While the winding road to innovation often only makes sense in retrospect, that doesn’t mean you can’t bend the odds. One of my favorite prospective strategies an organization can employ is the classic science fair... but you must approach it correctly.

Undisputed "Beyond the Prompt" fan favorite Jenny Nicholson drops by to share some insights from her adventures helping folks innovate with AI. Important lessons for any leader looking to unleash their teams with this transformative technology.

In the past year, I've witnessed a fascinating phenomenon across organizations embracing GenAI. Two "identical twins" in the AI race, similar in their approach to AI adoption -- engaged senior leadership, extensive training, numerous opportunities for AI integration -- whose outcomes couldn't be more different.

A funny thing happens when humans interact with AI—they start talking like robots. This is tragic. It's the very humanity that we often unwittingly withhold that guarantees lackluster output. To revolutionize your output with GenAI, revisit your own humanity.

Quick: come up with an innovative idea!

If you’re anything like the thousands of students I’ve coached in the last fifteen years, panic alarms just went off.

But the truth is, the creative process is hardly a mystery – in fact, it can be broken down into three simple steps.

Most folks’ biggest mistake in collaborating with AI is expecting to get things perfect right out of the gate. But learning to use AI is just like any other motor skill: you’ve got to fall in order to create new neural pathways. Here, I share some insights on falling forward, productively.

Rather than waiting around for lightning to strike, take a more proactive approach. You can provoke your own imagination. One of the most effective, powerful, and fun tools we have created for such self-provocation missions is what we call “Analogous Exploration.”

Special guest post from Wharton professor and “accidental AI expert” Ethan Mollick. He joined the podcast a couple months back, and then he blew our minds with this exceptional post on how companies can do much more with AI than merely improve efficiency.

This insightful guest article conjures the spirit of legendary restauranteur Danny Meyer, who said, “ABCD so you can ABCD: Always be collecting dots to always be connecting dots.” The collection- and connection-instinct is at the heart of a curator. Read on…

Generative AI represents enormous potential for innovation. But even well-intentioned leaders can undermine their own efforts to explore. If they aren’t careful, they can end up reinforcing counter-productive biases amongst the very teams they’re trying to unleash.

All too often, the stated “problem” keeps a team from innovation: the problem is the problem. Being willing to question the premise, rather than accept it blindly, is a critical practice for creative health.

If you’re getting mediocre–or even bad–results from AI tools like ChatGPT, it’s not because the tech is bad. Research suggests that you’re probably settling for mediocrity.

To become a professional in any field takes an enormous amount of skill, and hard work. Routine practice is a hallmark of the “professional” in any context. Here’s how to take a professional mentality into the innovation arena.

From Steve Jobs to Taylor Swift to Seth Godin, there’s remarkable consistency among “the greats”: having bad ideas is a necessary precondition to having good ones.

To stimulate innovation, ideas and experiments are critical. But how to free up resources necessary to drive new initiatives forward? Start by pruning back some work that’s past its prime. Here’s how.

Business leaders should take a page out of one of the most brutally-straightforward innovation laboratories in the world: lessons from Jerry Seinfeld and Steve Martin’s stand-up routines.

Bernard Arnault became the richest man in the world — surpassing Musk, Bezos, and Buffet — not by focusing on profitability, but by foregrounding desirability. We all should.

Great ideas are not the function of episodic, haphazard bursts of effort. They’re the function of a well-honed individual and organizational ability. So before you sprint, do this…

One of my all-time favorite origin stories is a case study in innovation: a collision between boredom, R&D, ineffective technology and a frustrated choirboy.

Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs — and what propelled their project forward — have made me wonder whether the sterile calculus of today’s valuation-obsessed start-up culture has its priorities out of whack.