This month marks the seven year anniversary of Innovation in Practice. As always, I want to thank my many readers and supporters who follow it.
2014 was an excellent year as our message about systematic creativity continues to be heard. Jacob Goldenberg and I launched our book, Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results last year, and it was nominated for Innovation Book of the Year. We’re thrilled that the book is now published in fourteen languages. It is the first detailed description of Systematic Inventive Thinking (the method and the people at SIT LLC that taught it to me.)
Teaching, writing, and speaking continue to be my main focus. Professor Jim Tappel and I co-taught a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) at the University of Cincinnati called Innovation and Design Thinking. I’ve published more courses at Lynda.com on innovation, marketing, and branding. I continue to write articles on creativity for Psychology Today, Industry Week, and Coca-Cola Journey. Staying busy is a good thing.
My goal is to make this blog different from other innovation blogs and websites. Instead of focusing on why innovation is important, I focus on how innovation happens. The themes of this blog are:
- Innovation can be learned like any other skill such as marketing, leadership, or playing the guitar. To be an innovator, learn a method.Teach it to others.
- Innovation must be linked to strategy. Innovation for innovation’s sake doesn’t matter. Innovation that is guided by strategy or helps guide strategy yields the most opportunity for corporate growth.
- Innovation is a two-way phenomena. We can start with a problem and innovate solutions. Or we can generate hypothetical solutions and explore problems that they solve. To be a great innovator, you need to be a two-way innovator.
- The corporate perspective, where innovation is practiced day-to-day, is what must be understood and kept at the center of attention. This is where truth is separated from hype.
2015 will be an explosive year in terms of more keynotes, workshops, and training programs. I plan to collaborate with my various business partners and colleagues at the University on making SIT the dominant form of ideation. Since learning it in 2002, I’ve not found anything that surpasses it. Both Jacob and I are “open source” in terms of helping anyone who wants to learn or teach the method. Our slides, Syllabi, and training materials are available to all. Just ask.
I want to thank Jacob, as well as Amnon Levav, Yoni Stern, and the entire team at SIT LLC. I thank Marta Dapena-Baron at Big Picture Partners, Bob Cialdini and the team at Influence at Work, Yury Boshyk at Global Executive Learning, the Washington Speakers Bureau, the team at Lynda.com, Jim Levine, Emilie D’Agostino, Shelley Bamburger, the team at Innovation Excellence (Braden, Julie, Rowan), and my fellow faculty at the UC Lindner College of Business.
Special thanks to my family, Wendy and Ryan, for all their love and support.
Drew
