Author Archives: Braden Kelley

About Braden Kelley

Braden Kelley is a Human-Centered Experience, Innovation and Transformation consultant at HCL Technologies, a popular innovation speaker, and creator of the FutureHacking™ and Human-Centered Change™ methodologies. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and Charting Change (Second Edition) from Palgrave Macmillan. Braden is a US Navy veteran and earned his MBA from top-rated London Business School. Follow him on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The Wonderful World of Downsizing

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Stikkee Situations - Downsizing Cartoon

In Stikkee Situations we’ll try to take a humorous look at a lot of different serious business topics.

In this episode we poke fun at the wonderful world of downsizing.

Employees hate workforce reductions (aka downsizing), but some CEOs (even in profitable companies) seem to love these traumatic events as a tool to save their job and to drive short-term movements in the price of a company’s stock price, often coming on the heels of a company missing their earnings estimates.

But the positive short term stock price effects of an across the board workforce reduction come with heavy consequences, several of which greatly affect the innovation capacity of the organization, including:

  1. Destruction of trust within the organization
  2. Reduction in collaboration in the organization
  3. Loss of forward momentum on project work
  4. Loss of some of your best talent as they proactively find themselves jobs elsewhere
  5. Reduction in passion, creativity, and engagement among those who remain
  6. Elimination or reduction in the organization’s commitment to innovation

Now of course sometimes workforce reductions are necessary to avoid bankruptcy or for strategic realignment (removing human resources from business areas you are exiting), and they can be potentially healthy for the organization.

But, when downsizing is done purely to please wall street and in an untargeted way, in the long run I would assert that the organization suffers more than it benefits because any reduction in forward innovation momentum is an invitation to competitors and startups to speed past you.

So, keep innovating!

Please note the following licensing terms for Stikkee Situations cartoons:

1. BLOGS – Link back to https://bradenkelley.com/category/stikkees/ and you can embed them for free
2. PRESENTATIONS, please send $25 to me on PayPal by clicking the button 3. NEWSLETTERS & WEB SITES, please send me $50 on PayPal by clicking the button
License for presentations - $25
License for newsletters and web sites - $50

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Your Chance to Help Overworked Entrepreneurs

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Your Chance to Help Overworked Entrepreneurs

Life for a busy entrepreneur regular working 60 hours a week can lead to a struggle with maintaining a healthy weight. You may find that you are eating out for convenience and getting to the gym very infrequently (if at all). This lifestyle may have been fine through your twenties and early thirties, but after 35, it gets difficult to keep active and you might find those few extra pounds you’ve put on every year are really starting to add up.

Have you had similar struggles?

If you have a way to help motivate overworked entrepreneurs to lay off the takeout and introduce more physical activity into their busy lives, we at Premera would love to hear about it.

Simply post your idea to Premera’s Facebook or Twitter page using the hashtag #IGNITEchange, or as a comment to their stories. You are then automatically entered into a drawing to win a $200 Amazon gift card. Best of all, you have the chance to impact a real person’s life. There will be four chances to win, once every week from now until September 8, 2014 (terms and conditions link expired).

Have a true game-changing idea that will spark families to make lasting, realistic improvements to their health?

Premera is rewarding that type of innovation as well through Premera’s Innovate to Motivate challenge (link expired), which offers a grand prize of $5,000!


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Do you support #StrikeFastFood or not?

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Stikkee Situations FightFor15

Today is the big day for the #StrikeFastFood movement (aka #FightFor15), during which fast food workers will walk off the job in search of a living wage – in this case they are hoping for $15 an hour.

What do you think of this movement?

Do you support it, or do you think the market should decide?

And do you think they’re foolish for changing the hashtag for their movement in the last 48hrs from #FightFor15 to #StrikeFastFood?

(You might notice the title for the cartoon is #FightFor15 because I created it yesterday)

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Announcing Stikkee Situations

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Stikkee Situations Number 1

I am proud to announce the launch of my business cartoon series called Stikkee Situations. I will try and do at least one business cartoon a week on the themes of innovation, marketing, management, leadership, strategy, culture, human resources, entrepreneurship, and the occasional political cartoon just for fun.

You may notice changes over time as I take a rapid prototype, Lean Startup type approach to the creation and evolution of this strip.

Please send me your topic ideas if there is a particular cartoon you’d like to see (or leave a comment) and give me your feedback and be part of its hopeful growth and improvement over time!

Please note the following licensing terms for Stikkee Situations cartoons:

1. BLOGS – Link back to https://bradenkelley.com/category/stikkees/ and you can embed them for free
2. PRESENTATIONS, please send $25 to me on PayPal by clicking the button 3. NEWSLETTERS & WEB SITES, please send me $50 on PayPal by clicking the button
License for presentations - $25
License for newsletters and web sites - $50

I hope you enjoy the ‘toons!

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Another Innovation Movie for Kids

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Another Innovation Movie for Kidsby Braden Kelley

If you haven’t watched the Disney movie “Meet the Robinsons” with your kids, you should. It may not inject innovation into their DNA, but it will help teach the role of failure in success.

Here is a great quote from the end of the movie from Walt Disney:

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long.

We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious…

and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

The movie celebrates failure and its importance in driving innovation.

For more celebration of progress and a single-minded focus, check out Honda’s ‘Dreams’ campaign from a couple of years ago.

What do think the place is for failure in innovation?

P.S. And if you missed it, I encourage you to check out my other kids movie post – Innovation and Chitty Chitty Bang

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Apple iPhone 6 Killer App Revealed

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Apple iPhone 6 Killer App RevealedWhile most people are focused on what the new Apple iPhone 6 hardware might look like and what new gizmos it might have, the real killer app for Apple’s latest refresh of their flagship mobile device will be an App and a little tiny NFC chipset.

