Posted in Business, Change, Risk, Unlearning Lesson
Unlearning Lesson #16 “Don’t wanna learn from nobody what I gotta unlearn.” –Bob Dylan Question #16: Which of the following characteristics has a higher correlation to the success of a Hollywood movie: the involvement of a famous movie star or the location(s) where the movie is shot? The answer, to the surprise and chagrin of many…
Posted in Business, Change, Creativity, Design, Innovation
As I have said before, unlearning is the key to creativity. It is also a theme that David Kelley, the founder of design firm IDEO, emphasizes at the Institute of Design — AKA the d.school — at Stanford University. The following paragraph was taken from Innovation 101: … a lot of time at the d.school…
Posted in Business, Creativity, Culture, Curiosity, Innovation
This past summer IBM released a survey of 1500 CEO’s across the globe and they said that creativity was the most important leadership quality for guaranteeing future success. How does one become creative, though? Part of the answer begins with the ability to unlearn. It’s now generally understood that today’s more successful companies have figured out…
1. Master unlearning. One of the most difficult tasks for corporate innovators is to learn how to unlearn the legacy business models they have perfected. Often, maybe even always, companies take the standards they have for their current business and use that to measure the new model. Start unlearning by explicitly recognizing that these metrics…
Posted in Behavior, Business, Change, Creativity, Culture, Curiosity, Failure, Innovation
If you want to facilitate creativity and encourage innovation you are going to have to embrace the idea that many ideas and products will end in failure. Failure, as I have said before, is thus something that must be encouraged. But how does one “encourage” failure? One idea, which was suggested in this article, is…
Posted in Business, Human Resources, See What Isn't There, Think Like a Child
Let me begin by saying I don’t know anything about Chelsea Clinton’s qualifications to be appointed to the board of IAC/Interactive Corp. For all I know, it may be nothing more than blatant cronyism. Nevertheless, it is an interesting development. Here’s why. Since 2007, there have been only 50 people born since 1980 (or under…
Posted in Business, Business Models, General, Innovation, Management, Perspective, See What Isn't There, Visual unlearning
As humans we like to believe we're good at seeing the whole picture. But, as I suggested in this piece, most of us are not. This is particularly true in business. Most managers focus relentlessly on serving the customer, making incremental improvements to core product or services, or finding yet another margin-saving efficiency. There is…
Posted in Ask a New Question, Business, Business Models, Business School, General, Happiness, Human Resources, Innovation, Less is More, Management, Psychology, Questions, The Way We See the Problem
If you are a manager and want to position your company or organization to succeed in the future, I'd suggest changing the normal managerial question of "How do I get more out of my employees?" to "How do I get the best out of my employees?" Why? because passion, energy, creativity and innovation aren't easily…
Posted in Assumptions, Behavior, Business, Business Models, Publishing
“We’re going to have to make a lot of different assumptions,” says the head of one large publishing house in this article discussing the imminent demise of Border’s — one of the world’s large bookstores. The individual is, of course, correct but the real question is why he (or she) didn’t begin questioning his assumptions…
Posted in Business, Human Resources, Questions
"When I come back, I want you to explain to me something complicated that I don't already know." This is the question that Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, would routinely ask people he was interviewing in the early day's of Google's existence. It is an excellent question–and one I have recommended before–but, as this article…
