Innovation
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Good Design Can Make the Elevator Pitch Futile
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2 min read
I had a five-minute conversation with an angel investor last week and described the product I’m working on. His response: “Similar things are being done by bigger companies with giant marketing budgets, so you’ll need a very clever marketing idea to succeed. What is it?” There was an uncomfortable pause. On one hand, I haven’t…
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Uncertainty, Argh!
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2 min read
I just heard a talk at Lean Startup Machine NYC by Jonathan Fields, author of the book Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance. It was only about 20 minutes but had maybe the highest useful content density of any talk I’ve ever heard. Here’s a few notes: A startup at the beginning…
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In case you’re wondering how to expose business leaders to the innovative power of design and design research without using those words, read how John Kay does it in the FT: For years research and development scorecards have dutifully recorded how much pharmaceuticals companies spend on the search for new drugs and the expenditure of…
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We Put the ‘No’ in Innovation
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2 min read
Here’s an ad that I saw in the May 1, 2009 issue of The Week magazine. It’s from Post advertising their Shredded Wheat cereal with creative from Ogilvy: Personally, I love it. Just as wrong-headed financial management is being righted in this economy, we can reclaim the oft-maligned word innovation to mean actual progress. So…
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Disruption From the Bottom Up: Flip
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1 min read
I think it’s fair to say the $100 Flip video camera is a disruptive play. I’m not too surprised it didn’t come from Canon or Sony, but instead from a company who established their capabilities by building even cheaper cameras… Pure Digital started out, in 2002, making a digital version of the single-use “disposable†camera,…
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Surowiecki on Toyota
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1 min read
Toyota gets Surowiecki’d (a straightforward, insightful summary)… …if Toyota doesn’t look like an innovative company it’s only because our definition of innovation—cool new products and technological breakthroughs, by Steve Jobs-like visionaries—is far too narrow. Toyota’s innovations, by contrast, have focussed on process rather than on product, on the factory floor rather than on the showroom.…
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What’s Your Favorite Innovation Book?
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1 min read
Happy new year my readers and friends. While I once wrote that everything written about innovation is useless (including my own writing), we continue to write about it because writing is thinking, and there’s a lot of problems to think through. The result is some writing that is truly insightful and/or based on hard-won experience,…
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When Design Innovation Comes Down to Execution
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1 min read
Matt, formerly of Nokia, counters the notion that Apple alone has the best touch user interface ideas, but also that it’s not the idea that won that race, but execution… In recent months we’ve seen Nokia and Sony Ericsson show demos of their touch UIs. To which the response on many tech blogs has been…
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Blue Oceans for Little Fish
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1 min read
I recently finished my first three-week session at Stacy’s Boot Camp, a calisthenics-based workout class held for one hour, three times a week, for three weeks. Sometime during the class when I was trying to avoid thinking about the pain I was in, it occured to me this is a wonderful example of a Blue…
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Having the API Rug Pulled Out From Under You
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1 min read
John Hagel observes how “the large Internet players are wearying of the high acquisition premiums for attractive Web 2.0 companies and are increasingly deciding to grow their own copy when they see an interesting venture.” So if you’re a start-up, what’s your new exit strategy? Hagel says… The only sustainable edge in Web 2.0, as…
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For a limited time only you can download the full text of Finding the Right Job for Your Product by Clayton M. Christensen et al. The article itself isn’t revolutionary — they essentially mirror the transition that marketing research has undergone in moving from demographic to affinity customer segmentation. Christensen and his colleagues describe that…
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Jeneanne Rae Attacks Idea Management
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1 min read
Jeneanne Rae spanks innovation efforts that are little more than idea-management systems… Collecting random ideas may be an interesting exercise, but unless distinct energy is directed against solving a vexing corporate problem or exploiting a complex opportunity, you can count on low-level noise that won’t get senior management very excited. Lack of enthusiasm on the…
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Jack Welch on Green Products
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1 min read
Jack Welch and his wife, former HBR editor Suzi, were at the 92nd St Y in New York last night in an on-stage interview with the editor of BusinessWeek. It was great seeing them in person, and Jack’s persona was especially refreshing: large doses of common sense spoken with brutal honesty. One point he made…
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Wilson on Change
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1 min read
It was recently the birthday of former American president [[Woodrow Wilson]], someone who knew about trying to be innovative and bringing about change. He pushed major legislation through Congress, entered World War I, and sought to establish the League of Nations. He said, “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.“
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Old School Scrappy Innovator: William Norris
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1 min read
Thomas J. Watson Jr., the head of I.B.M., which was famed for its militaristic corporate culture, was incredulous over Norris’s operation. So lean, so ragtag, so bafflingly humane. In a 1963 memo, Watson wondered how Control Data achieved with just a few dozen people what he had not with several thousand. Control Data later went…