As usual the real learning was in the application. I was in Denver a couple of weeks ago with a group of colleagues for some strategic development and planning. As part of our work, one of the team members set up some offsite time at a popular “escape room.” In case you haven’t heard, these […]
If it wasn’t real, it could have been off a movie set. I walked and walked…past the administrative and waiting area and inside the office. I had never seen anything quite like this: enormous inlaid desk, conference table, glass cases full of expensive travel artifacts and carpet so thick you had to be careful not […]
It was a quest of nearly mythic proportions, and I had a front-row seat to the action: allow anyone – anywhere – to make a satellite-based phone call. The program was dubbed Iridium (named for the 77th element when initial calculations showed the need for 77 satellites). It was conceived of in the 1990’s and […]
I recall it clearly: the pressure to get that first “deal”…as well as the relentless pressure to fill “the funnel” even though we were in a very early stage incubator within a large firm where our revenue wouldn’t have paid for the yard care. That memory came flooding back last week at a professional society […]
If you are on the board, a member of the C-Suite or a P&L accountable leader in a larger firm, there is a common blind spot when launching innovation initiatives. I was reminded of this during a phone call with a colleague whom I did several large-scale breakout programs with while in an op’s role […]
True story from my ops background: When I was running through emails one morning, I found one that stopped me in my tracks. The VP of a recently acquired product line had sent an incendiary note to the CFO and copied dozens of people internally, using coarse language to declare the integration systems team completely […]
I can’t tell you the number of times I’m asked to facilitate a session to accelerate a project and this happens: all the introductions are complete, and while it’s very clear that all the “backstage” players are present (R&D, Development, Corporate Development), the essential front of house team members who connect that value to the […]
I was speaking for a group of senior executives last week and a great question came up: “What is the most destructive thing you see when working with new innovation teams in existing firms?” As my mind flashed through dozens of projects and larger programs, there was one thing that came up over and over […]
Have you ever fallen victim to the MBA Kool Aid? As a young strategist, it led me to believe that with the right preparation, a great pre-read and a superb facilitation job, I could lay the foundation for a solid innovation strategy with one good offsite session. After the session was complete, we’d then spend […]
I was giving a talk recently and the topic of cycle time reduction came up. It’s a historical fact that after Six Sigma, Motorola took on a very aggressive corporate program to reduce product development cycle time. We used a methodology that set a targeted reduction over a six-year time interval. To set the bar […]
