Monthly Archives: August 2011
I write today about a beloved company – Hewlett-Packard (HP), and all that it has meant to my life. One of my first consumer electronic purchases was an HP calculator, and as a young engineer fresh out of college we were regaled with the history of HP: born in a garage, during a depression, making excellent products. The HP story is in many ways the story of Silicon Valley writ large, or at least the story that used to be. HP represented the entrepreneurial story of two guys who decided to do it on their own, in a garage, developing great products, scaling up a company. They built real products and delivered real value – not “eyeballs” or advertising revenue, but a solid business built on excellent products which created a lasting reputation. But over the years, the company has lost its way, and become in …
Finding the reasons why innovation does not work at your company is in general not that difficult. Overcoming those obstacles is somewhat harder. Here are three steps to start working on turning your situation around. Continue reading
We’re too busy. All of us. Too busy. And we better get used to it: too busy is the rule. But how to make too busy feel good? How to make yourself feel good? How to make the work better? Pretend there is abundance; plenty for all; assume an abundance mindset. There’s a subtle but powerful shift with the abundance mindset. Here’s the transition: me to we talk to listen verify to trust fear to confidence comply to embrace compete to collaborate next month to next week can’t to could, could to can no to maybe, maybe to how The abundance mindset is not about doing more; it’s about what we do and how we do. With the abundance mindset everyone feels better, our choices are better, and our work is better. Lincoln said “Happiness is a choice.” I think it’s the same with abundance. We’ll always be too busy, … Continue reading
Private equity firms can boost the value of their investment portfolio by applying a systematic innovation method along the entire investment value chain – before, during, and even after the investment. Private equity firms are collections of investors and funds that put money into privately-held companies. Private equity investments provide working capital to a target company to nurture expansion, new product development, or restructuring of the company’s operations, management, or ownership. Private equity firms are betting on their ability to take control of the target, clean it up, make it more competitive, and then sell it for a higher price. It is like “flipping” a home in the real estate market. Here is how a private equity firm could apply systematic innovation in their portfolios: Before Investing: Take the target company’s main product or service and apply S.I.T. to it during the evaluation process. There are three things …
Just a friendly reminder that today at: 9am – PDT (west coast USA) Noon – EDT (east coast USA) 5pm – UK 6pm – Continental Europe We will be having our next Expert Office Hours with Deborah Mills-Scofield (@dscofield) on twitter at http://tweetchat.com/room/ixchat or using your favorite twitter tool or twitter search to follow along at hashtag #ixchat Please tweet your questions by sending a tweet including the #ixchat hashtag For more information or to volunteer to be a future expert of the week, please visit http://www.innovationexcellence.com/get-answers/expert-of-the-week.
Last month a group of engineers met secretly to reinvent the US economy one company at a time. Here are some of the players, maybe you’ve heard of them: Alcoa, BAE, Boeing, Bose, Covidien, EMC, GE Medical, GE Transportation, Grundfos, ITT, Medrad, Medtronic, Microsoft, Motorola, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon, Samsung, Schneider Electric, Siemens, United Technologies, Westinghouse, Whirlpool. Presenter after presenter the themes were the same: double profits, faster time to market, and better products – the triple crown of product development. Magic in a bottle, and still the best kept secret of the product development community. (No sense sharing the secret sauce when you can have it all for yourself.) Microsoft used the secret sauce to increase profits of their hardware business by $75 million; Boeing recently elevated the secret methodology to the level of lean. Yet it’s still a secret. What is this sauce that doubles profits without increasing … Continue reading
