Counterintuitivity

Innovation is a lazy industry word. Often but a label for yet another leadership ambition, another consultant-driven program. Innovation has ceased to be a positive force for change. To reverse this, we need to leverage its design and value creation free of the tyranny of profit and efficiency. By designing with more meaning, and not only for iteration, disruption and predictability.

Mario Van der Meulen’s nine counterintuitive behavioral principles will inspire entrepreneurs, executives, consultants, designers and innovators on the front line in virtually any industry to enact positive change in the creation of innovation. Are you ready to act as a catalyst for meaningful innovation and design action? Only those that can pioneer new ways of proposing more meaningful possibilities will warrant the reputation of being true innovators, keeping our innovations and designs human. In fact, these will then become more meaningfully human.

Innovators, entrepreneurs, and designers usually have a pragmatic and instrumental relation with the future. However, our attempts to construct the future in rigid, process-driven methodologies, like design thinking, is mostly leading to the reproduction of known thinking and meaningless ideas. Now that the tech, consumer, and design fields are converging, Mario Van der Meulen believes we need to make a mindset shift to create a future that looks more human by tech, and not less because of it.

To evoke meaning and broaden the outcomes of our innovations, we need new ways of seeing, thinking, understanding, and acting, to intentionally embrace the richness of possibilities. Surprisingly, it is often by doing that what seems counterintuitive. New ways of thinking and working - even the ones that feel counterintuitive - are the kind of things a design mind should love to experiment with!

If it is unclear exactly how leaders may influence perceptions of meaning for their colleagues, clients and stakeholders, these nine counterintuitive behavioral principles will inspire leaders to enact positive change in the creation of innovation. Only those that can pioneer new ways of proposing more meaningful possibilities will warrant the reputation of being true innovators, keeping our innovations and designs human. In fact, these will then become more meaningfully human. Are you ready to act as a catalyst for meaningful innovation and design action?