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Incremental is about fighting for market share with competitors, transformational is about expanding the market - Idea to Value
I recently developed a new perspective on the difference between incremental and transformational innovation, and it has reshaped the way I think about growth and progress in business. When you are working on incremental innovation, the focus is on improving something your company already makes. This is typically a product or service that has
Innovation cannot succeed without dedicated time for team members - Idea to Value
As the leader of a cross-functional innovation team within a large pharmaceutical company accelerator, I’ve noticed a recurring challenge: team members struggle to balance their innovation tasks with the demands of their regular roles. Our team brings together individuals from multiple departments, each contributing a portion of their time—typically 20% to 50%—to the innovation project. While
We are living in a post-Truth era - Idea to Value
I do not often talk about politics, but I am worried about the way the world is developing. Today, Donald Trump was announced as the winner of the 2024 USA Presidential election, by a wider-than-anticipated margin. During his previous term in office, as well as during his election campaign now, he built on a campaign of lies.
Organisational Stresswood: How a little adversity is required to become resilient - Idea to Value
A while back, I came across a great article by Aidan McCullen, the host of the excellent Innovation Show podcast, about Stresswood. In an Arizona research facility called Biosphere 2, opened in 1991, researchers tried to create a completely sealed-off ecosystem to see if a man-made biosphere could produce enough fresh water, oxygen and ecosystem […]
Who is more creative: Men or Women? - Idea to Value
When it comes to how society views creativity, there is unfortunately a clear stereotype of who is most creative. For hundreds of years, men in general have been listed as more creative than women. This creative stereotype is often based on the fact that throughout history, there have been more examples of famous creative men […]
Are you selling "Vitamins" or "Painkillers"? - Idea to Value
Many startups and innovators struggle to sell their products once they launch. Often, this is because while they love the idea for the product they have come up with, it is not actually solving a problem which the user perceives in their own lives. But how is it possible that intelligent, hardworking teams can make […]
Maker's schedules, Manager's schedules and why meetings can destroy productivity - Idea to Value
How you prioritise your work is one of the major ways you determine what you get done. Different people require different times and schedules to do their best work. According to influential tech founder and investor Paul Graham in his 2009 essay, there are two major types of schedules that different people require to work […]
One-way door decisions or Two-way door decisions - Idea to Value
How can you determine if part of your business should be innovated on or not? Many companies and leaders become afraid to make a decision because they are afraid it might not work out. Ironically, not making a decision if often the worst thing you can do, as it is guaranteed not to change or […]
Nothing creative is guaranteed to be a success - Idea to Value
Every time you produce something creative, there is a high chance that it might fail. It doesn’t matter if it is an innovative new product idea, a new song, or a new recipe. Whatever you produce, and no matter how successful you have previously been, it does not mean that customers will want what you […]
How would YOU improve chess? - Idea to Value
Imagine this. You work for a board game manufacturer, and you have been asked to improve the sales of your chess games. They have been slowly falling over the past few years and your boss has asked you to come up with innovative solutions to make it more appealing and increase sales. How would you […]
When your imagination is beyond your skill level - Idea to Value
Recently my toddler has begun playing with Duplo, which is Lego for really young children. And while usually he loves it, it also often causes him to become incredibly frustrated when things do not work as he wants. This is when he might begin shouting and throwing the pieces away. A perfect example is when […]
When does it make sense to play a character of yourself? - Idea to Value
When your audience thinks of you and what your work represents, who do they think of? It does not matter if your audience is your team at work, the people who buy your art, or the people who follow your presence online. In almost every case, these people will not be thinking of you exactly […]
Focus on doing fewer things in order to make progress faster - Idea to Value
Often, when trying to make progress towards an innovative challenge there are thousands of things you could be doing. Examined individually, each of these actions look like they could bring you closer to your end goal. Or worse, they may each be different goals which all seem equally appealing and worth putting effort into. However, […]
