Books & Reviews

    Innovation Piano Lessons

    Scaffolding is THE Key to Learning AND Innovation

    Learn to Play Piano in Days

    Control Shift Piano to Launch January 27th

    Steven Jenkins and I have something in common. We’re both frustrated piano players. I took lessons as an adult for several years and never achieved fluency. Traditional lessons teach music theory. I can read music but I’m so slow I can’t really keep a song flowing without practicing for months. Not much fun. I didn’t have the time or patience to continue; instead I took to singing at piano bars.

    Steven, on the other hand, took his frustration and innovated. He decided to invent a way to learn piano, and play songs, faster. He’s created a system (Control Shift Piano Method) that honestly you won’t believe. But it works. It’s amazing. It’s for people like me, who only want the fun of playing a tune, and don’t really need sophisticated music theory.

    Steven Jenkins is a true innovator because he SCAFFOLDS

    Have a look at this video. Steven does something with his system that all good teachers and teaching methods do, that is, Scaffold the student to the learning. Scaffolding is how you bridge someone’s mind to incorporate new learning, and, significant to innovators, think in fresh ways. Scaffolding is something that educators know about, there’s been significant research.

    For more information about Steven and his cool new method click here. Control Shift Piano launches January 27th.

    Scaffolding is virtually unheard of as an innovation method

    It’s long been the holy grail of innovation facilitators such as myself to help clients scaffold their thinking to come up with new ideas for products, services, process improvements and even business models. One reason it’s difficult is because thinking sessions start cold, and, there is Not Enough Scaffolding.

    Wouldn’t it be great if there was a template, akin to what Steven has done with his piano system, to make it easier for innovators to connect to fresh ideas?

    There is, it’s called Innovation MoshPit. It assists innovators in making new connections through a series of easy-to-do scaffolding steps. Like Steven’s method, it works because it uses learning as part of innovation.

    Get in touch if you’d like to know more about how to integrate Scaffolding into your innovation process.

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    The Shining Digital City On the Hill

    Digital Technology Remains An Unharvested Field There is so much innovation potential being left on the table, right now, that our future could truly be that shining city on the hill. The potential, much of it, lays in digital technology. Your future could be that company that thrives amidst chaos. Your future could be that person who surfs above the waves of massive change. But there’s a big IF isn’t there? You won’t get any results if you don’t invest in innovation now. That phrase “city on the hill,” thanks to Ronald Reagan, has come to represent American exceptionalism, but, here, I intend it to mean something bigger, and more akin to the biblical source it comes from. What it

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    Organizational Creativity, A Practical Guide for Innovators & Entrepreneurs

    Book Review of: Organizational Creativity, A Practical Guide for Innovators & Entrepreneurs I read the literature associated with creativity and innovation. Can you hear me snoring? I don’t review most of them because I’d have to pan them. They are consistently boring, dry, and wonky. At the end of the day many books in the genre are, weirdly, not very creative. I’m happy to report that I’ve read a new creativity book that is quite dynamic. Organizational Creativity, A Practical Guide for Innovators & Entrepreneurs, by Gerard Puccio, John F. Cabra and Nathan Schwagler* is a breath of fresh air. It’s dense with fascinating and fresh information about innovation. As claimed in the title, it really is practical, and indeed,

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    Reading Widely Means More Dots to Connect

    People ask me what I read. I think this question is inspired by my citing some arcane fact or that I make a weird connection now and then. I am a voracious reader, but I think what I actually read might surprise. Most of it is NOT directly about creativity and innovation (that’s a way to guarantee you’re boring!) Reading widely provides more dots to connect. Broadly, I’m thinking I’m improving my database by reading a lot of varied and weird content. There is some science to this; one can make more conceptual blends if one has more to blend. And, concept blending, new connections, are where innovation comes from. So, this is a snapshot of what I’m reading, for

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    Luke Williams at World Innovation Forum (a review)

