Monthly Archives: July 2009
When innovation is brought up in a business context, we mostly think about, well, the business. We think of innovations related to products, business models, go-to-market strategies and the like. This blog does a great job of identifying and promoting specific strategies and tactics for accelerating and maximizing innovation through those and other business-specific contexts.But your business strategy is just one of many places where the right innovation approach can create incredible, positive changes in your life. Imagine what would happen if you made a specific point to innovate elsewhere?Here are five specific places and contexts in your personal and professional life that, with the same approach to innovation, can make you happier, more fulfilled and more successful.1. Innovate Your CareerAre you doing what you want to do? Are you learning new things every day? Do you feel comfortably challenged with the work on your plate? If …
How disruptive is your business model? While much has been written about corporate vision, mission, process, leadership, strategy, branding and a variety of other business practices, it is the engineering of these practices to be disruptive that maximizes opportunities. Without a disruptive focus you are merely building your business model on a “me too” platform of mediocrity. As we move into the second half of 2009, nothing will be more critical to your efforts in increasing your revenue growth and corporate sustainability than understanding the value of disruptive innovation. So, in today’s post I’ll examine the power of disruption as a key business driver…Disruptive business models focus on creating, disintermediating, refining, reengineering or optimizing a product/service, role/function/practice, category, market, sector, or industry. The most successful companies incorporate disruptive thinking into all of their business and management practices to gain distinctive competitive value propositions. “Me Too” companies fight to eek out … Continue reading
Whether you’re a professional innovator or someone driving innovation to grow your business, chances are you need more support to get projects delivered to market.Question: Does your innovation business model catalyze your goals or crush them?When You Have To Deliver, You Learn To DeliverIn 1999, Jim Collins wrote a brilliant piece in the Harvard Business Review, “Turning Goals Into Results: The Power Of Catalytic Mechanisms.” In it he addressed the problem that many managers face within their organization: they have a big goal but lack the organizational focus and courage to achieve it. Collins offered catalytic mechanisms as a potential solution. By his definition, a Catalytic Mechanism is “the crucial link between objectives and performance, [the] galvanizing devices that translate lofty aspirations into concrete reality.”His article provided some poignant examples that span a wide range of industries. For this discussion, I’ll break his thesis down into a simple analogy: …
Business schools and companies need to create more internships dedicated to innovation. Most MBA internships continue to focus on traditional core functions like marketing, finance, and strategy. A few schools have innovation internships, but they focus on the technical and design points-of-view. The mainstream, non-technical B-School programs are missing an opportunity.Innovation internships are a great way to infuse an organization with innovation process and techniques. The best internships allow the intern to learn from the company and the company to learn from the intern. The key success factors are: Selection, Sponsorship, and Structure.Selection means picking the right student for the internship as well as picking the right company. Not all students or companies are suitable for this type of program. The intern needs to have advanced innovation training. This should include both innovation method training as well as organizational aspects of innovation. …
Many conversations recently have addressed the misperception that creativity, by definition, takes time, money, and effort that can’t be afforded right now because of the economy. A couple of examples:Someone showed me a meeting announcement for an “ideation” session to which they’d been invited. It referenced the range of ideas under consideration as “creative and practical and everything in between.”A tweet in recent weeks said that while the sender wouldn’t reject innovation, he would “say no to unique creative thinking.”Another forwarded email suggested a group shouldn’t “over think” a topic “out of respect for time & resources. We can do that later when we can be more creative.”Arghhhhhhh!!!Since when is practical the opposite of creative? And what types of pre-conceived ideas and misperceptions obscure the role creativity plays in contributing to business results?The image below of three Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors is another exhibit in showing the fallacy … Continue reading
“We get frustrated when we hear “motherhood and apple-pie” lessons about Enterprise 2.0. I would have screamed had I heard one more speaker or seen one more tweet telling me “it’s not about the tools, you know. It’s about culture.” Yes, we heard. We agree. But we are past this. Let’s now talk about the nature of effective culture change. Let’s get some Org-behaviorists in the community to help us. Not the ones who just tell us “it’s about culture” – the geeky ones with real data, real insight, and specific advice we can take to understand what culture change really means.”- Gil Yehuda, Post #e2conf thoughts – installment 1If only I had a nickel for every time an Enterprise 2.0 stakeholder used the word culture. The industry uses the word culture constantly in terms of describing when an organization is ready to implement social software. It has become something … Continue reading
