More Intentional Accidents = Real Innovation
What do these products have in common? Anesthesia, cellophane, cholesterol lowering drugs, cornflakes, dynamite, the ice cream soda, the slinky, Ivory soap, NutraSweet, nylon, penicillin, photography, rayon, PVC, smallpox vaccine, stainless steel, Teflon. They were all invented by accident. Of the more famous examples, microwave ovens were first invented by Percy Spencer, the 5th employee of Raytheon. Percy, a curious and skilled engineer, was responsible for scaling up the production of magnetrons for military use in radars. One day in...
read moreDon’t Save Par, Make Birdie
“You don’t know how strong you are, until being strong is the only option you have.” There’s an old adage that suffering yields ingenuity. The list is deep of artists, innovators, and inspiring leaders who found strength in the depths of adversity. It’s a beguiling truth since we tend toward safety and risk aversion in most aspects of our lives and business. So the question becomes, “If we aren’t currently in the depths of adversity, how do we find deep creativity and inspiration within...
read moreDrop Anchors Carefully
ShareA few years ago at a Sioux Falls, ID supermarket, the owners experimented with marketing labels next to cans of soup. Some days the label said “10% off regular price, limit 10 per customer,” and on other days it said “10% off regular price, no limit per customer.” Shoppers purchased twice as many on the days with limitations. The sense of scarcity set an anchoring effect, and the number 10 set a mental anchor of the amount of cans they should buy. So, those presented with the limited availability felt a mental urge...
read moreMake it Human, Connect with the Impact
There’s a small trick, a small shift in thinking, in mindset, that can translate to immense performance gains. It’s this: connect personally with the impact, the change or result of what you do. Let me give you an example. Adam Grant is a talented young professor at the Wharton School and he conducted a study a couple years ago in which he worked with a group of students at the University of Michigan. These students were earning a little extra cash by making cold calls to alumni to raise money which would go to scholarship fund. The...
read morePraise Grit, Not Talent
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” - Stephen King, Author Carol Dweck led a fascinating study back in 1998 in which she and her colleagues worked with four hundred 5th graders and gave them a series of tests, mostly puzzles, and then praised them in two different ways with these six little words. With half of the group they said, “You must be smart at this.” With the other half of the group they said, “You must have tried...
read moreThe Velocity of Learning
You don’t often think of learning as having a speed, a velocity, but it does. The classic notion of practice involves putting in the hours, doing the time, right? But there is a striking difference in the quality of practice that leads to accelerated learning. And it isn’t about watching the clock, it’s more about purposeful practice. Purposeful practice is found right on the edges of your ability, at the intersection of challenge and ability when you are successful perhaps 50-75% of the time. Not so much easy success...
read moreYour product is not what you sell, it’s the difference you make
Your product is the impact you make, the change you affect, the experience your product delivers. Your product is the result, the causatum, the punch. Sell cars? No, you don’t sell a car, you sell utility or transport or identity or experience or speed perhaps. In pharma? – you don’t sell drugs, you sell health and well-being. Clothing retail? – your product isn’t jackets and boots, it’s warmth and style and durability and expression of taste. It starts at the beginning – teachers and educators...
read moreConnectivity is Productivity
I’m grateful for an interview the other day with Iqal Quadir, Director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT. When Iqbal was quite young, growing up with his siblings in a village in Bangladesh, he was asked by his mother to walk about 10km to another village to fetch medicine. He spent all morning walking to the village to discover the doctor was out attending to patients in other villages and retrieving supplies. So Iqbal spent the afternoon walking home with his pockets empty. Years later after moving to...
read moreMoney is a by product of contributing value and meaning
Share As the legend goes, Peter Drucker was once asked by a business owner to review his financial statements and see if he could find better, more innovative, ways to make money from studying, and tweaking, his financials. To which Drucker replied, “You don’t make money, you make shoes. Work on making shoes. The money is just a by-product.” The lesson reminded me of an interview I had with Yvon Chounaird, founder of Patagonia, who said in the interview, “Over the past forty years I have yet to encounter a business...
read moreChange is Hard: Embrace the Unfamiliar
Sometimes you make a leap. Perhaps you buy that new car you’ve been researching, or that slick new piece of software or technology you’ve been eyeing. And suddenly you see it everywhere and wonder if you weren’t on the cutting edge after all. Once you’ve gone through the diligence and effort, it’s become familiar and suddenly you see it everywhere. The same is true about out networks and connections – we know what we know and whille we think we adapt the new, and are open to new experiences, we readily...
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