Category Archives: Innovation

The Event That Made Einstein an Icon

The Event That Made Einstein an Icon

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

On April 3rd, 1921, a handful of journalists went to interview a relatively unknown scientist named Albert Einstein. When they arrived to meet his ship they found a crowd of thousands waiting for him, screaming with adulation. Surprised at his popularity, and charmed by his genial personality, the story of Einstein’s arrival made the front page in major newspapers.

It was all a bit of a mistake. The people in the crowd weren’t there to see Einstein, but Chaim Weizmann, the popular Zionist leader that Einstein was traveling with. Nevertheless, that’s how Einstein gained his iconic status. In a way, Einstein didn’t get famous because of relativity, relativity got famous because of Einstein.

This, of course, in no way lessens Einstein’s accomplishments, which were considerable. Yet as Albert-László Barabási, another highly accomplished scientist, explains in The Formula, there is a big difference between success and accomplishment. The truth is that success isn’t what you think it is but, with talent, persistence and some luck, anyone can achieve it.

There Is Virtually No Limit To Success, But There Is To Accomplishment

Einstein was, without a doubt, one of the great scientific minds in history. Yet the first half of the 20th century was a golden age for physics, with many great minds. Niels Bohr, Einstein’s sparring partner at the famous Bohr–Einstein debates (which Bohr is widely considered to have won) was at least as prominent. Yet Einstein towers over all of them.

It’s not just physicists, either. Why is it that Einstein has become a household name and not, say, Watson and Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA, an accomplishment at least as important as relativity? Even less known is Paul Erdős, the most prolific mathematician since Euler in the 18th century, who had an outrageous personality to boot?

For that matter, consider Richard Feynman, who is probably the second most famous physicist of the 20th century. He was, by all accounts, a man of great accomplishment and charisma. However, his fame is probably more due to his performance on TV following the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster than for his theory of quantum electrodynamics.

There are many great golfers, but only one Tiger Woods, just as there are many great basketball players, but only one Lebron James. The truth is that individual human accomplishment is bounded, but success isn’t. Tiger Woods can’t possibly hit every shot perfectly any more than Lebron James can score every point. But chances are, both will outshine all others in the public consciousness, which will drive their fame and fortune.

What’s probably most interesting about Einstein’s fame is that it grew substantially even as he ceased to be a productive scientist, long after he had become, as Robert Oppenheimer put it, “a landmark, not a beacon.”

Success Relies On Networks

Let’s try and deconstruct what happened after Einstein’s arrival in the United States. The day after thousands came to greet Weizmann and the reporters mistakenly assumed that they were there for Einstein, he appeared on the front pages of major newspapers like The New York Times and the Washington Post. For many readers, it may have been the first time they had heard of any physicist.

As I noted above, this period was something of a heyday for physics, with the basic principles of quantum mechanics first becoming established, so it was a topic that was increasingly discussed. Few could understand the details, but many remembered the genius with the crazy white hair they saw in the newspaper. When the subject of physics came up, people would discuss Einstein, which spread his name further.

Barabási himself established this principle of preferential attachment in networks, also known as the “rich get richer” phenomenon or the Matthew effect. When a particular node gains more connections than its rivals, it tends to gain future connections at a faster rate. Even a slight change in early performance leads to a major advantage going forward.

In his book, Barabási details how this principle applies to things as diverse as petitions on Change.org, projects on Kickstarter and books on Amazon. It also applies to websites on the Internet, computers in a network and proteins in our bodies. Look at any connected system and you’ll see preferential attachment at work.

Small Groups, Loosely Connected

The civil rights movement will always be associated with Martin Luther King Jr., but he was far from a solitary figure. In fact, he was just one of the Big Six of civil rights. Yet few today speak of the others. The only one besides King still relatively famous today is John Lewis and that’s largely because of his present role as a US congressman.

Each of these men were not solitary figures either, but leaders of their own organizations, such as the NAACP, The National Urban League and CORE and these, in turn, had hundreds of local chapters. It was King’s connection to all of these that made him the historic icon we know today, because it was all of those small groups, loosely connected, that made up the movement.

In my book, Cascades, I explain how many movements fail to bring change about by trying to emulate events like the March on Washington without first building small groups, loosely connected, but united by a shared purpose. It is those, far more than any charismatic personality or inspirational speech, that makes a movement powerful.

It also helps explain something about Einstein’s iconic status. He was on the ship with Weizman not as a physicist, but as a Zionist activist and that dual status connected him to two separate networks of loosely connected small groups, which enhanced his prestige. So it is quite possible, if not probable, that we equate Einstein with genius today and not, say, Bohr, because of his political activity as much as for his scientific talent.

Randomness Rewards Persistence

None of this should be taken to mean that Einstein could have become a legendary icon if he hadn’t made truly landmark discoveries. It was the combination of his prominence in the scientific community with the happy accident of Weizmann’s adoring crowds being mistaken for his own, that made him a historic figure.

Still, we can imagine an alternate universe in which Einstein becomes just as famous. He was, for example, enormously quotable and very politically active. (He was, at one time, offered the presidency in Israel). So it is completely possible that some other event, combined with his very real accomplishments, would have catapulted him to fame. There is always an element of luck and randomness in every success.

Yet Einstein’s story tells us some very important things about what makes a great success. It is not, as many tell us, simply a matter of working hard to achieve something because human performance is, as noted above, bounded. You can be better than others, but not that much better. At the same time, it takes more than just luck. It is a combination of both and we can do much to increase our chances of benefiting from them.

Einstein was incredibly persistent, working for ten years on special relativity and another ten for general relativity. He was also a great connector, always working to collaborate with other scientists as well as political figures like Weizmann and even little girls needing help with their math homework. That’s what allowed him to benefit from loosely connected small groups.

Perhaps most importantly, these principles of persistence and connection are ones that any of us can apply. We might not all be Einsteins, but with a little luck, we just might make it someday.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and previously appeared on Inc.com
— Image credit: misterinnovation.com

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

Resistance to Innovation – What if electric cars came first?

Resistance to Innovation - What if electric cars came first?

GUEST POST from Dennis Stauffer

In his acclaimed book the The Diffusion of Innovations—the most-cited work in all the social sciences—Everett Rogers explained how innovations frequently meet resistance. Resistance that isn’t always rational. How all-too-often we’re willing to accept the status quo despite its flaws and reject new options despite their benefits.

We’re seeing exactly this phenomenon with electric vehicles. Demand from what Rogers identified as the early adopters—wealthy buyers who can pay a premium for the newest technology—has largely been met. The challenge now is to reach a broader market of buyers with more practical concerns about cost, range, reliability, and safety. News articles and commentary are popping up noting those concerns and expressing doubts about just how useful electric cars really are. The lack of charging stations, the environmental impact of mining lithium, the danger of battery fires, and potential strains to the electrical grid. There are some legitimate concerns, but how much of that skepticism is grounded in the reality of electrification and how much is good old-fashioned resistance to change?

To answer that question, let’s turn the tables. What if electric cars came first, and we’re trying to introduce internal combustion engines? Here are some predictable—and quite similar—objections.

  • How can we possibly build all the gas stations we’re going to need, and should we? (If electrification is the entrenched technology, we’d have plenty of charging stations everywhere.)
  • Do you really want trucks carrying 10,000 gallons of highly explosive gasoline driving down the highway next to you? Accidents happen! Do you want 20 gallons of it parked in your garage, waiting for just one spark to set it off—taking your house with it?
  • You can charge your electric car at home while you sleep, or at a charging station while at work. You can’t do that with a gasoline engine. You must go somewhere to buy gas, take time to get there, and then stand next to a hose pumping one of the most flammable liquids we know of.
  • We’re going to need a lot of that gasoline. Where will we find it, and at what environmental cost? Are we going to start drilling everywhere? Even in the ocean, the arctic, and in fragile ecosystems?  Are we going to have massive tankers crisscrossing the oceans? What if there’s a leak or a spill?
  • How are we going to build all the refining capacity we’ll need to process and transport all that gas? That’s a massive investment. Who’s going to pay for it?
  • What if we need to get that gas from countries that don’t like us? Will they refuse to sell to us or charge exorbitant prices? Will we make our enemies rich?
  • Gasoline is more expensive per mile driven than electricity, and because it’s a commodity, its price fluctuates—sometimes a lot. You never know what you may have to pay.
  • Gasoline engines are a lot more expensive than electric motors. They’re much more complex and since we’re building them in smaller numbers at first, carmakers don’t have the same economies of scale.
  • Internal combustion engines are more complex to repair. How often will your car need to be fixed? Will your mechanic know how?
  • What about air pollution? Just one internal combustion car emits 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. Multiply that by all the cars on the road!
  • Would you like a car that’s slower? The most powerful—and most expensive—internal combustion cars on the road have less torque than a typical electric vehicle. That means less acceleration when you need to pass someone.

Some of these concerns are a bit overblown — just like some of the concerns about electric cars. But others are entirely valid. Yet too often we shrug them off because we’ve already accepted those costs, inconveniences, and dangers.

What we’re seeing with electric cars is the same progression we saw with early automobiles, airplanes, hybrid crops, personal computers, and many other now widely popular innovations. We’ll get there, but not without some pushback.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of January 2024

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of January 2024Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are January’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023 — Curated by Braden Kelley
  2. Creating Organizational Agility — by Howard Tiersky
  3. 5 Simple Steps to Team Alignment — by David Burkus
  4. 5 Essential Customer Experience Tools to Master — by Braden Kelley
  5. Four Ways To Empower Change In Your Organization — by Greg Satell
  6. AI as an Innovation Tool – How to Work with a Deeply Flawed Genius! — by Pete Foley
  7. Top 100 Innovation and Transformation Articles of 2023 — Curated by Braden Kelley
  8. 80% of Psychological Safety Has Nothing to Do With Psychology — by Robyn Bolton
  9. How will you allocate your time differently in 2024? — by Mike Shipulski
  10. Leadership Development Fundamentals – Work Products — by Mike Shipulski

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in December that continue to resonate with people:

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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






Are You Engaging in Innovation Theater?

Are You Engaging in Innovation Theater?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When you go to the cinema or the playhouse you go you see a show. The show may be funny, it may be sad, it may be thought-provoking, it may be beautiful, and it may take your mind off your problems for a couple of hours; but it’s not real. Sure, the story-line is good, but it came from someone’s imagination. And because it’s a story, it doesn’t have to bound by reality. Sure, the choreography is catchy, but it’s designed for effect. Yes, the cinematography paints a good picture, but it’s contrived. And, yes, the actors are good, but they’re actors. What you see isn’t real. What you see is theater.

If you are asked to focus on the innovation process, that’s theater. Innovation doesn’t care about process; it cares about delivering novel customer value. The process isn’t most important, the output is. When there’s an extreme focus on the process that usually means an extreme focus on the output of the process would be embarrassing.

If you are tasked to calculate the net present value of the project hopper, that’s theater. With innovation, there’s no partial credit for projects you’re not working on. None. The value of the projects in the hopper is zero. The song about the value of the project hopper is nothing more than a catchy melody performed to make sure the audience doesn’t ask about the feeble collection of projects you are working on. And, assigning a value to the stagnant project hopper is a creative story-line crafted to hide the fact you have too many projects you’re not working on.

If you are asked to create high-level metrics and fancy pie charts, that’s innovation theater. Process metrics and pie charts don’t pay the bills. Here’s innovation’s script for paying the bills: complete amazing projects, launch amazing products, and sell a boatload. Full stop. If your innovation script is different than that, ball it up and throw it away along with its producer.

If the lame projects aren’t stopped so better ones can start, if people aren’t moved off stale projects onto amazing ones, if the same old teams are charged with the innovation mandate, if new leaders aren’t added, if the teams are measured just like last year, that’s innovation theater. How many mundane projects have you stopped? How many amazing projects have you started? How many new leaders have you added? How many new teams have you formed? How will you measure your teams differently? How do you feel about all that?

If a return on investment (ROI) calculation is the gating criterion before starting an amazing project, that’s innovation theater. Projects that could create a new product family with a fundamentally different value proposition for a whole new customer segment cannot be assigned an ROI because no one has experience in this new domain. Any ROI will be a guess and that’s why innovation is governed by judgment and not ROI. Innovation is unpredictable which makes an ROI is impossible to predict. And if your innovation process squeezes judgment out of the story-line, that’s a tell-tale sign of innovation theater.

If the specifications are fixed, the resources are fixed, and the completion date is fixed, that’s innovation theater. Since it can be innovation only when there’s novelty, and since novelty comes with uncertainty, without flexibility in specs, resources, or time, it’s innovation theater.

If the work doesn’t require trust, it’s innovation theater. If trust is not required it’s because the work has been done before, and if that’s the case, it’s not innovation.

If you know it will work, it’s innovation theater. Innovation and certainty cannot coexist.

If a steering team is involved, it’s innovation theater. Consensus cannot spawn innovation.

