E113: Perry Klebahn - The Practice of Ideaflow

A Sherpa's Guide to Innovation

For our penultimate episode of 2022, we interview Perry Klebahn about his soon-to-be-published book Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric that Matters, co-authored with Jeremy Utley. Perry is an Adjunct Professor and Director of Executive Education at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design--the d.school--at Stanford University. Prior to his role at the d.school, Perry was CEO of Timbuk2 and COO of Patagonia. He's also an avid surfer.
Perry posits that innovation is not an event, a workshop, a sprint, or a hackathon, but rather the result of mastering ideaflow. Put simply, ideas / time = ideaflow. When applied, ideaflow is an effective approach to problem-solving that reduces effort, minimizes risk, and magnifies results. To illustrate this concept, Perry shares personal stories of when he has (and hasn't) applied ideaflow to gnarly business problems, and how he, Jeremy, and the d.school team promulgate this approach to their students, startups, and large corporations.
"Once you fully understand what ideas are, where they come from, and how to separate the winners from the losers, you can finally put that lightning rod down and start making lightning."
Pre-order Ideaflow today and learn more by visiting ideaflow.design/.
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