Earlier this week some colleagues and I attended a fantastic gathering of business and political leaders called the Emerging Issues Forum. The theme of the forum—interestingly enough for a bunch of business folks—was creativity, and speakers included some of my favorite thinkers/authors who analyze the future of business:

Roger Martin, Dean of the Rottman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and author of The Responsibility Virus, The Opposable Mind, and a new book on design thinking called The Design of Business.

Tom Kelley, General Manager of legendary design firm IDEO, and author of The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation. IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown also has a book out on the subject on Design Thinking, called Change by Design, which my friend Jonathan Opp wrote a nice review of here.

Daniel Pink, bestselling author of A Whole New Mind, a book that has been extremely influential in my thinking about how the left brain and right brain can play nice in the business world. Pink also has a new book out, called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

During their talks, I couldn’t help but notice all three touched on a similar thematic: the crucial role that inspiring creativity plays in driving innovation.

[Read the rest of this post over at opensource.com]

Today I spent a great day at the Emerging Issues Forum, where I’m proud to say my home state of North Carolina attracted some of the top business minds in the world (the Twitter stream is going crazy here). This morning featured two Dark Matter Matters all stars, Roger Martin and Tom Kelley (who I have written about previously here and here), but there was also an incredible lunch session where Charlie Rose interviewed husband and wife creative geniuses Nnenna Freelon (the 5-time Grammy nominated jazz vocalist) and Philip Freelon (architect extraordinaire), and plenty of other enlightening stuff.

The theme of the conference is Creativity, Inc., and from what I can tell from many of the attendee and host comments, the theme of this year’s event is very different than years past. But the undercurrent of many of the comments from this morning seemed to take a clear point of view on this theme.

My interpretation? For years the business world has been waging a war against creativity… and creativity is beginning to fight back.

It’s about damn time.

Read the rest of this post at Dark Matter Matters.

In the software development industry the results are in and open source is the winner. As Matt Asay predicts in a recent blog, future dialogues about open source will be less about evangelism and there will be more focus on putting open source into practice.

Which forces us to look, fundamentally, at exactly what we’re putting into practice? Open source software? Or open source itself? What do we mean when we say open source?

At New Kind, we believe that open source is— simply stated—  a beautiful and effective way to scale creative thinking and culture. What is amazing is the rapid acceptance of “open source” beyond software development. Today businesses are looking at open source as a way to create new business models, new management strategies, new marketing, innovation and community-building paradigms.

As we’ve noted before (and will, no doubt continue to note) evangelists in this broader understanding of open source include many of the world’s most influential business thinkers including Gary Hamel, Roger Martin and Tom Peters. Two weeks ago I watched Coke’s VP of Global Branding— David Butler— introduce open source as a powerful branding/design concept to AIGA’s national conference for professional designers. These speakers are not referring to open source software.

But, through the proven success of the open source software development model, in part, they have discovered the competitive power of such creative collaborative, design thinking cultures. And they are advising today’s business leaders to rapidly adopt these new kinds of models across their organizations; internally and externally.

Acceptance will be slow among executives who are just now being introduced to open source creative models. Hamel says they are locked into “archaic beliefs” that must be changed if they are to remain competitive. It took nearly 15 years for the technology acceptance; how long will this take?

The time is now. For organizations where innovation is now a strategic necessity, open source creative cultures are a powerful if frightening alternative to the habitual thinking of analytical-driven, MBA-type cultures. As Martin’s book The Responsibility Virus makes clear, fear is a powerful force that shuts down innovation. Most executives and senior managers have little clue how strongly fear influences their thinking and actions, and the effect that has on the competitive positioning of the organizations they lead.

Open source and design thinking are anecdotes. But there are countless traditional players— individuals and corporations; large and powerful— who have no interest in seeing new competitive threats to their status quo arise. Open source is revolutionary change; landowners seldom start revolutions. These players will not welcome the change open source promises. And they will not play nicely.

Such opposition will look for evidence that open source doesn’t work. To borrow Roger Martin’s language, “reliable” actions will trump more “viable” solutions. When they find ‘reliable’ evidence, they can and will be ruthless adversaries. Open source practitioners must not be naive; evangelism can become a detriment in this environment. Even the Christian Bible (a fair prophet on evangelism) warns, “Faith without works is dead.”

In that context, Matt Asay is correct. Evangelist must begin to play a secondary role to the practitioner. And if Malcolm Gladwell is right, then it takes 10,000 hours for an individual to grasp the nuance and expertise necessary to play that role. That’s a small community of practitioners.

That’s the next challenge for open source.

……………………..

additional resources:

https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/ghost.aspx?ID=/Strategy/Innovation/Innovative_management_A_conversation_between_Gary_Hamel_and_Lowell_Bryan_2065

http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/rogermartin/publications.htm

Yesterday on his Dark Matter Matters blog, my friend Chris Grams respectfully challenged author Seth Godin by asserting that his latest book “Tribes” limited his audience by preaching to the choir.

