Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1345

The “Digital Valley” Book Quotes Collection III

"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy." -Norman Schwarzkopf
The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.   -Peter Drucker
Thinking is trying to think the unthinkable: thinking the thinkable is not worth the effort.   -Helene Cixous
The biggest challenge the world is facing is not climate change but poor thinking!    - Edward De Bono
Life is the sum of all your choices.    -Albert Camus
Chance favors only the prepared mind.   -Louis Pasteur
It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.  - Elbert Hubbard
If we are all in agreement on the decision - then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.    - Alfred P. Sloan
Question the unquestionable.    -Ratan Tata
A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know.    - Lawrence J Peter
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.   -Theodore Roosevelt
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.   - William James
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.    - Francis Bacon
Everyone has a choice. Just make sure it's the right one.   - Rumplestiltskin
Everything is something you decide to do, and there is nothing you have to do.  -Denis Waitley
The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself - and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.  -Agatha Christie
To decide is to walk facing forward with nary a crick in your neck from looking back at the crossroads."  -Betsy Cañas Garmon

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Future-Driven Leadership

The substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about making the positive influence, and providing direction, both for oneself and others. Leadership is about CHANGE. It is a basic human ability to inspire self and others to look beyond limitations and make continuous improvement. This ability becomes a capability if we constantly nurture our basic human instincts of HUMILITY, CURIOSITY, and CREATIVITY. Fundamentally, leadership is more about future but starts at today.

Vision differentiates transformational leaders from transactional managers:  A great leader is a visionary. Leadership is one's ability to paint a vivid picture, a vision of a future state and motivate others to achieve it. Despite our present condition and realities, we must never abandon the hope that generations to come will view things differently and breathe new life into an old and dysfunctional system. Thus, visionary leadership is crucial to zoom into the future as if it were closer because leadership is all about future and change. There are too many transactional managers who overly focus on short-term thinking due to the pressure of stakeholder, risk aversion, or ineffective strategy. Technology changes very quickly, and the speed of business changes is also increasing. Visionary leaders have better sense to capture the business trend, be genuinely curious about information, knowledge and future perspective, so they can drive changes more confidently, and lead long-term digital transformation effortlessly.
Strategic thinking involves of being visionary: A visionary mind has the ability to think the past, perceive what is now and foresee the future. Vision is a foresight with a proactive understanding of cause and effect, not reactive seeing. It is a clear choice among future scenarios that advocates future trends and promotes certain behavior. The "aha" vision is an "entrepreneurial" attribute; the ability to envision a solution to a perceived or not-yet-perceived need. Vision is a motivation act one plans to see happen in the life, businesses and the society we live in. It often takes turns positively or negatively, but it has been and always will be the genesis of uncountable success stories we all know.  Top leaders need to be a visionary - someone who can assist in "seeing" and bringing clarity to the future within the business ecosystem and beyond.
Leadership vision is to serve as an enabler to make profound influences: Leadership is all about future and change. Leadership vision is being great by making positive influence; without affecting anyone in any negative way. Being a leader takes one to have a desire to do better than others in certain domains, to practice Thought Leadership for making a profound influence. To clear the path, whether that be the elimination of obstacles or to provide coaching and guidance and make an influence so that the talent employees are limited only by their imagination. Being a leader means giving people confidence on where to go via a clear vision and how to get there, supporting them and also stretching them to live to their full potential, both individually and as members of a high performing team.
The future is already here, but it is unevenly distributed. Great leaders can bridge today and tomorrow via their vision. Leadership is about future, future is full of uncertainty, leadership vision helps to navigate through and lead into the future more confidently.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIO Master Tuning: XIV: How to Overcome Three Pitfalls to Accelerate Digital Paradigm Shift

if you make change part of your routine and ongoing business capability, then change becomes easier to deal with.

Digital means the increasing speed of changes, hyperconnectivity, and always-on business dynamic. Corporate change can be a simple modification of strategy, a business process improvement or a more radical digital transformation. Either at the individual or organizational level, in the static industrial era, change is often a one-time project; in the Digital Age, change has to become an ongoing capability. But what are barriers you need to overcome in order to manage change more effectively?



