Dear Subscribers, Thank you for your interest in this blog, and in the innovation messages I am trying to spread! You may have noticed a bit of a drop-off in the frequency of blog posts. Selfishly, I hope that you are disappointed because the content is so crazy valuable to you, you just can't get enough. Or at least I hope that it provides some relief from inbox overload. I am in the home stretch of getting the revised and updated version of my book Keep Innovation Simple pu

Do you measure the outcomes of your actions and decisions? This week’s fascinating Freakonomics podcast was loaded with lessons on doing so. But not the lessons you might expect. If you have an hour available, it’s well worth a listen: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/when-helping-hurts/ Without being too much of a spoiler, the episode tells the story of a well-intentioned mentorship program for at-risk boys. Not only did the program not help, it actually hurt. But no one knew

Imagine the scene: a focus group room. A facilitator pitching the latest advertising concept. Megacorp advertising executives sit in a dark room behind one-way mirrors. Bowls of M&Ms and cans of Diet Coke all around. Sure to follow are insights on their latest brainstorms. “Okay, here’s an idea,” says the facilitator. “A live online broadcast. We’ll have a camera watching a woman shuck oysters. She’ll talk while prying the shells open. Then she’ll announce the color of the pe

Forgive me if you think that the title of this blog post is un-American or un-Patriotic, here on the Fourth of July. I lived in Illinois for over thirty years, where the head of the Chicago FBI office once said "“If this isn’t the most corrupt state in the United States, it is certainly one hell of a competitor.” So I might be a little jaded. Anyway, the real question here: "Is 'Culture of Innovation' an oxymoron" (meaning a self-contradictory phrase, not a super-idiot, which

George Carlin would have been a great job interviewer. Carlin’s comedic success came largely from his astute observations of irrational human behavior. If you’ll excuse the language, he called us all out on our bullshit. One of my favorite sound bites (at least among those mentionable in a professional setting) is a simple observation of how we tend to think in our cars: “Have you ever noticed when you are driving, that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone d