Category Archives: Innovation

Igniting Innovation Through Shared Values

From Mission Statement to Movement

Igniting Innovation Through Shared Values

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

As my colleague Braden Kelley works with organizations striving for meaningful change, he often sees beautifully crafted mission statements gathering dust on corporate websites. These well-intentioned pronouncements articulate purpose but fail to ignite the very innovation they hope to inspire. The critical missing ingredient? Shared values that resonate deeply within the organization, transforming a static statement into a dynamic movement that fuels creativity and drives impactful change.

A mission statement defines what an organization does and why it exists. While essential for clarity, it often operates at a strategic level, lacking the emotional connection needed to truly motivate individuals. Shared values, on the other hand, articulate how an organization operates, the principles that guide its decisions, and the behaviors it champions. When these values are genuinely embraced and lived by the people within the organization, they create a powerful cultural foundation for innovation to flourish. They provide a moral compass, guiding experimentation, fostering collaboration, and ensuring that innovation efforts are aligned with a larger, unifying purpose.

Think of shared values as the DNA of your organizational culture. They influence everything from hiring decisions and internal communication to product development and customer interactions. When values are clear, consistent, and deeply ingrained, they create a sense of psychological safety, where individuals feel empowered to take risks, challenge the status quo, and contribute their most creative ideas. Conversely, a disconnect between stated values and actual behavior breeds cynicism and stifles innovation, as individuals become hesitant to step outside the perceived norms.

Transforming a mission statement into a movement driven by shared values requires a conscious and sustained effort. It involves:

Co-creation and Internalization: Values should not be dictated from the top; they should be co-created with employees at all levels, ensuring genuine buy-in and a sense of ownership.
Living the Values: Leaders must model the desired values consistently in their own behavior. Actions speak louder than words, and any perceived hypocrisy will undermine the entire effort.
Integrating Values into Processes: Embed values into hiring, performance management, decision-making, and reward systems to reinforce their importance and ensure they are not just abstract concepts.
Storytelling and Celebration: Regularly share stories that exemplify the organization’s values in action, celebrating individuals and teams who embody these principles in their work.
Continuous Reflection and Adaptation: Regularly revisit and discuss the organization’s values to ensure they remain relevant and continue to guide behavior in a changing landscape.

Case Study 1: Patagonia – Innovation Rooted in Environmental Values

The Challenge: Maintaining Authenticity and Driving Sustainable Innovation

Patagonia, the outdoor clothing and gear company, has long been lauded for its commitment to environmental sustainability. Their mission statement reflects this, but it is their deeply ingrained shared values that truly drive their innovative practices. These values, centered around environmental responsibility, integrity, and not being bound by convention, permeate every aspect of their business.

The Values-Driven Innovation:

Patagonia’s commitment to environmental values fuels numerous innovative initiatives. Their “Worn Wear” program encourages customers to repair and reuse their gear, reducing waste and promoting a circular economy. They invest heavily in using recycled and organic materials, even when it’s more expensive or challenging. Their “1% for the Planet” initiative donates a percentage of their sales to environmental organizations. These aren’t just marketing tactics; they are deeply held principles that guide their product design, supply chain decisions, and customer engagement strategies. Employees are empowered to innovate solutions that align with these values, knowing they have the full support of the organization.

The Results:

Patagonia’s unwavering commitment to its values has not only built a fiercely loyal customer base but has also driven significant innovation in sustainable materials and business models. Their transparency and authenticity resonate with consumers who care about more than just the product itself. By living their values, Patagonia has transformed their mission into a powerful movement, inspiring other companies and individuals to prioritize environmental responsibility. Their innovation is not just about creating better products; it’s about creating a better world, and their shared values are the engine of this movement.

Key Insight: Deeply embedded and consistently lived values can be a powerful engine for driving innovation that aligns with a greater purpose, building brand loyalty and societal impact.

Case Study 2: Zappos – Cultivating Customer-Obsessed Innovation Through Core Values

The Challenge: Building a Differentiated Brand in a Competitive E-commerce Market

Zappos, the online shoe and clothing retailer, recognized early on that to stand out in a crowded market, they needed to offer more than just products; they needed to deliver an exceptional customer experience. Their mission statement hinted at this, but it was their ten core values, such as “Deliver WOW Through Service,” “Embrace and Drive Change,” and “Create Fun and A Little Weirdness,” that truly shaped their innovative approach to customer service and company culture.

The Values-Driven Innovation:

Zappos famously empowered its customer service representatives to go above and beyond to delight customers, guided by their core value of “Deliver WOW Through Service.” This led to innovative practices like no time limits on customer calls, surprising customers with free upgrades or gifts, and even helping customers find products from competitors if Zappos didn’t have what they needed. Their value of “Embrace and Drive Change” fostered a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement. Employees were encouraged to suggest new ideas and challenge existing processes. This values-driven culture fueled innovation not just in customer service but also in their supply chain, employee engagement, and overall business model.

The Results:

Zappos’ unwavering commitment to its core values created a legendary customer service reputation and a highly engaged workforce. This, in turn, drove significant customer loyalty and organic growth, ultimately leading to their acquisition by Amazon for over $1 billion. Their story demonstrates how a clear set of shared values, actively lived and integrated into every aspect of the business, can be a powerful differentiator and a catalyst for customer-obsessed innovation, transforming a transactional business into a beloved brand and a thriving movement centered around exceptional service.

Key Insight: Clearly defined and consistently reinforced core values can empower employees to drive customer-centric innovation, leading to exceptional experiences and strong business outcomes.

Igniting Your Own Innovation Movement

As we navigate an era of rapid change and increasing complexity here from our vantage point in Sammamish, the need for organizations to be agile and innovative has never been greater. The journey from mission statement to movement begins with a conscious effort to define, embody, and champion a set of shared values that truly resonate with your people and your purpose. By creating a cultural foundation built on these principles, you can unlock the collective creativity of your organization, foster a sense of shared ownership, and ignite a powerful movement that drives meaningful innovation and lasting impact. It’s time to let your values be the spark that ignites your innovation engine.

Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Four Things You Need to Succeed in The Good Place

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Four Things You Need to Succeed in The Good Place

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You have, no doubt, seen the design squiggle. The ubiquitous scribble is all loopy and knotty in the beginning until it finally sorts itself into a straight line by the end.

It illustrates the design process – “the journey of researching, uncovering insights, generating creative concepts, iteration of prototypes and eventually concluding in one single designed solution” – and its elegant simplicity has led it to be adopted by all sorts of other disciplines, including innovation.

But when I showed it to a client, her immediate response was, “It’s Jeremy Bearimy!”*

Wha????

And that is how I discovered The Good Place, a sitcom about four humans who die, go to The Good Place, and struggle to learn what it means to be good.

The show, created by Michael Schur of The Office and Parks and Recreation fame, is a brilliant treatise on ethics and moral philosophy. It also contains valuable wisdom about what innovators need to succeed.

Questions

With all due respect, “It’s the way it’s always been done” is an excuse that’s been used for hundreds of years to justify racism, misogyny…

Tahani Al-Jamil

This quote was a gut punch from the show’s fourth and final season. As innovators, we often hear people ask why change is needed. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” they proclaim.

But sometimes it is broke, and we don’t know it. At the very least, it can always be better.

So, while “it’s the way it’s always been done” at your company probably (hopefully) doesn’t include racism, misogyny, sexism, and other genuinely horrible things, framing the status quo as an enabler of those horrors is a harsh wake-up call to the dangers of an unquestioning commitment to continuing to do things the way they’ve always been done.

Decisions (not just Ideas)

If you’re always frozen in fear and taking too long to figure out what to do, you’ll miss your opportunity, and maybe get sucked into the propeller of a swamp boat.

Jason Mendoza

Even though Jason Mendoza is the resident idiot of The Good Place, he occasionally (and very accidentally) has moments of profound insight. This one to a situation that innovators are all too familiar with – analysis paralysis.

How often do requests for more data, more (or more relevant) benchmarks, or input from more people slow down decisions and progress? These requests are rarely rooted in doubt about the data, benchmarks, or information you presented. They are rooted in fear – the fear of making the wrong decision, being blamed or shamed, and losing a reputation or even a job.

But worse than being wrong, blamed, shamed, or unemployed is missing an opportunity to radically improve your business, team, or even the world. It’s the business equivalent of getting sucked into the propeller of a swamp boat.

Actions (not just decisions)

In football, trying to run out the clock and hoping for the best never works. It’s called “prevent defense.” You don’t take any chances and just try and hold on to your lead. But prevent defense just PREVENTS you from winning! It’s always better to try something.

Jason Mendoza

Jason does it again, this time invoking a lesson learned from his beloved Jacksonville Jaguars.

Few companies publicly admit to adopting a prevent defense, even though most companies engage in it. They play prevent defense when they don’t invest in innovation, focus exclusively on maintaining or incrementally improving what they currently do, or confine their innovation efforts to events like hackathons and shark tanks.

Incremental improvements and innovation theater keep you competitive. But they won’t get you ahead of the competition or make you a leader in your industry. In fact, they prevent it by making you feel good and safe when you’re really just running out the clock.

Perseverance

Come on, you know how this works. You fail and then you try something else. And you fail again and again, and you fail a thousand times, and you keep trying because maybe the 1,001st idea might work. Now, I’m gonna and try to find our 1,001st idea.

Michael

It’s hard to explain this quote without sharing massive spoilers, so let’s just say that The Good Place is an experiment that fails. A lot.

But it’s also an experiment that generates profound learning and universe-altering changes, things that would not have been possible without the failures.

Yes, smart innovators know when to kill a project. They also know when to try one more time. Wise innovators know the difference.

One final bit of wisdom

Innovation is hard. You will run into more resistance than expected, and things will rarely work out as planned. As long as you keep trying and learning, you won’t fail.

To paraphrase Jason Mendoza (again), you’re not a failed innovator, you’re pre-successful.

*For those of you who are, like I was, unfamiliar with Jeremy Bearimy, here’s a clip explaining it (WARNING: SPOILERS)

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Scanning the Horizon to Identify Emerging Trends and Human Needs

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Scanning the Horizon to Identify Emerging Trends and Human Needs

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the fast-paced world of innovation, it’s easy to get caught up in the immediate, to react to the latest competitor move or market blip. But the most impactful innovators aren’t just responding to the present; they are anticipating the future. They have a panoramic view, constantly scanning the horizon for the subtle signals that reveal emerging trends and, more importantly, the underlying human needs driving them. This is the art of strategic foresight, and it is the single greatest competitive advantage in a world of constant change.

The distinction between a trend and a fad is crucial. A fad is a fleeting novelty—a temporary spike in popularity with no lasting impact. A trend, however, is a longer-term shift in consumer behavior, technology, or culture that is driven by a fundamental change in human needs or values. While a fad can be a fun distraction, a trend is a powerful current that will shape the future of markets, industries, and society itself. The challenge for innovators is to identify these currents and understand what they mean for the people we serve.

Scanning the horizon is a deliberate, multi-faceted practice. It goes beyond simple market research and requires a blend of curiosity, empathy, and strategic thinking. It involves:

Observing Anomalies: Paying attention to the small, strange things that don’t fit the current narrative. The early adopters of a new technology, the unexpected success of a niche product, or a new social movement. These are often the first whispers of a major trend.
Connecting Disparate Fields: Looking at what is happening in seemingly unrelated industries or domains. A breakthrough in materials science might be a signal for a future innovation in retail or healthcare.
Engaging with Lead Users: Identifying and deeply engaging with the customers who are ahead of the curve. These “lead users” often have unmet needs that the mass market will develop in the future. Their struggles and workarounds are a goldmine of innovation opportunities.
Synthesizing Data with Empathy: Combining quantitative data (what people are doing) with qualitative insights (why they are doing it). The data can show you the “what,” but a deep, human-centered understanding will reveal the “why,” which is where true innovation is born.

