Category Archives: Innovation

Transparency in Innovation

Why Openness Builds Trust

Transparency in Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

For too long, the default stance of innovation has been one of secrecy. Organizations have operated under the assumption that competitive advantage is best preserved by erecting walls of intellectual property and treating consumers as passive recipients of finished products. This closed model, built on proprietary control, is fundamentally incompatible with the demands of the modern, interconnected world. The fear is palpable: If we show our hand, a competitor will steal our core idea. But as a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I argue that this fear is misplaced. The single most critical, non-technical factor separating resilient market leaders from fragile incumbents is Transparency. Innovation thrives in the open, and in today’s economy, strategic openness is the foundation of trust.

Transparency in innovation means proactively sharing the why, the how, and the results of your creative endeavors. It involves exposing your development process, admitting to failures, disclosing the data you use, and inviting external scrutiny. This requires a courageous shift in mindset, transforming the consumer from a passive buyer into an engaged partner. This shift creates a powerful, self-correcting feedback loop of trust that accelerates quality, anticipates ethical pitfalls, and builds a powerful, resilient community around your brand, making the entire organization more anti-fragile.

The Three Dividends of Transparent Innovation

Adopting transparency is not a moral obligation; it is a superior business strategy — a Hybrid Competitive Advantage — that delivers three quantifiable dividends:

1. Enhanced Integrity and Algorithmic Resilience: By exposing your processes, you invite ethical audit. This is paramount in the age of AI. Algorithmic Transparency — explaining how a machine learning model arrived at a decision — is vital for regulatory compliance and public acceptance. Openness forces integrity, catching unintended biases or data misuse before they become a public crisis. This proactive ethical diligence shields the brand from future reputational damage.
2. Accelerated Improvement via Feedback: When you share prototypes or development roadmaps early, you don’t just get passive validation; you gain immediate, diverse, and high-quality feedback. The community effectively becomes an unpaid, global testing and quality assurance team, vastly accelerating the iterative cycle and ensuring the final product is truly human-centered. This speed is IP protection in itself.
3. Deepened Stakeholder Trust: In an era of rampant skepticism, consumers, investors, and employees value authenticity above all. Transparency serves as a powerful signal of confidence and honesty. It communicates: “We believe in what we are doing enough to show you the messy middle.” This conviction translates directly into loyalty and a willingness to forgive inevitable missteps, leading to higher customer lifetime value (CLV).

“Secrecy guards your vulnerability; Transparency guards your resilience. The choice is between short-term control and long-term trust.”

Case Study 1: Buffer – Radical Transparency in Operational Innovation

The Challenge:

Buffer, a social media management company, operated in a crowded, competitive market where secrecy around funding and operational decisions was the norm. The challenge was finding a non-technical way to stand out and build extraordinary trust with employees and customers.

The Transparent Solution:

Buffer embraced Radical Transparency as its core operating principle. They went far beyond standard innovation disclosure, sharing sensitive company data like their public salary formula, financial health (revenue, expenses, funding), and detailed decision-making frameworks. For product innovation, this meant openly discussing the trade-offs and constraints that shaped their roadmap, explaining why one feature was prioritized over another and how resources were allocated.

The Trust-Driven Impact:

This openness fostered deep trust, leading to extremely high employee engagement and low attrition. Externally, it positioned Buffer as an ethical, reliable partner. Customers became deeply committed not just to the tool, but to the company’s values, proving that sharing sensitive operational data—the ultimate act of transparency—can be a powerful, non-replicable competitive advantage that builds profound organizational resilience.

Case Study 2: Patagonia – Transparency in the Value Chain and Impact

The Challenge:

As a global apparel company, Patagonia faces immense complexity in its supply chain, making it difficult to guarantee that every fiber and factory meets its stringent environmental and labor standards. The pressure for perfect, unquestionable sustainability is practically unattainable.

The Transparent Solution:

Patagonia chooses not to hide its complexity but to expose it through Impact Transparency, most notably with its Footprint Chronicles. This online resource publicly details the environmental and social impact of every product, from raw material extraction to final delivery. This includes disclosing manufacturing locations and, crucially, admitting to shortcomings where materials or processes do not yet meet ideal standards. They use transparency not as a claim of perfection, but as a commitment to innovation and improvement, often inviting customers to join the journey.

The Trust-Driven Impact:

By being honest about the “messy middle” of their value chain, Patagonia has earned exceptional trust and loyalty. Consumers trust the brand not because it claims perfection, but because it is willing to disclose its imperfections and actively work to fix them. This transparency drives purchasing decisions, allows Patagonia to command a price premium, and ensures that their innovation efforts—such as switching to regenerative materials—are seen as genuine commitments, not just superficial marketing.

The New Mandate: Leading with Proactive Openness

The age of opaque innovation is over. Today, secrecy is interpreted not as strategic prudence, but as a lack of confidence or, worse, something to hide. Trust, the most valuable currency in business, is earned through exposure and vulnerability.

Leaders must therefore champion a culture of Proactive Transparency. This means designing innovation processes where ethical disclosure, early feedback loops, and open communication about both success and failure are default settings. By opening your innovation process—sharing the data, revealing the constraints, and celebrating the collective effort — you not only build a better product faster, but you forge an unbreakable bond of trust with your employees, partners, and customers. Transparency is not just good for people; it’s essential for modern, resilient innovation.

