Posts tagged as:

innovation

Embrace the bad

July 7, 2010

I was facilitating a client meeting not long ago. As always, we had a lot of content to review and discuss. Some folks wanted to move ahead quickly and I tried to move the discussion from point A to point B to stay on track. One fellow got pretty upset and felt like we should […]

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What if they won’t play along?

April 27, 2010

It is by now received wisdom that companies should stick close to their core competencies. “Don’t try to do too much. Stick to your knitting” they say. And thus, the passion is beaten out of companies much as it has been beaten out of individuals for so long. A related phenomenon is the desire to […]

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But it’s just…

April 15, 2010

Many marketers and would-be innovators often make a fatal mistake. I call it the “it’s just” mistake. They look at their product category and see a dearth of innovation and little growth and they assume that there are no growth opportunities because people – consumers – don’t care much about those products. These products are, […]

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On trend-spotting

February 22, 2010

Below is the text of my recent post at Blogging Innovation: It is critical that businesses have a clear sense of the state of their current marketplace. They need to understand the needs of their customers, the relevant business models, the competition… But all of this is only good for keeping the lights on today. It […]

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Keeping the hen out of the foxhouse

December 22, 2009

In a pair of recent posts (URLs below), I laid out the case for a robust innovation function that exists as a standalone department. Click here to read the first post Click here to read the second post Click here to go to the website of one of the greatest beer bars ever (because why […]

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Innovation talent considerations

December 18, 2009

This is the third post in a series about the need to setup standalone innovation departments and what they should look like. The first post laid out my case for treating innovation with the robustness that reflects its strategic importance and the second laid out some specifics on the necessary nature of standalone innovation departments. […]

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How to get the most from your innovation resources

December 18, 2009

I argued in my last post that innovation should be treated like any other function and given the respect that its strategic value merits. So what does that look like? (Note: I am assuming for the purpose of this series of posts that innovation is considered critical for a company. If the situation did not […]

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The case for a robust innovation function

December 17, 2009

“Innovation” has become so much of a buzzword that the talk within the innovation community has turned to whether innovation is passe. But I am not that concerned with what is or is not in fashion. And I am not that concerned with buzzwords. I am concerned with helping people innovate (either as individuals or […]

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Innovation diversity

December 15, 2009

I really love whitespace/revolutionary/disruptive innovation. I just dig it. Typical line extensions just don’t quite do it for me. But that’s a personal preference. It doesn’t reflect the totality of my opinion on how companies ought to manage their innovation efforts. In fact, I have written of the need to pursue both revolutionary and evolutionary […]

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Don’t scratch that itch

December 7, 2009

Years ago when I was a kid practicing martial arts I remember one of my teachers telling me, as I interrupted a technique to scratch my leg, that it was important I stay focused on what I was doing and that if I focused properly then I would not feel my leg itch at all. […]

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