The Discipline of Innovation

The only way to change a system is by changing the way we interact with others:

A Conversation is the Smallest Unit of Change The only way we can make ourselves is through making each other. And we always have a choice in how we make others. Do we do it using generative, both/and, mutually thriving stories, thoughts, and language, or do we do it using narcissistic, better than, zero-sum ideas? The choices we make for how w...

It seems that the Ideas to Impact page that I made a few years ago is about to disappear - so today might be your last chance to see it!

UQ Create Change Masterclasses Create Change Masterclasses offer inspiring teaching from leading UQ thinkers and shine a spotlight on the journeys of proven change-makers. Dive in now to see how UQ can help you create change – in your life and the world.

I thought this was an interesting session, and I learned a lot talking with Brendan and Nancy.

The tightrope of tech transfer - competing interests all around June 2020 webinar hosted by KCA QLD Network and LESANZ. Speakers: Associate Professor Tim Kastelle, Brendan Cheong and Dr Nancy Schellhorn

New blog post - profit and purpose aren't mutually exclusive, powerful business models often provide both.

The Power of Purposeful Innovation Firms often view doing good and making a profit as trade-offs - if you do well at one, its at the expense of the other. However, the story of the Herman Miller company is just one that shows that the two actually often go hand in hand.

Here's a talk I did last week.

Taking a Long Term View During Turbulent Times Here's a talk I gave last week on some methods and benefits to thinking in the long term, even when there are urgent short term events taking up our attention.

New blog post!

Technological Revolutions and the Governance Gap There is often a gap between how fast technology changes, and how fast human institutions respond to this change. This Governance Gap is one of the core problems of management today.

"Retail isn't dead, but purposeless retail sure it." Old post, still relevant.

What Do You Stand For? Despite what we keep hearing, physical retail isn't dead. The key to thriving is by standing for something - having a purpose.

“But ideas that are truly innovative—that is, those that can reshape industries—typically go against the grain of executive experience and conventional wisdom.”

The Discipline of Business Experimentation Increase your chances of success with innovation test-drives.

I wrote this a while ago, and I still think it's true:

You Should Start a Blog Right Now You should start a blog right now. It will help both you and others learn, and it will help you build a skill.

"Continuous improvement isn’t nearly as important as discontinuous improvement. Creativity is a discontinuity. A creative act breaks with the chain that has come before it." - Russ Ackoff Why Improvement Does Not Equal - great post https://buff.ly/2XutZDG

If is about creating value, then we should be working on the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

Are You Working On the World’s To-Do List? Innovation is making new ideas real, to create value. If we're not innovating to support the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, are we really creating value?

This piece on service just came out!

Why service is more profitable than products Today there is no such thing as a product-only business, according to a new approach that aims to encourage innovation.

An older post, that I still like.

How to Design for Outcomes If we want to change the world, it's not enough to have great ideas. We also have to have the managerial skills needed to execute our ideas. The baby incubator from Design that Matters is a great case study showing the obstacles we face.

“Ultimately, it was my love of punk rock and garage music combined with my curiosity about how things work that led me to find my interest in people management.” How's that for a teaser?

Questioning everything: why leaders need constant curiosity .

This is packed with insights.
https://firstround.com/review/empathy-driven-development-how-engineers-can-tap-into-this-critical-skill/

Empathy-Driven Development: How Engineers Can Tap into This Critical Skill Andrea Goulet is determined to change the way that the tech industry talks about empathy. After teaching us how to conquer technical debt, the CEO of Corgibytes returns to the Review to explain why empathy is technical skill, and how engineers can leverage this powerful tool in their practice.

Brisbane and UQ People - this will be great! Professor David Gann will be talking about his experiences as DVC Innovation at Imperial College, and Chairman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority

Building an innovation campus and ecosystem | UQ Business School Universities are expected to be major contributors to innovations of benefit to society. In this talk, Professor David Gann will explain the thinking and process behind the creation of Imperial College’s $5 billion, White City Innovation Campus. Throughout the planning and construction of this cam...

This is good thinking from Ash Maurya

“Lean Startup, or Business Model Design, or Design Thinking?” is the Wrong Question In order to achieve breakthrough innovation, you shouldn’t be limiting yourself to any one of these frameworks, but rather using all…

Thinking about this post right now - I'm in the middle of a piece of work that was simplistic one week ago, and is complex right now. With any luck, it will be simple by next week.

Three Types of Models: Simplistic, Complex and Simple Tweet42FlipShare26Share6Buffer1Pin75 SharesI was watching some MBA presentations this week, and they reminded me of a section of “On Exactitude in Science” by Jorge Luis Borges. In this short story, Borges describes a map the size of the world (From Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, Transla...

This is a really interesting talk on the interaction between design and strategy.

Bill Buxton on sketching experiences, Institute of Design Strategy Conference, May 2008 Bill Buxton Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Bill Buxton is a designer and a researcher concerned with human aspects of technology. His work reflects a…

Amazing how frequently this comes up as an issue.

Those That Get It Don’t Need It, and Those That Need It Don’t Get It When we have a new idea that we're trying to spread, we face a paradox: those that get it don't need it, and those that need it don't get it. Breaking this paradox is the key to getting our ideas adopted.

This is really important - flat structures make management more important, not less - and you must think through how to build management into your practices. Good example here.

Co-opting traditional management skills for self-management As a self-managing company with a flat structure, we’ve got plenty to learn from looking at traditional management styles.

There's a lot you can say when your competitors are on the flat part of the S-Curve, and you'll be right - for a while, at least.

Foot In Mouth: 42 Quotes From Big Corporate Execs Who Laughed Off Disruption When It Hit With the iPhone as a glaring example, and stretching through Amazon and e-commerce and more recently blockchain and bitcoin, many innovations have initially been met with derision by big company CEOs. History often proved them wrong.

This gets at some of the key corporate innovation issues.

Don’t Pretend You’re a Startup When You’re Not - Innov8rs Steve Blank once famously said: “We now know something we didn’t know before: startups are not smaller versions of large …

I linked to this in this week's blog post, reminding me in the power of this idea from Charles and Ray Eames.

Never Delegate Understanding We often look for shortcuts to change, but there are none. The design process used by Charles and Ray Eames gives us insight into how we have to do the hard work if we want to change the world.

New blog post!

Do The Hard Work Many people want to act empathetically, but you can't do this if you don't first build empathy. And that's the hard part.

This podcast with came out really well - check it out for a short summary of what's going on with these days.

Learning Innovation: In Conversation with Dr Tim Kastelle - Trans-Tasman Tales Welcome to Trans-Tasman Tales, the free podcast by the Australian High Commission in New Zealand.In the latest episode of Trans-Tasman Tales, Second Secretary Anna Brown talks with Dr Tim Kastelle, Associate Professor at the University of Queensla...

Huge business model opportunity

Killing Strategy: The Disruption Of Management Consulting Since former Boston Consulting Group consultant Clayton Christensen first used the words "disruptive innovation" in 1995, nimble startups have challenged incumbents in every field from music to manufacturing.

Working on a new blog post reminded me how much I like this old one.

Don’t Set Goals, Make New Habits Instead It's not enough to want to innovate more. We have to build the habits that will help us take the daily actions that will achieve this goal.

Conversations over the past week have reminded me of the relevance of this.

Having a “Risk Averse Culture” Increases Your Risk If we try to avoid short-term risk, we actually increase the long-term risk of catastrophic failure for our organisations. If risk-aversion keeps us from innovating, we're thinking about risk all wrong.

Innovation isn't always about high-tech solutions.

The Story Behind The World’s Most Incompetent Drawings By all objective measures, the drawings I use in my talks and on this blog are not particularly skilled. So why do I use them? Here's the story.