Why You Need to Be Vulnerable to Innovate
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How many great ideas get killed because we’re scared to put them out in the world? We need to be vulnerable to innovate – Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly gives some insights into how to do this.
Category Archives: experiments
Business Needs More Art
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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.
Why Lean Startups Turn Into Innovative Firms
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One of the exciting trends in innovation right now is the lean startup idea. The basic premise is that when ventures are starting out, building a scalable business model needs to be a top priority. People like Steve Blank, Eric Ries, Ash Maurya and Alex Osterwalder are all doing great work in this area. I’m […]
My Thoughts on Silicon Valley + blog under construction
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The blog will be under construction this weekend as I work with Todd Lohenry from e1evation to upgrade the site. Todd does fantastic work, and I recommend him highly. In the meantime, the latest online update to the UQ Business School’s Momentum magazine includes an interview with my discussing my thoughts about my recent trip […]
Mistakes versus Experiments
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Are You Entering a Market or Building One?
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There is a huge difference between entering an existing market and building a completely new one. To see an example, check this out – it is the very first Apple product, which Andrew Chen writes about in a terrific post: You can see why IBM didn’t view personal computers as any kind of threat to […]
Atul Gawande on Failure and Rescue
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First off, you should go and read all of Atul Gawande’s commencement address to Williams College last weekend. It will take a couple of minutes, but it’s well worth the time. I’ll wait. Here are some of the highlights for me: …the critical skills of the best surgeons I saw involved the ability to handle […]
What We’re Talking About When We Talk About Failure
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I often tell people that failure is an essential part of innovation. What do I mean by that? I think that what I really mean is that to innovate, we have to learn. It’s not the failure that drives innovation, but rather the learning. There is really a hierarchy of failure: System failure (the collapse […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
What’s Stopping You?
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I solved a mystery recently that had been bothering me for months. There’s about a seven minute walk from the main faculty parking lot on campus to my office. About halfway through this walk, there are two paths that you can take – one covers significantly less distance. I’ve always taken this shorter route. One […]
