March 31, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The 10 Personas of an Effective Brainstorm Facilitator
Allow me to make a wild guess. You have participated in more than a few brainstorm sessions in your life. Yes?
March 31, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Eco Lux Trend – Is Your Brand Missing Out?
Like it or lump it, the “eco” market is not going anywhere. 66% of global consumers say they are willing to pay more for sustainable brands (Bain & Company). Despite global economic instability, last year the luxury market grew by 5% to an estimated €1.2 trillion globally (Bain). And Europe regained its place as the …
March 30, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
THE FIRST RULE OF GOOD MEETING FACILITATION
Let’s face it. Most meetings under-deliver. The reasons are many — everything from no agenda, wrong people, sterile meeting room, poor facilitation, monologues, lack of real listening, constant interruptions, late arrivals, and no real closure. But …
March 30, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Top 6 Reasons Why Customer Experience Mapping Efforts Fail
Before we can talk about how to improve customer experience maps, let’s start with a definition. Customer Experience Map: A large, colorful chart that impresses leadership for a few weeks and then gathers dust in the corner. A complex visualization that requires a user manual in order to identify anything productive. A user-centered process that, once …
March 29, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Eleven Essential Behavioral Science Books for Innovators
No matter how great an innovation is, it is only useful if people notice it, understand it, desire it, acquire it and use (and reuse) it. To achieve this, we need to understand human perception, motivations, decision making and ultimately, influence be…
March 29, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
We Are Pushing Away From the Old Innovating Core
I continue to investigate and explore as much of the thought leadership on innovation as I can, it continually points to a change in how we approach innovation. Delivering this changing message becomes simply a cause in itself as so many are failing to…
March 29, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
WE’RE NUMBER SEVEN!
How cool is this. I just stumbled on the Consultants500 website — an online business advisors marketplace — and discovered that Heart of Innovation (this blog) is rated the 7th best innovation blog out of 161 innovation blogs surveyed. Whoo! Whoo!
I…
March 28, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How Amazon Achieves and Sustains Record Growth
As a follow-up to our recently completed Innovation and Growth Leadership Summit, we compiled a white paper on How Amazon Achieves and Sustains Record Growth. What began as ‘Earth’s biggest bookstore’ in 1994 is now the largest electronic commerce retailer in the United States. Amazon’s 20-year record of double-digit revenue growth is unmatched in industry. […]
March 28, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
8 Reasons Why Today Will Be an Awesome Day
“It may not feel like it at times, but you live in the most fortunate sliver of humanity.” If you’re reading this, then You actually woke up this morning with a heartbeat; 150,000 people never will again. You have clean water to make a cup of coffee or tea, and a toilet to flush; nearly …
March 28, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Is It Time To Rethink The Scientific Method?
Designing an airplane has long been an exercise in tradeoffs. A larger airplane with more powerful engines can hold more people and go farther, but is costlier to run. A smaller one is more cost efficient, but lacks capacity. For decades, these have been nearly inviolable constraints that manufacturers just had to live with. Boeing’s …
March 27, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How to Make Product Roadmaps not Dangerous
My 12-year old son recently got a belt sander from his Opa. Opa is a German name for grandfather. My son is making a bookshelf and has a lot of sanding to do. The belt sander will do the work quickly. It is the right tool for the job, but only if it is used …
March 27, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Can we fix our broken economy with a guaranteed income?
Automation, robotics, displaced workers, outsourcing, offshoring, near-shoring, smartsourcing… These are all words that strike fear into the ordinary working man and woman, American, or otherwise… Now comes a new set of words from the intelligentsia promising to fix it all for the common person, phrases like “guaranteed income” and “universal income” have emerged into the …
March 26, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
What is a Google Design Sprint?
