Idea To Value - Creativity And Innovation

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with artist, neuroscience researcher and startup founder Dr Shama Rahman. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tU  We speak about how we are using Artificial Intelligence and mental models to better understand and even enhance our human intelligence and spark creativity in new ways. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:03:00 - What she was researching and her findings, to see if there are certain brain activities depending on the creative process 00:08:00 - Getting into a flow state 00:11:00 - Different mental modes and models for creativity 00:13:30 - How her new startup is using artificial intelligence to help people during their creative process 00:18:00 - Using wearables and biosensors to help people get feedback on their creative performance Links mentioned in today's episode: Neurocreate: https://www.neurocreate.co.uk/ Dr Shama Rahman's Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-shama-rahman-4a6ba713/ Bonus: This episode was

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with the creator of the Bose Noise-cancelling headphones, John Carter. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1u8  We discuss how challenging it is to develop completely new technology, the difficulty in describing its value and marketing it, and getting buy-in for innovation processes in your company. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:00 - John's background and journey with Dr Bose 00:03:00 - The history of the noise-cancelling headphones actually started by trying to improve audio performance, before later finding the noise-cancelling value proposition 00:04:00 - The challenges were not just technical, but in convincing marketing and distribution channels to create a new product category 00:08:00 - Innovation is not a team sport, it is usually done by one or two people 00:10:00 - The three aspects required for innovation: leadership, governance and process 00:12:30 - The reasons why functional managers are challenged by new innovations

In today's episode of the Idea to Value Podcast, we speak with creativity and motivation expert Todd Henry. He is the author of 5 books on how to get the best creative performance out of yourself and creative teams, the Founder of the Accidental Creative and the podcast of the same name, and author of the upcoming book The Motivation Code. We speak about how teams can be more effective when being creative together, as well as insights on what motivates people. I was fortunate to be given early access to the unique MCODE system to assess what drives every person's unique motivation factors and found it very interesting. For example, my top Motivation Profiles were Evoke Recognition, Be Unique and Explore, which do in fact relate to my driving forces. It's a very interesting way of looking at your own, and your team's motivations. I would suggest you get a copy of the book and the assessment to find out more about yourself as well. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:30 - How talent alone will not sustain

In today's episode of the Idea to Value Podcast, we speak with Dr Gaia Grant, a researcher into innovation and founder of Tirian Consulting. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tT  We speak about the need for contextual ambidexterity and the profile of highly effective innovators. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:02:30 - Gaia's research into ambidextrous paradoxes around innovation, where leaders can think in multiple different ways 00:07:00 - What makes up an innovation leader profile 00:10:00 - What is the team makeup profile to develop a portfolio of innovations 00:12:00 - The tensions between the need to explore and preservation 00:16:00 - Contextual ambidexterity is where people have the training to switch their thinking depending on the needs Links mentioned in today's episode: The Innovation Race assessment: https://the-innovation-race.com/ Dr Gaia Grant's website: https://andrewgaiagrant.com/ Tirian Learning and Development: https://www.tirian.com/ Dr Gaia Grant's Linkedin: https://

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with the world's #1 Communications Coach and Top 50 Business Thinkers in the World, Dorie Clark. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tS  Dorie also teaches executive education at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Columbia Business School, and we talk about the importance of reinventing yourself and how best to communicate your value. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:02:00 - why it's so important to be able to reinvent yourself, either by choice or by necessity 00:03:00 - how to get over the challenges of changing course 00:06:30 - how to rebrand yourself 00:09:30 - how to find out what you might be passionate about, but you don't know what 00:12:00 - finding disconfirming evidence by getting data points 00:14:30 - what people get wrong about communicating their value. Use more nouns and fewer adjectives Links mentioned in today's episode: Dorie's free Reinventing You self-assessment: https://dorieclark.com/reinvent Bonus

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with Karin Hurt and David Dye from Let's Grow Leaders. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tR  We speak about what it takes to build a culture where both leaders and everyone can feel engaged with innovation and bring forward their best ideas. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:00 - Karin and David's backgrounds in corporate work which led them to innovation 00:03:30 - How leaders lose their souls and lose engagement in their work 00:05:15 - Their research which showed why people aren't sharing their ideas 00:08:00 - How to overcome the challenges of engagement 00:12:00 - How people a the front line can share their ideas more effectively 00:16:30 - How a courageous culture helps companies implement ideas Links mentioned in today's episode: Let's Grow Leaders: https://letsgrowleaders.com/ Courageous Cultures book: https://letsgrowleaders.com/courageous-cultures-2/ Bonus: This episode was made possible by our premium innovation and cr

In today's episode fo the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with Tamara Ghandour, founder of Launch Street, author of INNOVATION IS EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS and developer of the IQE assessment. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tQ  We speak about why some people find it so challenging to innovate, how to overcome these fears and the importance of understanding how your tribe works best together. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:02:30 - Why everyone needs to understand how they can be involved in innovation 00:03:30 - If you try to force everyone to innovate in the same way, you will fail 00:05:15 - Why our primal brain makes people fear failure and new ideas 00:09:10 - Are there people who cannot innovate? 00:11:30 - Building an innovation tribe 00:14:30 - The challenges which women experience in innovation 00:18:30 - How to communicate to get buy-in on innovation Links mentioned in today's episode: Launch Street: https://www.gotolaunchstreet.com/ Bonus: This episode was made possible by our pr