Case Study 1: The Rise of the Sharing Economy

The Challenge: Shifting Human Needs and Asset Utilization

Before the emergence of companies like Airbnb and Uber, the concept of a sharing economy was not a mainstream idea. The world was dominated by an ownership-based model, where owning a car or a home was the primary goal. However, beneath the surface, a number of social and economic trends were quietly changing human needs. Younger generations were increasingly prioritizing experiences over ownership, urban populations were growing, and people were looking for ways to generate extra income from underutilized assets. These were the subtle signals of a massive shift in how people valued and accessed resources.

The Innovation:

Innovators at Airbnb and Uber didn’t invent the concept of sharing a room or a ride. They saw the emerging human needs and built platforms that leveraged technology to make it easy, trustworthy, and scalable. They addressed the core human needs for **flexibility, connection, and economic empowerment**. Airbnb tapped into the desire for authentic, local travel experiences and a new source of income for homeowners. Uber addressed the need for convenient, on-demand transportation and created a flexible work opportunity for drivers. They built trust into their systems through ratings and reviews, which was a critical component of their success.

The Results:

By connecting these disparate trends—the rise of mobile technology, changing generational values, and the desire for economic flexibility—these companies created entirely new industries. They didn’t just compete with existing hotels or taxi companies; they created a new paradigm for how people think about asset utilization and human-centered services. The result was not just a successful business, but a fundamental change in how we live, work, and travel.

Key Insight: The most transformative innovations often emerge from connecting seemingly unrelated trends and building a trusted platform to meet a new, underlying human need.

Case Study 2: Personalized Health and Wellness

The Challenge: The Shift from Reactive to Proactive Health

For a long time, healthcare was a largely reactive industry. We went to the doctor when we were sick. However, innovators began to notice a growing trend: people were becoming more proactive about their health. The increasing awareness of diet, exercise, and mental health was creating a new human need for **personalization, agency, and prevention**. The rise of digital technology, from wearables to at-home genetic testing, was a powerful enabler of this trend, but the core driver was a fundamental desire for more control and information about one’s own well-being.

The Innovation:

A new wave of companies emerged to meet this need. They developed products and services that moved beyond a one-size-fits-all approach. Wearable technology, like the Apple Watch, didn’t just tell time; it empowered users with continuous data about their heart rate, activity levels, and sleep patterns. At-home genetic testing companies offered insights into ancestry and health predispositions, satisfying a deep human curiosity and desire for self-knowledge. App-based wellness platforms provided personalized fitness plans, guided meditations, and nutrition advice, bringing professional-level wellness coaching to the palm of a user’s hand.

The Results:

By scanning the horizon and recognizing the shift from reactive to proactive health, these innovators created a massive new market for personalized health and wellness. They didn’t just sell a product; they sold a sense of **empowerment and control** over one’s own health journey. This has not only created billion-dollar companies but has also contributed to a broader societal change, making health and wellness a core part of our daily lives, rather than a periodic reaction to illness. The key was understanding that the technology was just a tool; the true innovation was meeting a human need for a more personalized and proactive approach to well-being.

Key Insight: True innovation lies in recognizing a fundamental shift in human values and building technology that serves a new, deeply felt need for control and personalization.

The Path Forward: From Trend-Spotting to Human-Centered Foresight

The practice of scanning the horizon is more than a predictive exercise; it’s an act of deep empathy. It requires us to listen carefully, to observe with an open mind, and to ask ourselves not just “what’s next?” but “what will people need next?” The most successful innovators understand that a great innovation isn’t just about a clever idea; it’s about a deep, resonant connection to a human need that is just beginning to emerge. By formalizing this process of strategic foresight and grounding it in a human-centered approach, we can move from being passive observers of the future to active creators of it. It’s time to put on our binoculars and start looking past the noise of today, toward the meaningful signals of tomorrow.

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: Pexels

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What’s Next – The Only Way Forward is Through

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by Braden Kelley

The world needs you. The United States needs you. Your family needs you.

Both your heart and your mind are needed to work on potentially the greatest innovation challenge ever put forward.

What is it?

We must find a solution to the division and lack of meaning that has become the American experience.

I’m not sure about the country you live in, but here at home in the United States we are more divided than we have been in a long time – if ever. People are feeling such an absence of meaning and purpose in their lives that they are finding it in opposing ‘the other’.

In the most extreme cases, we are so divided that brothers and sisters, and parents and children are no longer speaking with each other or getting together for holiday meals.

We speak often about the importance of diversity of thought, diversity of group composition for innovation, but when a society reaches a point where people cannot productively disagree and debate their way forward together, innovation will inevitably begin to suffer.

When there is no dialogue, no give and take and a culture begins to emerge where opposition is mandatory, progress slows.

As long as the current situation intensifies, there will be no progress on other areas in desperate need of innovation:

Climate change
Gender equity
(Insert your favorite here)

We all need your help creating the idea fragments that we can connect as a global innovation community into meaningful ideas that hopefully lead to the inventions that will develop into the innovations we desperately need.

The innovations that will move social media from its current parallel play universe to one which actually encourages productive dialogue.

The innovations that will help people find the renewed sense of meaning and purpose that can’t be found making Sik Sok videos, watching other people play video games on Kwitch or investing in cryptocurrency pyramid schemes.

Our entrepreneurs have made a lot of cotton candy the past couple of decades and people are starving, people are hangry.

There are certain constants in the human condition, and when we as a species stray too far away, it creates huge opportunities for innovators to create new things that will bring us back into balance.

But we can’t ignore where we are now.

We must acknowledge our current situation and fight our way past it. The only way forward is through.

