Blog Archives

How to Increase Innovation in Organizations

Innovation and creative thinking in organizations is not only difficult to achieve, but also potentially risky, time consuming, and expensive. Is it worth the effort? Several studies suggest that indeed, higher organizational innovation affects overall performance quite strongly and is worth pursuing.

How, then, can innovation and creative thinking be increased in an organization? One important factor seems to be a strong learning orientation within the company.

Learning orientation (as defined in this body of research) consists of the following four components:

  1. commitment to learning,
  2. shared vision,
  3. open-mindedness, and 
  4. intra-organizational knowledge sharing.

Studies have shown that learning orientation not only influences firm innovativeness directly, but that it also moderates the impacts of risk-taking,

Read more ›



The Dark Sides of Positive Thinking

Illustrated by an artist in this RSA animation, Barbara Ehrenreich explores the problems of positive thinking:

Positive thinking, to the extent that it is delusional (and it often is), is not as harmless as it sounds. It can keep us in a powerless or complacent state, rather than forcing us to acknowledge the unpleasant reality and take action.

Read more ›



Book Recommendation for the New Year

Charles Duhigg. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

This book offers a very well-researched but easy to understand explanation of how we form and maintain habits. Gaining a deeper understanding of this general mechanism gives us as readers a very useful starting point to develop our own interventions in kicking old unwanted habits and forming new intentional ones. It is not the kind of book that offers a lot of specific advice, but it gives you the knowledge to develop your own best practices. I have found it a very useful framework for improving my own habits, as well as for my coaching work with clients who want to achieve specific goals in their work or personal lives.

Read more ›



Book Recommendation for October

Jon Krakauer: Into Thin Air

This is Jon Krakauer’s bone-chilling eye-witness report of the disastrous 1996 Mount Everest climb that killed eight people. I’m not going to discuss why this book is about decision making and goal achievement (well – the dark side of focusing on a goal). All I’ll say here is it was a page-turner for me. I have deep respect for a writer who can make 400+ pages about climbing a mountain go by so quickly, and yet leave such an impression.

Read more ›



RSA Animate: The surprising truth about what motivates us

I love those animated videos, and this one is adapted from a very interesting talk by Dan Pink about what does – and doesn’t – motivate us. Watch a skilled artist illustrate some very counter-intuitive findings:

Read more ›



Top