Creative Innovation Gems

I have just enjoyed a thought provoking three days on creativity and innovation at the Ci 2012 event and conference in Melbourne, Australia. So many gems, learnings, insights, and wisdom was shared by fantastic speakers and thought leaders from around the world. Here are a few gems for you.

Seek a killer question to create innovations.
E.g. What if the opposite were true?
How would Richard Branson do this?
What can you add to make people go WOW?
Tim Reid, The Ideas Guy
 
Creative abrasion and positive human collisions create innovation.
Dr Thomas Frey, Executive Director and Senior Futurist at Da Vinci Institute
 
Change is not about reorganising and reconstructing. It is about re-conceiving.

By 2050, 70% of people will be over 70 years old. Those born after 2000 will live on average 100 years. (Lancet)
How are you going to spend the next 50 years of your life?
Professor Nadia Rosenthal (UK) – leading regenerative medicine researcher

All innovation is about letting go, saying goodbye to things to create space for the new.
Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive of NESTA (UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts)

You can have any strategy in the world, but it’s how you communicate that matters. Good leaders tell great stories.
Gabrielle Dolan and Yamini Naidu – Co-founders and Directors of One Thousand and One  
 
If you don’t stand for something, you are liable to fall for anything.
Jason Drew International business leader, Serial entrepreneur and sustainability expert
 
Fifteen minutes a day, learning something new is all it takes over two years to become very knowledgeable in a new area.
What will you learn to win next?
Charles Kovess, Australia’s Passion Provocateur  
 
We need to teach people how to think. Use every moment as a teachable moment. We all remember Sesame St and what we learned but few even remember the name of our Grade 3 teacher let alone what we learned.
Michael T Jones – Chief Technology Advocate, Google; Previously Chief Technologist of Google Maps, Earth and Local Search
 
Test fast, fail fast, change it & then accelerate it to stay ahead of competition.
Michael Harte – Chief Information Officer, CBA

Teacherless education will dramatically increase global intelligence.
Dr Thomas Frey, Executive Director and Senior Futurist at Da Vinci Institute

Engineers without Borders love people failing.  They publish their failures report every year and all the lessons learned.

Be open enough to learn from surprising places. Get better at letting go and using your (collective) brains.
Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive of NESTA (UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts)

Failure is the most important path to learning.
Steve Vamos – President, Society for Knowledge Economics. Director Telstra, Medibank and David Jones

Say no to a thousand things so you don’t get on the wrong track or do too many things.  Be tough about focus.
Steve Jobs was Co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc

Turn strategy into simple language so every staff member knows it.  People must understand why you are doing, what you are doing and where you are going.

Big almost impossible, highly meaningful goal + respectful & supportive team is the  winning combination of fear & love.

Meaning is the biggest sources of energy that gets you up in the morning.
Michael Rennie – Managing Partner, McKinsey & Company

Don’t just do something, listen. In the attentive space, something grows, something happens.  
Making space is profoundly creative.
Dr Iain McGilchrist, Former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Author

Never give up. Don’t let good ideas be buried with you.
Breathe it. Dream it Live it and relentlessly pursue your ideas and ideals. Without them you cannot achieve anything meaningful in life.
Li Cunxin, Li is Mao’s Last Dancer. His book is in its 52nd re-print and now a blockbuster film

Whether we’re swimming or drowning in information is the new question. We’re not lacking information.
Michael T Jones – Chief Technology Advocate, Google; Previously Chief Technologist of Google Maps, Earth and Local Search

Respect and learn from other cultures to create a true multi- culture society.
Wade Davis – Anthropologist, ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker,  Explorer-in-Residence at National Geographic Society
 
 
 
The wisdom, wicked thinking, creative solutions, vast experience, the poetry, and the music all really touched my soul                    
Thanks for a terrific few days of brain food.

Wishing you all quintessentisal success
 
Ann