A thought on Innovation

The web’s abuzz about “being innovative”, creating the coolest ideas & innovations ever as well as a lot of stuff roughly summed up in the term “innovation management”.

But I hardly ever stumble across a piece about “innovation strategy” and/or how to define one.

Could it be that the former (while sometimes being a challenge on itself) is far more easier than working out and defining an innovation strategy that really fits?

My del.icio.us tags in Wordle

The following image is a representation of my tags on del.icio.us, created on Wordle. Very cool little application.

My tags on del.icio.us — (click to enlarge)

Creative Generalist — What specifically do Generalists do

I stopped counting the number of new blogs I added (and removed) to my Feedreader throughout the past years. It’s been quite a few but as you may guess, many of them were just not worth being kept (As it is probably the case with my own.) But every now and then, I stumble accross one blog that stands out and captivates me. Creative Generalist by Steve Hardy seems to be one of these.

It covers the topic of (creative) generalism, as opposed to the ever more prvalent specialisation of all sorts. From the few post I read since I discovered the blog, the one titled “What specifically do Generalists do” fascinated me most — I guess mainly because I’m sort of a (creative) generalist as well.

In it, Steve identifies a number of areas where he thinks Creative Generalists excel most:

• Wander & Wonder - finding possibility
• Synthesize & Summarize - presenting information
• Link & Leap - generating ideas
• Mix & Match - connecting people
• Experience & Empathize - understanding worldview

If I look back what I’ve done so far in my career and what I thought I can do best, then I think a Creative Generalist quite perfectly fits the ENFP-type of Personality. And from this point of view, Steve helped me to precise quite a bit my understanding of what I can and want to do best in both my professional and personal life. Which seems to be a good reason to keep his blog on my blogroll.

Tags: Steve Hardy