If more than one person in charge, it’s innovation theater. With innovation, there’s no place for compromise.

And what to do when you realize you’re playing a part in your company’s innovation theater? Well, I’ll save that for another time.

Image credit: Pexels

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.






Pathways to Scale

Why planning your innovation expedition helps avoid a lot of trouble on the journey…

Image: Dall-E via Bing

GUEST POST from John Bessant

When I was a child a big feature of the social landscape was the annual visit to my uncle’s house on Christmas Eve. My dad came from a big family and they’d gather at his brother’s place to celebrate; my kid brother would already be asleep but I would sit in the small room next to the place they were all gathered, drinking, talking, occasionally singing. It was warm there; a small electric fire in the grate and a blanket to wrap myself in if I felt the cold.

Which was just as well since I invariably spent the evening with my nose in a book. Not just any book; as soon as we arrived I’d make a beeline for the bookshelf and haul out John Hunt’s account of the ascent of Everest. And I’d spend the evening while the ice crawled up the windows outside the room I’d imagine hearing the wind howling against the flimsy side of my tent as we shivered over a primus stove, trying to warm ourselves and get some rest before tomorrow’s big day. The last painful yards towards the summit…..

I was fascinated by the scale of the thing; a huge expedition, involving over 400 people (362 of them porters helping carry the 5000-plus kilograms of equipment) and relying on the intimate knowledge of the mother mountain held by the 20 Sherpas in the team. Those Nepalese guides had grown up in the shadow of the peak and knew to fear and respect it. The months of planning in smoky rooms in London clubs, the assembly and trek towards the base camp and the allocation of roles to help lay the foundations for what would certainly not be a simple walk in the park.

The extended discussions around which paths to take, the weighing up of different challenges along the prospective routes. Obstacles reckoned into the equation and balanced with the specialist skills and equipment needed to tackle them. A whole new language of cols and crevasses, of pitons and crampons to be learned, a crash-course in high altitude physiology and technology to be mastered.

And that was all before they even took their first tentative steps up the slopes.

It was engrossing, exciting and scary; for an 8-year-old kid whose experience of mountaineering extended to scrambling over the South Downs during our annual trip to see Grandma this was heady stuff. And as the evening wore on and we approached the summit, so it became a race against time. For the climbers, whittled down to Hilary and Tenzing, struggling up the last stage, their oxygen and energy running low and storms looming.

And for me hearing the chatter from next door rise to the climax which portended the taking of farewells, the wrapping of my kid brother in a blanket to continue his pre-Santa sleep in the car and me being bundled into a coat. Would I get to the summit in time — or have to wait until next year to continue the journey, abandoning mine at the eleventh hour?

I took a couple of lessons from that book, the first being that I’m not cut out for mountain climbing. There have to be easier and still thrilling ways to get your kicks and ‘because it is there’ isn’t a good enough reason for me to devote my energies to that particular kind of madness.

But the other is a healthy respect for people who scale mountains successfully. It takes a lot of planning, great team work and an approach to uncertainty which is all about agility and pivoting, adapting and improvising your way upwards.

Pretty much the key ingredients for successful innovation — and certainly relevant to another kind of scaling journey, enabling great innovations to have impact.

Because taking an innovation from a small-sized success story to something which delivers value at scale is not an easy one. The Holy Grail of impact has a lot in common with that elusive quest pursued by King Arthur’s knights, taking them along strange paths, meeting with dragons and disasters and lasting a long time. Similar odds of success too.

Having spent a long time focused on the challenges facing start-ups the innovation spotlight is now moving to the question of scaling — and there’s a helpfully growing body of knowledge and codified experience around this theme. Including the important decision about which route to take for the journey to scale.

One thing about mountain climbing which I remember thinking about when reading my Everest book was how they chose which route to take. Faced with 29,000 feet of sheer white walls with the occasional dangerous looking black rock poking its jagged edge through the snow like a knife through a curtain, how do you decide which path to take? It’s not as if there are well-worn tracks and clear signposts which you can follow — all you have is a lot of very unfriendly and treacherous ground on which to try to make your way.

It’s the same with scaling your innovation. Choosing your preferred pathway to scale is a key first stage on the journey; fortunately — like today’s Everest climbers — there’s a wealth of experience available from previous attempts and some important lessons on which we can build.

In particular we need to see the choices available as lying on a spectrum where we trade off additional external involvement with giving up a degree of control.

It’s a strategic decision, trying to balance the resource commitments you’ll need to make with the amount of control you want to retain. And with deciding what parts of your innovation knowledge are core, what parts are modular and can be adapted and customized with others in mind and what parts are you prepared to let others engage with, ‘hacking’ their own version of your ideas. Scale stories give us valuable clues about possible options, which include not doing it!

Some innovations aren’t really about a scaling journey. They work for a particular problem in a particular context; what’s needed for impact over the long-term is sustainability, being able to continue to deliver over an extended period of time and becoming something which is used and relied upon.

But if you are going to aim for scale then your choices include:

· Parachute — develop the venture, then try to get acquired, a classic start-up exit strategy. Let someone with the experience and the resources buy your solution, let it go. Easy on paper but you give up all your control and can only watch from the side-lines as your venture develops, and hope it’s in safe hands…

· Go it alone — keep on adding staff and spreading your solution across different geographies, gradually paint the world (or your chosen part of it) in your colors. There are plenty of advantages to doing this — mostly you keep control and you can directly manage quality, message, brand, etc. But the downside is you’ll need a lot of people and resources and you’ll pretty soon reach the point where you need to rethink your structure. The old tight-knit start-up team has to give way to a structured organization, complete with policies, procedures and a slowing down of the decision-making process. Plus you’ll need to adapt your solution to different local conditions — compatibility. And cost management will be important, finding ways to grow without bloating.

In reality this organic growth kind of approach can’t be a solo act — there will be things you need to outsource like legal services, manufacturing, distribution or maintenance. And it can also take time to build your own networks.

· Replicate — maybe your solution idea is one you think will work simply by replicating, placing the same offer in different geographies with only minor tweaks to help it fit. If your solution is something which can be ‘packaged’ and exported — a plug’n’play option — then this can work. It can either be a ‘grow your own’ approach, repeating the pattern by putting down your footprints on an increasingly broad geography. That’s the kind of route followed by IKEA and many other retailers, embodying their innovation solution in something which can be replicated.

