Killer Questions
How To Use First Principles Thinking To Innovate
Thinking is one of the essential skills a person must learn. It allows us to decide, solve problems, and come up with new ideas. And yet, many people never learn how to do it properly. The history of thinking goes back centuries. The ancient Greeks were some of the first people to think about thinki
(Preparing For) A Failure of Imagination
With organizational failures, the imagination is often at fault. We can’t imagine things going wrong, so we don’t plan for them. Organizations can’t imagine that their employees would do something unethical, so they don’t have policies in place to prevent it. Owners can’t imagine that a natural disa
The Power of Human Ingenuity
“What are you going to do about it?” My grandmother was chastising me for whining about how life wasn’t fair – or some other perceived injustice. What could I do about it! I was only a kid. It’s someone else’s job to fix it! Or at least I thought so. Instead of letting me pass […]
Killer Questions and Stepping Outside
Once you have assigned your Killer Questions, briefed your group, and set the date for the innovation session, it’s time for everyone involved to do observational homework. This is exactly what it sounds like. You need your team to get out of the office, into the real world, and make as many observa
Innovation Mentoring vs. Innovation Coaching: Which Do You Need?
Mentoring is certainly not a new concept. In fact, the name comes from a character named “Mentor” in Homer’s Odyssey. He was a trusted advisor to Odysseus’ son. Even though its roots run back thousands of years, however, the recent growth of social learning has given rise to a boom in mentoring and
Ideation Workshop Game Plan
So what do you need to know as the leader of an ideation workshop? A workshop has multiple elements—participants, Killer Questions, and so on—but at the end of the day, the quality of the ideas directly relates to your ability to create a highly functional, highly effective group. In the following s
Education and Change
About a year ago I got a call inviting me to participate in a meeting with the Department of Education because they were actively looking at ways to innovate how kids are educated. I agreed to participate in a meeting in San Francisco, and I was happy to have the opportunity to do so. My […]
Brainstorming Quality Ideas
I’ve given you my system for using the Killer Questions to generate the quality ideas that lead to great innovations. Now comes your challenge: getting this information out of the book and into your organization. In this chapter I’ll give you a few essential rules for running a successful innovation
Know that your customers’ needs will change
A big part of my business is being aware of, and responding to, the life cycles of my industry and my customers. Some of these are easy to see; you only need a cursory understanding of the effect of OPEC on gas prices in the early ’70s to understand why cars became more fuel efficient […]
In-house or Outsource as Needed?
What is your organization’s philosophy about design and development? Do you keep everything in-house, or do you outsource as needed? There are two schools of thoughts on this. By keeping the design process in-house, a company can build a sense of continuity and cohesion that links the entire family
