Dare to DREAM Big

The 7 People You Absolutely Need In Your Life

2010-09-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

One thing that we all need is a friend … or two, or three. Too many times we think of someone as a friend, when they’re really just an acquaintance. True friends have qualities that acquaintances do not. Can one or two people have all these qualities? Sure. I would say that if you find someone who exhibits all of them, you’ve found a true friend, maybe even a soul-mate.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit. –Aristotle

I believe there are 7 types of friends we all need. I’ve found 4 and striving to find rest !!

A friend to listen to us

It happens so rarely, perhaps that’s why nothing is more powerful than the art of listening. When someone focuses on you and listens to your ideas, your thoughts, and your concerns, you’ve found a friend. Bonus points if they can listen without prejudice, passing judgment, or feeling the need to constantly give advice or tell you “what they would do.”

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. –Dale Carnegie

A friend we can trust

Trust is a tricky issue and is rarely an “either/or” proposition. Trust is something that comes in degrees, but it is something that is a vital part of any friendship. As a matter of fact, without trust, there can be no friendship.

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them. –Confucius

A friend to accept us

Acceptance is a willingness and an openness to see things as they really are without scurrying around trying to change them to fit our mold. For example, if you’re feeling tense, you’re just feeling tense. That’s it. A friend doesn’t think it’s horrible or catastrophic or that it will last forever. They certainly don’t think you won’t be able to handle it. It doesn’t mean anything, except that you’re feeling tense at a particular moment.

Acceptance doesn’t mean blanket approval. We can accept a situation without approving of it. Acceptance doesn’t mean we’ve given up. I can accept a diagnosis without giving up on treatment. Acceptance means we’re paying attention.

When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old. –Mark Twain

A friend to help and support us

Friends help and support each other. Simply put, a friend is loyal and will set aside his or her interests to help. They will faithfully support your decisions and help you see things from different perspectives, even if you don’t always see eye to eye.

There are three faithful friends – an old wife, an old dog, and ready money. –Benjamin Franklin

A friend to love and respect us

Love is putting someone’s highest interests at the top of your priority list. Respect is understanding that others actually can make a worthwhile contribution. It’s hard to have one without the other. A friend is someone who both loves and respects us.

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home. –Mother Teresa

A friend to hope with us

Hope is the confident expectation of great things to come. We need hope. Someone without hope is a pitiful, dying soul. We need friends who will build up hope inside of us, that will help us hang on just a little while longer when things seem their darkest.

Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams. –Henry David Thoreau

A friend to challenge us

We need people in our lives who will challenge us to become better, to strive for more. No, I don’t mean in the sense of accumulating more things, or climbing the corporate ladder, but in becoming better in all the areas I’ve just outlined.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business. –Ghandi

We need each other. Plain and simple. We need each other for friendship, for companionship, for fellowship.

Now the big question: How well do YOU stack up in these areas? Don’t answer that in the comments, but answer it in your own voice inside your head. Where do you need to improve your friendship skills so that someone absolutely needs you in their life?

When you choose your friends, don’t be short-changed by choosing personality over character. –W. Somerset Maugham

An Attempt to define Success...

2010-08-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

You’ve heard the cliche, success is a journey, not a destination. In many cases I agree. There is more fun in the chasing than in the catching. I went fishing with afriend of mine and caught a very large striped bass. He was thrilled and scrambled around to find a camera to take a picture. When I bent over to let the fish go, he said, “What are you doing? We can clean it and fry it up back at the cabin!” My reply was, “Man, I don’t want to clean this fish.” Then I let him go.

That story illustrates that the fun is in the pursuit, the chase. Success is like that. We love the thrill of the chase, the excitement of what’s going to happen, the what ifs, and the hopes that come with them. Once you’ve “arrived,” you have to set different goals to get those thrills again.

To many people think that success is wrapped up in things, but the truth is, success is wrapped up in how you see yourself and how you are able to enjoy your life. To have acompletely successful life along these lines, you’ll need to consider these six components:

1. Peace of mind. Can anyone truly consider themselves successful if they lack this ingredient? People around the world are constantly searching for peace of mind. I define peace of mind as freedom from fear, worry, anger, and guilt. I think we seek peace of mind through many channels, some of them are destructive and some are worthwhile. Some seek peace of mind through faith, some through money, others in relationships, others in work, ans still others seek to fill this void through participation in vices such as gambling or drugs. Success, no matter how you define it, must have peace of mind in the mix, otherwise it is bland and watered down.

2. Health and energy. “Success” without good health and the energy to enjoy life isn’t success at all, it’s just a shell of what it can be. Many people that are financially successful in the world’s eyes spend their fortunes in desperate attempts to regain their health or to stay youthful and vibrant. Any success without health and energy to enjoy it is like a high performance car with no gasoline in the tank.

3. Loving relationships. No matter how much financial success someone enjoys, again, it’s a hollow feeling if you have no one to share it with. It doesn’t have to be a spouse, it can be parents, children, friends or other family members. Remember that Scrooge was financially successful, but he had no peace of mind and he had no one to share it with. His success was empty.

4. Financial freedom. That is, freedom from thinking about money all the time. Not necessarily being “rich,” but having enough money to pay your bills, feed your family, and take care of basic necessities. For some, $50,000 in the bank would be plenty, for others, $5 million wouldn’t be enough. To be sure, many people think of finances when they visualize success and it IS a major component in our culture, but for the purposes of defining success, I’m talking about the feeling of freedom, that deep sigh that everything is okay.

5. Worthy goals. Most people have financial freedom as their top goal, but once you have that big pile of cash, then what? That’s why you constantly see millionaires and billionaires getting involved in some type of other business venture or philanthropy. Many people misinterpret their chasing as greed, but for someone who is already financially rich, it’s the chase that they love. Money is just the way to keep score. Humans need to be chasing something. We desperately want to improve ourselves, or someone, or something. It’s just human nature. Either we move or we die.

6. Personal fulfillment. Maslow called this step Self Actualization. This is the concept of “being all you can be,” of feeling like you matter and that you’re making a difference. This is the feeling that you aren’t just going through the motions for no reason, what you do and who you are is of vital importance. If you have the first five components, but feel unfulfilled and useless, you don’t enjoy the full measure of success.

Not all of your endeavors will incorporate all six of these, and any one of them can be a pursuit in itself, but many of these aspects will show up in your pursuit of success. You can adapt these six components into any goal you set for yourself. Money for example.

You’d want the security that it represents.
The ability to eat well and live a healthy lifestyle.
The relationships that improve with enough money. Many arguments involve money.
The freedom it represents. You can do more with it than without it, after all.
The ability to set goals much higher than “where’s my next meal coming from.”
Lastly, the ability to use money to bless the lives of others.

Applying it to finishing your degree and you’ll see:

That it represents the relief you’ll experience once you’ve finished.
The health and energy you’ll feel as a result of accomplishing your goal.
The relationships it can open up for you.
The potential for financial freedom it represents.
The higher goals you can now set for yourself.
The feeling that you became a new person through accomplishing your goal.

What are you chasing? What are the goals that you have and why do you have them? How do they mesh with the six aspects of success? How will your life change once you reach the goals you’ve set?

Right attitude matters !!!

2010-08-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

It is amazing how one’s world turns around with just the right attitude. Having the right attitude changes one’s perspective dramatically. It encourages rather than discourages. It motivates rather than interferes. It helps achieve rather than procrastinate and it makes everyone into better people.

Everything is possible with right attitude behind you to push you forward. When you feel that you can no longer achieve or finish a certain task, just having the right attitude pushes you on to your maximum potential, and you will eventually achieve in the end.

Having the right attitude encourages you to achieve a goal that you have set for yourself and ultimately what others have set for you. There is no reason to be discouraged with the right attitude.

Everything is possible with right attitude to guide you in your way. Having the right attitude is like shining a bright light to whatever path you choose to take. You won’t get lost with this type of guidance and you won’t stray from the path as well. It will help you become more dedicated to reach the end of your journey, whether for a successful career or for self-discovery and improvement.

