Creativity

In: Creativity, Innovation

Good product strategy enables effective and efficient decision making. Effective product strategy lowers decision fatigue and simultaneously creates the psychological safety to make critical decisions. What Is Decision Fatigue? According to Adam Thomas “Decision fatigue, then, refers to the tendency of our decision-making ability to deteriorate in quality over the course of a long session”. He goes on to point out the importance of Decision Fatigue, given that the entire role of Product Management is about prioritising and making critical decisions. Every decision made is a choice and has a cost. As you move down a decision tree each following decision inherits the implications of previous decisions, no matter the current merit or relevance. The process gets harder over time and when we struggle with decisions we get more fatigued. Product Strategy Should Make Decision Making Easier. This article is not about explaining what needs to go into a product strategy,Continue Reading

comedian

In: Creativity, Innovation

While it doesn’t sound like the most obvious approach there are a number of tools that business leaders can take and apply from comedians. But the approach doesn’t require you to try and be funny, rather by better understanding how comedians do their job, leaders can learn techniques to be better at theirs. Comedians use an arsenal of cognitive tools to develop a repertoire, one of these is what Peter McGraw author of Shtick Business refers to as “benign violation” this premise of the incongruous is when a violation (say of social norms or laws of physics) intersects with harmlessness, (or at least acceptability). An example is where comedian Chris Rock says, “I love being famous. It’s almost like being white, y’know?” he hits an unexpected contrast and people find if funny. That unexpected contrast is something that McGraw is encouraging leaders to explore an MIT study in 2011 foundContinue Reading

In: Creativity, Customer Centricity, Innovation

Cultural Innovation is not just about building a better mousetrap, rather it is driven by deeply connecting customers with a brands ideology, which in turn has transformed the the value proposition and reinvented the category. Why is innovation so hard? Why do companies who have have incredibly talented teams struggle to innovate and create a sustainable innovative new product? This article explores the challenges with large corporate innovation. Procter & Gamble a company renowned for driving what it refers to as ‘constructive disruption’ has designed a process that aligns closely to a startup with venture funding, support from tech entrepreneurs and a lean probe and learn prototyping process. But even with this best in class approach to corporate innovation the process is not exactly delivering huge results – the most recent P&G offering was a ‘Smart Pampers Diaper’ (nappy) that signals a change is needed! “Build a better mousetrap, andContinue Reading

In: Creativity, Innovation

The idea that creativity is exclusively the domain of youth is an incorrect assumption according to researchers at Ohio State University, their finding is that creativity peaks at different ages. The difference is that those people who generate radical ideas often do so before they are deeply knowledgeable in the conventions of their field. Alternatively experimenters take all of their career knowledge, together with decades of trial and error to go beyond the conventions of their domain. “Many people believe that creativity is exclusively associated with youth, but it really depends on what kind of creativity you’re talking about,”  Bruce Weinberg, Professor Economics, Ohio State University Conceptual Innovators Conceptual innovators are generating creativity in fundamentally new ways, they have clear goals, and seek to communicate specific ideas or emotions. This approach tends to peak early and most of the groundbreaking work from conceptual innovators happens early in their careers. ExperimentalContinue Reading