Rumored for the iPhone 5 (rumors which were heightened by Apple’s acquisition and subsequent inclusion of fingerprint sensor technology), mobile payments may finally be a built-in feature of the Apple’s newest handset, the iPhone 6.

Apple has been reportedly out talking to the likes of Visa, American Express, Nordstrom and others, and if that is all true then expect part of Apple’s Tuesday September 9th announcement to be focused on the new mobile payment capabilities of the iPhone 6.

I was one of those who thought that mobile payments might launch as part of the iPhone 5’s capabilities, but obviously the technology, or more likely the relationships and contracts, were not ready for prime time a year ago.

Will mobile payments authenticated by your fingerprint finally appear in the iPhone 6?

If so, soon we will finally be able to stop carrying around wallets and switch to money clips and mobile phones, as such a feature will not only replace credit cards, but loyalty cards, insurance cards, and more.

Yes, Samsung may have done it first with the Galaxy S5, but you know Apple will do it bigger (and better).

I guess we’ll find out next week.

Image credit: Ricardo Del Toro


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Your Chance to Help Working Professionals

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Your Chance to Help Working ProfessionalsToday life in our college years feels somehow more manageable than the hectic pace of the working professional. Somehow it feels like it was easier then to eat reasonably well and to stay in good shape. Recent college graduates feel the pressure to build a strong foundation for a career and a social life, then add in responsibilities like car payments, pets, rent, and student loan debt, and it’s no wonder many working professionals find a focus on a healthy lifestyle often comes last.

With time short, stress high, and energy running low after work, it is often easier to grab a burger or pizza than to make a kale salad, and skip the gym in favor of the siren’s song of Netflix and the couch.

Are you struggling with a similar issue or is this sounding like the problems of a younger you?

Then here is your chance to help working professionals everywhere!
(and possibly win some cash at the same time)

Simply post your idea to Premera’s Facebook or Twitter page using the hashtag #IGNITEchange, or as a comment to their stories. You are then automatically entered into a drawing to win a $200 Amazon gift card. Best of all, you have the chance to impact a real person’s life. There will be four chances to win, once every week from now until September 8, 2014 (terms and conditions link expired).

Have a true game-changing idea that will spark families to make lasting, realistic improvements to their health?

Premera is rewarding that type of innovation as well through Premera’s Innovate to Motivate challenge (link expired), which offers a grand prize of $5,000!


Build a common language of innovation on your team

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How Happy Are You When You Fly?

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I came across the following video from British Airways a month or so ago, and I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to write about it, but I finally had a moment and so I thought I would share it with you now.

It’s about a happiness blanket that British Airways has invented and subsequently tested on flights between London and New York.

When I first found the video I had to first check the date it was posted because it almost seemed like an April Fool’s joke, but it was posted in June, so it was definitely something they were serious about.

The question I have is, what actionable data were they hoping to gain from the investment of all of this time, money, and energy (at the expense of not doing something else they were considering)?

Personally, I don’t get it. It seems like a waste of money as they likely learned very little they didn’t already know. And if it was done as a viral marketing ploy, well, that doesn’t really work if it gets people laughing at you instead of with you.

Whatever the reason behind it, personally I would have spent my marketing dollars elsewhere.

So, without further delay, I give you, the happiness blanket:


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Your Chance to Help Middle-Age Guys (and Gals) Get Fit

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Your Chance to Help Middle-Age Guys (and Gals) Get FitHere is your chance to help every middle-aged guy (or gal) who’s struggling with the inevitable progression of age. What used to be easy isn’t anymore!

Maybe you (or a friend) used to be a big runner and counted on running to keep weight down and stay active, but lately the motivation to run has waned, and as as a one-trick pony who’s never developed other ways to get regular exercise, with persistent plantar fasciitis that makes anything longer than a one mile walk moderately painful, the weight is starting to accumulate.

How do you re-energize what formerly were healthy eating and workout routines to accommodate the realities of middle age?

Any ideas for new forms of exercise, for establishing new routines that are realistic for an 8 to 6 office worker?

Premera would love to hear your ideas on a middle age makeover.

Simply post your idea to Premera’s Facebook or Twitter page using the hashtag #IGNITEchange, or as a comment to their stories. You are then automatically entered into a drawing to win a $200 Amazon gift card. Best of all, you have the chance to impact a real person’s life. There will be four chances to win, once every week from now until September 8, 2014 (terms and conditions link expired).

Have a true game-changing idea that will spark families to make lasting, realistic improvements to their health?

Premera is rewarding that type of innovation as well through Premera’s Innovate to Motivate challenge (link expired), which offers a grand prize of $5,000!


Build a common language of innovation on your team

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Five Ways to Make Your Innovation Culture Smell Better

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Five Ways to Make Your Innovation Culture Smell BetterIs Your Organization Committed to Innovation?

If so, download my new innovation culture white paper.

Unfortunately, when it comes to fostering continuous innovation, most organizational cultures stink at it, and they are not innovating fast enough to repel the unrelenting threat posed by new market entrants with declining barriers to entry.

This is why I created my latest innovation white paper in partnership with Planview to help organizations learn how to make their organization’s innovation culture stink less by:

  • Focusing on the basics of culture change
  • Building a common language of innovation
  • Identifying and harnessing the untapped talents, skills, and abilities of employees
  • Leveraging their most curious individuals to drive momentum

Click here to download the white paper

To watch my ON DEMAND video presentation on the same topic, “Your Innovation Culture Stinks: 5 Ways to make it Smell Better” visit www.pipelineconference.com

What does your organization’s innovation culture smell like?


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