Making Offers to Spur Innovation with Peter Denning
Peter Denning returns to the show this week to talk about innovation. But this most likely isn’t the innovation discussion you’re expecting. Instead, Peter challenges the conventional wisdom in the area of innovation and idea, inviting us to rethink our perceptions on contribution. His work and writing have lead to a series of observations in human and team behavior. The upshot: our ability to make offers and deliver on the offers we make to others are skills that can be honed and indisputably lead to new innovations in our work. These are skills that most of us aren’t very good at. If you haven’t read The Beginner’s Creed, we encourage you to read it now. It provides excellent background to this week’s discussion. You can find it, along with our earlier conversation with Peter, right here. About Peter Denning Peter is a Distinguished Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He chairs the Computer Science Department and directs the Cebrowski Institute, an interdisciplinary research center for information innovation. Peter has held previous faculty positions at Princeton, Purdue, and George Mason, and he was founding director for the computer science research institute at NASA Ames. Links & Notes Read The Beginner’s Creed by Peter Denning About Peter Denning — Naval Postgraduate School, Computer Science Department 00:00 - Navigating Change: A conversation with Peter Denning 03:21 - How do we bring innovation to our work? 04:02 - What is "innovation"? 05:47 - Invention vs Practice 09:46 - Strategic planning and making great offers 15:25 - The Buy-in Myth 19:23 - Revisiting our experience as a beginner 23:52 - What are the 8 Practices? 26:26 - The mechanical nature of "active" listening 28:35 - Possibilities 30:17 - The role of the leader in moving possibility to action 34:04 - Making and delivering on our offers, developing credibility and authority 36:54 - Innovation, practices, and the objects we create 39:37 - Closing thoughts