When we think of building our networks, all too often the word conjures up images of sleazy-feeling cocktail hours. Yet loose associations are profoundly powerful sources of leverage. How do we preserve our networks without feeling gross?

There’s a great story about Jim Yurchenco discovered the insight that fueled the wildly popular and widely imitated original Apple mouse…

I once asked David Kelley what he would say to someone who’s intimidated by the volume of material required to get to a good idea. (Depending on one’s field, research suggests anywhere from ~200 on the low end to ~10,000 on the high end)…

“I try to keep Fridays wide open for exploration. They are my creative days. I keep a stack of stuff reserved for Fridays that I want to look into. Other than a call with two treasured collaborators, I have nothing else planned…”

One thing I'm always wondering is, "How do leaders create an environment where creativity can thrive?" A few fresh answers have popped on the radar recently, for the benefit of fellow practitioners...

This memory of Steve Jobs reminded me of a tactic that was known as “Tom Sawyering” around the Xerox PARC offices. An informal process of socializing ideas to build momentum…

"I was obsessed with not getting trapped by DVDs the way AOL got trapped, the way Kodak did, the way Blockbuster did…" - Reed Hastings, Founder & CEO of Netflix…

“We hit a manufacturing snag that threatened to stall production of a critical new product by 18 months. Over the weekend, we assembled a ‘swat team’ who solved the problem in just a couple of days.”

The other day, my friend and mentor David Kelley told me about a famous old assignment legendary Stanford professor Bob McKim used to give his students: he would tell them to keep a bug list. Mind you, this was decades before programming language became common parlance…

"It's your fault, really. You're the one who told us to prototype." A CEO friend of mine, with whom I've been discussing the merits of low-res prototyping and rapid iteration in the context of his public company, jokingly placed the blame upon me for a failed scaling effort today…

Curiosity defines genius, but many of us stifle curious impulses in favor of more "relevant" searches; if we can't rationalize an interest, it gets jettisoned pretty quickly in the name of focus. The irony is, some of history's most prolific and inventive thinkers were insanely curious! Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman is an excellent example of a curious life…

My friend Philipe Barreaud runs the Customer Innovation Lab for Michelin. He’s the kind of guy who tells the technicians to “hang the sign upside down” in the main office, just to signal the value of seeing things differently and challenging people’s perceptions…

Ultimately, over the course of a single day (enabled by meticulous planning and thoughtful pre-program correspondence) 1,059 employees “discussed 106 topics in 171 sessions managed by 138 facilitators in 66 meeting spaces across Pixar’s three buildings…”

The end of the story is, he wins the Nobel Prize. The unexpected part was the twist in the middle of the roller coaster…

To solicit maximum contribution value out of a diverse team, you must create psychological safety (defined by HBS Professor Amy Edmonson as "a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up"…

In conventional business settings, logic is king. All decisions are stripped of any seemingly unnecessary information (including emotion) just like a hospital is sterilized of germs. Only the facts. Reason must prevail. And yet, all too often, data-rich but emotion-poor meetings end in the same outcome: a resolution to have another meeting…

"We cracked the problem wide open. We have people coming forward we've never heard from before!" This from the leader of a global sales organization growing at 20% month over month…

Dr. Rakesh Suri, MD, Chief Executive Officer and Chair of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, took an unexpected approach to leading in the face of COVID. Apparently, when the pandemic hit, one thing he required was that a novice be added to every department…

When the pandemic hit, Perry and I started exploring work on a book. After months of fits and starts, we settled on a topic and put it in front of a few publishers. We were humbled by the response. During the holidays, we were offered a deal by Penguin Random House's business imprint, Portfolio. We are pretty excited about it. Should be out next fall, 2022…

Another one of the insights I gleaned from my and Mar's illuminating conversation with the amazing female founders of The Landing (the first of many insights posted here) was how they accelerated product development by creating a design council…