As a thought starter, here is an ad campaign from Heineken from 2017:

We need everyone’s help to address the meaning crisis.

We need everyone’s help to bring America (and the rest of the world) back into productive conversation and connection – to end the division.

Are you up to the task?

Are you ready to help?

Let’s start the dialogue below and get that pebble rolling downhill in the winter, gathering snow as it goes.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments on:

other great thought starters
good idea fragments to build on
the way through

Image credit: Pixabay

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Quantifying the Value of Empathy and Collaboration

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The Untapped Metrics

Quantifying the Value of Empathy and Collaboration - The Untapped Metrics

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In the data-driven world of modern business, we have become masterful at measuring the tangible. We track ROI, KPIs, and market share with an almost religious fervor. But what if the most powerful drivers of innovation and long-term success are the very things we struggle to quantify? This is the paradox of empathy and collaboration—they are the invisible forces that fuel human-centered innovation, yet they are rarely captured on a dashboard. It’s time to move beyond this oversight and develop a new framework for measuring what truly matters.

We’ve long held a bias toward what’s easy to count: revenue growth, cost reduction, and time-to-market. These metrics are important, but they only tell a part of the story. They measure the output of an organization, but they fail to capture the health of the engine—the human element. A company with high empathy and strong collaboration is an engine that is well-oiled, resilient, and primed for continuous innovation. A company without it is a machine running on fumes, prone to burnout, internal conflict, and a failure to connect with its customers.

The challenge lies in making the intangible tangible. We must develop a new set of metrics that allow us to gauge the strength of our human connections. This isn’t about replacing traditional business metrics; it’s about complementing them with a deeper understanding of the organizational and cultural health that underpins all successful change. By actively measuring and managing the soft skills that drive hard results, we can create a more powerful and sustainable innovation culture. The metrics we need to tap into include:

Empathy Quotient (EQ) Scores: Measuring the ability of teams to truly understand and feel the customer’s experience. This can be done through surveys, observational studies, and qualitative feedback.
Collaboration Velocity: Tracking the speed and effectiveness with which diverse teams can come together to solve a problem. This involves analyzing communication patterns, project handoffs, and feedback loops.
Psychological Safety Index: Gauging whether employees feel safe to take risks, voice dissenting opinions, and admit mistakes without fear of retribution. This is foundational for a truly innovative culture.
Customer Experience (CX) Depth: Moving beyond simple satisfaction scores to understand the emotional journey of the customer and the depth of their connection to your brand.
Cross-Functional Innovation Rate: Measuring the percentage of successful innovations that originated from collaboration between different departments or teams.

Case Study 1: The Healthcare Innovator and Empathy as a Metric

The Challenge: A Disconnected Patient Experience

A large hospital system was struggling with declining patient satisfaction scores, even though their clinical outcomes were excellent. The data showed that patients felt disconnected and unheard during their visits. The problem wasn’t a lack of medical expertise, but a lack of empathy in the patient-facing process. The organizational culture was focused on efficiency and procedures, with little attention paid to the emotional experience of the patient.

The New Metric and Innovation:

The hospital’s leadership team, in a human-centered change initiative, decided to make **Empathy** a core metric. They created an “Empathy Index” by integrating a new set of questions into patient surveys, focusing on qualitative feedback about how they were listened to and how well their concerns were addressed. They also conducted observational studies to see how staff interacted with patients in real-time. This new metric, along with qualitative feedback, led to a simple but profound innovation: the “Patient Story” program. Staff meetings and training sessions were no longer just about protocols; they began with a personal story from a patient or a family member, reminding the staff of the human impact of their work. Furthermore, they launched a “Listening Skills” training program, explicitly teaching doctors and nurses how to actively listen and respond with empathy.

The Results:

Within a year, the hospital’s patient satisfaction scores saw a dramatic turnaround. The Empathy Index showed a significant increase, and the qualitative feedback was overwhelmingly positive. By making empathy a measurable and celebrated metric, the hospital shifted its culture, leading to a more connected patient experience and, ultimately, better health outcomes. It proved that a soft skill could drive hard, measurable business results.

Key Insight: By creating a quantifiable metric for empathy, organizations can drive cultural and behavioral changes that lead to significant improvements in customer experience and business results.

Case Study 2: The Tech Giant’s Collaboration Velocity

The Challenge: Siloed Innovation and Slow Development

A leading technology company was an acknowledged innovator, but its sheer size had created a problem: its teams were working in silos. A new product idea would often get bogged down as it moved from engineering to marketing to sales, with each department operating on its own timeline and with its own metrics. The result was a slow, inefficient development cycle and a high percentage of promising projects being abandoned due to a lack of cross-functional alignment.

The New Metric and Innovation:

The company’s leadership team recognized that a lack of collaboration was their biggest barrier to growth. They introduced a new metric: **Collaboration Velocity**, which measured the speed at which cross-functional teams could move a project from ideation to launch. They tracked the number of inter-departmental meetings, the frequency of cross-team knowledge sharing, and the speed of project handoffs. This data revealed the key bottlenecks. As an innovation, they introduced a “Fusion Team” model. Instead of having a project move sequentially through departments, a small, multi-disciplinary team with representatives from engineering, design, and marketing was assigned to a project from day one, with shared goals and metrics. Furthermore, they used a “Project Pulse” tool to track the sentiment and psychological safety within these teams, ensuring the collaboration was healthy and productive.

The Results:

The results were immediate and impactful. The company’s Collaboration Velocity improved by over 40% in the first year. The Fusion Teams were able to launch new products in half the time of the traditional model, with far greater internal alignment and market success. The company’s overall innovation output increased, and the new metric gave leaders a clear, data-driven way to prove the value of breaking down silos and investing in collaborative team structures. The intangible value of collaboration became a powerful, measurable driver of competitive advantage.

Key Insight: Measuring the health and speed of collaboration provides a clear path to breaking down organizational silos and accelerating the pace of innovation.

