Category Archives: Innovation
Un-clarity, un-risk and un-management: words from Ije Nwokorie, MD at Wolff Olins, on leading a creative business
Facilitation is a word that Ije Nwokorie, Managing Director at Wolff Olins (international brand consultancy), uses with pride. He sees it as one of today’s most important management skills. So he made it his mission to make it something that Wolff Olins would become famous for, and he’s well on the way to achieving this. [...]
Serendipity: the full picture
Serendipity is a word we see around a lot these days, not least because the web now tends to play a big part in it. It’s used to describe a “happy accident” – the link that you happen to click on that leads you to that article; the random person that pops up on Twitter [...]
How working with creative partners helps companies to gain a competitive advantage
“I am encouraged by the potential that artists and designers have to make real changes in the world. Artists and designers have a powerful role in this expansive universe – to take all of the complexity and make sense of it on a human scale” John Maeda in The Design of Business Between 2009 and [...]
Working with creative chaos
In our last post “The messiness of creativity“, we looked at how organisations need to get comfortable with chaos in order to innovate, particularly when bringing diverse people together. This is difficult when they also need to become more productive and efficient as they grow.
The messiness of creativity
A few weeks back, Jonah Lehrer did a talk at the RSA to present his new book “Imagine: How Creativity Works”. In the book, Lehrer aims to shed some light on creativity – often thought of as magical – to debunk the myth that it is the preserve of the chosen few. By taking a [...]
Something for the weekend: take part a creative jam
Do you want an outlet to exercise your thinking and play with creative ideas? A hackathon-inspired event could be the answer. Hackathons (also called ‘hack days’) are 24-48 hour events where developers come together to produce a mobile or web app in response to a brief or problem. Although hack days tend to be technology-oriented, [...]
Starting a startup culture
A couple of weeks back, we attended the Leancamp unconference, an event with various sessions that covered Lean Startup, a term developed by Eric Ries in his book of the same title. The premise of Lean Startup is that entrepreneurs get their products to market quickly and cheaply, test it with their customers, get feedback and [...]
Upside down thinking: turning your development process around
If you’re struggling to develop interesting new products and services, stop thinking about the ideas that you’re producing and think more about the process that you’re using. To produce different outcomes, you may need to work in a completely different way (as Albert Einstein said, “insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting [...]
Fresh insight: breaking down barriers to open innovation
The benefits of working with those outside of your organisation to help you to innovate are widely promoted, but if you have never engaged in open innovation it can be quite a daunting prospect. The Open Innovation – challenges and solutions conference held at the British Library recently aimed to look at the practical aspects [...]
Thinking Forward
Although we’re often busy working ‘in’ our business, it’s just as important to think about how current trends and developments can help us stay more competitive. The world is changing so quickly in terms of technology, business models and consumer behaviour that we need to think creatively about how our own businesses might respond to [...]