The Jazz of Innovation

To jazz up your ability to innovate, turn to jazz. Do this systemically and balance proactive and adaptive forces: create a clear guiding structure, establish creative chaos environment within this structure to liberate people and trigger accidental discoveries, and encourage improvisation... More

Advice by great corporate leaders

"From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people's inborn creativity."
~ Akio Morita, a co-founder and former CEO of Sony

"Create an innovative atmosphere where people are confident that how far and fast they move is constrained only by their standards of personal excellence."
~ Jack Welch, a former CEO of GE

"The Googly thing is to launch it early on Google Labs and then iterate, learning what the market wants – and making it great. The beauty of experimenting in this way is that you never get too far from what the market wants. The market pulls you back."
~ Marissa Mayer, Google

Lessons from Leading Companies

Google's 9 Notions of Innovation

Dell: Culture of Independent Owners

Questioning Culture of Toyota

Intrapreneurial Organization

Innovation Brainball

Tom Peters researched many innovative companies and had been impressed in his researches by the "inherent sloppiness" of innovation. The "messy world", or the "creative chaos environment", is its "given precondition".

The necessary solution has three parts, each one leading on to the next:

① Experimentation

② Champions

③ Decentralized bands.

Management's task is to generate the right climate for creativity, experimentation, and individualism. This climate requires managers to take advantage of that "inherent sloppiness" of innovation – swimming upstream against the innovation myths.

5 Strategies

Inspiring Culture

High LQ Culture

Questioning Culture

Customer-focused Culture

Innovation Process

Define It Publicly

Experimentation

Ask Learning SWOT Questions