The Path Forward: A New Era of Measurement

The future of innovation belongs to those who are brave enough to expand their definition of what can be measured. We must stop treating empathy and collaboration as unquantifiable “soft skills” and start seeing them as the strategic, measurable assets they truly are. By developing and integrating these new metrics into our dashboards, we are not just adding to our data; we are gaining a richer, more holistic understanding of our organizational health. This allows us to make more informed decisions, nurture a culture of trust and psychological safety, and, most importantly, build a more resilient and human-centered engine for continuous innovation. It’s time to stop flying blind and start quantifying the forces that are truly driving us forward.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Asking the Hard Questions About What We Create

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Beyond the Hype

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In the relentless pursuit of “the next big thing,” innovators often get caught up in the excitement of what they can create, without ever pausing to ask if they should. The real responsibility of innovation is not just to build something new, but to build something better. It’s a call to move beyond the shallow allure of novelty and engage in a deeper, more ethical inquiry into the impact of our creations.

We are living in an age of unprecedented technological acceleration. From generative AI to personalized medicine, the possibilities are thrilling. But this speed can also be blinding. In our rush to launch, to disrupt, and to win market share, we often neglect to ask the hard questions about the long-term human, social, and environmental consequences of our work. This oversight is not only a moral failing, but a strategic one. As society becomes more aware of the unintended consequences of technology, companies that fail to anticipate and address these issues will face a backlash that can erode trust, damage their brand, and ultimately prove to be their undoing.

Human-centered innovation is not just about solving a customer’s immediate problem; it’s about considering the entire ecosystem of that solution. It requires us to look past the first-order effects and consider the second, third, and fourth-order impacts. It demands that we integrate a new kind of due diligence into our innovation process—one that is centered on empathy, ethics, and a deep sense of responsibility. This means asking questions like:

Who benefits from this innovation, and who might be harmed?
What new behaviors will this technology encourage, and are they healthy ones?
Does this solution deepen or bridge existing social divides?
What happens to this product or service at the end of its life cycle?
Does our innovation create a dependency that will be hard to break?

Case Study 1: The Dark Side of Social Media Algorithms

The Challenge: A Race for Engagement

In the early days of social media, the core innovation was simply connecting people. However, as the business model shifted toward ad revenue, the goal became maximizing user engagement. This led to the development of sophisticated algorithms designed to keep users scrolling and clicking for as long as possible. The initial intent was benign: create a more personalized and engaging user experience.

The Unintended Consequences:

The innovation worked, but the unintended consequences were profound. By prioritizing engagement above all else, these algorithms discovered that content that provokes outrage, fear, and division is often the most engaging. This led to the amplification of misinformation, the creation of echo chambers, and a significant rise in polarization and mental health issues, particularly among younger users. The platforms, in their single-minded pursuit of a metric, failed to ask the hard questions about the kind of social behavior they were encouraging. The result has been a massive public backlash, calls for regulation, and a deep erosion of public trust.

Key Insight: Optimizing for a single, narrow business metric (like engagement) without considering the broader human impact can lead to deeply harmful and brand-damaging unintended consequences.

Case Study 2: The “Fast Fashion” Innovation Loop

The Challenge: Democratizing Style at Scale

The “fast fashion” business model was a brilliant innovation. It democratized style, making trendy clothes affordable and accessible to the masses. The core innovation was a hyper-efficient, rapid-response supply chain that could take a design from the runway to the store rack in a matter of weeks, constantly churning out new products to meet consumer demand for novelty.

The Unintended Consequences:

While successful from a business perspective, the environmental and human costs have been devastating. The model’s relentless focus on speed and low cost has created a throwaway culture, leading to immense textile waste that clogs landfills. The processes rely on cheap synthetic materials that are not biodegradable and require significant energy and water to produce. Furthermore, the human-centered cost is significant, with documented instances of exploitative labor practices in the developing world to keep costs down. The innovation, while serving a clear consumer need, failed to ask about its long-term ecological and ethical footprint, and the industry is now facing immense pressure from consumers and regulators to change its practices.

Key Insight: An innovation that solves one problem (affordability) while creating a greater, more damaging problem (environmental and ethical) is not truly a sustainable solution.

A Call for Responsible Innovation

These case studies serve as powerful cautionary tales. They are not about a lack of innovation, but a failure of imagination and responsibility. Responsible innovation is not an afterthought or a “nice to have”; it is a non-negotiable part of the innovation process itself. It demands that we embed ethical considerations and long-term impact analysis into every stage, from ideation to launch.

To move beyond the hype, we must reframe our definition of success. It’s not just about market share or revenue, but about the positive change we create in the world. It’s about building things that not only work well, but also do good. It requires us to be courageous enough to slow down, to ask the difficult questions, and to sometimes walk away from a good idea that is not a right idea.

The future of innovation belongs to those who embrace this deeper responsibility. The most impactful innovators of tomorrow will be the ones who understand that the greatest innovations don’t just solve problems; they create a more equitable, sustainable, and human-centered future. It’s time to build with purpose.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Uncovering Hidden Opportunities for Innovation

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Mapping the Customer Journey

Uncovering Hidden Opportunities for Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the digital age, companies often focus on data, metrics, and technology, but the true frontier of innovation lies in one thing: empathy. The most powerful innovations aren’t born in a lab; they’re discovered by deeply understanding the human experience.

As an innovator, your greatest asset isn’t your product, but your customer’s journey. It’s the entire story of how they discover, consider, purchase, use, and advocate for your offering. By meticulously mapping this journey, we can move beyond assumptions and uncover the subtle, emotional truths that represent the greatest opportunities for transformative innovation.

Too often, businesses look at their customers through the lens of their own internal processes—sales funnels, marketing qualified leads, and customer support tickets. But this fragmented view misses the holistic experience. A customer doesn’t see a series of departmental touchpoints; they experience a single, continuous narrative. The friction in one stage, the moment of delight in another—these are the inflection points where innovation can make the most significant impact.

