change

There is much talk about innovation — and there are many approaches to creating new things, from the famous “open innovation” ideas of Henry Chesbrough to the ever popular notions of Clay Christensen about “disruptive innovation“. 

Walk into a Barnes and Noble you can find dozen of books on innovation. There are books from teaching the ‘how to” to creative thinking”. Not many good ones simply because the subject is a moving target with rules being broken and created everyday, existing tools are getting obsolete, and best practices are often worst practices. Much that is held as common wisdom regarding how purposeful or successful innovation happened is wrong. This is not to say that all organizations are not innovative; obviously many are not thanks to our management systems and education.

I was fascinated by the story told in a recent strategy+business piece about Herman Miller, Inc., the “office-furniture maker.” That descriptor belongs in quotation marks because it seems the company is as adept at building breakthrough business practices as it is its cool Aeron chairs. The article offers a peak into the great company behind the great brand. I’ve culled from the piece insights about what Herman Miller is designing in its business lab:

I may be looking too hard for hopeful signs but I think we may be at the threshold of a reformation in advertising, which will mean larger changes in the communications world overall. Here are two of them and why I think they’re important (and somewhat related):

So, yesterday I gave a keynote at a Google video event which featured an interesting line up of speakers followed by a good panel moderated by Matt Brittin, the UK MD. It was a lot of fun doing it. Google have kindly allowed me to put my presentation up here. It touches on many of the themes about which I've been obsessing lately plus some points that I've made before, but which I still think many media organisations are missing. My thanks to the people at Google for inviting me to be a part of it.

Book Review: The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge

For centuries, the human brain was considered largely immutable after childhood. We were told that we had all the brain cells we’d ever get by the time we were adolescents.