Or you can franchise, allow others to take on the task and replicate on your behalf, sharing the revenues and building on your original innovative efforts. That’s the route which McDonalds has followed, exporting its original innovative fast-food format to over 39,000 locations around the world. But as Ray Croc, their scale architect realized, there’s a critical need to make sure the rules are clearly codified and then control via the franchise agreement so your proxies don’t damage the brand, compromise quality or change the core product. It’s a kind of remote control based on a clear constitution….

· ‘Relay replication’ — another version which involves another organization adopting and using your solution. Like franchising it requires protocols, training, standardization of core elements and processes but it also allows the adopting unit to continue to adapt and innovate within agreed parameters. A classic model here might be the diffusion of chemical plants like oil refineries; the core technology is transferred and the user learns to operate. It needs more than simple delivery, not plug n play — it involves a shared extended handover process until the user can make ‘product in a bottle’ with its own staff operating the equipment.

The advantages here are that you learn every time as you coach different organizations in the use of your innovation, plus there’s the chance that their downstream learning feeds back to you and allows you to improve your innovation. But it takes time and resources to ensure a successful handover, with key knowledge being shared through training, manuals and protocols and a long-term commitment to support.

· Licensing is another variation on the replication theme where other players can take on and (depending on the terms of the license) do things ranging from simply selling the core package through to adapting and extending it to suit local conditions. The big advantage is that other players are putting their shoulder to the wheel, helping spread the innovation, plus there’s a direct financial return to the original innovator. But once again it does involve letting go of control.

· Open source/open licensing — much commercial innovation is about finding ways to appropriate the benefits. So there’s pressure to keep a tight rein on what’s shared and how. But if you want to spread something, especially a novel approach, you might want to open up more to accelerate diffusion and seek your returns from being a first mover, growing with the market. There’s plenty of examples — Philips wanted to change the way we consumed recorded music in 1993 when they launched the Compact Cassette and so licensed it for free to others like Sony and Matsushita. It makes sense — if you are trying to establish a new ‘dominant design’ and move the world away from the current incumbent then recruiting others via open licensing is a good road to take.

And in the world of social innovation this has particular relevance; innovators who want to change the world for the better face the same challenge and recruiting others to the cause offers one way of doing so.

There are several advantages to such an open approach, not least it recruits many innovators who may help improve on your ideas. Communities of practice and using the crowd have become powerful innovation engines through this approach of free sharing; Linux is a good example.

Image: Dall-E via BIng

Lego’s approach to the hackers who started to modify the original ‘Mindstorms’ product is interesting here; they were presented with a different option to the traditional lawsuit which they might have been expecting. They were invited to Denmark to add their innovative ideas to those of the core design team!

But the downside, of course, in such open approaches is the loss of control and the risk that the innovation may be hijacked or developed in directions which do not match those of the original authors or reflect their social values.

· Strategic partnerships make sense where there is a clear need for ‘complementary assets’ of knowledge or other key resources and where win-win arrangements and contracts can be put in place. Christopher Sholes and colleagues had developed a great solution to the typewriter opportunity back in the 1850s but it took their strategic partnership with Remington and their accompanying mass-manufacturing and marketing to scale their innovation.

· Multi-player consortia may be needed when the range of complementary assets needed goes beyond a single partner. Sears and Roebuck pioneered the remote retailing model with their mail order catalogue approach but they needed to bring together many other players into the model to make it work — finance houses, logistics and distribution and a wide range of different suppliers. Boeing and Airbus do the same today, orchestrating extensive networks of players and partners to deliver their aerospace solutions at scale.

Such consortia bring real power to the scaling challenge but also require careful integration around a core mission. Managing such ‘strategic networks’ is well-known for its high transaction costs and co-ordination challenges.

· Value network and ecosystems — today’s innovation language extends this multi-player game, recognizing that there is a need for multiple players to work together to create value at scale. The challenge is that not all of these players have the same goals or aspirations so balancing their needs with the overall ‘mission’ becomes a tricky balancing act. It’s also important to recognize that such ecosystems don’t just have shared value creators in the mix like our strategic partnerships; they may also involve other players who affect the journey to scale by shaping the ways in which the value creation game is played. Examples of such shapers include government regulators, trade unions and standards organizations.

Once again this has particular relevance for scaling social innovation where system change which delivers real impact may depend on finding ways to bring many diverse players, like government agencies or regional authorities onside. As an influential IDB report puts it, such collaborations require ‘…different actors to coalesce around a shared set of priorities and best practices’.

· Platforms — we’re also now seeing the rise of platform businesses which enable scaling through linking innovators and markets more effectively. The Taobao market approach pioneered in China mimics in many ways the ecosystems around Apple’s developer platform or much of the Amazon operation. For small start-up innovators such platforms become a powerful alternative route to scale, but at the cost not only of accessing the platform but also in letting go some degree of control.

For any innovator climbing Mount Scale remains a key challenge. Meandering around the foothills may be a pleasant way to pass the time but if you want your innovation to have real impact then that peak has got to be climbed. Which means putting together and planning your expedition with the kind of care and attention John Hunt brought to his Everest team. And my guess is that his reflections probably have relevance in the world of innovation. Working out the most appropriate route up those slopes is something best done in the comfort of base camp rather than halfway up the mountain with the wind howling and the snow lashing at your face as you realise that the other path might have been a better one to take….

Image: Dall-E via Bing

This blog is based on our forthcoming book ‘The Scaling Value Playbook’ — click here for more details and to pre-order

You can find my podcast here and my videos here

And if you’d like to learn with me take a look at my online course here

Image credits: Dall-E via Bing, John Bessant

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

Creating an Innovation Mantra

Creating an Innovation Mantra

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

We have an immense distaste for uncertainty. And, as a result, we create for ourselves a radical and unskillful overestimation of our ability to control things. Our distaste of uncertainty is really a manifestation of our fear of death. When we experience and acknowledge uncertainty, it’s an oblique reminder that we will die. And that’s why talk ourselves into the belief we can control thing we really cannot. It’s a defense mechanism that creates distance between ourselves and from feeling our fear of death. And it’s the obliquity that makes it easier to overestimate our ability to control our environment. Without the obliquity, it’s clear we can’t control our environment, the very thing we wake up to every morning, and it’s clear we can’t control much. And if we can’t control much, we can’t control our aging and our ultimate end. And this is why we reject uncertainty at all costs.

Predictable, controllable, repeatable, measurable – overt rejections of uncertainty. Six Sigma – Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control – overt rejection of uncertainty. Standard work – rejection of uncertainty. Don’t change the business model – a rejection of uncertainty. A rejection of novelty is a rejection of uncertainty. And that’s why we don’t like novelty. It scares us deeply. And it scares us because it reminds us that everything changes, including our skin, joints, and hairline. And that’s why it’s so challenging to do innovation.