The disciplined practice of customer journey mapping is the foundational step in human-centered innovation. It’s a process built on empathy, not just data. It forces us to ask not just “what are they doing?” but “what are they thinking and feeling?” The answers to those questions are where the magic happens. The process is a strategic imperative and involves several key stages:

Define the Scope and Persona: Begin with a specific customer segment and a clear goal. Who are you mapping for? What is the start and end of their journey? Create a rich, detailed persona, complete with their aspirations, fears, and daily routines. This isn’t a demographic profile; it’s a living character.
Identify All Touchpoints: From the moment a customer first hears about you (a social media ad, a friend’s recommendation) to long after a purchase (a follow-up email, a review), map every single interaction. Don’t limit this to digital. Include physical interactions, customer service calls, and even third-party reviews.
Document Actions, Thoughts, and Feelings: This is the heart of the map. For each touchpoint, use qualitative research—interviews, ethnographic studies, and surveys—to capture what customers are doing, what’s going through their minds, and how they feel emotionally. Plotting this emotional arc is critical; it’s where you’ll find the hidden pain points and moments of truth.
Pinpoint Pain Points and Opportunities: Once the map is visualized, look for the lows on the emotional arc. These are the areas of friction, confusion, and frustration. Simultaneously, identify the highs—the moments of delight and ease. These are your innovation targets. The goal is to either eliminate a pain point or amplify a moment of delight.
Ideate and Prioritize: Bring a cross-functional team together to brainstorm solutions for the identified opportunities. Don’t just think about fixing what’s broken. Consider new services, new technologies, or entirely new business models. Prioritize these ideas based on their potential impact on the customer and feasibility for your organization.

Case Study 1: Transforming the Grocery Shopping Experience

The Challenge: The Checkout Bottleneck

A major grocery chain faced fierce competition and declining customer loyalty. Journey mapping revealed a critical pain point: the checkout process. Despite having a great in-store experience, customers felt frustration and a loss of time and control when faced with long, unpredictable queues during peak hours. This final, negative touchpoint was tainting the entire shopping experience.

The Innovation:

Instead of just adding more cashiers (an expensive and often inefficient solution), the journey map highlighted a deeper need for control and transparency. The company developed a two-part solution: a mobile self-checkout app for customers with 15 items or less, and large digital displays at the front of the store showing real-time wait times for each lane. The app allowed customers to scan items as they shopped and pay instantly, bypassing the queue entirely. The wait time displays managed customer expectations and gave them the agency to choose their best path to checkout.

The Results:

The innovations led to a 15% reduction in average checkout time and a significant increase in customer satisfaction scores related to convenience. The mobile checkout became a key differentiator, attracting tech-savvy customers and reinforcing the brand as a modern, customer-centric retailer. The most important result? Increased customer loyalty and repeat visits.

Key Insight: The innovation wasn’t about speed; it was about addressing the emotional pain of feeling a loss of control and transparency.

Case Study 2: Reshaping the Patient Journey in Healthcare

The Challenge: Patient Anxiety and Information Overload

A large hospital system recognized that their administrative and clinical processes, while efficient from an internal standpoint, were a source of immense stress for patients. From complex paperwork to confusing post-discharge instructions, the patient journey was marked by feelings of fear, uncertainty, and a lack of clear communication. This anxiety negatively impacted patient well-being and recovery.

The Innovation:

The hospital’s journey map, which included direct patient and family interviews, revealed the need for a more empathetic, human-centered approach. They introduced two major innovations: a Patient Navigator Program and a Personalized Digital Information Hub. Patient navigators were dedicated staff members who acted as a single point of contact, guiding patients and their families through every step of their visit—from initial registration to understanding medical jargon and coordinating follow-up appointments. The digital hub, accessible on tablets, provided a single source of truth for each patient, including their personalized schedule, details about their care team, and simplified explanations of their condition and medication. This hub also streamlined the discharge process with easy-to-follow, multimedia instructions.

The Results:

The impact was profound. Patient anxiety levels decreased, and HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) scores saw a remarkable climb. The navigators addressed the emotional need for human connection and support, while the digital hub empowered patients with clarity and control. This combination of high-tech and high-touch innovation transformed a stressful experience into one that felt supportive and coordinated, leading to better patient outcomes and a stronger reputation.

Key Insight: True innovation in healthcare isn’t just about clinical breakthroughs; it’s about creating a more human and supportive emotional journey.

From Map to Mindset: The Path Forward

These examples illustrate a crucial lesson: the customer journey map is not a deliverable; it’s a living tool. It’s a call to action. By using it to align cross-functional teams, you can break down internal silos and create a shared, customer-centric vision for innovation. The most powerful question you can ask is, “What if…?” What if we redesigned this touchpoint to be a moment of joy instead of frustration? What if we could anticipate their needs before they even know they have them?

In a world of relentless change, ignoring the customer’s journey is to operate blind. By embracing this powerful practice, you will not only uncover new opportunities for innovation but also build a more resilient, empathetic, and ultimately, more successful organization. Your customers are already on a journey. It’s time for you to join them.

Image credit: Pexels

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Six Simple Growth Hacks for Startups

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Six Simple Growth Hacks for Startups

GUEST POST from Soren Kaplan

Building a new business is tough. These strategies will help your startup succeed without a big investment.

As many of my readers know, I usually write about strategy, innovation, and leadership. But recently I’ve been asked a lot about how I helped establish Praxie.com as a destination website for hundreds of best practice digital tools and templates using growth hacking strategies. That’s because it’s incredibly hard to cut through the noise and establish a new brand, website presence, and business model in today’s increasingly cluttered competitive world.

So, here’s what we did to build a brand and drive tens of thousands of visitors to our website each month, all without any significant marketing investment. Anyone who’s focused, methodical, and willing take the time can do it.

