Let’s face it, sometimes you feel horrible. You feel like the universe is conspiring against you. It could be caused by an upsetting event, such as the end of a relationship or the loss of a job. Other times the feelings are elusive and unexplainable, thus attributed to the alignment of the stars or a [...]

Being a professional speaker on innovation, I attend a lot of conferences and meetings.  And I am always amazed at how poorly most meetings are run. One things in particular disturbs me… When meeting time is used to present things that could have been sent via email. Don’t do it! Meeting time should be viewed [...]

Last week I wrote an article for American Express about “marrying your work.” Unlike the “ball and chain” picture that tends to pop into our heads, I espoused the merits of loving your job, just like you would marry a spouse you love.  Be sure to read that article before reading on.  I’ll wait. OK, [...]

I was talking to a Thai friend of mine recently; someone who knows that I work a lot. She also knows that I love what I do. She said I am, “Thang kub ngaan.” This literally means “marry with work/job.” We sometimes jokingly say that we are married to our job, but we tend to [...]

I’ve been using a BlackBerry for many years now.  It has always annoyed me that it takes 15 minutes for emails to arrive when using a pop3 email account.  Today I figured out a way to get all emails on my BB instantaneously, even when using a pop3 account and not using a BlackBerry Enterprise [...]

Being a frequent traveler, I am always looking for creative ways to get the best seat on a plane. Because of the extra leg room, the obvious selections are the exit rows.  That is, IF your seat reclines.  If there are two exit rows next to each other (e.g., rows 10 and 11), the first [...]

Fortune Magazine released their list of the top companies to work for. #1 on the list is the 7,000 person data storage company, NetApp.  They have some great business philosophies that show they treat employees like owners of the company – a key to creating a truly innovation organization. The article says… NetApp early on [...]

Here’s an excerpt from a magazine I have.  The title is: A Gloomy Feeling Wall Street was baffled. The market’s 18-month slide had brutally bent the Dow-Jones graph, ending with one of the worst one-day drops. The dollar loss on paper was actually three times greater than that of the ’29 crash. The market’s prolonged drop [...]

When I work with large organizations, they have sophisticated tools and processes for managing their innovation pipeline.  Well, at least some do. But how do YOU manage YOUR innovation pipeline?  OK, for simplicity sake, you can just call it your ”to-do” list. I have so many different projects and ideas that I am working on at [...]

In a previous blog entry, I wrote about my “30 day challenge.” The purpose of that was to disconnect you from email. Well, today I have a new – yet shorter – challenge. It only takes 90 minutes. I live near the ocean, and when I am home (which is not often), I like to walk [...]