Idea to Value

APRIL 12, 2023

A few months ago, my wife and I had our first child ( not the child in the blog page image here). Now, I have never been a gym-freak, and noticed that my arms would quickly get tired after I carried them for only a few minutes. I worried what would happen when they quickly grew and got heavier. Would I soon be unable to hold them for more than a minute?

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Creativity Innovation Training Course 191

Idea to Value

FEBRUARY 9, 2023

In today’s episode of the Idea to Value podcast , we speak with Innovation Leader management team of Scott Kirsner (previously on the podcast here ) and Alex Slawsby about the b reaking new InnoLead report “ Benchmarking Innovation Impact 2023 “ We cover the most important data on innovation teams, including the changes in appetite for different types of innovation projects based on the uncertainty in the coming 2023 economy.

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Idea to Value

JANUARY 24, 2023

Have you ever heard that women are bad drivers? Or that Asian students are good at math? Or that people who work in accounting are not creative? Well, there is a powerful psychological phenomenon which means that if someone is part of a group where there is a stereotype that they will underperform or be bad at a task, then that stereotype will actually make them perform worse.

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Comparison Creativity Innovation Groups 248

Idea to Value

JANUARY 16, 2023

Many people have the stereotype of a creative person as someone who is broody, weird and possibly a little depressed. But according to research, the opposite might actually be true. Numerous studies have looked at what sort of mood results in people producing their most creative output. And the results are overwhelmingly clear: Being happy is good for your creativity.

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Creativity Study Analysis Engagement 236

Idea to Value

JANUARY 12, 2023

Is it better to have grit , or know when to quit? A few weeks ago I was listen to an excellent episode of the Innovation Show podcast , with guest Annie Duke. It was about her new book “ Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away “ , and there was one topic they spoke about which really stuck with me when thinking about innovation projects.

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Project Innovation Management Resources 246

Idea to Value

DECEMBER 30, 2022

I was walking through the forest with my sleeping son, day dreaming, when something stopped me. I was not sure what the feeling was, but it felt out of place and surprising. I looked back, and noticed someone had left a random piece of carrot on a branch. Then as I looked closer, I noticed two more blueberries symmetrically paved either side of it. Someone must have carefully left them like that.

Creativity 251

Creativity 251

Idea to Value

DECEMBER 13, 2022

Hi there, With 2022 almost behind us, a lot of companies and teams are planning their next steps for 2023. This is especially true for venture and innovation teams, who let’s face it, many of whom had a very tough 2022. With the global economy stalling and fear of an upcoming recession, many companies have significantly slowed their investments into new innovation teams. 2023 could turn out to be one of the hardest for innovation and leadership teams in decades… … or, with the

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Idea to Value

DECEMBER 6, 2022

You may have seen news of people talking about the new artificial intelligence chatbot from OpenAI, called ChatGPT. Put simply, this is a way you can ask questions to OpenAI’s huge artificial intelligence in a natural, chat-like manner. So for example, you can ask it questions in natural text, and instead of just linking to a page with an answer, it will understand what you were looking to find out and write that answer for you.

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Innovation Creativity Competition Examples 272

Idea to Value

OCTOBER 21, 2022

The Harvard Business Review’s Podcast “ HBR Ideacast ” has recently started a series on four business ideas which changed the world. I already told you about their excellent episode on Disruptive Innovation. Today I want to highlight another great episode on a topic I learned a lot more about: Taylorism. What is Taylorism? In 1878, a machinist at a Pennsylvania steelworks noticed that his crew was producing much less steel than he thought they could.

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Idea to Value

OCTOBER 17, 2022

Do you know what disruptive innovation is? No, I am not talking about every start-up trying to disrupt their industry. I am talking about the original theory of disruptive innovation, as outlined by Professor Clayton Christensen in his groundbreaking Harvard Business Review article in 1995. This was the theory which described how small upstart companies can take market share away from the large incumbent companies in a market, by delivering a new offering which may be inferior to that of the inc

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Disruption Innovation Technical Review Innovation Management 213

Idea to Value

OCTOBER 13, 2022

What is more likely to kill you: A shark? Or a cow? Most people would be much more afraid of a shark. After all, they are known to be an alpha predator, and many movies show how easily they will kill anyone that comes to close. Indeed, a 2010 survey conducted in the USA found that shark attacks were one of the top 6 most feared ways to die. However, in the last 500 years only 1,909 confirmed shark attacks occurred worldwide (as of the 2015 research paper ); of the 737 that happened in the United

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Innovation Examples Survey Groups 249

Idea to Value

SEPTEMBER 28, 2022

A new survey of 20,000 by Microsoft shows how little trust most managers have in their teams. When asked “ Do you feel productive when you work remotely? ”, 87% of workers said they felt as productive or more productive working remotely than in the office. Yet when managers were asked “ Do you have confidence that your employees are being productive?

