June 30, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How mature is your technology?
As a technologist it’s important to know the maturity of a technology. Like people, technologies are born, they become children, then adolescents, then adults and then they die. And like with people, the character and behavior of technologies change as they grown and age. A fledgling technology may have a lot of potential, but it …
June 30, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Harvard, Stanford, and MIT Researchers Have Found the Secret to Success
We want to believe that talent and opportunity are equally abundant. Not so, according to this ground-breaking study of 1 million inventors. There’s a popular quote attributed to Leila Janah, “Talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not.” We can argue what “equally distributed” really means, but I’d submit that neither talent nor opportunity are equally …
June 29, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
What PR Firms Say About Our Brainstorm Facilitation Training
Idea Champions has trained quite a few PR and Marketing firms in the art and science of facilitating breakthrough brainstorming sessions. What follows is a sampling of the feedback we have received.
“At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, Idea Champio…
June 29, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
FourSight: Innovation when it works and when it fails
An Innov8ors Miami Keynote by Sarah Thurber Last year Innov8rs embarked on a year-long research project to better understand: who are corporate innovators? What makes them tick? What makes their efforts succeed and fail? We partnered with FourSight, cr…
June 29, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Cooperation in Teams – Contracting Level 1: Administrative Contract
One of the things we know is that contracting is very important to create a cooperative relationship. And in the past, we’ve explained what is actually a contract. Now, we’re going to talk about the three levels of contracting and specifically this time, level one. Contracting Level 1: Administrative Contract Level one is how do …
June 28, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How to Staff Your Startup Team
Every entrepreneur who has succeeded or failed (is there a difference?) has advice about how to get the right people on the bus. What questions should you ask at the interview? What character traits should you seek and how do you do that? How much is science and how much is just going with your gut and …
June 27, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO FACILITATE Your High Level Ideation Sessions
Here’s what Idea Champions’ clients have to say about the value they’ve received from engaging our brainstorm facilitation services.
“Through your brainstorm facilitation, we gained more than 100 original ideas of high quality. The best of these will guide AT&T’s development for years to come.” – Robert Rubin, CCS Product Development, AT&T
“As a result of Idea Champions’ efforts we have implemented more than 250 value-added Big Idea projects.” — Joe Belinsky, Professional Development Manager, Goodyear Rubber and Tire
“Several of the ideas we came up with in the Idea Champions session are being developed into concrete projects that are looking like very profitable opportunities.” – Rudy Villa, VP, GE/RCA Licensing
June 27, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
If You Want to Change the World …
You Need To Start With Small Groups, Loosely Connected But United By A Shared Purpose In 1847, a young doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis had a major breakthrough. Working in a maternity ward, he discovered that a regime of hand washing could dramatically l…
June 27, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Are other peoples’ fears the cause of your frustration?
I was working with a pharmaceutical distribution business that needed to innovate, and fast. Drugs were coming off-patent, and industry forces were going to change who made money and how. The MD was worried. He was also frustrated that his senior manag…
June 27, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The Paradox of Innovation
My big insight about innovation these days would make Nobel Prize winner, Niels Bohr, proud.
“Now that we have met with paradox,” explained Dr. Bohr, “we have some hope of making progress.”
Innovation is full of it — paradox, that is.
On one h…
June 26, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Your Risk of Dying Probably Increased 5-Fold Today
Of all the things you do, this is more likely to kill you than even the top 10 deadliest diseases, especially today. When you roll the clock back a hundred years and wonder, “What was the scariest part of how people lived?” what comes to mind? No, it’s not the lack of a smartphone! Instead, …
June 26, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Sky is the Limit: Intrapreneurship at Air France
Marine Gall is VP Innovation & Intrapreneurship Programs at Air France, working on innovation, business synergies, transformation, change management, and customer centric items. She kindly accepted to tell us more about the intrapreneurship program which is now starting its season 2, “Boosting the future”, and has just selected 6 laureates for its 2019 season. 1) …
June 25, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
10 Things to Change About Physician Behavior
Disrupting sick care is the new parlor game. Of course, even the guy who coined the term “disruptive” now feels he has to defend himself, so I guess the good news is that we are becoming the victims of our own success. Most of the talk has been about changing patient/customer/consumer/prosumer/client behavior. The assumption is that engaging …
June 24, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Cognitive Diversity is the DNA of Innovation
Katrina Sherrerd, CEO of Research Affiliates, poses an interesting challenge, “Achieving cognitive diversity is easier said than done. We all have a neurobiological preference for comfort and familiarity over discomfort and the unknown. Human nature inclines us toward people and ideas that confirm and reflect our views. Only when we resist and suppress our instincts …
June 24, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
The One Genius Google Innovation Strategy That You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
It’s no secret that Google is one of the most innovative companies on the planet. Besides pioneering and then dominating the search industry, it has also become a leader in developing futuristic technologies such as artificial intelligence, driverless cars and quantum computing. It has even launched a life science company. What makes Google so successful is not one particular …
June 23, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Is your work meaningful?
