Over Thanksgiving we got our puzzle board out for a jigsaw puzzle. This time it was a Wasgij (jigsaw in reverse). A puzzle where you get a few hints, but don’t know the picture you are putting together. It occurred to me, that there is a lot of resemblance between putting together the unknown in […]
On our T4 training platform, we can see how teams progress by the answers they provide. One of the teams did not show any progress. So – in my role as their trainer – I reached out and asked what was going on. It turned out, the team had read all the materials, but just […]
IBM once featured a campaign around “the innovation man”. Stop talking, start doing was the main theme of these advertisements. This slogan seems still very relevant. However, how do you start doing? And does that mean that you should stop talking? Talking is important Stop talking is not really an option. You cannot launch […]
Learning by doing sounds easy, however, it requires preparation, guts, and practice to make it work. In an innovation project, there are many occasions that learning while doing is the only option. Years of schooling have taught us how to learn before doing, in the process, many of us have lost the ability to learn […]
In the various entrepreneurship and innovation programs I am involved with, Customer Discovery is always a key activity. While it may sound simple, in practice it is not. Interviewing users and potential clients about their needs and desires is challenging for startups and established organizations, yet, for different reasons. Below customer discovery tips and tricks […]
Overconfidence drives poor decisions. We humans, tend to focus on the evidence for outcomes that we believe and want to happen, while ignoring other possibilities. As a result, overconfidence is the biggest pitfall when it comes to bringing an innovative idea to practice. Now, research has shown an effective strategy to avoid overconfidence: focus on […]
How do you give your interns a meaningful experience in the brief period that they are part of your organization? Have you ever thought about the value of a (no-code) hackathon? A 2-days workshop within their internship in which they will get to experience what innovation truly entails? An experience that will make their summer […]
Do you still have unspent education and training budget left over for the year? Ensure it delivers value and spent it on new business development education.
As you may know, the 3rd Annual Wharton DC Innovation Summit is next Tuesday and Wednesday, April 26 & 27. It features 8 keynotes, 40 panels, over 100 speakers and hundreds of attendees. Floortje Blindenbach-Driessen is part of the panel on Woman Innovators on the 27th from 1.15 pm till 2.30 pm.
Everyone is enthusiastic about their innovative ideas when they start. Yet few are still enthusiastic when they have reached the finish line … because few make the finish line. Why do so many innovation projects strand?
Busy organizing for continuous improvement in your professional service organization? Both in healthcare and in the legal industry there are some great examples of how to embed continuous improvement in the fabric of your organization. Is the same infrastructure also suitable to foster innovation and new business development?
Mindset is the title of a book by Carol S. Dweck, PhD. It describes ways to go about being smart, learning, failure and praise. Not surprising, because mindset is about learning, it has founds its main application in education. However, the framework is also very relevant for innovation.