15 Ways Whoever Is Going to Disrupt Your Market Isn’t Like You
Published on 13 April 2012 by Mike Brown in Brainzooming
Whoever is going to disrupt your market isn’t like you, which makes them really hard to identify right now.
Number 1? They may not even be in business yet.
That’s a big difference, but it’s not the only one. Here are fourteen other ways whoever is going to disrupt your market isn’t like you, since they:
2. Don’t care about preserving anything about what’s made your brand successful.
3. Are happy to get a small share of the market at a premium price with a dramatically different offering.
4. Are happy to get a bigger share of your market (since it’s related to their market) at a really low price.
5. Don’t have any qualms about introducing a product/service and price point combination that’s really tough to compare to anything else your market has been doing.
6. Make decisions and move really quickly because the stakes are so much lower for them.
7. Can get away with using some, but not all, of the marketing mix to beat you at your own game.
8. Compete really effectively by looking at a couple of things (or maybe even only one thing) in a radically different way.
9. Don’t have to fund their new venture out of the dollars coming from your market.
10. Have figured out a different entry point into the customer model in your industry.
11. Don’t (or aren’t) going to look like you in very fundamental ways – size, structure, scope, etc.
12. Don’t have to have a complete offering since they’re appealing to a different market segment.
13. May have glaring weaknesses compared to traditional competitors (i.e., “you”) in areas traditional competitors think are really important but customers are willing to overlook.
14. Will not be focused on delivering the same benefit package you are.
15. Are fine with putting together parts and pieces tried and thrown out by others to compete in new ways.
And for everyone who points to Apple as the great disruptor, this story from Forbes points out that just as yesterday’s category owners can be disrupted, so can today’s seemingly invincible players.
Start looking for your disruptors. And start looking for who you are going to disrupt, because you’ll be just as hard to identify for them. - Mike Brown
Friday, April 13, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Quotes on CREATIVITY and INNOVATION
Quotes on CREATIVITY and INNOVATION
"When all think alike, then no one is thinking."
— Walter Lippman"Capital isn't so important in business. Experience isn't so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn't any limit to what you can do with your business and your life."
— Harvey Firestone"Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart."
— Mencius (Meng-Tse), 4th century BCE"Doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results, is the definition of crazy."
— UnknownM. A. Rosanoff: "Mr. Edison, please tell me what laboratory rules you want me to observe."Edison: "There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish somep'n!"
— Thomas Edison"Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted."
— George Kneller"It isn't the incompetent who destroy an organization. The incompetent never get in a position to destroy it. It is those who achieved something and want to rest upon their achievements who are forever clogging things up."
— F. M. Young"It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date."
— Roger von Oech"We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don't waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the "closed" mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the "open" mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent."
— John Cleese"The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas."
— Dr. Linus Pauling"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
— Albert von Szent-Gyorgy"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science."
— Albert EinsteinWithout the playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable."
— Carl Jung"When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: “Only stand out of my light.” Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light."
— John W. Gardner"To be creative you have to contribute something different from what you've done before. Your results need not be original to the world; few results truly meet that criterion. In fact, most results are built on the work of others."
— Lynne C. LevesqueBreakthrough Creativity"We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
— T. S. Eliot"Once we rid ourselves of traditional thinking we can get on with creating the future."
— James Bertrand"There's a way to do it better—find it."
— Thomas Edison"The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail."
— Edwin H. Land"Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual."
— Arthur Koestler"There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns."
— Edward de Bono"Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found."
— James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)"The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six months, or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen."
— Carl Ally"The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—re the primary sources of creativity."
— Margaret J. Wheatley"Too much of our work amounts to the drudgery of arranging means toward ends, mechanically placing the right foot in front of the left and the left in front of the right, moving down narrow corridors toward narrow goals. Play widens the halls. Work will always be with us, and many works are worthy. But the worthiest works of all often reflect an artful creativity that looks more like play than work."