Focus on what you can control - Idea to Value
If you cannot be the best in the world at something, is it even worth trying? Yes. Often, people can be afraid to begin a new creative endeavor, especially when they compare themselves to people who are the best in the world. After all, how can you compete with someone who is so much better […]
Is Design Thinking dead? - Idea to Value
A few weeks ago, I saw an article in Fast Company about the layoffs at IDEO, one of the world’s most respected Design Thinking firms. In fact, IDEO was one of the pioneers of Design Thinking back in the late 1970s, but the process of using Design Thinking as part of innovation work really exploded […]
This new recycled packing material could replace bubble wrap - Idea to Value
Sometimes, an innovation comes around that is so simple, it makes you think “why didn’t I think of that?” I just came across another such example from renowned innovation powerhouse 3M. They have found a way to use a principle of origami to create sheets of cardboard which fold themselves into packing material when stretched. […]
Procrastination can (sometimes) make you more creative - Idea to Value
Are you the sort of person who procrastinates? Who always seems to put off starting work on something and is easily distracted? While this procrastination may be a significant problem for being productive, and the resulting time pressure can be bad for creativity, there may be some instances when it can be beneficial. According to […]
You do not need to be completely original in order to be creative - Idea to Value
Does something need to be completely original in order to be creative? How can you prove if something is original or not? After all, if something which I produce is not original, is it not just a waste of time putting in time and effort creating it? This is a challenge which can petrify many […]
Made to last - Idea to Value
Over the weekend, we stayed with my parents. For my toddler, they brought out some of the toys they had kept from when I was still a baby. One of the hits was a wooden toy train set which must now be over 40 years old. And my child loved it (although there were significantly […]
We could all benefit from more failures - Idea to Value
People are afraid of failure. In fact, people tend to avoid failing publicly wherever possible, especially in the workplace. This can result in people and projects trying to hide failure, or avoid trying things which challenge them at all so that they are less likely to fail. There are deep-rooted evolutionary reasons why we feel […]
Self-Serving bias: Why you think nothing is your fault - Idea to Value
How often are you blamed for things which are not your fault? Or get credit for the good things which only happened thanks to you? While in some cases people may really get negative feedback which was completely not their fault, often there is more nuance involved, where the person may not accept their responsibility. […]
Planning fallacy: Why we are so bad at predicting how long something will take - Idea to Value
The Sydney Opera house is one of the most iconic buildings in the world. I had the pleasure of living there for a while, and it always took my breath away. But did you know that it is one of the best examples of a project going over time and budget? Construction was originally planned […]
We are all sheep - Idea to Value
And this explains why innovating can be so hard for many of our colleagues. Sheep stick together in a herd. I saw this herd this morning, and notice how close each sheep stays to each other. They feel safer this way. If there is ever any danger or predator around, being in a large group […]
Pygmalion effect: The self-fulfilling prophecy - Idea to Value
The expectations we put on people can have a direct impact on their performance. Often, and authority figure placing higher expectations on someone, like a teacher having high expectations for a student, or a manager having high expectations for an employee, can result in both the authority figure and the person in question changing their […]
What impact does time pressure have on creativity? - Idea to Value
Diamonds are formed under pressure There are numerous examples of companies who allowed staff to take time to work on their own innovations and creative ideas. Companies such as AT&T’s Bell Labs (leading to the transistor and the laser), 3M allowing people to have 15% of their time to work on projects of personal interest […]
Why art should not just be "content" - Idea to Value
Is art today being designed less about being creative, and more about trying to go viral? This is the hypothesis of an Australian artist and illustrator, Struthless, who outlined his view in this youtube video: I think he makes some interesting points. Many artists have seen huge success and have gained access to an audience […]
It takes 23 minutes to regain focus after a distraction: Task Switching - Idea to Value
Do you ever get to the end of a working day only to become frustrated that you were unable to complete any of your work? Chances are, you may have become distracted or interrupted at some point. Either from a colleague stopping or sending you a quick message … … or hearing someone talk about […]
