Economic Development

    Wish Wildly With Abandon

    Blue Sky Visioning is Under-utilized

    Improve Personal or Professional Innovation Roadmaps

    “Be careful what you wish for” is a cliché you hear now and then.

    It occurs to me that innovation teams, often, don’t wish imaginatively enough. This is also true for individuals seeking new and interesting projects for their lives.

    If you want to innovate, solve a big problem, or make a positive change in a business or your life — it starts with wildly imaginative wishing. Some term it Visioning. How can you get what you desire if you don’t have an exciting vision for a highly desired outcome?

    Wildly Imaginative Wishing Take Practice

    Don’t obey the cliche and wish carefully. Wish With Abandon.

    This is not as easy as it sounds. It takes practice, and a skilled facilitator helps.

    We tend to rein in wishes. We think, “that’s a stupid wish because I don’t have the money,” or, the resources, the talent, or the guts to make the wish happen. So we wish practically and list unexciting project ideas. Those projects are not likely to achieve a breakthrough. Visioning takes practice. The more you do it, the better you get at it. Tools and frameworks help.

    That Innovation Project List

    Most Innovation teams have a roadmap of scheduled projects. If not that, at least a list of potential projects to consider for future innovation efforts.

    The lists I’ve reviewed are not visionary enough, and, are populated with obvious projects. Obvious projects address the glaring holes. It might be a missing in the product line. Or a service offering that needs improvement. It might be improving operations. There’s nothing wrong with obvious ideas, they tend to be practical. Every innovation project list should have low risk/high reward practical projects. That said, the first items in any creative list are usually not insightful or surprising. If you don’t push beyond this, you’re in trouble.

    Surprising, Scary, Deeply Insightful Projects

    Without doing the work of imaginative, creative, visioning  there won’t be any game changers.

    That’s a missed opportunity that will plague an organization for years. You’ll get incremental innovation, at best. You need to innovate your project list!

    How often do you (or your team) spend time thinking imaginatively about what innovation projects you might do?

    Idea For Project One: Make An Imaginative List of Innovation Projects 

    Another idea: Call in a professional facilitator to plan the project list meeting (which could be virtual) and get that list made, or refreshed. Who you gonna call? Maybe an uber-experienced facilitator? You need tools and frameworks for:

    • Looking at your current research for fresh insights,
    • Casting a wide net for new possibilities, new ways to innovate,
    • Considering new technology and existing shelved IP

    Get teams thinking of wildly imaginative innovation projects. Projects that, when done, fuel growth for years to come.

    If a session found even one major new vision and project idea would that be of value to your organization?

    Are several fresh project ideas for innovation, and a roadmap of your innovation future, of value?

    Get it done. If you need help, get in touch.

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    Fractional Chief Innovation Officer (CINO)

    A Practical Solution for Medium Sized Companies to Grow The 80/20 Solution for the MisFortune 10,000 The Fortune 1,000 work innovation process like mad. Many have fine-tuned frameworks with a high level of sophistication. That lowers risk. However, elaborate innovation frameworks slow things down. This mild paralysis is an opening for small and medium sized companies. They can grow by beating bigger players to the punch. But the “MisFortune 10,000” tend to miss this opportunity. Time to consider a Fractional Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) to load up that innovation punch. Here’s why. Speed and momentum matter in innovation, even more so to smaller firms. Leverage the innate agility. The best way to ramp up and grow quickly, beyond having a

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    Tune-In To Taster Tools On Thursday

    Free Weekly Webinar of Facilitation Tools with Gregg Fraley Every Thursday at 2 pm EST, Master Facilitator Gregg Fraley demonstrates a facilitation tool online. The weekly sessions are FREE. Sessions begin on Thursday March 18th. The 30 minute weekly webinar features demonstrations of various facilitation tools for: strategy, challenge clarification, idea generation (aka brainstorming), problem framing, idea selection, innovation projects, and idea development, etc. Thinking Differently Takes Tools At some point everybody needs to think differently. It might be a really thorny, hairy, awful, complex problem. It might be a juicy opportunity you don’t know how to seize. When you ask your mind to think differently, what happens? Does it come easily? Do new thoughts and ideas spring forth? Or,

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    USA Now an Innovation Also-Ran — 11th in World

