Three reasons to tackle the hard problems, right now.
It’s common for businesses to prioritize solving the easy problems while delaying the greater efforts needed to solve the hard problems. It’s usually a low-risk (at least short-term), low-effort and low-cost approach that can return incremental advantages within a single budget cycle. The collective and cumulative effects of that habit are that we usually witness the emergence of parity stop-gap solutions across an industry. Eventually parity leads to price comparisons and margin reduction until some entity finally takes on the risk of investing enough time and treasure to take on the hard problem.
What is futurecasting (and why should you care)?
There are two paths to innovation. One resides in our timeline just beyond now—solving a problem that exists today with technologies and resources available today. For comparison’s sake, let’s call it simple forecasting. The other path resides in our timeline years into the future—solving a problem that is, at least according to the tea leaves of trends and R&D pipelines, imminent, using technologies or resources that may not be currently available. That’s futurecasting.
Tesla’s innovation is in the doghouse
Watching the world’s automakers respond (or not, as the case may be) to Tesla, has been interesting, to say the least. I find it fascinating to see an established market watch a competitor waltz in and secure a beachhead in a successful new category, with a near-zero response from the established powers for years.
Five sensational gift ideas for the innovator in your life
Innovators are notoriously tough people to buy gifts for. They’re early adopters, so the stuff they likely want isn’t on sale yet, or worse, they couldn’t wait and already bought whatever it is for themselves. They get bored easily, so to be worth our effort and hard-earned dollars, the things you buy for them really need to offer thoughtful and engaging enough experiences to bring them back, time and time again. So, how can you find something truly sensational to give them? We thought it might make sense to talk about some of the most innovative items available, one sense at a time!
Three reasons Uber should never have invested in self-driving technology.
There’s a classic Venn diagram generally attributed to Ideo’s Tim Brown that points to the reality that for an idea to be considered an innovation, it needs to satisfy three criteria: desirability (people would want it), feasibility (it is something that can realistically be created) and viability (it can be made and offered in a way that makes financial sense for the business). Academics or inspired home tinkerers may be satisfied with any combination of one or two of these qualities, but a business, especially a publicly held business, needs to satisfy all three.
Looking for big corporate innovations? Think small.
What most people forget about the most game-changing innovations is that, more often than not, they satisfied some unmet basic need in a simple way. The breadth and complexity of the effect of that innovation came later, as more and more people found more and more ways to utilize that innovation to address some variation of the original need. Keeping that in mind, if you’re charged with corporate innovation, there are a lot of reasons to focus on simple, small innovations. Let’s explore!
Corporate Innovation: Breaking Through Organizational Barriers
I’m not sure who first promoted the idea that the greatest determiner of whether a corporation could successfully innovate is an ill-defined, immeasurable quality named “agility.” I am sure that the individual in question had a penchant for oversimplification. Just do a search for “agile business” books on Amazon, and the results are well over the 2,000 result threshold where Amazon stops counting. It’s not that a company shouldn’t have the qualities linked to the idea of agility. It’s just that agility is an emergent condition resulting from a number of more easily quantified and measurable behaviors.
Three signs of success that should make you want to innovate.
In business, we should always celebrate our successes. We should all find happiness and take comfort in classic, somewhat irrefutable, business metrics, like returning a healthy net profit, growing sales and customer loyalty, to name a few. But there are anecdotal success measures most people repeat that, while they directionally point to good things, should also have you start asking whether they actually are signs of a problem. Let’s look at three of the most common.
Striking the Right Balance Between Risk and Reward
The relationship between risk and reward is fairly established—it’s unlikely you get the latter without taking on the former. How can established businesses make sure that the risk of their innovation is worth the reward? Read on.
Is a 1945 Magazine Article Responsible for the Modern Internet?
A July 1945 issue of The Atlantic article can be traced as the source for most of the technologies driving the world’s current economic growth. The author, Dr. Bush, predicted personal computers, touch screens, hypertext, metadata, the world wide web, speech recognition and Wikipedia. How did this article have such a profound influence?
Innovation Begins with Empathy: Embracing Our Customers as the Heroes in Our Innovation Story.
Obtain the fuel to generate your next big idea by taking the time to truly understand your users.
3 Rules Apple Has Forgotten About Design
In the Apple heyday, Steve Jobs’ superpower seemed to be looking at an existing or emerging technology, empathizing with users, and seemingly effortlessly stripping the relationship between them down to its bare essentials. Looking at those moments of interaction that had the greatest impact on user experience, he would mercilessly execute against those. It’s a superpower that many claim Apple has lost since his departure. Thankfully, we can all learn from their mistakes.
A “Solid” New Approach to Data Privacy and Consent?
This week, Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the world wide web, proposed a new standard for returning control of online identification back to users. It’s called Solid. How does it work and is it possible? Check out our latest post.
Hunting Disruption
Disruptive market entrants simply examined the structure of the industry or market and saw some tell-tale signs that anyone can see, if they know where to look. We’ve outlined 5 signs any disruption hunter should look for when deciding upon which industry to set his or her sights.
In Corporate Innovation, There’s No Silver Bullet. It’s Silver Buckshot.
The odds of any one innovation succeeding are dismal, so the smartest companies approach innovation investing like venture capitalists. If you do it correctly, in the end the game is rigged.