By Tony Vengrove
What a fun and rewarding year for Miles Finch Innovation! Thank you for all your support and engagement during the past twelve months. I continue to be inspired by the generosity of all our friends and followers. It’s utterly refreshing, and quite humbling, to be connected to people who are so caring, willing to share, and provide a great exchange of knowledge and ideas.
The links below reflect my favorite posts of the year. They also seemed to resonate the most with our audience. Hope you enjoy them!
One of the great joys of 2014 was partnering with Todd Schnick to create this podcast series. We had the privilege of interviewing some incredible guests about creative leadership and what it really takes to lead innovation in a corporate environment. You can catch all nine episode via the link above. I’m happy to announce that we’ll continue the series in 2015 as The Stories of Creative Leadership, so be sure to follow along!
In this post, I challenge whether or not the “We have to innovate or die” mantra has done more harm than good. Instead of focusing myopically on all the things we can innovate, perhaps it’s time to get back to basics and ask, “How can be better serve our market?”
This post features a story from my early advertising agency days. I shared a bold campaign idea in a big agency meeting only to have it killed quickly. However, one of the creative teams involved left the meeting and took the time to get to know the idea before judging it completely. The result? They made it better and ultimately sold it.
My Father is the source of many great creative leadership stories. This one features his presentation to Lee Iacocca and demonstrates how doing a little homework not only builds rapport, but creates trust–a critical ingredient when selling ideas. If you like this, then you’ll love the story about his inspiration for the famous Toyota Jump.
In this post I create a case for Creative Leadership as a focus area for organizational development (after a brief rant about fellow innovation consultants). This was my favorite blog title of the year.
My good friend, Paul Doherty, contributed this story to the blog; I’m extremely grateful he shared such a personal story. It’s a classic “turn lemons into lemonade” tale and reminds us how remarkable adversity can be: it can either crush us or make us stronger. The good news is we all have to the power to choose the outcome.
This podcast interview introduced me to Todd Schnick, which began a great friendship and our collaboration on The Seven C’s of Creative Leadership. This was a fun interview in which we tackle some fundamentals of innovation and creative leadership. My favorite part was hearing Todd’s reaction to my definition of innovation.
Thank you once again for your continued support! Here’s wishing you a happy and prosperous 2015!
Miles Finch Innovation helps companies navigate the messy territory of corporate innovation. We’re strategic thinking partners who can help you get unstuck and identify creative solutions to your toughest challenges. We also love to train and speak on the subject of Creative Leadership. Email us or call us at 860-799-7505 to learn how we can help you unlock the creative potential of your employees.