Tag Archives: Experiment Canvas

Using Intuition to Drive Innovation Success

Using Intuition to Drive Innovation Success

Americans are in love with data, big data, analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

… and the rest of the world is catching the same disease.

Data is important, don’t get me wrong, but it is only one side of the coin driving innovation and operational success.

On the other side of the coin is intuition.

As smart organizations try and make greater use of human-centered design, empathy and intuition can and must play an increasingly important role.

Bruce Kasanoff states that “Intuition is the Highest Form of Intelligence” in his article on Forbes.

Intuition is incredibly important to human-centered design from the standpoint that an “intuitive” design taps into our shared understanding as humans of how things should operate.

Intuition is the secret sauce of the quantum human computer, and as the pace of change AND complexity both accelerate, we must change our brain function to develop not just our intellectual capabilities but our instinctual capabilities as well.

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman wrote about these two ways of thinking in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Let’s look at a short video looking at intuition, science and dreams:

Science Intuition and Dreams – Dean Radin

Dreams can be an incredibly powerful tool for innovation, in fact the Nine Innovation Roles that play an important role in the best-selling book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire came to me in a dream. Many experts recommend that you keep a pen and a notebook next to your bed to capture these flashes of brilliance.

Dreams and shared understanding are but two manifestations of intuition, of our interconnectedness with each other and energies greater than ourselves. But how do we leverage our intuition for innovation?

One way is to use your innovation as an input to use with a tool like The Experiment Canvas™:

The Experiment Canvas

Which is available as a free tool here on my web site from the forthcoming Disruptive Innovation Toolkit™.

You can use it to craft a hypothesis based on your intuition that you want to test, it keeps you focused on what you hope to learn during the experiment, and to consider the setup, operation, and wrapup of your experiment – among other things.

Too often people ignore their intuition because it doesn’t seem scientific. But, turning intuitive insights into hypotheses to test will help you overcome your hesitancy until you train your intuition and to learn to trust it as the potential human quantum computer that it could be. The other reason that people ignore their intuition is that well, they just can’t hear it. For many people, their intellectual mind is so busy that they can’t receive and react to what their intuitive mind is telling them.

Here is an interesting video that highlights these two points and how humans communicate behind the scenes:

Are you drowning out your intuitive mind? Are you failing to consider what is saying, and to test its assertions?

If so, please stop it, and learn new ways to keep innovating!

SPECIAL BONUS:

If you’d like to watch and learn even more about intuition…

Here is a video on Nikola Tesla and the Power of Intuition:


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Latest Interview with Voltage Control’s Innovation Series

Latest Interview with Voltage Control's Innovation Series

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Douglas Ferguson of Voltage Control, to speak with him for their Innovation Series about my work as a popular keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, and thought leader on the topics of continuous innovation and change, and some of my work with clients to create innovative strategies, digital transformations, and increased organizational agility.

But mostly in this information-packed interview, I reveal key lessons from the Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ and my books Charting Change and Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, including what’s hard about making innovation sustainable, the difference between invention and innovation and how the human elements are the key to successful innovation.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

Start with the end in mind

Measurement provides a good starting point for establishing a strong foundation. “No innovation idea emerges fully formed. What people come up with are idea fragments and you have to collect and connect those dots to create a fully formed idea.” Based on those ideas, begin by identifying the value you want to create.

In order to make sure an initiative creates all the value it intends to, Braden advocates for the use of experiments with checkpoints. “You can have checkpoints that you establish along the way in terms of getting from what you’re able to do now versus your vision for the full value that you hope to create.” When thinking through experiments to validate assumptions about feasibility, viability, and desirability, also consider the flaws that might be present in your experimentation process.

“Start plotting out all the different experiments that you plan to run and the learning that you hope to get from each one. Those are the things that you can measure against to show that you’re making progress, to show that you’re going to get to the end and that you’re on track.”

The Experiment Canvas was designed to help with this:
Click here to get The Experiment Canvas™ (11″x17″)
Click here to get The Experiment Canvas™ poster (35″x56″)

Planning with the end in mind also includes consideration for scaling the invention. “Make sure you’re laying out checkpoints around your ability to scale it, because if you can’t get to that [wide] adoption point, then most likely you’re not going to get your investment back.” Think through what you’ll have to work against in order to scale so that profitability is part of the long-term plan from the beginning. Braden looks to companies like Tesla as an example of the potentially disastrous effects an inability to profitably scale can have on a product and a company’s viability despite having strong ideas and exploration practices.

Click here to read the entire interview

Here are some additional links:

1. Click here to visit the Voltage Control interview page

2. Click here to get your copy of Charting Change

3. Click here for more information on the Change Planning Toolkit™


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Interview with Launchstreet About How to Increase Organization Agility and Speed of Innovation

Interview with Launchstreet About How to Increase Organization Agility and Speed of Innovation

I was fortunate enough to join Tamara Ghandour of GoToLaunchStreet, a TED speaker and entrepreneur recently for an interview for her Launchstreet podcast. From building and running multi-million dollar businesses, advising Fortune 500 companies like Disney, Procter and Gamble and RICOH on fostering innovative ideas and people, Tamara’s life is about breaking through the status quo for game-changing results, and that’s what her keynotes, online programs and assessments can do for you. Obviously we’re kindred spirits so check out the lively conversation we had on her podcast!

Listen now to this episode on Inside LaunchStreet:

Download Link | iTunes | Stitcher Radio

Click the links below to find out more about the resources mentioned in the podcast:

The Experiment Canvas™

The Change Planning Toolkit™

Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire: A Roadmap to a Sustainable Culture of Ingenuity and Purpose, by Braden Kelley

Charting Change: A Visual Tool Kit for Making Change Stick, by Braden Kelley


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Ask Me Anything About the Change Planning Toolkit™

Ask Me Anything About the Change Planning Toolkit™

On Thursday, June 8th in the United States I will be answering any and all questions about the Change Planning Toolkit™ on TWITTER at the following local times:

9am PDT (West Coast USA)
Noon EDT (East Coast USA)
5pm GMT (UK)
6pm Western Europe
8pm Dubai
9:30 Mumbai
2am Sydney

I will be monitoring the hashtag #cptoolkit so be sure and include that in your tweet. Alternatively you can submit your questions using the contact form and I will answer them by email and in the tweet stream.

On Twitter I am @innovate if you aren’t already following me

Look for more AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions on the Change Planning Toolkit™ and The Experiment Canvas™ in future weeks!


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