Innovation reminds us of our death and that’s why it’s difficult? Really? Yes.

Six Sigma is comforting because its programmatic illusion of control lets us forget about our death? Yes.

The aging business model reminds us of our death and that’s why we won’t let it go? Yes.

That’s crazy! Yes, but at the deepest level, I think it’s true.

I understand if you disagree with my rationale. And I understand if you think my thinking is morbid. If that’s the case, I suggest you write down why you think it’s so incredibly difficult to create a new business model, to do novel work, or to obsolete your best work. I’ll stop for a minute to give you time to grab a pen and paper. Okay, now put your pen to paper and write down why doing innovation (doing novel work) is so difficult. Now, ask yourself why that is. And do that three more times. Where did you end up? What’s the fundamental reason why doing new work (and the uncertainty that comes with it) is so difficult to do?

To be clear, I’m not advocating that you tell everyone that innovation is difficult because it reminds them that they’ll die. I explained my rationale to give you an idea of the magnitude of the level of fear around uncertainty so that, when someone is scared to death of novelty, you might help them navigate their fear.

Trying something new doesn’t invalidate what you did over the last decade to grow your business, nor will it replace it immediately, if it all. Maybe the new work will add to what you’ve done over the last decade. Maybe the new work will amplify what’s made you successful. Maybe the new work will slowly and effectively migrate your business to greener pastures. And maybe it won’t work at all. Or, maybe your customers will make it work and bury you and your business.

With innovation, start small. That way the threat is smaller. Run small experiments and share the results, especially the bad results. That way you demonstrate that unanticipated results don’t kill you and, when you share them, you demonstrate that you’re not afraid of uncertainty. Try many things in parallel to demonstrate that it’s okay that everything doesn’t turn out well and you’re okay with it. And when someone asks what you’ll do next, tell them “I don’t know because it depends on how the next experiment turns out.”

When you’re asked when you’ll be done with an innovation project, tell them “I don’t know because the work has never been done before.” And if they say you must give them a completion date, tell them “If you must have a completion date, you do the project.”

When you’re running multiple experiments in parallel and you’re asked what you’ll do next, tell them you’ll do “more of what works and less of what doesn’t.” And if they say “that’s not acceptable”, then tell them “Well, then you run the project.”

We don’t have nearly as much control as our minds want to us believe, but that’s okay as long as we behave like we know it’s true. Uncertainty is uncomfortable, but that’s not a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s a good thing.

If people aren’t afraid, there can be no uncertainty. And if there’s no uncertainty, there can be no novelty. And if there’s no novelty, there can be no innovation. If people aren’t afraid, you’re doing it wrong.

As a leader, tell them you’re afraid but you’re going to do it anyway.

As a leader, tell your team that it’s natural to be afraid and their fear is a leading indicator of innovation.

As a leader, tell them there’s one thing you’re certain about – that innovation is uncertain.

And when things get difficult, repeat the Innovation Mantra: Be afraid and do it anyway.

Image credit: Pixabay

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.






Customer Journeys and the Technology Adoption Lifecycle

Customer Journeys and the Technology Adoption Lifecycle

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

Like everything else in this Darwinian world of ours, customer journeys evolve with changes in the environment. Ever since the advent of the semiconductor, a compelling source of such changes has been disruptive digital technology. Although we are all eager to embrace its benefits, markets must first work through their adoption life cycles, during which different buying personas come to the fore at different stages, with each one on a very different kind of journey.

So, if you plan to catch the next wave and sell the next big thing, you’re going to need to adjust your customer journey playbook as you go along. Here’s a recap of what is in store for you.

Customer Journeys in the Early Market

The early market buying personas are the visionary and the technology enthusiast, the former eager to leverage disruption to gain first-mover competitive advantage, the latter excited to participate in the latest and greatest thing. Both are on a journey of discovery.

Technology enthusiasts need to get as close to the product as possible, seeing demos and alpha-testing prototypes as soon as they are released. They are not looking to be sold (for one thing, they have no money)—they are looking to educate themselves in order to be a reliable advisor to their visionary colleague. The key is to garner them privileged access to the technical whizzes in your own enterprise and, once under NDA, to share with them the wondrous roadmap you have in mind.

Visionaries are on a different path. They want to get as clear an understanding as possible of what makes the disruptive technology so different, to see whether such a difference could be a game changer in their circumstances. This is an exercise in imagineering. It will involve discussing hypothetical use cases, and applying first principles, which means you need to bring the smartest people in your company to the table, people who can not only communicate the magic of what you have but who can also keep up with the visionary’s vision as well.

Once this journey is started, you need to guide it toward a project, not a product sale. It is simply too early to make any kind of product promise that you can reliably keep. Not only is the paint not yet dry on your own offer, but also the partner ecosystem is as yet non-existent, so the only way a whole product can be delivered is via a dedicated project team. To up the stakes even further, visionaries aren’t interested in any normal productivity improvements, they are looking to leapfrog the competition with something astounding, so a huge amount of custom work will be required. This is all well and good provided you have a project-centric contract that doesn’t leave you on the hook for all the extra labor involved.

Customer Journeys to Cross the Chasm

The buying personas on the other side of the chasm are neither visionaries nor technology enthusiasts. Rather, they are pragmatists, and to be really specific, they are pragmatists in pain. Unlike early market customers, they are not trying to get ahead, they are trying to get themselves out of a jam. In such a state, they could care less about your product, and they do not want to meet your engineers or engage in any pie-in-the-sky discussions of what the future may hold. All they want to do is find a way out of their pain.

This is a journey of diagnosis and prescription. They have a problem which, given conventional remedies, is not really solvable. They are making do with patchwork solutions, but the overall situation is deteriorating, and they know they need help. Sadly, their incumbent vendors are not able to provide it, so despite their normal pragmatist hesitation about committing to a vendor they don’t know and a solution that has yet to be proven, they are willing to take a chance—provided, that is, that:

  • you demonstrate that you understand their problem in sufficient depth to be credible as a solution provider, and
  • that you commit to bringing the entire solution to the table, even when it involves orchestrating with partners to do so.

To do so, your first job is to engage with the owner of the problem process in a dialog about what is going on. During these conversations, you demonstrate your credibility by anticipating the prospective customer’s issues and referencing other customers who have faced similar challenges. Once prospects have assured themselves that you appreciate the magnitude of their problem and that you have expertise to address its challenges, then (and only then) will they want to hear about your products and services.