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Management Survey Collaboration Innovation 53

Idea to Value

AUGUST 25, 2022

How many people can you meet in your lifetime, and could you potentially keep in touch with? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? After all, there are people on Facebook with thousands of friends, or millions of instagram followers. According to research by anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the number is actually likely closer to about 150 individuals. This is approximately the number of people which one individual can keep ongoing relationships with.

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LEAN Innovation Groups Course 260

Idea to Value

AUGUST 10, 2022

Curiosity has long been linked to being more creative. Along with being open to new experiences , being curious makes it more likely that you discover new and interesting knowledge which can then be combined in a creative way. A 2019 meta-analysis of 2,692 individuals showed that there was a strong positive link between being more curious and being more creative.

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Idea to Value

JUNE 10, 2022

What is worse? A colleague who steals money? Or a colleague who steals other people’s ideas and pretends they came up with them? According to new research by Lilien Ellis just published in June 2022, it seems like stealing other people’s ideas is seen as being much worse. Through a series of experiments, Ellis investigated how someone would be perceived by others if they found out that they had stolen either an idea from someone else, or had stolen money.

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Creativity 213

Idea to Value

JUNE 9, 2022

Developing a practice of consistently creating requires dedication and grit. After all, professional creatives get on with the act of creating. But if you are just starting out, this can seem overwhelming. Going from not creating and publishing anything, to feeling the pressure of doing this consistently can scare many people off. Especially if they think that what they are about to produce is not good enough.

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Creativity Examples 218

Idea to Value

JUNE 8, 2022

If you were at a party, and wanted to shake hands with everyone, how many handshakes would it take? Simple: it would be the total number of people at the party, minus one (yourself). That grows with the total number of people involved. But how many total handshakes take place, and how long would it take for everyone to shake hands? This can teach us much about why companies and teams slow down as they grow larger.

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Company Meeting Collaboration Innovation 221

Idea to Value

JUNE 1, 2022

Innovation teams often see a problem and think that the most effective thing to do is to create a solution for it. Often, this involves developing a solution that automates a task that previously had to be done manually by someone, or at least makes the activity significantly more efficient. However, sometimes the time, effort and resources spent developing the solution to fix what in reality is a minor problem can be significant.

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Disruption Innovation Software Resources 227

Idea to Value

MAY 27, 2022

Are some people born creative? Or to say it another way, are some people born not creative? I hear this myth all the time. That someone thinks that they are not creative because they see other people who have more talent or skill than they do, and by comparing themselves to these “geniuses” , they believe they do not have the ability to do great creative things.

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Idea to Value

MAY 11, 2022

If you want to improve your creativity , what is more likely to make you better in the long run: Creating a large volume of average-quality work, or focusing on a single piece and working tirelessly to try and make it perfect? A large number of creatives think that in order to make anything worthwhile, you need to strive for perfection. In that case, they work on a single piece for a long amount of time, constantly trying to improve it before they finally feel like it is “done”, and

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Creativity Creative Thinking Groups Learning 216

Idea to Value

MAY 9, 2022

What makes successful people succeed? A number of factors they come up with if you ask them may include: Hard work. Grit and being willing to keep going through challenging times. Having the resources to develop what you are thinking of. Focusing on quality, delighting the customer, being the best. A supportive network around you. etc. But one aspect which is often forgotten is also one of the most important: luck.

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Creativity Underperforming Technical Team Examples Study 243

Idea to Value

MAY 2, 2022

Humans are a forgetful species. While we have an amazing ability to remember complex information and patterns, our brains can be given so much information that if we remembered everything, it would be a jumbled mess and impossible to remember any specific fact. Imagine that remembering something is like finding a pair of socks to wear. For most of us, that should be easy enough as we have a few pairs to choose from, already paired together in the drawer.

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Creativity Exercises Learning 233

Idea to Value

APRIL 27, 2022

The most successful creative people are the ones who put in the time and effort. They have the grit to work and practice for years, in order to build up the skills to produce highly creative work. However, investing this amount of time and effort over many years requires the motivation to keep going. The motivation to do each task over time will determine how much you will want to do it.

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Creativity Underperforming Technical Team Exercises Analysis 275

Idea to Value

APRIL 25, 2022

My vacuum cleaner sucked, badly. By which I mean, it hardly sucked at all anymore. Years ago when I bought it, it was amazingly strong and picked up everything. Now it could hardly pick up crumbs. Over the years, performance just dropped over time. I could have bought a new vacuum cleaner (I dread to think of how many people would have done this). Instead, I got a new filter.

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Knowledge Base Innovation Project Leadership 255

Idea to Value

APRIL 14, 2022

In today’s episode of the Idea to Value podcast , we speak with Paul Ruppert. Paul is a veteran of the Telecommunications industry, and his companies have helped bring breakthrough technologies like worldwide mobile calling and SMS to the masses. In this interview, we speak about what it takes for companies to innovate in new markets, the challenges with new technology and whether you are better off being a first mover or fast follower.

