Innovation & Learning Loop

In recent years I've often heard the words " innovation " and "creativity" used interchangeably. Sometimes mastery and creativity are lumped together as well. But as a technologist, artist and agile coach I believe there is value in differentiating these terms in order to foster each of them. Why? Because a creation can be beautiful, "one of a kind" and highly customized without being innovative (and vice versa) and as such still has great value. To illustrate the difference I will use realist oil painting, another genre I'm familiar with. As a practiced artist, I have the tools and skills to paint oil portraits that are completely customized.  What makes them creative is that they are designed and crafted as a one of a kind object. By capturing a person's likeness in paint by hand, a conservator can not only distinguish between my work and that of other artists but they can also distinguish between two paintings by me of the same subjec...

Whether you are new or "used to" Design Thinking, there is value in understanding the model taught at Stanford and designed by David Kelly and Tim Brown. If you only have 5 minutes, watch the video above, read below and click on the blog article link. If you have more time and are ready to go deeper - skip to the end of this article for a link to the free Stanford design thinking virtual crash course through the dschool.  Here is a useful blog post by neo mobile  and introductory material describing design thinking. Are you ready to learn more?  Here is a f ree design thinking virtual crash course on design thinking through Stanford University's dschool . Thnaks for sharing this!  And now ... my 2cents. Why is this important?  For career creatives and innovative teams, the flow of "Design Thinking" will seem familiar. Parts of the mindfulness and the experimentation loop (empathize, define ideate, prototype, test) may be built...

In this video Alexander Osterwalder makes some great points and provides us with simple tools for use by entrepreneurs including his  Business Model Canvas  referred to in his book Business Model Generation . "No Business Plan survives the first contact with customers" - Steve Blank "The Plan is useless but the planning is everything" Dwight Eisenhower He Referred to Dan Roam and his books In this video talk Dan speaks about combining the verbal and visual for "ViVid". It's a set of tools that help us create visuals to work with our words. "Whoever best visualizes the problem is most likely to solve the problem"."the Person who comes up  They tend to get funding, feedback and help from others. That's because visualizing the problem helps map it out, shows that they understand the problem and can get help. Dan Roam: Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don't Work from BrightSightGroup on Vimeo . Dan Roam's Vi...

Interesting book I haven't read ... yet =) If you've read this, drop me a line and tell me what you think. The Imagineering Pyramid by by Louis J Prosperi