Idea to Value

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Focus on doing fewer things in order to make progress faster

Idea to Value

Often, when trying to make progress towards an innovative challenge there are thousands of things you could be doing. Examined individually, each of these actions look like they could bring you closer to your end goal. Or worse, they may each be different goals which all seem equally appealing and worth putting effort into. However, if they are each taking up your time and effort, the result is often time working ineffectively, working towards targets which are not aligned and where you end the

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Focus on what you can control

Idea to Value

If you cannot be the best in the world at something, is it even worth trying? Yes. Often, people can be afraid to begin a new creative endeavor, especially when they compare themselves to people who are the best in the world. After all, how can you compete with someone who is so much better than you are? What they fail to recognise is that these “best in the world” people have often been working on their skills, craft and experience for decades to get to where they are now.

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Is Design Thinking dead?

Idea to Value

A few weeks ago, I saw an article in Fast Company about the layoffs at IDEO , one of the world’s most respected Design Thinking firms. In fact, IDEO was one of the pioneers of Design Thinking back in the late 1970s, but the process of using Design Thinking as part of innovation work really exploded in the 1990s and 2000s. The rise of Design Thinking and IDEO Back then, Design Thinking was seen as a way to incorporate more human insights into the innovation process, which often struggled wh

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This new recycled packing material could replace bubble wrap

Idea to Value

Sometimes, an innovation comes around that is so simple, it makes you think “ why didn’t I think of that?” I just came across another such example from renowned innovation powerhouse 3M. They have found a way to use a principle of origami to create sheets of cardboard which fold themselves into packing material when stretched. Check out this video to find out how it works.

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Made to last

Idea to Value

Over the weekend, we stayed with my parents. For my toddler, they brought out some of the toys they had kept from when I was still a baby. One of the hits was a wooden toy train set which must now be over 40 years old. And my child loved it (although there were significantly more “accidents” than I remember being responsible for). Still working after being more than 40 years old That made me think about how some things are built to last, while others are built to be consumed and then

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We could all benefit from more failures

Idea to Value

People are afraid of failure. In fact, people tend to avoid failing publicly wherever possible, especially in the workplace. This can result in people and projects trying to hide failure , or avoid trying things which challenge them at all so that they are less likely to fail. There are deep-rooted evolutionary reasons why we feel losses and negative experiences more strongly than successes, so we try and avoid the losses even if it means not experiencing potential successes as well.

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Self-Serving bias: Why you think nothing is your fault

Idea to Value

How often are you blamed for things which are not your fault? Or get credit for the good things which only happened thanks to you? While in some cases people may really get negative feedback which was completely not their fault, often there is more nuance involved, where the person may not accept their responsibility. Conversely, often people will take credit for good things happening to them, when in reality it had very little to do with their actions.

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