Most new ventures fail because they don’t have enough customers. Unfortunately, entrepreneurs often fail to address this problem, and focus more on getting the product right first. This is a mistake. Lean Startup tools can help you avoid this mistake.
Part 1 in a series reflecting on what we’ve learned after doing a bunch of lean startup work over the past year. First issue – how to use customer development interviews to build a business model.
The hype around innovation right now seems overwhelming. Does this mean that we’ve hit Peak Innovation? No – we’ve hit Peak Innovation Hype. To avoid the hype, we need to understand what is already known about the substance of innovation.
To be a successful organisation, we need the skills to both find and execute new ideas. These two skill-sets often seem to be opposites. However, it is much more productive to think of them as a polarity – an interdependent set of skills which are both simultaneously necessary for success.
If our eternal rate of change doesn’t match the rate of change in our environment, we’re in big trouble. The way to avoid this is innovating more.
According to my friend Ben, mountain bikers say “if you see rocks, you hit rocks.” This idea has important implications for innovation and business performance.
We often look for shortcuts to change, but there are none. The design process used by Charles and Ray Eames gives us insight into how we have to do the hard work if we want to change the world.
Zappos is undertaking a fascinating experiment in change management. It’s important to evaluate this separately from the experiment with the management structure Holacracy that they are trying at the same time.
Innovation requires slack – are you taking enough time to innovate?
The Trap of Authenticity Do organisations need to be authentic? It’s a question that came up as I was talking to a colleague recently. He runs a program for the London Stock Exchange designed to accelerate growth in mid-sized companies so that they will become big enough to list on the LSE faster. One of […]
The watch I inherited from my Grandfather is over 50 years old, but it still works. Are we working on things today that will last 50 years? We should be.
When we make something new, we often don’t give as much thought to building a business model to go with the great new thing. This is a mistake.