As the vendor, therefore, you are differentiating on experience and domain expertise, ideally by bringing someone to the table who has worked in the target market segment and walked in your prospective customer’s shoes. Once you have established credibility by so doing, then you must show how you have positioned the full force of your disruptive product to address the very problem that besets your target market. Of course, you know that your product is far more capable than this, and you also know you have promised your investors global domination, not a niche market solution. But for right now, to cross the chasm, you forsake all that and become laser-focused on demolishing the problem at hand. Do that for the first customer, and they will tell others. Do that for the next, and they will tell more. By the time you have done this four or five times, your phone will start ringing. But to get to this point, you need to be customer-led, not product-led.

Customer Journeys Inside the Tornado.

The tornado is that point in the technology adoption life cycle when the pragmatist community shifts from fear of going too soon to fear of missing out. As a consequence, they all rush to catch up. Even without a compelling first use case, they commit resources to the new category. Thus, for the first time in the history of the category, prospective customers have budget allocated before the salesperson calls. (In the early market, there was no budget at all—the visionary had to create it. In the chasm-crossing scenario, there is budget, but it is being spent on patchwork fixes with legacy solutions and needs to get reallocated before a deal can be closed.)
Budget is allocated to the department that will purchase and support the new offer, not the ones who will actually use it (although they will no doubt get chargebacks at some point). That means for IT offerings the target customer is the technical buyer and the CIO, the former who will make the product decision, the latter who will make the vendor decision. Ideally, the two will coincide, but when they don’t, the vendor choice usually prevails.

Now, one thing we know about budgets is that once they have been allocated they will get spent. These customers are on a buying mission journey. They produce RFPs to let them compare products and vet companies, and they don’t want any vendor to get too close to them during the process. Sales cycles are super-competitive, and product bake-offs are not uncommon. This means you need to bring your best systems engineers to the table, armed with killer demos, supported by sales teams, armed with battle cards that highlight competitor strengths and weaknesses and how to cope with the former and exploit the latter. There is no customer intimacy involved.

What is at stake, instead, is simply winning the deal. Here account mapping can make a big difference. Who is the decision maker really? Who are the influencers? Who has the inside track? You need a champion on the inside who can give you the real scoop. And at the end of the sales cycle, you can expect a major objection to your proposal, a real potential showstopper, where you will have to find some very creative way to close the deal and get it off the table. That is how market share battles are won.

Customer Journeys on Main Street

On Main Street, you are either the incumbent or a challenger. If the latter, your best bet is to follow a variation on the chasm-crossing playbook, searching out a use case where the incumbent is not well positioned and the process owner is getting frustrated—as discussed above. For incumbents, on the other hand, it is a completely different playbook.

The persona that matters most on Main Street is the end user, regardless of whether they have budget or buying authority. Increasing their productivity is what creates the ROI that justifies any additional purchases, not to mention retaining the current subscription. This calls for a journey of continuous improvement.

Such a journey rewards two value disciplines on the vendor’s part—customer intimacy and operational excellence. The first is much aided by the advent of telemetry which can track product usage by user and identify opportunities for improvement. Telemetric data can feed a customer health score which allows the support team to see where additional attention is most needed. Supplying the attention requires operational excellence, and once again technology innovation is changing the game, this time through product-led prompts, now amplified by generative AI commentary. Finally, sitting atop such infrastructure is the increasingly powerful customer success function whose role is to connect with the middle management in charge, discuss with them current health score issues and their remediation, and explore opportunities for adding users, incorporating product extensions, and automating adjacent use cases.

Summing up

The whole point of customer journeys done right is to start with the customer, not with the sales plan. That said, where the customer is in their adoption life cycle defines the kind of journey they are most likely to be on. One size does not fit all, so it behooves the account team to place its bets as best it can and then course correct from there.
That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pixabay

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.






Big Companies Should Not Try to Act Like Startups

Big Companies Should Not Try to Act Like Startups

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In 2009, Jeffrey Immelt set out on a journey to transform his company, General Electric, into a 124 year old startup. Although it was one of the largest private organizations in the world, with 300,000 employees, he sought to become agile and nimble enough to compete with high-flying Silicon Valley firms.

It didn’t end well. In 2017, problems in the firm’s power division led to massive layoffs. Immelt was forced to step down as CEO and GE was kicked off the Dow after 110 years. The company, which was once famous for its sound management, saw its stock tank. Much like most startups, the effort had failed.

Somewhere along the line we got it into our heads that large firms can’t innovate and should strive to act like startups. The truth is that they are very different types of organizations and need to innovate differently. While large firms can’t move as fast as startups, they have other advantages. Rather than try to act like startups, they need to leverage what they have.

Driving Innovation At Scale

The aviation industry is dominated by big companies. With a typical airliner costing tens of millions of dollars, there’s not much room for rapid prototyping. It takes years to develop a new product and the industry, perhaps not surprisingly, moves slowly. Planes today look pretty much the same as ones made decades ago.

Looks, however, can be deceiving. To understand how the aviation industry innovates, consider the case of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. Although it may look like any other airplane, Boeing redesigned the materials within it. So a 787 is 20 percent lighter and 20 percent more efficient than similar models. That’s a significant achievement.

Developing advanced materials is not for the faint of heart. You can’t do it in a garage. You need deep scientific expertise, state-of-the-art facilities and the resources to work for years—and sometimes decades— to discover something useful. Only large enterprises can do that,

None of this means that startups don’t have a role to play. In fact one small company, Citrine Informatics, is applying artificial intelligence to materials discovery and revolutionizing the field. Still, to take on big projects that have the potential to make huge global impacts, you usually need a large enterprise.

Powering Startups

All too often, we see large enterprises and startups as opposite sides of the coin, with big companies representing the old guard and entrepreneurs representing the new wave, but that’s largely a myth. The truth is that innovation often works best when large firms and small firms are able to collaborate.

Scott Lenet, President of Touchdown Ventures, sees this first-hand every day. His company is somewhat unique in that, unlike most venture capital firms, it manages internal funds for large corporations. He’s found that large corporations are often seen as value added investors because of everything they bring to the table.

“For example,” he told me, “one of our corporate partners is Kellogg’s and they have enormous resources in technical expertise, distribution relationships and marketing acumen. The company has been in business for over 100 years and it’s learned quite a bit about the food business in that time. So that’s an enormous asset for a startup to draw on.”

He also points out that, while large firms tend to know how to do things well, they can’t match the entrepreneurial energy of someone striving to build their own business. “Startups thrive on new ideas,” Lenet says “and big firms know how to scale and improve those ideas. We’ve seen some of our investments really blossom based on that kind of partnership.”

