Replace Fear of the Unknown With Curiousity

The Shift Index 2011 is out now, and as with the previous two editions, it is a must-read. I am always skeptical of “everything is different now” type arguments, but in this series of reports, John Hagel, John Seeley Brown and a number of other contributors have done a fantastic job of documenting exactly what […]

Innovation Problem: New Ideas Spread Slowly

There’s a big problem with innovation: ideas spread much more slowly than we expect them to. Ideas follow an S-Curve as they spread that looks like this: They pick up steam very slowly, until they either die off or hit a tipping point and take off. The slow build-up is the time I’ve indicated as […]

Two Great Innovation Misquotes

There are two popular quotes that often get used when discussing innovation that were never actually said or written by the people to whom they are attributed. Despite the fact that they are fake quotes, there are still things that we can learn from them. The first common quote is attributed to Henry Ford: If […]

Please Reinvent the Wheel

How often have you heard someone say something like “No need to reinvent the wheel”? It’s such a common phrase we don’t even think twice when we hear it. The thing is, a lot of the time there is a huge need to reinvent the wheel. If we didn’t reinvent the wheel on a regular […]

Three Signs of Business Model Innovation Opportunities

How can you tell when there is an opportunity for business model innovation? Recent events in higher education might give us a good indication. There are a few issues in university education these days. The main one is that education is information based, and over the past 20 years we have seen nearly every single […]

Innovation Mistake: Thinking Tools Will Fix Your Problem

I had lunch a while back with two executives from an organisation that the Business School does a fair bit work with. They wanted to improve innovation and that’s what triggered our meeting. We talked for a couple of hours about what was happening in their organisation. We talked about innovation as a process, the […]

Tools Should Be Invisible

What is the most common mistake that I see when people try to implement management tools or frameworks? By far the most common is mistaking using the tool for getting the outcome you are looking for. I have been doing some consulting work recently where we are using the Business Model Canvas to develop a […]

Lessons From Kodak’s S-Curve Problems

With Kodak in big trouble this week, a lot of people have been reflecting on what went wrong. While many are using this an opportunity to talk about bad management, or missing the digital photography trend, I think there’s more to the Kodak story than this. Kodak’s problems illustrate two very important innovation problems. The […]

How Apple Disrupts Markets and then Goes on to Dominate

By Greg Satell (mostly) and Tim Kastelle Who wouldn’t like to be Apple?  They make great products, consumers love them, competitors fear them and they make a ton of money.Yet for all that’s been written about Apple, nobody’s been able to emulate them.  What’s more, little more than a decade ago, they were on the […]

Three Mistakes We Make With Models

Imagine that you live in Australia and you would like to eat a good, genuine bagel. After fairly extensive research, I have discovered that there are two places that you can go. One is called Bagel Nook, and it’s here in Brisbane. Not many people know about it, and one of the reasons is that […]

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 […]

Eight Models of Business Models, & Why They’re Important

The term Business Model is one that gets thrown around a lot these days. Even though it might sound like a buzzword to you, it’s important to understand what a business model is, and how they are useful. One of the confusing things about the business model concept is that there are a wide variety […]