Extra Extra: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Flickr

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

Imagine Your Next

Leave a reply

Planning for the Future!

Imagine Your Next

GUEST POST from Teresa Spangler

“Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.” – Charles Kettering

The line between humans and machines is blurring by the day. The future, as we know it today may be tomorrow’s history book; with our exponential technological advancement in fields like Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, automation etc., there will come a time when machine intelligence could exceed human capabilities to an extent that would require us to contemplate on how this might affect society for better or worse.

The question of whether AI can take over has been at the forefront among futurists ever since computers began matching human abilities—albeit not entirely replacing them just yet! Although no one knows what lies ahead for humanity, these advancements are certainly going bring changes in every sphere from socioeconomics all the way up to space exploration.

So how best can we do future planning with so many priorities sitting on our day-to-day plates? Here is a simple exercise you and your organization can use to get imaginative about your future and design the best possible outcomes you desire.

In order to formulate the best possible outcomes for your organization, you need to get imaginative and plan. One way of doing this is by looking 10 years into the future! Can you predict what the future will look like in 10 years? Probably not. But, with a little time and creativity, we can get close!

Using this first strategy that may help you started planning a possible future.

Exercise:

Look forward 10 years

Divide a wall, white board or use a conference table into two sections

Doom– most negative possible outcomes that could happen

Boom– most positive possible outcomes that could happen

Considerations in your scenarios:

How will the world be impacted?

How will humanity be impacted?

How will your company be impacted?

How will you personally be impacted?

How did each of the above contribute to these scenarios?

+ Any other points you feel need to be considered

Using sticky notes

Write as many worse possible outcomes as the team can imagine
Write as many of the best possible outcome you can imagine impacting the world and humans positively.

Have each person contributing to craft a mini story of each scenario as if it’s happened already with as much detail as possible. Each person read out their mini story and collectivity design one story scenario from everyone’s input.

Now you have two possible future worlds one worst case and one best case.

Now for the planning:

Take the best case and reimagine your vision and mission as a company. What products, technologies, services, solutions will you have (no barriers! Imagine anything is possible)?

What roles will you have, what skills will everyone have, what does the organization look like, how have your customers and their needs changed?

This is not a one-hour or one-day exercise. The idea of designing the future is ongoing.

In the future, humans will coexist with machines.

The question is: how?

What do you think about this and what are your thoughts on adapting to it now?

How does company’s products change in relation to human-machine relationships or interactions reflected by technology usage habits of today’s youth who grew up using smartphones from an early age they can type faster than 5 WPM typing speed?

Consider the possibilities!

Let us help you start your journey into the future. We’d love to help!

Request our free two-hour facilitated workshop and see what you come up with!

Image credit: Pixabay

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

Open Source Innovation is Sharing for Greater Impact

Leave a reply

Open Source Innovation is Sharing for Greater Impact

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

For decades, the competitive landscape has been dominated by a zero-sum mentality: innovation was a tightly guarded secret, proprietary technology was the ultimate moat, and intellectual property was a weapon. But as a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I argue that this closed-loop model is becoming increasingly obsolete in a world defined by exponential complexity and interconnected challenges. The future belongs to a more expansive, collaborative paradigm: Open Source Innovation. This isn’t just a technical methodology for software development; it’s a profound strategic philosophy that leverages collective intelligence, accelerates problem-solving, and cultivates an ecosystem of shared value. It’s about moving from a mindset of hoarding knowledge to one of sharing for greater impact, proving that when you give away your best ideas, you often get something far more valuable in return.

The core principle of open source innovation is simple yet radical: by making certain intellectual assets (code, designs, data, research) freely available for others to use, modify, and distribute, you tap into a global network of talent and creativity that far surpasses the capacity of any single organization. This collaborative ecosystem drives faster iteration, more robust solutions, and greater societal benefit. The perceived “loss” of proprietary control is vastly outweighed by the gains in adoption, collective improvement, and the establishment of industry standards. It’s a human-centered approach to problem-solving, built on trust, transparency, and a shared belief that many minds are better than one, especially when tackling grand challenges.

The Strategic Imperatives of Open Source Innovation

Embracing open source innovation requires a significant shift in corporate culture and strategy. It’s about strategically deciding *what* to open and *how* to engage with the community:

1. De-Risking and Acceleration: By exposing nascent ideas or foundational technologies to a wider community, you gain diverse perspectives, catch bugs faster, and accelerate development cycles. The collective scrutiny and contribution dramatically de-risk the innovation process.
2. Building Ecosystems and Standards: Open sourcing foundational technologies can establish them as industry standards, creating network effects that benefit everyone, including the original contributor. It fosters a collaborative ecosystem that attracts talent and partners.
3. Enhancing Trust and Transparency: In an era of increasing skepticism, open source demonstrates a commitment to transparency and community. It builds trust by showing a willingness to share, inviting external review and collaboration.
4. Focusing on Higher-Value Activities: By open-sourcing non-differentiating “commodity” components, organizations can free up internal resources to focus on proprietary innovations that truly create unique value and competitive advantage.

