Monthly Archives: September 2010
Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire – A Roadmap to a Sustainable Culture of Ingenuity and Purpose is now available for Amazon Kindle both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Enjoy the book on your iPad, Kindle, Nook, iPhone, Android, PC, or Mac before it is widely available. If you buy the electronic version of the book from either Barnes & Noble or Amazon, you can download their readers for almost all of today’s major computing platforms. The book will be available in hardcover October 5, 2010 from online retailers in the United States, and a week later it will be available in book stores and other electronic retailers outside the United States (UK, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and more). If you’re curious about the book, you can look inside it on Amazon, or use Google Preview on the publisher’s web site, or watch on Monday, September 20, 2010 … Continue reading
I’ve been pondering the “truths” we hold dear and wondering whether or not the mental models we were taught in college and graduate school hold up under the changes occurring in our economy. Do the great business thinkers of the past twenty or thirty years and their models and descriptions hold true, especially when we introduce innovation into the mix? Over the next few months I’ll look at a couple of the models we hold dear and place innovation within the context of the model, to see if the model is extensible enough to account for innovation, or whether we may want to revise our thinking to account for innovation. First up: Porter’s Five Forces. Michael Porter wrote the book on corporate strategy. Well, he actually wrote a number of books about corporate strategy, competitive advantage and a number of other topics. The books that …
I was talking with BlogTalkRadio maven Tachelle Daniels last week day about what innovative strategies help you stay in front of customers. The topic is intriguing and will be the basis for an upcoming BlogTalkRadio show with Tachelle. Trying to address how you stay in front of customer needs sent me back into my recent past for these six strategies which contribute toward achieving a compelling, innovative marketplace edge: Listening to Customers in New Places and Buying Stages with Social Media – Social media provides unprecedented access into customer thinking. Two examples: Use social media monitoring to see where and how customers talk about your brand. Listen for challenges to help solve, issues with your own and competitive offerings, and customer-developed innovative adaptations. Make it easy for customers to share perspectives through social media-based contests, incenting them to share ideas, register complaints, and react to new ideas. Talk with Lead … Continue reading
J&J, Whirlpool and Manitowoc by Andrea Meyer Point: Innovators can use various tactics to evaluate (Manitowoc), protect (J&J), bridge (Whirlpool), and ferry (J&J) innovations across inevitable organizational gaps. Story: Innovation in large organizations often faces obstacles due to the natural divisions within the firm. Gaps can occur between risk-taking vs. risk-avoiding groups, diverse business units, and functional silos. Open innovation adds a fourth type of division: that between the investor/buyer of an innovation and the inventor/seller of an innovation. Presenters at the 2nd Annual Open Innovation Summit discussed these four different types of gaps and some methods for carrying innovation across the gap. Johnson & Johnson highlighted the first gap, which occurs between groups involved in long-term innovation versus those responsible for short-term operations. On one hand, the near-term viability of a firm depends on minimizing risk and costs while consistently delivering value to the customer. On the …
How’s that for a headline? No, you didn’t read it incorrectly. Companies should not put people before profits. Before you get upset, bear with me for a moment. I got thinking about this on a recent business trip on which I took five flights in three days, all of which were mostly full. While I hate a middle seat as much as anyone, I was glad the airlines appeared to be making money. I admit it—as a passenger, I’ve occasionally wondered if legroom and customer service are the only things the airlines have been trimming back, hoping they haven’t been cutting corners in the maintenance department as well. Full planes, for all of their discomfort, at least suggest the money is there to do proper maintenance. So yes, in my minor epiphany I realized that I actually want the airlines to make money. And you probably do too, if you … Continue reading
Voting for the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers is now closed and the contest winners have been announced. The ten leading vote recipients so far are (in alphabetical order) – Boris Pluskowski, Idris Mootee, James Todhunter, Jeffrey Phillips, Mike Brown, Mike Myatt, Mitch Ditkoff, Rich Bendis, Robert F Brands, and Rocco Tarasi. To see the list of nominees and to vote, please go here. People who vote (or who nominated someone) will be entered into the prize drawings for a range of great prizes (more than $10,000 worth), including: 2 signed advance copies of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire by Braden Kelley (get it before its October launch date) – priceless 1 ticket to the World Business Forum (October 5-6, 2010 in New York City) – $2,500 value 1 ticket to the Future Trends 2010 conference (October 18-20, 2010 in Miami) – $2,500 value Signed copy of The Power of Pull by … Continue reading