Creating New Markets

Another role that large firms play is creating and scaling new markets. While small firms are often more agile, large companies have the clout and resources to scale and drive impact. That often also creates opportunities for entrepreneurs as well.

Consider the case of personal computers. By 1980, startups like Apple and Commodore had already been marketing personal computers for years, but it was mostly a cottage industry. When IBM launched the PC in 1981, however, the market exploded. Businesses could now buy a computer from a supplier that they knew and trusted.

It also created fantastic opportunities for companies like Microsoft, Intel and a whole range of entrepreneurs who flocked to create software and auxiliary devices for PCs. Later startups like Compaq and Dell created PC clones that were compatible with IBM products. The world was never the same after that.

Today, large enterprises like IBM, Google and Amazon dominate the market for artificial intelligence, but once again they are also creating fantastic opportunities for entrepreneurs. By accessing the tools that the tech giants have created through APIs, small firms can create amazing applications for their customers.

Innovation Needs Exploration

Clearly, large firms have significant advantages when it comes to innovation. They have resources, customer relationships and deep expertise to not only invent new things, but to scale businesses and bring products to market. Still, many fail to innovate effectively, which is why the average lifespan of companies on the S&P 500 continues to decline.

There’s no reason why that has to be true. The problem is that most large organizations spend so much time and effort fine-tuning their operations to meet earnings targets that they fail to look beyond their present business model. That’s not due to any inherent lack of capability, it’s due to a lack of imagination.

Make no mistake, if you don’t explore, you won’t discover. If you don’t discover you won’t invent and if you don’t invent you will be disrupted. So while you need to focus on the business at hand, you also need to leave some resources un-optimized so that you can identify and develop the next great opportunity.

A good rule of thumb to follow is 70-20-10. Focus 70% of your resources on developing your present business, 20% of your resources on opportunities adjacent to your current business, such as new markets and technologies and 10% on developing things that are completely new. That’s how you innovate for the long term.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and previously appeared on Inc.com
— Image credit: Pixabay

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.






Are You Testing Your Intuitions?

Are You Testing Your Intuitions?

GUEST POST from Dennis Stauffer

Do you trust your intuitions? When you have a hunch, do you go with it or hold back? There’s been a long-running debate about which is the better strategy.

Some have claimed that top executives are at their best when they “go with their gut” or “follow their instincts.” They can give examples of when that’s turned out well for them. But what we don’t know is how often other intuitions may have turned out badly.

Trusting your intuitions can sometimes keep you safe. Some research has found that firefighters are well-served by their intuitions, because it helps them avoid danger. Women who are uneasy walking alone at night are advised to follow their intuitions.

That makes sense when you’re crossing a dark parking lot or at the scene of a fire. Being cautious when there might be no threat is better than being careless when there might be one. But that doesn’t mean those intuitions are accurate.

Innovators also have intuitions—and need to. Hunches about the value of an idea, or a sense of how customers will react. For an innovator, asking whether you should trust your intuitions is the wrong question. What needs to be asked instead is: How can I test my intuitions? What can I do to find out whether those feelings are reliable?

That’s one reasons innovators have a bias for action. Because acting on their ideas—in ways that will test them—is how they find out whether those ideas will work. That’s not only a more prudent approach than just following hunches; it’s excellent practice at evaluating the merits of your ideas. So over time, you become better at forming those hunches. Because you know how well it worked in the past, and maybe where you might have biases.

If you want to enhance your intuitions—and your innovativeness—don’t trust them or distrust them.

Test them.

View this post on video here if you prefer:

Image Credit: misterinnovation.com

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

Top 100 Innovation and Transformation Articles of 2023

Top 100 Innovation and Transformation Articles of 2023

2021 marked the re-birth of my original Blogging Innovation blog as a new blog called Human-Centered Change and Innovation.

Many of you may know that Blogging Innovation grew into the world’s most popular global innovation community before being re-branded as InnovationExcellence.com and being ultimately sold to DisruptorLeague.com.

Thanks to an outpouring of support I’ve ignited the fuse of this new multiple author blog around the topics of human-centered change, innovation, transformation and design.

I feel blessed that the global innovation and change professional communities have responded with a growing roster of contributing authors and more than 17,000 newsletter subscribers.

To celebrate we’ve pulled together the Top 100 Innovation and Transformation Articles of 2023 from our archive of over 1,800 articles on these topics.

We do some other rankings too.

We just published the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023 and as the volume of this blog has grown we have brought back our monthly article ranking to complement this annual one.

But enough delay, here are the 100 most popular innovation and transformation posts of 2023.

Did your favorite make the cut?

1. Fear is a Leading Indicator of Personal Growth – by Mike Shipulski

2. The Education Business Model Canvas – by Arlen Meyers

3. Act Like an Owner – Revisited! – by Shep Hyken

4. Free Innovation Maturity Assessment – by Braden Kelley

5. The Role of Stakeholder Analysis in Change Management – by Art Inteligencia

6. What is Human-Centered Change? – by Braden Kelley

7. Sustaining Imagination is Hard – by Braden Kelley

8. The One Movie All Electric Car Designers Should Watch – by Braden Kelley

9. 50 Cognitive Biases Reference – Free Download – by Braden Kelley

10. A 90% Project Failure Rate Means You’re Doing it Wrong – by Mike Shipulski

11. No Regret Decisions: The First Steps of Leading through Hyper-Change – by Phil Buckley

12. Reversible versus Irreversible Decisions – by Farnham Street

13. Three Maps to Innovation Success – by Robyn Bolton

14. Why Most Corporate Innovation Programs Fail (And How To Make Them Succeed) – by Greg Satell

15. The Paradox of Innovation Leadership – by Janet Sernack

16. Innovation Management ISO 56000 Series Explained – by Diana Porumboiu

17. An Introduction to Journey Maps – by Braden Kelley

18. Sprint Toward the Innovation Action – by Mike Shipulski

19. Marriott’s Approach to Customer Service – by Shep Hyken

20. Should a Bad Grade in Organic Chemistry be a Doctor Killer? – NYU Professor Fired for Giving Students Bad Grades – by Arlen Meyers, M.D.

