Great thoughts, yes?
One of the smartest guys I know and a fellow Mazuman, Christian Marcussen mentioned Steve Johnson’s idea that Chance Favors the Connected Mind while he and I were talking in my office the other day. We were having one of those really good conversations where you talk about big ideas, tough struggles, ways we could work better together, and so on.
His comments sprang out of part of our conversation where we talked about creativity and innovation being far more likely when people are connected. Basically, we were talking about where good ideas tend to come from, which brings us back to the video you watched above…
What implications does this have for our workplace environments? What things do your organizations do really well to encourage innovation and ideas? What things do they do, often unintentionally of course, to hinder it? Where do good ideas come from in your organization?
Enjoy the weekend!
I couldn’t agree more, Matt. I live in Los Angeles, which has a thriving startup scene. One of the key ingredients here is that a number of startups are using co-working spaces, and guess what? That environment helps those startups increase their velocity.
As an entrepreneur, I love that energy in a room. But beyond that, there’s the meat of your topic – being in the right place at the right time with the right people can spark serious innovation.
Very cool, Scott. Workspaces have long been a point of fascination for me.(I even have a board on Pinterest dedicated to them: http://pinterest.com/workplacemojo/workspaces-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/)
It’s really amazing what can happen when you get humans together and give them some time, space, and resources. But it’s like you said — you have to create environments that are conducive to those interactions taking place.
If you box people up and lock them away, and the implication is that you’re never, ever to leave your desk; but then you also say you want your employees to communicate, collaborate, and innovate–it doesn’t match up.
Matt – I think the key thing is to share information, without even having a good reason for doing it. I never know what piece of data will be useful personally. But the more I research, read, analyze, etc., I start to make connections that make my decisions better. My recommendation would be to push information and data to colleagues as much as possible. If people have a clear picture of their marketplace/company/problems/opportunities, they’ll make better deisions.
– Anthony
That’s a great point. You never know what’s going to click with someone, or be that missing piece of a puzzle you didn’t even know they were working on. But the more people are in the habit of sharing information and learning from each other, the more likely it is that they’ll collectively propel each other forward.
Thanks, Anthony!