If innovation has become a word that is met with a lack of enthusiasm, this article from Kaihan Krippendorff may inject fresh inspiration and motivation. People talk about innovation a lot… but often in the conversation around innovation, there isn’t an innovation strategy. If there’s a semblance of an innovation strategy, it’s not often clearly articulated or it’s not connected to an overarching business strategy. That is when things start to fall down.” Dr. Simone Ahuja is the founder of…

Kaihan Krippendorff shares an article that draws from a Harvard study on the three areas of the brain responsible for creativity and how technology and human creativity will collaborate in the future. In 2018, a famous Harvard study sought to understand which parts of the brain are responsible for creativity. Creativity, as defined in the study, is “the ability to come up with new and useful ideas.” To test it, researchers hooked participants up to fMRI scanners and had them…

Kaihan Krippendorff shares an article that identifies how employees can increase their employability using the “influence formula” regardless of how unemployment rates fluctuate. In the war for talent, talent is winning. Unemployment has not been this low since 1968. Employers are paying 20% compensation premiums to hire new employees. And across nearly every industry, the number one challenge on the minds of executives is how to recruit and retain top talent. Some experts argue we are entering a new era…

Kaihan Krippendorff provides a reminder on the power of stories and why the narratives about your organization can shape patterns of thinking and daily behaviors within the workforce that ultimately shape the culture and business transformation.  A World Beyond Cash… Former Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga’s vision of a “world beyond cash” has resonated across a decade. The concept expanded globally in its call for customers, employees, and executives to imagine a cashless society fueled by digital payments. Banga’s leadership at…

Kaihan Krippendorff shares an article that identifies how to use language to stimulate innovation. Last week, the Outthinker Strategy Network (OSN) hosted our first in-person roundtable of the year at Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island in New York City. The island, located in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, once a site of abandoned prison buildings and mental institutions, has been transformed into a hub of innovation. Opened in 2017, the Cornell Tech campus and its Tata Innovation Center…

Kaihan Krippendorff shares an article on where to start when you are thinking of building ecosystems in business. The nature of competition in business is changing. What has historically consisted of company-to-company rivalry has evolved into a struggle between competing ecosystems to gain supremacy. Business ecosystems consist of two or more partner companies who agree to combine their assets, capabilities, markets, and talent pools to create and deliver new value. Last week, I sat down with Tiffani Bova, Global Growth…

What if a futurist could answer questions posed by CSOs? The following article shared by Kaihan Krippendorff reveals the answers to ten questions asked of renowned futurist Faith Popcorn. Earlier this month, The Outthinker Strategy Network hosted futurist Faith Popcorn as a roundtable guest. Faith joined our community of chief strategy officers and executives to talk about trends that will have the biggest impact this year and over the next decade. As each member shared their most critical concerns, the…

A six-minute read from Kaihan Krippendorff on how to be more influential at work.  Whether you’re trying to get your dream job, convince your boss to give you more responsibility, get your colleagues excited about your idea, get neighbors to vote for your proposal, or simply persuade family members to consider somewhere new for vacation, your influencing skills are key. We all know this. And yet, few of us do it well because we fail to exercise the full breadth…

Kaihan Krippendorff provides an article that offers a new twist on innovation development.  To keep up with today’s rapid pace of disruption, every company feels the pressure to innovate. Most of them, when trying to shift to an innovative culture, feel like they have to pursue brand new ideas. But when I was recently invited to judge an innovation competition for Macmillan Learning, I saw that there is another way. An innovation competition without any new ideas? This was the…

Kaihan Krippendorff takes a look at the history of the music industry to demonstrate how Spotify excels at delivering customers what they want when they want it.  In 2006, a pair of Swedish entrepreneurs banded together to fight an ongoing problem: Piracy in the music industry was costing artists, retailers, and record companies billions of dollars in lost sales. Customers who had previously gone to CD or record stores to purchase music were now evading legislation to download songs for…

A Dark Sky experience led Kaihan Krippendorff to ruminate on how to disrupt your industry. It’s 6:30 a.m. at the Dark Sky RV resort in Utah. I’m sitting out by the gas firepit and everyone else is asleep. The sun is rising, but it’s not one of those sudden appearances that I often see in the Northeast. Instead, the sky is wide open above the vast horizon, and it begins to change colors over the short desert vegetation and red…

Kaihan Krippendorff identifies how the concept of a flywheel can be applied to business.  Most evenings, when I’m not traveling, I make time to get in at least half an hour on my Peloton bike. It helps to wind down at the end of the day. I’ll turn on a show (lately I’ve been slowly savoring this season’s episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale and waiting in anticipation for season 2 of Ted Lasso) and pedal to break a sweat. As…