Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Search Results for: creativity

How to … Incorporate Exercise into Your Daily Life

By Leave a Comment

An “exercise snack” is a short little bite of physical activity you can do anywhere, anytime. You don’t even need to change your clothes. Try 10 push-ups, stair climbing, or a brisk walk or jog around the block.

Exercise snacking increases the amount of activity in your day, and breaks up sedentary time, which is increasingly being linked to chronic health risks.

It may not seem like much, but several scientific studies show that interleaving brief fitness routines a few times into your day not only encourages your body to feel better, but also contributes to meaningful gains in fitness and overall health. It improves your mood, stimulates creativity, and enhances focus, making it an all-around win for your health and productivity. Best of all, exercise snacking removes the pressure of committing to a long, once-a-day sweaty session.

Innovation’s Valley of Death: Case Study on the Bombardier CSeries

By Leave a Comment

The discovery and development of an invention are usually easier relative to the creativity and resources required to make it a commercial success. Indeed, many entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs struggle to commercialize their idea meaningfully—establish the idea’s marketability to prospective backers, engage potential customers, and price and promote their product or service for a favorable return on investment. Consider this case study of the Bombardier CSeries jets—fated for misfortune for many years only to morph into the successful Airbus A220 series:

As a country, we habitually underinvest in R&D. And, when domestic champions like Bombardier do emerge, they often prove unable to turn their great ideas into commercially successful, globally dominant businesses.

In a knowledge economy, a country’s future prosperity is increasingly tied to its ability to generate and capitalize on innovative new ideas.

“The paradox is that while there is innovation going on in Canada, we do not observe the same level of commercialization and ownership of those innovations [as in other countries]. In many cases, inventions developed in Canada are then commercialized by foreign companies that keep much of that benefit.”

Idea for Impact: Don’t let your idea fizzle because they can’t take your sizzle to market. Focus not just on overcoming internal barriers but also on how to commercialize your innovation. Hire outside capabilities if necessary.

Inspirational Quotations #967

By

The spirit is smothered, as it were, by ignorance, but so soon as ignorance is destroyed, spirit shine forth, like the sun when released from clouds.
—Adi Shankaracharya (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

Those who are going to be in business tomorrow are those who understand that the future, as always, belongs to the brave.
—William Bernbach (American Advertising Executive)

The future of architecture does not lie so much in continuing to fill up the landscape as in bringing back life and order to our cities and towns.
—Gottfried Bohm (German Architect)

Stealing to eat ain’t criminal-stealing to be rich is.
—Andrew Vachss (American Attorney, Author)

Life is given to use, we earn it by giving it.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali Poet, Polymath)

Among the instrumentalities of love and peace, surely there can be no sweeter, softer, more effective voice than that of gentle peace-breathing music.
—Elihu Burritt (American Pacifist)

The more you practice what you know, the more shall you know what to practice.
—William Jenkyn (English Clergyman)

How helpless we are, like netted birds, when we are caught by desire!
—Belva Plain (American Novelist)

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.
—Meg Greenfield (American Journalist, Socialite)

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
—Guy de Maupassant (French Short-story Writer)

Ever notice that people never say “It’s only a game” when they’re winning?
—Ivern Ball (American Writer, Aphorist)

Smart is an elusive concept. There’s a certain sharpness, an ability to absorb new facts. To ask an insightful question. To relate to domains that may not seem connected at first. A certain creativity that allows people to be effective.
—Bill Gates (American Businessperson)

In every question and every remark tossed back and forth between lovers who have not played out the last fugue, there is one question and it is this: “Is there someone new?”
—Edna O’Brien (Irish Author)

No war is inevitable until it breaks out.
—A. J. P. Taylor (English Historian)

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
—Ralph Ellison (American Novelist)

Inspirational Quotations #964

By

You don’t concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.
—Chuck Yeager (American Aviator)

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
—Agnes de Mille (American Dancer)

You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power—he’s free again.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russian Novelist)

If the track is tough and the hill is rough, THINKING you can just ain’t enough!
—Shel Silverstein (American Cartoonist, Author)

Always be smarter than the people who hire you.
—Lena Horne (American Singer, Actress)

The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.
—Madame Roland (French Revolutionary)

Life is a gathering to which only a limited number are invited at a time, and the invitation is never repeated.
—Hans Carossa (German Novelist)

We have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies.
—Roderick Thorp (American Novelist)

The voice you hear when you read to yourself is the clearest voice: you speak it speaking to you.
—Thomas Lux (American Poet)

Like an old gold-panning prospector, you must resign yourself to digging up a lot of sand from which you will later patiently wash out a few minute particles of gold ore.
—Dorothy Bryant (American Novelist)

Hollywood never knew there was a Vietnam War until they made the movie.
—Jerry Stiller (American Actor, Comedian)

Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.
—Mae Jemison (American Physician, Astronaut)

The body has to be utilized for service to others. More bliss can be got from serving others than from merely serving oneself.
—Sathya Sai Baba (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

A man always has two reasons for what he does good one, and the real one.
—J. P. Morgan (American Financier, Philanthropist)

Dear Customer, Speak Early and Have it Your Way!