The comfort zone: Many people can’t get out of the comfort zone because change means uncertainty and risk taking. When faced with change, people go through the phases - denial, resistance, exploration. and acceptance. Managing the change process and transition emotions is fundamental to the success of a change-oriented project. There is nothing wrong with resistance. On the contrary, it is a good sign! By saying, "it is ok to feel resistance," the resistance will go down significantly because people feel that they are being heard or seen. People often resist changing because they don't understand how it is relevant to them. So it is important to try to find ways to make people feel involved in the design and implementation of the change. Resistance is usually from the three areas: in your thinking -doubt/uncertainty, feeling -resentment/hatred or action-Fear. Often these also determine workplace cultures as well as change challenges, passive aggressive or defensive. Resistance is mostly about not engaging at the right time with the right people to have the right communication. Change requires the management of people’s anxiety and confusion or conversely their excitement and engagement. These are emotions most managers try to deal with or address. The fact is that people's belief system on a subconscious level is slowly "adjust" to a new set of rules rather than at the conscious level. In any case, behavioral change in organizations happens on a group level and a person's "resistance" is just the symptom of an "organizational allergy" to the loss of the previously set operational equilibrium. The effective Change Management effort should help to build a culture of change and risk taking, to encourage people getting out of their comfort zone, reward innovative way to solve the old problems, and improve both employees’ and overall organizational “Changeability.”

Silo Mentality: The digital hyperconnectivity is breaking down the functional borders, business borders, and even industrial or national borders.The digital shift has come to a change in organizational forms away from the traditional rigid hierarchies managed through command and control to more fluid and responsive network forms. Yet many business managers still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of running always-on and always-connected businesses. Are silos a mere product of organizational design? Or is their nature tied to a deeper level: the humankind's nature? Despite the mountain of evidence pointing the detrimental effects of these silos, they still seem to be quite common in organizations. It is not structured, but the behaviors and attitudes of the leadership teams, and lack of strategic and team objectives and rewards that drive this mentality. Silos don't seem to fit within emerging 'networked' collaborative organizational forms, and if they are being reinforced, their existence is perhaps a legacy of old management thinking applied to new ways of doing - the result, higher risk of conflict and inertia, not something organization's want in a global business environment that demands innovation, speed, responsiveness and flexibility to succeed. Therefore, it is important to build a high level of trust within the upper rankings of management, share the same vision, set the strategic goals, being able to coordinate and communicate effectively across departments, and manage business performance to ensure the organization as a whole is more superior to the sum of pieces.

The wrong cause of the problem: Either for individuals, organizations, or society as a whole, the problem-solving capability is crucial to surviving and thriving. However, often times, people have a tendency to try to fix a symptom which results from the actual cause of the problem. When they do this, they throw good money after bad. They allow problems to grow under the surface, out of sight, out of mind, until it’s too late. So trying to fix the wrong cause of a problem will waste time and resources, increase anxiety, many decision-makers fail to fully grasp and accurately perceive what leads to problems and difficulties. Often, events and patterns are observed on the surface, and then the action is taken, but that is too early. Until the underlying problem is addressed, the symptom or result will continue to return. A better solution that crosses all industries is to keep peeling back the layers to find the root cause through asking five WHYs, or taking other systematic approaches - to discover the real cause, and address it. The problem-solving scenario is also a part of Change Management because change is never for its own sake, but for solving the real issues and making continuous improvement.
Change can not be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into the collective mentality, process, action, and communication of the organization. In today's work environment. It takes a lot of energy to break old habits and outdated thought processes. It is challenging to overcome silo mentality, get out of comfort zone, frame the right problems and solve them effectively. But change is happening at a more rapid pace, if you make change part of your routine and ongoing business capability, then change becomes easier to deal with, and improve strategy execution seamlessly.


CIO Master Order Link on AmazonCIO Master Ordre Link on Barner & NobleCIO Master Order Link On IBooks
“CIO Master” Book Preview Quote Collection III“CIO Master” Book Preview Quote Collection II“CIO Master” Book Preview Quote Collection I, Slideshare Presentation“CIO Master” Book Preview Conclusion Running IT as Digital Transformer“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 9 IT Agility“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 8 Three "P"s in Running Digital IT“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 7 IT Innovation Management“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 6 Digital Strategy-Execution Continuum"CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 5 Thirteen Digital Flavored IT“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 4 CIO as Talent Master Introduction“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 3 “CIOs as Change Agent” Introduction“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 2 “CIOs as Digital Visionary” Introduction“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 1 “Twelve Digital CIO Personas” Introduction"CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT" Introduction"CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT" Book PreviewFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIO Master Tuning: XIII: How to Overcome Three Pitfalls to Accelerate Digital Paradigm Shift

Digital means increasing the speed of changes, hyperconnectivity, and always-on businesses. Corporate change can be a simple modification of strategy, a business process improvement or a more radical digital transformation. Either at the individual or organizational level, in the static industrial era, change is a one-time project; in the Digital Age, change has to become an ongoing capability. But what are barriers you need to overcome in order to manage change more effectively?