Optimism Bias - Idea to Value
Just how likely are you to succeed? And how unlikely is it that something bad happens to you, just because it happened to someone else? Surprisingly, most people appear to think that in the future, it is more likely that good things will happen to them, and less likely that bad things would happen to […]
Normalcy Bias: Why companies don't react in a disaster - Idea to Value
How is it possible that so many companies fail to react while they are being disrupted? It may come down to a cognitive bias called the Normalcy bias. The normalcy bias is the tendency of people to ignore the probability of a large negative event or a disaster happening to them, just because it has […]
Naïve realism: Why you think other people's views are wrong - Idea to Value
Can you know the truth? What if someone else’s truth is different from yours? Who is right or wrong? It might seem like a simple question, but humans are inherently bad at putting themselves in the perspective of other people. One of the cognitive biases which drives this is something called naïve realism. According to […]
Don't experiment to prove. Do it to improve - Idea to Value
Don’t fall victim to confirmation bias. If you set up your innovation experiments to just prove or confirm what you hope to find, you will miss out on the sort of valuable information and insights you can use to actually make your solution better. Instead, focus on continuously improving. Improve. Don’t prove. Idea to Value […]
Information Bias: Paralysis by Analysis - Idea to Value
Sometimes, having more information will not make your decisions any better. Yet many people panic before making any decision, and want to keep gathering more data and information before they feel “ready” to make the correct choices. This is often referred to as analysis paralysis. And one of the cognitive biases which may underpin it […]
Hyperbolic Discounting: Why we choose things for now even if a better long-term option exists - Idea to Value
Which would you prefer? Getting one dollar today, or three dollars tomorrow? According to research, individuals and companies often choose options that give them a small gain in the short term, when if they were to wait a bit longer they would receive more. This is due to a cognitive bias known as hyperbolic discounting. […]
Endowment Effect: Why people value what they currently have - Idea to Value
Have you ever wanted to buy something, but the person selling wanted more than you thought it was worth? That person might have been suffering from the Endowment Effect. The Endowment Effect is a cognitive bias where people who own a good to value it more than people who do not. It was popularised by […]
Can creativity training really improve your creativity? - Idea to Value
Some people still debate whether creativity is something which only certain people are born with, or whether it can be developed in everyone. Well, we have already previously seen that creativity is determined more by our nurture (upbringing) than by our nature (genes we are born with). However, we have also seen that children appear […]
Egocentric Bias: Why your thoughts matter more to you than anyone else - Idea to Value
Have you ever had a situation where you felt like you were not getting the credit you deserve for your contributions? Or have you ever wondered how other people seem to not understand how good an idea that you had was? Then you might be suffering from a cognitive bias known as the Egocentric Bias. […]
Declinism: Why we think the past was better than the future - Idea to Value
I have previously shared research about the cognitive bias of the rosy retrospective. In it, we found evidence that people seem to remember things as more positive than they were in reality at the time they happened. Now, there is another related but different bias which I quickly want to highlight: Declinism. Declinism is not […]
Bias Blind Spot: Why you are more biased than you think - Idea to Value
You hear me talk about cognitive biases a lot. They affect everything from what sort of information be believe, what we like, who we hang out with and what we look for. However, as intelligent readers of this blog, surely you are more aware of your biases and less biased than other people… Right? Well, […]
Nick Skillicorn selected as the #1 thought leader on Creativity - Idea to Value
I just wanted to share some quick news. I was honoured to find out that I was recently selected by Thinkers 360 as their #1 Thought Leader and Influencer on the topic of Creativity. See the announcement from Linkedin embedded below: Idea to Value Podcast: Listen and Subscribe nowListen and Subscribe to the Idea to […]
Bandwagon effect: Why people want to follow the crowd - Idea to Value
Does it make sense to just follow the crowd? Well, sometimes it could end up leading you to make bad decisions, just because everyone else thinks it is a good idea. The bandwagon effect is a cognitive bias where people adopt certain behaviors, styles, or attitudes simply because others are doing so. It is due […]