Treasure 25 – Innovation and remote celebrations

Howdy! First I wanted to focus this weeks treasure on innovation. But as Christmas is coming close, I added a nugget for celebrating holidays with remote teams.

Nugget #1 is from Andy Howard on Innovation Labs. These days every bigger company has an innovation lab, startup accelerator or hub. Andy describes why in many cases the activities are pure innovation „theaters“. I can’t agree more. It seems many companies have no clue how to tackle innovation and just copy this concept from others. „If Google has an accelerator and is successful, we should have it too“. I also agree to most of Andy’s five points on how to get it right. Where I don’t agree is the separation of departments. IMHO you can’t simply divide people and say: „You 10 guys take care of innovation and you 90 guys continue operation and execution.“
Innovation Labs Don’t Work (5 mins, text, English)

Nugget #2 is from Guido Bosbach. He also identified innovation theater as an issue, but adds a different perspective how to tackle it. He suggests to assess the management practices. This can result in higher degrees of freedom and increase the level of intrapreneurship. I feel this is more effective and sustainable than just separating innovators from executors.  But I guess also harder to do.
Wie Innovation einfach(er) beginnt (5 mins, text, German)

Nugget #3 is from Lisette Sutherland, who I featured earlier on this blog. In her podcast episode 122 she suggests some cool ideas how you can celebrate holidays in your virtual team. Since Christmas is close you might want to try this in the next two weeks. You can also use this for Chinese New Year, for birthdays and other celebrations. It’s only 6 mins and very actionable!
Holiday Parties For Virtual Teams (6 mins, audio, English)

Have a nice weekend!

PS: My most read treasure this year was Treasure 11 – Education, Agile, People management.