The Daily Innovator

Principled Innovation Blog coming soon!

Dear TDI Readers:

As most of you know, I have not posted to this blog for a few months and I have decided not to post to it again after this evening.  Instead, I am launching the Principled Innovation Blog, which is integrated with my company's new website that will launch in the next ten days.

When the new blog is live, you will be able to reach it at http://www.principledinnovationblog.com.  As of this evening, this URL will take you to a Go Daddy parked domain page.

I've really enjoyed writing this blog and I want to thank you for reading it.  The Principled Innovation Blog will be a little bit different from this one.  On the new blog, I'll talk more about my company and my work, along with my continued focus on innovation and associations.  In addition, I'll be posting more of my more random thoughts about life, with an eye toward provoking discussion in a more humorous fashion.

At this point, I plan to keep this blog up and available as an archive site, rather than making its posts part of the new blog.  For me, the Principled Innovation Blog is a clean slate, a chance to try out a new voice and new ideas.  I may reference something from this blog from time to time. of course, but mostly I'll be starting fresh.  I'm looking forward to the challenge and I hope you'll enjoy the experience right along with me!

Jeff

Dump innovative now!

A hat tip to The Innovation Insider for this post confirming the basic uselessness of the word "innovative."  Long ago, I advised colleagues, clients and audiences to stop using this word because it was essentially meaningless.  CEOs and executives make their companies sound more interesting and attractive by spicing up their speeches, annual reports and web sites with descriptions of so-called "innovative" initiatives and projects.  All too often, these efforts are nothing more than yesterday's ideas repackaged as new or different.  Moreover, when everything from audio/video equipment, to consulting solutions, to food, to pavement can be described as "innovative," how can we effectively calibrate our understanding?

My advice:  rather than trying to be "innovative," be about innovation.  You can't change your organization's future with adjectives, but you will with action.

Join the iPod Economy!

Check out this great post on the Church of the Customer Blog about the wedding photographers who now offer what they call "iPod Proofs" to newlywed couples.  What a fantastic idea!  (I actually like Ben's suggested name better, but it is still a great idea.) 

At the Arizona Heart Institute, doctors are using video iPods to communicate with and educate patients.  (You can access the Institute's podcast site here.) 

These are just two examples of how organizations are using iPods either to create new market opportunities and/or create new value for customers.  How can your organization join the iPod Economy?

Quotations to innovate by #37

Here's another great quotation to inspire your work today!  Tim is absolutely right, of course.  The question is whether we will choose to think about our work in this way, as well as convince others to do the same.  If innovation naysayers are left with no alternative but to reframe their own thinking, we've made a step in the right direction!

"Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems."                               
                                                                    —Tim Brown, CEO, Ideo

(From Fast Company First Impression newsletter)

Will you ask the bold question?

Just wanted to make TDI readers aware of a post I made to the PCMA 2006 Philadelphia Weblog that should be of interest.  I'm serving as blogmaster for PCMA's Annual Meeting, and my hope is that the meeting's attendees will have the courage to ask the bold question.  I hope you do as well. 

Take the TDI Pledge!

Happy 2006!  It's a brand new year and time for TDI readers to take the The Daily Innovator's Pledge.  This is a very straightforward little pledge, one that should be quite easy for you to remember and recite to yourself each morning:

• I will challenge myself to innovate everyday.
  
• I will challenge others to innovate everyday.
  
• I will challenge naysayers to think differently everyday.
  
• I will challenge my organization to embrace innovation everyday.
  
• I will challenge myself to innovate everyday.

As you can see, this pledge begins and ends with your individual commitment and your personal responsibility.  This is the only way it can be.  The Daily Innovator must be the driving force for innovation, and must seek to inspire others with a compelling vision of what is possible through innovation.  If you can innovate everyday, in ways big or small, the cumulative effect of your efforts over time will produce an irresistible force that will wear down the immovable objects of deep-seated intransigence and risk aversion.

So welcome to the new year!  It's time for you to get started on what's next.  Will you take the pledge?

Happy New Year!

It's 2006 everyone...let's make the most of it!

Do over

At this same time every 12 months, everybody gets a do over.  In just a few hours, when the clock strikes midnight tonite and the calendar rolls over to 2006, we get the kind of clean slate opportunity that only a new year can offer.  With the arrival of each new year, there is a small break with the past, from which emerges the possibility and the inspiration for renewing ourselves and every dimension of the lives we lead.

What will you do with your do over?  How will you and your life be different one year from today?

Food for thought.  And while you're reflecting on these big questions, please accept my best wishes for a very safe and peaceful New Year's Day holiday!

Quotations to innovate by #36

Okay, I've promised to fill in the archive with posts for all the days I've missed in the last couple of months.  It is my intention to do that, and so I'm projecting ahead on the number of quotations I'll include from the middle of October to the middle of December in order to catch up.  I'm figuring it will be 24 quotations, including this one from Sir Winston Churchill, which I just heard from author Frans Johansson at ASAE & The Center's Great Ideas Conference in Orlando:

If you're going through hell, keep going.

I think these words should be something of a mantra for daily innovators.  It can be hellish trying to persuade people to embrace innovation.  But when things get tough, we cannot simply give up on our efforts.  Doing so will leave us in right where we don't want to be:  frustrated, disappointed and without having made any real progress on the work of innovation.  So my advice is to not lose sight of the big picture.  The naysayers will try to distract you, but in the long run, the daily innovators will prevail!

Another blog...

No, don't worry.  I'm not launching YET ANOTHER blog!  I simply want to make TDI readers aware of another blog to which I contribute called The Association Renewal Blog.   It is the blog of my joint venture consulting practice, Association Renewal LLC, and it was just included in a list of Ten Cool blogs for the association community.

The focus of The Association Renewal Blog is on associations, of course, but I think that Jamie Notter (my Association Renewal business partner and blog co-author) and I write about issues that have relevance beyond associations.  I want to bring this blog to your attention and encourage you to check it out.  To help make it more accessible for you, I have added a feed for the blog to the TDI sidebar (scroll down) so you can see the five most recent posts.  Thanks in advance for giving it a chance.  Let me know what you think!