I live here in Silicon Valley, and no doubt any of you who are into technology and the news have heard the news of massive layoffs in the tech sector. You’ve got 11000 layoffs at Facebook or meta; I don’t even know what percentage of the company that is. You have thousands of layouts of…
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Having been in the innovation business all of my career and for the last 15 years as a professional innovator, I’ve seen my share of resistance to innovation. Most of the time, individuals within internal innovation groups within organizations are typically pretty innovative, they spend time pushing forward-thinking products and services forward within the organization. In some cases, however, especially in staid, older organizations without a strong innovation culture, even folks in the innovation group themselves can put up a fight when it comes to breakthrough ideas. Even in some organizations which are tied down by market forces or regulatory burden, there’s still a need to experiment.
If you spend any time on Quora, the question and answer site which I pioneered a version of from 2000-2005 (as I’ve always said – being a futurist is like being a meteorologist, you are usually right, but at the wrong time) you’ll find an inordinate fascination with Elon Musk.
In some cases, companies comes to us because some of the leaders feel that they have a perception that the company is no longer a leader in their space (most of the time, true from the perception of those who hire us, and untrue to the many within the organization who can’t see their oncoming demise at the hands of more nimble competitors), and they need us to help them to unearth the innovation in their organizations.
It’s come to my attention that there is something wrong with time.
We are obsessed with it – with being more productive – with being more mindful – with keeping time, killing time, and wasting time.
Let’s face it – most people just don’t like change. We like things being the way that they are – even the word “upset” has a negative connection – to turn over the “set” to break with the established order. The only problem is – there are so many things we have the ability to just SOLVE, only we would be willing to “upset” things.
Many companies feel that innovation programs, innovation labs, and other innovation initiatives are great in good times, but are superfluous in tough times. The number of times I’ve heard that firms are axing or “re-purposing” their innovation personnel to work on “core product” or “core services” when times are tough, are legion.
A few weeks ago, SNAP – the parent company of Snapchat, went IPO. It’s the first tech IPO in a long time and it nearly doubled in price, then settled back down to slightly over its offering price, netting the founders about $5B each (as of this writing)
Chris joins Alistair Schneider of Startups Innovation for a wide-ranging discussion on a number of topics:
This video is brought to you by Startupsinnovation. A cool site that helps you learn about the disruption, innovation, entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship (Basically how to survive in this ever changing world 🙂
Recently, I read an article in the latest Wired magazine about tidying up – there is a Japanese author named Marie Kondo who wrote the bestselling “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” which, I hear, is still on bestselling books lists everywhere, it also seems to be in every airport bookstore I’ve been in lately. This and her other books discuss how your life will change if you would only just tidy up. I’m assuming that with this, and more and more shows like Hoarders, we are seeing a backlash against clutter. She is really against clutter, in fact, discusses in which order you should get rid of stuff (books first, then clothes, then papers, then sentimental objects) and you should only hold onto whatever “brings you joy”. Her method is to take everything in the house of that one type, say books, then pile them up in one place, then physically pick up each book and hold it in your hand. If it brings you joy in some way, when you see the book or hold the book, you should keep it, if not, get rid of it.