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Map Out Positive and Negative Stories of Your Future
To effectively envision future business directions, engage your team in scenario planning that balances optimism and pessimism, assigning groups to explore both best-case and worst-case outcomes, ultimately leading to a more calibrated and research-driven strategy.
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Create a Growth Board for Vetting Ideas
To cultivate a culture of innovation, organizations should establish a dedicated “growth board” that acts like an in-house venture capital team, evaluating new ideas against strategic priorities and fostering collaboration across departments to drive change and ownership among all employees.
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Interrogate Ideas
Effective brainstorming in business innovation requires a two-phase approach: an expansive, criticism-free brainstorming session followed by “agitated inquiry,” where diverse perspectives challenge ideas through structured debate to ensure sound decision-making and prevent groupthink.
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Remix, Reframe, and Repurpose
Natalie Nixon emphasizes the importance of remixes and mashups in business creativity through the SCAMPER method, which encourages innovation by substituting, combining, adapting, modifying, repurposing, eliminating, and reversing traditional ideas and processes.
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Guiding Principles
In this lesson, Lawrence Summers outlines two key principles for decision-making: prioritize reversible over irreversible errors and conduct a cost-benefit analysis during implementation to ensure that changes are beneficial rather than detrimental.
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Dream with Creative Thinking
Dan Pontefract emphasizes that organizations must prioritize creative thinking over mere productivity metrics, as fostering a culture that encourages dreaming and ideating is essential for generating innovative ideas and achieving meaningful benefits.
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Class
Mastering Creative and Critical Thinking
Leadership strategist Dan Pontefract argues that effective workers balance action with reflection, taking time to introspect, learn from mistakes, and prioritize tasks, emphasizing that the best workers think as much as they do.
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Assessing What You See
Optical illusions, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, highlight how easily our perceptions can be distorted by light, angles, and personal experiences, prompting art historian Amy Herman to encourage viewers to critically assess their own interpretations of what they see.
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“From Impossible to Possible”
Lisa Bodell, Founder and CEO of FutureThink, shares an exercise to foster innovation by having teams identify obstacles to problem-solving, swap lists, and collaboratively turn challenges into achievable solutions.
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“Killer Queries”
Lisa Bodell, Founder and CEO of FutureThink, emphasizes that the key to innovation lies not in access to information but in improving our questioning skills, advocating for provocative thought experiments to elicit meaningful insights.
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“Kill A Stupid Rule”
Lisa Bodell, Founder and CEO of FutureThink, discusses her “Kill a Simple Rule” exercise, which empowers teams to challenge existing rules and foster innovative cultures by allowing them to change two rules while identifying non-negotiable ones.
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“Kill Your Company”
In this video, FutureThink’s Lisa Bodell presents a team exercise that encourages companies to adopt their competitor’s perspective, identify their weaknesses, and strategize on how to leverage those insights for innovation and change.
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A Framework for Creating a Culture of Innovation
Lisa Bodell, Founder and CEO of FutureThink, outlines effective strategies for managers to embrace and implement change, emphasizing the importance of collaboration, identifying competitive weaknesses, and fostering a culture where change is collectively supported and simplified.
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Conversational Moves for Engaging Your Team in Creative Collaboration
Managers and leaders must foster team agility by creating an authentic, structured environment that encourages open dialogue, shared goals, and critical analysis, while also helping team members navigate uncertainty and build resilience through collaboration and creative problem-solving.