Darrel Rhea is the CEO Cheskin Added Value which apparently guides innovation
through the understanding of people, culture and change.. Whatever that means. I haven’t quite figured out what he was pushing, but he was on TechNation the other week in theory to talk about ‘Marketing During an Economic Meltdown’ but they went off into innovation and systems thinking. I was hoping for the marketing stuff, but the other wasn’t bad either.

  • Now is the most important time to be innovative
  • Businesses that thrive coming out of the recession
    • Produce more value
    • Connect and are more relevant to their customers
  • Instead of doing two initiatives, pick one or two and do them really well
  • Innovation trend over the last 10 years has been people or customer centric rather than tech
  • Embed customer empathy into corporate products and services
  • Make sure your metrics and rewards system rewards the customer too
  • Ideation – generating, developing and communicating ideas
  • Corporations exist to create value for their customers
  • How deep and authentic are your corporate values?
  • And how embedded are they in the fabric of the company?
  • Are you walking the walk, or talking the talk?
  • Perform a Design Intervention – apply a systems approach to problem solving
  • Look at what is meaningful for consumers as the basis of innovation
  • Use a systems approach with the basis being human beings
  • Go outside of how you might normally define problems
  • Embrace complexity
  • What are the principles of success based upon what we know about people?