In today’s episode of the Idea to Value Podcast, we speak with one of the most influential and prolific authors on the topics of marketing and creativity in the world, Seth Godin. Seth Godin is one of the fathers of online and email marketing, and has blogged every day for decades. His blog has thousands of posts, he has written over 20 bestselling books, and his views are respected around the world. His newest book is “The Song of Significance: A Manifesto for Teams and the People Who Lead Them“, about how we can all find work which is both more valuable and more meaningful. Topics discussed ..read more

Would you ever hurt someone intentionally? What about if someone you respected told you to do it? In some cases, people will believe almost anything someone tells them, if the person telling them appears to have the authority to do so. One of the most dangerous biases in the world might be the Authority Bias. This is the tendency to attribute greater accuracy to the opinion of an authority figure (unrelated to its content) and be more influenced by that opinion. And like many biases, we might all suffer from it without realising it. Milgram’s Obedience Study and other Authority research One of ..read more

If you have ever felt challenged solving a problem, or struggled to come up with an idea, there is one piece of advice that many people would give: Sleep on it For hundreds of years, artists, scientists and entrepreneurs have told tales about how some of their best ideas came to them in their sleep, during their dreams. After all, dreams happen when we sleep. And dreams sometimes exhibit some of the most creative, unexpected and original thoughts we ever have. However, more recent scientific evidence has looked at whether there really is a link between sleep and problem solving, creativity a ..read more

Even if it was created by a terrible person, can art still be beautiful? Is it possible to appreciate something created by someone, when you know that creator has done something you disagree with strongly? And how bad does their action have to be in order for people to change their mind about the quality of their creative work? Simply put, can you separate the artist as a person from the art they create? This has been a question which people and scholars have wrestled with for centuries. And it is a question for which each person likely needs to decide where their own limits lie, based on thei ..read more

When you are about to negotiate, is it better to go first, or is it better to wait for the other person to show their hand and you then are able to adjust with more information? Well, according to the research, whoever provides the first piece of information has a major advantage, as the final agreed number tends to be closer to their initial suggestion. This is due to a cognitive bias called anchoring. Anchoring is a process by which people are influenced by a piece of information given to them just before they are asked to make a judgement. It refers to our tendency to rely too heavily on th ..read more

In today’s episode of the Idea to Value podcast, we speak with Innovation Leader management team of Scott Kirsner (previously on the podcast here) and Alex Slawsby about the breaking new InnoLead report “Benchmarking Innovation Impact 2023“. We cover the most important data on innovation teams, including the changes in appetite for different types of innovation projects based on the uncertainty in the coming 2023 economy. Topics covered in this episode: 00:04:00 – The target audience for the 2023 report is anyone involved in innovation in companies with 5,000+ employees 00:08:00 – The data t ..read more

One of the biggest questions I am getting from businesses at the moment is what the potential impact of a recession or the slowdown of the economy might have on their innovation efforts. And according to a new report by Innovation Leader and KPMG USA called “Benchmarking Innovation Impact, from InnoLead.” (available for download from Tuesday 7 Feb 2023), the outlook shows that there are potentially major problems ahead for innovation teams. This report is a follow up to the amazing InnoLead reports I have previously written and spoken about, including the one which outlined how over time compa ..read more

There is so much hype around Artificial Intelligence tools and what they are able to create in the fields of creativity. One of the most recent examples which is taking the world by storm is by using text prompts, either to create new text or even to create new images. But I just came across a new research study just published at the end of Jan 2023 which may have a bigger impact than any on the future of the planet. The study describes a new AI model called Progen, developed by the research team from Salesforce. Titled: “Large language models generate functional protein sequences across diver ..read more

Have you ever heard that women are bad drivers? Or that Asian students are good at math? Or that people who work in accounting are not creative? Well, there is a powerful psychological phenomenon which means that if someone is part of a group where there is a stereotype that they will underperform or be bad at a task, then that stereotype will actually make them perform worse. How is this possible? It is called the Stereotype Threat, and came from a groundbreaking 1995 research paper by Steele & Aronson which looked at why African American students seemed to underperform on certain tests ..read more

A few months ago, I saw a piece of research which has stuck with me. Research by Microsoft was looking into how Hybrid Work was working, and found out the following shocking statistic: 87% of employees feel like they are just as productive working remotely as they are in the office But 88% of managers feel like their team members are not as productive remotely That means only 12% of managers feel like their team is being productive in an environment where they are not visible to the managers. And that got me asking: Why? How is it possible that managers have such a different belief about wha ..read more