Borrowing Brilliance - Collected Wisdom and Lessons for Reinvention with Aidan McCullen
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How learning from others can be a way through change.
Gavin Weeks talks with innovation expert Aidan McCullen who says the only lasting organisational competitive advantage is learning and reinvention.
Aidan is author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention, is host of The Innovation Show, winner of a Thinkers50 award, and a former Ireland team rugby player. He founded The Reinvention Summit and teaches on emerging technology trends at Trinity Business School.
A thread throughout this episode is what borrowed wisdom has taught him about reinvention, in organisations and in our own lives. Some highlights of their conversation:
-Why reinvention asks us to let go as much as to learn.
Aidan explains why reinvention is harder than innovation because it means unlearning the very things that made you successful. He shows why every attempt that fails still leaves “assets in the ashes”, in the form of new capabilities, new data and a new, unplanned directions.
-Listening to the people who see change coming first.
‘Snow melts from the edges’ - it's most often not those in the boardroom who sense change first. It’s the people at the edges of the organisation - suppliers, in logistics and on the front line - and they have often been calling for change for years before strategy catches up.
They discuss why culture has to come before any innovation work, and why the J-curve of learning (the dip in competence before you get good) is where so many people, and so many AI rollouts, flounder. Aidan explains why your sceptics may be “gainsayers” rather than naysayers.
- Crazy Penguins and the small rituals that teach a team to reinvent itself.
Aidan talks about the practical rituals that change a culture. They include idea funerals, Disney’s dreamer, critic and realist rooms, a monthly reading circle that outlived its founder, and the Crazy Penguin Award for whoever takes the first calculated leap. They also cover how Microsoft went from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all”, and what any leader can do with the team they already have.
Gavin Weeks talks with innovation expert Aidan McCullen who says the only lasting organisational competitive advantage is learning and reinvention.
Aidan is author of Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention, is host of The Innovation Show, winner of a Thinkers50 award, and a former Ireland team rugby player. He founded The Reinvention Summit and teaches on emerging technology trends at Trinity Business School.
A thread throughout this episode is what borrowed wisdom has taught him about reinvention, in organisations and in our own lives. Some highlights of their conversation:
-Why reinvention asks us to let go as much as to learn.
Aidan explains why reinvention is harder than innovation because it means unlearning the very things that made you successful. He shows why every attempt that fails still leaves “assets in the ashes”, in the form of new capabilities, new data and a new, unplanned directions.
-Listening to the people who see change coming first.
‘Snow melts from the edges’ - it's most often not those in the boardroom who sense change first. It’s the people at the edges of the organisation - suppliers, in logistics and on the front line - and they have often been calling for change for years before strategy catches up.
They discuss why culture has to come before any innovation work, and why the J-curve of learning (the dip in competence before you get good) is where so many people, and so many AI rollouts, flounder. Aidan explains why your sceptics may be “gainsayers” rather than naysayers.
- Crazy Penguins and the small rituals that teach a team to reinvent itself.
Aidan talks about the practical rituals that change a culture. They include idea funerals, Disney’s dreamer, critic and realist rooms, a monthly reading circle that outlived its founder, and the Crazy Penguin Award for whoever takes the first calculated leap. They also cover how Microsoft went from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all”, and what any leader can do with the team they already have.
