The latest issue of Speaker Magazine has me as the cover story where I give some suggestions for how to innovate in general and for speakers in particular. I find the entire industry of speaking quite interesting – it is a world entirely unto its own with a set of rules and traditions that it takes some time to learn and then question.

Speaking is also something I love doing while also discovering that I am pretty darn good at it – always a fun combination! After having seen tons and tons of speakers from all over the world I believe that there are common mistakes people make in their presentations. Some have to do with the slides people use (assuming they use slides) and sites such as Presentation Zen are a good help for reminding people that slides should be simple, clean and balanced while also being unique and provocative. Some have to do with the failure to tailor to your audience (CEOs of Fortune 50 are different from front-line workers for those same companies). I have often found, however, that many people forget that points made during a presentation should also be delivered through punches, emotional rollercoasters, and surprises – even in small ways. People have asked me about this many times and I will share some ideas on this on my blog, but for now here is a quick example of this principle in a tiny way:

After a couple of minutes in a presentation I often want to make the point that all new ideas are combinations of existing ideas (a core notion of The Medici Effect). I also want give people a subtle sense of that these combinations are 1) surprising and 2) requires us to rethink our existing assets, processes, strategies and resources although I will make both points explicitly a few minutes later. So how to do that within 30 sec or less?

Well, one can just say it, but that would be boring. All theorems are better remembered if coupled to an example. You could show a slide of this happening. At this point I have been using slides (I will have covered some 50 slides in about 5-6 minutes, but that is another story) and even shown an example of unusual combinations, such as termites and architecture. So I would like to change the medium.

Here is how I do it: I will have a water bottle with me on stage, and maybe had a sip or two from it…but the cap of the bottle is on in either case. So I now take the bottle, remove the cap and tell people that the screwcap is one idea. That already is surprising because the audience is not thinking of the bottle as a prop for a presentation. It immediately sends the message that you can find insight in unexpected places – and I do not have to mention this at all. I then pull out a light bulb from my pocket telling people this is another idea. By combining them: screwcap + lightbulb Edison found a way to attach his invention – an innovation that has lasted for a long time. I use the water bottle for the rest of the presentation to drink form and many people have told me that every time a take a sip – it sends a small message of using stuff around you in new and unexpected ways.

Lately I have innovated by developing The Medici Experience, which is a combination of a live performance and a transformational workshop. I just did one yesterday for a major, global client. It is an all-day event where the emphasis is to push the creation and execution of new ideas through the diversity of everyone present while also providing strategic frameworks and inspiration. The thing that I love about it is that it scales – it can be done for hundreds, potentially even thousands of people. It took quite some time to figure out how to crack that, but it seems to be going beautiful now. These Medici Experiences been very, very successful as I believe organizations, perhaps more than ever, want and need clear outcomes from their internal events. I am obviously also doing these types of events publicly (the next one is in San Jose next week – go to it if you can!)