The Innovation Show

Flex is a manifesto for living and working on your terms. It means looking at the established, rigid ways of doing things and asking: 'Is this really working for me?' If the answer to that question is 'No' then read on because this book is for you. When we learn how to flex we gain a superpower that allows us to challenge what is holding us back and reinvent the rules for a smarter, happier life....

It's no coincidence that most of the top 100 most valuable global brands invest heavily in technology to drive innovation into every aspect of their business: product development, operations, marketing, and customer service. In the next decade, a suite of six strategic technologies—artificial intelligence (AI), Blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality, autonomous machines, and 5...

Do you spend too much time learning with disappointing results? Do you find it difficult to remember what you read? Do you put off studying because it's boring and you're easily distracted? Today's book is for you. Our guest struggled in the past with our learning. But has found techniques to help us master material—any material. Building on insights from neuroscience and cognitive psychology, she...

Innovators. Changemakers. Entrepreneurs. Intrapreneurs. Catalysts. One of these things is not like the other. That is to say, each of these types of people can make a whole lot of change happen in the world, but within any group of innovators, changemakers, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs, are those people called Catalysts, Those of us who have a deep-rooted need to create positive change. Among...

Even before the pandemic, it seemed the world was spinning so fast it's difficult to keep up. Arguably a lot of the technological disruption that was around in 2019 simply got accelerated – remote working, digitisation and AI to name just three.    Our guest today notes in his new book: Two hundred and fifty years ago the Industrial Revolution replaced our arms and legs at work. The fourth Industr...

Leaders have experimented with open innovation programs, corporate accelerators, venture capital arms, skunkworks, and innovation contests. They've travelled the world to learn from today's hottest, most successful tech companies. Yet most would admit they've failed to create truly innovative cultures. There's a better way. And it all starts with the power of habit. The central argument in today's...

Faced with the choice of starting a company or joining a large corporation, Steve Jobs believed that it was 'more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy'. But for innovators inside established companies, making a distinction between being a pirate and joining the navy is a fallacy. We have to figure out a way to become pirates in the navy! There is nothing harder in business than trying to innov...

Today's book was born out of a desire to show how and why ritual is critical in our everyday lives, using examples from across the animal world, including elephants, chimpanzees, orangutans, wolves, dogs, lions, zebras, whales, flamingos, fish, and even insects. Although social animals exhibit many rituals, this book focuses on ten important rituals that are essential to our well-being: greeting r...

Paradigmatic shifts in the business landscape, known as inflection points, can either create new, entrepreneurial opportunities (see Amazon and Netflix) or they can lead to devastating consequences (e.g., Blockbuster and Toys R Us). Only those leaders who can "see around corners" - that is, spot the disruptive inflection points developing before they hit - are poised to succeed in this market. Col...

Barry O'Reilly shares how the Cycle of Unlearning is a new way of thinking and a new way of leading organisations in every industry. It's not difficult to learn more. What is difficult is to know what to unlearn, what to stop, and what to throw away. This is the paradox of success. While thinking and doing certain methods may have brought you success in the past, it's almost certain they won't con...

This mind-opening episode summarises some of the groundbreaking analysis of the business, economic, and technological trends of today to predict what the world will look like in 2030 – and how the Coronavirus pandemic will accelerate each of these major trends. Our guest is author of "2030: How Today's Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything", Mauro Guillén Some stats from...

Today's focus is a Playbook that helps innovators and entrepreneurs to harness new, extreme ideas despite complex business barriers. This visual guide provides insight, practical solutions and reusable canvasses to help innovation managers, CEOs, Chief Innovators and directors of innovation labs to develop breakthrough ideas. We welcome, authors of, "The Radical Innovation Playbook: a practical gu...

This episode is about getting to grips with how to actually change your behaviour so you stay curious a little bit longer. It sounds like it should be easy, but it's not.   You have to tame your Advice Monster, that part of you that jumps in to offer up ideas, opinions, suggestions and advice.   And it's taming your Advice Monster that's at the heart of this book. But there are also some specific...

Our guest was used to giving orders. In the high-stress environment of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine, it was crucial his men did their job well. But the ship was dogged by poor morale, poor performance and the worst retention in the fleet. One day, he unknowingly gave an impossible order, and his crew tried to follow it anyway. He realised he was leading in a culture of followers,...

For millennia, dominant groups have had the habit of framing themselves to be the best, deep down: the more powerful they become, the more power begins to be framed as natural. When you see how power has shaped the idea of race, then you can start to understand its meaning. In Superior, celebrated author Angela Saini explores the concepts of race and caste, from their origins to the present day. E...

Ozan Varol reveals simple strategies from rocket science that you can use to make your own giant leaps in work and life -- whether it's landing your dream job, accelerating your business, learning a new skill, or creating the next breakthrough product. Today, thinking like a rocket scientist is a necessity. We all encounter complex and unfamiliar problems in our lives. Those who can tackle these p...

Four out of five adults report feeling that they have too much to do and not enough time to do it. These time-poor people experience less joy each day. They laugh less. They are less healthy, less productive, and more likely to divorce. In one study, time stress produced a stronger negative effect on happiness than unemployment. Our guest offers us a playbook for taking back the time you lose to m...

There is a painful gap between what people want and what they actually do. The disconnect between want and do has been blamed on a lot of things — but we blame it on ourselves for the most part. We internalize the cultural message of "It's your fault! Our guest is here to say: It isn't your fault. creating positive change isn't as hard as you think and when it comes to change tiny is mighty. We we...

In business, government, and every area of contemporary life, leaders today are struggling to find workable solutions to greater and more complex challenges.   As a former senior Pentagon official and CEO of a billion-dollar company, our guest has seen firsthand that the current model for solving diverse problem sets no longer works.   Organizations and individuals need to adopt an entirely differ...

Our guest today brings us a powerful blend of cross-disciplinary research and battle-tested tools to help you diagnose, design, and implement a reinvention system that allows your company to stop combatting or resisting change – and instead helps you turn every disruption into your greatest opportunity. We welcome author of "The Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook: How to Thrive in Chaos" Nadya Zhe...

The future will get even more perplexing over the next decade, and we are not ready. The dilemma is that we're restricted by rigid categorical thinking that freezes people and organizations in neatly defined boxes that often are inaccurate or obsolete. Categories lead us toward certainty but away from clarity, and categorical thinking moves us away from understanding the bigger picture. Sticking w...

"The relationship between the organism and the environment is transactional—the environment grows the organism, and the organism creates the environment." ― Alan Watts   Creativity isn't all in your head. Sometimes it's in what's around you--especially when you're at home.   For over twenty years, scientists have been discovering connections between our physical surroundings and the creative mind....

"If you could learn to squeeze the vibrancy and beauty out of each moment of your life, would you say yes to a practice that could get you there?", that is the question our guest asks of us.   She then takes us through her technique to do just that. A technique she teaches to first responders, veterans and those who have suffered trauma. It is a please to welcome, author of Neurosculpting: A Whole...

Friends matter to us, and they matter more than we think. The single most surprising fact to emerge out of the medical literature over the last decade or so has been that the number and quality of the friendships we have has a bigger influence on our happiness, health and even mortality risk than anything else except giving up smoking. Our guest is the world-renowned psychologist and author who fa...

This episode is an intimate and inspirational exploration of Stephen Hawking— the man and the physicist. It is also a story of friendship, written by his friend also a physicist and renowned author of multiple titles including: Subliminal Elastic Euclid's Window Feynman's Rainbow The Upright Thinkers War of the Worldviews with Deepak Chopra and 2 books coauthored with Stephen Hawking. It is a plea...