SmartBrief is partnering with Big Think to create a weekly video spotlight in SmartBrief on Leadership called “VIP Corner: Video Insights Powered by Big Think.” This week, we’re featuring author George Dyson.
Alan Turing’s computer proved to be a tremendous challenge to translate into engineering terms for a functional, memory-capable device. But contrary to what we might expect, the rapid answers to this problem weren’t found at the big, famous and funded laboratories of the post-World War II era, says George Dyson, author of “Turing’s Cathedral.”
Those labs produced great innovations and inventions, and there’s been the argument recently that we need to return to the Bell Labs era. Dyson points out, though, that sometimes creativity and problem-solving cannot be managed merely by constructing a certain setting. Small groups without backing can do great things when left to their own devices.
“The lesson to take from that, in my view, is, you know, let these small, imaginative groups of people do what they want,” Dyson says. (read more…)
The world is changing at an increasing pace. To stay competitive, many organizations are focusing their efforts on enhancing innovation. It’s a worthwhile pursuit. Innovative organizations stand the best chance of developing a sustained competitive advantage in their industry. To achieve that competitive advantage, firms are asking how they can be more innovative.
At its core, innovation needs creativity. Innovative organizations are those with individuals who generate novel and useful ideas (the consensus definition of creativity). To put it another way: creativity yields innovation. If you want your organization to be more innovative, you need your people to be more creative.
In a recent survey of business executives, ECSI found that 68% believed innovation and creativity to be something individuals are born with. These business leaders felt strongly that innovators cannot be made, that creativity cannot be trained. However, their beliefs aren’t exactly supported by research. As early as 1973, studies on identical twins sought to distinguish whether creative ability was attributable to nature or nurture. (read more…)
The Coca-Cola Company sponsors this blog and the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council, which serves as an authentic and comprehensive “voice of the customer.” Visit ccrrc.org to learn more about the Council and to download its studies at no charge.
Facebook and Twitter have become such a big part of everyday life in such a short span of time that marketers in all areas of business are struggling to catch up and keep up. It’s no different for grocery marketers, said food industry consultant and former Progressive Grocer Editor-in-Chief Michael Sansolo. Recent research shows grocery marketers worry that they don’t have the skills and social media savvy to make the most of social media tools, said Sansolo, who is also the former senior vice president of the Food Marketing Institute and a member of the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council, whose retail members are in the midst of a long-term study of the effects of the social Web on the supermarket industry. (read more…)
If innovators have one thing in common, it is that they love to collect ideas, like kids love to collect Legos. Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling advised that “the best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.” Thomas Edison kept over thirty-five hundred notebooks of ideas during the course of his lifetime and set regular “idea quotas” to keep the tap open. Billionaire Richard Branson is an equally passionate recorder of ideas, wherever he goes and with whomever he talks. Yet, absolute quantity of ideas does not always translate into highly disruptive ideas. Why? Because “you cannot look in a new direction by looking harder in the same direction,” says Edward de Bono, author of Lateral Thinking. In other words, getting lots of ideas from lots of different sources creates the best of all innovation worlds.
Innovators who frequently engage in questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting become far more capable at associating because they develop experience at understanding, storing, and recategorizing all this new knowledge. (read more…)
SmartBrief is partnering with Big Think to create a weekly video spotlight in SmartBrief on Leadership called “VIP Corner: Video Insights Powered by Big Think.” This week, we’re featuring Peter Guber, chairman and CEO of the Mandalay Entertainment Group.
Leaders should be wary of adopting the latest technology simply because it’s state of the art, warns Peter Guber, head of the Mandalay Entertainment Group. It’s important to adapt to the changing tides of technology, but it’s also crucial to strike a balance between what you think you want versus what your business actually needs.
“What you really have to recognize that what moves people is not state-of-the-art technology, it is state-of-the-heart technology,” Guber said, later adding, “Unless it moves something, unless it renders a benefit … unless it offers a deeper meaning into your heart, into your soul, a deeper purposefulness, it’ll be vestigial, it’ll be gone.”
Before implementing new technology, Guber advises business leaders to stop and ask themselves if they’ll really benefit from the tech in question — or if it’s simply just another shiny toy. (read more…)
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