Author Archives: Brad Barbera
If you are operating under tight resource constraints (and these days, who isn’t?), you may recognize that this is the innovation world you face every day. You desperately want to – need to – innovate, but you are in the dark about emerging technologies, consumer trends, and competitive movements. Optimally, you’d like to throw on the light switch and see clearly into all of those areas, but the costs of market research studies, consumer testing, innovation management software, and outside consultants are beyond your reach. Continue reading
I was having an interesting discussion this morning with a couple of innovation colleagues of mine. One is an entrepreneur with an outsourced “skunk works” business. The other is a creator and inventor who led disruptive innovation efforts at a major office products company. We came to a sad conclusion, at least for us innovation-oriented types.Innovation is dead in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Corporate America.Well, maybe dead is too strong a word. Morbidly thin, perhaps. To be sure, there are some notable exceptions. But as we looked around in today’s economy, we concluded that in spite of corporate leaders’ recognition of the importance of innovation, the focus tends to remain on incremental, “safe” projects. Failure is not tolerated (let alone encouraged), and employees are rewarded equally for changing the color of an existing product or changing the dynamics of the marketplace.Is this gloomy assessment accurate? If so, what should be … Continue reading