    USA, Now An Innovation Loser STEM Skills the Major Culprit Suggests a CCC-ish “American Science Corp” This is my annual blog reporting on the Bloomberg Innovation Index 2021 edition. The USA was 9th last year. Now, the USA has fallen to 11th in the annual ranking of innovation by country. Like last year, the continued slide (we were #1 in 2013) is due mostly to lack of investment in hard science, manufacturing, and technology education. See the Bloomberg Innovation Index report for 2020 here. It’s a truly rich report and it gives a great picture of which countries are primed, and are doing, great things. Is it a perfect measure? No. But it’s a hell of an indicator. The USA

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    Double Down on Digital Tech Innovation

    Adjust Innovation Project Roadmaps Now Fraley Oracle Predictions for 2020 & 2021 Like everyone else innovators have been thrown a loop during Covid19. Strategic plans so carefully developed now look like Napoleon’s disastrous return from his invasion of Russia (see graphic). Napoleon didn’t adjust his plans. He lost his army and his empire. Our businesses are in Moscow now. We’ve got decisions to make with how to get home. How organizations return from Covid19 determines their futures. This Covid19 disaster is an opportunity. More uncertainty will freeze some of your competition. Survivors prosper. Things will get better eventually, but the time is now to prepare for that lovely day when the sun comes out again. My key advice is in

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    Schools Kill Creativity

    We Still Can Learn From “The Ken” Sir Ken Robinson Leaves a Legacy That Still Inspires Educators, Creators, and Innovators, Revisit His Work! The creativity and innovation world has lost one of its finest just this last week. Sir Ken Robinson was the most articulate speaker and author in the field of applied creativity we’ve ever known. His insights are profound, and his unique verbal delivery is simply unparalleled. His sense of humor colored his work and is the secret sauce of his success; he had the wit of a natural born comedian and the incisive insights of a brilliant satirist. His original TED talk (“How Schools Kill Creativity) is without a doubt the most influential 18 minutes of video

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    Vote In-Person

    Pack a Lunch Mail-in voting is already problematic. Like many Americans I’m appalled at the use of the Post Office to suppress votes. If you don’t agree this is happening, you can skip the rest of what I say here. In my view, the Post Office and Mail-in voting is already compromised, with some exceptions. For those of you who read my blog for innovation, this blog is not about that, I’ll return soon with more writing on creativity and innovation. But the stability of our elections and our government does impact innovation in the long run, and maybe the short run. Too Late To Fix This It would be great if this problem of mail-in voting could be fixed

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    MoshPit Workshop — Reinvent Your Business @ The NIIC

    Intensive Program Helps Small Business Owners in Indiana Survive and Grow Indiana Business Owners: Sign Up Now, It’s FREE, Starts August 12th. MoshPits, those crazy human-smashing dance scenes at heavy metal concerts are deliberate chaos. Those who participate dive in because they want that wacky experience. They Choose to Dance. What business leaders are going through to survive the economic chaos of Covid19 is a MoshPit nobody really chose to be a part of, but, we’re stuck with the situation. Make no mistake, these are tough times, and they cause business leaders anxiety and fear. But, they can Choose to Take Control. Control means thinking your way out of this crisis. Did you know there’s another kind of “MoshPit” that

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    USA Falling Behind in Innovation

    Main Culprit? Lack of Education in Science, Manufacturing, Construction, and Engineering Infrastructure and Education Project Idea: Learn, Build, Innovate USA The USA is 9th in the 2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index. The USA leads in a couple of categories, including “High Tech Density” and “Patent Activity” — so that’s good. But that’s not the whole story. Can we agree that innovation drives economies? The stock market is actually a questionable indicator of economic health, particularly looking to the future. The Bloomberg Innovation Index shows broad trends related to a countries ability to create. The ability to create is at the heart of any economy. So, this is our future USA citizens, a slow slide into mediocrity, unless we change. It’s true at the national level, and

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    Creatives Build Rural Economies

    Rural Development Hinges On The Creative Class Attracting the Creative Class is About Culture, Tolerance, and Quality of Life Where Creative Workers Locate is Where Innovation and New Businesses Happen, Site Locations Follow Richard Florida is, in my view, the top theorist in the USA with regards to economic development. His seminal book the Rise of the Creative Class should be required reading for anyone with an interest in creating jobs, and attracting companies to locate in a particular region (his other work is also notable). Florida is not without controversy, but I respect his work because it’s data-driven, and, because I’ve seen his theories play out in the real world. The skinny on Florida’s theories is pretty simple: creative

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