— James Ogilvy"The achievement of excellence can only occur if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction."
— Lawrence Miller"When the 'weaker' of the two brains (right and left) is stimulated and encouraged to work in cooperation with the stronger side, the end result is a great increase in overall ability and ... often five to ten times more effectiveness."
— Professor Robert Ornstein, University of California"Innovation— any new idea—by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience."
— Warren BennisThe way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away."
— Linus Pauling"The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions."
— Anthony Jay"Success is on the far side of failure."
— Thomas Watson Sr."You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways."
— M. Minsky"To have a great idea, have a lot of them."
— Thomas Edison"Companies have to nurture [creativity and motivation]—and have to do it by building a compassionate yet performance-driven corporate culture. In the knowledge economy the traditional soft people side of our business has become the new hard side."
— Gay MitchellExecutive VP, HR, Royal Bank"That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time."
— John Stuart Mill“Creative thinking is not a talent, it is a skill that can be learnt. It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which improves teamwork, productivity and where appropriate profits.”
— Edward de Bono"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
— Albert Einstein"Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity."
— Chuck JonesWarner Bros. animator"An inventor is simply a person who doesn't take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. It he succeeds once then he's in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work."
— Charles Kettering"All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise we would never have anything new."
— Charles Kettering"Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport."
— Robert Wieder"He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson"Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried."
— Frank Tyger"The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so."
— Thomas TrowardThe Dore Lectures on Mental Science 1909"Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction."
— Picasso"If you do not the expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail."
— Heraclitus"The organizations of the future will increasingly depend on the creativity of their members to survive. Great Groups offer a new model in which the leader is an equal among Titans. In a truly creative collaboration, work is pleasure, and the only rules and procedures are those that advance the common cause."
— Warren Bennis"Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
— Thomas Edison"The business world sees a measurable and growing intelligence gap - with need for intellectual expertise constantly expanding. Available talent is decreasing even though the population is increasing. Being bombarded with information - be it in Nintendo or shogi - and being able to process it, find patterns etc., is a vital skill. One way to increase this talent potential is through games."
— Leif EdvinsonSkandia at the MindSports Olympiad 1997"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
— Howard Aiken"Some men look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that are not and ask why not?"
— Robert Kennedy"In every work of genius, we recognize our once rejected thoughts."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson"The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants."
— Roger von Oech"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things."
— Theodore Levitt"Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form."
— Watts Humprey"The innovation point is the pivotal moment when talented and motivated people seek the opportunity to act on their ideas and dreams."
— W. Arthur PorterCreativity Killers:"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
— Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office 1899"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote."
— Grover Cleveland, 1905"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
— Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
— Robert Miliham, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible."
— Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895"Ruth made a big mistake when he gave up pitching."
— Tris Speaker, 1921"The horse is here today, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad."
— President of Michigan Savings Bank advising against investing in the Ford Motor Company"Video won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
— Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on television in 1946"What use could the company make of an electric toy?"
— Western Union, when it turned down rights to the telephone in 1878"Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation."
— Peter Drucker"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions"
— Albert Einstein"I roamed the countryside searching for the answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plant and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it and why immediately on its creation the lightening becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life."
— Leonardo da Vinci"Slaying sacred cows makes great steaks."
— Dick Nicolose"In the modern world of business it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman."
— David M. Ogilvy"Innovation is fostered by information gathered from new connections; from insights gained by journeys into other disciplines or places; from active, collegial networks and fluid, open boundaries. Innovation arises from ongoing circles of exchange, where information is not just accumulated or stored, but created. Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren't there before."
— Margaret J. WheatleyLeadership and the New Science"When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination."
— Dr. Rollo May"A person might be able to play without being creative, but he sure can't be creative without playing."
— Kurt Hanks and Jay Parry"The achievement of excellence can occur only if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction."
— Lawrence Miller"Replace either/or thinking with plus thinking."