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with Byron Lopez, who is a Technical Director on the award-winning animated TV show South Park. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tP  We speak about the unique creative process which enables South Park to be created from start to finish in less than a week, where other TV shows take months. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:02:00 - Byron's journey that brought him to South Park 00:03:30 - What a Technical Director does 00:05:00 - How South Park is created and produced in less than a week 00:08:00 - His personal creative process, based on a strong sense of trust in the team 00:13:30 - Byron's creative endeavours outside of work 00:15:30 - How Byron thinks that it is easier for children to be creative nowadays Links mentioned in today's episode: Youtube: Art time with Mr Color: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3fpBjk9n4-F2VKT-b6f4wA Byron's Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/byron-lopez-39415b7/ Bonus: This episode was mad

In today's episode of the Idea to Value Podcast, we speak with Michael Raynor, Managing Director for the Deloitte US Strategy group, and author of numerous groundbreaking books on innovation, including The Innovator's Solution and the Strategy Paradox. See the full article at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tO  We speak about the link between strategy and innovation, what companies get wrong about disruptive innovation and understanding where your company is in the market. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:02:00 - The history of the Innovator's Solution, creating separate organisational entities for different types of innovation 00:04:45 - The misunderstanding of Disruptive Innovation 00:07:30 - Why you cannot use disruption as a strategy 00:09:00 - The links between strategy (embracing tradeoffs) and innovation (breaking tradeoffs) 00:15:00 - Understanding your intent when determining where innovation should be invested in 00:16:15 - How to set an innovation strategy to help the company understand where you curre

In today's episode of the Idea to Value Podcast, we speak again with creativity researcher Professor Mark Batey from the Manchester Metropolitan University. We speak about some of his most recent research into how our environment affects our performance and creativity, and people who use their creativity for evil purposes. Mark is widely published on the subject of creativity and is the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving and an editorial board member for the APA Journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:02:30 - Research into how your physical environment affects your creativity 00:04:00 - Being exposed to nature appears to result in a 15% improvement in divergent thinking 00:09:00 - What is malevolent creativity (a creative act which is deliberately designed to harm other people). Is everything that is creative always good? 00:13:00 - Be aware of our own biases to consider our own malevolence Links mentioned

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with Rob Lowe, head of Value Creation and Marketing at LEGO Ventures. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tN  We speak about what innovation and creativity mean at Lego, and how they look for partners to invest in. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:00 - What is LEGO Ventures and its purpose: Play can be a great basis of learning 00:03:20 - How creativity and innovation is a part of the culture at LEGO 00:05:00 - What makes an investment interesting for LEGO 00:08:30 - The reason why the Ventures team is separate from the core business 00:10:00 - What "value" means for LEGO, going beyong ROI 00:11:00 - The link between the idea and the team in how investment choices are made 00:14:00 - The dangers of diversifying innovation too far from the core business 00:18:00 - What LEGO has learned about venture building so far. In order to be excellent, you need to narrow your focus Links mentioned in today's episode: LEGO Ventures website: htt

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with author Dan Toma about the concept of Innovation accounting. Dan is the founder of Outcome and the co-author of the Corporate Startup. We go through how companies should measure innovation performance, and which KPIs actually make sense for these types of projects. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:30 - Dan's history in entrepreneurship 00:03:45 - Why accounting is overrated. It cannot tell you what to do next. It is like driving a car but only looking backwards in the rearview mirror. 00:05:00 - The aspects which create a successful innovation culture are found nowhere in the accounting books.  00:08:00 - Instead of just focusing on inputs and outputs, innovation relies on understanding the process 00:09:00 - Innovation cannot provide information on what has not yet happened, making questions around "Return on Investment" impossible to predict 00:14:00 - Which KPIs and principles work for an innovation accounting system 00:19:30 - What is

In today's episode of the Idea to Value Podcast, we speak with Pete Newell, Founder of BMNT. We speak about how to align innovation strategy with operations in large organisations. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:30 - How Pete's history in the military with the US Army's Skunkworks influenced his journey to innovation 00:03:00 - The military is always in a certain state of chaos at the head of the battlefield, moving towards structure as you move up the chain of command 00:05:00 - How companies suffer from innovation exhaustion 00:06:00 - What is an innovation pipeline? From start to finish in 5 steps 00:09:30 - No problem survives first contact with investigation. Finding the right problems is vital 00:11:00 - Between every stage of an innovation pipeline, it requires someone making a decision about what is required from one activity to the next activity with another team. Many people are too focused on proving the purpose of the current activity, rather than thinking what should be the series of p

