Blog

When was the last time you were able to change either your own or someone else’s behaviour? And what exactly was it that you did that led to that successful change? A few months ago, in an attempt to find my own answers to these questions, I decided that I would try to make justRead more

I caught up with Janine Allis (founder of Boost Juice and a shark on Shark Tank) this week for a chat on the How I Work podcast and it was fascinating hearing about how one of Australia’s leading innovators and entrepreneurs works. Janine has a bunch of rules that she tries to apply when structuring her week.Read more

I was lucky enough to spend the first week of November on Inventium’s Silicon Valley Tour, visiting some of the world’s most innovative organisations in and around San Francisco. There was a huge range of amazing takeaways from the week, but one that really stuck with me was the consistency with which Silicon Valley’s top performing companiesRead more

Have you ever noticed how some organisational leaders thrive in the face of change and disruption, while others somehow manage to lead their company into an abyss of irrelevance? (Did someone say ‘Kodak’?). There’s a whole lot of factors that can contribute to a company’s success or failure, but we know two things for sure;Read more

If you have ever sat in on a meeting about innovation, chances are you probably heard a lot of jargon and buzzwords being thrown around. If you want to talk buzzwords with the best of them, use this article as a cheat sheet to help you out. Alternatively, if you find the buzzwords boring, takeRead more

I’ve just realised that everything I thought I ever knew about Market Research, when it comes to testing innovation, was either flawed or is fast becoming redundant. If, like me, you have employed traditional market research approaches (i.e. concept tests, market simulation tests, focus groups, etc) to evaluate and validate your innovations, then allow meRead more

Disruptive ideas are like an 80’s aerobic class. You know it’s good for you, but it would be so much easier to avoid all that spandex and stay on the couch. When choosing which ideas to progress, organisations often take the easy way out. This can be because incremental innovations are often: Aligned to current KPI’sRead more

Stinky, and hard to find. Innovation Managers don’t always smell like gourmet mushrooms, but they are rare. Great Innovation Managers are rare, because there are specific capabilities and preferences required to help drive an organisation’s innovation efforts forward. In my time at Inventium, I have met dozens of Innovation Managers across four continents, and canRead more

I was raised to have a healthy sense of curiosity. For example, my dad – being an engineer – decided that playtime was the perfect opportunity to show me how to disassemble our family computer and put it all back together again, just to see how it worked! The residual effect this has had onRead more

I’m pretty sure that my kids will roll their eyes and sigh deeply when I begin yet another story with the infamous words “when I was young…” Okay, so I’m not quite there yet with my story telling, but my dad is, and I have no doubt I will follow in his footsteps as heRead more