Original drawing by G Fraley

Am off tonight to do a Pecha Kucha presentation at an event organized by Simon Strong of Human Zoo. It looks like a fascinating line-up of tasty Pecha’s.

It’s good fun to create something as scaled down as 20 slides at 20 seconds each.  It forces you to get to the essence of things.  In preparing for tonight, I put together what I think is an insightful set of 20 statements about innovation that I’m calling “Innovation in a Nutshell” or less PC, “No BS Innovation”.  Sharing my work with you here…

So, please, tell me what you think of the following.  My intent is to take Innovation back to the absolute basics — if you follow this guide, you might just do alright.  These are the slides without graphics, and, I’m not going to explain here, you ask me!  Obviously some of these statements have an “answer,” albeit, a short one.

1. Innovation is: complex, difficult, hairy, interesting, frustrating, and fun, mostly, Hard Work.
2. What makes it Difficult in groups is that we mostly get in our own way, there’s Problem A (the challenge) and Problem B (our own agendas)
3. Organisations reach for innovation…when there is an emergency.
4. Sadly, when emergencies happen, we are usually not ready to take advantage.
5. Many seek an innovation “Silver Bullet”
6. It’s not One Thing, It’s Everything, It’s Holistic.
7. What you can do (training wouldn’t hurt!):
8. First, have a few really brilliant people
9. If you don’t have the horses, rent them, buy them, partner with them, seduce them, charm them, steal them
10. Next, allow people to fail and learn
11. Leaders: You job is to hire, support the brilliant, and then get the ____ out of the way
12. Do it all the time, do it small, do it big, do it on a train schedule, mostly stop talking, and do, do, do
13. Adopt a formal process for complex problem solving and stick with it
14. Ideas are not a “dime a dozen” keep track of them
15. Strive for a culture of Yes + AND
16. Customers don’t invent
17. Incremental innovation is what you want most of the time
18. The biggest ideas are usually laughed about , at first
19. As sure as there is a sun in the sky, there will be days of utter despair
20. Don’t Quit.

That’s it.  Some of these points scream for explanation, but I’ll let you ask. Warmest thoughts to you’all on this chilly fall day.  Keep on Innovating.