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.

Kindle Sample of ‘Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire’

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Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is being announced by John Wiley & Sons today. Please help get the book off to a strong start by purchasing a copy (or one for each member of your team), and then reading and reviewing it on the retailer’s site or on your own personal blog. If you love Blogging Innovation, then you’ll love the book, and getting a copy of the book is a great vote of support for the work we are doing to make innovation and marketing insights accessible for the greater good.

A lot of hard work went into this book to make it accessible for innovators and managers in organizations of all sizes, while at the same time, it is also structured in such a way that it could be very useful in an academic setting.

I hope you’ll enjoy the book!

You can see the foreword from Rowan Gibson and Chapter 1 using the Kindle for the Web Beta reader below (the book is available as a hardcover, and for Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac, PC, etc.) – a special bonus awaits you at the bottom of this article:

'Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire' shipped to nearly 90 countries

Special Bonus

If 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 blog.

Download the sample chapter

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Please Help Ignite the Innovation Bonfire

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Every successful organization began as a nimble, innovative startup with the ability to course-correct and quickly adapt to the needs of its customers. But along the way, success and growth cause changes in the structure, the culture, and sometimes even the vision of organizations. Successful, growing organizations often focus on driving out the operational inefficiencies they maintained during their startup phase, and unintentionally erect barriers to innovation along the way.

When organizations realize that they need to innovate, they find that they struggle to do so. Often organizations make the mistake of copying the artifacts they observe or read about in case studies to boost their innovation. Instead, organizations need to look internally to build new organizational capabilities that will enable them to create their own artifacts.

My new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire will help readers identify the innovation blockages specific to their organization and teach them the fundamental changes that will help their organizations rebuild their hidden or lost innovation capabilities. Where appropriate we will leverage and evolve other leading innovation theories into coherent, practical applications that readers can implement in reinvigorating their organizations themselves – without expensive consultants.

Please help get the book off to a strong start by purchasing a copy (or one for each member of your team), and then reading and reviewing it on the retailer’s site or on your own personal blog. If you love Blogging Innovation, then you’ll love the book, and getting a copy of the book is a great vote of support for the work we are doing to make innovation insights accessible for the greater good.

A lot of hard work went into this book to make it accessible for innovators and managers in organizations of all sizes, while at the same time, it is also structured in such a way that it could be very useful in an academic setting.

I hope you’ll enjoy the book!

Here are a few of the advance reviews and interviews for Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire:

Here are a few of the endorsements of the book:

“Innovation is all about taming the unknown. In large companies, the unknown often goes unfunded. Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire arms you with the case studies you need to go from random spark to a steady burn.”

Steve Faktor, Vice President, Business Growth and Innovation, American Express

“Innovation is essential for the long-term success of companies. Braden Kelley provides individuals, organizations, and companies with a very powerful matchbox (tools and insights) to vigorously light their innovation bonfires! A must-read.”

Chris Thoen, Managing Director, Global Open Innovation Office, Procter & Gamble

“Braden Kelley has delivered a book that helps people move innovation from theory into practice. Given our experience innovating with clients over the past 40 years, I believe Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire shares many useful strategies and case studies showcasing what works. Most importantly, the book helps managers identify and address the barriers to innovation within their organization – a crucial step towards making sustainable change.”

Mark Bernstein, CEO of PARC

As you can see, the people who have received a sneak peak of the book so far have enjoyed it and I hope you will get yourself a copy and find something useful in it too. It is available for the Kindle in the UK and the USA, as an eBook from Barnes & Noble, and as a hardcover. Both electronic versions of the book also allow you to read it on your iPad, iPhone, Mac, PC, Android, etc.

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is now widely available in North America and is winging its way to online retailers and book shops in many countries around the world as we speak. Here is a list of many of the places it is available to purchase or pre-order. If we missed a big retailer in your country, please let us know:

Sneak Peek

If 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 blog.

Download the sample chapter

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Introducing Snack-Sized Innovation Consulting

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As many of you know, Human-Centered Change & Innovation is a sideline for me, and a way of giving back by bringing together the best human-centered innovation, change, transformation, design thinking and experience insights I can get access to and then make them accessible for the greater good.