The right attitude will help you achieve great things in life. At work, procrastination won’t be an option with the right attitude. You would be constantly working for better things to ensure you a better life in the future. Come to think of it, with the right attitude, a promotion won’t be far off and a stable financial situation for your family will be possible.

Everything is possible with right attitude to look forward to. Things look brighter in the future if you look at the positive possibilities it holds for you. Do not mind the negativities in the future for this will only hinder you from going towards it. You cannot return to the past nor can you stay in the present. You have to move forward to the future in order to grow as a person.

You are constantly motivated when you have the right attitude. Unlike having a negative attitude which constantly interferes with your achievement, having the right attitude won’t. It would only foster growth and improvement.
Everything is possible with right attitude to live by. When you live each day in a positive light, looking at every person’s positive side, and learning from every situation’s positive aspect, you will become one happy and fulfilled person. You will learn from the people you encounter and the situations you are faced with.

With learning comes growth and with growth comes improvement. You become a better person than who you are now. And ultimately, as being a better person, you will be able to influence other people to be the same and the world won’t be such a harsh place to live in anymore.

Yes, everything is possible with right attitude in mind. With the right attitude there is no room to stagnate. If you live each day with the right attitude you will also see great opportunities for everysingle day that greets you.

Must see videos

2010-08-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

Nandan Nilekani

Bill Gates

Ajim Preemji

Rod McQueen gives the inside story on the phenomenal success of the Waterloo-based company Research In Motion.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Secret Power of The Mind

2010-08-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends, in my continued effort to bring most inspiring content, here is another post dedicated to power of mind, believe me whatever you think you can do that if you believe in it,

Secret of Mind Power:

The Power of Sub-conscious Mind to achieve any goal

People who dared to dream big

2010-08-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

Dr. Kalam

Ajim Premji

Dhirubhai Ambani

Nelson Mandela

Barack Obama

Sachin Tendulkar

The Entrepreneur’s Pledge

2010-08-09T08:42:00.000-07:00

I am an Entrepreneur.

I am following a dream, pursuing an opportunity, taking charge of my own destiny.
I am bringing something of value to society, making a job for myself and for others, and creating wealth that benefits my family, my community, my country, my world.
I am one of a movement of millions of entrepreneurs and innovators who made India great, and who will continue to keep our economy going...and growing.
I am what I am because many people have helped me along on this journey.

Therefore...
I will tell my story, sharing my successes and failures, so that others taking the entrepreneurial path can learn.
I will strive to mentor an aspiring entrepreneur.
I will make my voice heard by those who make policy decisions that affect me and my business.
I will appreciate and celebrate my accomplishments, and the accomplishments of all my fellow entrepreneurs.
I will give back to the society that helped me to be successful.
I will Build A Stronger India.

Creating an Innovation Mindset

2010-08-08T12:16:00.000-07:00

An interview with Vijay Govindarajan, Professor, Tuck. To create an innovation mindset, managers must bring in fresh voices from outside their company, encourage collaboration, and consider how emerging markets' needs can spur ideas for innovative offerings.

5 must read books on innovation

2010-08-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

Innovation to the Core
In too many organizations, innovation is more rhetoric than reality, more buzzword than core competence. This book aims to change that. It gives organization leaders and front- line innovators a blueprint for building and deploying an enterprise capability for innovation. Based on real-world experience with a string of major companies, Peter and Rowan provide a practical, disciplined guide to making innovation a reality within your organization – helping you to achieve profitable, sustainable growth. In this book you'll discover:

How to rapidly enlarge and enhance your innovation pipeline with breakthrough ideas
How to systematically innovate across all the components of your business model
How to dramatically improve the efficiency of your innovation spending
How to use the power of IT to enable and manage innovation across the enterprise
How to balance the tension between day-to-day operations and radical innovation

The Art of Innovation

There isn’t a business in America that doesn’t want to be more creative in their thinking, products, and processes. At many companies, being first with a concept and first to market are critical just to survive. In The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley, general manager of the Silicon Valley-based design firm IDEO, takes readers behind the scenes of this wildly imaginative and energized company to reveal the strategies and secrets it uses to turn out hit after hit.

Democratizing Innovation

it describes how people participate in the development of products they use. For example, von Hippel in the fifth chapter uses thehistory of mountain biking to propound that users can also "be sophisticated developers". The MIT Press published the book in 2005. It is licensed under a Creative Commons license and is available as a downloadable PDF document on http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ.htm

Think Better: An Innovator's Guide to Productive Thinking

The Productive Thinking Model (sometimes known as "thinkx") was developed by Tim Hurson, a Canadian author, speaker, and creativity theorist. It is a structured approach to solving problems or generating creative ideas that is based in part on the Creative Problem Solving Process (CPS) and NASA's IDEF. The Productive Thinking Model is a framework rather than a technique; that is, various creativity techniques such as brainstorming and lateral thinking can be applied at different stages of the process.

Harvard Business Review on Innovation

In today's ever-changing economic landscape, innovation has become even more of a key factor influencing strategic planning. This helpful volume will help the reader recognize and seize innovation opportunities.

The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series
The series is designed to bring today's managers and professionals the fundamental information they need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world. From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, here are the leading minds and landmark ideas that have established the Harvard Business Review as required reading for ambitious businesspeople in organizations around the globe.

Five "Must-Haves" for a Strategic Plan

2010-08-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

Strategic planning methodologies are like shoes – one size does not fit all.

Some companies use a top-down, autocratic approach, where the plan gets created by a small group of senior managers and handed down to the rest of the organization. Some prefer a more democratic approach, with employees at all levels contributing their ideas and input to the plan. Most companies employ a hybrid of these two models.

The best approach for your company depends on several factors, such as size, industry, culture, type of workforce and management style. Regardless of which approach you choose, however, every strategic plan needs five key elements in order to achieve the intended results.

Mission. This defines why you exist as an organization. Specifically, it tells others (not just those in the organization) why you exist. Ideally, it describes some noble purpose that is both inspirational and aspirational, so that it instills pride in all those connected with the organization.

Guiding principles. Also called organizational attributes, these describe how you expect people to behave with each other and with other stakeholder groups. Guiding principles broadly define which types of behaviors are acceptable and which behaviors will not be tolerated. In particular, they describe how you will behave when faced with difficult situations or challenges.

Value propositions. These explain the value you provide to your organization’s different stakeholder groups, both internal and external. For example, why do customers buy from you? Why do employees come to work for your organization? What kind of return can shareholders expect? How does your community benefit from the work you do?

Destination points. These identify where your organization wants to go within a specified time frame. This is perhaps the most critical element in the whole process because the more clearly you define your desired end state, the greater your chances of getting there.

Areas of focus/strategies. These define, in a broad sense, how the organization will get to where it wants to go. They are the three to five areas everyone should be focused on to get to the destination points. What cuts across several destination points; where should the majority of energy be focused; what must everyone keep in mind as they make investments in people and other resources; and, what guides you on what to do and not to do are the core questions answered.

These five elements form an essential foundation for the strategic planning process. If even one of these bedrock elements is missing, your chances for success become marginal at best.

Once these elements are in place, the next step involves action planning and breakthrough modeling to determine what it will take to get to where you want to go. Here is where you get down to the nitty-gritty to figure out what organizational capabilities (systems, tools, processes, people and technologies) are needed to reach your destination points. Effective strategic planning also requires that you set goals and define team and individual accountabilities, as these link the big picture to individual goals and competencies.

Ultimately, strategic planning is like a jigsaw puzzle – all the pieces must be in place in order to complete the picture. The mission and guiding principles inspire and energize employees, while creating pride and connection throughout the organization. The value propositions provide a touchstone for staying focused on what matters to stakeholders. The destination points provide clear goals and milestones that provide the big picture employees want and need. And the strategies/areas of focus create alignment and ensure that everyone in the organization is working toward the same goal.

