I am having more and more conversations with leaders of organizations who have fundamentally the same concern: “I have read all the literature on the “Lean Startup” movement, and find it superficial at best. I have a business with a large human resource and capex base (or regulatory constraint), and the idea of “pivoting” means […]
The analysis is done, the decisions are made and your charter is clear. Now, you need to set up a strategic innovation team and move your organization toward a new product or services business model. What are your next moves? One of my favorite observations is that most major errors in a program are made […]
The recent news that Apple is looking at a $3.2B acquisition of the DRE music business – much larger than it’s usual pattern – brings up an interesting question: What happens when a company moves from smaller deals that are easily digested into core business and product operations, to larger and more highly valued entities? […]
I have been taking my readers through a series of posts on innovation decision making built around the WRAP process from Chip and Dan Heath’s book Decisive. The WRAP acronym allows you to remember their four decision anchors – Widen your options, Reality Test Your Assumptions, Attain distance before deciding and Prepare to be wrong. […]
When I was a younger man, I had a long string of back problems that resulted in repeated episodes of injury, muscle relaxants and rest in an effort to live a normal life. It was only a relatively short time ago that I finally saw an orthopedic doctor and a physical therapist who found I […]
Our family loves water parks, and one of our favorites is in the Wisconsin Dells at a place called Noah’s Ark. They have a 10-story high waterslide there called The Point Of No Return, and after you’ve ridden it a time or two, you know exactly why. The ride starts with a 40-meter vertical drop, […]
I had the good fortune to travel through Cedarville, Michigan this summer and take a tour of the Great Lakes Boat Building School, the only wooden boat building school in the Midwest. Bud McIntire, their director of development, took us on a tour of their operation to give us a behind-the-scenes look at the fascinating […]
The garage located at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto is famous for where Hewlett and Packard made it happen. It’s nothing more than a simple building with swinging doors – so what made it work? Today, we continue our examination of this question with a look at how the element of low overhead plays a […]
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland When I’m working with clients on how to find the growth plan for their business, I first help them step outside of their organization to see the entire landscape that’s available to them so that […]
I have written a great deal about technology breakout programs here, but today I want to talk about breakout marketing. Let’s take a look at how smart positioning is helping one automotive company gain on its competitors. Automotive brands occupy some of the highest-priced brand real estate in the market. Billions are poured into strategy […]