“True innovation is not found in guarding secrets, but in inspiring shared discovery. Open source is the engine of collective genius.” — Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: Linux – The OS Built by the World

The Challenge:

In the early days of personal computing, operating systems were proprietary, expensive, and controlled by a few large corporations. This limited access, stunted innovation, and created vendor lock-in. The challenge was to create a robust, reliable, and accessible operating system that could compete with commercial giants without the resources of a corporate entity.

The Open Source Solution:

In 1991, Linus Torvalds released the initial version of the Linux kernel under an open-source license. This simple act invited developers worldwide to contribute, audit, and improve the code. What started as a personal project rapidly evolved into a global collaborative effort, harnessing the collective genius of thousands of programmers. The open development model allowed for:

Rapid Iteration: Bugs were found and fixed faster, and new features were integrated at an unprecedented pace.
Community Ownership: Developers felt a deep sense of ownership, driving unparalleled commitment and quality.
Unprecedented Customization: The open nature allowed Linux to be adapted for an incredible array of devices, from supercomputers to smartphones (Android is built on a Linux kernel).

The Human-Centered Result:

Linux fundamentally reshaped the technology landscape. It provided a powerful, free, and incredibly flexible operating system that became the backbone of the internet, enterprise servers, and mobile devices. It democratized access to powerful computing, fostering an explosion of innovation that would have been impossible under a proprietary model. Linux is the ultimate testament to the power of shared intellectual capital, proving that collective endeavor can create solutions far more robust and impactful than any single corporate entity.

Case Study 2: Arduino – Democratizing Hardware Innovation

The Challenge:

Microcontroller platforms, essential for building electronic prototypes and interactive objects, were traditionally complex, expensive, and geared towards professional engineers. This created a high barrier to entry for artists, designers, educators, and hobbyists who wanted to innovate with hardware.

The Open Source Solution:

In 2005, the Arduino project was launched, offering an open-source hardware and software platform. The physical circuit boards (hardware schematics) and the integrated development environment (software) were made freely available under open licenses. This meant anyone could build their own Arduino board, modify its software, or create extensions. This open approach led to:

Massive Accessibility: Lower cost and simpler programming made electronics accessible to a non-expert audience.
Explosive Innovation: A global community emerged, sharing thousands of projects, tutorials, and libraries, collectively innovating on the platform far beyond what a single company could achieve.
Educational Impact: Arduino became a staple in STEM education, teaching foundational principles of coding and electronics.

The Human-Centered Result:

Arduino revolutionized the maker movement and democratized access to hardware innovation. It empowered countless individuals to turn their ideas into tangible prototypes, leading to everything from home automation systems to interactive art installations and educational robots. By choosing an open-source model, Arduino didn’t just sell products; it built a vibrant ecosystem of creators and learners, proving that sharing foundational technology can unlock exponential human creativity and societal impact.

Conclusion: The Future is Collaborative, Not Proprietary

The lessons from open source are clear: in an increasingly complex world, no single organization holds a monopoly on good ideas or the talent to execute them. The greatest innovations often emerge from the intersections of diverse perspectives and collaborative efforts. Open source innovation is not about altruism alone; it is a powerful strategic choice that fosters speed, resilience, and an unprecedented capacity for solving shared challenges.

Leaders must actively explore how to strategically embrace open source principles—whether by contributing to existing projects, open-sourcing internal non-core technologies, or fostering a culture of internal transparency. By moving beyond a mindset of proprietary hoarding to one of strategic sharing, organizations can tap into the collective genius of the world, driving greater impact, building stronger ecosystems, and ultimately, ensuring a more innovative and collaborative future for all.

Image credit: 1 of 950+ FREE quote slides for your meetings and presentations at http://misterinnovation.com

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

Metrics for Purpose-Driven Innovation

Leave a reply

Measuring What Matters

Metrics for Purpose-Driven Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the innovation world, we often fall into the trap of measuring what is easy, not what is essential. We celebrate vanity metrics—the number of patents filed, the size of the R&D budget, or the raw number of ideas generated—while the true measures of impact, those tied to human value and organizational purpose, remain stubbornly abstract. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I am here to argue that the way we measure innovation fundamentally dictates the kind of innovation we pursue. If your metrics are focused solely on short-term financial returns, you will stifle the kind of purpose-driven, deeply impactful innovation that drives long-term success and true societal change. Measuring what matters means placing human outcomes at the heart of your data strategy.

Purpose-driven innovation requires a shift from Output Metrics (e.g., number of projects launched, revenue from new products) to Outcome Metrics (e.g., reduction in customer effort, improvement in employee well-being, quantifiable social impact). The goal is to create a holistic measurement system that tracks not just the financial success of an innovation, but its measurable contribution to the company’s stated mission and its impact on the people it serves. This is about establishing a direct, measurable link between your innovation efforts and your commitment to a future that is not just more profitable, but more human-centered.