Have you got your five must-have’s in place? And is everyone clear on what they are?

Article by -

Holly is the CEO of THE HUMAN FACTOR, Inc. (www.TheHumanFactor.biz) and is a highly sought after and acclaimed speaker, business consultant, and author. Her unique approach to creating strategic agility, helping others go slow to go fast, will change your thinking

The Mad World of Innovation

2010-08-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

I believe it was Albert Einstein who once said that the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So I feel I’m in good company as I observe the sheer insanity of companies and the way they embrace innovation.

I’ve been watching several people I know Twittering and Blogging their observations from several innovation conferences recently and it finally dawned on me what’s been missing: anything at all new.

All the big takeaways, noteworthy points, and otherwise shareable insights have quite simply all been seen and done before. They’re all rehashed observations and reinvented wheels – some of which have been out for over 10 years – Which brings up the question – Is there a lack of innovation or originality in the innovation practice itself?

Maybe – maybe not – but I refuse to believe that there aren’t areas of innovation thought and practice that are still ripe for exploration and innovation of the core processes themselves. Instead, let me point the finger at a different potential culprit – organizational ignorance in picking their leaders.

As someone who’s been in the job market for senior innovation roles for a little while now – it’s been interesting to note that most job opportunities that have crossed my desk seem to end in one of two ways:

The company decides to hire someone internal despite a lack of any internal innovation skills or experience, believing that the right person will simply learn the necessary process expertise quickly enough to make it all work.

or otherwise the company decides not hire anyone at all due to budgetary cuts/changes in corporate priorities.

The second option implies a serious lack of understanding as to the power and importance of innovation – especially with regards to making sure the company has a future – or even a present for that matter. Even in a downturn as bad as the one we’re experiencing now – one would expect for companies to shorten the time horizon for innovation processes to deliver results – but not to eliminate them altogether – that’s just crazy. To be fair, most of the ones that have ended like this have ended with an intention to revisit this “innovation concept” again in the future – but that’s still pretty dumb, as the situation won’t get any better until you make core changes, until you change the rules of the game to better suit your strengths, until, in short, you innovate your way out of it.

However, I put to you that the first option is just as bad if not worse – as it implies that there is little or no value in innovation process expertise – despite all evidence to the contrary as to how tricky it can be to balance the rapid achievement of organizational goals with the engagement of social and human capital needed to fuel the innovation process. They would rather take someone who “understands the company” and attempt to teach them how innovation works than the other way around. I don’t know about you, but outside of certain government entities who don’t understand themselves how they get anything done – I don’t know of any company that is that complex that you can’t pick it up in a few weeks – are they trying to say that learning how to put together a comprehensive innovation program that engages the value chain and social networks as a whole to driving new sources of value that will generate results for the organization is easier than that?? Doesn’t make sense to me – but then again, I’m not the one making those kind of calls. For now at least…

The result then, is a continuous stream of new innovation “leaders”, making the same mistakes over and over again – and coming up with the same results (or lack of them) and ‘insights’ repeated over and over again. There are plenty of good innovation people out there – plenty with the knowledge, expertise, and ability to not only make an innovation program work – but to make it excel and deliver massive results. It’s no wonder that the companies that invest heavily in innovation are the ones who thrive and survive – they’re the ones who value the process expertise over industry expertise.

So here’s my wakeup call Corporate World – industry expertise counts for little or nothing in the innovation game! In fact – it can even frequently be a hindrance. It puts walls up where they might not need to be; tells you what you “can and can’t do”; what “will and won’t work” – it can be, and frequently is, in short, a barrier to innovation – the very thing you’re trying to achieve.

As a result, we get what we’ve been seeing on the conference circuit – a steady stream of people relatively new to the subject who are trying to assimilate the complexities of innovation and social networks from scratch – and as a result -progress in the innovation industry has been handcuffed – and corporate results with innovation have been mediocre at best as these people make the same mistakes all over again that the previous generation made – reinventing the wheel over and over again…

As Gary Jules sang: “I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take, When people run in circles it’s a very very… Mad World, Mad World”

Please stop running in circles everyone. Comments, as always, are very welcome.

This Article is by -

Boris Pluskowski is the Founder of The Complete Innovator where he regularly shares new ideas and best practices on how big companies can harness Innovation, Collaboration and Social Media to drive new sources of value throughout the enterprise.

Harsh Reality of Innovation

2010-08-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

Just came across this beautiful article and couldn't resist to share with you all, find original article here

Nothing like putting your heart and soul into innovation, and then getting this:

Man, tough audience. But very much in keeping with some the best advice on innovation. Which is, you can’t have innovation without some failure along the way. It’s inevitable.

That advice is both true, and glib. Innovation consultant Jeffrey Phillips catches the right spirit when he says:

“Another thing about ‘failure’ is that we try to kid ourselves that failure is a ‘good thing’ a learning opportunity. Well, not in most cultures.

This is the reality of innovation. It’s tough. The more disruptive an innovation, the tougher it gets. And we’re in the middle of seeing how it plays right now with Apple iPad and Google Buzz.

Let me ask you this: Do you personally think either the iPad or Buzz will be guaranteed successes for their respective companies? Be honest now.

My guess is you’re like most of us: I don’t know.

Well, truth be known, neither do Apple and Google. But they’ve got a history you’d bet on.

Apple and Google: Big Time Failures, Big Time Innovations

Both Apple and Google have had their share of duds in the market:

Obviously, these companies do not have a perfect record of successful innovations.

But they do have a record of pressing through failures and continuing to roll out innovations. In fact, they’re consistently ranked the best in the world:

It pays to stick-to-it in trying out innovations. But can everyone?

Does Your Company Really Want Radical Innovation?

In Psychology Today, a professor at the University of Michigan gets to the issue:

From vaccines to Velcro, many inventions were spawned from accidents, seeming failures. But when Fiona Lee, psychology and business professor at the University of Michigan, explored which conditions help people experiment with novel ideas, she uncovered an interesting phenomenon: “Managers talk a lot about innovation and being on the cutting edge, but on an individual level, many people are not willing to try new things.”

What’s holding us back? A fear of failure.

Think about your own reaction to the question of whether the iPad and Google Buzz will be successful. It’s easy enough to be uncertain as an observer. But imagine if you have to put shareholder capital in to it, affect your brand in the market and risk some career trajectories?

I will often read of the importance of taking risks and accepting some level of failure for companies to be innovative. This is very true. But it can be glib to summarily dismiss companies for not ‘getting it’. When they’re made up of people like you and me who possess ordinary… well, human characteristics.

Because how do you know when you’re iterating toward a true high-value innovation, or you’re just spinning your wheels? I’ll turn again to Jeffrey Phillips:

“As Edison and countless others have demonstrated, you rarely get it right the first time, and if you are stymied by early failure, then you’ll never find and implement the best ideas. Innovation, as has been pointed out by individuals with far more to say about it than me, will create some failures. Your job isn’t to avoid the failures, since you can’t predict them in advance, but to reduce the cost and impact of the inevitable failures. In other words, keep moving.”

As I said before, I can’t know for sure whether the Apple iPad or Google Buzz will be successful. But kudos to those companies for rolling out innovations that might fail. And in case you’re wondering whether allowing employees some latitude to fail is worth it, check out the 5-year stock performance of Apple and Google versus the S&P 500:

Let’s take this one out with the great speech from Teddy Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Hutch Carpenter is the Vice President of Product at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.

Building a better Innovation Business Model

2010-07-31T12:52:00.000-07:00

Whether you're a professional innovator or someone driving innovation to grow your business, chances are you need more support to get projects delivered to market.

Question: Does your innovation business model catalyze your goals or crush them?

When You Have To Deliver, You Learn To Deliver

In 1999, Jim Collins wrote a brilliant piece in the Harvard Business Review, "Turning Goals Into Results: The Power Of Catalytic Mechanisms." In it he addressed the problem that many managers face within their organization: they have a big goal but lack the organizational focus and courage to achieve it. Collins offered catalytic mechanisms as a potential solution.