By Leave a Comment

At the heart of every successful product is the ability to address a real need or circumstance of struggle—a “job to be done”—in consumers’ lives. Identification of this “job” happens early in the innovation process, as it forms the core insight around innovation development and execution.

Feedback-Influenced Design is a Key Point of Differentiation

Long before its current mess, Boeing was once the pioneer in aspects of product development. No example illustrates Boeing’s inventive stills than the groundbreaking Boeing 777 program, particularly in its use of iterative, paperless computer-aided design, assembly process-planning, and agile product development. Not only that, the Boeing 777 program offers the most high-profile examples of companies tapping consumers as never before to help them create new products.

Knowing very well that the secret to long-term success starts very early in the innovation process, director of engineering Alan Mulally led a “working together” initiative to organize product development around customer input. (Mulally left Boeing after not being named CEO in 2006 and engineered a dramatic turnaround at Ford Motor Co.)

Concept Testing at Every Stage of Development

In the late 1980s, just as the 777 program was being launched, Mulally made a consequential decision to involve its major potential customers in the development of the aircraft specifications. Mulally made up a “gang of eight” comprising All Nippon Airways, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Delta Air Lines, Japan Airlines, Qantas, and United Airlines. At the group’s first meeting in January 1990, Mulally’s team distributed a 23-page questionnaire asking what each customer wanted in the design. Within two months, Boeing and the airlines decided on a basic design configuration.

The “working together” initiative was a radical departure from the bureaucratic project organization. Internally, Boeing had become bureaucratic and department-focused. Specialists in various departments would design their parts. Then, it was up to the manufacturing team (the system integrators) to figure out how to make it all come together. It was a “throw-it-over-the-wall” environment where the disconnect was a persistent problem.

Having customer input implied that development was centered on customer needs. This would also tear down the walls between departments—designers, suppliers, and assemblers usually separated by organizations or development phases would now be engaged collaboratively and talking and collaborating in real-time.

In an industry where manufacturers classically designed aircraft with only token customer input. Rather than presenting the market with what Boeing perceived as their idea of what was required, customers had direct input. Over the decades, the Boeing 777 became one of the world’s most successful commercial aircraft and continues to be the workhorse of many a customer fleet.

Idea for Impact: Create Something People Want

Whether selling products or services, fast food, or experiential travel, the most innovative companies organize their offerings around customers’ needs. From the very beginning, they tap consumers as never before to help them create new products, and they’re embedding customer knowledge into the business. Early and frequent feedback is one way to cope with the pressure for shorter product cycles and to be prudent about not investing time and resources in unpromising ideas. It also augurs well for the experiences-over-possessions shift in consumer values.

Evolution, Not Revolution

By Leave a Comment

Innovation often transpires from synthesizing existing ideas in new ways, as the following case study on the iPod will illuminate.

In some sense, the iPod wasn’t a breakthrough innovation at all. It emerged from Steve Jobs’s “digital hub” approach to integrating iMac software for playing, editing, and managing photos, music, and movies. According to Walter Isaacson’s masterful biography of Steve Jobs (2011,) when Apple designers learned that Toshiba had newly prototyped a tiny 1.8-inch hard drive that could hold five gigabytes of storage (that’s about a thousand songs,) they conjured up a digital music player. Apple found that existing gadgets were “big and clunky or small and useless” with “unbelievably awful” user interfaces.

Sony’s Walkman had previously proven the market potential of portable audio players, having sold 200 million units in the two decades before Apple conceived the iPod. Napster had offered digital audio file distribution for over five years. Finger-driven touchscreens were pioneered in the 1960s, and Citibank rolled out touchscreen ATMs in the 1980s. (Apple didn’t offer touchscreens until 2007 with the iPhone.) Hence, the iPod’s innovation was in bringing all these capabilities together in a way that was easier to use and relevant to the consumer. Dartmouth’s strategy professor Ron Adner writes in The Wide Lens: What Successful Innovators See That Others Miss (2013.)

Apple was three years late [behind Creative, SanDisk, Sony, and Samsung, who had previously launched portable music players]. As we’ll see again in the case of the iPhone, Jobs tended to be late for everything because he wanted everything to be ready for him. Reflecting on catching technology waves in 2008, he said, “Things happen fairly slowly, you know. They do. These waves of technology, you can see them way before they happen, and you just have to choose wisely which ones you’re going to surf. If you choose unwisely, then you can waste a lot of energy, but if you choose wisely, it actually unfolds fairly slowly. It takes years.” Jobs’s discipline paid off.

