So today marks the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar and it also marks the end of my work days for 2012 so I thought it made a fitting setting to wish everyone all the best in the pending apocalypse, or over the holiday season, whichever turns out to be more accurate. Television […]
Tag Archives: Innovation
Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean
There is an old Hawaiian proverb that says “Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean”. The people of Hawaii have a tremendous respect for the Ocean and it’s beauty, but also for it’s tremendous power. One minute you may be relaxing in the sun enjoying the sun and surf, and in the next moment […]
Good Enough to Great
Perfect is the enemy of good is an old proverb from Voltaire which asserts that a drive for perfectionism can prevent you from accomplishing a task at all. Especially when a good enough result could be achieved with far less effort. Perfect results are limited by the law of diminishing returns. By setting the bar […]
Shooting Arrows at the Moon
About a week ago stories started surfacing about the possibility of resurrecting the Avro Arrow as a potential replacement for the troubled F-35 Stealth Fighter purchase for the Royal Canadian Air Force. For those who don’t share my adoration for the Arrow (otherwise known as the CF-105) I’ll provide a brief summary of its short […]
Walking the Fence
When I was working for myself and leading a small company things were much easier. The 60 hour work-weeks, lack of vacation time, and total consumption in the work and building of the company were hard, but in a small company in a leadership position you never had to worry about what you said or […]
Commit to making Errors of Commission
According to Rosabeth Moss Kanter, when it comes to innovation the big mistakes are “generally not errors of commission”. Put another way a former boss used to say “if you’re not failing you’re not trying”. Ultimately they both mean that it’s actually the lack of innovation that is the most risky approach to doing business. […]
The Slipping Point
At some point in the evolution of even the most successful companies, an interesting thing happens – growth stalls. Even the brightest and most experienced Entrepreneurs and managers are perplexed as the things they did to create the initial growth in the company no longer drive new revenues. In fact if they stick with old […]
Out Of The Box Opportunities
There is a great article in this week’s BusinessWeek magazine entitled ‘Fertile Ground for Startups’ that illustrates the opportunities that are at hand for truly innovative ideas in today’s economy. The article outlines that investment by angel investors and venture capitalists is up significantly over the first half of this year, and that as many as 50,000 […]
Appropriate Management Controls for Small Business
For those that read this blog regularly or who have spoken with me at one of the various networking events that I regularly participate in you know that my passion is in creating growth through value innovation, but I have had a couple of conversations in the past week with colleagues in other businesses about […]