Please feel free to use these cartoons in your presentations, university courses, books etc, for free, as long as you drop me a line to let me know what you have planned (telliott at timoelliott dot com),
Top cartoon page here, including links to analytics cartoons, more analytics cartoons, yet more analytics cartoons and artificial intelligence cartoons, marketing cartoons, social cartoons, innovation cartoons, sustainability cartoons, work frustration cartoons, other cartoons.
Note that I am not a gifted artist! While I drew the simpler drawings myself, the more impressive art is the work of ChatGPT, typically with a lot of combining and corrections in Photoshop to get the image I want.
Too much jargon! Are you “pushing the envelope”?
Everybody wants innovation — but not necessarily the consequences that go with them
It’s easy to give up on innovation after the first setbacks:
It’s important not to be too busy to think about innovation…
Because your competition isn’t going to stand still.
It’s also easy to kill off any enthusiasm for employee innovation with too much bureaucracy and barriers
When you are ready for innovation, you have to think out of the box — which can be hard!
A change of scenery can help:
Design thinking is a great tool to get around the problems you see in your business:
IT agility is very important
But before you start changing the game, make sure you know what game you’re playing:
The complexity of your existing systems can get in the way of innovation
Over time, your organization may have built up complex systems that no longer make sense (except to those who feel their jobs are threatened?!)
Cloud technology may help you innovate with more agility… 
In order to innovate, you have to “fail fast, fail forward”
Innovators have to learn that having a good idea isn’t enough — you can’t just hand it over to somebody else to execute, you have to push it yourself:
But smart companies will put processes in place to help pioneers move their innovations forward:
At the end of the day, innovation is hard work — but it’s worth it!
Personal cloud solutions are all the rage…
Alexa, what’s the next big breakthrough in computer interfaces?!
How about — bear with me here — we actually try to change something?!
Do you have problems thinking outside the box?
Unauthorized drone usage? You’re suspended!
Fed up with talk about digital disruption? You’re not the only one!
Top executive tip — promise what you can’t deliver!
Beware of executives reading airline magazines!
You have to “skate to where the puck will be” — or do you?!
Why is so much “innovation” just so… small-minded?
Hey, it’s really important for all of us to embrace change! (you go first!)
Innovation in large organizations can be hard work…
Innovation is hard to do on a silo-by-silo basis!
Go be an innovation hero! And make sure you fulfill all these KPIs…
Are you a thought leader?!
It seems like some folks will go out of their way to reject innovation. Which is the better excuse? “Yes, but will it scale?” or “I’ll need an ROI case”?!
Innovation backlog is a big problem…
Culture eats technology for breakfast!
Ageism in technology? Nice try, Grandpa!
Diversity is good. Ageism is bad. Both old and young have much to bring — it’s not supposed to be a contest!
What innovation looks like in most organizations, sadly…
Trying to win over the audience… and failing.
Is your spaghetti code getting in the way of innovation? Here’s how it’s made…
When it comes to innovation, it’s important to see the big picture!
When it comes to innovation, some decisions are harder than others!
You know where your custom code should go…
Invest in ground-breaking technology!
And, again, it’s important to embrace change rather than resisting it. But this is what change looks like to most people…
Are you waiting to go to the cloud? This could be the big sign you’ve been waiting for!
Here’s a common enough problem in modern organizations when it comes to innovation:
You don’t want to be the CEO or CIO that got left behind when everybody else innovated:
Still looking after your own computer infrastructure? It might be time to swap it for some cloud innovation!
If you’re looking to innovate in your organization, it’s important to meet in the right place…
If you’re in charge of technology, it’s important to be able to talk the language of business, or you may get ignored!
Are you SURE you want to be on the cutting edge of innovation?!
I mean, this is always an option, right?
If you’re moving your on-premise systems to the cloud, it’s important to have a clean core…
Young people today, they have no idea about the innovation we lived through…
A tryptic on change inside organizations. Who wants change / who wants to change…
And more diverse versions:
What? You’ve never seen a lean startup before?
Having a clean core is really important for innovation…
Everybody wants transformation and innovation, nobody wants disruption:
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! (except it’s GOING to break, so you should probably simplify things right now, so you can fix it when it does)
The three unwise monkeys — don’t ignore that transformation is happening to you, too!
A well-crafted elevator pitch can help get the point across — but don’t be too literal about it!
This is a typical situation. What’s the solution? Help IT people automate their jobs more, and let business people do more innovation themselves!
Here’s the problem with an old system that works “just fine”: when you find you suddenly need to move, you can’t!
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