Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

I am an avid soccer player -- in my mind.  I grew up playing the sport. Had aspirations of making the National team. I love watching the sport on television.  If I could spend my money on anything, it would be any soccer jersey that I deem awesome. Linda Hill  describes innovation as producing things that are new and useful.  I think a lot of times, we associate innovation with something that has to blow your mind.  If you were to ask me if something like  Trusox  blew my mind, I would say 'no.'  However, is it brilliant? I would say, "yes!"  I remember as a kid not being very happy with how any soccer sock felt in the foot area. I would have much rather worn a regular athletic sock that fit so that my foot wouldn't slip around in my boot (i.e. soccer cleat).  Somebody was brilliant enough to cut the foot off of a soccer sock, and put pads on the foot to reduce slippage.  Seriously?? That's brilliant. You just have...

When I was recruiting the best and brightest minds into management consulting, we always said that we wanted "out of the box" thinkers.  And then we wanted them to conform to the rules and methodologies of the Firm. Such is the irony.  I don't think it really hit me what out of the box meant until I watched a Project Innovation through Design Thinkin g webinar that was available for free on Stanford's Center for Professional Development site.  It presented a question that asked, "How much can you make with $5 and 2 hours?"  It turns out that the top 3 answers were this: One group thought like I did and framed the question as an investment one. They bought a bicycle pump and went out on campus to offer the pumping of tires for a fee. That really didn't catch on. So they changed their strategy and offered pumping tires for free, but asked for donations. They made considerably more by asking for donations than they did when charging  a fee.  An...