1. Create Expert Content

Content is king. You can create it yourself or provide a platform that encourages users to contribute content as part of your business model. Content drives the brand and engages customers. Plus, Google and other search engines index and prioritize pages with solid content, so your specific webpages with noteworthy content will get a boost in SEO rankings and see increased traffic over time. Content comes in many forms: articles, blog posts, listicles, white papers, templates, and videos.

2. Syndicate Content to Grow Backlinks

Backlinks are the lifeblood of SEO. The more that reputable websites link back to your website (or sub-pages on your site), the higher you’ll rank will be in search engines. And the higher your rank, the more organic visitors you’ll receive. Whatever you’re doing or providing as part of your business, position yourself as the expert. Become a source of knowledge and insight for the press, get interviewed on podcasts, write articles for other sites, or do anything else that gets your name (and backlink) out there on the net. This strategy also builds your brand.

3. Become a Video Star

Content isn’t just about the written word. YouTube is now the number-two search engine in the world, right behind Google. Video content highlights your expertise. It gets shared. And it drives traffic to your website that can convert to newsletter signups, subscriptions, and product purchases. Be sure to include keywords in the titles and descriptions of your videos. Also include a plug at the end of the video for where the viewer can learn more (e.g., your website). Re-purpose your videos on social media and embed videos into your website to further reinforce your content expertise.

4. Build Email Relationships

While just about every email inbox is cluttered with spam these days, when someone gives you their email address, they’re essentially giving you permission (opting in) to connect with them. While the same principle applies to social media, email is still a unique, higher-touch, form of connection-making. As compared with social media, email is like pinning a flyer up on someone’s front door versus hoping they see one that has been posted on the corner telephone pole as they walk by. So, create easy ways for people to sign up for newsletters. Connect with others on LinkedIn, where most profiles include email addresses. Focus on building a list and providing high-value communications that use expert content to connect with your audience versus just trying to sell them your product. Many free or inexpensive tools can get you started like Mailchimp and Constant Contact.

5. Measure Everything Using Dashboards

The only way to gauge progress is to measure it. Use Google Analytics to track your most important metrics, like the number of visitors, landing pages, conversion rates for your newsletter and purchases, and more. Use free tools like those provided by Moz and Similarweb to benchmark yourself against the competition. Connect social media metrics and advertising into a dashboard that provides a holistic picture of the business. But don’t spend too much time cobbling together data. Keep it simple so you can get a quick read on how you’re doing while spending most of your time doing the things that grow your business.

6. Test, Retest, and Test Again

Google recently introduced a great tool called Optimize. Optimize allows you to quickly run tests on your website or individual web pages. By creating A/B tests that serve up different page headings, product prices, button colors, etc., you can gain insight into what works and what doesn’t based on what you’re trying to achieve. Track which market positioning statements result in the most newsletter signups or which price model delivers the greatest revenue. Running tests should be an ongoing activity which essentially means you’re taking the winning formula from your A/B test and then running another A/B test using that as the baseline. Connect your tests to your data analytics to track what works (and doesn’t) over time.

Most small startups don’t have big funding. That’s why growth hacks are so important. Use a little elbow grease, coupled with savvy customer engagement strategies, to build the basis for market traction. You might need to give it a little time to yield results, but that’s also what’s needed to create an enduring business.

Image Credit: Getty Images (acquired by Soren Kaplan)

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

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The Untapped Power of Purpose-Driven Innovation

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Beyond Profit

The Untapped Power of Purpose-Driven Innovation

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

For too long, the default engine of innovation has been the singular pursuit of profit. Companies have innovated to reduce costs, increase market share, and maximize shareholder value. While this model has driven incredible progress, it has also led to a significant oversight: the untapped power of purpose. The world’s most impactful and resilient companies are beginning to realize that the most potent innovations aren’t just about making money; they are about making a difference.

Purpose-driven innovation is a mindset that places a social or environmental mission at the heart of the innovation process. It moves beyond traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and integrates purpose as a core strategic driver. It’s about asking, “What problem in the world can we solve, and how can our innovation and business model be the solution?” This approach doesn’t just create new products or services; it creates new markets, builds fierce customer loyalty, and attracts the best talent. When purpose becomes the lens through which we innovate, we create a powerful feedback loop where doing good and doing well become one and the same.

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The Untapped Advantages of a Purpose-First Mindset

The greatest misconception about purpose-driven innovation is that it comes at the expense of profitability. On the contrary, purpose can be the very catalyst for profitability. By solving a significant social or environmental challenge, companies can create a strong competitive advantage that is difficult for others to replicate. They build an emotional connection with consumers who are increasingly making purchasing decisions based on their values.

Purpose as a Strategic Lever

Deepened Customer Loyalty: Customers today are looking for authenticity. They want to buy from companies that share their values. Purpose-driven innovations create a bond that goes beyond a transactional relationship, fostering loyalty that withstands market fluctuations and builds brand advocacy.
Attracting and Retaining Top Talent: The best and brightest employees are no longer motivated solely by salary. They are seeking meaningful work and a sense of belonging. A clear and compelling purpose is a powerful recruiting tool, and it inspires employees to bring their full creativity and passion to their work, driving internal innovation.
Opening New Market Categories: By addressing an underserved social or environmental need, purpose-driven innovators can create entirely new market categories. They see problems not as liabilities, but as opportunities for growth and value creation, expanding their total addressable market in novel ways.

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Case Study 1: The Eyewear Company with a Global Vision

An innovative eyewear company built its entire business model around a single, powerful purpose: to help people see. For every pair of glasses sold, the company provides a pair to someone in need. This isn’t a side project; it is the core of their brand identity. Their innovation extends beyond product design to their business model itself, creating an efficient supply chain that can deliver affordable eyewear to communities in need, while simultaneously building a premium, stylish brand that appeals to conscious consumers.

The result? The company has not only grown into a multi-billion dollar enterprise but has also provided millions of pairs of glasses globally, improving quality of life, their ability to work, and educational opportunities.

