MIT Keynote on Innovation Strategy

I was recently invited back to MIT to speak with students in the Integrated Design and Management (IDM) and Systems Design and Management (SDM) graduate programs. My talk was titled ‘Are we talking about the same thing? Having meaningful conversations about Innovation and Design Strategy’ and covered a key challenge I’ve run into while working in the field: misaligned vocabularies!

Common language is critical to meaningful dialogue. But, within the fields of innovation and design it can be hard to nail down exactly what it is people are talking about. There are variations across industry, organization and job function that impact the language people use to talk about their work. Getting on the same page with someone often requires active facilitation and I spoke how to do that in complex, multinational consulting environments. Sometimes it even boils down to the basics of what job function you hold within the larger innovation sphere.

See the short clip below to hear some of my thoughts in this area.