In search of better ideas, and impact … ideaflows and flux mindset, engineering your dreams and going beyond disruption … innovative thinking for business
September 18, 2023
As the world changes, how do we move forwards?
Innovation has never been a more urgent or important challenge, in business and society. How can organisation reimagine themselves in rapidly changing markets, with new tech capabilities, new customer demands and social expectations? How can society embrace new thinking to solve the biggest challenges from climate change to healthcare crisis?
Yet for too many companies, a quick workshop on Design Thinking, and maybe a few Idea Sprints, feel like enough to convince them that they are innovating. Too often, these become the high energy workshops that can also be called Innovation Theatre. They look and feel good at first, but do they really deliver results? Do they drive significant progress, and value creation?
Yes, we absolutely need energising and inspiring, but innovation also needs discipline. A disciplined process to capture fragile ideas, to ensure that are relevant to customers, to connect them into bolder concepts, to accelerate them into and within the market, to ensure they deliver commercial and user impact, for society too, and to sustain a portfolio of such concepts so they they keep flowing.
You can read more about my best new ideas for business, plus new innovation and future thinking here .
Here are some of the new books, research and projects that have inspired me this year:
The Performance Paradox: Turning the Power of Mindset into Action by Eduardo Briceño of Mindset Works tackles the counterintuitive phenomenon that if we focus only on performance, our performance suffers. To avoid falling into this trap, Eduardo sets out his innovative and refreshing framework of balancing learning and performing. He builds on the Growth Mindset principles of colleague Carol Dweck.
Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change by April Rinne, explores eight mindset shifts that flip conventional ideas about leadership, success, and wellbeing. These ‘flux superpowers’ include getting lost, running slower, and knowing your ‘enough.’ The book is all about helping individuals and organisations rethink and reshape their relationship with change and uncertainty. “When everything is in flux, like it is today, everything can benefit from a Flux Mindset” she says.
Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters by Stanford d.school’s Perry Klebahn and Jeremy Utley, which demonstrates how to establish daily creativity practice to unleash innovation within individuals and organisations. Innovation, they argue, is not event; it’s a practice. Ideaflow offers a tried and tested framework to boost the flow of ideas and breakthrough results to solve business problems.
Decision Sprint: The New Way to Innovate Into the Unknown and Move from Strategy to Action by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Atif Rafiq, presents a practical model for accelerating team-based problem solving. A roadmap for turning ideas into action, in Decision Sprint Atif debunks the belief that speed and accuracy need to be mutually exclusive and shows how business can move faster and smarter on their most important ideas.
Going On Offense: A Leader’s Playbook for Perpetual Innovation by Stanford’s Behnam Tabrizi, which explores the key ingredients that fuel the mindsets of firms dedicated to relentless experimentation. Drawing on his rigorous seven-year research, in Going On Offense Behnam reveals the transformative drivers of success in multiple innovative organisations, including several of the big tech giants.
Think Bigger: How to Innovate by Sheena Iyengar asks the timeless question, “How can I get my best ideas?” By debunking some of the popular concepts surrounding creativity, including brainstorming, Think Bigger provides a step-by-step framework for entrepreneurs, leaders, innovators – and everyone – to think more effectively and grow their ideas. As a roadmap for innovation and guide to creative thinking, Think Bigger lays the groundwork for addressing some of the world’s most pressing problems.
Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence by Brian Evergreen, former global head of Autonomous AI Co-Innovation at Microsoft Research, weaves together strategy, management thinking, economics, systemic design, and philosophy into actionable steps for managers seeking to harness AI for the betterment of their organisation and the world.
The Innovation Mindset: A Proven Method to Fuel Performance and Results by Jennifer Kenny focuses on practices that drive innovation across an entire business ecosystem, The Innovation Mindset argues that ‘human innovation’ is the missing link for enhancing individual and team innovation capacity. The book outlines Jennifer’s Six Step Practice Model, which starts with uncovering the innovative drive within yourself and then harnessing it to build a cooperative ecosystem designed to unleash new discoveries.
Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobsby INSEAD’s Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, redefines and expands the existing view of innovation by introducing a new approach: nondisruptive creation. Just as Blue Ocean Strategy redefined the essence of strategy as creating not competing, Beyond Disruption provides a powerful new blueprint for how innovators and businesses can avoid destruction and create both economic and social value – to tackle new sets of challenges not addressed by existing industries, and for companies to grow whilst also being a force for good.
Engineering Our Dreams, is an active research project on AI, AR, and VR by Martin Lindstrom, who has engaged 1,000 volunteers in the metaverse for six months, to better understand human behaviour, and the role of businesses, brands. A key finding of the research is determining how brands, branding, and the influence of brands over consumers will be forever altered, given the new insights into what typical lifestyles will look like in 2035 as a result of VR and AI.
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