Exploring A 6 Year Case Study Evolving into World's Best Innovation Practice Behaviors

I thought you might like to know about a highly successful webinar we ran recently “How A Mature International Financial Services Organization Succeeded in Turning Innovation Into A Core Value for Success". The webinar explored how against the most turbulent financial times of recent history, Allianz UK over 6 years built and implemented a powerful innovation ecology that now contributes directly and measurably to the organization’s growth and value. It is one of the best examples of innovation practice globally I have come across and have had the pleasure to write and speak about. Interestingly,

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Thinking Literally: The surprising ways that metaphors shape your world - The Boston Globe, Drake Bennett

When we say someone is a warm person, we do not mean that they are running a fever. When we describe an issue as weighty, we have not actually used a scale to determine this. And when we say a piece of news is hard to swallow, no one assumes we have tried unsuccessfully to eat it. These phrases are metaphorical--they use concrete objects and qualities to describe abstractions like kindness or importance or difficulty--and we use them and their like so often that we hardly notice them. For most people, metaphor, like simile or synecdoche, is a term inflicted upon them in high school English class: “all the world’s a stage,” “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” Gatsby’s fellow dreamers are “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Metaphors are literary creations--good ones help us see the world anew, in fresh and interesting ways, the rest are simply cliches:

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I am a Leader, Not A Manager - Harvard Business Review

One of Kent's friends — we'll call him Roy — is a master craftsman who owns a small business that makes custom wood furniture. After making some cutbacks in 2009, his little company still employs three fine woodworkers, an office supervisor/customer service rep, and an apprentice. What makes Roy unusual is that when he founded his firm a dozen years ago, he realized he knew nothing about business. And so he began reading serious books on the subject, as well as the Harvard Business Review and two or three business magazines.

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The cognitive neuroscience of creativity - Arne Dietrich, American University of Beirut

This paper is academic in style. However for those interested in this topic, it provides important description of the tension in the neural pathways between how neural computation produces emotional content and cognitive analysis which in turns produces creativity.

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Practically Radical: Four Simple Truths about Leading Change and Making a Difference - William C. Taylor

“We are living through the age of disruption. You can’t do big things if you’re content with doing things a little better than everyone else or a little differently than how you did them before. In an era of hyper-competition and non-stop dislocation, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something special. Today, the most successful organizations don’t just out-compete their rivals. They redefine the terms of competition by embracing one-of-a-kind ideas in a world filled with me-too thinking.”

Read William's full manifesto here courtesy of Change This.

About William C. Taylor | William C. Taylor is an agenda-setting writer, speaker, and entrepreneur who has shaped the global conversation about the best ways to compete, innovate, and succeed. He is the cofounder of Fast Company, which published its premiere issue 15 years ago, and the coauthor of Mavericks at Work, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. His new project, Practically Radical, is the latest chapter in a two-decade career devoted to challenging conventional wisdom in business and helping business leaders win. Practically Radical was published on January 4, 2011 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins. Bill blogs about the book at practicallyradical.com. A graduate of Princeton University and the MIT Sloan School of Management, he lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with his wife and two daughters.