Monthly Archives: February 2011
Rewards and Recognition by James Pasmantier As we have discussed in previous posts, proper campaign design (targeted- vs. broad-spectrum) and building awareness are crucial to the success of any innovation program. But even if your program is well-planned and well-publicized, if your employees aren’t engaged it’s likely to fail. But generating workplace engagement can be difficult. Business thinker Gary Hamel cites a Towers Perrin study that discovered only one-fifth of employees are truly engaged in their work—meaning they’re fully invested and would “go the extra mile” for their employer. The rest ranged from disengaged (38%) to indifferent (41%). This feeling of detachment, and especially the sense of not having a voice in the company, is also a large factor in why employees leave their jobs. However, there are a number of different ways to motivate and engage your employees. The two most common methods are reward and recognition. While often … Continue reading
We often talk about how innovation occurs along a spectrum. At one end there are relatively small, incremental innovations – taking things that we currently do and figuring out how to do them better. At the other end we have disruptive innovations – those ideas that attack existing market segments in a completely new way. Somewhere even beyond that we have blue ocean type innovations – those that create entirely new markets. In a good post that discusses disruption in slightly different terms, Jeffrey Phillips explains some of the issues with disruptive innovation: “Disruption, the most palatable, asks the firm to innovate (create new products) in a market or space that’s already competitive and where the firm often has little experience. This means the firm enters a new space, in new markets, with new products where competitors are already active. These “new” factors compound the likelihood for failure, or at … Continue reading
A well-facilitated brainstorming session is like a symphony — or, at the very least, a really good performance of any kind of music. Embedded in its DNA are dynamics (i.e. “variation and contrast in force and intensity”) — the skillful modulation of elements that fully engages a person’s attention. The opposite? Muzak. Next time you listen to a piece of music, be aware of dynamics — the various ways in which the composition holds your interest (i.e. rhythm, pauses, crescendos, harmonies, solos, and multiple variations of soft and loud). As a brainstorm facilitator, you need to do everything in your power to keep the session as dynamic as possible so participants remain fully engaged — poised and ready to respond. If the session is boring (or takes a “dip” after a brief period of engagement), your chances of succeeding decline exponentially. Towards this end, think of yourself as a “conductor” … Continue reading
A colleague has just forwarded the brilliant ‘burning platform’ memo from Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop. If you haven’t read the entire memo to Nokia employees, you can link to a report here. It’s a brutal self-assessment that could be a turning point for Nokia. Learning often starts with a statement of “I don’t know” and the memo is not only an ‘aha’ moment for Elop but also an insight for the future of competitive strategy. Elop talks about Nokia’s misguided focus on a product, which has resulted in them being out-competed by entire ‘ecosytems’. These are value-creating networks of buyers, suppliers, related businesses and even competitors. “The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, e-commerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our … Continue reading
My wife is due to deliver a little girl any day now, and the waiting is sheer agony… Watching the entire process of a tiny person grow inside of my wife’s belly has been a real mind bender. I also can’t help but notice similar qualities between babies and new companies. For both, the processes are namely creating and shipping, with copious amounts of support. Am I right? Ok, maybe that’s oversimplifying the process. Yet, there are some crucial similarities between growing a business and a baby. (Aside from, you know, the fact that they’re “new”.) I’ve been working on a tiny side project for a little longer than my wife has been pregnant, and it’s also about ready to be “born”. This is what I’ve learned in the process. You’ll never know what to expect We have no idea what to expect about our daughter. Who’s nose will she … Continue reading
Simplicity is one of the keys to successful innovation. But simplicity is not the same as having simple ideas. Rather, it’s about taking sophisticated ideas and design and being able to reduce them down to a simple explanation. It’s about reducing the complex into something that is easy to understand. It’s about resisting the temptation of being clever and instead, focusing on creating a message that will resonate with the masses. But simplicity, like successful innovation is hard to achieve. Taking an idea and making it overly complex is easy. Taking that same idea and being able to simplify and explain it in less than ten seconds is the real challenge. The market doesn’t reward you for complexity. The market rewards only those ideas that are easy to understand because those are what capture the hearts (and wallets) of your buyers. Perhaps Peter Drucker said it best when he cited … Continue reading
