This time I have a question. Albeit not yet concrete, my question offers a promising direction for cooperative exploration.
First, please close your eyes (…then open them fast so you can continue reading). Now, try and think of an innovation conference in which you’d like to participate.
As a reader of this blog and an obvious innovation-phile, I imagine that conferences crammed with speakers from 9-4 are not exactly to your style. You’re looking for something a little different; a conference that’s, well, a work of innovative itself. From the moment you get the invitation to the moment you go back home, a conference that feels different - new, interesting, effective and is informative to boot.
Continue reading ‘Innovating the innovation conference’
Monthly Archive for August, 2008
Innovating the innovation conference
Sustainability & Innovation : a love-hate relationship?
A few months ago, we were invited to take part in a conference, near Washington DC, called Greener by Design.
Our theme there – we gave one plenary session and several of what we call “Innovation Flashes” in between the other sessions - was Sustainability & Innovation. When they hear the title, cynics often say “this year’s buzzword and last year’s.”, and I have to admit there is something in this remark. Still, for most companies, both them and their clients do want products to be sustainable, and competition does demand that offerings be more innovative. So in the end, not much choice these days but to aim for both S and I.
But why do we sense that a tension exists between innovation and sustainability?
Continue reading ‘Sustainability & Innovation : a love-hate relationship?’
Please invent a new product
Let’s begin with a small exercise.
Please invent a new product.
Yes, really, go ahead and invent a new product…
.
.
Stuck ha….?
.
.
I’ll tell you why.
Paradoxically, when a problem statement is too broad, our mind finds it quite difficult to recruit all its creative powers.
Scientific studies have proved time and again that we tend to become more creative in a constrained thinking environment.
I’ll let you see it for yourself.
Wanted: Innovation Manager
Ok, so I’m not looking for one just at the moment - but I’m pretty sure that in no less than three years, the job of innovation manager will be just as acceptable and desirable as that of marketing manager, product development manager and sales manager.
Even today, I personally know 15 innovation managers, working in a variety of companies and organizations – the title on their business cards actually reads “Innovation Manager”. It’s amazing, isn’t it?
Why we call something interesting?
Irving Biederman, USC psychology and computer science professor, tries to explain why we find one thing more “interesting” than another.
According to his theory, we tend to be interested in things that are new to us but at the same time still connected to what we already know. New, but not too new…
Biederman proposes a simple mechanism by which the brain seeks to “maximize the rate at which it acquires new but interpretable information.”
