True Innovation

Below are 3 great discussions by 3 great minds on innovation. They will challenge you to question your process, environment and what you think about the conventions of innovation. Godin, Kawasaki & Semier are the rockstars of innovation and I think they bring home the bacon in these 3 speeches; here's what I took away.

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain
- You're all creative but your job isn't to "be creative", it's "to ship" or bring your product or service to market. Thrashing early benefits your business because it means you won't sabatoge your work right before your about to send it to market. This human tendency is a primal impulse that we must fight so that we can be successful.
- We are all creative. We try to change the status quo, we come up with a creative idea but never commit to it or execute.
- Being a genius is getting the lizard brain to shut up long enough to over come resistance.
- Do a lot of thinking, scenario analysis, arguement & discussion up front because once you get over the initial hump you are going to finish (ship.)

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain from 99% on Vimeo.

Guy Kawasaki: 10 Steps to Innovation
1. Make Meaning. Decide you want to change the world for the better. This will make you money, bring you success.
2. Create a succinct mantra. It should be based on why your product should exist. It should be 3 words in length.
3. Jump to the next Curve. Define business in terms of a benefit you provide instead of what you do. True innovation happens because you jump to the next curve not because you get 10% better on your current curve.
4. Roll the D.I.C.E. Is your product: Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Elegant?
5. Don't Worry, Be Crappy. Don't make your product perfect, at a certain point just ship it. Get it out and then start to make revisions.
6. Let 100 Flowers Blossom. Unitended people will use your product in unintended ways. Embrace it.
7. Polarize people. Create passion in people. Some people will love your product or service, some will hate it. It's ok not to be loved by everyone.
8. Churn. Improve your product/service. Create better versions by listening to how people want it to change.
9. Niche yourself. Find a specific market, be unique and be valuable.
10. 10 / 20 /30 Rule. Great communication is simple communication. When creating a ppt deck use 10 slides, present yourself in 20 minutes and don't use a font smaller than 30 point.



Ricardo Semier
It's been 100 years, why haven't we invented a car that parallel parks by turning the wheels 90 degrees perpendicular to the curb? Why hasn't office structure ever changed, why do we still work 9 to 5 sitting in a cube? Why do decisions have to be based on metrics instead of intuition even when intuition works so surprisingly well and metrics are such poor indicators? Here are a few other points made in Semier's 45 minute talk.
- Intuition: When playing chess Big Blue can calculate 4 million possible chess moves in the one minute time limit it has to make each move; yet it still loses to a chess pro who can only think 4 or 5 moves ahead. This analogy equates to business because the human mind has the capacity to make great decsions but corporations do not tolerate decisions made on intuition.
- The capitalist model rewards growth but growth has never been related to the success of a company.