{"id":117,"date":"2007-06-01T07:25:34","date_gmt":"2007-05-31T23:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/?p=117"},"modified":"2007-06-01T07:27:27","modified_gmt":"2007-05-31T23:27:27","slug":"corporate-refugees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/?p=117","title":{"rendered":"Corporate refugees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every so often you meet people in innovation who really understand what it&#8217;s about.  I mean : <em>really understand.<\/em>  Inevitably one of the questions that I ask is what&#8217;s their background?<\/p>\n<p>After the second or third time asking this question I gave up being surprised by the answers. Inevitably those that are passionate about innovation have had the most interesting backgrounds.<\/p>\n<p>For instance a friend who used to be the Head of Innovation at one of the worlds largest phone companies (and who reported into the CEO), used to spend time teaching waterskiing.<\/p>\n<p>A colleague in Holland used to be a marine biologist and study human-dolphin interactions.  Curiously enough this is also what I started out training for at university.<\/p>\n<p>Why is this?<\/p>\n<p>(Actually it&#8217;s because dolphins always look so damn happy with their little perma-grin.  And they get to surf all day at some of the worlds best beaches if they like. But I digress.)<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s because if you are content with following the path you trained for at school or university or where-ever, then it means that you&#8217;re not that curious about the world.  Those that are naturally interested in a whole range of things tend to move jobs\/countries\/professions every so often.  When they start finding out about the sort of creativity that goes into innovation roles, they&#8217;re hooked.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more they are usually amazed that they can get paid to do the sort of work which makes their brain hum until steam comes out their ears.<\/p>\n<p>I was talking to a guy at an innovation lab in Sydney and he used the term &#8216;corporate refugees&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>I like it.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re stuck in a beige cubicle reading this, and wondering if there is more to life in the business world, then why not apply for asylum?<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bluesandtwos.org.uk\/images\/library\/icons\/approved_stamp2.gif\" alt=\"Apply for corporate asylum now!\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every so often you meet people in innovation who really understand what it&#8217;s about. I mean : really understand. Inevitably one of the questions that I ask is what&#8217;s their background? After the second or third time asking this question I gave up being surprised by the answers. Inevitably those that are passionate about innovation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-innovation-culture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdennis.com\/ideaport\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}