21. How Networks Power Transformation – by Greg Satell

22. Are We Abandoning Science? – by Greg Satell

23. A Tipping Point for Organizational Culture – by Janet Sernack

24. Latest Interview with the What’s Next? Podcast – with Braden Kelley

25. Scale Your Innovation by Mapping Your Value Network – by John Bessant

26. Leveraging Emotional Intelligence in Change Leadership – by Art Inteligencia

27. Visual Project Charter™ – 35″ x 56″ (Poster Size) and JPG for Online Whiteboarding – by Braden Kelley

28. Unintended Consequences. The Hidden Risk of Fast-Paced Innovation – by Pete Foley

29. A Shortcut to Making Strategic Trade-Offs – by Geoffrey A. Moore

30. 95% of Work is Noise – by Mike Shipulski


Build a common language of innovation on your team


31. 8 Strategies to Future-Proofing Your Business & Gaining Competitive Advantage – by Teresa Spangler

32. The Nine Innovation Roles – by Braden Kelley

33. The Fail Fast Fallacy – by Rachel Audige

34. What is the Difference Between Signals and Trends? – by Art Inteligencia

35. A Top-Down Open Innovation Approach – by Geoffrey A. Moore

36. FutureHacking – Be Your Own Futurist – by Braden Kelley

37. Five Key Digital Transformation Barriers – by Howard Tiersky

38. The Malcolm Gladwell Trap – by Greg Satell

39. Four Characteristics of High Performing Teams – by David Burkus

40. ACMP Standard for Change Management® Visualization – 35″ x 56″ (Poster Size) – Association of Change Management Professionals – by Braden Kelley

41. 39 Digital Transformation Hacks – by Stefan Lindegaard

42. The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Future Employment – by Chateau G Pato

43. A Triumph of Artificial Intelligence Rhetoric – Understanding ChatGPT – by Geoffrey A. Moore

44. Imagination versus Knowledge – Is imagination really more important? – by Janet Sernack

45. A New Innovation Sphere – by Pete Foley

46. The Pyramid of Results, Motivation and Ability – Changing Outcomes, Changing Behavior – by Braden Kelley

47. Three HOW MIGHT WE Alternatives That Actually Spark Creative Ideas – by Robyn Bolton

48. Innovation vs. Invention vs. Creativity – by Braden Kelley

49. Where People Go Wrong with Minimum Viable Products – by Greg Satell

50. Will Artificial Intelligence Make Us Stupid? – by Shep Hyken


Accelerate your change and transformation success


51. A Global Perspective on Psychological Safety – by Stefan Lindegaard

52. Customer Service is a Team Sport – by Shep Hyken

53. Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022 – Curated by Braden Kelley

54. A Flop is Not a Failure – by John Bessant

55. Generation AI Replacing Generation Z – by Braden Kelley

56. ‘Innovation’ is Killing Innovation. How Do We Save It? – by Robyn Bolton

57. Ten Ways to Make Time for Innovation – by Nick Jain

58. The Five Keys to Successful Change – by Braden Kelley

59. Back to Basics: The Innovation Alphabet – by Robyn Bolton

60. The Role of Stakeholder Analysis in Change Management – by Art Inteligencia

61. Will CHATgpt make us more or less innovative? – by Pete Foley

62. 99.7% of Innovation Processes Miss These 3 Essential Steps – by Robyn Bolton

63. Rethinking Customer Journeys – by Geoffrey A. Moore

64. Reasons Change Management Frequently Fails – by Greg Satell

65. The Experiment Canvas™ – 35″ x 56″ (Poster Size) – by Braden Kelley

66. AI Has Already Taken Over the World – by Braden Kelley

67. How to Lead Innovation and Embrace Innovative Leadership – by Diana Porumboiu

68. Five Questions All Leaders Should Always Be Asking – by David Burkus

69. Latest Innovation Management Research Revealed – by Braden Kelley

70. A Guide to Effective Brainstorming – by Diana Porumboiu

71. Unlocking the Power of Imagination – How Humans and AI Can Collaborate for Innovation and Creativity – by Teresa Spangler

72. Rise of the Prompt Engineer – by Art Inteligencia

73. Taking Care of Yourself is Not Impossible – by Mike Shipulski

74. Design Thinking Facilitator Guide – A Crash Course in the Basics – by Douglas Ferguson

75. What Have We Learned About Digital Transformation Thus Far? – by Geoffrey A. Moore

76. Building a Better Change Communication Plan – by Braden Kelley

77. How to Determine if Your Problem is Worth Solving – by Mike Shipulski

78. Increasing Organizational Agility – by Braden Kelley

79. Mystery of Stonehenge Solved – by Braden Kelley

80. Agility is the 2023 Success Factor – by Soren Kaplan


Get the Change Planning Toolkit


81. The Five Gifts of Uncertainty – by Robyn Bolton

82. 3 Innovation Types Not What You Think They Are – by Robyn Bolton

83. Using Limits to Become Limitless – by Rachel Audige

84. What Disruptive Innovation Really Is – by Geoffrey A. Moore

85. Today’s Customer Wants to Go Fast – by Shep Hyken

86. The 6 Building Blocks of Great Teams – by David Burkus

87. Unlock Hundreds of Ideas by Doing This One Thing – Inspired by Hollywood – by Robyn Bolton

88. Moneyball and the Beginning, Middle, and End of Innovation – by Robyn Bolton

89. There are Only 3 Reasons to Innovate – Which One is Yours? – by Robyn Bolton

90. A Shortcut to Making Strategic Trade-Offs – by Geoffrey A. Moore

91. Customer Experience Personified – by Braden Kelley

92. 3 Steps to a Truly Terrific Innovation Team – by Robyn Bolton

93. Building a Positive Team Culture – by David Burkus

94. Apple Watch Must Die – by Braden Kelley

95. Kickstarting Change and Innovation in Uncertain Times – by Janet Sernack

96. Take Charge of Your Mind to Reclaim Your Potential – by Janet Sernack

97. Psychological Safety, Growth Mindset and Difficult Conversations to Shape the Future – by Stefan Lindegaard

98. 10 Ways to Rock the Customer Experience In 2023 – by Shep Hyken

99. Artificial Intelligence is Forcing Us to Answer Some Very Human Questions – by Greg Satell

100. 23 Ways in 2023 to Create Amazing Experiences – by Shep Hyken

Curious which article just missed the cut? Well, here it is just for fun:

101. Why Business Strategies Should Not Be Scientific – by Greg Satell

These are the Top 100 innovation and transformation articles of 2023 based on the number of page views. If your favorite Human-Centered Change & Innovation article didn’t make the cut, then send a tweet to @innovate and maybe we’ll consider doing a People’s Choice List for 2023.

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 1-6 new articles every week focused on human-centered change, innovation, transformation and design insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook feed or on Twitter or LinkedIn too!

Editor’s Note: Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all the innovation & transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have a valuable insight to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, contact us.

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