I attended a seminar by Langdon Morris in Taiwan this September. Langdon Morris’ work involves developing “innovation, strategy, and collaboration methodologies to solve problems with very high levels of creativity and innovation.” He is also an author of several books, the recent one being “Permanent Innovation.”
The presentation talks about creating a work culture of permanent innovation, which is a bit of an oxymoron if you ask me, since the word ‘innovation’ is regularly used within the context of change. But Morris argues that it is, in fact, possible to have continuous innovation within any company. It just takes a lot of work and requires a few elements to exist first. The details though, Morris points to his book.
Nonetheless, here are a few notes I had written during the seminar:
1) Innovation is a company’s only sustainable competitive advantage.
1a) Failure is very costly and it doesn’t always produce results that translate into profit for companies
2) Starbucks is a good example of a brand that can sustain selling high-cost products because they provide something extra to your drinks: A unique cafe experience, and the guarantee that your drink will be perfect the way you want it.
3) There must exist three roles for developing an innovative culture:
- creative genius (sees what others do not see)
- innovation leader (sees the future and engages society in the quest to achieve this)
- innovation champion (holds everyone up, makes everyone successful, can break existing rules)
4) Three types of innovation:
- business model innovation (change the way profit is made)
- incremental innovation (change the product/service)
- internal innovation (organizational reform)
All in all, it was an alright seminar – definitely not the better ones I’ve attended. One major reason was the attitude of the speaker, Langdon Morris. He must have been irritated before coming to his presentation since he was pretty rude to the volunteers of the event, and questioned the reaction of the audience at certain times. I understand that the event could have gone more smoothly, but there is no need to talk to people (the same people helping your event!) the way he did. And whenever you are doing a presentation, never ever question the intelligence of your audience!
It may have been that he’s not accustomed to Taiwan’s culture, but irregardless his attitude affected my perception of his character. Just because you are in a foreign country doesn’t mean you can be rude to others.
Ultimately, I came out of the seminar knowing more about his character than his speech.
Peter Kao