To pay the bills and keep Human-Centered Change & Innovation going, I do consulting, speaking and writing.

In recognition of the changing economic realities and the increasingly global market for our services, we are pleased to offer snack-sized innovation and marketing consulting services by Skype video conference as well as traditional on-site consulting. Now you can rent Braden’s brain for even the smallest need or budget. Here are our three main packages:

Silver

Gold

Platinum

Skype video call
Up to 90 minutes of preparation and consulting services
Additional hours available for purchase

Skype video call
Up to 180 minutes of preparation and consulting services
Additional hours available for purchase

Travel expenses
Custom on-site consulting solution
Purchased by the day or week
Scheduled in advance

Business Strategy Innovation delivers workshops and consulting services that focus on three areas:

Getting Started with Innovation
Creating a Culture of Continuous Innovation
Building Stronger Customer and Employee Relationships

Founded by Braden Kelley, Business Strategy Innovation has been advising companies since 1996 in industries ranging from medical equipment, software, and internet advertising to real estate, retail, defense, and more.

Based in Seattle, Washington we are just a short flight away from anywhere in the United States and available to work with companies in Europe, Asia, and beyond. But, now with these new snack-size consulting options, you don’t have to have a budget big enough to bring us to you, and can instead get some really good feedback or advice on the issues you are wrestling with at a much lower cost.

I look forward to helping out however I can.

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‘Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire’ on Kindle

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Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire – A Roadmap to a Sustainable Culture of Ingenuity and Purpose is now available for Amazon Kindle both in the United States and in the United Kingdom.

Enjoy the book on your iPad, Kindle, Nook, iPhone, Android, PC, or Mac before it is widely available. If you buy the electronic version of the book from either Barnes & Noble or Amazon, you can download their readers for almost all of today’s major computing platforms.

The book will be available in hardcover October 5, 2010 from online retailers in the United States, and a week later it will be available in book stores and other electronic retailers outside the United States (UK, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and more).

If you’re curious about the book, you can look inside it on Amazon, or use Google Preview on the publisher’s web site, or watch on Monday, September 20, 2010 for a link to a free sample chapter from the book to be posted on http://innovationbonfire.com.

Getting a copy of the book is a great way to support the blog and keep it free.

Click here to pre-order the book

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Update – Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

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Beginning on October 5, 2010 my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire – A Roadmap to a Sustainable Culture of Ingenuity and Purpose will begin shipping from online retailers in the United States. It will be available from book stores and retailers outside the United States a week or so later.

If you’re curious about the book, you can look inside it on Amazon, or use Google Preview on the publisher’s web site.

Getting a copy of the book is a great way to support the blog and keep it free.

Click here to pre-order the book

Attendees of the Spigit Innovation Summit and readers of our monthly Innovation Insights newsletter have already received a free sample chapter from the book. This sample chapter will be made publicly available on September 20, 2010 when we announce the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2010.

And, for those of you with Apple iPads, Barnes & Noble Nooks, a smartphone, or a PC/Mac, you could be the first one on your block with the book thanks to our friends at Barnes & Noble. Check out the Newsflash:

Newsflash!

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is available as an e-book in advance of its hardcover release at Barnes & Noble.com. Enjoy the book on your iPad, Nook, PC, or Mac before it is widely available.

Visit Barnes&Noble.com

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Don’t Believe the Innovation Hype

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Don't Believe the Innovation Hype There are some strange rumors circulating out there that I’ve written a book. Before these rumors spin out of control, I thought I should address you, the loyal and valued readers of Blogging Innovation, and set the record straight.

I have not written a novel, an autobiography, or a tell-all book. Let us be clear. Despite what some people might be saying, I have not written a book about how to fix the sorry state of the global economy, or anything that might even in a small part include tips about how to find the perfect job. I also do not, nor have I ever pretended to be able to give you a new look or make you fashionable, either by writing about fashion or by speaking any magic or even mildly interesting words about the subject.

But I must admit, that yes, I have written a book about innovation. Get your rotten tomatoes ready.

Now, some of you might be wondering, why on earth would I do this?

And, some of you might be wondering why I haven’t addressed these rumors before now.