By his definition, a Catalytic Mechanism is "the crucial link between objectives and performance, [the] galvanizing devices that translate lofty aspirations into concrete reality."

His article provided some poignant examples that span a wide range of industries. For this discussion, I'll break his thesis down into a simple analogy: If you're standing next to a lake and you have to catch a fish to eat, you will catch a fish.

Collins posits that this same philosophy can be applied to business problems simply by framing a firm's most ambitious goals in this type of scenario:

Step One: Translate your objective (I would like to catch a fish) into an imperative (I will catch a fish)

Step Two: Give it real teeth (or I will die)

Step Three: Get to work (start fishingâ€¦ with dynamite)

Our company translated this into a performance-based compensation model that provides us with a powerful catalytic mechanism - we needed to figure out how to generate true innovations quickly, consistently and across a wide range of categories.

And in so doing, it gave us a much better understanding of the core tenets of effective innovation.

Making the Leap from Idea to Marketable Innovation

There's a reason the number of ideas far exceeds the number of true innovations: The lightning strike is just the beginning.

Sure the blinding inspiration of a "eureka moment" is thrilling; but in reality, it's just the first step.

As any entrepreneur will tell you, the journey from conceptualization to commercialization is often when the real breakthrough thinking happens.

As a result, it's critical to have a well-defined understanding of what needs to be true for an innovation to get to market. Once you've defined "the how", the champion should surround herself with lateral-thinking people who can react quickly to new challenges without ever losing sight of the true vision.

Skin In The Game

The power of performance-based compensation is directly transferable to any innovation initiative. Giving people a material stake in an outcome will significantly increase your chances of succeeding.

Because when people need to eat, they will come up with brilliant ways to catch a fish.

Sometimes even without the dynamite.

For More

This video outlines benefits we've experienced with performance-based compensation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO6NMOXoZf8&feature=channel_page

Five Ways to Create Innovation Throughout Your Life

2010-07-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

When innovation is brought up in a business context, we mostly think about, well, the business. We think of innovations related to products, business models, go-to-market strategies and the like. This blog does a great job of identifying and promoting specific strategies and tactics for accelerating and maximizing innovation through those and other business-specific contexts.

But your business strategy is just one of many places where the right innovation approach can create incredible, positive changes in your life. Imagine what would happen if you made a specific point to innovate elsewhere?

Here are five specific places and contexts in your personal and professional life that, with the same approach to innovation, can make you happier, more fulfilled and more successful.

1. Innovate Your Career

Are you doing what you want to do? Are you learning new things every day? Do you feel comfortably challenged with the work on your plate? If not, it may be time to try something new.

If you were starting your career from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently? What risks would you take? How hard would you work in a different direction to achieve the job, the career or the business you dream of today?

What do you really want to be doing in five years? 10 years? Whatever that vision is, what do you need to do right now, this month, or at least before the end of the year to make progress towards that dream?

Playing with your career can mean playing with your livelihood, which is of course scary. But you spend at least 40 hours a week at work, working effectively on your career.

2. Innovate Your Management Style

How are you making your direct reports as productive, successful and satisfied as possible? For those who don’t work directly with you, how are you enabling them as best as possible to achieve their goals, and make both you and the company overall perform better?

Are you actively mentoring future leaders inside your company? How about outside? When you get requests for your time to help someone learn – whether or not they work directly for you – do you take the time to do it?

Do you actively use recognition strategies to praise and motivate your team? Not just bonuses and coffee gift cards, but do those you work with know on a regular basis that you value their work?

Think hard about how you would be best learn, innovate and be motivated as an employee, and make sure you’re innovating your management style to match that. Better yet, ask your employees directly how they learn, how they innovate, and how they’re motivated, and match that.

3. Innovate Your Personal Life

You do have a life outside of work, right? If not, let’s start there. How are you staying balanced and refreshed so that you’re working at your peak while on the job, but also living a rich, fulfilling life away from the office?

Put pen to paper and inventory the things you wish you had more time to do. If they’re important enough, you’ll make time for at least a handful.

What are the things you want to do in the next five years? Before you die? What are you doing right now to make those things possible? If you don’t act now (or at least prepare to act), you’ll never take advantage of the things you really want to be doing.

Explore that personal itch. Meet new people. Try new things. Mix things up.

4. Innovate Your Relationships

Think about the people most important to you – your family, your spouse, your close friends. Do you spend as much time with them as you want? Do you do the things with them you want to be doing?

Indulge me for a moment, and treat your personal relationships like a business problem. What’s your goal? What does success look like? Envision what that relationship would ideally look like moving forward. Now what’s your strategy to get there?

5. Innovate Your Future

OK, I cheated. This one’s really a combination of the first four above, but is perhaps the most important. You can keep doing what you’re doing today – follow the same career, keep the same friends, the same occasional convenient hobbies – and maybe that makes you happy.

But chances are, if you took a minute to think and innovate, you’d envision a world much different than the one you live now.

Article by -

Matt Heinz is principal at Heinz Marketing, a sales & marketing consulting firm helping businesses increase customers and revenue. Contact Matt atmatt@heinzmarketing.com or visit www.heinzmarketing.com.

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When Innovation Fails

2010-07-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

Hi, Came across this post and wanted to share,please find the original post here

"Innovation can never be risk-free, but you can certainly make sure you look before you leap."

Ever since innovation became the buzzword du Jour, a lot of people seem to have lost their ability to tell smart ideas from stupid ones. Case in point: the financial "innovations" (read: stunningly stupid loan products) that kicked off the trillion-dollar economic meltdown mess we're currently in. The simplistic notion that "new equals good" has often been a recipe for grand-scale disaster, just as it was in the dotcom debacle at the turn of the millennium. And when the doo-doo inevitably hits the fan, it's all too easy to level the blame at innovationper se rather than admit to being a bonehead. Here's why many ideas that are labeled "innovations" are just plain stupidity.

Simply put, innovation goes wrong (sometimes big time) when an organization over-commits to an idea before validating the key assumptions on which it is based. Let's take the infamous sub-prime mortgage. The assumption here was that a jobless, homeless person who is just out of jail and doesn't even have a bank account can afford to make mortgage repayments of any description, let alone horrendously overpriced ones.

The idea of selling mortgages to poor people with bad credit was clearly "new" given that banks have traditionally offered 30-year, fixed-rate amortizing home loans to people who looked like they could actually pay the money back. But going after this risky, low-end market segment with a ripoff financial product wasn't exactly what C.K. Prahalad had in mind when he talked about "the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid." And it turns out - duh! - that this particular "financial innovation" wasn't a very smart one (to put it mildly), and even less smart when used as the cornerstone for a multitrillion dollar house-of-cards based on endless derivatives of derivatives.

It's precisely big boondoggles like this one that give innovation a bad name. In fact, columnist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times that "financial innovation" is a phase that "should, from now on, strike fear into investors' hearts." Yet should the financial services industry - or any industry for that matter - now decide to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" when it comes to innovation?

Absolutely not. It's worth remembering that over the last couple of decades, innovation has given us a string of success stories in financial services:

Charles Schwab's online equity trading

Commerce Bank's open-all-day, seven-days-a-week business model

First Direct's branchless banking

Grameen Bank's micro-credit lending concept

PayPal's user-friendly, online-payment service

Umpqua Bank's people-centered retail environments

The difference with these opportunities is that they were all based on very solid assumptions about the viability and sustainability of the business model; they were not built on proverbial sand. That's why these innovations have created significant new value and wealth, instead of destroying it.

Unfortunately, there are all too many cases where companies have overcommitted to an idea that wouldn't even pass the sanity test. These tend to be ideas where the customer benefit is unclear or unimportant to people, or where the technology is not yet up to the task, or where the market is just not there, or where the business model is so stupid that it's dead on arrival. Instead of first checking the validity of critical assumptions on which the idea is based, sometimes a company (or even a whole industry) decides to jump from 10,000 feet without a spare parachute, hoping against hope that the thing will somehow work.

