In my upcoming book, The Intuitive Compass (Jossey, Bass Oct 2011), I write extensively about the need for business leaders to use what I call Intuitive Intelligence to tap into their ability to effectively manage their employees and generate innovative business strategies and solutions in a complex global marketplace. Before I give you a preview of what Intuitive Intelligence is, it is worthwhile to look at how culture, society, and science have tried to understand and measure intelligence. Read More
Author Archives: Francis
My TEDxKC presentation : make business innovation happen
Synopsis: “Creativity and innovation are keys to business success in the global economy. Yet recent research shows American creativity has been significantly declining for the past 20 years. A new competence – Intuitive Intelligence – is needed to win the creativity challenge. Read More
A New Corporate Mandate: Rethink Efficiency and Play!
“Play is the highest form of research”
– Albert Einstein
“I was not working, I was playing. I was letting things reassemble in front of my eyes and … I knew I had come up with something that would get me the Nobel Prize… and it did!’
– Dr. Kary Mullis, Scientist, Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry (1993)
Since 2006 IBM has published a series of biannual studies highlighting the priorities of CEOs around the world. Read More
Listening for Clues to The New Economy
In 2003, when the Indian auto giant Tata Motors decided to design a new low cost car, the Nano, for lower income consumers they made a key decision: rather than starting from a traditional four wheel car and stripping it down, they would start with an auto-rickshaw (a small, three wheeled vehicle) and build it up. Also, rather than making design assumptions based on decades of auto development for the middle and upper classes, their design team researched the features their new lower income target audience – many of whom had never owned a car before – would value. One of the interesting things they discovered in their research was that their new target audience didn’t care about having a radio; they preferred having extra storage space. At this point in the evolution of car engineering and design, a radio is seen as the most basic of equipment. It’s not terribly expensive, but in the context of trying to make the lowest cost vehicle possible, it could be eliminated and simultaneously transformed into something more valuable to the target consumer: space. Read More
Seven Steps to a More Playful Life
Get Comfortable
Hungry, tired, and uncomfortable aren’t good conditions for serious play. Sleep well, have a healthy meal, and put on relaxed fit pants and
shirts before you set off in search of fun.
Give Yourself Time
Play is as essential to our long term well being as food, water and sleep.
Set aside a few hours, or even better a whole day or weekend to do
nothing but indulge in fun … it’s a necessary luxury that will
reap rewards in higher creativity, mental efficiency, and
productivity. You will also avoid reaching burn out.
Start Moving
Put on some music and let yourself move to it, hum along, or sing out
loud if you feel the impulse. Creativity and playfulness are rooted
not just in your mind, but also your body, and music touches both.
Be Messy
The reason that we dress kids in wash and wear clothes and sit them at
plastic tables is that play is messy! So whatever your playtime
involves – whether it be drawing, cooking, dancing, gardening, or
creative brainstorming – don’t worry about doing it perfectly and
don’t worry about the outcome. Just enjoy the mess and stay in the
present moment.
Take on a Different Role
If you play with others give up traditional hierarchy. If you are
playing with co-workers you may have the more junior members of the
team take the lead for a change.
Fail With Gusto
To paraphrase what Titanic director James Cameron once said, failure is
always an option, but fear is not. Embrace failure as part of the
process of life. Don’t get hung up on what you are doing, why you
are doing it, and where it is leading or not. Accept your fear of
failure and get on with it; if you don’t, you can’t evolve.
Open the Floodgates
In French we have a saying that translates roughly as, “Jack
laughing, Jack weeping,” meaning that when you open yourself to
one emotion you access the whole range of your emotions. But if you
keep yourself from feeling a particular emotion then you ban yourself
from the whole gamut of your emotions. So go ahead and cry at the sad
movie, laugh out loud at the absurdities of daily life, or vent your
frustration in a kickboxing class! Emotions are the fuel for
authentic living and our best source of energy and creativity.
BP crisis: our shared responsibilities toward a new path to success
BP oil spill nearshore trajectory june18 2010
The tragedy in the Gulf continues. By now we’ve all seen the horrendous images of seabirds, fish, dolphins, and other forms of aquatic life – dead or dying, helpless as they slither about covered in oil, an agonizing sight for all the world to see. We’ve seen the Cajun shrimpers bemoan the loss of their lifestyle, and we are witnessing a slow, lingering devastation – as the sea itself seems to be gasping for breath. Read More
Michael Schrage and the Intuition Fallacy
There’s a post on the HBR blog – Tell Your Gut to Please Shut Up – by Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, in which he denounces the current trend about intuition as the key to quick, effective, successful decision-making.
Although Schrage’s argument seems to make perfect sense, and his ideas are well articulated, I think this is just another false debate about intuition. Read More
The Future of Magazines & Newspapers: A Conversation
Not long ago, at the airport, I had a conversation with John – a business man in his early 40s.
Since I consult in the highly-challenged paper media industry I asked him how he feels about reading magazines and papers.
I assist a major firm identify the fundamentals of the media of the future, facilitate a culture of innovation and accelerate the reinvention of their business model. For those of you less familiar with the challenges of this industry in the US let me tell you what they are in this digital age: Read More
“Intuitive Intelligence” on iTunes U: Top Download
The “Intuitive Intelligence” conference I put together for HEC MBA – first business school in Europe per FT ranking over the past 5 years – has become one of the top global downloads for iTunes U.
You can download it for free >>
“Digital Intuition” versus Intuitive Intelligence: Where’s the Digital Trust?
One of the latest ideas to hit the buzz circuit is the concept of “digital intuition” – introduced by my6sense, a company which has developed a tool that serves up the most relevant
information for us. They’ve developed a recommendation engine which TechCrunch says “separates
the signal from the noise and helps users shift their attention to the
content they care about most.”
The application learns what you like, then finds more. Read More