How to create and communicate your personal brand

by Stefan Lindegaard

Last week, I wrote a blog post on why your personal brand is important for your success. This is a follow-up post that offers some practical advice on how to build your personal brand based on two key steps: create and communicate.

On creating a brand, here are the parts you will need to explore:

1. The future. Define your strategic goals.
2. You about you. Become clear on your values and traits.
3. Others about you. Understand how other people see your values and traits.
4. Check your digital footprints. Google yourself.
5. Identify your unique contributions and define your personal brand statement.
6. Know your environment. Focus on competitors and influencers.

The future: Your strategic goals.

The most important part of creating your brand is...

Open innovation — Free sessions in your region?

by Stefan Lindegaard

The innovation role is changing rapidly as companies embrace the open innovation movement, seeking external partners to co-create future products and services. This requires a new mindset and new skills; it is no longer enough to just be a good project manager, researcher, engineer – or leader.

Do you have what it takes to succeed with open innovation?

Find out in my free of charge two-hour sessions, where you will be inspired and challenged on issues such as:
 
• Open Innovation: What is open innovation and how do you identify and approach the big issues of open innovation?
 
• The Essentials: What are the traits, mindset and skills needed to be successful with open innovation? How do you identify...

What are your personal success factors?

by Stefan Lindegaard

At work, we often talk about critical success factors. Have you considered developing your personal success factors? What should they be? To become successful as an innovation leader and intrapreneur–and as a partner, family member and friend–you can explore these pathways to success:

•  Know your values. Often success at work is defined by others, which can cause internal conflict with your inherent values. Even if you haven’t taken time to delineate your values, you will feel stress when you take actions that go against them in an effort to please others. I assure you that knowing your values and living by them will eliminate this unfortunate situation.

•  Follow your passion. As you get to know your values you will also discover where your...

Innovation consultants and facilitators – how do they add value?

by Stefan Lindegaard

Business is tough for innovation consultants and facilitators. As innovation projects are shut down and budgets are trimmed, there is less of a need for such people. I know because I feel this myself.

But leaving the current crisis aside, how do innovation consultants and facilitators best add value to companies? Two incidents in the last couple of years helped me shape my perspective on this.

The first incident takes me to Silicon Valley, where I met with a best-selling author and the kind of consultant who charge on the absolute highest level for his services. I wondered how one person could be worth so much.

Obviously, he had heard this question before and his response was that although he costs a small fortune a day...

Why your personal brand is important for your success

by Stefan Lindegaard

I would argue that your skills are not your most attractive asset on the job market today. In this competitive world they are merely table stakes.  Your career today is no longer just built on what you know and what you can achieve. Today it is very much also about your personal brand and your network of relationships.

“My personal brand? Come on, I am who I am,” you might say. Wrong. You are who other people believe you are, and this will determine how you can build and nurture the relationships that can define your career and determine whether you achieve your vision of success. Whether you know it or not and whether you like it or not, you already have a personal brand....

A new innovation manifesto – because things have to change

by Stefan Lindegaard

Innovation leaders have lost their jobs, and those who are still with their companies have at least temporarily lost much of the passion that is such an important driver for their work.

The reason is that our current model of innovation is broken. And you – the corporate innovation leaders – have failed. I have to plead guilty as well. I consider myself a member of the innovation community although I do not work in the trenches like many of you. But I – and the many other innovation facilitators, consultants and thought leaders – have also failed.

We have failed to convince the top executives who hold the fate of innovation within an organization in their hands that innovation is important. Just look at...

Use Google Adwords for your innovation projects

by Stefan Lindegaard

Most marketing guys already know this, but I recently learned it is not the case for innovation leaders and intrapreneurs. You should start using Google Adwords for your innovation projects – also if they are business-to-business projects.

In a recent network meeting, we got into a discussion on sales and marketing strategies for early stage projects. Two of the participants mentioned they had great success using Google Adwords. They said that:

• it was more effective than hiring a sales assistant
• you got an instant global reach for the niche markets they focused on
• a smart and aggressive Adwords strategy helps you build long-term brand awareness
• they could improve on their landing sites (where the users end when they click on a link)...

Innovation + LinkedIn: Where is the value?

by Stefan Lindegaard

Almost everyone I meet in the international innovation community has a profile on LinkedIn. Of course, some are more active than others, but I am overall a bit puzzled on how little value people in the innovation community actually seem to be extracting out of LinkedIn.

I wonder about this because I really like LinkedIn and use it for several reasons. They include:

• build and maintain an overview of my professional relationships

• reach out for input to my own ideas on innovation

• get inspiration on new trends and ideas within the global innovation community

• create exposure for my blog

• develop a following of like-minded people within the innovation community through my network groups on LinkedIn.

My groups include the

Open innovation: Why mindset matters most

by Stefan Lindegaard

Many of you have brought up the subject of trust in our interactions on open innovation. I agree that trust is an essential component on open innovation. It also comes at many levels – internally as well as externally.

I have just been in New York where I attended the World Innovation Forum. It was a great opportunity to listen to some of the best innovation thought leaders in the world, and it was encouraging to hear how they also believe in co-creation and open innovation.

C.K. Prahalad also talked about the value of turning customer transactions into customer relationships and – in the spirit of open innovation – I would argue this focus should be given to the entire eco-system of customers, partners, suppliers...

Thinking time = Better innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

When you work with innovation at a high level, you need time to think and reflect in order to be as good as you can be. Very few of us manage to do this in today’s hectic world, but with a few changes, you can probably free up one hour of time a week for high-value thinking. Once you try this, you’ll think it’s the greatest luxury of your week.

An hour of solitary reflection (with no interruptions for multi-tasking or other distractions allowed) could make a tremendous difference in your ability to remain focused on your vision and your priorities. To make maximum use of this valuable time, your thinking needs to be directed toward a particular issue. Here are some additional guidelines:

• ...