You Are Not a Special Snowflake & Other Innovation Obstacles

I’m teaching exec ed this week, which is always a lot of fun. During one of the breaks today, one of the people in the class said to me “This has been really valuable to me because it reinforces that I’m not the only one with these problems.” A very important point, which made me […]

How Much Innovation is Enough? The Innovation Matrix

Note: This is part of a series of posts explaining the individual parts of The Innovation Matrix. See this post for a description of the full model and what can be done with it. Fit for Purpose and World Class Innovators In a perfect world, as firms increase their Innovation Competence, their Innovation Commitment, should […]

Thoughts on Spreading Ideas Well

You are responsible for getting your ideas to spread. How can you do this more effectively? The first step is to connect ideas creatively – this is the fundamental creative act in innovation. Here are some thoughts on this from Noam Chomsky, discussing the role of education in an excellent post from Maria Popova: You […]

Art, Dollar Shave Club & Business Model Innovation

When I’m doing public talks, one of the big misconceptions that I have to work around is the idea that innovation is only about making new stuff – that you can only innovate if you’re making things like iPhones. Schumpeter defined innovation as the formation of new connections which drive economic growth. In The Nature […]

Building Dynamic Business Models

How can established organizations innovate their business model? That is the question that I’ve been putting a lot of thought into recently. Two ideas collided this week that gave me some insight into the question. First, in the comments on my post about different business models leading to different outcomes, Greg Satell said: A business […]

Don’t Be Surprised, Prepare the Surprise Yourself

Here is a great quote from Ioan Tenner in a post on the strategy of surprise: Significant surprise is a life event. Neglect this subject and your fate may be of the led and of the losers. The surprised lose initiative, stumble and take hasty decisions they will regret. They submit to choices crafted by […]

Why Do Razors Have Five Blades Now?

I remember that when Gillette came out with their double-bladed razor, I started joking about how it wouldn’t stop until razors had five blades. At the time, that seemed absurd, but sure enough, now we can buy razors with five blades. Now, while this may seem ridiculous, it’s actually a pretty smart response to a […]

Two Problems Caused by the Innovation Diffusion Curve

The economist Rudi Dornbusch succinctly describes the way that ideas spread: Things take longer to happen than you think they will and then they happen faster than you thought they could. It’s the innovation S-Curve in words, this is what that looks like graphically: And the problem is that the value for X is larger […]

Three Things You Can Do With a Business Model

Yesterday I looked at Eight Models of Business Models and Why They’re Important. However, in writing about how different people conceive of business models, I didn’t have enough space to address the really critical issue with them: What can you actually do with a business model? Once you’ve defined your business model, here are three […]

Business Model Analysis & the Link to Strategy

What’s the best way to use business model analysis in larger organisations? Steve Blank has done some outstanding work looking at how Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas can be used in entrepreneurial startups (see also this post and the ones that follow it). But there are still some questions about how to best use the […]

Use Your Value Proposition to Avoid Fatal Business Models

What do you think of when you think of Swiss Watches? You probably think of high-end brands, that have been making well-crafted watches for many years. Brands like Rolex, or Patek Philippe, or George Clooney and his Omega: Or maybe you think of innovations, like the perpetual calendar, or 24 hour timezone watch, or the […]

How to Steal Like An Innovator

I’ve been obsessed with this video for the past couple of days: The song is Nouvelle Vague covering Dance With Me by Lords of the New Church. It’s a great cover. The video is an even more inspired piece. Youtube user Luakabopper took the song and put it over this amazing dance sequence from Bande […]