If you’ve ever worked on something even remotely disruptive or innovative, you know about unknown unknowns. They are the unexpected things that happen that it is impossible to predict. Customer feedback that doesn’t align with your assumptions. Unexpected alternative uses of your idea for other purposes. The competition reaction to your new offering. None of […]
Tag Archives: Innovation
Cross-Industry Innovation – Seek Converging Trends
Every industry today is facing disruption and change at a speed that we have never seen before. E-commerce is challenging Retail. Technology companies are challenging banks. 3D Printing is challenging traditional manufacturing. Innovation is no longer a nice-to-have capability in your organization; it is a critical component of your future success. But the innovation of […]
The Tortoise and the Hare in Innovation – Go Slow to Go Fast
Aesop’s fable of the Tortoise and the Hare is well known from our childhood. The braggartly Hare spent his time gloating about how fast he was until the Tortoise finally had enough and challenged him to a race. Laughing at the slow Tortoise the Hare happily accepted the challenge. When the race started the Hare sped […]
Happy World Innovation Day
Today is World Innovation Day – the final celebration of World Creativity and Innovation Week. This week marked World Creativity and Innovation Week. Open minds, hearts, eyes to new ideas, new decisions, new actions: one week worldwide. The movement has gained so much momentum that the United Nations has added World Innovation Day on April […]
Scaling to Differentiation
I recently wrote about the importance of “Framework Thinking” as a way to simplify how you look at problems, structures, and processes so I thought I would extend that thinking as an example of how you can think about how you organize your business structure. Scaling an organization requires an evolution of maturity in your […]
ROI Comes From Customer Value Creation
I read a post the other day looking at the ROI (Return On Investment) in immediate payment systems (banking speak for instant payments) and one particular statement made by the author made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. In fact, the real driver may not be the ROI but just keeping […]
Fail Forward
I was reading today about a number of the biggest product failures of all time (kind of a fun read actually). One of the things that jumped out at me was the number of companies that are known for being really innovative that made the list of failures. Normally if you were to put together […]
Curiosity Killed the Cat (But Satisfaction Brought It Back)
I was doing my morning reading today and I came across a few posts and thoughts the value of opposing ideas, disagreement, and controversy and it reminded me of the value of curiosity when we are going about our daily lives. Increasingly we see leaders just “speaking louder”, believing that by talking louder they will convince […]
Flawless Execution In Innovation
I’ve had many bosses who spoke about the need for “flawless execution” in our organization. They spoke of delivering with excellence, achieving plan, and a relentless pursuit of productivity in our work. Then they spoke about how innovative we were going to be. How we were going to try new things, adapt and increase our […]
Empathy Mapping – A Versatile Tool for your Toolbox
One of my favourite tools, when I’m working on innovation, strategic planning, marketing, or even just preparing for an important meeting where a key decision is needed, is Empathy Mapping. Empathy Mapping is a way to discover new insights into people, customer segments, or personas you have developed for your new product or marketing campaign. […]