Melissa Dinwiddie

Hey there, innovation champions! Here's something I didn't expect to say as someone who embraced ebooks years ago: I genuinely believe the physical version of Innovation at Work will do more for your team than the Kindle version ever could. And I have receipts. The Great Ebook Experiment That Didn't Go as Planned A few years ago, I had what seemed like a brilliant idea: convert my entire personal library to ebooks. Think of the shelf space! The freedom! I was already reading fiction on my...

Hey there, innovation champions! Your team doesn't need more alignment meetings. They need one small experiment and permission to start before they're ready. Here's how I know. The Competition I Almost Didn't Enter On Saturday, I stood onstage in a TV studio and told a five-minute story to a room full of judges and fellow speakers. I placed third in the NSA NorCal Last Story Standing storytelling competition. That's not the win I want to tell you about. The real win was simpler, and honestly...

Hey there, innovation champions! Last week I shared that Innovation at Work is live — and I asked you to pick one experiment, run it, and tell me what happened. A few of you have already reached out. (Thank you. Seriously. I read every response.) But I also heard a version of this: "I want to try one, but what if it doesn't land? What if my team thinks it's weird? What if it just... flops?" I get it. And I want to address it head-on, because this is exactly the moment where most innovation...

Quick update: Innovation at Work is live on Amazon — the Kindle edition is just $0.99 for a limited time. If last week's canvas-wrapped-in-plastic story resonated, the full book has 51 more experiments where that came from. 👉 Get it on Amazon Already grabbed a copy? An honest Amazon review — even two sentences — helps the book reach more leaders who need it during these early launch weeks. 👉 Leave a review Hey there, innovation champions! A few weeks ago, I wrote about why I was publishing a...

Hey there, innovation champions! I want to tell you how I actually want you to use my new book. But first, a confession. A Canvas That Sat in Plastic Wrap for Years Back when I was making my living as a professional artist, I spent close to a decade almost never making art for myself. I was trapped in a story that everything I created had to bring in money, had to be "amazing," had to justify itself. The result? Total paralysis. I couldn't start anything that didn't have a client's name on...

Hey there, innovation champions! I want to tell you how I actually want you to use my new book. But first, a confession. A Canvas That Sat in Plastic Wrap for Years Back when I was making my living as a professional artist, I spent close to a decade almost never making art for myself. I was trapped in a story that everything I created had to bring in money, had to be "amazing," had to justify itself. The result? Total paralysis. I couldn't start anything that didn't have a client's name on...

Hey there, innovation champions! Here's the thing nobody tells you about innovation initiatives: most of them don't fail because the idea was bad. They fail because everyone expected them to be perfect before they started. Sound familiar? I've been inside enough tech teams (heck, teams in general!) to know that this is one of the quietest innovation killers out there. Not the lack of smart people. Not the lack of good ideas. The insistence that every new approach needs to be bulletproof...

Hey there, innovation champions! These are trying times. I wrote the other day on LinkedIn about the cognitive dissonance of logging in to talk about business-as-usual while communities are being terrorized and traumatized by an armed force of untrained, violent men, and citizens are being executed in the streets while exercising their Constitutional rights. Writing this newsletter feels like cognitive dissonance. I sang at a vigil for Renee Good just a few weeks ago, which the civic...

Hey there, innovation champions! Most leaders can tell you when innovation has stalled. What they struggle to see is when it's about to stall—when the very systems that created breakthrough thinking have quietly calcified into comfortable routines that feel productive but have stopped producing anything new. I discovered this pattern not in a boardroom, but in my art studio. When the Spark Stops Sparking For years as a professional artist, creative block paralyzed me. I could meet client...