Links to interesting stuff on innovation and improvement
From VPSCINWIKI
Social Media guidelines
There are a number of interesting social media guidelines on this site. Considering the various discussions we’ve had in the I&I CoP meeting, there maybe something relevant. http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php Peter Chomley
Ten Red Flags for Innovation
There's no surefire way to guarantee success in innovation. Stefan Lindegaard offers 10 helpful suggestions of common pitfalls to avoid http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/mar2010/id20100330_141589.htm
Foresight & crowd sourcing - an opportunity to contribute
Cognitive Edge would be really grateful if you would be prepared to share your thoughts, fears and hopes about the current state of the world post the financial crisis.
- What are the implications for public service?
- How will our institutions adapt?
- What will be important for the public service in the future?
- What is going to happen to public service anyway?
We want your micro-narratives, you mini-scenarios as part of a crowd sourcing project.
Anyone who participates can have access to the data, results will be published on their website.
Basically you click here and contribute your ideas, then you signify their meaning. The signifier (or index) set was produced in conjunction with experts in strategic foresight. We want to demonstrate the power of networks, the ability of the voice of the person on the metaphorical Clapham Omnibus, Jo Public (or whatever yiyr cultural phrase is) to stand up there with the views of experts. One is not better than the other, we need both!
Also we want them fast - as many as you can over the next couple of days. The first report will come out on Sunday 14 March, then more over next week. Please participate please pass this on in your blog, Twitter, Facebook, emails lists or good old word of mouth.
Free ebook download for a limited time
'How To Remember Names, Present Without Notes And Get More Done - 29 Time-Saving, Memory-Boosting Short Articles' is an ebook is packed full of juicy, easy-to-read articles and practical tips you can quickly apply to become even more successful. Here is the web page download link:
http://www.gloo.com.au/5th-Birthday-Special-Ebook-Dload.html
Gloo is giving the ebook away for a limited period for free - usually $27 - as part of Gloo's 5th Birthday Celebrations.
Communications and behaviour change
Some good information for comms practitioners and in general when thinking about how to realise attitudinal and behaviour changes necessary for innovation.
Image:Commongood-behaviourchange.pdf
--Simon Blankenstein 05:56, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
Selling innovation to your boss
http://innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com/2010/03/selling-innovation-to-your-boss.html
Make your computer more creative
Inventium have created a screensaver that is full of creativity-evoking images. It consists of over 150 diverse images that are designed to stimulate creativity. They have also thrown in a few creativity tips too.
Innovation in the Public Sector: Enabling Better Performance
Ian McPhee, Auditor-General for Australia talks about Innovation in the public sector http://vic.psnews.com.au/BooksFeaturesVICpsn1571.html
Harvard Business Review
December 2009's edition of the Harvard Business Review is called "Spotlight on Innovation" - grab a copy; there are several articles worth a read
VICTORIANS TO WIN $100,000 TO APP THE STATE
Victoria’s IT innovators will be invited to take part in a $100,000 online competition to create new applications to be formally launched later this month, as mentioned in the statement of government intentions released early Febraury. VICTORIANS TO WIN $100,000 TO APP THE STATE
Resources & downloads from insights to excellence
Insights to excellence (i2e) has a really useful page of resources & downloads
Creativity: How to Cultivate an "Insight Outlook"
According to Chuck Frey, the founder and editor of InnovationTools.com, a "powerful way to live a creative life is to cultivate an "insight outlook" - the art of looking more deeply at everything we experience. This video explains how to do it."
YouTube video - Creativity: How to Cultivate an "Insight Outlook"
How Creativity Can Support Tactical Work
This article claims that creativity "does not have to be about brand new product ideas, 10 year plans, hockey stick growth or “out of the box thinking”. A well designed, facilitated workshop can allow creative thinking to be applied to extremely tactical, operational details." I believe we suffer a bit like this - our organisations push "innovation" and "creativity" away as if "we'll do that if we have time" ... I am more and more convinced about not using the "innovation" word and resort to "problem solving" and we may be able to engage with people because we like to solve problems.
--Deb Barron 21:42, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Making Everyone Whole
Making Everyone Whole is an e-letter from Jim Womack, founder and chairman of the Lean Enterprise Institute, who has kindly given permission for me to publish it on our site ... its quite thought-provoking, given the high resistance and highly risk averse organisations we are working within.
--Deb Barron 00:19, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
New Employee Training on Continuous Process Improvement—Strategies and Methods to Touch Every New Employee
The dilemma that any organisation faces after the implementation of an organisation-wide program ... how to get new employees to "get it" ... here's an article which touches on that topic
--Deb Barron 20:37, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
The sound of one hand creating: Making the most of constraints
Another good article from Innovation Tools ... "What comes to mind when you think of a "creative" person? The angst-ridden artist? A maverick who rejects convention? The "guru" who seems to tap into a mystical vein of new ideas? You probably conjured up an amalgam of stereotypes that have to do with defying conformity and rejecting rules.
Railing against rules certainly has a home in creativity, but to leave it at that is to abandon creativity to the camp of anarchy. Less appreciated, I think, is the role — and the power — of limitations in producing creative outcomes."
Read more in the article ... The sound of one hand creating: Making the most of constraints
--Deb Barron 23:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
21 great ways to innovate
Innovation Tools brings us another handy list of 21 great ways to innovate. They say "How hard is it to innovate? Not once but over and over? How can you repeatedly implement great new products, processes or services? Continuous innovation is not easy and if you keep using the same method you will experience diminishing results. Try innovating how you innovate by employing some of these ideas."
--Deb Barron 21:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Think Quick!
Think Quick! is a new blog taking shape by one of our own, Frank Connolly
Visualisation methods
A periodic table for visualisation tools ... A really cool on-line tool which helps you decide which visual display tool is best to use to communicate a particular topic ... [1] ... the parent site also has some other good resources ... another one ... [2] ... shows you the sorts of things to think about when you're designing a display of some sort - they call it the stairs to visualisation excellence - again an on-line tool - I can't seem to find how to download it as a doc or pdf.
Our Secret Sauce Revealed
The Idea Champions say they are a company dedicated to awakening and nurturing the spirit of innovation. An article on their blog provide a 'bakers dozen' of princples that are the foundation to their approach to yielding innovation within organisations ... they call it their Secret Sauce ... I reckon it's worth a read. --Deb Barron 22:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
A leaner public sector
This article from McKinsey Quarterly A leaner public sector emphasises the need to balance the hard and soft elements as being the key to a sustainable operational transformation using the Lean and Six Sigma methodologies.
From crowdsourcing, to open source software ... oh, and free books to download
This blog from Deloitte's called the The Open-Minded Professor interviews Eric von Hippel from MIT’s Sloan School of Management - has some interesting comments about organisations that have traditionally thrived using closed innovation and the difficulties in adapting to new attitudes in the innovation and technology environments - oh, and there are a couple of books available to download for free - that's gotta be worth a look!!
Complexity in government
A blog from David Snowden on complexity in government
Innovation Matters presenation
This presentation from the Palladium Group (founder is David Norton who co-developed the Balanced Scorecard) was from their breakfast series and has some interesting ways of looking at embedding innovation in organisations. They have some fascinating stories to tell from organisations they've worked with and I was looking at inviting them to join our community for a chat in the near future about making innovation real in our environment - if you're interested, pop a comment here on the wiki, or let me know, thanks (Deb Barron)
21 Rules of Thumb For Innovation Team Building
21 Rules of Thumb For Innovation Team Building comes from a blog on creativity and innovation - regular teamy sort of stuff - I liked a couple though - # 21 pull in the mavericks and outliers - those people who we tend to shy away from - they give a bit of spice and spunk to our thinking ... we've tried that on a coule of projects in DTF - a challenge to work with, but gets unexpected results - isn't that what innovation is all about?
Turning problems into innovation challenges & When not to innovate
These are two articles from a newsletter called Report 103, which is a newsletter on applied creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business – delivered to your e-mail box on the first and third Tuesday of every month.
Idea Champions
This blog about The Top 10 Reasons Why Your CEO Sabotages Innovation comes from a site called Idea Champions - they say that "Idea Champions is a consulting and training company dedicated to awakening and nurturing the spirit of innovation. We help individuals, teams and entire organizations tap into their innate ability to create, develop and implement ideas that make a difference." They have some interesting articles and talk about some different tools and techniques.