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak world-renowned futurist Daniel Burrus. He has written 7 bestselling books on innovation, including the Anticipatory Organisation, and has also started 6 leading companies himself. We speak about the difference of hard trends (that will definitely happen) and soft trends (assumptions, that might happen or might not), and using the principles of hard trends to guide your innovation efforts. Get The Anticipatory Leader at an exclusive discount here. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:02:30 - What is a professional futurist? 00:04:00 - How to use the 500 known cycles, as well as linear and exponential trends, to predict hard trends and soft trends 00:07:00 - Value is delivered when you tie an opportunity to a trend 00:09:00 - The three types of hard trends 00:16:00 - Doing the opposite, and the Skip-It principle 00:18:30 - Innovation and businesses based on certainty are low risk 00:19:30 - When most people try to look forward, they use legacy thinkin

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with Scott Anthony, Senior Partner of Innosight. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tn  We speak about some of the insights from his upcoming book Eat, Sleep, Innovate, and how the current pandemic is going to change many industries in the near future. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:02:00 - Scott remembers Professor Clayton Christensen, and his ability to tell stories to explain innovation 00:05:30 - What does it really take to innovate? And why are these innate behaviours not happening in companies? 00:08:00 - How leaders delude themselves about disruption, you need to be able to flip between thinking about the current business, and thinking about the future 00:09:30 - The limits to the concept of ambidextrous organisations, you need dual transformation 00:14:00 - How can you develop a culture which allows intelligent failure 00:15:30 - Asking the jobs to be done that are being affected by the global coronavirus pandemic 00:19:00

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we talk with Steve Blank, senior innovation fellow at Columbia University, serial entrepreneur and the founder of the Lean Startup movement. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1th  We speak about what makes a successful startup, what large companies get wrong about innovation and how he has seen Lean Startup evolve and change over the past few years. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:15 - How Steve started 8 startups in 21 years, and what this taught him about how innovation works 00:03:00 - How his Customer Development methodology morphed into the Lean Startup method (including insights from Alex Osterwalder and the Business Model development) 00:07:30 - How the meaning of "Startup" has changed over the past few decades 00:12:00 - The moment he realised "there are no facts inside your building", you need to go out and understand what customers think 00:15:00 - How to test hypotheses. Lean startup is just the scientific method, using minimum

In today's episode of the Idea to Value Podcast, we speak with Mark Metry, host of the popular Humans 2.0 podcast and author of Screw Being Shy: Learn How to Manage Social Anxiety and Be Yourself in Front of Anyone See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tg  We speak about overcoming anxiety, mental illness and living a more fulfilling life. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:15 - How Mark spent the first 18 years of his life trying to hide himself and his message, due to his social anxiety 00:05:15 - How creative people feel fear about releasing their ideas, especially introverts 00:07:00 - How your body creates a negative feedback loop during social situations, which makes you feel even more anxious 00:11:30 - The impact of social media on comparing yourselves to other people 00:15:15 - Humans take much longer than other animals to learn about the external and internal world 00:19:45 - Ways to overcome shyness and social anxiety, including using FLOW Links mentioned in today's episode: Mark

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with Linkedin Top Voice of 2019 and innovation vlogger, Céline Flores Willers. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1sW  We talk about what it takes for companies and individuals to better get their message out there on Linkedin, and the importance of brand authenticity. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:30 - Her journey starting with innovation and Ernst & Young 00:03:30 - How she chooses the innovation topics to talk about 00:04:45 - The importance of a personal brand message on Linkedin, and how this fits into marketing 00:07:00 - It is not authentic to just share company messages, you need to bring in your own content 00:08:45 - Don't worry about putting out content which doesn't look perfect. It needs to be authentic Links mentioned in today's episode: Célin's Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/c%C3%A9line-flores-willers/ Bonus: This episode was made possible by our premium innovation and creativity training. Take y

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with Jonathan Courtney, CEO of AJ&Smart. See the full episode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1t6  We speak about what it takes to run successful workshops, his experiences with companies who are failing at innovation, and how to successfully develop digital products. Topics covered in today's episode 00:01:30 - How User Experience (UX) led Jonathan on his journey to starting his company 00:03:30 - The tension behind building products for months and misalignment causing them to go nowhere 00:05:30 - The power of Design Sprints to speed up project starts. Design sprints are a step by step system for bringing a group of people together to solve big problems 00:09:00 - Why they moved from long term client engagements, and are now focusing down on shorter workshops 00:12:00 - How digital product innovation has changed over the past 10 years 00:16:30 - Innovation labs were a place where nothing got done 00:19:00 - Apple and Google led people astray, by focusi

In today's episode of the Idea to Value podcast, I speak with Iain Bitrain, Executive Director of The International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM). See the full epsiode at https://wp.me/p6pllj-1tf  We speak about how ISPIM has evolved over time, and what professional innovation managers can do now to prepare for an uncertain future. Topics covered in today's episode: 00:01:30 - ISPIM is a community for anyone involved in innovation 00:02:30 - Iain's journey 00:04:00 - What ISPIM does and professionalising innovation management as a profession 00:08:00 - How the COVID-19 conference is forcing companies to innovate 00:12:00 - Examples of how companies are doing things differently Links mentioned in today's episode: ISPIM Virtual Conference registration: https://www.ispim-virtual.com/ Bonus: This episode was made possible by our premium innovation and creativity training. Take your innovation and creativity capabilities to the next level by investing in yourself now, at https://www.idea