The comfort zone: Many people can’t get out of the comfort zone because change means uncertainty and risk taking. When faced with change, people go through the phases - denial, resistance, exploration. and acceptance. Managing the change process and transition emotions is fundamental to the success of a change-oriented project.  There is nothing wrong with resistance. On the contrary, it is a good sign! By saying, "it is ok to feel resistance," the resistance will go down significantly because people feel that they are being heard or seen. People often resist changing because they don't understand how it is relevant to them. So it is important to try to find ways to make people feel involved in the design and implementation of the change. Resistance is usually from the three areas of; in your thinking -doubt/uncertainty, feeling -resentment/hatred or action life-Fear. Often these also determine workplace cultures as well as change challenges, passive aggressive or defensive. Resistance is mostly about not engaging at the right time with the right people to have right communication.Change requires the management of people’s anxiety and confusion or conversely their excitement and engagement. These are emotions most managers try to deal with or address. The fact is that people's belief system on a subconscious level is slowly "adjust" to a new set of rules rather than the conscious level. In any case, behavioral change in organizations happens on a group level and a person's "resistance" is just the symptom of an "organizational allergy" to the loss of the previously set operational equilibrium. The effective Change Management effort should help to build a culture of change and risk taking, to encourage people getting out of their comfort zone, reward innovative way to solve the old problems, and improve both employees’ and overall organizational “Changeability.”
Silo Mentality: The digital hyperconnectivity is breaking down the functional borders, business borders, and even industrial borders. The digital shift has come to a change in organizational forms away from the traditional rigid hierarchies managed through command and control to more fluid and responsive network forms. Yet many business managers still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of running always-on and always-connected businesses. Are silos a mere product of organizational design? Or is their nature tied to a deeper level: the humankind's nature? Despite the mountain of evidence pointing the detrimental effects of these silos, they still seem to be quite common in organizations. It is not structured, but the behaviors and attitudes of the leadership teams, and lack of strategic and team objectives and rewards that drive this mentality. Silos don't seem to fit within emerging 'networked' collaborative organizational forms, and if they are being reinforced, their existence is perhaps a legacy of old management thinking applied to new ways of doing - the result, higher risk of conflict and inertia, not something organization's want in a global business environment that demands innovation, speed, responsiveness and flexibility to succeed. Therefore, it is important to build a high level of trust within the upper rankings of management, share the same vision, set the strategic goals, being able to coordinate and communicate effectively across departments, and manage performance to ensure the organization as a whole is more superior to the sum of pieces.
The wrong cause of the problem: Either for individuals, organizations, or society as a whole, the problem-solving capability is crucial to surviving and thriving. However, often times, they have a tendency to try to fix a symptom which results from the actual cause of the problem. When they do this, they throw good money after bad. They allow problems to grow under the surface, out of sight, out of mind, until it’s too late. So trying to fix the wrong cause of a problem will waste time and resources, increase anxiety, many decision-makers fail to fully grasp and accurately perceive what leads to problems and difficulties. Often, events and patterns are observed on the surface, and then the action is taken, but that is too early. Until the underlying problem is addressed, the symptom or result will continue to return. A better solution that crosses all industries is to keep peeling back the layers to find the root cause through asking five WHYs, or taking other systematic approaches - to discover the real cause, and address it. The problem-solving scenario is also a part of Change Management because change is never for its own sake, but for solving the real issues and making continuous improvement.
Change can not be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into the collective mentality, process, action, and communication of the organization. In today's work environment. It takes a lot of energy to break habits and outdated thought processes such as silo mentality, get out of comfort zone, and frame the right problems and solve them effectively. But change is happening at a more rapid pace,  If you make change part of your routine and ongoing business capability, then change becomes easier to deal with, and improve strategy execution.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 4/21/2016