— Craig Hickman"[I]in 1913, the first assembly line was implemented at Ford Motor Company. The process grew like a vine and eventually spread to all phases of the manufacture of Ford cars, and then through the entire world of heavy industry. There can be no doubt that a powerful revolution occurred at Highland Park—but it was not the assembly line itself that provided the power. Rather, it was the creation of an atmosphere in which improvement was the real product: a better, cheaper, Model T followed naturally. Every man on the payroll was invited to contribute ideas, and the good ones were implemented without delay."
— Douglas BrinkleyWheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and A Century of Progress"Observe what is with undivided awareness."
— Bruce Lee"History can’t give attention to what’s been lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success."
— Scott Berkun"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
— Albert EinsteinOn Science"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."
— Erich Fromm"It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you."
— Tony BennBritish politician, in the Observer"The world is but a canvas to our imaginations."
— Henry David Thoreau"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."
— George Lois"If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original."
— Sir Ken Robinson"The joy is in creating, not maintaining."
— Vince Lombardi"Nothing is so embarrassing as watching someone do something that you said could not be done."
— Sam Ewing
"When all think alike, then no one is thinking."
— Walter Lippman"Capital isn't so important in business. Experience isn't so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn't any limit to what you can do with your business and your life."
— Harvey Firestone"Great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart."
— Mencius (Meng-Tse), 4th century BCE"Doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results, is the definition of crazy."
— UnknownM. A. Rosanoff: "Mr. Edison, please tell me what laboratory rules you want me to observe."Edison: "There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish somep'n!"
— Thomas Edison"Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted."
— George Kneller"It isn't the incompetent who destroy an organization. The incompetent never get in a position to destroy it. It is those who achieved something and want to rest upon their achievements who are forever clogging things up."
— F. M. Young"It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date."
— Roger von Oech"We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don't waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the "closed" mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the "open" mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent."
— John Cleese"The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas."
— Dr. Linus Pauling"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
— Albert von Szent-Gyorgy"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science."
— Albert EinsteinWithout the playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable."
— Carl Jung"When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: “Only stand out of my light.” Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light."
— John W. Gardner"To be creative you have to contribute something different from what you've done before. Your results need not be original to the world; few results truly meet that criterion. In fact, most results are built on the work of others."
— Lynne C. LevesqueBreakthrough Creativity"We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
— T. S. Eliot"Once we rid ourselves of traditional thinking we can get on with creating the future."
— James Bertrand"There's a way to do it better—find it."
— Thomas Edison"The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail."
— Edwin H. Land"Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual."
— Arthur Koestler"There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns."
— Edward de Bono"Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found."
— James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)"The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six months, or six years down the road. But he has faith that it will happen."
— Carl Ally"The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—re the primary sources of creativity."
— Margaret J. Wheatley"Too much of our work amounts to the drudgery of arranging means toward ends, mechanically placing the right foot in front of the left and the left in front of the right, moving down narrow corridors toward narrow goals. Play widens the halls. Work will always be with us, and many works are worthy. But the worthiest works of all often reflect an artful creativity that looks more like play than work."
— James Ogilvy"The achievement of excellence can only occur if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction."
— Lawrence Miller"When the 'weaker' of the two brains (right and left) is stimulated and encouraged to work in cooperation with the stronger side, the end result is a great increase in overall ability and ... often five to ten times more effectiveness."
— Professor Robert Ornstein, University of California"Innovation— any new idea—by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience."
— Warren BennisThe way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away."
— Linus Pauling"The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions."
— Anthony Jay"Success is on the far side of failure."
— Thomas Watson Sr."You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways."
— M. Minsky"To have a great idea, have a lot of them."
— Thomas Edison"Companies have to nurture [creativity and motivation]—and have to do it by building a compassionate yet performance-driven corporate culture. In the knowledge economy the traditional soft people side of our business has become the new hard side."
