1.  I follow thought leaders and commentators who comment on innovation, creativity or lateral thinking.  You can search on key words and quickly find the most prolific tweeters.

2. I post links to interesting articles on innovation and ‘retweet’ (i.e. copy) other people’s interesting posts to my followers.

3.  I post short quotations or thoughts on the subject.

4.  I ask questions.  E.g. what technology do you use to aid innovation?

You can follow me at

http://twitter.com/PaulSloane

Here are some of my recent tweets to give you a flavour – @name refers to the name of a user who made the original post and RT means retweet.

·  @yatinsactivity RT Green #innovation – an Eco “Bomb” That Plants Trees http://ff.im/-2Qnqp

·  @ArnoldBeekes RT Is Everyone Creative? Lateral Action http://ow.ly/6oW5

·  I am writing about technology that aids innovation. Do you have any suggestions or links please? What technology helps you to innovate?

·  #Innovation through volunteers, http://bit.ly/mTJ1c

·  #Innovation tip. Get a colleague to facilitate a brainstorm meeting in your dept and return the favor. It is easier for an outsider.

·  Innovation tip. Before introducing any change identify the resistance leaders who are likely to oppose it. Plan to handle or bypass them.

If you are not already using Twitter as a communications tool in your interest fields then I would strongly advise that you experiment with it.  You can dip in and out when you want and you can easily ‘unfollow’ the people whose tweets add no value.

Paul Sloane

Pageflakes

Alltop Innovation

Now you can keep up to date on innovation postings with a minimum of effort.

Paul Sloane

• The cost of ignorance is high. NASA and the British Nuclear Industry both lost important early knowledge.
• You should align your KPIs to achieve innovation through KM
• Corporate Yellow Pages allow you to find key skills and experiences
• Employees need to be motivated to share expertise so put it into objectives and appraisals
• ‘After-action reviews’ and ‘lessons learnt’ need to be captured
• Organisational story telling is a key part of KM
• To help with innovation we need a searchable corporate memory of past failures as well as successes

Martin Fowkes, who is responsible for KM at Taylor Woodrow then covered what they are doing in this field. When it comes to innovation the Taylor Woodrow motto is – Think, Prove, Do. (Many other companies operate – Think, Analyse, Reject.) They promote innovation through physical innovation notice boards and an innovation buddy system. Before they bid on a new tender they search their knowledge base to look for relevant experiences. They then run workshops to generate innovative approaches.

There was a discussion on related topics. Many participants use Microsoft’s Sharepoint for KM. Blogs and wikis are increasingly important tools.

If you are a member of BQF then Pat Myles can supply copies of the Powerpoint presentations from the day.

Next Meeting will be on July 30th in London with the topic – Competency Traps – presented by Arthur D Little. More details will follow.

Paul Sloane