Take Iridium, Motorola's failed satellite telephone venture, which was built on a fundamentally flawed assumption about the size of the target market. Basically, Motorola totally underestimated the speed at which cellular coverage would spread. Their premise was that there would be huge regional gaps in the global network - parts of the world that would have no mobile phone coverage for a long time to come. That would have made Iridium the perfect answer. It turned out quite quickly that those regions would be very few and far between (you would practically have to be an Arctic explorer to need an Iridium phone!), so the target market soon shrank to insignificance. This is something Motorola should have known better.

Or take Webvan, the "oh-so-dotcom" online grocery business that burned through a billion dollars and went belly-up. There was nothing fundamentally flawed about the idea of online grocery shopping, as a host of other retailers have since proven. Rather, Webvan's massive failure was based on a whole series of flawed and untested assumptions around the customer value proposition, the economic engine, the value of partnerships, and the product and service offering.

Business history is full of such examples: from Coca-cola's infamous "New Coke", to GM's all-electric EV-1 project (which cost a billion dollars and sold only 700 vehicles), to all those other empty dot-com business models in the late 1990s - like Pets.com - that quickly disappeared. The lesson from all these disasters is to look before you leap. A company should first reduce the uncertainty surrounding critical project assumptions before committing irreversible and non-recoverable resources to an idea. The greater the uncertainty surrounding these assumptions, the greater the risk associated with any new opportunity. Therefore, the focus of an innovation project should initially be on learning rather than earning. It should be on launching experiments to test whether a business model makes sense or not, or whether a new technology will work or not, or whether customers would value the new service, or what they would be willing to pay for it, or which product configuration would work best, or which distribution channels would be most effective, and so on.

Clearly, innovation can never be risk-free. But the process of validating or invalidating these critical project assumptions should stop you from ever completely misreading the basic economics of an opportunity. It will make sure that hubris never gets the better of humility.

Breaking Innovation Barriers by Looking Beyond

2010-07-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

I came through this nice article and wanted share this with you all, find the original source here.

If you are a scientist or an engineer, you know firsthand that innovation is neither inexpensive nor straightforward. It is a long convoluted process that starts with investing copious amounts of money into scientific and market research. Furthermore, the desired end result is not always guaranteed. Several projects, if proven less than commercially viable, are halted before they even reach the developmental stage. Others that make it through the new product life cycle take years to be completed.

The importance of innovation is apparent everywhere. Companies need to constantly be in innovation-mode to remain competitive and become more productive. Government and non-government organizations, too, need to embrace innovation to progress forward.

So when innovation doesn't come easy, what can a company do? What can large multinationals manufacturing hosts of products do to prevent being "out-innovated"?

Proctor and Gamble was in a serious situation. At the turn of the millennium, its R&D productivity had somewhat stabilized, yet costs were increasing beyond top-line growth. Inflationary effects were being seen in everything, from labor costs to prices of equipment and raw materials Their existing innovation model, where pretty much everything from conceptualization to development was done in-house in their global research facilities, was proving to be costly.

The P&G management made a bold but wise move. It broke through its "invent-it-ourselves" model and started looking for innovation beyond its walls. It started actively tapping into the open innovation marketplace for patentable research projects. By offering prizes for valuable research data, inventions and other milestones to innovation, P&G was suddenly attracting qualified scientists all over the world.

Open innovation sounds like a rosy concept, but there are several challenges in adopting that model. For one, building awareness and reaching out to the right crowd of industry leaders with total credibility cannot happen overnight. Even for a Fortune 500 company such as P&G, building a global network of professionals in itself requires time and resources. It took P&G years to identify and grow its network of technology entrepreneurs, suppliers and scientists. Not only that, P&G was also tapping into other R&D companies to license research studies which did not get carried to the developmental stage.

To make things easier, P&G approached a third party agent, InnoCentive. The poster child of open innovation and crowdsourcing, InnoCentive provides research and development driven companies with an avenue to leverage its global pool of talent. With over 150,000 members possessing a variety of backgrounds and expertise, InnoCentive was an incredibly powerful tool for P&G to find solutions.

InnoCentive gave P&G the ability to post challenges at any stage of the development lifecycle. Hence, it can engage outside solvers across four different stages of the product development process - ideation, design, product prototype and final product delivery.

Partnering InnoCentive enabled P&G to circulate its technology briefs around in its network and receive hundreds of proposals for each. After careful evaluation, if a solutions is found, P&G's business development team contacts the producer to begin negotiations for licensing, collaboration or other deals.

A number of successful innovations have resulted from the P&G's open innovation efforts. Here are some remarkable ones:

P&G wanted to boost sales of Pringles potato chips. Its executives came up with a unique idea - to print trivia questions right on the chips and lure consumers into buying them for more than just the taste. To do that, however, they needed ink which wasn't only edible, but that did not break or change the taste of the chips. They did not know if it was worth investing into R&D for this unproven idea. So P&G sought solutions through global networks of scientists, academia and researchers. Eventually, an Italian professor came forth. He already had the ink-jet technology to printing images on cookies and cakes with edible dyes. P&G engaged him and adapted his technology to Pringles potato chips at a much smaller price and time scale.

In 2006, there was another product upgrade P&G wanted to develop. It wanted to product a "smart" dishwashing detergent, one that effectively displays when the amount of soap dropped into to a sink full of dirty plates is optimal. As with the first challenge, the in-house research required for this project was colossal. Through InnoCentive, P&G found a solution. Another Italian came up with a whole new invention. Right from her home laboratory, she created a dye that would turn the dishwater blue when the right amount of soap is added. For this ingenious solution, P&G awarded her $30,000 in prize money.

Another successful product was invented when an open innovation technology entrepreneur recommended a special material to P&G. The material, a type of foam produced by a German chemical giant is used for soundproofing and insulation in factories. Seeing that it was being sold in Japan, the entrepreneur contacted P&G wondering if it could be of any other use. P&G, recognizing its potential, approached the German firm to license the material. What followed was incredible- P&G and the German firm co-developed a hit product, the Magic Eraser.

In 2000, only 15% of P&G's new products had elements that came from outside the company. Today, the figure has gone up to 35%. Academia, subject matter experts, government laboratories, and research institutes all over the world are working with P&G to create and license their product innovations. By reaching out to a global pool of talent, P&G has truly overcome several barriers to innovation.

References

http://www.federicibusiness.com/images/Federici_PG0208.pdf

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5258.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS215811+22-Apr-2008+MW20080422

10 Must Read Books for Young Entrepreneurs

2010-07-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

Came across this post on Under 30 CEO the other day and had to share it in full. You can find the original post here.

Crush it – Gary Vaynerchuk

Do you have a hobby you wish you could indulge in all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night? Now is the perfect time to take that passion and make a living doing what you love. In Crush It! Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real interests into real businesses.

Gary spent years building his family business from a local wine shop into a national industry leader. Then one day he turned on a video camera, and by using the secrets revealed here, transformed his entire life and earning potential by building his personal brand. By the end of this book, readers will have learned how to harness the power of the Internet to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true.

Step by step, Crush It! is the ultimate driver’s manual for modern business.

The New Community Rules – Tamar Weinberg

Blogs, networking sites, and other examples of the social web provide businesses with a largely untapped marketing channel for products and services. But how do you take advantage of them? With The New Community Rules, you’ll understand how social web technologies work, and learn the most practical and effective ways to reach people who frequent these sites.Written by an expert in social media and viral marketing, this book cuts through the hype and jargon to give you intelligent advice and strategies for positioning your business on the social web, with case studies that show how other companies have used this approach.

Many consumers today use the Web as a voice. The New Community Rules demonstrates how you can join the conversation, contribute to the community, and bring people to your product or service.

Trust Agents – Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

This book is your guide to a new form of power broker–web natives who trade in trust, reputation, and relationships using tools you may never even have heard of. You will learn what you need to look for in such an agent for your business or how to become one yourself. Trust Agents is your guide to the deep end of meaningful relationships on the web.

The book explores how business people can use the Web’s new social software tools to build awareness, influence, reputation, and eventually authority. It focuses on methods of building trust and wielding influence, and how these efforts impact business processes and goals. In three parts, the book defines the landscape of this generation’s web, explains who trust agents are, and analyzes the mechanics of trust in today’s economy where reputation is key. Part career advice, part communications management, and part technology know-how, Trust Agents aims to deliver high level theory, actionable next steps, and stories and case studies to bolster the opinions and experiences of the authors.

Anatomy of Buzz Revisited – Emanuel Rosen

A new edition of the definitive handbook on word-of-mouth marketing, completely revised and updated for today’s online world. With two-thirdsnew material and scores of current examples from today’s most successful companies, The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited takes readers inside the world of word-of-mouth marketing and explains how and why it works. Based on over one hundred new interviews with thought leaders, marketing executives, researchers, and consumers, The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited shows how to:

* Generate genuine buzz both online and off.
* Encourage people to talk about your products and services—and help spread the word among their friends, colleagues, and communities.
* Adapt traditional word-of-mouth strategies in today’s era of Facebook, YouTube, and consumer-generated media.

Smart, surprising, and filled with cutting-edge strategies and insights, The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited is essential for anyone who wants to get attention for a product, message, or idea in today’s message-cluttered world.

Upstarts!: How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit from Their Success – Donna Fenn

Generation Y is creating startups at an unprecedented rate, and their approach to business is unlike anything you’ve seen. The generation described by the media as spoiled, entitled, even narcissistic, is proving these notions false every day. Inspired by the rock-star entrepreneurs of previous generations and driven by a burning desire to control their own destinies, GenY is rewriting the entrepreneurial playbook one cool startup at a time.

Inc. magazine writer Donna Fenn interviewed more than 150 young CEOs to learn what makes them tick. While upstarts are motivated by similar aspirations of past generations, their way of doing business is radically different—and it’s changing the way everyone must do business now.

Upstarts examines and analyzes this entrepreneurial revolution to reveal eight critical lessons every entrepreneur and marketer must learn. Fenn describes a generation of entrepreneurs that is highly collaborative and team-oriented. It’s quick and alert when it comes to new technologies. It’s hell-bent on changing the world. And it’s totally impatient with outmoded business models.

Viral Loop – Adam Penenberg

Many of the most successful Web 2.0 companies, including MySpace, YouTube, eBay, and rising stars like Twitter and Flickr, are prime examples of what journalist Adam L. Penenberg calls a “viral loop”–to use it, you have to spread it. After all, what’s the sense of being on Facebook if none of your friends are? The result: Never before has there been the potential to create wealth this fast, on this scale, and starting with so little.

In this game-changing must-read, Penenberg tells the fascinating story of the entrepreneurs who first harnessed the unprecedented potential of viral loops to create the successful online businesses–some worth billions of dollars–that we have all grown to rely on. The trick is that they created something people reallywant, so much so that their customers happily spread the word about their product for them.

All kinds of businesses–from the smallest start-ups to nonprofit organizations to the biggest multinational corporations–can use the paradigm-busting power of viral loops to enable their business through technology. Viral Loop is a must-read for any entrepreneur or business interested in uncorking viral loops to benefit their bottom line.

Career Renegade – Johnathan Fields

Renegade in the title is appropriate, especially if readers are searching for a traditional career guide, which this is not. Instead, former high-powered New York City lawyer turned serial entrepreneur Fields leans heavily on the 75 percent of employees who are dissatisfied with their jobs. The first part involves discovering one’s secret passion, via a few exercises. What makes the journey with this author worthwhile are his sections on determining the exact work path (yes, via research on the Internet) and on developing a business. The references and ideas will inspire; he also interviews quite a few renewed careerists, whether it’s the tale of the young mother who started the Young Rembrandts franchise or an artist who found her passion in creating edible art through her family-owned Rivera Bakehouse. Part 3 zeroes in on honing online knowledge and creating an authority figure, via such social networks as MySpace or through blogging and word of mouth. –Barbara Jacobs

B-A-M!: Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World – Barry Moltz

BAM! Is a no nonsense book that teaches companies why they want to deliver effective customer service in this self-service world and how to do it The book debunks the 20 common myths of customer service-from “The customer is always right” to “Customer service means the same thing to everyone,” to “Companies achieve customer service by under-promising and over-delivering”-myths that too many companies use automatically to run their customer service practices and policies without ever questioning them. BAM! replaces myths with a tactical approach that shows companies how to make more money through attitudes and actions that will help their customers feel satisfied in good times or bad.Creating satisfied customers is the only enduring competitive advantage left in a world market where virtually everything is a commodity. Forget the customer service platitudes. The only reason a company should offer excellent customer service is because it will make money for the business.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price – Chris Anderson

The New York Times bestselling author heralds the new future of business in Free. In his revolutionary bestseller, The Long Tail, Chris Anderson demonstrated how the online marketplace creates thriving niche markets, allowing products and eager consumers to connect in a way that has never been possible before. Now, in Free, he makes the compelling case that in many instances businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them. In order to succeed in the twenty-first century economy, Free is more than a promotional gimmick: It’s a business strategy that is essential to a company’s successful future.

In Free,Chris Anderson explores this radical idea for the new economy, and demonstrates how this revolutionary price can be harnessed for the benefit of both consumers and business alike.

The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff – Clara Shih

The ‘90s were about the World Wide Web of information and the power of linking web pages. Today it’s about the World Wide Web of people and the power of the social graph. Online social networks are fundamentally changing the way we live, work, and interact. They offer businesses immense opportunities to transform customer relationships for profit: opportunities that touch virtually every business function, from sales and marketing to recruiting, collaboration to executive decision-making, product development to innovation. In The Facebook Era, Clara Shih systematically outlines the business promise of social networking and shows how to transform that promise into reality

Right this minute, more than 1.5 million people are on Facebook. They’re interacting with friends–and talking about your brands. They’re learning about your business–and providing valuable information you can use to market and sell. In the Facebook Era, you’re closer to your customers than ever before. Read this book, and then go get them!

Eric Schmidt on technology, innovation & the global economy

2010-07-18T05:28:00.000-07:00

Feels great when your idea gets implemented :-(

2010-07-16T00:07:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,

Below is an article posted on silicon-India, regarding three young Indian talents who have created apps which is actually a smart information retrieval system application currently available for i-phone, i-pad and android.These three Indian talents Archana Patchirajan, Puneet Mehta and Sonpreet Bhatia actully own a company callled "MyCityWay".What feels gr8 is that they are all indian and my idea was worth millions of dollars but what feels bad is that someone else had owned your idea.Well COnggrats to young entrepreurners and wish their idea goes long way up.

Article from Silicon India :

New York: Three Indians expatriates, Archana Patchirajan, Puneet Mehta and Sonpreet Bhatia, the winners of NYC BigApps have come out with their own company MyCityWay for creating inventive, effective and commercially viable application to render information to the New York.They have thus rung the ceremonial bell in Nasdaq.

MyCityWay apps for the mobile device invented by them, offers information to over 50 resource centres in the city like restaurants, nightlife, hotels, traffic, public transport, safety and green efforts. It acts like a travel guide within the city.

The application's success led to the creation of the company with the same name of the app.

Patchiranjan, Co Founder and Partner of MyCityWay said, "As a startup company, we are delighted to be building a product that will enable the creation of smarter cities - cities that allow active interaction with residents and visitors through our apps,"

Gaining presence in 10 cities like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, DC and London, MyCityWay now intends to spread its wings across 40 cities in the next four months.
Sonpreet Bhatia reveals that, "Police departments from a couple of cities are seeking our help to include relevant safety tips from them within our city based apps,"

Google and Apple are the currently the customers for MyCityWay apps which can be downloaded on their iPhones, iPads and all Android based phones.

