Innovation in practice: stakeholder mapping

A short-form practical guide to using innovation techniques in the workplace. This time, it’s how to ensure you understand your stakeholders

Innovation in practice: ensuring focus in meetings and workshops

A short-form practical guide to using innovation techniques in the workplace. This time, it’s how to ensure focus in meetings.

User journeys need direction, not a dead end

It’s not the user journey that’s the problem, it’s the execution of the tool.

User journeys are not good for innovation

Our lenses got more and more focused on discrete areas of the journey to the point we’re getting seriously myopic.

Don’t call me “entrepreneur in residence”

It’s not my idea and I don’t own the risk – why the hell would you call me an entrepreneur?”

When not to choose a design sprint

Design sprints are great, but there are times you should think about using a different methodology

Three things you should consider before setting up an innovation lab

Everyone is doing it! Setting up an innovation function, incubator, accelerator, lab or hub. Here are three things you need to consider, even before starting due diligence 1. Innovation in a traditional corporate environment is hard I wrote previously about how to become an intrepreneur in a corporate environment, and this holds true if you […]

The 3 reasons your brief is not your project plan

My last post was about how creative briefs are awesome and how we should all strive to master the art of writing them and make them part of the common language of scaling-up teams. So this week I thought I’d tell you the three things the brief is NOT. 1. The brief is NOT your […]

Scaling up? Write a creative brief

We talk a lot about how the model of ad agencies is broken. Martech is commoditising operations once owned by agencies. The retainer model is practically obsolete, with agencies trying to keep up with profit sharing and IP-based models, to name just a few. The big consultancies are biting shamelessly at their once-unique propositions. The […]

Q: How hard is it to be open?

A: Very. I was ruminating this week on what it takes to get into the habit of being open in business. In the past, I have found it hard to balance trust with ensuring an advantage for my product. This lead to a dive into innovation, 50% of which is around openness. Here’s a recap […]