What can we do to create effective environments to solve multi-stakeholder problems? As a consultant charged with helping a variety of organizations figure out how to drive and measure impact, I see my job as figuring out what kind of conveyance an organization needs to do its work. At its…

Implicit in the idea of innovation is a word that’s less likely to be bandied around as a desired goal — failure. By investing in smart and strategic experiments, you can improve the evolutionary potential of your organization’s — if you have aligned your experiments with your organization’s mission. Innovation…

Entrepreneurial ventures with a central societal mission are critical for solving problems that cannot or are not addressed by traditional businesses, government, or non-profit organizations. Rooting these ventures in communities ensures relevance, develops trust, and builds the foundation for long-term social impact. If you run a mission-driven organization, you may…

Stakeholder governance is not only critical for the management of social ventures; it’s also the driving force that ensures community engagement and mission relevance. Is a lack of governance hindering your mission-driven organization? It’s a common challenge I’ve seen at organizations across many sectors. It’s especially common in the early…

Storytelling is a fundamental part of creating a vision. Stories set tone and context. They make it possible to imagine yourself in the world of the vision. Add in laughter and you enter a gateway to immersion. My dad loved to tell stories. Dad loved to tell stories. Snippets of…

As we emerge from our COVID shell, here are some workplace innovations worthy of continued use. In the kerfuffle and smash of returning to the office, I took an informal poll of virtual workplace innovations that have really hit the mark. …

Researchers are some of the most innovative people in the world, and yet continue to use a hundreds-year old singular method to share findings and measure impact. …

Let’s drive innovation by re-envisioning postdoctoral research as a fixed term “Tour of Duty”, with embedded offboarding, alumni services, and access to “Veteran’s benefits” for all who participate. Postdoctoral researchers are a critical component of global innovation capacity. Yet, after more than two decades of sustained advocacy, there remain amorphous…

Humans tend to create dichotomies. Either this or that. Heaven or hell. Chocolate or peanut butter. Moss or rolling stone. Ritual or innovation. But for all of these choices, we do not have to choose one or the other. There is a continuum of options, with multiple factors that should…