Idea for Impact: Innovation often builds on existing technological competencies or as a synthesis of smaller innovations.

The Tyranny of Best Practices

By Leave a Comment

By all means, acquaint yourself with the management practices of Dell (in supply chain management,) Toyota (quality control,) Ryanair (working capital,) or whatever company is the present-day shining exemplar of the pertinent best practices. But beware of the risks of taking their best practices out of context and applying them to your business.

Some advantages are unlikely to be accrued by borrowing fashionable ideas from other companies. It makes sense, for example, to study how Apple’s innovations have changed the world, but the visionary in Steve Jobs can’t be replicated.

Best practices can offer deceptively simplistic solutions. Some of them aren’t implementable—even relatable. You can try replicating Google’s policy of allowing employees to spend 20% of their time on their own ideas; that initiative isn’t likely to transform a company designing gasoline engines.

Many of the basic principles of innovation are universal. But management methods succeed—or fail—in a specific context. A company’s industry, maturity, location, and leadership structures influence this context. Unless you develop a thorough understanding of all the factors that have contributed to others’ success, there’s a risk that you’re learning the wrong lessons.

Idea for Impact: You can’t truly become another company. You can only become a better version of yourself, not an inferior version of someone else. Be inspired by others’ best practices, but don’t imitate them blindly.

Inspirational Quotations #943

By

The art of friendship has been little cultivated in our society.
—Robert J. Havighurst (American Researcher)

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.
—Jean Piaget (Swiss Psychologist)

In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.
—Sid Caesar (American Comedian)

Sweat saves blood.
—Erwin Rommel (German Field Marshal)

Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet)

Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.
—John Burroughs (American Naturalist, Writer)

Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant.
—Sa’Di (Musharrif Od-Din Muslih Od-Din) (Persian Poet)

I always say beauty is only sin deep.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (British Short Story Writer)

Shame is an unhappy emotion invented by pietists in order to exploit the human race.
—Blake Edwards (American Filmmaker)

Our yearnings for happiness were implanted in our hearts by Deity. They represent a kind of homesickness, for we have a residual memory of our premortal existence. They are also a foretaste of the fullness of Joy that is promised to the faithful.
—Jack H. Goaslind (American Mormon Leader)

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Just do your best today and tomorrow will come … tomorrow’s going to be a busy day, a happy day.
—Helen Boehm (American Entrepreneur)

Pray not for lighter burdens, but for stronger backs.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset (Spanish Philosopher)

The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

How to Keep Your Brain Fresh and Creative

By Leave a Comment

If you need to make much progress on a project, you may feel constrained to work on it in one sitting-down.

Don’t.

No one can concentrate on a single task all the time.

Break up your day—and your thought patterns—by regularly engaging in activities that aren’t intellectually taxing.

Plan your distraction. Have a little something to look forward to—a 15-minute break to watch the highlights of last night’s match, for example. Stretch, dance, or get a glass of water. Go for a short walk around your neighborhood.

According to neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley and psychologist Larry Rosen’s The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World (2016,) regular breaks can lower mental fatigue, boost brain function, and keep you on-task for more extended periods. Creativity can flow when your mind wanders, allowing you to synthesize information uniquely.

When you sit back down to resume working, you’ll be emotionally regulated and have your mental resources replenished. This helps you be more creative and get more done.

Idea for Impact: Work in spurts. Set specific times to take recesses and stick to them. Your mind needs a break—a “state change,” in fact—at least every 30-45 minutes to work more effectively.

Intellectual Inspiration Often Lies in the Overlap of Disparate Ideas

By Leave a Comment

From David Chapman’s instructive essay ‘How to Think Real Good,’

Learn from fields very different from your own. They each have ways of thinking that can be useful at surprising times. Just learning to think like an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a philosopher will beneficially stretch your mind.

I’ve always been an admirer of the “Renaissance Man”—the notion that one should try to embrace multiple streams of knowledge and develop one’s own faculties as broadly as possible. An archaeologist who studies only material culture will think similar thoughts to a second archaeologist who studies only material culture. However, an archaeologist whose studies include anthropology, biology, geology, and metallurgy has the wherewithal to pursue her curiosity down disparate channels and synthesize multiple perspectives.

Idea for Impact: Dabble in multiple disciplines from time to time and try to understand the basic thinking model of each discipline. You’ll think more broadly, redefine problems outside of normal boundaries, and reach solutions anchored in a unique understanding of complex situations.