Shipulski On Design

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Try – when you’re not sure what to do. Listen – when you want to learn. Build – when you want to put flesh on the bones of your idea. Think – when you want to make progress. Show a customer – when you want to know what your idea is really worth. Put it […]

With process improvement, the existing process is refined over time.  With innovation, the work is new. You can’t improve a process that does not yet exist.  Process creation, yes.  Process improvement, no. Standard work, where the sequence of process steps has proven successful, is a pillar of the manufacturing mindset.  In manufacturing, if you’re not […]

There are many definitions for creativity and innovation, but none add meaningfully to how the work is done. Though it’s clear why the work is important – creativity and innovation underpin corporate prosperity and longevity – it’s especially helpful to know how to do it. At the most basic level, creativity and innovation are about […]

Success is the enemy of new work. Past success blocks new work out of fear it will jeopardize future success, and future success blocks new work out of fear future success will actually come to be. Either way you look at it, success gets in the way of doing new work. Success itself has no […]

When a hurricane is on the horizon, we are all glued to our TVs. We want to know where it track so we know we’ll be safe.  Will it track north and rumble over the top of us or will it track east and head out to sea?  This is not trivial. In one scenario we […]

If you can’t imagine it, it can’t be done. But if it can’t be done, how can you imagine it? No one is buying a product like the one you imagined. There’s no market. No one can buy an imaginative product that doesn’t yet exist. There may be a market. Imagine things are good, just […]

Everyone wants to do more innovation.  But how? To figure out what’s going on with their innovation programs, companies spend a lot of time to put projects into buckets but this generates nothing but arguments about whether projects are disruptive, radical innovation, discontinuous, or not.  Such a waste of energy and such a source of […]

When doing new things there is no predictability. There’s speculation, extrapolation and frustration, but no prediction. And the labels don’t matter.  Whether it’s called creativity, innovation, discontinuous improvement or disruption there’s no prediction. The trick in the domain complexity is to make progress without prediction. The first step is to try to define the learning […]

When you’re laying in your camping tent dead tired and wanting for sleep the last thing you want is a rouge mosquito that dive-bombs you continuously throughout the night. With each sortie, it pushes on your expectations of how things should be. This little creature, so small and so powerless, becomes powerful enough to ruin […]

Like it or not, everything changes. The rock solid brand will erode and the venerable business model will wither and die. Though you will add immense energy to hold on to what you built, natural forces of competitive evolution will come up with something makes your best work extinct. We see it in our everyday […]

Today marks seven years of weekly blog posts.  Here’s what I’ve learned so far: When you can write about anything, what you choose tells everyone what you’re about. Sometimes you’ve got to start writing to figure out what you have to say. Some people think semicolons are okay; others don’t like to show off. When […]