eicolab: design thinking for business innovation

Personal Growth

Emotions and decision-making

Here’s an interesting article on the role of our emotions in decision-making.

Points of note:

Without our emotions, we will have difficulty making decisions.
Strong emotions like fear can adversely affect our decisions.
The more we deny our emotions, the less able we are to make a decision; regardless of how much info we have.
Relying on our gut instincts is important.
Women make better decisions - because women are more in …

Wonder, not decide

Wonder

The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other …

Three things that matter most

I was asked what were the three things that really matter to me about my work recently. These were my on-the-spot responses:

Making a difference, making a contribution, changing something for the better.
Learning new things, and putting what I have learnt to use.
Doing interesting work, meeting interesting people, participating in interesting projects.

The person who asked the question was surprised that money did not make it on the list. After …

On travelling and blogging

I have been travelling around China for the past 10 days or so with friends. Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjing – the three largest cities in China.

Today is the first opportunity I had to be by myself for a few hours. Not walking around looking at things, not engaging with my friends or the locals, not seeing something amazing, or eating great food.

I realised that it has been a …

Tim Berners-Lees – making a difference

Here are some ways to make a difference to the world, using Tim Berners-Lees as an example: A World Wide Web of Ideas.

My take on the key concepts are:

Altruism – giving something away returns far more, and enables more people, in the long run.

Influence – a personal story attracts more attention than the best message-managed PR gloss.

Freedom – the freedom to explore ideas is a …

Rationality is an illusion

Businesses and certain “experienced business people” like to pretend that rationality is the only way to make “real” business decisions.

Here are some irrational decisions I see many businesses make:

Penny-wise and pound foolish. Buying under-powered equipment, not having maintenance and backup plans, reacting to repeated and avoidable emergencies. Because thinking and planning is too hard.

The boss gets the fastest/best/most powerful computer to surf the web with, while the workers …

Bigger is not always better

Thoughts sparked by Stilgherrian’s post of the same title:

Much conventional business practice is simply incompatible with humanity. The less human we can be, the more successful we will be in business.

For too long now there is only one way to do business, and one definition of success, and one goal. The domain of business has long been dominated by the uncreative, the greedy, the exploitative, the …

Marketing, intrinsic motivation, happiness and Joy Ninja

It is rare to stumble upon a blog with thoughts that seems to fit so well with mine. This is what happened today when I discovered Emma McCreary’s Joy Ninja.

Reading through Emma’s posts, I suddenly realised why I have always been uncomfortable with conventional marketing and PR.

As I have often said on this blog, conventional business practice seems to assume there is only one “right” …

i-confide.com

“People say that a joy shared is a joy doubled. And a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. So what happens when you share something with the entire world?”

This is the premise of i-confide. Go look, and confide something.

(Disclosure: I was the designer of this application)

Authenticity - a real example and the doggie doo analogy

Stilgherrian’s great post on calling Jason Calacanis a “prick” is a fun and worthwhile read on many fronts.

It is also a great real example of authenticity.

Jason Calacanis made some comments on a blog post which he later edited after receiving loads of negative responses.

Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work …

Noticeboard

Cubicle CommandoBuy my book - 30% off and free shipping within Australia; 15% off and free shipping worldwide!

flyingsolo.gifAre you a solopreneur doing it on your own? Read my articles on Flying Solo.

squidooicon.gifMy evolving Squidoo lenses summarise the key themes and thinking behind my work.

twitter.jpg Follow me on twitter.

Locations of visitors to this pageVisitor locations: click for details.