March 31, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Are you a “COCO?
I’m working with CLEAR™ VIEW to help bring together COCOs from across multiple companies, industries, functional disciplines, geographies, and organizational levels for a three day in-residence session this summer. What is a “COCO”? I’m glad you asked! COCO is an acronym for Chief Organizational Capability Officers (COCOs), who are tasked with driving business performance through […]
March 31, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Learn How to Build a Data Governance Dream Team
In today’s digital economy, innovation is fueled by the insights company leaders have concerning their own organizations. To effectively run a business, you need good information and data. To innovate, you need a way to play out scenarios and strategies. The success of these scenarios relies on a high degree of trust in the underlying information. Continue reading →
March 31, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Innovation: War Between “DoIts” and “ShouldWes”
Once upon a time, there were two types of humans… As a futurist, I was always a big fan of depictions of the future – movies like Things To Come, where we’d fly everywhere and even Metropolis, with its legions of shift workers punching in and out – both positive and negative depictions of the…
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March 30, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Want to Upgrade Your Company’s Brainstorming Sessions?
“We found Idea Champions in a desparate search for brainstorm facilitation training and haven’t looked back. During the past few months, they’ve helped us harness our naturally innovative spirit and significantly improved the way we execute our ideation process. We now have the tools and process we need to dig deeper into our creativity — adding a lot more value and power to our company culture.”
— Jody Johnson, Chief People Officer, M Booth & Associates
“Idea Champions came to consult with M Booth just weeks after we were named ‘Creative Agency of the Year’ and helped us unlock an even greater level of thinking for our clients across the board. The creative shift came almost immediately after our sessions with Idea Champions began and continued to grow exponentially with each session. Now, our thinking is more innovative, more strategic and reached more efficiently.”
— Andrew Rossi, Creative Director, MBooth & Associates
Brainstorm Facilitation Training
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March 30, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Hero’s Journey Retreats in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Mitch Ditkoff, Co-Founder of Idea Champions, is thrilled to announce that he will be co-facilitating a series of 5-day Hero’s Journey Retreats in San Miguel del Allende, Mexico with Dr. Beverly Butler, Founder of LifePath Retreats. The first session …
March 30, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
CLEAR™ VIEW: Driving Business Performance through Organizational Capability
Business and organizational transformation are among the most urgent needs facing today’s leaders, as they prepare to address future trends and challenges. Responsibility for making organizations more agile, innovative, resilient, and “capable” is increasingly becoming a multi-disciplinary leadership role. With that in mind, CLEAR(TM) Institute is offering the inaugural CLEAR(TM)VIEW program, providing a 360 learning […]
March 30, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Disrupt, Destruct, Digital – The Way of Future Life?
Are we always being extorted to disrupt our enterprises before someone else does? The constant threat of both those ‘known to us’ and those ‘unknown competitors’ who can simply raise money based on a disruptive concept, provide a different business model and, then attack tomorrow, leaves us with not a comfortable feeling does it? Continue reading →
March 30, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Future of Innovation in Media and Entertainment
The global entertainment industry takes many forms but whether its aim is to delight, distract, inform or terrify there’s always a back story, a location and a cast and its value chain will always be heavily reliant on Curation, Distribution and Consumption Continue reading →
March 29, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
COMING SOON! The Woodstock Story Festival: April 30 and May 1
Q. What do Alice B. Toklas, Willie Nelson, and the Woodstock Story Festival have in common?
A. They were all born on April 30th.
Alice was born in 1877. Willie was born in 1933. And the Woodstock Storytelling Festival was born in 2016 — or should…
March 29, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Brainstorming Revisited
The good news? Idea Champions brainstorming sessions are not like most brainstorming sessions. What our clients say. Brainstorm, not shitstorm.
Brainstorming illustration: Gaping Void
March 29, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Jump Starting a Culture of Innovation
In a recent survey of 246 CEOs from around the world, “having the right culture to foster and support innovation” was rated the most important ingredient to ensure a organization’s success. In other words, if innovation is the big fish companies ar…
March 29, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Innovation, traffic jams and ring roads
Drive around almost any big city in the world and you’re likely to hit traffic jams sooner or later. It’s like innovation in large companies, where the sheer size and complexity can inhibit the smooth flow of new offerings. Continue reading →
March 29, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How Homestuck Became the Future of Entertainment
If you’re still thinking about how to reach Millennials, you might already be too late. Now’s the time to start appealing to Generation Z. Generation Z doesn’t use smartphones as often as you’d think, preferring to interact with their friends via a laptop and Skype or Steam chat, instead of SnapChat, and play their games on a larger…
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March 29, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Is Your Strategic Plate Too Full?