The Purpose-Driven Metrics Framework

To accurately measure purpose-driven innovation, leaders must look beyond the balance sheet and adopt a three-tiered framework that captures the human, organizational, and strategic value being created:

1. Human Impact Metrics (The “Heart”): These metrics quantify the change in user and employee experience. They are the strongest signal of purpose alignment. Examples include:
- Customer Effort Score (CES): Did the innovation make the customer’s life measurably easier?
- Well-being Index: How did the innovation impact employee stress, engagement, or capacity for deep work?
- Reduction in Friction: Quantifying the time or steps saved for the user/employee.
2. Learning & Agility Metrics (The “Mind”): These metrics track the efficiency and intelligence of the innovation pipeline itself, rewarding the behaviors that drive continuous change. Examples include:
- Failure Rate of Experiments: A *healthy* failure rate (e.g., 7 out of 10 ideas fail) shows the team is taking enough risks.
- Cycle Time Reduction: The time elapsed from ideation to testing.
- Innovation Literacy Score: A measure of how well employees understand and engage with the innovation process.
3. Purpose Alignment Metrics (The “Mission”): These metrics link innovation directly to the organization’s greater purpose, often encompassing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors. Examples include:
- Resource Efficiency: Reduction in waste, water, or energy use per unit of output.
- Inclusion Score: Percentage of new products/services designed to explicitly serve previously underserved communities.
- Social Value Creation (SVC): A quantifiable measure of positive social impact tied to the innovation’s core function.

“What you measure is what you become. Measure only money, and you’ll create a short-sighted organization. Measure purpose, and you’ll create a resilient future.”

Case Study 1: Patagonia – Measuring Environmental Footprint as a Core Metric

The Challenge:

For decades, Patagonia’s core mission has been “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” The challenge was how to measure the success of innovation—a new jacket, a revised supply chain—against this specific purpose, rather than just against sales figures.

The Purpose-Driven Solution:

Patagonia innovated its measurement system by making environmental and social impact metrics non-negotiable in the product development lifecycle. They treat their Footprint Chronicles — a detailed public record of the environmental and social impact of their products, from raw material to delivery — as a core innovation metric. For any new product or material, the innovation team is primarily measured on metrics such as:

Percentage of Recycled Content: Did the innovation increase the use of recycled or regenerative materials?
Reduction in Water/Energy Use: Did the new manufacturing process measurably decrease resource intensity?
Fair Trade Certification: Is the innovation elevating the social standard of the supply chain?

The financial success of the product is a secondary, supportive metric. The primary goal is to minimize environmental harm, making purpose the leading indicator for investment.

The Human-Centered Result:

By prioritizing Purpose Alignment Metrics, Patagonia consistently drives innovations like the use of recycled polyester, organic cotton, and radical supply chain transparency. This strategic alignment has fostered fierce customer loyalty and premium pricing, proving that measuring and achieving purpose is the most effective path to enduring financial success.

Case Study 2: Microsoft – Quantifying AI’s Impact on Employee Productivity and Well-being

The Challenge:

Microsoft’s massive investment in AI and tools like Copilot threatened to fall into the classic trap of only measuring adoption or revenue. The true innovation challenge was demonstrating that AI didn’t just automate tasks, but measurably improved the human experience of work — making employees more creative, more focused, and less burdened by “digital debt.”

The Purpose-Driven Solution:

Microsoft developed sophisticated Learning & Agility and Human Impact Metrics to quantify the value of AI in a human-centered way. They moved beyond simple usage rates to metrics like:

Focus Time Recovery: Quantifying the number of uninterrupted work hours AI tools helped to create.
Meeting Load Reduction: Measuring the percentage decrease in unnecessary or redundant meetings.
Cognitive Load Score (in internal studies): Measuring the perceived mental effort required to complete tasks before and after AI integration.

These metrics directly link the technological innovation of AI to the human outcome of enhanced well-being and creativity.

The Human-Centered Result:

By measuring the quality of life improvements, Microsoft ensures its AI innovations are human-centered by design. This strategy allows them to prove that the core value of their technology is not just in efficiency, but in empowering human potential — freeing up time and mental capacity for the uniquely human tasks of judgment, creativity, and empathy. The emphasis on these metrics guides their development teams to optimize for human outcomes, creating a powerful feedback loop for purpose-driven innovation.

Conclusion: The Moral Compass of Measurement

The innovation landscape is complex, but the path to meaningful, resilient growth is clear: Measure your purpose first, and the profits will follow. Your metrics are your moral compass. If you measure only financial return, you will only create financial products. If you measure social impact, employee empowerment, and environmental stewardship, you will create innovations that build a better, more resilient future for everyone.

Leaders must champion this shift, insisting that every new project, product, or pivot carries a dedicated set of Human Impact and Purpose Alignment Metrics. This commitment moves your organization beyond simple performance and into the realm of true significance, proving that the greatest innovations are those that measure and maximize the value they create for humanity.

Image credit: Pexels

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

Why Small Teams Kick Ass

Leave a reply

Why Small Teams Kick Ass

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When you want new thinking or rapid progress, create a small team.

When you have a small team, they manage the hand-offs on their own and help each other.

Small teams hold themselves accountable.

With small teams, one member’s problem becomes everyone’s problem in record time.

Small teams can’t work on more than one project at a time because it’s a small team.

And when a small team works on a single project, progress is rapid.

Small teams use their judgment because they have to.

The judgment of small teams is good because they use it often.

On small teams, team members are loyal to each other and set clear expectations.

Small teams coordinate and phase the work as needed.

With small teams, waiting is reduced because the team members see it immediately.

When something breaks, small teams fix it quickly because the breakage is apparent to all.

The tight connections of a small team are magic.

Small teams are fun.

Small teams are effective.

And small teams are powered by trust.

