Pause for Thought
Reflection: Today I went to the funeral of a friend’s husband who passed away long before his time. Appreciate this may not be the most uplifting way …
Creativity
FUN?!
The Premise: For those of you who are not a BBC viewer, W1A is just a postcode. However, for those who tuned in at 9.00pm on 18th September, a new se…
Why it’s time to ditch PowerPoint and master the art of the truly visual presentation
PowerPoint may have been a gamechanger back in the 80s. But in the intervening years, the game has moved on so far that presenting a crucial pitch with…
Build the company you wouldn’t sell
Dreams of a lucrative ‘exit’ provide shaky foundations for innovators and entrepreneurs wanting to make a real impact. They not only impair your judgem…
How to make brainstorming work for you
If two heads are better than one, as the adage goes, would not three heads be better than two and so on? If you answered yes, then you are already a p…
The age of the creative workspace
A creative workspace is key to innovation, accelerated problem-solving, and fostering a work culture in which creativity and collaboration thrives. Thi…
Madness or Innovation?
Innovation is not always blindingly obvious when we see it, sometime it just looks like madness, and we may question why people are doing it. In fact, …
Never Mind the Paradox
Or why Innovation is full of dilemmas, dichotomies and decisions. Paradox - defined by Wikipedia thus “a statement that, despite apparently sound rea…
Making innovation stick: The Sugru Story
Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh went to university to study product design, with sights set on a career ahead as a professional innovator. She had a passion for…
A Space for Innovation
Creating a “culture of innovation” is easy to say, but hard to do. Although many executives start off with well intentioned aspirations, the hard real…
Innovations in driving employee, supplier and customer engagement
One of the questions that my clients often ask me is "what should we look to innovate? Should we be looking at creating new innovative products and ser…
The Gentle Art of Questions
We live in a world of pace, high-energy and therefore the quickest way to get things done is often to tell people. Tell people how, what, when, and eve…
How can we stay creative under pressure?
Our scribes know a thing or two about staying creative under pressure. That's basically their job description. But it's not just illustrators-for-hire …
Stories lead to innovation: Innovation leads to stories
In the unpicking of innovation, we invariably find stories – of solutions for problems, of unusual alliances, of unexpected endings, of happy accidents…
The NASA Meatball
I was recently in Prague to speak at a technology conference about the future of space exploration. Just as I was deboarding the plane on the cold wind…
Innovation Archetypes: What kind of innovator are you?
We use archetypes in many walks of life: to provide context, assign a character or personality or define a brand. Definition: Archetype [ar ki taip] …
C’mon Champ! Three things the world of sport can teach us about being creative
On the face of it, the sporting and creative worlds share many similarities: They touch almost everyone, inspiring great passions, fuelling lifelong ob…