The purpose of strategy – to guide our organizations to the desired destination – hasn’t changed. How we implement it has. Here’s why. Continue reading →
March 28, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Urgent Intrapreneur Opportunity: An Intro for Corporate Leaders
The power and freedom that entrepreneurs and their startups embody is reinforced through a constant stream of media highlighting success, purpose and (mostly bullsh*t) bucolic work environments. As the global economy improves, business leaders of established corporate organizations need to consider how they can introduce an entrepreneurial spirit. Intrapreneurs are the answer, and this article provides a high level overview. Continue reading →
March 28, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Boost Your Creative Output By Working in Small Teams
A very simple technique is, instead of working as a large group, imagine breaking the group down into smaller teams, pairs, or groups of three. Why does this work? Working in pairs has many advantages. When you work with another person, you give that person your undivided attention. You feel a certain accountability to that other person to do your fair share of the thinking.
March 27, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
You Can Teach Old Dogs New Tricks — With Innovation
People fear what they don’t understand, and they’ll kill a project they’re afraid of. You have to get out in front of that and fight the fear and resistance early and often. Continue reading →
March 27, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How to Get Buy-in and Resources for Enterprise Innovation
Through our conversations and observations of how intrapreneurs at different companies have gone about doing this, we’ve outlined a handful of strategies that you can try to secure buy-in, support and resources to foster enterprise innovation. Continue reading →
March 25, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Leaders should Advocate Fast Feedback over Failing Fast
In a “Fast Feedback” culture, conversations don’t stop with the decision of what to try, but rather push further to a discussion of how to learn from what was done and how to do so quickly. Continue reading →
March 25, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Why Effective Innovation takes Focus
The truth is that your mission needs to drive your strategy, not the other way around. Genuine excellence requires passion, commitment and consistency. You can’t create that in a boardroom meeting or a strategy session. It takes focus over an extended period of time. Continue reading →
March 24, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
What’s the Difference Between a Snowstorm and an Earthquake? [VIDEO]
What’s the difference between a snowstorm and an earthquake? Well, with a snowstorm, you typically get notified ahead of time, you can plan thing out, you can buy a parka, boots, snow tires for your car, etc. With a earthquake, no one ever know when those will happen – in fact the other day they…
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March 24, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Eight Change Mindsets
If your organization is seeking to create a continuous change capability, it must have a strong focus on increasing its organizational agility. As you use the Change Planning Toolkit™ to kick off your next project or your next change initiative, keep thinking about what the minimum viable progress (MVP) might be in order to maintain momentum. This is very similar to the idea of a minimum viable product, a key lean startup concept popularized by Eric Ries, author of the bestselling book, The Lean Startup. Continue reading →
March 23, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Lessons from Pixar and Disney: Creativity is a Team Sport [book review]
Sometimes, every once in awhile, an amazing book drops off the shelf, in front of your eyes and into your hands and resonates with you at the core of your being. ‘Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration’ by Ed Catmull, President of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation, recently had that effect on me! Continue reading →
March 23, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Do’s and Don’ts of Running an Ideation Program
Do – Track Ideas One of the first misses in an employe ideation system is not tracking ideas in the first place. There are a few reasons that this is important. First, building the organizational skill to effectively manage employee ideas takes time. It’s rare that a program to become an overnight success. For that reason, leveraging a maturity model for idea management is a good way to understand progress. But you need tracking in place to do that. The second reason is that it’s important to hold everyone accountable to the success of the program. That means tracking the idea from inception all the way to implementation – not just the idea itself. Some key things you can track are: Ideator Date the idea was submitted Date when key stakeholders (including ideators) received feedback on the idea Date idea was selected to be implemented Last update to key stakeholders … Continue reading →
March 22, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How 13-Year Olds Can End Terrorism
OK. I know this headline seems bold. Even presumptuous. But bear with me. I’m inspired. And even more than that — on the brink of a breakthrough. But first, some back story…
Five years ago, my awesomely cool, smart, and creative daughter, Mimi …
March 22, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
5 Recommended Innovation Portfolio Metrics
Innovation portfolio metrics are different that other innovation process metrics. They are not idea focused but rather project focused. Continue reading →
March 22, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
To Innovate, You Must Be of Open Mind
I’ve founded startups, I’ve worked at small companies, I’ve worked at huge companies and I’ve worked at medium size companies. Some may even say that I have an interesting background. When you talk to the senior management of any of these companies, and you ask them to define innovation, or ask where it comes from,…
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March 22, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Max DePree: North America’s First CEO Design Thinker
The former CEO of Herman Miller, Max DePree said, “I’ve got so many MBAs, but what I need is a poet. Poets are the original systems thinkers.” This poetic mode is the critical perspective in a human-factor and design business—and Herman Miller is the most apt precursor in the Design Thinking revolution, so they knew the value of this holistic, poetic lens where anything can be better designed to better suit real people. Continue reading →
March 21, 2016 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Are you listening to your customers?
Thanks to technology and automation, more corporations are losing the “voice of the customer” rather than invest in human ears to listen to those who make or break our businesses. How can we be smarter about hearing what our customers have to say, and then acting on those complaints, suggestions and nuggets of insights? My […]