Karla Phlypo is an avid dreamer, builder, artist, and scholar. She holds a Ph.D. combining research in social innovation, knowledge management, and decision science. Her background is in automotive product engineering. Although she has many interests, the common thread is contributing to a culture of sharing and innovation through collaboration.
Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators
Highlights from the discussion include:
- Karla’s innovation experiences began as a young girl when she dismantled her father’s lawnmower, without permission!
- “Appreciative Inquiry” is a tool for facilitating a group innovation session that focuses on positives (not problems) and understanding different perspectives (see short tutorial)
- Karla studied how people participate in innovation environments (open, crowdsourcing, and collaborative communities)
- Key contributors needed in innovation environments are solution providers that tend to be quiet (may not offer ideas until asked to do so), non-political, and boundary-less with a systems view
- Quirky (https://www.quirky.com/invent) is an interesting open community for inventing and influencing new product designs
- Organizational innovation is improved by knowledge managers who aid the flow of knowledge in an organization and identification of best practices
- “Hardy perennials” are not flowers, but problems that keep showing up in product efforts that need to be pruned
- Inspiration comes from many places. A GM engineer found inspiration by examining toy cars
- Idea management systems that collect suggestions for employees can destroy trust when they don’t understand how their ideas are used – they can be counter-productive when not managed properly
- Open innovation requires trust and coherence.
- Cob building, construction with mud and straw, is in Karla’s future.
Connect with Karla on her blog, Distilled Wisdom.
Innovation Quote
“I have no special talent, I am just passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein
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Raw Transcript
tei006_karla_phlypoThanks for Listening!
Thank you for joining me again. I love discussing product development and learning from the successes and failures of product innovators. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product innovation professional by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.
The primary responsibilities for an organization are product management and innovation. They deliver value to customers. They're also exciting responsibilities for those properly equipped. That is my job - equipping product managers and innovators. 
