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The Ten Most Important Things You Need To Know About Brendon McLoughlin

If your reading this, I may have some how captured your imagination, interest and peeked your curiosity, either way, the following perhaps maybe the most valuable read and insights into my passion and personality.

My name is Brendon McLoughlin. Having successfully completed my ‘Innovation Management’ post graduate in the University of Limerick in 2014, I am currently pursuing a second post graduate in Lean Systems with a desire to consolidate both specialist diplomas into a single master’s in ‘Lean Innovation’. I believe it may be the first masters in ‘Lean Innovation’ in Ireland (always innovating me).

“God helps those who help themselves …. God help those who get caught helping themselves …”

(The Two Ronnie’s)

There are two sides to everyone, just as there are two sides of any great story, there are two sides to a beautiful brain and two sides to any individual personality.

Those that know me will have already learned (with a smile) that …

1. I am a BIG! supporter and user of online collaboration spaces like ‘Study Buddies’, ‘Google Hangouts’, Lean Tools, TeamworkPM, LucidCharts, Project Management tools, ‘Skype’ for groups, ‘Mind42’, ‘Google Apps’ and ‘Zotero’. I love to share and encourage others to actively share their learning also.

2. I am a dyslexic mature early school leaver who is out to prove that anyone can and will succeed and successfully survive academia if you put the effort and energy in … even me!. As a result my confidence and passion comes from team projects proven with hard data and the voice of the customer. This combo means that I am great at promoting projects, but bloody hopeless are promoting myself (I think its an Irish thing more than a lack of confidence or dyslexia).

3. I am an active volunteer skills development coach, facilitator and trainer (with distinctions / top 2% in the country in 2011), an innovator and the proud programme designer for The Jobs Factory which seeks to help the skills development of long term unemployed and local micro-enterprises seeking assistance.

4. I am a pragmatist who, like many people I learn by doing, constructive feedback and passive challenging of the status quo. I remove box’s, but facilitate journeys while agreeing destinations within achievable boundaries while often challenging accepted thinking, theories and best practices for example, ‘everyone has the capacity to innovate’, ‘everyone can be creative’ (Sir Ken Robinson, 2008).

5. Failure is my friend, I welcome constructive failure and feedback on my failures more than feedback on my success. Fail fast, fail cheaply, fail often, fail forward. Put another way … Learn fast, learn cheaply, learn often, learn forward (aka Lean Innovation).

6. I find it very difficult to write concisely, I hate to waste the learning opportunity that flows from my writing. I really hate SMS because I like to write as I speak. Just as I like to spell ~~correctly~~ Dis-lex-ic-lee in the knowledge that “I’m rite and the rest of the world is rong” 😉 … and so, I could write for Ireland.

7. I am an evangelist for …

Blending and Tailoring Project Management Approaches (Waterfall, Agile, Rapid Results, PRINCE2, ITIL, EpicWay etc..)
Lean, Bootstrapping and Entrepreneurial Thinking, Lean Start Up, Lean Innovation and Frugal Innovation.
Socialisation and Commercialisation of Innovation
Lean learning, education and the Makers Movement
Collaboration and Open Innovation
Online collaborative tools and virtualisation

Note: I love to explore and create coaching, project management and lean tools, applications and systems, but firmly believe if the focus is on the tool as anything more than a mere process of facilitation. Such focus may be misplaced and signalling a possible weakness in the existing knowledge sharing, learning, creative and innovative culture.

8. I am an innovative technical project manager with 30 years in business and product development, 20 years of which has been within IT industries. But my innovative thinking goes well beyond such boundaries and my imagination inspirations come for the likes of Nicholas Tesla, Dyson, IDEO, 3M, Lean Start-Up, Education and Elon Musk. Including also, the re-invention of long established products, services or norms, open, social and retro innovation (re-innovation/re-engineering) and process improvement.

9. As of today Sept. 2014, as well as being a serial entrepreneur of 6 x successful start-ups, (the first of which I started at the tender age of 16), I am currently validating 3 x commercial (1 of which is developing a new technology and platform) and 1 x social start-ups … in my spare time!

10. I am always available and excited by big challenges and very open to collaborations or knowledge sharing opportunities which may also benefit from my personality, experience, competencies and passion.

A special note for 3rd party recruiters / agencies, who just happen to be reading this post … While I am always open to new challenging and innovative opportunities, I only contract direct and never via agencies … so I hope you’ll understand when I refuse your network request, its nothing personal! 🙂

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