innovation

Your Phone is Now Your Bank: Are You Ready for Disruptive Innovation?

Does your bank fit inside your cell phone? If not, it soon will. And if today’s banks don’t come to terms with this fact very soon (as in starting yesterday), they may no longer exist in 10 or even five years. How’s that for disruptive innovation? I just finished reading Bank 3.0 —Why Banking Is…

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Taking the Mystery Out of Innovation

Many people see innovation as a mystifying process that requires blinding flashes of creative insight to come up with new products that change the world. In reality, there’s nothing mysterious about it. As defined in the dictionary, innovation is simply “making changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.” Those blinding…

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Prepare to Be Disrupted

A few months back, I wrote about how the current cycle of tech disruption is significantly faster and broader than previous cycles. As a result, new products and technologies are causing us to re-imagine almost everything we do in business and in daily life. Well, prepare to be disrupted, starting with where you spend most…

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10 Brainteasers to Stretch Your Brain

Earlier this year, I posted a blog entitled “Tease Your Brain.”  It offered 10 brainteasers that showed how our preconceived notions, combined with the brain’s tendency to see what it wants or expects to see, greatly affect how we solve problems and make decisions. To my amazement, it quickly became one of the most popular…

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Are You Afraid to Innovate?

Recently I worked with a very successful company that brought me in to shake things up and show them how to stoke the new product pipeline. In other words, help them innovate. I led strategy sessions with the senior management team. I gave company-wide presentations on the importance of innovation. I coached middle managers on…

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10 Good Reasons Not to Trust Your Brain

The human brain is a marvelous tool. However, it was designed for a very different world than we currently live in. As a result, it retains many design flaws that do not serve us well, especially in today’s business world where new ways of thinking and ongoing innovation are essential for success. Perhaps the most…

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Take the Innovation Self-Test

Ever wonder why some companies seem to effortlessly come out with one great innovation after another while others struggle to get even one new product or service out the door? There’s a reason for it. Innovation is a complex process that involves a lot more than just throwing money at an R&D department and hoping…

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The Top 5 Leadership Skills for Sustained Innovation

Anyone can innovate once. But which leadership skills enable you to innovate on an ongoing basis?

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Stop Slamming the Door on Innovation

People in your organization are killing innovation without even knowing it. Find out how, and what you can do about it.

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Fight Back Against Over-Stimulation!

In today’s hyper-fast world, we’re so constantly over-stimulated that we rarely notice it. Find out how sensory overload can be bad for your business.

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How to Let Your Creativity SOAR

Last week I talked about the first phase of the creative process (divergence), which consists of stimulating new thinking by diversifying and exploring. The second phase in the process is convergence, which involves refining and choosing the best possibilities from the ideas generated during the divergence phase. In today’s global economy, market opportunities abound. For…

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Need Some New Ideas? Consult your SWAMI!

The wise leader knows that creativity and innovation requires both inspiration and perspiration. To increase the flow of new ideas in your organization, try these five tips.

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