Author Archives

Tim Kastelle

Student and teacher of innovation - University of Queensland Business School - links to academic papers, twitter, and so on can be found here.

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Learning From Failure

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What’s the biggest new product launch failure ever? The biggest I’ve seen was New Coke, but the example that often springs to mind is the Ford Edsel. Ford put a lot of effort into the Edsel. They had lagged behind GM for a few years, and the Edsel was supposed to put them back in […]

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The Property Ladder Theory of Bubbles

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I’ve always thought that the BBC show The Property Ladder provided the perfect illustration of how bubbles worked. The show ran from 2002-2006 and it was hosted by Sarah Beeny. The show profiled aspiring property developers who bought properties, renovated them, then tried to sell them for a profit. If you’ve never seen it, this […]

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You Have a Choice – Act!

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There are plenty of excuses for not innovating – for not taking steps to change things. However, if you see a way to make things better and you don’t do anything, then you’re letting your situation control you. If you’re dissatisfied with the situation, you have to change the way you act. Here is the […]

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Efficiency or Exploration?

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Here is a brilliant post from Randall Munroe on XKCD: There’s a very simple point here – strategy is about making choices. What we choose to emphasise reveals what we think it important. Here’s a simple business example: do we choose efficiency or exploration? In most cases, we need to do both. We need to […]

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Malcolm Gladwell on the Norden Bombsight

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I’m traveling right now, so I can’t write a lot today. Instead, I have this must-see video from the always-watchable Malcolm Gladwell: I’m traveling right now so I can’t write a long post. So today, just watch this: Some important points: We get hung up on our technologies: the Norden bombsight made bomb dropping more […]

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There’s No Such Thing as a Good Idea…

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Experimenting is a key part of innovating. In his new book REAMDE, Neal Stephenson has a great description of learning through experimenting: Much like a teenager who starts playing a new video game without bothering to open the manual, he tried things and observed the results, abandoning whatever didn’t work and moving aggressively to exploit […]

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Innovation When All You Have is a Noodle

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Most of the inspirational innovation stories that we hear are about technology firms like Google, Amazon and Apple. This sometimes makes it difficult to help people find the connections to their work if they are in less sexy industries, like mining, education or government. However, innovation is just as important in those industries as well. […]

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Ada Lovelace Day 2011 – Inspiration from Jane McGonigal

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I missed writing about someone on Ada Lovelace Day this year because I was actually teaching my MBA class about a great technology heroine – Jane McGonigal. I love the concept behind Ada Lovelace Day. In order to encourage more women to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the day is used to […]

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The Fundamental Problem in Management

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The fundamental problem in management is that the world is uncertain, and people hate dealing with uncertainty. The result of this that they go to great lengths to provide themselves with the illusion of certainty. The Bed of Procrustres by Taleb, which I discussed previously, is primarily concerned with the problems caused by false certainty. […]

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Innovation in Aussie Rules

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Collingwood fan and outstanding economist Nick Gruen wrote an interesting piece prior to last weekend’s AFL Grand Final explaining why he thought his team would lose to Geelong. The underlying premise in the piece is that he thought Geelong would win because they were more innovative. Here are some of the key points: If I […]