I keep a lot of irons in the fire and so the reading here at the FrogBlog tends to be a bit eclectic. Following are my recommendations for posts that I think you won’t waste your time reading…
Ideas From Strange Places – Interesting ideas come from unexpected places.
- Following Instructions “I am not a stupid customer, but I play one at the laundromat”
- Will Customers Do Absolutely Anything To Consume Your Product? “Reading about poisonous beans in Beans: A History by ken Albala and have to say, I’m amazed at what lengths we will go through to consume something we really need or want.”
- Fear, Banking and Bring on the Wolves “Could the current financial crises be explained by a lack of lion’s and tigers and bears?…I found myself asking these questions as I readWhere the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators by William Stolzenburg.”
- Planning for Serendipity – Taking Flight Lessons from the Wright Bros. “But as with all serendipitous moments (and most instances of luck for that matter) the inventors had to put themselves in the right frame for inspiration to strike.”
- When Trails of Science and Art Cross Interesting example of art and science building on each other. “When the world of mathematics and music collide, normal cells and cancer cells sound different. Is that true of black holes, binaries, big bangs? Does that mean anything?”
- Abandon Logic, Create Then Verify One of my favorite photos and a rant on the need to occasionally abandon logic. “Abandoning logic isn’t an everyday solution, it’s for special occasions. A way of saying, “I know the world is pretty much going this way, but wouldn’t this over here be nice?” – and then figuring out a way to cut cross country to the new reality.”
- Escaping the Gap “Recently The Doctor (of BBC’s Dr. Who) hid his companions with a simple device that skewed your attention just a wee bit to the left. So as they went past, the bad guys would just look away without realizing it and they could go on with saving the world and other such things. If your product has fallen into the Gap of Despair there is a good chance prospects are doing exactly the same thing to your marketing message.”
- Buffalo Bill, Eiffel, Otis and The Keys To Success “Flexible Rigidity. Sometimes you need to bend and sometimes you need to stand firm when driving forward. So what can we learn from Buffalo Bill, Gustave Eiffel and Charles Otis about the balancing act we must perform while being torn between these two opposites?”
- Being and Entrepreneurship “Then I became distracted, by pig farming.”
- Taking Care of Loyal Customers “Soon after my son settled on which pacifier would get him through infancy, Playtex decided to make a change.”
- Are You Going To Be A Victim Of Banana Marketing? “Has your creative started to look more like a banana than a bouquet? Sure everyone knows it’s you – but is that good?”
The Physics and Ideation Series – Loved the book The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn By Louisa Guilder and couldn’t help riffing through the connections to business and creativity if found in it’s scientific history pages.
- Ways to Unleash Creativity “I’ve seen ideas take this kind of tortured path in the business world. The truth is, the most innovative, most creatively destructive ideas always take time. Always must be tested. Always destroy careers of the unlucky and make geniuses out of the lucky.”
- When does a Breakthrough Idea Become An Acceptable Idea? “Illustrating the winding road taken by the physics community in understanding entanglement, it shows how even the most brilliant can dismiss, ignore and argue against ideas that seem to break foundational beliefs.”
- Creativity and Mismatched Socks “I’ve been thinking about lessons we can take from the physics community to more successfully develop ideas — and I’ve been wearing mismatched socks.”
- Customer Entanglement “I think the word ‘entanglement’ may be the best single word description of marketing at its best – no matter what your specialty.”
- Physics, Ideation, Community & Entanglement “Physics has been my muse for thinking about ways creative ideas might be better shepherded through an organization as we try to: Avoid concept death by committee. Avoid killing creativity through argument. Avoid ignoring the game changing idea.”
The Uncertainty Paradox Series – “Uncertainty is a funny thing. At the same time it destabilizes your organization’s ability to generate profits it opens up opportunities for the future.”
- Tackling the Uncertainty Paradox — An Introduction “Preparing (for Leadership) — Differentiating (the Enterprise) —- Connecting(to Customers/Partners/Competitors)”
- Are You a Business Uncertainty Explorer “Are you ready to set sail when the map is solid blue?”
- Creative Response to the Uncertainty Paradox “Sometimes we just need to turn our thinking upside down. Customers change. Tastes change. No mater what creative endeavor you are part of, the more rules for success are written in stone the more opportunity is knocking for the potential leader who can see things a different way.”
- When Thinking Out of the Box, You Just Might Want To Think In The Box
- The 3 P’s of Innovation “Perspiration, Perseverance and Perspective”
- Global Winds Driving The Uncertainty Paradox “No matter how local your business appears, global forces are going to trip you up if they haven’t already. A corollary – all local markets will feel the impact of international competition and technological change.”
- Scenario Planning As A Spur To Entrepreneurship
Creative Fire Extinguishers – I need to fire this series up again. Here’s my top 10.
Riffs On Interesting Quotes and Posts
- Is the American Dream Dead – “In describing why business models must change, Kay Plantes pointed out a study that indicates 78% of respondents believed the American Dream has died. This has bothered me all weekend.”
- Procrastination = Creativity | There Is Hope! “‘Productive mediocrity requires discipline of an ordinary kind.’ Quote from W.A. Pannapacker’s article How To Procrastinate Like Leonardo da Vinci”
- “Catering To Past Patterns Of Power” “What a great way to sum up one of the key roadblocks to successful innovation. I heard this term used by Robert Johnson while speaking with Bill Moyers about fixing the international banking crisis.”
- Creativity is Messy, Walk In A Great Man’s Shoes “The photo of his paint stained leather shoes was posted in response to questions from a kindergarten class who had watched him creating a large mural – they wondered how he didn’t get messy with paint flying.”