If you want to be notified when the book is available, go to our Innovation Architect website and leave your email.

One-day Workshop: Innovation Architect
On June 6th (the day before the forum), Paddy Miller and I will host a one-day Innovation Architect workshop, aimed at experienced innovation leaders. The workshop is a concentrated version of our regular program and also includes lunch sessions during the Forum.

Keynote speech – Innovation Architect
On June 7th, we are featured as keynote speakers at the forum, presenting our work on the Innovation Architect and sharing a few insights from our forthcoming book. We will be sharing the stage with a great line-up of speakers this year, including Clayton Christensen, Tony Hsieh, Daniel Pink, Roger Martin and Paola Antonelli.

Red Thread Breakfast
On the morning of June 8th, we host a ‘Red Thread’ breakfast at IESE which is open for all Forum participants. Apart from some good breakfast grub, the Red Thread session will provide something which is often missing from big seminars – namely some concrete take-aways about how to apply the insights from the forum to your own situation.

You can find more information at IESE’s website.

Watch the video on IESE’s website.

Excerpt below – link to full article at the bottom.

Stealthstorming: Making innovation happen under the radar

Creativity isn’t about crayons. It is about finding a way to adopt creativity to your workplace – and that often entails leaving the more flamboyant methods behind in favour of a subtler, more pragmatic approach.

Here is how it normally goes: A manager, challenged with making his or her organization more innovative, sets in motion a range of initiatives. A fun and energizing workshop is organized; a new framework is introduced; brainstorming tools are taught and wild ideas encouraged. The manager also starts some kind of online idea contest – “Submit your ideas for improving our company!” It looks like a great start on the journey towards a creative culture.

And then, after the initial excitement – comes the silence. The workshop didn’t change anything. The brainstorming tools aren’t used. The new innovation buzzwords are received with surprising coolness by the front-line employees. And with slowly dawning horror, the manager finds that people have started to think of innovation not as a serious value add, but as the ‘Department of Light Entertainment’.

The answer is what we call Stealthstorming. Stealthstorming, in essence, is about making innovation happen under the radar. It is guerilla warfare, waged with ideas. It is a radical thinker dressed in a suit and a tie. It is when you abandon all the usual trappings of creativity – multi-coloured hats, flamboyant workshops, cheesy change management techniques – and sneak under the corporate defences to make it happen.

The successful stealthstormers we have studied follow some simple, if counterintuitive, rules when they make innovation happen. [...]

Read the full text: Download the article as a PDF or read it online at Developing Leaders.

1. Not knowing where you want to go
2. Thinking communication is enough
3. Chasing free lunches only
4. Jumping into action
5. Thinking ‘fear of change’ is the problem
6. Treating innovation as a one-man, one-idea show

Read the article (PDF)

Barcelona: March 16 – 17
New York: June 6 – 8 (in conjuction with the World Innovation Forum)

More information and registration here.

Any idiot can learn from a wise man, but it takes a wise man to learn from an idiot. Learning the latter is useful, because while wise men are rare, you will never run out of idiots.

On our recent Innovation Architect course in New York, we shared three book recommendations for people with an interest in innovation:

Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
A great book on what is perhaps the most fundamental problem in management: how do you change behavior? The Heath brothers present a useful three-part framework for achieving this, focusing on logic, emotions, and the environment.

Game Changing Strategies by Constantinos C. Markides
Markides show how companies can get better at executing radical or game-changing ideas, providing alternatives to the now-classical ‘divide and conquer’ model introduced by Clayton Christensen. Great read for those with an interest in innovation strategy.

The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson
Johansson explains how breakthrough ideas originate in what he calls ‘intersections’, i.e. meeting places for different ideas, fields and ways of thinking. Very relevant for Innovation Architects who struggle to get fresh thinking into their companies.

One of our collaborators, Henrik Werdelin, was just listed by Fast Company as one of the 10 most creative people on Twitter, along with Evan Williams (Twitter founder), Neil Gaiman (author and artist) and others:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1650139/the-most-creative-people-on-twitter