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Idea to Value

APRIL 6, 2022

If I just spend another week in the editing room, I can get the colour levels just right. If I just do another month worth of focus group testing, maybe I will get that killer insight. If I just have another branding workshop, I will finally be happy with our company logo and then we can start working on the product. When it comes to working on anything creative or innovative, it can be tempting to just spend that little bit more time and effort taking what you have and polishing it until you fe

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Creativity Innovation Groups Company 214

Idea to Value

APRIL 5, 2022

In the 1989 movie Field of Dreams , Kevin Costner’s character builds a baseball field within his corn farm after a ghostly voice tells him “If you b uild it, he will come” In this case, the “he” refers to Costner’s character’s dead father. Since then, especially in entrepreneurial companies and startups, the phrase has been changed to “If you build it, they will come” , which suggests that if you create a new product, customers will find the

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Innovation Creativity Marketing Examples 234

Idea to Value

MARCH 28, 2022

Often, when someone says they are not creative , what they are really saying is that they do not believe they have the same level of skills or talents as people they look up to as creative. Even if the people they look up to have spent an entire lifetime developing those talents. What they do not realise is that creativity and skill are related, but not the same thing.

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Creativity Examples Study Resources 256

Idea to Value

MARCH 24, 2022

Over the past few weeks, I have been reviewing every one of my previous blog posts. It is part of a review I am doing to consolidate the research I have done over the past 9 years. And what I have to admit is a bit painful… Compared to the quality of the articles I have produced in the last few years, some of my first articles were bad. Like, really bad.

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Idea to Value

MARCH 15, 2022

There is a tendency for people to love their own ideas. Not necessarily because the ideas themselves are better than others, but instead because of the work which people put into developing them. As a result, they are often disappointed when other people do not care as much about their ideas as they do. This is partially down to a cognitive bias which most of us suffer from called the IKEA Effect.

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Idea to Value

MARCH 10, 2022

In this episode of the Idea to Value podcast , we speak with Dr Ralph-Christian Ohr about ambidexterity, dual innovation and what it takes to scale up new ventures. Rather than there being a single best way to set up an ambidextrous organisation, it requires a set of key principles which all innovation teams and companies need to display. Topics covered in this episode: 00:01:15 – How Ralph got started on Dual Innovation. 00:03:30 – The challenge of exploring and exploiting innovatio

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Innovation Change Learning Management 238

Idea to Value

MARCH 3, 2022

In this episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with Michael Easter, author of The Comfort Crisis and Professor of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We speak about the dangers our society faces by wanting to be more comfortable, and how we can improve our creativity by pushing our comfort barriers. Topics mentioned in this episode: 00:02:30 – The benefits of embracing discomfort. 00:04:30 – How our evolution made us avoid risk. 00:05:30 – Why we are no l

Creativity 212

Creativity 212

Idea to Value

FEBRUARY 14, 2022

Over the past few weeks , I have been telling you about the history behind True Creativity. How I started on the journey to find out how creativity worked, and why I found it so important to focus on the science of creativity. Today, I’d like to give you a sneak preview about what exactly I have been working on in secret over the past few years.

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Idea to Value

FEBRUARY 11, 2022

Why are people so hesitant to support new ideas? As we have seen in the past few weeks, people have a natural tendency to prefer things stay the way they are , as well as feeling negative experiences more strongly than positive experiences. But is there something even stronger at play here? Is there something about new ideas which scares people? Some scientists believe the answer is yes, and it is all related to our fear of the unknown.

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Innovation Creativity Engagement Data 227

Idea to Value

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

In this episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with Alex Pang, founder of Strategy and Rest, a consultancy devoted to helping companies and individuals harness the power of rest to shorten our workdays, while staying focused and productive. Alex is also the author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less and his new book SHORTER: WORK BETTER, SMARTER, AND LESS– HERE’S HOW.

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Strategy Strategy Culture Collaboration 272

Idea to Value

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

If you are anything like me, you will have discovered how convenient and informative podcasts can be. Unlike a lot of other information on the internet, podcasts can be a great source of information direct from the mouth of an expert. Even better, because podcasts are audio, you can listen to them in the background while doing something else, like commuting, doing housework or just walking.

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Idea to Value

FEBRUARY 4, 2022

Over the past several years, I have shown numerous examples of how companies and individuals are afraid of pursuing new ideas and innovations because they are afraid of the potential negative outcomes. Yet at a fundamental level, the question is why this is the case? Why, when faced with an opportunity which could either have a positive or a negative outcome (like an idea succeeding or failing), do our mental biases predispose us towards wanting to avoid the negative outcome?

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