Yearly Archives: 2012

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You Are Not a Special Snowflake & Other Innovation Obstacles

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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 […]

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Three Posts That You Should Read

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Here are three posts that caught my eye recently that I think you should read: Ten Rules for Maker Businesses What kind of business model do you need if you are building things? Chris Anderson from Wired addresses this question with some excellent advice on issues from pricing building good relationships with your shipper. Check […]

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Procter & Gamble – Using Open Innovation to Become a World Class Innovator

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Note: This is part of a series of posts discussing The Innovation Matrix. See this post for a description of the full model and what can be done with it. We can use The Innovation Matrix to help us understand how the innovation capability of firms evolves over time. A great case study in this […]

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Hold Strong Visions Weakly

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Guest Post: by Ralph-Christian Ohr Remark : Coincidentally and amazingly, Tim and I were obviously thinking and writing about business model experimentation and pivots at the same time. Hopefully, I can add some complementary thoughts to Tim’s post from yesterday with mine today. In one of my previous posts I discussed the crucial distinction between need […]

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Why Your Business Model Must Evolve

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Nancy and I were talking about business models today. She is trying to figure out how to use her knowledge of ageing to have the biggest impact. As we discussed the possibilities, and it was clear that she wants to work out the best plan in advance. I told her that this is impossible – […]

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Five Ways to Be More Innovative

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People frequently ask me “How can I be more innovative?” The answer can be elusive, as they are often asking for permission to innovate, which you will rarely receive. Fortunately, you can learn to be more innovative. Here are some thoughts on how: Innovate because you have to. I was talking with Brendan Coram last […]

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Why Extractive Business Models Fail

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If you force me to choose, I pick the invention of quartz watch movements as one of the more astonishing examples of creative destruction in business. Once quartz arrived, the value propositions of most of the luxury Swiss watchmakers was instantly destroyed. Pre-quartz, they competed on accuracy. But quartz watches were 10 times more accurate […]

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Leading Strategic Conversations

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The relationship between strategy, leadership and organisational performance continues to be an area of major interest for practitioners, academics and the business media.  For example, the recent and untimely death of Steve Jobs has sparked a wave of interest in into his leadership characteristics and their links to Apple’s strategy and performance. As a strategist, […]

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Culturematic by Grant McCracken Makes a Great Case for Experimenting

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Experiments are a critical innovation skill, and it’s one that you can use to build your Innovation Competence. A culture of experimentation is one of the elements that distinguishes highly innovative firms from those that arene’t quite as good at it. The best thing that I’ve run across recently on the importance of experimentation is […]

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Why You Should Care About Network Structure

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When carbon atoms connect, they most commonly form molecules built on rings of six atoms. The things that are built out of these six atom rings of carbon are amazingly diverse. Here are the structures of two of these things: graphite (A) and diamond (B): You can see the rings in both. Same material, same […]