Innovation Conundrum

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L.P. Draper and A.H. Kirkendal started the ride-sharing service in Los Angeles. This was in 1914. Long before Uber and Travis Kalanick were born.

First electric vehicles came to market in 1880s. In 1890s, the demand exceeded that of gasoline powered cars. Long before Toyota released Prius, before Tesla and Elon Musk became a household name.

Door delivery services have existed in third-world countries for years. Long before Tony Xu and DoorDash and similar services came to  exist.

Conventional wisdom teaches us innovation means unique ideas. But often times, inspiration for new ideas and solutions, lie in the past. Many technology advances we celebrate today are extensions of history. Take a hard look at Facebook and Twitter.

In order to be innovative, we tend to think optics are more important. We spend our time and energy trying to look different, like most teenagers in the world.

When you look at any innovation, or for that matter any accomplishment, through a narrow slice of time, it looks unique. Popular culture have long led us to believe that. Reality is, successful innovators have always used history as their playbook. The world rewarded them for failing repeatedly, learning, persisting and solving. More than who just dreamed.

Flawless for billions of years, the universe has given everything you need to survive, create and solve.

The thing is, you have to care to look.

4 Simple Ways to Improve Project Communication

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One of the common problems executives and team members face within an organization is poor project communication. According to a study conducted by PMI, “Ineffective communications is the primary contributor to project failure one third of the time, and had a negative impact on project success more than half the time.”

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Is my role relevant anymore?

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Is my job function still relevant? Is my business becoming a dinosaur? Relevancy questions that often come up when we are in the verge of disruption. The question is one of concern, one laden with uncertainty and doubt. More often than not, the timing of the question becomes a tad late.

When I was a project manager a few years ago, I used to get such existential questions a lot from fellow project managers who are used to waterfall style of software development. If you are in the technology industry, especially in Silicon Valley, you could probably relate to the fact that many tech companies are moving away from Program Management Office towards a nimbler Agile style development approach. Nowadays the lead engineer takes on the role of a scrum master and drives the work product delivery. Although the fundamentals of project management has not changed, the title has.

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5 Key Elements of Change Management

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Recently, I was involved in a successful new system implementation project launch. The project had an impact on an entire department. Countless men and women toiled their days and nights leading up to the launch. Naturally the post-launch excitement across the organization was quite palpable. In layman’s terms, the launch happened exactly as we planned – seamless!

Amidst all the euphoria, someone asked me how we managed to pull this off, what type of internal resistance we faced and how did we overcome it – all very fitting questions given that our launch schedule was very aggressive and set to have global impact. Even folks who were part of the project team were initially hesitant when the timelines for launch were first introduced. So when this question was posed, it did not surprise me.

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