Melissa Dinwiddie

Click to watch (09:55) or scroll down to read more Hey there, innovation champions! The Compliment I Almost Just Took Sunday morning, I led songs at a Flag Day event. Afterward, a woman who sings in my father's choir came up to me. "You have such a strong voice," she said. "You're a wonderful song leader." I said thank you — I've trained myself to actually receive a compliment instead of deflecting it. But then, because she's a singer too, I told her something most people don't want to hear....

Click to watch (18:08) or scroll down to read more Hey there, innovation champions! The Story Your Engineers Tell Themselves (And How to Change It) I was first-chair viola in my high school chamber orchestra. The two violinists practiced constantly — before school, after school, weekends. I put in the bare minimum. Classical music wasn't my passion, and my effort reflected that. Not surprisingly, they were significantly more skilled than I was. Here's the part I got completely wrong. I didn't...

Click to watch (12:58) or scroll down to read more Hey there, innovation champions! The Room That Changed Me It was around 2012. World Domination Summit, Portland. A few thousand people packed into a theater. Brené Brown walked onstage and, within the first few minutes, had us doing something deeply uncool. First, she had us strike a "cool" pose — arms crossed, chin up, maximum detachment. Easy enough. Then she had us dance. Still manageable. Then she had us sing Journey's "Don't Stop...

Click to watch (06:46) or scroll down to read more Hey there, innovation champions! The Call That Changes Everything You know the moment. A leader above you — maybe the CEO, maybe the board — decides it's time. "We need to be more innovative. We need a culture where people take risks, generate ideas, move faster." And somehow, you're the person who gets the mandate. Maybe it comes with a budget. Maybe it comes with a timeline. Maybe it comes with exactly zero additional support, a team...

Click to watch (13:17) or scroll down to read more Hey there, innovation champions! The Buzzer Goes Off I’m going to take you back to 2014 or so. I'm standing in a line at my first improv performance class, waiting for my turn, watching everyone ahead of me step up to do a scene with a partner. Simple enough — except for one rule: you cannot use the letter S. What?! As I got closer to the front, my heart rate climbed. My mouth went dry. I rehearsed every possible sentence opener in my head,...

Click to watch (12:05) or scroll down to read more Hey there, innovation champions! Today I want to talk about something that is quietly killing innovation on your team. It's not a lack of ideas. It's not the wrong tools or the wrong people. It's the unspoken rule that everything has to be good before anyone sees it. Why Your Next Innovation Should Be Terrible (On Purpose) Here's what I know about analytical, high-performing teams: they don't lack ideas. They lack permission to have bad ones....

Click to watch (11:26) or scroll down to read more Hey there, innovation champions! Here's a common reaction I get when I tell leaders the first step of my innovation framework is called "Play Hard": An almost imperceptible pause. A polite smile. And behind the eyes: Oh no. She's going to make us do trust falls. I get it. The word "play" has been weaponized by well-meaning consultants for decades. It has come to mean: vaguely fun, probably frivolous, nothing that will matter on Monday...

Click to watch (11:14) or scroll down to read more Hey there, innovation champions! Your team isn't short on ideas. They're short on safety. And the difference between those two diagnoses determines whether your innovation initiative becomes a real culture shift — or just another offsite people talk about once and forget by February. The Job I Still Think About When I was just out of high school, I got a job at a trendy housewares store in a shopping center. My manager was impatient — the...

Click to watch (13:04) or scroll down to read more Hey there, innovation champions! Here's something that might reframe how you think about your entire organization's capacity for innovation: The people most likely to drive real breakthroughs aren't the ones in your "creative" departments. They're in your engineering teams. Your data science orgs. Your project management offices. And something you're probably doing right now is making sure they never find out. The Myth That's Costing You...