Monthly Archives: December 2009
Or are we better off creating new ones? Does “The Circle Of Life” apply here?by Idris Mootee We make assumptions that it is the management team responsibility to extend or prolong the life of any companies even they have fewer reasons to exist. Management is different from practicing medicine, although sometimes I am called the strategy doctor. Instead of wasting resources and energy to save a company or a brand, should we just take whatever assets and redeploy them? In life, the cycle of life is the natural order of things. Although we do live longer now, death is inevitable. Technology is the same. Should corporations be the same? Saab is at the end of life. Should it deserve a second life? Apple had its near death experiences and came back stronger. Many argued at that time Apple should be sold to Sony. Wang Computers thought they were beating IBM … Continue reading
Last week I was with a group of extremely successful entrepreneurs in Las Vegas. I was a bit of an outlier as my background is mainly with large, multi-billion dollar businesses. Everyone else in the room came from the start-up world. Also, nearly everyone in the room worked exclusively with speakers and authors. Although I too am a speaker and an author, it was clear that my perspectives were a bit different than everyone else in the room. Or as one entrepreneur said, “Steve, you have distinctions in innovation that we don’t.”So they asked me to share my point of view. What I shared were three simple distinctions on innovation.Challenges not IdeasProcess not EventsDiversity not HomogeneityIn today’s blog entry I will focus on the first point. Subsequent blog entries will address the last two points.CHALLENGES, NOT IDEASSignal-to-Noise RatioOne of the most important, yet under-considered measure in the innovation process is … Continue reading
Scott Cook, legendary founder of Intuit, discussed in a recent issue of Inc Magazine how today’s entrepreneurs can continue to incubate new ideas while successfully focusing on today’s day-to-day revenue generation. His answer can be broken down into four keys to achieving both innovation and execution today:Make sure employees know which output metric they are responsible for and how it is measured. Focus on the metrics that matter most to growing the business (new customers, margin, top-line growth). These measures will ensure proper focus on today’s business, and will also give employees a foundation from which to brainstorm and incubate new ideas focused on the same end-goal.Enable all of your employees – not just a small group – to invest business ideas or product features. Don’t predetermine which employees – based on rank or tenure or paycheck – will have your business’s next great innovation. Oftentimes, it’s the frontline …
Would you like a chance to win one of three copies of Gary Hamel’s latest book “The Future of Management” ?Well, if you’ve got a Twitter or LinkedIn account, then you’ve got an opportunity to maybe win one of three copies of this book.To enter on Twitter:Send an @reply message to @innovate with the URL of your favorite innovation articleMake sure that your tweet includes “2009 contest” in itSubmit your entry by the end of December 31, 2009 (GMT)To enter on LinkedIn:Submit a news article URL to our Continuous Innovation group on LinkedIn (1,700+ members) or add a comment to someone else’s submission thereMake sure that you begin your submission title or comment with “2009″Submit your entry by the end of December 31, 2009 (GMT)I’ll announce the three winners on January 1, 2010.Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on … Continue reading
Following on from my article on what innovation an Apple Tablet might offer and Idris Mootee’s article on Apple’s 3D efforts for gaming, I bring you a video sneak preview of some of the innovation an Apple tablet might offer.This isn’t of course exactly what an Apple tablet (or iSlate) might look like, but it gives you an idea of one application type that an Apple device might offer, and it shows the further disruption coming to the book, magazine, newspaper, and television industries.You can see in the video that in such a device, even more so than on the traditional web, that magazine publishers now need to have video, and merge or partner with people that produce video on the same topic. ESPN is particularly well-positioned for this type of new content consumption environment because they already have a print magazine, a web property, and content from several television … Continue reading
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “creating a culture of innovation”, which is what a lot of firms suggest they want to do. Of course this is a very lofty goal. Changing a corporate culture doesn’t happen easily, and it certainly doesn’t happen overnight. Yet clearly one of the most significant barriers to innovation is the entrenched culture of effectiveness and efficiency, of risk-avoidance and following rather than leading.So, that led me to think about when teams and groups within an organization can be innovative, and what the conditions were when that happened. We regularly lead teams on trend spotting and scenario planning exercises that create some really radical future scenarios, with little resistance, and often lead ideation and brainstorming programs that achieve a large number of disruptive or radical ideas. These small programs demonstrate that innovation can happen in any organization under certain …