Well, in regards to the timing, it didn’t feel right to say anything before now. It just felt too premature.

And, in regards to why I would write a book? Well, it’s not to become the next Julia Child or John Grisham. I’m not very good at cooking, and I couldn’t stomach being a lawyer. But, I can finally come clean and say that, yes, I am passionate about innovation. There, I’ve said it, and if you want to know what I think about the subject, you can now read the sordid details in the pages of this book.

Instead of fashion or fine cuisine, I’ve chosen to write about identifying and removing barriers to innovation. The full title of the book is Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire – A Roadmap to a Sustainable Culture of Ingenuity and Purpose and it is available for pre-order wherever fine business books are sold. The book is being published by John Wiley & Sons, officially launches in October 2010, and features a foreword by Rowan Gibson.

With this all out in the open, I promise that my blogging game won’t go to hell in a hand basket, and I hope I won’t be missing the Postrank cut anytime soon. If you want to get the inside scoop and read more information about the book, please visit http://innovationbonfire.com.

Now that I am publicly humiliated and exposed as the author that I am, I might as well offer you the opportunity to be one of the first to preview the sample chapter from my new book. All you have to do is join our mailing list by August 31, 2010 and you will receive an electronic copy of the chapter on ‘Sustainable Innovation’ from Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire on September 1, 2010. If you’re already receiving our monthly Innovation Insights newsletter, then you will automatically receive the free sample chapter.

I promise you won’t have to wait in any silly lines (queues for the Brits and Aussies among you) and I guarantee that you will still be able to read it no matter how you choose to hold your device. Finally, please don’t tell too many about this, I’m not sure I’m ready to face Maria Bartiromo quite yet.

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Joy is BMW – Marketing Innovation or Marketing Failure?

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I came across the following video of a BMW advertising installation thanks to a tweet from Blogging Innovation contributor @RowanGibson and I think it serves as a perfect case study of how one firm – in this case BMW – can succeed and fail in utilizing some of the modern incremental innovations in the traditional marketing methods (including social media) to bond itself to an emotion – in this case ‘joy’.

First, watch the video, then we’ll examine where BMW has done well and where they have failed to harness the power of social media in creating the perception that ‘Joy is BMW’.

Successes:

1. BMW attempts to stake a claim to an emotion (joy) that no other car company is pursuing
2. The video has already had 115,000 views in one week
3. Lots of people are re-tweeting the video and including ‘BMW’ and ‘joy’ in their tweets on Twitter

Failures:

1. If you do a search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo! for “joy” – BMW is not in the top ten search results
2. Compounding this failure is that BMW is not doing any search engine marketing on the term “joy”
3. The startup video was herky-jerky after waiting a long time for it to load on the Joy is BMW page
4. The ‘Joy is BMW’ page is boring, not search engine friendly, and not social – there is no way for people to participate – no real value to the page
5. The 3D building projection event from Singapore is not featured on the ‘Joy is BMW’ page
6. There is no way for people to have conversations about the video (other than on YouTube)
7. BMW is not active on Twitter and makes no mention of Singapore event or ‘Joy is BMW’ campaign
8. No videos or photos related to ‘Joy is BMW’ on Facebook or mention of it by any of their 679,000+ fans
9. http://www.joyisbmw.com not purchased by BMW before launching the campaign
10. http://www.miseryisbmw.com also not purchased by BMW before launching the campaign

Unfortunately the failures list could be much longer, but I will stop here in the interest of brevity. The really sad thing about the ‘Joy is BMW’ campaign is that people want to be more social with BMW, they crave it, but they are not really being provided the opportunity.

To be honest, after watching the video of the experiential event I was expecting BMW to have created this forward-thinking integrated conversational marketing campaign to go with it, so imagine my surprise when the emperor’s new clothes fell off when I started looking around the social media universe.

BMW, there is still time to save the campaign. If you need some help (which it looks like you do), let me know and I’ll be happy to jump in, line up some great creative teams around the world, and knock out a great conversational marketing strategy to salvage the campaign.

What do you think? Has BMW blown a golden opportunity to go social with ‘Joy is BMW’?

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