Gaps are everywhere. In complex systems—especially those involving customers, products, and cross-functional teams—gaps show up in...

Innovation doesn’t become a strategic advantage until it becomes repeatable, regenerative, and resilient.The final phase of the Fuzzy to...

Phase 4 of the Fuzzy to Feasible™  framework: Value Capture This is the fourth post in a series to provide more context around Spark's...

Fuzzy to Feasible - Phase 3: Value Creation. Understanding Desirability. The vast majority of  product innovations fail to meet their...

With a shared and aligned mental models from sensemaking, it's time to move to experimentation.

This is the first of five articles to highlight each of the five phases of the Fuzzy to Feasible™ framework. Innovation doesn't fail...

To address complexity and uncertainty, it's imperative to understand the human side of innovation, which involves sensemaking and wayfinding to create and capture value. That's why I'm relaunching Spark.

This post originally appeared in a recent Spark newsletter. The intent is to make innovation less scary and more productive. Reducing the...

Background About 100 years ago, leadership at the University of Iowa were exploring creativity and craft. In academia there was a debate...

As of today, I’ve produced 75 episodes of The Iowa Idea Podcast. The latest episode will be published soon. I consider myself incredibly...

The new podcast, produced by Spark, examines stories of creativity, collaboration, innovation and persistence through interviews with...

In an earlier post, I highlighted the four capabilities needed to help teams and organizations embrace creative problem solving in...

In an earlier post, I highlighted the four capabilities needed to help teams and organizations embrace creative problem solving in...

When navigating a sea of complexity, it's important to know how to SWIM.

When facing complex challenges, we need to move beyond a win-lose, true-false, binary view of the world.

Complex, adaptive systems don't respond to best practices. Utilize sensemaking to help navigate adaptive challenges.

10 ways you improve the creative output of your team.

My uncle and communication scholar, John Cragan, taught me that without a theory, you can’t tell a fact from a non-fact. A theory, likes...

Here's a short story to illustrate the importance of understanding customer needs and goals, and putting those goals in the context of...

While working on a change management and communication project for a client, we were discussing ways to build trust. I had discussed an...