2 days agoSay “Yes to the Mess”I admit it: I think most “business” books are boring but that’s never stopped me from buying a lot of them only to stop reading ¼–1/3 of the way through. I’ve left a ton of them at co-working/startup space VCET in Burlington, Vermont filling up their bookshelves. Once in a…Innovation5 min readInnovation5 min read
Published inBootcamp·Updated Oct 16What do designers do? Survey results from Sweden.During this last year I’ve worked with a local group in Stockholm The Design Leadership Community (DLC) on a survey targeting designers. In the survey we’ve tried to understand what designers spend their day-to-day work on (design wise, that is, we were not interested, for example, in how much of…UX Design7 min readUX Design7 min read
Oct 4Stop Selling Design and Innovation as “Fun”I’ve notice a trend among consultants and organizations promoting design and innovation. They seem to have a need to pitch it as “fun” — possibly to position it as diametrically opposed to the boring routine most employees seem to get stuck in. I see this when I read descriptions of…Innovation5 min readInnovation5 min read
Published inBootcamp·Sep 11Ideation and AIA recent study published in the Wall Street Journal by Wharton professors Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich tested whether MBA students or ChatGPT was better at generating ideas. They tested both the quantity of ideas and the quality of ideas. In both cases ChatGPT greatly outperformed the Wharton MBA students…AI3 min readAI3 min read
Aug 15The Fearless OrganizationThe first thing that strikes me after, finally, reading Amy Edmondson’s book “The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Growth and Innovation” is that it is, in one sense, completely anti-intuitive. The catch isn’t so much the fearless part; it’s the psychological safety part. Sadly, when…Transformational Leaders6 min readTransformational Leaders6 min read
Jun 22Leading innovation is more than just creating new thingsI’m thinking of you all who have titles like innovation lead or innovation manager and who are responsible for leading efforts within your organizations to change. It’s hard enough to come up with these significant and beneficial changes for your customers, citizens, users, employees — i.e. the main part of…Design4 min readDesign4 min read
May 2We live in precedented times.See what I did there? You probably thought there was a typo in that title, right? “He meant unprecedented” you may have thought. Wrong. I’ve just listened to another presentation about the future, about “exponential” about how things are changing faster than they ever have in human history. This speaker…Future4 min readFuture4 min read
Published inBootcamp·Updated Mar 31Empathy Porn. And how to avoid it.Empathy. It’s critical that we use empathy in all of our design and innovation work to provide true value to people in order to make their lives better. The whole of design thinking/human-centered design/service design is built on the foundation of empathy: we’re taught that we must take our first…Design3 min readDesign3 min read
Feb 21Bring out your dead!Can I tell you how tired I am of reading that this thing or that thing is “dead”? Here’s just a tiny taste of articles from the last year: Agile is Dead Social Media Is Dead Why Digital Transformation Is Dead And It’s Too Late To Cross The Chasm …Design Thinking3 min readDesign Thinking3 min read
Jan 30Facilitation Matrix for better workshops or meetingsI’ve been thinking a lot about facilitation and workshops and meetings and why some are so good, and some are poor. …Innovation4 min readInnovation4 min read
