creativity

What is it to “hack” something? How can a “hack” make something better? It wasn’t until the end of my own journey through a “hackathon” that the concept was so perfectly articulated. The morning of the HackIT finals – the day of judgement for groups like mine participating in the 2018 Cisco HackIT I…

What does the word “techie”, “engineer” or “coder” mean to you? Likely, you have a general definition of the people in those roles. But I’m here to assure you that Cisco employees aren’t only engineers, coders, marketers, innovators, or financiers — we are also amazingly creative people! And, if you…

Next month, Cisco’s Krakow, Poland campus will celebrate its 6th anniversary! It’s Europe’s second largest Cisco office, and if you haven’t gotten a chance to visit us yet – here’s why you should! Up first! Fun facts about Cisco Poland:  The Krakow site is home to 1400+ Cisco employees. We are the…

Cisco is well known for our flexible work environment, so it is not surprising that a large number of our employees work remotely on a regular basis! Working from your favorite coffee shop, avoiding rush hour traffic, increased time at home – the perk list for working remotely is quite lengthy.  Alt…

I’ve been sharing my life at Cisco from my own personal social media channels for many years. Posts such as international team offsites, pictures from events in Bangalore, and more. I just completed seven years at this amazing company. Around here, we call our anniversary a “Ciscoversary.” I also ca…

A friend and colleague suggested an awesome book to me last week called Winning the Brain Game: Fixing the 7 Flaws of Thinking. Although the book focuses on limitations in our thought process, I could see how these same flaws are perfectly applicable to innovation initiatives at companies of all siz…

Last night, I had the honor of opening the 22nd annual Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards ceremony in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. I talked about “The Power of Disruptive Innovation to Ignite Talent” before hundreds of peers from companies who were there to be recognized for their innovative talen…

Alteration. Risk-Taking. Bravery. Curiosity. Breakthrough. When you think of innovation, these are the synonyms that come to mind. These characteristics are intimately related to platform diving – a sport I took up at the age of 40. That was four years ago and I now dive competitively around the wor…

A Q&A with Cisco Vice President of Intellectual Property, Dan Lang According to a report from global recruitment firm WilsonHCG, tech companies are the most successful among the Fortune 500 at  finding and recruiting top employees. What’s more telling, within the tech industry, the competition…