How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation
How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation is an interesting article that is easy to read, with plenty of "take-aways" such as banning PowerPoint and tackling wicked problems!
Innovation blogs/ websites
- 5 Reasons your problems aren't being solved and 5 ways to solve-them from Australian Anthill ... a website that has heaps of innovation tips and hints - and great discussion
- Innovation blogger named Stephen Shaprio
Web links for high performance, excellence and lean
- High Performance Consortium - an Aus site
- Insights to Excellence - an Aus site
- Association for Manufacturing Excellence - an Aus site
- Lean Enterprise Australia - an Aus site
- Resources for Lean Enterprise Excellence
Making sense of weak signals
We've talked a bit about Dave Snowden's work around making sense of anecdotal information ... here is another interesting article which compliments Dave's work nicely ... How to make sense of weak signals [3]. Also an interesting website with lots about innovation in organisations.
Pecha Kucha
This article was printed in The Age 28 April 2009 - it is even headed "Speed Networking", a title that I thought we might have developed ourselves... Worth a read.
Innovation discussion page
Found this new McKinsey website which has some interesting discussion topics on innovation: [4]
Innovation in government
The first two are from a blog ... egovau/blogspot.com "Is there a groundswell of demand for collaboration tools in your agency?" [5] and one about copyright as a blocker to information sharing [6]
And this one about the need for innovation in education - the second video further down the page is recommended about the vision of students today. [7].
Since we're adding links to relevant or other allied themes, here's my blog of citizen engagement and Web 2.0. By the time we actually embrace the 'new' media of interativity and co-authorship in government the world will have moved on...
http://citizenengagement.wordpress.com/
Artful inquiry
Members of the Innovation Project team at DSE recently met the Principal of Maverick Minds, a company that can "design and deliver programmes and workshops that incorporate creative arts-based processes to facilitate artful inquiry around creativity, communication, collaboration, leadership, conflict and change to develop a sense of wellbeing for individuals and groups of people". Visit their website for more details - http://maverickminds.biz/. We may be able to engage their services in the future if we wish to collectively explore innovation / creativity in our departments using a novel arts-based approach.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR INTRAPRENEURS
Pinchot (1985) in his seminal work on "Intrapreneuring" provides a list of rules for the intrapreneur striving in a large company to get his or her idea accepted. They are:
- Do any job needed to make your project work regardless of your job description;
- Share credit wisely;
- Remember, it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission;
- Come to work each day willing to be fired;
- Ask for advice before asking for resources;
- Follow your intuition about people; build a team of the best;
- Build a quiet coalition for your idea; early publicity triggers the corporate immune system;
- Never bet on a race unless you are running in it;
- Be true to your goals, but realistic about ways to achieve them; and
- Honor your sponsors.
(Pinchot, 1985)
Kawasaki (2006) presented a more realistic set of commandments for the modern day "intrapreneur". This series of practices might well allow us to intrapreneur. These rules are:
- Kill the cash cows (Allow for the fostering of new products and services funded by the cash cows of yesterday);
- Reboot your brain.... Generally, you should do everything the opposite way from the tried and true existing ways of large companies (Building consensus and focus groups do not allow for originality in innovation. Customers can only tell you what they like or dislike about existing products. They cannot tell you what they think of your new ideas.);
- Find a separate building (Remove the intrapreneur from the daily activities of the company. This allows freedom to try various trials without the constraints of the organization. There is a requirement for freedom of thought, space and experimentation.);
- Hire infected people.... It's being infected with a love for what the team is doing.... It's not work experience or educational background (Intuitive, creative people can come up with amazing ideas which can be commercializable, but may not fit well into the traditional bureaucracy of a large organization with its rules and procedures);
- Put the company first.... as long as you are an employee, you have to do what's right for the company;
- Stay under the radar ... you need to stay invisible as long as practicable ... Make your bosses think it was their idea;
- Collect and share data (Be prepared for questions and be able to support your position for the nay sayers.); and,
- Dismantle when done.... product teams will move into the mainstream of the company.
(The art of ..., 2007)
