Monthly Archives: September 2010
Leveraging Your Constraints This is the second of several ‘Innovation Perspectives’ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘Should companies treat innovation management as a core competence? And if so, how?’. Here is the next perspective in the series: by Mike Dalton Most companies reinvest (aka spend) anywhere between 30 and 50% of their net income in R&D. However, even with that level of spending, most CEO’s are dissatisfied with the return on that investment. Getting more out of that investment requires a core competence in managing new product innovation. Easier said than done, but knowing where the leverage points are can dramatically speed improvement. Here’s how the five focusing steps of Theory of Constraints can help in this process. 1. Identify your innovation bottleneck and its constraints. To increase new product profits and time to market, you need to identify the bottlenecks … Continue reading
Marketers Love Drinking Their Kool-Aid by Idris Mootee Can a company/brand create such powerful emotive connections to make customers love them? Your advertising agency will be quick to say yes. I am not sure. I can imagine a few scenarios that it happens but is is very uncommon. Marketers like to convince themselves that you can buy ‘love’ and that’s the ultimate goal for great marketing. What’s that book name “Lovemark”? That’s an example of advertisers drinking their own Kool-Aid. Yes, many customers can have a level of enthusiasm because we provide them with a great customer experience, is that love? That’s what I want to write about. Neurologists suggest that the early stages of love are governed by parts of the brain that are used for goal-seeking and reward, and resembles obsessive-compulsive disorder. Such as the first time you look at an Apple iPhone, a Harley Street Bob, a … Continue reading
Following on from my previous post on the Death of the Chief Innovation Officer (and the forthcoming rise of the VP, Innovation!), I’ve had several people now ask me about the rest of the contents of that presentation I gave on the “State of Innovation” – where is Innovation today? I personally believe that Innovation is continuing to mature – if we looked at the track of the adoption curve for Innovation as a sustainable business process, my feeling is that it looks somewhat like this: Back in 2001 when I first got involved with Innovation and Idea Management – we were most definitely selling to the Innovators out there. They behaved in typical Innovator fashion – looking for shiny objects, reading up research to get the latest and greatest in whatever business tools are out there, very little sensitivity to risk, and generally regarded as mavericks within their companies. … Continue reading
Imagine you are heading to a REALLY important meeting that is being held out of town. You have your bags packed. You have your airplane tickets, hotel and car rental reservations, and GPS. You hop on the plane and fly to your destination. After deplaning, you pull out your hotel reservation and type the address into the GPS. And then, you realize… you have a problem. A BIG problem. Although your destination airport was Buffalo, NY, the event is being held just over the border in Ontario, Canada… and you don’t have your passport. I am completely embarrassed to admit it, but this happened to me just last week. My speech was in Niagara Falls. For some reason I believed that the event was on the United States Side. This was a BAD assumption. A friend once described herself as a fire fighting arsonist. She was constantly putting out fires … Continue reading
Most high level executives do not expect a lot of recognition from others. Nor do they give a lot of recognition to others. Many managers are like the guy who, when his wife complains that he doesn’t tell her he loves her any more, responds that he told her he loved her when he married her — and he would have let her know if anything had changed. Similarly, most managers act as if the act of hiring an employee is recognition enough — and they would have let them know if anything changed. This in spite of the fact that every one of these managers wants to be valued and appreciated by their superiors, and is regularly disappointed by the lack of appreciation coming their way. There is a great fear that only the most extraordinary achievements warrant recognition and that all “just good” or superior performance is merely … Continue reading
We all care too much about our brands. We’re obsessed with our products & services – how we talk about them, how we describe them, what we name them. And that’s usually a good thing. But we also have to be mindful of the gap between how much we care, and how much our clients care. For example, many companies spent a ton of time fretting over brand strategy, architecture and naming issues. They spend meetings and email strings and hours talking & thinking about what to name a new product or feature. But does the customer care? Or is it just the same to them if you call it what it is (or what it does) and get out of the way of their success? The more you put yourselves in the shoes of your customers, or better yet stay close enough to them that you hear …
