Innovation Acceleration

Deborah Byrd of EarthSky Communications turned me on to a TED video from Chris Anderson, Curator of TED (Ideas Worth Spreading) where he speaks about the power of online video to accelerate learning and innovation.

He speaks about how the explosion of bandwidth, the power of non-verbal communication and the ability of the medium to visualize problems or solutions is about to accelerate the speed of society’s ability to innovate.

Now everyone loves TED and its open sharing of knowledge and insights, but if you take a step back and look at TED compared to your organization, you will likely see something very quickly. When you think about how our organizations handle Knowledge Management (KM) or even innovation management (okay, idea management really), it is very much about text. Why aren’t we training people in our organizations how to use video?

How much more capable would innovation efforts inside and outside the organization be if we made more liberal use of video to explain not just the selling points for an innovation idea, or to visualize a customer insight, but also to bring a lens to the barriers that people run into as they develop a funded idea?

And, if by extension you shared the ideas that failed, then who knows, maybe someone, somewhere, sometime in the future, might be able to look at how something is failing and bang on it until they find a way to turn a failed idea into a potential future success that could be put back into your organization’s innovation engine.

Visualize, visualize, visualize, and you can’t help but stoke your innovation bonfire!

Braden Kelley is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons. Braden is also the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy.