We often think that it’s particularly hard for big, established firms to innovate. Yes, there are obstacles. And yet, many manage to innovate, and to do so very effectively. Dow Corning and their business model innovation in launching Xiameter is a good case study of an innovative big firm.
If you are using a tool like the Business Model Canvas, where does innovation fit? The answer depends on your strategy. I use The Innovation Matrix to outline several different strategies, and how the business models for these will be different.
Business needs more art, as simple as that. Art teaches many critical skills, including risk taking, dealing with ambiguities, discovering patterns, and the use of analogy and metaphor. And we need all of those.
Several years ago I had a discussion with an MBA class on how to recognise good or bad strategy. After a lot of consideration their conclusion was….. good strategy works, it delivers the numbers, bad strategy doesn’t. I attempted to point out some issues in their response, especially that it precluded assessing strategy in advance […]
The Bing It One challenge would have been a great tool in 1998. Unfortunately, now that Google dominates search, an improved algorithm isn’t enough to get people to switch. This is the Attacker’s Dilemma: unless you bring a major performance improvement, there is no point in directly attacking a strong incumbent in their area of strength.
What we can accomplish is enabled by how we view the world. It’s also constrained by how we view the world. Figuring out how to change our frame of view is a powerful innovation tool.
What are the implications of the new ways that technology allows people to connect and interact? Nilofer Merchant explores this in her book 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra – it’s a good book with some important lessons.
As outlined in my previous post, sustainable innovation requires evolution and revolution. Over the long term, organizations need to be capable of both moving along existing growth trajectories and creating new ones when the old business matures or stalls. This can be depicted as recurring movement along innovation s-curves. In the case of a new […]
How can you learn what you need to know to become an expert? It requires deep knowledge of a field, but it also requires broad knowledge of related fields. Our current technologies support deep, but not broad. We need to figure out a way to find t-shaped knowledge.
There is often a gap between what we do daily and our long-term objectives. This gap can kill strategy, and it can kill innovation. We apply some lessons from South Park to figure out how to successfully bridge this gap.
People often think it’s weird when they hear that I study innovation – even people in very innovative jobs. The biggest reason for this is mistaking invention for innovation. If you do this, then studying innovation makes no sense at all – what can you learn about the flash of insight, the stroke of genius, […]