I recently had the opportunity to participate in a "Thinking Weekend" and it was transformative. It was a day and a half with a group of 30 participants. The theme was an inquiry into ethics in tech. We considered the topic through different lenses: corporate, education, arts, governance (local), an outside perspective to American approach, individual and operative. For each lens there was an hour [...]
In February, I had the honor of joining my colleague Janice Francisco as a guest at the joint meeting of the Conference Board of Canada and the Conference Board of the US. The topic of our discussion was innovation and productivity. Janice provided a great summary of the overall conference below, but here are my highlights of the group discussion I participated over the two [...]
When I work with a team around improving their innovation approaches, I often ask: are you creative? Depending on the group I get between one and four hands raised. Interestingly enough I tried the same exercise with a group of Kindergarteners when I went to my son’s classroom once and most of the hands went up. Why the difference? Somewhere around Kindergarten time we start [...]
The Innovation Uncensored conference in San Francisco started with a series of off-sites experiences where participants could visit some interesting start-ups. I visited Hint Water, where CEO Kara Goldin explained the unique positioning of her naturally flavored waters, a healthy alternative to soft drinks without the side effects of sugar alternative. Her story was not only about product innovation, but about innovating the distribution stream. [...]