Victor
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Funding and the Innovator’s Dilemma
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2 min read
I’ve talked with several people who are heads of business units who have faced up to the what of the innovator’s dilemma but aren’t sure about the how. They have the determination to make difficult changes in how they serve their customers. They have P&L responsibility, but not necessarily a large scale budget that allows…
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Futures studies and the importance of ‘images’
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1 min read
Tangible Futures, Part 2: The historical context The Wilson Quarterly’s Winter 2006 issue focuses on future studies and includes this historical review, Has Futurism Failed? In it the authors cite several practitioners hailing the importance of our images of the future. To me this could include our science fiction, our movies, and our political rhetoric,…
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Tangible Futures example: Futurama
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1 min read
Sometime during the second half of the 20th century, American companies forgot how to dream. The social and political upheaval of the 1960’s and 1970’s may have squelched the raw optimism of previous decades, but this only made the need for inspiring visions even more important in the face of new, complex business environments. In…
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Tangible Futures example: Earth from space
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1 min read
Stewart Brand knew the power of this photograph before it was publicly released. In 1966, “…he sold buttons which read, ‘Why Haven’t We Seen A Photograph of the Whole Earth Yet?’ Legend has it that this accelerated NASA’s making good color photos of Earth from distant space during the Apollo program and that the ecology…
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Tangible Futures example: Da Vinci’s flying machine
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1 min read
Leonardo Da Vinci possessed one of the greatest abilities to imagine the future potential for humans and work out these ideas as an engineer or designer would. It’s telling that we remember his drawings more readily than his words. Here is his pen and ink drawing of A Flying Machine from 1490…
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Imagine it is the year 1900 and you own a large corporation needing offices in a major city. You want to construct a building that makes a grand statement of your financial strength and contributes to the civic infrastructure. Currently the highest buildings are about 20 stories, but you are told new construction techniques are…
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Understanding the future in a tangible way
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3 min read
Tangible Futures, Part 1: Background I’m starting a series of posts to talk about something we’re calling Tangible Futures, which are tangible expressions of visions for the future. That might sound quite ordinary or quite esoteric depending on your point of view, but having worked on it for several months I’m finding it to be…
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Wal-Mart enters the consulting biz
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2 min read
This is interesting… Wal-Mart Stores, whose all-in-one retailing model has forced scores of competitors to close their doors over the last 40 years, is turning to an unusual business plan: helping its rivals. The giant discount retailer, under increasing assault by critics, announced a wide-ranging effort yesterday to support small businesses near its new urban…
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Hire us, Forrester says so
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1 min read
Though we probably wouldn’t refer to ourselves as a design agency, these are kinds words from the folks in Cambridge… Tap design agencies for a jump-start on culture and process. Many companies turn to outside agencies for help designing self-service channels or products — but the more lasting value of the partnership is often the…
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Business Innovation Factory
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1 min read
BIF is one of the few organizations of its type on the US East Coast: “The Business Innovation Factory is a community of innovators collaborating to explore… business model innovation through a series of experiences designed to get ideas off of the white board and onto the ground as quickly and cost effectively as possible.…
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Good Crazy and Bad Crazy
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1 min read
My MIG colleague Scott Hirsch recorded a podcast with PodTech and discussed technology-focused startups that drive by the rear-view mirror, open vs. closed networks, and why it’s the crazy-brave people that drive innovation.
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Homogeneous Architecture
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1 min read
My business partner Jim just returned from doing a presentation in Turkey. Notable comment: “Istanbul looks more like San Jose than Constantinople.”
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In Vancouver
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1 min read
I’m in lovely tho’ rainy Vancouver to co-teach our seminar. If you’re in the area do come by and say hello.
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Charan’s “10 Tools of Profitable Revenue Growth”
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1 min read
Ram Charan’s book Profitable Growth Is Everyone’s Business seems to be closely related to (and a summation of) Peters and Waterman’s In Search Of Excellence. Charan’s book in turn is summed up on his site.
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When you have a new idea and you’re not sure it will work, create a tangible version of it as quickly as humanly possible. Even if it is very rough, something tangible helps you reach a solution. I’m sure you’ve been in this situation. There’s an important problem that needs to be solved before the…