The intersection of the innovator and the customer resembles the intersection of an artist and their audience. Resemblances include a performance, celebrations, getting past perfectionism, creating moments that matter, and building a legacy.

An innovation team that emulates the arts has a competitive advantage. These culture traits include balance, vigilance, rejection, failure, and resilience.

An innovation team that emulates the arts has a collaborative advantage. These culture traits include safety, authenticity, welcoming beginners, trust, listening, practicing, and rehearsing together.

In innovation, most attention is the work within the project. Before your next project begins, consider what questions your team should answer. This documentation provides transparency, alignment, and sets you up for success.

Private collaboration exploration

When the Agile Manifesto was written, money was loose (dot com bubble) and frequent go-live dates were in style. As the intensity of innovation increases, Agile contributes to VUCA and low marginal cost is worth high upfront costs. Economics pressure us to innovate how we innovate.

Innovation professionals spend a lot of time in meetings. Rethink the relationship between meetings and “real work.” Have a firm grasp of the numerous ingredients of effective meetings.

Innovation should take inspiration from an expanded view of the Performing Arts - the Empathetic Arts. The world of innovation has much to learn, benefit, and profit from audience-centric collaboration that has a great employee experience.

Documentation is unpopular to build, but once you have it, it’s valuable to your current and future teams. Documentation is valuable for so long, it qualifies as an Asset Portfolio.

Manage your team like a factory because you want discipline, predictability, rhythm. Manage like a factory because you care about speed, quality, and waste.

It’s one thing to identify what a user wants to be able to accomplish. It’s another thing to capture what they consider a chore and want to leave their scope of responsibility.

A script is a simple, raw, unambiguous format to get the sequence of actions on paper, primed for a Future State Process Flow.