the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office that challenges a newly formed group of 40 emerging leaders from India and the UK to develop innovative solutions to common societal issues.
This week, in just a few days, the group met for the first time and identified what systemic change would be required to make heart surgery at USD 1,000 a possibility. Impressed by the outcome, I started digging into the process they used. It struck a chord. Innovation: Group dynamics can stifle a great idea. For most companies, conventional wisdom says that collaborative teams offer the best path to generating compelling innovation.
Behind this notion is that high-performance and diverse groups are best suited to cope with technology complexity, commercialization challenges and as well as stick handle through management gates such as securing buy-in and resources. In fact, I have argued this point in my blog on a number of occasions. A recent Wharton research paper suggests that other innovation strategies could be more effective. Professors Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich contend that common group dynamics are anathema to developing breakthrough products, unique ways to save money or revolutionary business models.
Instead, they believe the next Facebook, Twitter or iPad could best be germinated by an inspired innovator with plenty of time to ponder and experiment. The study concluded that the hybrid process resulted in three times more ideas than the team-based process.