I have been catching up on listening to a podcast series we are hosting: Eric Mankin's Innovation Tip of the Week:

This is a gold mine of valuable insights on how people and organizations innovate.

If you only have time to listen to one of these podcasts, I recommend the one on American Idol which is not only topical but interesting in terms of how we manage risk. Eric looks at mistakes of omission and commission and how these different types of mistakes influence our choices and ability to innovate.

Programming chief at ABC Andrew Wong made a type 2 error (an error of commission) when she passed on American Idol. Most errors of commission are never discovered. They are stopped without being shown to others to take on the risks. Since they are invisible they are much more common. Passing over American Idol is a classic error of commission. In fact the only reason the show got picked up by Fox was that Rupert Murdoch personally ordered his subordinates to buy it. The point here is that many innovative projects are killed before they see day light.

This is just one example of the many insights Eric Mankin has packed into these small gems. If you are interested in innovation, download this series and the next time you are on the treadmill, you will gain brain cells along with burning calories.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Main Page. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.