Five days for an innovation journey: is it speed or haste? Using the three basic premises of Design Thinking – Immersion, Ideation and Prototyping – and leveraging the creation of a multidisciplinary environment, Design Sprint is emerging as new way for accelerated innovation, where speed and innovation go hand in hand. Design Sprint is a …
March 26, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Lines of Innovation – Part II
Lines of Innovation – Part II In a previous article (Lines of Innovation – Part I) I wrote about the importance of lines in thinking about innovation. In this sequel, I will focus on additional examples where lines provide insight into the challenge of driving innovation. A common theme of this article is the importance …
March 25, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Hansei: The Art of Reflection
What Did You Learn From 2017? Around the end of the year, most of us, and our businesses, tend to slow down just a bit from the normal dawn-to-dusk mad dash. We smile a bit more. We wave people in before us in traffic, and let others with less in their…
March 25, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Ten of the Greatest Inspirational Quotes Churchill Never Said (and Ten More That He Did)
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. I love powerful quotes. Words can inspire entire societies to change and they act as mile markers for historical shifts. And few people have…
March 24, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Storytelling & the Creative Process
This is bleeping brilliant. Not only WHAT its says, but HOW it’s presented. Two minutes on what it takes to really do creative work. Inspiring. Truthful. And in your face like a fresh arctic wind off a lake you’ve been waiting too long to sail on…
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March 24, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Is Business Killing Our Creative Sprits?
This week there was an article on INC. magazine that was wildly popular on social media. Elon Musk named his favorite books and there was only one business book out of 10. The rest were Science Fiction, Classics, Great Books. Many were surprised to lea…
March 23, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Little Innovation which Transformed Online Shopping
It is clear that the internet has transformed how we shop. More people are buying more products and services on-line than ever before. High-street retailers and big brands are suffering at the hands of on-line merchants large and small. There is one often overlooked innovation which has enabled this trend. It is buyer/seller feedback. A …
March 22, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
A Big Clue for Meeting Facilitators
If you facilitate meetings for your company, school, volunteer organization, or team, please know that your STATE OF MIND is going to very much impact the outcomes of the meeting. If your mind is cluttered, the quality of the meetings you facilitate…
March 21, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Micro-Learning for Storytellers
Time-crunched as you are, I know you don’t even have two-minutes to read this. So thanks for your 119 seconds.
I’m not going to sell you on the power of storytelling. You already know it’s powerful. What you don’t know is how to make it real in your…
March 21, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Business People Are Lousy Doctors
So doctors are lousy business people, huh? Well, imagine if your doctor prescribed something based only on your chief complaint. They did not take a history. They did no physical exam and they did no lab tests or imaging if it were necessary . Yet, business people, particularly digipreneurs, do it all the time. If you …
March 20, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Can America Win The New Century?
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States was an industrial and technological backwater. Still mostly an agrarian nation, bright young students would often go to Europe to pursue advanced degrees in the sciences, because American uni…
March 19, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Is innovation really important to you?
How can we establish Innovation as the vital link to a process of change and strategic direction options? One that lifts the debates of managing today’s business by linking it into the future and then turning this thinking into a series of plausible and coherent set of activities? Innovation can drive change, change is required. …
March 19, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Marriage of Zany and Practical
Feedback from Charter Manufacturing in response to an Innovation workshop of ours with 27 of their high potential leaders of the future.
“Idea Champions has the unique quality of being able to combine zany out-of-box thinking with a pragmatic approach that appealed to every participant in the session. Even those who relish the status quo and the proven way of doing things couldn’t help but relax, laugh. and lean into their untapped creativity. Participants left the session feeling hopeful and powerful about their individual ability to create and innovate.”
– Maureen Toshner, Director, Organizational Development & Learning
Idea Champions
What our other clients say
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March 19, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Secret to Organizational Innovation
In my previous article (Why Innovation Remains Elusive), I identified a half dozen obstacles to companywide innovation. I also hinted at a grand unified solution in the form of a strategic innovation system. Allow me ease into it by way of story and an…
March 18, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Innovate Before Your Customers Want You To Die
“I literally can’t wait for the entire rental car industry to go down in flames. This whole thing is archaic.” – annoyed guy in front of me at rental car pick up. I’m in line waiting for a rental car. Two gentlemen in front of me are having a heated conversation about how they want to …
March 18, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
HOLY FOOLS DAY: March 25th!
Gail Larsen initiated Holy Fools Day in 2014, and in this fourth year of bringing a wonderful spark of madness to the world, you’re invited to join Gail, Wisdom Healing Qigong Master Mingtong Gu, Sacred Activist Andrew Harvey and a fervent group of t…
March 18, 2018 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Top 20 Innovation Articles of January 2018
Drum roll please… At the beginning of each month we will profile the twenty posts from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Innovation Excellence. We also publish a weekly Top 8 as part of our FREE email newsletter. Did your favorite make the cut? But enough delay, here are January’s twenty most …