    The following is a review of Luke Williams talk at the recent World Innovation Forum. Roving reporter and colleague Dr. Orin Davis gives Luke high marks as both a speaker/entertainer, AND as an innovation expert, high praise indeed. I’d not heard of Luke Williams, apparently he’s a fellow at Frog Design, an author, and a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business. I’m putting his “Disrupt” on my reading list. Here’s Orin’s report: ************** Disrupt Yourself!  Luke Williams at the World Innovation Forum by Orin Davis, Phd I note in jest that what Luke Williams primarily proved at his WIF talk is that showing pictures of babies doing really cute things, like trying to dance to Beyoncé’s “All the Single Ladies,” gets

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    The Value of a “Cross Domain” View

      Dr. Orin Davis (@DrOrinDavis) has written up two more short pieces — essentially his reflections from the talks of Rebecca Henderson and Dan Pink at the recent World Innovation Forum. His comments on Pink are somewhat provocative, so, be aware I do not share Orin’s views exactly. Orin is a well read academic (and practitioner as well) and he knows a lot about the wide array of literature that exists for creativity and innovation — that’s why I’ m publishing his insightful work here. His critique of Pink is interesting to me because I was not aware of who Pink borrows from, and, if he is borrowing faithfully to the original research. That said, I think there’s a real value for people

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    When Culture Matters…for Innovation

    Back in those glory days at the University of Cincinnati, I was assigned a lovely little textbook to read for Freshman English class called “The Elements of Style” (by E.B. White and William Strunk). In a nutshell it’s all about how to write clearly. It provides succinct advice with spot-on examples. It’s a smallish book which easily fits into your jacket pocket. I read it, used it, and have refferred to it hundreds of times over the years. I treasure that slim little book. I’ve just found a similar treasure — but having to do with cross-cultural communications.  It’s official title is When Culture Matters, the 55 minute guide to better cross-cultural communication, by Indy Neogy.* True to its title,

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    Amping Ideas, Two EZ Innovation Tools

    Guerilla Innovation Chapter Nine You have to amp those ideas before you start marketing and selling. If you are in before-start-up mode, even more reason to AMP like mad. The refined or amped up idea might just get you to that elusive Point of Difference we talked about. It’s not enough to have a great idea. I’m not making light of the effort one must make to get to a breakthrough idea, but if you’re an entrepreneur, really, a great idea is only what you need to get to the starting line. The early going in the business race is about “insanely great” ideas (thank you Steve Jobs). Good ideas are  normally “out of the medals” at the end of

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    Stimuli, Scaffolding, Seeing — for Innovative Ideas

    Guerilla Innovation Chapter Eight Everything is Stimuli for Scaffolding to Better Ideas In my last post I introduced you to the concept of “Scaffolding”. For those who are starting here, it’s essentially a thinking tool to take your mind to a new place — an aid in the objective of coming up with an innovative idea for your small business. It might even be The Innovative Idea that starts a new business (hopefully with the clear point of difference I talked about in Chapter One (Even a Pizza Shop Has a Point of Difference) of this online “blogged book.” In order to take your innovation thinking (particularly in this idea generation phase) to the next level, you need to combine

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    Scaffolding — Thinking Monkey Bars for SmallBiz

    Guerrilla Innovation Chapter Seven Scaffolding — Thinking Monkey Bars for Small Business Small business people, aka, Guerrilla Innovators, you’re now looking for a unique business idea. This ain’t brainstorming, it’s Scaffolding. Just for fun maybe we call it Idea Generation Monkey Bars for Small Business. It’s a method to get to great ideas one thinking notch up at a time. I’ve been told that the term “Scaffolding” is used in the psychology and education fields. I first heard the term used by my partner with regard to idea generation — and it immediately struck me as a helpful way to look at things. Let me explain how Scaffolding works. Innovators, get out your Notebooks and start Notebooking. Breakthrough ideas are

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