Puneet Mehta remarks, "You can easily plan your vacation in New York city using the application on a flight in offline mode,"

These three immigrants had moved to U.S. a decade ago and have now left their jobs to concentrate more on building up their own company.

Human Brain : An unusual computer

2010-07-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

The human mind is the most incredible computer it would be possible to imagine. Yet no one knows where it is! Scientists have made detailed studies of the brain, but have been unable to locate where the mind is.

Our brain is composed of some 14 trillion brain cells! A very few people are making use of perhaps less than 10% of their mental capability. Most of us are probably using nearer 1%. So the potential we have is virtually unlimited.

For our purposes, imagine that the brain is in two parts: the Conscious mind and the Subconscious (or Inner) mind. The conscious mind does all our day to day thinking, our communication with others and general thoughts each day of our lives. Do you realise that you are thinking at the rate of about 1,200 words a minute?

The Subconscious mind looks after all our involuntary functions: the beating of our hearts, the breathing of our lungs. It also has stored in it every single experience and every thought we have ever made from the moment we were born. Some people believe that it also contains all the memories of our past lives as well. As it contains memories of everything that has ever happened, we can use it to locate information we need. For instance, you may be walking down the street and suddenly bump into someone you haven`t seen for a long while. Whilst talking, you are frantically thinking of their name, and suddenly it will come to you, hopefully whilst your are still in conversation!

If it is something that occurred many years ago, your subconscious mind may have to spend a long time locating the necessary information. That is why we can sometimes have a problem when we go to bed. In the morning the answer will suddenly pop into our heads.

Admittedly, it doesn`t work exactly the way we want it to. Yet our brain is perfect, it remembers and files away everything. Sometimes, though, our recall is faulty. When something is “on the tip of our tongue” our brain is not working as well as we would like it ot. The best way to handle this is to temporarily “forget” what we are trying to remember and soon it will come back to us whilst we are thinking about something completely different. If you are constant absent-minded, it would pay to take a memory training course. (contact me)

There is a third part of our mind also. This is the Super-Conscious mind. Hardly anything is known about it, but this is where everything really important happens. Ideas come from here. So does creativity, and ESP. (Extra Sensory Perception) When you come up with a good idea, it comes directly from your Super-Conscious mind, through your Sub-Conscious mind to your Conscious mind, and it is then up to you to act upon it. Your Super-Conscious mind is your creative force, and is the most important part of your mind. It contains all the answers to anything you may ever want to know. Writers, artists, composers, inventors, clairvoyants, and all sort of other people use this part of their mind when doing whatever it is they do. Sometimes these people feel totally inspired. A composer may start on a melody and then, all of a sudden, the rest of the tune just comes with no apparent effort on his part. It has all come from directly from the Super-Conscious mind.

Your Super-Conscious mind contains all the information of the universe and you have access to it whenever you want. All you have to do is ask.

You have already used it many, many times. Say, for instance, that you have a major problem that has to be resolved the following day. You worry about it and think about it, and find it hard to get to sleep as it is still bothering you. When you wake up the following morning, the answer suddenly pops into your head. “Eureka” you cry and you happily go and solve the problem. Where did the answer come from? You did not have it when you fell asleep. It was not in your Conscious mind, nor was it in your Sub-Conscious. What happened was, while you were asleep, the Sub-conscious contacted the Super-Conscious mind and asked for the answer. Next time you have a problem of this sort, tell your Sub-Conscious mind about it and say that you need an answer by a certain time.

Overnight is fine, but two days would be better. Don`t tell it how you want the problem resolved. Just ask for the answer and confidently expect it to come. Ask again several times during the time limit you have set, and your Super-Conscious mind will solve your problem.

Why you came to this world ?

2010-07-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

Is there a limit that can be defined for human mind?, when this question was put up in stone age the thoughts were “yes”, our primates could not have even thought of “fire” and “wheel”. In the process of evolution our understanding about our environment increased, and we kept making new things but that was not innovation that was the need. We made weapons to protect ourselves and hunt for food, fire, dwelling places, cloths and started human civilization and slowly we kept developing, making things more and more complex. We moved to a very different age, in span of some 20000 years we have reinvented whole world, we discovered new planets, built complex civilization, raised power in air ,water and on ground. In this time span out understanding of different subjects increased tremendously. Humans unlike any other living creatures have gained supremacy and utter supremacy over any other living creatures, what is the reason behind this type of development. If human have evolved over millions of years, so are other creatures, what was the most unique in Humans. It’s the brain we own.

If the same question is reframed today “is there a limit to what we can do”, answer won’t be “yes”. It’s our brain that gives us seamless power, to think and to develop. People always wonder whether it is possible, yes of course it is. Once you start believing that “yes it is possible”, your mind starts searching for the way to make that stuff possible and this builds bridge between IMPOSSIBLE and POSSIBLE. There are millions of examples to quote and you can see your own life experiences to find out many.

Now this question is for those who fear from success, my dear success is in your hand, just ask one question to yourself, that why you came to this world? and pen down your answer in a golden book, that’s the key to your success.

Rachit Gupta

Jugaad technology and Systematic Innovation

2010-07-11T06:25:00.000-07:00

raveling ticketless by train in India is not uncommon. In fact, traveling so in local trains is a matter of pride and adventure for many. After all, the likelihood of getting caught is low. Even so, sometime ago, an insurance scheme was launched – surreptitiously one presumes – for ticketless travelers. By paying a small monthly premium, if caught, the penalty for ticketless travel would be paid by the insurer and the traveler was free to continue his/her travel (ticketless, presumably). This might well be an apocryphal story but it illustrates the infinite capacity of the Indian mind to “opportunistically” innovate or invoke Jugaad (a term that’s since become fashionable internationally). Another common example is the case of washing machines being used to churn milk to make butter in rural Punjab. There are scores of examples of such Jugaad innovations but hardly any for what one might call Systematic Innovation, which is typically the source of major innovations on a sustained basis.

Why is that the case? Rishikesha Krishnan, Professor of Corporate Strategy and Policy and Jamuna Raghavan Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore has attempted to answer this in his recent slim book From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation – The challenge for India. While there have been umpteen studies on Innovation in India including several pop-books on examples of breakthrough innovation in India, this is perhaps the first book that lists the critical ingredients required to generate sustained innovation.

For instance, the book looks at socio-cultural barriers to innovation (e.g. hierarchical structures and a non-questioning education system) and examines the policy required to foster a culture of innovation. It makes a set of detailed recommendations that policy makers would do good to read. In spite of the so called lack of innovation, India grows. It is said that the country grows at night while the government sleeps! And this is exemplified by the growth of the Indian IT industry that grew before the government understood what it was.

Policy has a huge impact and the appropriate implementation of policy even more so. For example, thanks to policy there’s just one Indian technology company Tejas Networks competing in the Indian telecom equipment market, the world’s fastest growing one. Tejas is all of about $150m in size after 10 years while Chinese competitors like Huawei (supported by the Chinese government) will do over $3billion this year in India!

The only other player, Indian state owned, ITI is deep in the red. Thanks to policy, there were till very recently no Indian private sector companies catering to Indian defense needs and India is the world’s largest importer of defense equipment. The role that defense has played in the development of an innovation culture in the US, Israel and even China cannot be understated. Even so, Indian companies are taking baby steps in partnership with international companies. India produces the world’s largest number of movies and yet there’s no home grown technology (including special effects, equipment etc). India is a world leader in remote sensing satellite technology and yet this and other technologies developed by the state funded labs are not commercialized because of the architecture of these labs and thanks to serious policy flaws.

Socio-cultural barriers to innovation are not just an Indian thing – fear of failure and the social acceptance of failure – but rather an Asian phenomenon or even a non-American one. Yet, Korea and Japan are innovative countries, far more than India. China today, credit to policy, is investing huge sums in R&D, education and in developing home-grown technologies. Policy, including laws and bureaucratic hurdles, is therefore more critical an area for reform. Economic growth, liberalization and globalization will address the issue of socio-cultural barriers by enabling the private sector creation of a friendly ecosystem.

The presence of a market governed by laws (for example, taxation, setting up and exiting companies) is an important area as well. Over the past 19 odd years, India has cautiously shed its socialist trappings and decided to embrace market capitalism. The results are there to see. In addition, India is slowly moving towards a single market governed by a single taxation system for goods and services. For innovation to flourish in a friendly policy environment, an enabling infrastructure must also be present. In an energy deficient and impoverished country like India, shouldn’t there by serious policy measures actively promoting development of clean technologies? Shouldn’t small and medium companies be encouraged by means of access to capital and markets? For those interested in seeing systematic innovation in India, it is important to appreciate the role and impact of policy. This book makes a good case for such policy changes.

POWER OF THE MIND

2009-09-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

Whatever the mind can

conceive and believe, it can achieve.

-Napoleon Hill
The above quotation from Napoleon Hill is extremely precise.
The basic principle is that whatever your mind can imagine... it can create. How does your mind do this? What your mind thinks, sees, believes, feels is all sent to your subconcious mind -- it's great partner, the real power within you. Your Subconcious Mind then works with the universe and creates your reality based on the messages that began in your mind. But its not enough to simply imagine it and then hope it happens. That's not the way it works. If you can imagine it you can achieve it -- but you need to know how to use the power of your mind and subconscious mind. Even Napoleon Hill tells you this in every one of his books. But he doesn't tell you how to use all your powers.
Your mind can create wonderful things for you -- if you know how to use that power and how to send the right messages to your subconcious. Most people don't know how to do this. Instead, you go through life never really using the power of your mind and subconscious mind.
Did you know that doctors now firmly believe that 75% of all sickness and disease start in the mind? 75-Percent! That's a very large amount. That means that 75% of all the people who are sick today -- are only sick because they did not know how to use the power of their mind and subconscious mind. Doctors will even tell you that most sickness and disease are caused by stress - which starts in the mind.
Scientists have long said that we only use 10% of our mind power. 10-percent -- that's it. Think of going through life only spending 10-percent of your salary? Could you do it? No! Yet you go through life only using 10% of the power of your mind. That 10-percent is creating 75% of all sickness because we don't even know how to use it properly.
Now imagine if you just used 10% of our mind's power correctly? What would happen? What would happen if we learned to use 90% of our mind's power correctly? Imagine if we could properly direct our subconscious mind? The results would be astounding!
Your mind is an incredible power -- but no one ever taught you how to use this power. Throughout your entire life you've been taught how to do everything but no one ever taught you how to use your mind. In this powerful e-course and Mp3 you will learn how to harness, direct and instruct the your subconscious mind - and you will begin to utilize the full potential of your mind. You will use the power of your mind and subconscious mind to create the life you want.
Napoleon Hill taught us that if we think properly we can grow rich. But he wasn't just talking about financial gain. He was talking about making our lives rich. My Subconscious Mind Power training e-course and Mp3 goes further than Napoleon Hill because it teaches you how to use your mind so that you continually know how to think and grow rich.
In order to Create the things you want in life you must first take control of your mind. It doesn't matter what else you do. If you don't learn to work with your mind -- nothing else will work. I have seen people very close to me ruin their lives because they don't want to use the power of their mind. No matter what I tell them they refuse to take control of their mind. They refuse to work with it and use it to its full potential. I have seen people struggle and then tell me "that's just the way life is. It was meant to be." Let me make one thing clear: NOTHING IS MEANT TO BE. NOTHING IS WRITTEN. YOU CREATE EVERYTHING. YOU DO THIS WITH THE POWER OF YOUR MIND THAT YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE!

Blocks to creativity

2009-09-18T11:03:00.001-07:00

here are many blocks to creativity. This is a short article that describes the three main domains of such blocks: the environment, other people and, ultimately, ourselves. The response to creative blocks is sometimes called blockbusting.

Environmental blocks

Some blocks occur in our environment. For example, dress codes and tidy offices at work are all subtle signals that remind us that we must conform, even in our thinking. Most of the time this is not a bad thing, but when we want to be creative it can be subtly obstructive, even when we are working alone. If you want to be creative, it can be a good idea to go offsite.

Environments can be supportive as well as obstructive, and you can deliberately build an environment that are full of creative stimuli--or maybe just very relaxing. Effective creative environments can vary with people and moods, so you may want to be able to experiment with your surroundings so you can build the most effective environment you can.

People blocks

Many blocks come from other people. We are highly social creatures and even the thought that a complete stranger may find us ridiculous is enough to make most of us clam up. We are also competitive and judgemental which can easily lead us to evaluating others and their ideas, even when we consciously know the corrosive effect it will have on them.

Psychologist Carl Rogers said we should create two conditions for people:

Psychological safety by accepting the person, empathising and not evaluating them.
Psychological freedom to think, feel and contribute fully.

This is why group creativity is particularly tricky and why one of the basic brainstorming rules is 'no judgement'. If you do not trust your co-creators, you might as well all go home. It is also one reason why it is useful to have a neutral facilitator run the session.

Internal blocks

The final and most pernicious sources of creative blocks is - ourselves. More accurately, it is our subconscious and that little voice that warns us of the dangers of unconventional thought.

Many of these blocks come from our past and are programmed in from an early age. We are taught to follow the rules, be logical and not rock the boat. Our parents, teachers and peers have all helped us put some powerful psychological blocks in place to keep us on the straight and narrow socially-acceptable road. Most of the time this is perfectly useful, but when we want to be creative, it is just a darned nuisance.

In the final analysis, all blocks are internal, although the people and things around us can still make it easier or harder to get into a creative frame of mind.

Blockbusting

'Block-busting' is a term that is used to describe deliberate actions or thoughts that are used to overcome our creative blocks. Many of the creative tools are specifically designed to get past your internal blocks and let out your creative self, for example by deliberately introducing unconventional stimuli.

For example, a creative skill that children use is play, where suspension of disbelief and open exploration is the norm. As adults we sometimes consider it to be beneath us, or worry that others will judge us if we 'stoop to childlike behaviour'. If we can overcome this irrational fear and take on a playful frame of mind, we can re-open this valuable avenue of exploration.

An attempt to define Innovation

2009-05-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

Probably there are as many definitions of innovation as the number of supposed experts on the field around the world. Reading through my books and papers, though, I realized that I had no comprehensive list of the many definitions I have ever being in contact with, therefore I decided to create one.

First of all, here is my own definition of innovation: “invention refers to new concepts or products that derive from individual’s ideas or from scientific research. Innovation, on the other hand, is the commercialization of the invention itself.”

Below you will find some of the first definitions I managed to collect, I will try to add to the list in the near future:

“The act of introducing something new” (the american heritage dictionary)

“A new idea, method or device” (Webster online)

“Change that creates a new dimension of performance” (Peter Drucker)

“The introduction of new goods (…), new methods of production (…), the opening of new markets (…), the conquest of new sources of supply (…) and the carrying out of a new organization of any industry” (Joseph Schumpeter)

“Innovation is a new element introduced in the network which changes, even if momentarily, the costs of transactions between at least two actors, elements or nodes, in the network” (Regis Cabral)

“The three stages in the process of innovation: invention, translation and commercialization” (Bruce D. Merrifield)

“The ability to deliver new value to a customer” (Jose Campos)

“Innovation is the way of transforming the resources of an enterprise through the creativity of people into new resources and wealth” (Paul Schumann)

“Innovation does not relate just to a new product that would come into the marketplace. Innovation can occur in processes and approaches to the marketplace” (David Schmittlen)

What about you, what is the best definition of innovation in your opinion?