Gregg Fraley

You have to love a guy who walks his own talk. Stefan Lindegaard (@lindegaard) is a well-known advocate for Open Innovation. I’ve been following him on Twitter for ages and have read several of his well written articles. We’ve actually met In Real Life at the Front End of Innovation conference in Berlin. Lindegaard has made his new book, Making Open Innovation Work available free to anyone who wants it. I’d call that open, and, an innovative way to market his expertise. He’s invited people like me (i.e. other gadflies in the innovation space) to help him distribute by letting people know. I’m happy to do this because it’s great content. So, below you’ll see some links to where you

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Some organizations are in a state of procrastination about Innovation. They really mean to do it…someday. “It’s really our intention, next quarter, err, actually, we mean next year,” says the beleaguered innovation director. This is “Innavoidance”. I’ve coined this term. Inavoidance defined in Fraley’s Funky & Wagnally New School Dictionary: INaVOYdanz — a persistent cultural lack of innovation work, process and action, nascent creativity, like procrastination, except specific to new product, service, or business development. Note that inside the new word is “navo” which in Latin means “to do with zeal,” and “dance” — the joyful act of doing the peppermint twist, or watusi. Sadly, both of these positive connotations are negated by the “void” in the middle. Bottom line,

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Jena McGregor (@jenamcgregor) wrote an interesting piece recently for the Washington Post titled “Why Brainstorming Doesn’t Work.” Her piece interprets some rather exciting new creativity research done by Steve Smith of Texas A&M and Nicolas Kohn of University of Texas as saying brainstorming doesn’t work. That’s not what the study is saying really. The research by Smith and Kohn is valid and helpful in my view — and does indeed illustrate one of the challenges  of group brainstorming. Essentially, Smith and Kohn say that when people see ideas others have generated in a group brainstorming session the ideas influence — actually inhibit — the groups ability to generate a diverse set of ideas. The test group that didn’t see each

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Innovation isn’t the exclusive domain of big companies and rocket scientists. People with passion can create good things anywhere. Even in the countryside, and in a tiny village like Sawyer, Michigan. Sawyer, Michigan is just big enough to contain my subject here — Fitzgerald’s Restaurant. Why is Fitzgerald’s Restaurant notable enough for a creativity and innovation blog? Many count themselves out of the innovation game because they feel they lack sophistication, or a cutting edge technology. Innovation is a certain kind of sophistication, but it doesn’t require that you live in a top 20 market, or write the latest iPhone app. The restaurant game is notoriously challenging. What’s the difference between one that works and one that doesn’t? At the

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I participated earlier this week in the Oklahoma Creativity Forum 2011. It was an impressively well staged event, as professional a creativity/innovation conference as I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Beyond event management, I have to say the conference had a great feeling, a gusher of creative spark and soul. Let me tell you why I liked it so much: 1. For what it symbolizes, commitment to creativity — The state of Oklahoma is actually doing something about it’s own future. Not many states, countries, or cities move so boldly into action on the resource that is the well-spring of all innovation. The conference — and the state — clearly understand that you don’t get innovation without it’s pre-requsite, creativity.

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I have to admit that I’m a bit jealous of Jeff DeGraff. He’s written an excellent book — so good I have author envy. DeGraff is an impressive innovation expert, consulting and coaching high level executives, but his book is really not targeted to that elite group. As the title suggests, it’s for You. Innovation You: Four Steps to Becoming New and Improved is quite simply a very useful book. Personally useful. Most books with the word Innovation in the title are not terribly exciting, particularly for someone who is not say, a VP or CEO of a major company. Sadly, for average people, or small business owners, most innovation books are quite overwrought with innovation from a large corporation

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Shifting perspective on a challenge, the framing of it, can lead to some great insights and ideas. When truly desperate to get out of the box, one creative tool is to turn the challenge upside down, inside out, or “flip it.” A former business partner of mine saved our medical software start-up from disaster using this technique. He said “if we can’t sell software to doctors, why don’t we buy the doctors?” Of course we all thought he’d had some thing to smoke on the way into the office, and we all slammed the idea the instant it came out of his mouth. On further reflection, it was brilliant, and we changed course rather dramatically. His idea, his flip of

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Ideas can make you sick. Okay, not sick exactly, but a word many of us would associate with new and different — high quality ideas — is “vomit.” It’s not pretty this new idea business. A Cornell University study was published recently that I feel compelled to share. The study reveals our deep and nearly unconscious reaction to new ideas. The link here is not to the actual study but a summary article written by Mary Catt for Chronicle Online, a Cornell blog (thank you Mary). In People are biased against creative ideas, Catt reveals the studies key results. Essentially the study says: * creative ideas make us feel very uncomfortable (think vomit) * people rule out creative ideas and

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I’ve been in and out of a lot of board rooms in the last few months. I’m in selling mode, but also, in listening mode. Nearly every conversation I’ve had has me more firmly believing that one of the problems with large organization innovation is it simply moves too slow. Now, I realize that’s a fairly obvious thought. Still, why is it that organizations are accepting of the fact that their “cycle” of innovation turns over once or twice a year? I don’t see a lot of urgency around changing this, I see a lot of acceptance. This is an opportunity to improve many are overlooking. Here’s why I think so. I’m focused, as is Kiln (I’m a partner in

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It’s easy to say and hard to do — Deferring Judgement. Alex Osborn the original guru of creativity suggested that during brainstorming, participants should “defer judgement.” Osborn wrote Applied Imagination many years ago, which defined brainstorming. He actually coined the term. It’s a rule from the master —  you don’t critique ideas during brainstorming — it’s challenging. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about Deferring Judgement as a daily habit, as a continuous way of being. I heard Sid Parnes talk at CPSI, and this was his lifestyle “add” to the original Osborn guidance. As a fundamental way of being, it’s a big shift. But wow, what benefits for your creativity! Let’s face it, we are

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