Monthly Archives: November 2009

Barriers to Innovation Workshop

Barriers to Innovation Workshop

This week I will be leading Workshop B on identifying and removing barriers to innovation on December 2, 2009 at the Open Innovation Summit in Orlando, Florida at the Crowne Plaza Orlando Universal.

Adding a front line perspective to the workshop will be:

  • Greg Fox (Cisco Systems) – Chief Marketing Officer, Strategic Alliances, WW Operations & Business Development
  • Helene F. Rutledge (GSK Consumer Healthcare) – Director of Open Innovations
  • Hutch Carpenter (Spigit) – Vice President of Product

The workshop will be a discussion with participants about identifying the barriers to innovation that can cripple the innovation capabilities that make organizations successful. This interactive workshop will also examine how to make immediate changes in your organization to start removing participants’ particular barriers to innovation and accelerate their organizations’ innovation capabilities.

Highlights will include:

  • An examination of how successful organizations go from nimble David to sluggish Goliath
  • An introduction of a framework for identifying barriers to innovation
  • Group Exercise – How to identify the barriers to innovation within your organization
  • An analysis of how others have removed barriers to innovation in their own organizations
  • Group Exercise – How to remove barriers to innovation in your organization

There is still time to register for the Open Innovation Summit and my Workshop B for $1000 off with code YPY692 online or by phone at 781-939-2500.

After the workshop I will be covering the rest of the Open Innovation Summit on Twitter as @innovate at the hashtag #OIS09, and will be writing up some blog entries after the event for Blogging Innovation.

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Find Your Nerve Guest Post

Are you going to be nervous in the downturn, or nervy?

It is much easier to lose your nerve than it is to regain it, so better not to lose it in the first place. I have lost my nerve before and made decisions I regretted for a long time after they were made. Acting out of fear leads to poor decision making and a lack of leverage that, in turn, leads to unfavorable outcomes. That is why you must maintain your nerve and focus on the actions you need to take to create positive change, rather than allowing yourself to be overtaken by fear. Fear is one of those emotions that grows to fill the space.

When this downturn began, I had a client that wanted to extend our contract at half the previous rate in order to cut costs. Without any other projects in hand it would have been very easy to take their offer and hope that something better would come along. It’s much harder to walk away from guaranteed income and focus on winning new clients during the biggest downturn in a generation, but I did. The outcome?

Not losing my nerve, refusing this offer, and fully dedicating myself to revitalizing my business has led to the signing of two new clients outside the United States, the signing of a top literary agent to represent my book project (and very soon a book deal), and to Blogging Innovation expanding to become the leading innovation blog on the web with more than 15 contributing authors and upwards of 200,000 monthly page views.

So before you lose your nerve and start asking yourself all those questions about what could go wrong, focus instead on asking yourself about the actions you could take now to make sure that things go right.

Are you going to be nervous in the downturn, or nervy? If you act fearful, your clients will be afraid to do business with you, but if you’re confident that you will do great things, then your clients will want to do great things with you.

This article originally appeared on Find Your Nerve

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Another Value-Driven Social Media Example

Another Value-Driven Social Media Example

I wanted to share another value-driven social media example:

Wisk’s facebook application called WiskIt.

“We thought perhaps we could take our stain-fighting heritage, and take it online to Facebook,” according to Elisa Gurevich, Brand Manager for Wisk.

It’s a great comment from the brand manager, and it is the way that every marketer should be thinking.

What value could we deliver to customers online that is consistent with our brand and our marketing strategy?

After all, despite what most people think, you don’t really need a social media strategy that stands apart from your marketing strategy.

Though your approach to social media might be different than other communication channels, social media isn’t this separate thing with mystical powers.

Social media should be an integrated part of your overall marketing strategy and something that every marketer has already educated themselves on how to use properly. Though it is never too late to learn!

What other examples of well-executed social media campaigns would people like to share?

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