Grams describes two separate and distinct audiences that could benefit from Godin’s work. Following Roger Martin’s model, one is the ‘validity-minded’ designer audience (his already loyal following, the “choir” if you will).

The other audience, the one who widely panned Godin’s book, is the ’reliability-minded’ business community that needs concrete examples and reliable outcomes. More data. More case studies. More proof.

Grams suggests that Godin could do more to reach out to this group, that he write his next book less for ‘validity-minded’ tribes and more for members of the ‘reliability-minded’ tribe.

Godin, in a comment on the blog post, graciously responded: “The challenge isn’t to preach to the choir. The challenge is to give the choir ideas they can use to spread the word.”

What a wonderful exchange. I’m a big fan of both Chris Grams and Seth Godin. And I appreciate that Godin has defined his role in the mission of spreading the good news.

For thirty years I’ve heard the call for ‘creatives’ to learn to speak the language of business. As Roger Martin advises, it continues to be valuable advice. But it cuts both ways.

What we should not underemphasize is Dr. Martin’s call to the business leaders: Think. Become more like designers. In a world where innovation is truly strategic, creativity is an imperative.

Business leaders need to be open to changing their world view about creative work forces. Recognize and appreciate the differences. Create cultures where creativity flourishes.

Unless they do, they will be left with one bullet to compete— cutting costs. Not very strategic. Good luck on that.

This blog has been too idle too long.

I’ve been reading the book Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently written by Emory professor of neuroeconomics, Gregory Berns. Berns uses brain-scanning technologies to explain the decision-making process of human minds. As such he is a highly respected researcher and speaker on the science of innovation.

According to his publicist, his book asks these questions:
+   what makes true innovators so creative, so successful — and so rare?
+   what makes them tick?
+   how can we learn to be a little more like them?’

Here’s more from Berns’ publicist:
Gregory Berns is the Distinguished Chair of Neuroeconomics at Emory University, where he is a professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Economics, and at the Gouzueta Business School. The field he has helped put on the map, Neuroeconomics, is, fittingly, a blend of neuroscience, economics and psychology. In his work, he is breaking ground in everything from the biological roots of political conflict to predicting which teenagers are likely to make fatally bad judgments. Even better, he possesses a rare ability to translate dense technical material for a general audience. He has been profiled — and his work has been ecstatically reviewed — in The New York Times, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal, as well as other leading business and science publications. In addition to Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently, he is also the author of Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment.

I’m digging the book. Great research and surprising observations. It will sit proudly on my shelf next to the books of Roger Martin, Gary Hamel, and Rollo May’s classic The Courage to Create. Well written and funny. Here are a few of my favorite lines:

“This is a story of the search for the holy grail of creativity,
an almost childlike imagination and willful abandonment to dream crazy thoughts.”

“Before one can muster the strength to tear down conventional thinking,
one must first imagine the possibility that conventional thinking is wrong.”

“The brain is fundamentally a lazy piece of meat.” You gotta love that.

“The brain takes shortcuts whenever it can.” Well, that would explain a lot, wouldn’t it.

Business leaders looking to compete by being more innovative would do well to read and follow the professor’s advice. Or they could ask an  artist or designer who’s experienced in managing creative teams.

I was catching up on a couple of my favorite bloggers earlier today when a theme of optimism emerged. Last week Bruce Nussbaum of Business Week described President Obama’s speech to congress in his blog as “designerly.” Later I found Matt Asay’s blog from a few days earlier focusing on Obama’s interest in open source technology.

Since the earliest days of his campaign, it is clear that President Obama possesses a genuine understanding of design and open source thinking. He is a gifted communicator who aligns perfectly the form/media of his messages with the content he’s delivering. His principles, words and actions are in sync. When he speaks of ‘bottoms up’ problem solving, he ‘gets’ it far beyond intellectual and competitive theory arguments. I’d say that’s a good set of attributes to describe the ‘designer’ of the future.

Bush was our first MBA president. I think it’s fair to claim Obama as the first, modern ‘design thinking’ president. I can only assume his work as a community organizer helped him realize the deep cultural underpinnings that are necessary as a platform to put collaborative innovation/tranformation to practice. But collaborative design cultures are fragile. It is hard for chickens to collaborate with the fox. Or, in Obama’s case, FOX.

It’s hard to overstate the obstacles that real change will face. When I worked at Red Hat my friend Todd Barr coined the term ‘colloberation’ which we used when referring to participants more interested in forcing others to ‘collaborate’ with their agenda than collaborating authentically. I’m reminded of that term now as I watch the Republican leadership desperately attempting to position the new administration as arrogant, partisan and non-collaborative.

This new form of collaboration works. The open source software development community is a wonderful example of the value, speed, efficiency and competitive advantage radical collaboration can ignite. Open source demands transparency, freedom, authenticity, commitment and courage. Roger Martin’s book— The Responsibility Virus— offers a great recipe for how to apply it.

The creative communities of design and open source should not be fooled into thinking any of this will be easy. It will be hard work. But it certainly feels great to be optimistic again!