Image credit: Pixabay

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

Mindfulness for Mavericks

Leave a reply

Finding Calm in the Chaos of Innovation

Mindfulness for Mavericks - Finding Calm in the Chaos of Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

The world of the innovator — the Maverick — is inherently chaotic. It is defined by relentless speed, constant pivoting, the terror of the unknown, and the inevitable sting of failure. For too long, we have celebrated the myth of the stressed-out, high-octane leader who fuels breakthrough with sheer exhaustion and adrenaline. But this model is not only unsustainable; it is strategically deficient. Exhausted minds make predictable mistakes, miss subtle signals, and react impulsively. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I argue that the single most powerful, yet overlooked, strategic tool for any innovator is Mindfulness — the non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. Mindfulness is not a “soft” wellness trend; it is the hard skill required to cultivate clarity, enhance resilience, and make smarter, more ethical decisions in the face of constant organizational chaos.

Innovation lives in the space between stimulus and response. When an unexpected challenge arises — a competitor’s sudden move, a prototype failure, or a market rejection — the unmindful leader reacts based on fear, bias, or past trauma. The mindful leader, however, creates a brief, intentional pause. This pause is where wisdom resides. It allows them to observe the emotional surge without being hijacked by it, ensuring that their response is strategic and deliberate, not emotional and reactionary. The capacity to be fully present, focused, and non-reactive is, therefore, the core competitive advantage in any fast-moving market. Calm is the new creativity.

Mindfulness as a Strategic Capability

Embedding mindfulness into the innovation culture is not a matter of employee benefit; it is a strategic imperative that directly impacts your bottom line and your capacity for disruptive thought. Here is why it belongs on the strategy table:

Reduces Cognitive Bias: Innovation is plagued by confirmation bias and anchoring bias. Mindfulness trains the brain to observe thoughts, feelings, and assumptions as temporary phenomena, not as absolute truths. This ability to decenter from one’s own immediate judgments is vital for seeing new solutions and avoiding fatal strategic blind spots.
Accelerates Resilience: Failure is oxygen for innovation. Mindfulness equips teams to process setbacks faster. By practicing non-judgmental observation, innovators learn to treat failure not as a personal crisis, but as neutral data — a valuable data point that requires analysis, not anguish. This allows for quicker pivots and less wasted time mourning a failed concept.
Enhances Deep Listening: Human-centered innovation demands empathy. Mindfulness sharpens our ability to listen—not just to the words being said in a user interview, but to the unspoken emotions, the subtle body language, and the unarticulated needs. This deep listening capability is the raw fuel for breakthrough insights.

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be stoked. Mindfulness is the bellows that focuses the flame.” — Braden Kelley (author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire)

Case Study 1: Google’s Search Inside Yourself (SIY) Program – Institutionalizing Calm

The Challenge:

Even at a place like Google, where technical brilliance is abundant, high pressure, rapid scaling, and information overload were creating burnout and hindering effective cross-functional leadership. The challenge was finding a way to enhance emotional intelligence and focus that was rigorous, scientific, and acceptable to a highly analytical culture.

The Mindfulness Solution:

In 2007, Google launched Search Inside Yourself (SIY), a now-famous program pioneered by engineer Chade-Meng Tan. It was a six-week course designed not just for “wellness,” but explicitly to enhance emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and focus through mindfulness training. The program used neurological data and a practical, secular approach to teach engineers and leaders how to manage stress and respond more skillfully to complex workplace situations. By linking mindfulness directly to measurable outcomes like improved collaboration and reduced conflict, the program integrated it as a strategic leadership tool.

The Human-Centered Result:

SIY proved that institutionalizing mindfulness could be scaled, even in the most demanding tech environments. The program fostered a generation of leaders better equipped to handle ambiguity and lead with empathy. It demonstrated that by training the mind to be calm and present, you directly improve the capacity for high-stakes problem-solving and sustainable innovation—making it a core capability, not a peripheral perk.

Case Study 2: Tactical Mindfulness in High-Stakes Environments – The Intentional Pause

The Challenge:

In fields where chaos is the norm—such as emergency medicine, aviation, or high-level tactical operations—decision-making must be instantaneous, precise, and free of panic. A sudden system failure in a cockpit or a rapid-fire sequence of events in a surgical theater demands peak cognitive performance under immense stress. Traditional training focuses on technical checklists, but often fails to address the cognitive breakdown that occurs when fear takes over.

The Mindfulness Solution:

High-reliability organizations, from Navy SEALs to commercial aviation safety experts, increasingly incorporate elements of Tactical Mindfulness into their training. This is not about long meditation sessions; it is about practicing the Intentional Pause. Techniques like “Box Breathing” or a quick “Sensory Scan” (grounding oneself by noting five things they can hear, see, or feel) are used to rapidly interrupt the panic cycle. This returns the prefrontal cortex—the rational decision-making center—to control. The goal is to maximize the time between the chaotic stimulus (e.g., a warning light) and the response, ensuring the action is deliberate and based on training, not terror.

The Human-Centered Result:

This application of mindfulness strips away any lingering stigma and positions it as a non-negotiable performance multiplier. By cultivating the capacity for calm under fire, these professionals significantly reduce error rates. This translates directly to the innovation world: the ability to execute an intentional pause when a major product launch fails, or a critical pivot is required, ensures the team moves from crisis to calculated action with speed and clarity—the very definition of resilient innovation.

Conclusion: The Ultimate Future-Proofing Skill

Mindfulness is the ultimate tool for FutureHacking™. It allows the Maverick to rise above the noise of the market and the internal anxiety of their own ambition, creating the necessary cognitive space to see truly disruptive opportunities. Leaders must recognize that their most powerful asset is the clarity of their team’s attention. By modeling and supporting mindfulness, you are not just offering a pathway to reduced stress; you are building an organization that is inherently more focused, more empathetic, more resilient, and ultimately, more capable of sustainable innovation.

The time has come to stop chasing the next distraction and start prioritizing the depth of your presence. The future of change belongs not to the fastest to react, but to the most skilled at pausing. Find the calm within the chaos, and you will find the answers you seek.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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

Using Leading and Lagging Indicators to Drive Your Business Forward

Leave a reply

You get what you measure, so make sure you’re tracking the right things.

Using Leading and Lagging Indicators to Drive Your Business Forward

GUEST POST from Soren Kaplan

I’ve seen a lot of organizations create strategies, programs, and projects focused on optimizing operations, streamlining processes, and driving innovation. Leadership teams put lots of energy coming up with the next big thing. But amazingly few teams think about how they’ll measure results. They may say they want revenue growth or cost savings, but that’s about the extent of it. Digging into the details by defining the specific metrics that will help track progress and forecast whether they’re going to achieve their goals in the future often gets neglected.

I’ve used this Key Performance Indicators template to address this challenge. Here’s the basis of why it’s important to use KPIs for your strategy and innovation initiatives, and how to use the template.

Strategy Without Successful Execution Is Just Brainstorming

Between developing strategy and executing it, there’s a step that requires creativity coupled with analytical thinking. It’s defining leading and lagging indicators. Many manufacturing companies and organizations that embrace Six Sigma know the importance of the metrics. Metrics help you quantify success, so you know when you’re achieving it and when you’re not.

Most companies focus on lagging indicators, like how much revenue they made in the last quarter, how many products they sold, or how many new customers they acquired. That’s important information, but those measures are obtained by looking in the rear-view mirror of what’s already happened. In addition to these things, you also need leading indicators to help you predict what will happen in the future. Here’s how to use both of these indicators to translate strategy into tangible implementation plans.

Leading Indicators Help You Predict the Future

Leading Indicators predict how you will perform in the future. They are more easily managed than lagging indicators but are harder to define. For example, if you’re looking to increase sales, you might measure the number of emails you send or sales calls you make. If you know that one in 10 calls results in a sale, the more contacts you make, the higher your sale forecast. Same goes for if you’re running a manufacturing organization. Leading Indicators for a manufacturing plant might include number of incidents that cause production slowdowns or the availability of specific materials in the supply chain.

Lagging Indicators Tell You How You Did

Lagging Indicators are easier to measure because they quantify what happened in the past. For example, a lagging indicator for sales would be measuring the number of products sold last month or number of new customers that signed up for a service. This information is usually easy to obtain and measure. Lagging Indicators are essential for charting progress but are not necessarily that helpful when looking at the inputs needed for achieving your overall desired results.

Create Your Dashboard

If you want innovation, reduced costs, and greater performance, you need to figure out how to do it, and what it looks like when you get it. Creating a set of lagging indicators gives you targets to achieve. But lagging indicators without leading indicators won’t provide focus around what to do–or early warning signals that things might be off track. If you’re manufacturing products, for example, if you’re not measuring whether your suppliers are delivering your materials on time, you might get surprised one day when you realize you don’t have the raw materials you need to achieve your manufacturing targets.

Here’s how to create a simple dashboard that contains both leading and lagging indicators:

Convene your team and identify the specific quantifiable targets that you need to achieve (your lagging indicators). Ask: What does success look like and how do we measure it?
Once you have your lagging indicators, define the inputs needed to achieve them. Ask: What specific things need to happen for us to achieve these targets and how do we measure those things? (your leading indicators)
With your lagging and leading indicators defined, use specific tools to gather and report on your data, whether a spreadsheet or online dashboard.

Management guru Peter Drucker once said, “What’s measured, improves.” If you want to improve your processes and business, figure out what you’re measuring. If you measure only the outputs (lagging indicators), your success will be far less predictable than if you’re also measuring the things that will get you where you want to go.

Image Credit: Praxie.com

This article was originally published on Inc.com and has been syndicated for this blog.

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

Lobsters and the Wisdom of Ignoring Your Customers

1 Reply

Lobsters and the Wisdom of Ignoring Your Customers

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Being the smart innovator (and businessperson) you are, you know it’s important to talk to customers. You also know it’s important to listen to them.

It’s also important to ignore your customers.

(Sometimes)

Customers will tell you what the problem is. If you stay curious and ask follow-up questions (Why? and Tell me more), they’ll tell you why it’s a problem and the root cause. You should definitely listen to this information.

Customers will also tell you how to fix the problem. You should definitely ignore this information.

To understand why, let me tell you a story.

Eye Contact is a Problem

Years ago, two friends and I took a day trip to Maine. It was late in Fall, and many lobster shacks dotting the coast were closed for the season. We found one still open and settled in for lunch.