Life’s too short to work on things that don’t make a difference. Sure, you’ve got to earn a living, but what kind of living is it if all you’re doing is paying for food and a mortgage? How do others benefit from your work? How does the planet benefit from your work? How is the …
June 23, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook are Monopolies: So What?
The need to support a free market by breaking up large companies that stifle innovation and competition is well established, but is it still valid? We’ve reached an economic precipice in building the future of technology; one that is striking chords of terror in many. Namely, that so much of our overall economic health is …
June 22, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Innovation: Don’t flirt if you don’t mean business
“This has been the most energized, inspired day in my long career here,” proclaimed a Senior Director of R&D of a durable goods company, “but it will be a complete waste of time if the company doesn’t launch any of these products or services.” His comments resounded with prophetic pomp, a sad vocal thunder. Everyone …
June 22, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Cooperation in Teams: What skills do you need to create cooperative teams?
Hi, my name is Sari van Poelje, I’m an expert in agile, innovative design. I fly around the world helping businesses innovate as quickly as they innovate their products. One of the questions I’m often asked is, “What skills do you need for cooperation and especially to create cooperative teams?”Well, we just said, the first skill …
June 21, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Where are the Entrepreneurial Lawyers?
I recently found myself in a room filled with in house healthcare lawyers. I was the only doc, let alone physician entrepreneur, there. After the usual full contact schmoozing, tasty morsels and open bar, two lawyers from large hospital systems answere…
June 20, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Business Pundits Love to Say These 4 Things — None of Them are True
Go to just about any business conference and you will see a pundit on stage. He or she will show some company that failed and explain the silly mistakes that they made, then follow-up with a few basic rules to help you avoid those pitfalls and become s…
June 20, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Developing Collaborative Leadership Styles
With a new Australian government recently in place, it raises key questions around the impact of collaborative, autocratic or competitive leadership styles. This caused many voters, like myself, to question what leadership style might be best for our country’s future? Is it a leader who runs a presidential style campaign, operating from an “I” or …
June 19, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Harvard Study Reveals One Word is the Secret to Being Likable and Emotionally Intelligent
Some things are so simple that we just can’t help complicating them. Here’s one area where you absolutely need to keep it simple. As I’ve grown older and more experienced, the greatest of all lessons learned is how simple most things in life really are; and yet, how we try our darndest to complicate them. …
June 19, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Breaking Out of the Bubble
Anyone can get caught in a bubble – it happens without you realising it. And even if you notice, it can be hard to escape. I remember one CEO telling me that his big worry was isolation. Not emotional isolation, but isolation from real information. He felt stuck at the end of a corridor, in …
June 18, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Spring Lab: Instilling a Startup Mindset into Large Corporations
1) What is the mission (the reason why, la raison d’être) of Spring Lab, its value proposition, and its main line of services (acceleration devices, learning expeditions, collective intelligence workshop, innov-athons, bootcamp) ? In a highly competitive world with constantly changing ways and growing customer expectations, your company crucially needs to think and innovate to set itself …
June 18, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Why is it so hard to do the right thing?
We have a crisis in entrepreneurial character. and doctors are not exempt. Justifiable suspicions of physician entrepreneurs result when the halo is cast over the profession by those who commit fraud, double-deal, or don’t prioritize the patient’s interest above others. They can’t reconcile the ethics of medicine with the ethics of business. The hall of shame adds new members …
June 17, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Choosing WHAT to Do
In business you’ve got to do two things: choose what to do and choose how to do it well. I’m not sure which is more important, but I am sure there’s far more written on how to do things well and far less clarity around how to choose what to do. Choosing what to do …
June 17, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
How IBM Sees The Future Of Artificial Intelligence
Ever since IBM’s Watson system defeated the best human champions at the game show Jeopardy!, artificial intelligence (AI) has been the buzzword of choice. More than just hype, intelligent systems are revolutionizing fields from medicine and manufacturing to changing fundamental assumptions about how science is done. Yet for all the progress, it appears that we …
June 16, 2019 | by Chris Kalaboukis
Diverse Talent Drives Innovation: A Collision Conference Interview with Rusul Alrubail
Collision Conference took place in Toronto, Canada May 20-23. It is North America’s fastest growing tech conference, welcoming 25,000+ participants from 125 countries with 45.7% female attendance. I had the opportunity to meet with Collision speaker, Rusul Alrubail, at her Toronto-based Parkdale Centre for Innovation. Can you tell me a bit more about the Parkdale …