How I Work

Scott D Anthony on how he removed 70% of recurring meetings from his diary, balancing manager time with maker time, and his go-to locations for doing focused work.

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Episode notes

My guest today is Scott D Anthony. Scott is global authority on innovation and the former managing partner of Innosight, the innovation and strategy consulting firm co-founded by Clayton Christensen. Scott has written several bestselling books and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review. Last year, Scott was awarded the Thinkers50 Innovation Award, which recognises the world’s leading thinkers on innovation.

I’ve known Scott for a little while now because our innovation consultancies are starting to partner up on some projects, but up until now, I’d never had the chance to quiz Scott about how he works. We cover lots of different topics including:

  • The places Scott goes to get his most focused work done
  • How Scott makes the most out of time spent on airplanes
  • How he breaks his day up into three shifts
  • Why Scott finds his office the worst place to do creative work
  • How Scott manages his energy when doing long focused blocks of work
  • Scott’s process for coming up with his best ideas
  • What Zombie projects are - and what to do about them
  • How Scott removed 70% of his regular meetings from his diary
  • Scott’s strategies for dealing with rejection
  • When co-authoring works well - and when it doesn’t
  • The advice that Clayton Christensen gave Scott that helped him become a better writer
  • How Scott tests his new ideas

You can find Scott on Twitter, on LinkedIn, at innovation and strategy consultancy Innosight, and you can drop him a note at [email protected]

Visit amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes.

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