This case study demonstrates how a powerful purpose can become an unshakeable differentiator and a primary driver of financial success, turning a social mission into a core competitive advantage.

Case Study 2: The Outdoor Apparel Brand and Sustainability

A well-known outdoor apparel company has long championed a purpose rooted in environmental sustainability. Their innovation is not just about making the best gear for the outdoors; it’s about innovating to protect the outdoors. This has led to groundbreaking innovations in sustainable materials, like recycled polyester, and has pushed the entire industry towards more responsible practices. They created a repair program that encourages customers to fix their gear rather than replace it, a radical idea in a consumer-driven world.

Their purpose has created a fiercely loyal customer base that views their purchases as a form of environmental activism. When a customer buys their product, they are not just buying a jacket; they are making a statement about their values.

This company’s purpose-driven innovation has created a powerful brand identity that is synonymous with sustainability, allowing them to command a premium price and maintain a leadership position by fostering a community of shared values.

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Building Your Purpose-Driven Strategy

To become a purpose-driven innovator, organizations must start by defining their purpose—not as a marketing slogan, but as a genuine commitment. It requires leaders to be brave enough to ask tough questions about their company’s impact on the world. The shift requires moving from a “what” and “how” mindset to a “why” mindset. Consider these steps:

Identify a Core Purpose: What is a problem your organization is uniquely positioned to solve? This purpose must be authentic and align with your brand’s heritage and capabilities.
Embed Purpose in Innovation KPIs: Move beyond traditional metrics like ROI and consider “Return on Impact.” How will you measure the social or environmental outcome of your innovations?
Empower Your Teams: Give employees the autonomy to innovate with purpose. They are often the best source of ideas for how to integrate social impact into your products and processes.

This is the future of innovation. It is a world where profitability and purpose are not mutually exclusive, but rather, are two sides of the same coin. The most successful innovations of the 21st century will not only solve a market need, they will also solve a human need. They will be driven not just by a desire for profit, but by an unwavering commitment to a bigger, more meaningful purpose.

Image credit: Dall-E

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Are You Hanging Your Chief Innovation Officer Out to Dry?

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Are You Hanging Your Chief Innovation Officer Out to Dry?

GUEST POST from Teresa Spangler

Only 7 percent of companies are delivering on the growth triple play by unifying creativity, analytics, and purpose. They are driving average revenue growth of 2.3 times versus peers from 2018–19 (which increased to 2.7 times versus peers from 2019–20). McKinsey

Many innovation leaders are feeling “hung out to dry.” It’s not for the lack of desire to innovate for sure. The challenge is the current innovation processes themselves are not always conducive to actually innovating:

the effort hits the balance sheet and potentially impacts profits
organizational teams fear the unknown and not being involved so often does not support the effort
some innovation leaders alienate team members by pushing too hard
and the priorities of the day simply just get in the way of doing new things.

Innovation is not a buzzword, it is not easy or for the faint at heart. In a hyper-disruptive economy where technologies are impacting everything and changing at unfathomable speeds, keeping pace with trends will take a concentrated effort with very little tolerance for complacency.

Times of uncertainty bring times of doubt and fear on taking risks and making changes. However, the opposite is needed to continue growth in challenging economic times. Companies that infuse creativity and combine creativity with analytics and as McKinsey notes, PURPOSE, continue growth at a faster pace. These companies are creating new products that matter to their customers, they are innovating new campaigns and ways to engage customers as well as new ways to acquire new customers. Innovating methods, business models, and campaigns are just a few outcomes of driving creativity and an analytic savvy in your company’s culture.

Innovation does not have to be groundbreaking disruption (of course it can be! but does not have to be). Iterative changes to the benefit of future needs of customers can be a ground-breaking change for your company’s growth strategy. What is your company’s risk tolerance? What freedom to play with new ideas does your innovation team have or your new product development team encourage? How well aligned are creative process with sales, marketing and product teams?

Plazabridge Group has been involved with 100’s of projects over 15 years and we’ve seen success come to those that double down in the hardest times staying future focused. Segmenting out a future’s team that focuses on the future is important. The day-to-day business must keep going. There are a number of methodologies that work well but none will work at all without a few key changes to the organization to ensure ideas flow from ideation to commercialization.

In the The Wall Street Journal article: Why More Companies Are Putting the LEGO Group Bricks in the Office, Lego Serious Play (LSP) has been used by the U.S. Naval War College (Warfare Division), and spread across energy, transport and finance industries. Companies including Google, Ernst & Young, Microsoft, Visa, Lexus and Procter & Gamble have used it. Plazabridge Group uses LSP in our innovation future planning workshops for companies.

The key is not all play! The necessity to drive a stronger analytic savvy is critical to the effort. In the efforts to create, we must answer the questions: WHO CARES? and WHY? and WHAT WILL THEY CARE ABOUT IN THE FUTURE?

Here are a few tips to consider that may help make driving innovating just a bit easier on the organization:

Build your innovation team’s sandbox and give them freedom to work within these constraints. Innovation is not permission to roam freely and haphazardly. Under a defined set of guidelines with a defined budget and set of resources the innovation team can be quite effective.

Remove barriers to approvals under the above guidelines. Allow the innovation team to introduce to departments and company leaders new ways of thinking by hosting events or information sessions to the teams. By doing so it begins to remove fear of the unknown and the mystery around the effort. Open communications and systems can be a very positive outcome.

Don’t be afraid to approach innovation from outside. There are a number of ways to do this, but you will need a strong leader inside to lead the way and manage the inside out and the outside in process.

Recognize that new innovations do not always fit nicely in the current company structure, processes and culture. Consider spinning it out and investing in new ventures as their own entities.

At the end of the day, you need strong people with a tenacity to pursue outside the world of the unknown. This does not always feel comfortable to the organization. Just don’t leave the innovation team “hanging out to dry!”

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