As part of my commitment to being a safe private pilot, I fly with an instructor every 180 days to make sure my instrument skills and reaction to emergency procedures are sharp and up to standard. By carefully working through scenarios that are rarely encountered, I am building “muscle memory” that, in the midst of […]
One of the most subtle and recurrent traps that organizations fall into repeatedly when launching new innovation is an over commitment of resources to those things they know how to do, as well as an under commitment to those areas that are truly new to the firm. The dismal 25% success rate we talked about […]
For the last six years, I have had the pleasure of serving as a downhill ski guide for blind and disabled skiers at the Black Hills Regional Ski For Light event. The photo above captures me guiding a participant down the slopes in a sitdown bi-ski. I’m finding more and more that skiing is not […]
For regular newsletter readers, we are four steps into a five-post series on developing a cross-functional innovation team that can deliver. To provide sufficient context for the final post, I am going to take this opportunity to do a higher-level briefing on innovation systems. If you missed the previous posts in this series, you can […]
Similar headlines are popping up every day: there are great jobs going unfilled because of the “talent shortage.” As the economy moves forward, these “shortages” are going to continue to increase in frequency and severity. If someone has shared this post with you, let me invite you to join my twice monthly mailing list by adding […]
If you’re like me, the year has flown by. Yet, there were moments in 2014 where engagement, clarity and challenge created a punctuated moment that is worth reflecting on. For this post, I want to share 12 of the most recent posts that, based on feedback I’ve received, triggered those events for you, my regular […]
This is the time of year when senior leaders in organizations of all sizes lock in their annual plans and go home with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. Unfortunately, by the middle of January (in most cases), it’s painfully clear that the warmth of the plan has turned out more like the opening scene […]
A recent study puts the innovation success rate in more than half of large enterprises at 25 percent. Today, I’d like to share one of the major ways to ensure your organization does much better than that. This is the third in a five-post series on how to build a cross-functional team that delivers. If […]
This is the second in a five-post series on how to build a cross-functional team that delivers. If you missed the first post in this series, you can find it here. If you have done your homework using the process we’ve discussed in previous newsletters, you are now ready to put your plans into place. […]
I had a chance to attend this year’s Venture & Finance conference in Minneapolis, where I heard detailed presentations from the CEOs of sixteen early-stage firms, as well as “minute” pitches from many more. MHTA and MVCA jointly co-hosted this very well-formatted event, which I would highly recommend for investors and investment-minded entrepreneurs. This was […]