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 2700+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight about digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO”  4/21/2016“CIO Master” Tuning VIII: The Creative Leap Innovation is about having new knowledge and new processes. Innovation is about too much knowledge in terms of too many good creative ideas, and too little available resources. Innovation is about prioritization, a system that can “smell” the right idea at the right time and place. Innovation means something new and valuable. Innovation is relative and has context. And innovation is a critical component of business strategy, Often technology is a disruptive force to changes, and information provides the dots to spark innovation. So how to leverage IT to enable creative leaps and manage business innovation more effectively?
“Digital Valley” Chapter IV Book Preview: Decision Wisdom The majority of leaders and professional spend a significant amount of time on making large or small decisions in the work and life. It takes wisdom, not just the intelligence to make effective decisions. There is fuzziness in the decisions because there is fuzziness in conflicting criteria. At the Digital Era, making data-based decisions means to leverage analytical thinking, advanced analytic tools, the human’s intuition, and add the “wisdom’ in the decision process to improve the overall effectiveness of decision making.
“CIO Master” Tuning XI: Does Superior Execution Require the Leaders’ Inquisitiveness? The characteristic of Digital Era is increasing rate of change and continuous disruption, and this isn’t going to change. Preparing a strategic plan is important because it points the organization in a direction where it can maximize its value position and reap as many benefits as possible. But the more challenging part is strategy execution, statistically more than two-thirds of strategy implementation fail to achieve the expected result. How to diagnose the root causes of problems? Does superior execution require the leader's inquisitiveness? And what are the best scenario to manage strategy execution continuum?
Three Questions to Assess a Person's Personality  People are different, we all have different character, personality, favorite activities, strength, and weakness. Think of the five fingers of the human hand. Without their differences in size, shape, and location, a grip wouldn’t have been perfect as destined by nature. Introvert, Extrovert, or ambivert, what are the set of questions to assess a person’s personality?
Why is creativity an important Leadership Quality  Leadership is about future, direction and change. What makes the difference between "good" and "great" leadership? Besides vision, intelligence (IQ & EQ), integrity, adaptability, etc., why is creativity becoming a more important leadership quality in the Digital Era?
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Humility

The humility comes from being vulnerable and admitting you don't have all of the answers. Getting on the level of those being led and really listening to understand shows real humility. Being confident to ask, be curious to learn more and be inclusive to understand other’s PoVs. Listening skills with equivalent questions. Being most polite, charm, patience and tolerance for people in development, Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s humility?
Are you confident enough to show humility? It requires deep discipline and insight to be truly humbled. People think humility is not a strong trait in a leader, this is completely wrong, it takes true strength to be humble. Being humbled is knowing and being confident of your strengths and gifts but knowing where they come from and being grateful for them and most importantly using them for others' benefit.  The strong leaders with humility have the confidence and willingness to admit when they are (or might be) wrong, and who are ready to say "I don't know." But like any aspect of leadership, following what the "Leadership Paradoxes"—being overly humble can be a big negative. Too much self-deprecation can lead people to wonder "Then why should we follow you?" The key is to find the balance and to know when it's right to be humble and when it's right to "SELL knowledge and wisdom." And when you DO sell, sell the right things in the right way.
Are you an inclusive leader who always embrace the diversity of thoughts and different point of views? The humble leader is inclusive. The humble leader embraces and encourages the ideas of other developing an environment rife with creativity and innovation because they do not create artificial barriers. Humility is considered one of the most important traits to develop high mature leadership There are various definitions: one general one is to take our place and give space to others. The question is for any leader is how much space should we take up in any situation, and how much do we make space for others? It requires great self-awareness, keep asking what is needed in this situation? Deep listen; make room for others to discover their own insights; or give room for their perspectives to emerge to inform my thinking.
Are you curious to learn more? Truly curious leaders are more interested in what they don't know than telling everyone what they do know. Listening to others input with the humility to accept it may be useful facilitates deep empathy which, in turn, builds trust and respect.Highly educated subject matter experts who are open to the ideas of others demonstrate humility. They act as though anyone could have the best ideas and do not use their expertise to discount the value of contributions of others. It is high mature leadership that helps elevate the team and encourage others to rise to the challenge by believing everyone is capable. The most destructive managers are the ones who know so little to believe that they know everything better than anyone else and these managers can never be leaders. These managers tend to micromanage everyone and never trust their employees. However, as for the good leaders, the more they learn, the more they appreciate how little they know. They empower their team members, respect their expertise and appreciate every team member's contribution to the overall success of the organization. A humble leadership encourages open and constructive communication, which leads to continuous improvement. These leaders are the ones who have the skills to lead people from 'within' rather than 'above.'Being humbled means you are willing to look at your own actions as hard as you look at others. Being humble means you understand your own strengths and limitations and will look to others to help you get to your goal rather than going it alone. If you are humble, you are open to learning both about yourself, your team and new ideas. All are key traits of great leadership.
Humbleness allows one to understand oneself, understand others, strike the balance of being confidence and being humbled, self-worth and the worth of others. In this way, one is able to be assertive and stay the course. Not lose focus and allow emotions to get in the way of teamwork and team growth.



Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

“Digital Valley” Book Quotes Collection II

Decisions always refer to the future.
Wisdom is often abstract, and Systems Thinking is the ability to think conceptually on the higher level.
In System Thinking, the true wisdom often comes from a willingness to let go of past learning.
In a broader sense, Systems Thinking is a path to greater awareness.
Systems Thinking  provides the more holistic way to view the problems.
Systems Thinkers shape a worldview based on the realization of interconnectedness.
Decisions are necessary as a result of limited resources in time, knowledge, capital, people.
Decisions always refer to the future.
Future is always uncertain.
Decisions are always characterized by the lack of information and knowledge.
Prognoses are always difficult - in particular those referring to the future
Future is the most difficult problem of our era.
The safest point in time for a prognosis is shortly after the event.
The best way to predict future is to invent it.
There will be a time when our offspring will be astonished at our lack of knowledge of such apparent issues.
All our finite decisions are taken in a very transient emotional stage.
Culture is like the visible and invisible levels of an iceberg -”the solid state of “water.”
Culture is the Corporate DNA.
Culture is the heartbeat of the organization and our society.
Culture is collective mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors.
Culture should be a business ‘app,’ everyone can apply it daily.
Culture is the organization’s fingerprint.
Culture is what happens when the managers are not around.
Organizational culture is just like the “Operation System” of the organization, you need reboot periodically to keep it running smoothly.

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

“CIO Master” Tuning: Three Aspects in Building Innovation As Business Capability

Innovation becomes simply “creating value by solving problems in a new way.” Today, at the hyperconnected business ecosystem, innovation can happen anywhere, anytime, it expands both horizontally and vertically. There are many ‘flavors’ of innovations: systematic innovation, customer-centric innovation, open innovation, design-driven innovation, or management innovation. It’s the state of mind to think and do things from a new angle, and it’s a critical element of the business strategy and the unique business capability to gain a competitive advantage in the face of fierce competition and business dynamic.


Being innovative is more important than any specific innovation: Innovativeness is a way of thinking. The biggest source of innovation within a company is built on culture - the collective mindset. But creating an “innovation culture” involves the good alignment of people, process, and technology, otherwise, it won’t sustain. Innovation is about people, culture, partnership, manner., etc. Innovation is all about doing things better, differentiating yourself from competitions, run, grow and transform the business. Change is not always equal to innovation, but innovation is CHANGE.  While the change was often previously discrete, intermittent, and predictable, it is now constant, discontinuous, and unpredictable, so we need to change the way we change. This is where absorptive capacity, dynamic capabilities, learning agility, etc. are needed. We don't really know the future of the industry or the environment, but we prepare ourselves to create it better and compete in it. The essence of innovation is made of trying new combinations of known things. It's the essence of evolution. Each human being is a potential innovation by definition as you won't find two humans that are exactly the same. We are all new combinations of the known. Therefore, being innovative, not just doing innovation.
Fine tune organizational structure and innovation ecosystem: Innovation isn't a magic word. Innovation is a discipline that, if practiced well and understood fully, reads more like a blueprint than science fiction. Overly rigid hierarchy or processes hamper innovation. If you want to be an "innovative organization," you need to shape your current business structure to match your current stack rank of areas where innovation will reap the most significant benefit. Innovation then happens in three ways - it enhances your CORE business capability, it finds a better balance with ADJACENT technology, or it is completely new, which is TRANSFORMATIVE. An Innovation ecosystem is a systematic innovation methodological environment or a sort of "professional philosophy" for innovation. An enriched innovation ecosystem enables systematic innovation management. It starts with innovation strategy defines "WHAT does the organization innovate" or "where should it innovate" to support the overall strategy. The strategy is tightly connected to the business model and provides the context for the innovation. Innovation often has a lot to do with external circumstances, and management tends to focus on internal circumstances. But just because innovation is greatly influenced by external circumstances doesn't mean the innovation system of the organization is or should be unstructured. The robust process and tools that enable any entity generate winning concepts on the consistent  basis, which is the prerequisite for sustaining advantage and growth. There are many areas within a company where the innovation process can be applied to create value, from communication innovation to culture innovation, from process innovation to business model innovation; from product innovation to service innovation, the innovation context goes beyond the traditional scope,
Looking at innovation from the perspective of developing business-wide innovation capabilities: Innovation has three phases: discovery of a problem or new idea, designing a prototype solution and the ultimate delivery of a commercially astute outcome. That the best point of view is to see innovation as a system, capable of delivering organization-wide capability. The organizational content is the innovation capability which is how does the organization innovate. This requires an effective 'innovation system' that is capable of supporting both widespread incremental innovation in products/services and ways of working as well as the rarer 'step-change' innovation in products/services, working methodology, business model, and market positioning. Innovative organizations deploy a range of different management, technology, process, and structural solutions. Innovation management requires the highest risk taking at a strategic value chain; including organization, investments, and assets. Create a disciplined, managed space for developing and testing new models, products, and business approaches. Innovation ecosystem or the methodological environment should cover the whole innovation process, from processes in managing ideas or idea handling systems to idea implementation and promotion.
There are many components in an effective innovation environment or ecosystem, each by themselves may not cause a good environment, but collectively they can build a set of unique innovation capabilities and weave an innovation ecosystem. Innovation is a unique business capability to reinvent business, but not to reinvent the wheels.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