Now, I’m a reasonably adventurous eater. I’ll try almost anything once (but not try fried tarantulas). However, I have one rule – I do not want to make eye contact with my food.

Knowing that lobsters are traditionally served with their heads still attached, I braced for the inevitable. As the waitress turned to me, I placed the same order as my friends but with a tiny special request. “I’ll have the lobster, but please remove its head.”

You know that scene in movies when the record scratches, the room falls silent, and everyone stops everything they’re doing to stare at the person who made an offending comment? Yeah, that’s precisely what happened when I asked for the head to be removed.

The waitress was horrified, “Why? That’s where all the best stuff is!”

“I don’t like making eye contact with my food,” I replied.

She pursed her lips, jotted down my request, and walked away.

A short time later, our lunch was served. My friends received their lobsters as God (or the chef) intended, head still attached. Then, with great fanfare, my lobster arrived.

Its head was still attached.

But we did not make eye contact.

Placed over the lobster’s eyes were two olives, connected by a broken toothpick and attached to the lobster’s “ears” by two more toothpicks.

The chef was offended by my request to remove the lobster’s head. But, because he understood why I wanted the head removed, he created a solution that would work for both of us – lobster-sized olive sunglasses.

Are you removing the head or making sunglasses?

Customers, like me, are experts in problems. We know what the problems are, why they’re problems, and what solutions work and what don’t. So, if you ask us what we want, we’ll give you the solution we know – remove the head.

Innovators, like you and the chef, are experts in solutions. You know what’s possible, see the trade-offs, and anticipate the consequences of various choices. You also take great pride in your work and expertise, so you’re not going to give someone a sub-par solution simply because they asked for it. You’re going to provide them with olive sunglasses.

Next time you talk to customers, stay curious, ask open-ended questions, ask follow-up questions, and build a deep understanding of their problems. Then ignore their ideas and suggestions. They’ll only stand in the way of your olive sunglasses.

Image credit: Pixabay

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

Using Analytics to Understand Human Behavior

Leave a reply

The Data-Driven Innovator

Using Analytics to Understand Human Behavior

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the world of change and innovation, there is a false dichotomy that has persisted for too long: the perceived conflict between **human-centered design** and **data science**. We often hear that the most profound insights come from intuition, empathy, and listening to the customer’s story. While true, that view misses a critical reality: the most powerful innovation emerges when intuition is fueled by rigorous data. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I argue that the future belongs to the **Data-Driven Innovator**—the one who uses analytics not just to measure performance, but to deeply understand, predict, and ultimately serve complex human behavior. Data is not the enemy of empathy; it is the most sophisticated tool we have to **quantify human needs** and **de-risk the innovation process**.

The problem with relying solely on traditional methods—surveys, focus groups, and simple intuition—is that they are often limited by what people *say* they do, which rarely aligns with what they *actually* do. Behavioral data, gathered from digital footprints, transactional records, and usage patterns, provides an unbiased, unfiltered window into genuine human motivation. It tells us where customers get stuck, which features they ignore, and the specific sequence of actions that leads to delight or frustration. Innovation, therefore, must move beyond simply collecting Big Data to mastering **Deep Data**—the careful, ethical analysis of behavioral patterns to uncover the latent needs and unarticulated desires that lead to breakthrough products and experiences.

The Analytics-Driven Empathy Framework

To successfully fuse human-centered thinking with data rigor, innovators must adopt a framework that treats analytics as the starting point for empathy, not the endpoint for analysis:

1. Behavioral Mapping (The ‘What’): Begin by mapping the customer journey using pure behavioral data. Which steps have the highest drop-off rate? What is the *actual* time between a pain point being identified and a solution being sought? This quantifies the problem space and directs attention to where human frustration is highest.
2. Qualitative Triangulation (The ‘Why’): Once data identifies a “what” (e.g., 60% of users fail at this step), the innovator must deploy qualitative research (interviews, observation) to find the “why.” Data highlights the anomaly; human-centered methods explain the motivation, the fear, or the confusion behind it.
3. Predictive Prototyping (The ‘How to Fix’): Use analytics to build predictive models that test new concepts. Instead of launching a full product, use A/B testing and multivariate analysis on small, targeted groups. Data allows you to quickly iterate on prototypes, measuring the direct impact on human behavior (e.g., effort reduction, time saved, emotional response captured via text analysis).
4. Ethical Guardrails (The ‘Should We?’): Data analysis carries immense responsibility. Innovators must establish clear ethical guidelines to ensure data is used to serve customers, not to manipulate them. Prioritize transparency, privacy-by-design, and actively audit algorithms to eliminate bias and ensure fairness.

“Empathy tells you *how* to talk to the customer. Data tells you *when* and *where* to listen.”

Case Study 1: Netflix – Quantifying the Appetite for Content

The Challenge:

In the crowded media landscape, the challenge for Netflix was twofold: how to reduce churn (customers leaving) and how to justify the massive, risky investment in original content. They couldn’t rely on simple focus groups for such high-stakes, long-term decisions.

The Data-Driven Innovation Solution:

Netflix became the master of **deep data analysis** to understand the human appetite for content. They didn’t just track viewing habits; they tracked every micro-interaction: when a user paused, rewound, what they searched for, the time of day they watched, and the precise moment they abandoned a show. This behavioral data revealed clear, quantitative unmet needs. For example, the data showed that a significant cohort of users watched British period dramas, starring a specific type of actor, and favored directors with a particular cinematic style. This insight was then used to greenlight shows like House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black, not just because they sounded good, but because the data demonstrated a latent, high-demand audience for that exact combination of themes, talent, and viewing format.

The Human-Centered Result:

By using analytics as an engine for creative decision-making, Netflix revolutionized media production. They proved that data can fuel, rather than stifle, creativity. The result was not just reduced churn and massive market dominance, but a fundamentally improved customer experience—a personalized library that feels tailor-made for each user, making them feel genuinely understood. This is innovation where the data-driven decision leads directly to human delight.

Case Study 2: Spotify – Using Behavioral Data to Define Identity

The Challenge:

For a music streaming service, the challenge is not just providing access to millions of songs, but helping users navigate that overwhelming volume and connecting them with the *right* song at the *right* emotional moment. The user’s relationship with music is deeply personal and often unarticulable—how do you quantify musical identity?

The Data-Driven Innovation Solution:

Spotify innovated by translating passive listening into actionable behavioral data. They moved beyond simple “most played” lists to create products like **Discover Weekly** and **Wrapped**. These features rely on deep analytics that track everything from the track’s tempo and key (acoustic data) to the time of day it was played, the device used, and the listener’s immediate skip rate (behavioral data). The key innovation was to use machine learning to identify the musical identity of the user not by asking them, but by observing their habits, and then to use that data to serve them content they didn’t even know they wanted. The company uses this data to quantify a person’s mood, context, and latent taste.

The Human-Centered Result:

Spotify transformed passive music consumption into an active, highly personalized journey. Products like ‘Wrapped’ don’t just give users data; they give them a **narrative about themselves**, which is profoundly human-centered. This innovation has led to unmatched user engagement and loyalty. It demonstrates that data analytics, when applied empathetically, can be used to reflect a user’s identity back to them, deepening their connection to the service and making the abstract concept of personal taste tangible and delightful.

Conclusion: The Future of Innovation is Quantified Empathy

The time for the intuitive innovator to stand apart from the data scientist is over. The next great wave of innovation will be led by those who understand that **Deep Data is the greatest tool for Deep Empathy**. Analytics does not dehumanize the innovation process; it refines it, allowing us to move from generalized guesses about human needs to precise, actionable insights. By fusing human-centered design principles with the rigor of behavioral analytics, we create a powerful feedback loop. Data points us toward the friction, empathy reveals the solution, and data again validates the fix. This is the quantified path to innovation, ensuring that we are not just building things that are technically possible, but things that people genuinely need, deeply want, and, most importantly, actually use.

The future belongs to the data-driven innovators who treat every behavioral click, every pause, and every purchase as a precious piece of the human story they are trying to tell.

Image credit: Pixabay

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

Crabby Innovation Opportunity

Leave a reply

Crabby Innovation Opportunity

There are many foods that we no longer eat, but because we choose to, not because they have disappeared from nature. In fact, here is a list of 21 Once-Popular Foods That We All Stopped Eating, including:

Kool-Aid
Margarine
Pudding Pops
Candy Cigarettes
etc.

But today, we’re going to talk about a food that I personally love, but that I’ve always viewed as a bit of luxury – crab legs – that is in danger of disappearing off the face of the planet due to climate change and human effects. And we’re not just talking about King Crab, but we’re also talking about Snow Crab, and we’re talking about Dungeness Crab too. And this is a catastrophe not just for diners, but to an entire industry and the livelihood of too many families to count:

2022-2023 King Crab fishing season will officially be closed in the Bering Sea for the second year in a row

Alaskan Snow Crab Season Canceled After 90% Of Population Disappears

Dungeness crab die-off underway along US West Coast

That’s more than a BILLION CRABS that none of us have had the pleasure of their deliciousness.

And given the magnitude of the die off, it is possible they might disappear completely, meaning we can’t enjoy and salivate at the thought of this popular commercial from the 80’s:

Climate change and global warming are real. If you don’t believe humans are the cause, that it’s naturally occurring, fine, it’s still happening.

There can be no debate other than surrounding the actions we take from this point forward.

And while the magnitude of the devastation of other animal species that humans are responsible for is debatable, we are failing in our duties as caretakers of the earth.

This brings me back to the title of the post and the missions of this blog – to promote human-centered change and innovation.

Because we have killed off one of our very tastiest treats (King, Snow and Dungeness Crabs), at least in the short-term (and possibly forever), there is a huge opportunity to do better than krab sticks or the Krabby Patties of SpongeBob SquarePants fame.

If crab legs are going to disappear from the menus of seafood restaurants across the United States, and possibly the world, can someone invent a tasty treat that equals or exceeds the satisfaction of wielding a crab cracker and a crab fork and extracting the white gold within to dip into some sweet and slippery lemon butter?

Who is going to be first to crack this problem?

Or who will be the first to find a way to bring the crabs back from extinction?

We’re not just talking about a food to fill our bellies with, we’re talking about a pleasurable dining experience that is going away – that I know someone can save!

And no Air Protein marketing gimmicks please!

Image credit: Northsea.sg

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