Imagine there are two workers, Jack and Tony, that have been asked to complete a task. They sit next to each other and on their desks are 200 folders that need to be processed in one weeks time. The exact task or what is in the folders is not important. ...
Have you seen your 401k lately? What started out as a good idea - helping expand home ownership - has turned out to be a nightmare. The creation of innovative loan products coupled with Wall Streets own innovations on how to invest in these financial vehicles has had an impact ...
Imagine this scene. A group of people at UPS are in a meeting about how to reduce fuel costs. One person suggests, "how about we eliminate left turns?" What do you think the reaction was? What would it be at your company? How would you have reacted? My guess is that there would probably be a lot of 'yeah but' and 'the problem with that is' going on.
So just what has been the result of working to eliminate and/or dramatically plan routes that have no left turns? UPS reports that it has "shaved nearly 30 million miles off already streamlined delivery routes, saved 3 million gallons of gas and reduced emissions by 32,000 metric tons of CO2 - the equivalent of removing 5,300 passenger cars off the road for an entire year."
So what is the lesson here? This story is less about saving fuel and more about how some of the best ideas may at first sound crazy, difficult to implement, or even impossible.
What can Brown do for you? Hopefully they have delivered a great lesson on the power of listening to and encouraging ALL ideas.
Innovative ways to get into college - a classic and must read
As a parent of two young children, I often wake up in the middle of the night in complete panic about the future cost of college. When I look at the potential amount of money it
may take to enable my kids to get through a four year education at ...
William Shatner - Bad actor, innovative genius, and inventor of the Blog
Stardate zero seven, zero one, fifteen. Captain's log.
Or is it 'Captain's Blog?' It just hit me - did William Shatner invent the Blog? Could the 'Captain's Log' be the precursor to the 'Captain's Blog.' The man never ceases to
amaze me.
I once heard a comedian say that Shatner lives every man's dream ...
Gilligan's Island - how a 3 hour tour changed innovation
When I ask people why they don’t share ideas a re-occurring response is that they have a concern they ‘will say the wrong thing’ or look foolish. This further cements my belief that
innovation can actually be quite easy if companies and organizations create the needed environment and culture to ...
Did you know that the address for the Tiger Woods Foundation is 121
Innovation, Suite 150 Irvine, CA? It’s true.
Did you know that Tiger Woods was signed by Apple Computer, a
leader in innovative product design and implementation, to be the
spokesperson for Apple’s most recent operating system, ...
Companies need to stop trying to schedule idea generation and brainstorming and create an environment where creativity happens spontaneously. Too often the process of coming up with an answer to an issue is, ‘get people in a room and let’s brainstorm some ideas.’ Why limit idea generation or brainstorming to ...
