Monthly Archives: August 2011

Mobilizing Your Innovation Army

Mobilizing Your Innovation ArmyToo much of the time the innovation conversation focuses on whether someone is innovative or not. We waste far too much time focusing on how people can become more innovative instead of stopping to think about the possibility that everyone is innovative in their own way.

The lone innovator myth needs to die.

Great ‘lone innovators’ like Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison had teams of people surrounding them and helping them succeed.

At Noon EDT on Wednesday, September 7, 2011 I will present a FREE webinar titled ‘Mobilizing Your Innovation Army‘ as part of the Back End of Innovation conference that will take place October 17-19, 2011 in San Diego where fellow Innovation Excellence co-founder Rowan Gibson will be speaking several times on creating a sustainable corporate innovation system.

Innovation is a team sport, and in this webinar we will take a look at how to engage your entire workforce in the innovation process by leveraging The Nine Innovation Roles to harness the different unique innovation capabilities that we all possess. We are all innovative in our own ways, and The Nine Innovation Roles help you evaluate your current workforce and provide insight into how to mobilize an innovation army.

In this webinar, we’ll focus on:

  • The importance of building a common language of innovation
  • How to destroy the lone innovator myth
  • Ways to use The Nine Innovation Roles
  • Why big innovations often start small
  • How everyone can make a difference for innovation

I hope to see you at the FREE ‘Mobilizing Your Innovation Army’ webinar on September 7, 2011 at Noon EDT.


Build a Common Language of Innovation

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A YouTube and Google+ Innovation

A YouTube and Google+ Innovation

Thanks to some of the people in my Google+ feed, I came across a little hidden innovation that YouTube and Google+ have brought to the social media party – social video watching.

In real life, when people want to watch a show together they either invite them over for a TV night or maybe they hang on the line on their telephone through the whole show chattering away about it.

But now Google+ and YouTube have teamed up to try and recreate the value of watching television, movies, or other video with friends and family.

They’ve made it so that friends can hangout and watch the same YouTube videos at the same time while connected to each other by Google+, and at the same time have created a potential killer app that will drive adoption of Google+ that builds upon the size and strength of the YouTube fan base.

If you don’t know how to do social video watching with YouTube and Google+, it is pretty easy. You go to YouTube find a video you like, then click the share button to expose all of the sharing options. There you will see a new option that says:

“Watch with your friends. Start a Google+ Hangout”

Where will things go from here? Hard to say, but I do know that this feature will raise the bar for Facebook, MySpace, Windows Live, Twitter, and the other social networks out there. And, this feature should start a lot of chatter on the web, and eventually probably also make it onto the mass media as well, but only time will tell what kind of takeup this gets. It should be a fun, and social ride. Buckle up! Google+ is about to take off.

Bonus Insight

Mark Ritson, one of my Marketing professors during my MBA course at London Business School, did a study that showed that people tend to leave the room during the commercial breaks when watching television alone, but were more likely stay in the room and watch and discuss the advertisements when watching television with other people. Will this behavior carry over to social online video watching? Does this insight from the off-line world present opportunities for advertisers in the on-line world? What do you think?

Special Bonus

Download 'Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire' sample chapterIf you’ve read all the way to the bottom, then you deserve a free sample chapter from my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire. I hope you enjoy the sample chapter and consider purchasing the book as a way of supporting the future growth of this community.

Download the sample chapter

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Top 10 Innovation Videos of 2011

Top 10 Innovation Videos of 2011Do you have a favorite innovation video?

We asked you the global innovation community, to suggest videos for the Top 10 Innovation Videos of 2011.

Many people did, and they had the chance to win some of the $3,650 worth of prizes up for grabs.

Here are the Top 10 Innovation Videos of 2011 based on the submissions:

  1. Where Good Ideas Come From

  2. Innovation Acceleration

  3. Do Schools Kill Creativity?

  4. ABC Niteline – IDEO Shopping Cart

  5. Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy – First Followers

  6. Interview with Dean Kamen

  7. Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment

  8. The Myths of Innovation

  9. Two Similar Visions of the Future
  10. Here are two very similar visions of the future, the first is Microsoft’s vision for the year 2020:


    The second is Corning’s vision of the future dominated by specialty glass:

  11. The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Happy innovating!

Before you go…

What are your favorite innovation videos?
(make your suggestions in the comments)

Special Bonus

Download 'Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire' sample chapterIf you’ve read all the way to the bottom, then you deserve a free sample chapter from my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire. I hope you enjoy the sample chapter and consider purchasing the book as a way of supporting the future growth of this community.

Download the sample chapter

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy – First Followers

If you’ve learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let’s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:

1. A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

The 2nd follower is a turning point: it’s proof the first has done well. Now it’s not a lone nut, and it’s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.

2. A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers – not the leader.

Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we’ve got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we’ve got a movement!

As more people jump in, it’s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there’s no reason not to join now. They won’t be ridiculed, they won’t stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you’ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they’d be ridiculed for not joining.

And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let’s recap what we learned:

If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.

Be public. Be easy to follow!

But the biggest lesson here – did you catch it?

Leadership is over-glorified.

Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:

It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.

There is no movement without the first follower.

We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

Special Bonus

Download 'Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire' sample chapterIf you’ve read all the way to the bottom, then you deserve a free sample chapter from my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire. I hope you enjoy the sample chapter and consider purchasing the book as a way of supporting the future growth of this community.

Download the sample chapter

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.