Do you know that feeling? A team is sitting together. The atmosphere is tense, the budget is gone, people are missing, and deadlines are looming. Everyone's talking about what can't be done. The list of limitations grows longer and longer. You're stuck in an innovation dead end. In the end, the frustration is greater than before, and you schedule a follow-up meeting because you haven't made any progress. I experience this so often, and of course, the same starting point exist

A company doesn't become more innovative just because it uses great tools. The success of innovation does not depend on the number of tools used, but on a flexible approach supported by an open and creative culture. A well-thought-out tool setup that supports processes but doesn't simply automate them is key to avoiding the tool graveyard and truly driving innovation.

Psychological safety forms innovative teams Psychological safety seems to be a hot topic these days. Is it worth the hype? Whhat does it mean for innovation management? Imagine a team where every idea ca be openly discussed – even if it seems absurd at first glance. An environment where, instead of "No, but...", it's more likely to be "Yes, and...". Where a brief thought is seen as an invitation to develop something greater from it. Where mistakes are analyzed objectively tog

Dier Blogpost beschreibt, wie man die richtigen Innovations-Superkräfte identifiziert

Small improvements as game changers Innovation is often associated with major breakthroughs or revolutionary ideas. But true innovation is not only found in the big, world-changing inventions, but also in the small and unspectacular things. With this blog post, I would like to encourage you to feel creative and innovative and to recognize that even small things that you improve in everyday life are innovations. Sometimes people tell me: "Our company is too small for innovatio

Creating creative oases In today's fast-paced business world, it's easy to feel limited in your creative, innovative thinking due to stress and overload. Creativity is not a skill that you can simply switch on and off. Recommendations for stimulating creativity are often: take your time, think calmly and reflect... This is often impossible because we live in a complex environment of obligations, expectations and demands and have to interact with many other people. According t

Overcoming challenges Innovation itself is a big challenge for most companies. If we look closely, we can discover a lot of other challenges in innovation management at the operational level that innovation managers and project managers deal with on a daily basis. What are the most important of these in my opinion and what approaches could be helpful? Here you can find my thoughts on this. I continue with the second part of this topic and my #4 to #6. (The first part can be f

Overcome challenges Innovation itself is a major challenge for most companies. If we look closely, we can discover a lot of additional challenges at the operational level that innovation managers and project managers deal with on a daily basis. Here you can find my thoughts on six of the biggest innovation challenges and some advice on how to overcome them. Let's start with my #1 to #3: #1 Lack of innovation strategy An innovation strategy guides the innovation and determines

Take different perspectives Sometimes we get stuck. We simply don't get any further with an idea or a solution and end up going around in circles. What can help? A longer coffee break Do something completely different Discuss with colleagues or friends Cancel a workshop Postpone the discussion But sometimes with the right questions and a relaxed inner attitude you also can move on. The inner attitude If you are often responsible for facilitating workshops, you know how import

Giving interesting presentations is not that difficult Perhaps you have already heard that or said it yourself: "I'm not good at Powerpoint!". Often we've all gotten bored by seeing an infinite number of charts. PowerPoint can be such a powerful and helpful communication tool. And not that complex if you don't claim to know and master every function. In innovation projects we create lots of Powerpoints: for presentations, for documentation, for reading..., as a base for ever

Pitches help to communicate in a focussed and efficient way ...and because we tend to overlook this, we sometimes waste good opportunities. Dealing with unexpected situations Life is a pitch, well, maybe not in all of life, but in many situations. E.g. when I present a new idea at work, give a presentation on the project status in a department meeting, when I am asked what I am working on, when I want to make a suggestion to someone, .... I refer to situations in which I want

Inspire others with an NABC What actually is a pitch? What makes a convincing pitch? Pitching in every situation - what do I mean by that? To give a good pitch, you need to understand exactly who you're dealing with—and what exactly you want to achieve. If you don't keep that in mind, there's no point in even giving a pitch. What is a pitch? Based on the the success of some TV shows in Germany "pitches" are now much better known here than before. A pitch is the short present

5 Whys A method to easily get to the heart of the message you want to communicate: the 5-Why method. 5 Whys - What? It originally comes from quality management and is an instrument for determining cause and effect. Toyoda Sakichi is considered the father of this method. He was a great inventor and founder of Toyota Industries Corporation, Ltd. His main message is as follows: If a problem arises, ask "why?" five times in order to identify the cause. Then change the production