“Digital Valley” Book Quotes Collection I

Wisdom is the full learning cycle.
Creativity is the ability to create novel value, creative mind is defined as the originator.
All humans are born with raw creativity ability, but not all creativities are created equal.
Creativity needs a problem, and the creative person needs a purpose.
Creativity is infused with an inner cohesion and comes from a vision of uniqueness.
Creative person’s spirit and soul dance with passion and imagination.            
Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth and manifold knowledge.
Creativity muscle needs to be strengthened, and creativity excellence needs to be cultivated.
Creativity adds signature or aesthetic that elevates passion to purpose and fancy to enchantment.
Creativity needs encouragement as food, and conflict to spark it.
A Strategic Thinker always “keeps the end in mind.”
The strategy is about putting a good team together to give you a multifaceted picture zooming into the business culture.
A strategy is multi-dimensional planning, multi-team collaboration, and multitasking action.
You need a strategy to assume leadership, but only the character can sustain leaders as who they really are.
Keeping it simple, you have a vision of what you are to become and a strategy for making that happen.
Strategy and execution represent the two sides of one and the same thing.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Insight

The business and the world today are hyperconnected and over-complex, digital leaders and professionals need to not only make observation carefully, but also should capture insight which is the deep intuitive understanding of things, and it often breaks through the conventional wisdom, in order to gain true wisdom. But which questions should you ask to assess a person’s insight?  


Does insight come through critical thinking or creative thinking? Insight is thinking into the box after thinking out of the box. Thus, insight takes both creativity and reasoning, intuition and logic, the power of acute observation and deduction, questioning, connection, penetration, discernment, perception called intellection. Insight is the excellent job via left brain and right brain’s connection and collaboration, both via creative thinking and critical thinking. Insight is the vision through ‘mind's eyes,’ the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively in Greek called noesis. The insight of situation requires in-depth understanding. It’s about the understanding of one´s possibilities, adversaries, environments effects and other stakeholders’ behavior. The more complex the situation is, the more different approaches and role gaming is needed to reach for understanding. So insight does not just fuel creativity, but also make creativity more tangible and embed creativity with other thought processes to create value and produce the new knowledge.
Can you often dig into the root cause of a problem, or only catch the symptom? Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context. Insight is being able to identify the root cause of a problem or the core issues of a situation which leads to understanding and resolution. Insight is about penetrating and often sudden understanding, as of a complex situation or problem. Too often people may take the easy path, think and work at a superficial level rather than spend the time to understand what is going on underneath. Insight is an understanding of cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario.
Which level are you on the pyramid of information-knowledge-insight -wisdom? Information is only a click away, knowledge is gained through learning. Insight is one's experience & exploration process, and introspection. Now digitalization is shortening the knowledge life cycle significantly, knowledge could be outdated soon, but insight lasts longer. it doesn’t mean that knowledge is less important, it’s the foundation to build insight upon. However, knowledge alone is not sufficient, insight is the most wanted and abstracted knowledge to “empower” a good strategy and its implementation. A collective insight is superior -. If a team clicks, it may reach shared insight of situation which is always better than individual belief.
Amplifying digital influence is not about how loud you can speak, but how insightful you can perceive or how foresightful you can see. Knowledge is no doubt important but more than that is complete awareness of what is happening in the context. Once you do that, you use your ability to classify the elements and know their linkage and capture the insight to understand things thoroughly. Knowledge is the power, you need to have the insight to apply it at the right time in the right circumstance with the right attitude. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu