Vote for Me Today!
GOOD NEWS! I've just been nominated as a "Top 5 Speaker" in the field of innovation & creativity by a prestigious speaker's bureau. Now the fun begins... and the voting.
If you have 30 seconds and feel that I have made a meaningful contribution to this field, click the link below, scroll down to #7, and check the box next to "Mitchell Ditkoff." Thanks!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2009Sand Animation from the Ukraine
This is a mind blower -- the winner of Ukraine's "You Got Talent" award expressing the history of her country via sand animation. (Thanks to my son, Jesse, for the heads up).
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:19 AM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2009The Good Thing About Bad Ideas
One of the inevitable things you will hear at a brainstorming session is "there are no bad ideas." Well, guess what? There are plenty of bad ideas. Nazism, for instance. Arena football. Bow ties.
What well-meaning "keep hope alive" brainstorming aficionados really mean is this: Even bad ideas can lead to good ideas if the idea originators are committed enough to extract the meaning from the "bad."
Do you think that War and Peace was written in one sitting? No way. There were plenty of earlier drafts that were horrid, but eventually led to the final outcome.
The key for aspiring innovators? To find the value in what seems to be a "bad idea" and then use that extracted value as a catalyst for further exploration. The following technique, excerpted from Awake at the Wheel, shows you how...
HOW IT WORKS:
1. Bring a challenge, question, or problem to mind.
2. Conjure up a really bad idea in response to it.
3. Tell another person about your bad idea.
4. The other person thinks of something redeemable about your bad idea -- and tells you what it is.
5. Using this redeemable essence as a catalyst, the two of you brainstorm new possibilities.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 06:59 AM | Comments (4)
November 17, 2009The Top 100 Learning Tools of 2009
Here are the top 100 netcentric learning tools as compiled by Jane Hart, social learning consultant and all around bright light.
Jane surveyed 278 top learning professionals to generate this list, so a good deal of thought and consensus has gone into it. Some of these tools you already know about. Some you don't.
And while you're at it, check out Idea Champions' Free the Genie (which...um...er...uh... didn't quite make the list this year).
Illustration
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2009"The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child." - Thomas Edison
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2009So, You Want a Culture of Innovation?
Tired of business as usual? Looking for insights, ideas, and inspiration about how to foster a culture of innovation? Willing to take a few minutes to pause and reflect? If so, read on...
What follows are Idea Champions' ten most popular postings on the topic. Read 'em and leap!
1. The Garden of Innovation
2. 56 Reasons Why Most Innovation Initiatives Fail
3. Innovation: It's About Time
4. 50 Ways to Foster a Sustainable Culture of Innovation
5. The Paradox of Innovation
6. The Art of Seeing the Invisible
7. The 100 Lamest Excuses for Not Innovating
8. Innovation Is An Inside Job
9. Here's to the Crazy Ones!
10. The Rise of the Innovation Ninjas
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2009Here Come the 15-Year Olds!
Tom Peters once said that unless 20% of a company's workforce was under the age of 20, they didn't have a chance.
I totally agree -- especially now that my kids, Jesse and Mimi, are 15 & 12.
Their creativity and resourcefulness blow my mind. See the image above? Photoshopped by Jesse, my son. If you have a photo or illustration that needs to be tweaked, repaired, refined, improved, or manipulated in any way, he's your guy. Forget about outsourcing to a 30-year old from Mumbai. How about a 15-year old from Woodstock? Faster, cheaper, and cooler.
Contact Jesse today: yumyum@hvc.rr.com.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2009SIX SIGMA UNRAVELLED: The Gotta Have a Process Blues
One of my favorite clients of all time was a key manager in a very prominent Fortune 500 company. She was smart. She was funny. She was creative. And she was kind. Then her company adopted Six Sigma.
I couldn't help but notice that soon after this she started becoming uncharacteristically cranky, not unlike the way an artist gets upon filling out a tax form. When I asked her how the Six Sigma initiative was going, she rolled her eyes and mumbled something about "going through the motions."
In a recent online Business Week posting, Brian Hindo lucidly deconstructs some of the flawed assumptions of the Six Sigma approach...
"The very factors that make Six Sigma effective in one context," explains Hindo, "can make it ineffective in another. Traditionally, it uses rigorous statistical analysis to produce unambiguous data that help produce better quality, lower costs, and more efficiency. That all sounds great when you know what outcomes you'd like to control. But what about when there are few facts to go on -- or you don't even know the nature of the problem you're trying to define?
"New things look very bad on this scale," says MIT Sloan School of Management professor Eric von Hippel, who has worked with 3M on innovation projects that he says 'took a backseat' once Six Sigma settled in. "The more you hardwire a company on total quality management, the more it is going to hurt breakthrough innovation," adds Vijay Govindarajan, a management professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. "The mindset that is needed, the capabilities that are needed, the metrics that are needed, the whole culture that is needed for discontinuous innovation, are fundamentally different."
And so, dear Heart of Innovation readers... in honor of all people who have ever questioned the long-term value of Six Sigma... in honor of all the people who have understood that increasing -- not decreasing -- variability is often the key to success, it is my utmost pleasure to make my graceful exit from this latest blog posting with the immortal, finger-snapping, toe-tapping, knee-slapping, put-on-your-blues-hat-and-sunglasses lyrics to....
THE GOTTA HAVE A PROCESS BLUES
I woke up this morning,
put both feet on the floor,
but I didn't have a process
to find the bathroom door,
so all I did was shuffle,
first the left foot, then the right,
forgot to count the tiles,
(hey boss, I ain't too bright.)
We got green belts, black belts,
corporate karate,
and soon we'll need a process
for going to the potty.
Lord, I need a chart and graph to help me choose
just what to name this song about the Six Sigma blues.
Back when we were kids
the only processed thing was cheese,
now we need a process
every single time we sneeze,
I say "achoo," I blow my nose,
I try to get it right,
my Black Belt says my charts don't flow,
not once a gesundheit.
I make no mistakes,
I do everything right --
to make sure nothing breaks,
I stay up all night,
I'm a Six Sigma cowboy
cutting cycle time in half,
I measure every joke
and the way it makes me laugh.
We got green belts, black belts,
corporate karate,
and soon we'll need a process
for going to the potty,
a fishbone diagram would be so cool to help me choose
just what to name this song about the Six Sigma blues.
I barely make a boo boo, I rarely blow a deal,
you might call it voo doo, but that's just how I feel,
I'm one in a million
though my defects number three,
I log on while I'm sleeping
and I've changed my name to "E."
We got green belts, black belts,
corporate karate,
and soon we'll need a process
for going to the potty.
Blind Willy Nilly
AKA Mitch Ditkoff
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)
November 03, 200914 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas
Here are 14 ways to get breakthrough ideas, excerpted from my ChangeThis Manifesto, available here for downloading.
1. Follow your fascination
2. Immerse
3. Tolerate ambiguity
4. Make new connections
5. Fantasize
6. Define the right challenge
7. Listen to your subconscious
8. Take a break
9. Notice and challenge existing patterns and trends
10. Hang out with diverse groups of people
11. Brainstorm
12. Look for happy accidents
13. Use creative thinking techniques
14. Suspend logic
Additional catalysts for generating breakthrough ideas can be found here.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:53 PM | Comments (1)