— Gay MitchellExecutive VP, HR, Royal Bank"That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time."
— John Stuart Mill“Creative thinking is not a talent, it is a skill that can be learnt. It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which improves teamwork, productivity and where appropriate profits.”
— Edward de Bono"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
— Albert Einstein"Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity."
— Chuck JonesWarner Bros. animator"An inventor is simply a person who doesn't take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. It he succeeds once then he's in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work."
— Charles Kettering"All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise we would never have anything new."
— Charles Kettering"Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport."
— Robert Wieder"He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson"Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried."
— Frank Tyger"The law of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so."
— Thomas TrowardThe Dore Lectures on Mental Science 1909"Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction."
— Picasso"If you do not the expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail."
— Heraclitus"The organizations of the future will increasingly depend on the creativity of their members to survive. Great Groups offer a new model in which the leader is an equal among Titans. In a truly creative collaboration, work is pleasure, and the only rules and procedures are those that advance the common cause."
— Warren Bennis"Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration."
— Thomas Edison"The business world sees a measurable and growing intelligence gap - with need for intellectual expertise constantly expanding. Available talent is decreasing even though the population is increasing. Being bombarded with information - be it in Nintendo or shogi - and being able to process it, find patterns etc., is a vital skill. One way to increase this talent potential is through games."
— Leif EdvinsonSkandia at the MindSports Olympiad 1997"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
— Howard Aiken"Some men look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that are not and ask why not?"
— Robert Kennedy"In every work of genius, we recognize our once rejected thoughts."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson"The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants."
— Roger von Oech"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things."
— Theodore Levitt"Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form."
— Watts Humprey"The innovation point is the pivotal moment when talented and motivated people seek the opportunity to act on their ideas and dreams."
— W. Arthur PorterCreativity Killers:"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
— Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office 1899"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote."
— Grover Cleveland, 1905"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
— Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
— Robert Miliham, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible."
— Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895"Ruth made a big mistake when he gave up pitching."
— Tris Speaker, 1921"The horse is here today, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad."
— President of Michigan Savings Bank advising against investing in the Ford Motor Company"Video won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
— Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on television in 1946"What use could the company make of an electric toy?"
— Western Union, when it turned down rights to the telephone in 1878"Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation."
— Peter Drucker"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions"
— Albert Einstein"I roamed the countryside searching for the answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plant and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it and why immediately on its creation the lightening becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life."
— Leonardo da Vinci"Slaying sacred cows makes great steaks."
— Dick Nicolose"In the modern world of business it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman."
— David M. Ogilvy"Innovation is fostered by information gathered from new connections; from insights gained by journeys into other disciplines or places; from active, collegial networks and fluid, open boundaries. Innovation arises from ongoing circles of exchange, where information is not just accumulated or stored, but created. Knowledge is generated anew from connections that weren't there before."
— Margaret J. WheatleyLeadership and the New Science"When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination."
— Dr. Rollo May"A person might be able to play without being creative, but he sure can't be creative without playing."
— Kurt Hanks and Jay Parry"The achievement of excellence can occur only if the organization promotes a culture of creative dissatisfaction."
— Lawrence Miller"Replace either/or thinking with plus thinking."
— Craig Hickman"[I]in 1913, the first assembly line was implemented at Ford Motor Company. The process grew like a vine and eventually spread to all phases of the manufacture of Ford cars, and then through the entire world of heavy industry. There can be no doubt that a powerful revolution occurred at Highland Park—but it was not the assembly line itself that provided the power. Rather, it was the creation of an atmosphere in which improvement was the real product: a better, cheaper, Model T followed naturally. Every man on the payroll was invited to contribute ideas, and the good ones were implemented without delay."
— Douglas BrinkleyWheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and A Century of Progress"Observe what is with undivided awareness."
— Bruce Lee"History can’t give attention to what’s been lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success."
— Scott Berkun"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
— Albert EinsteinOn Science"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."
— Erich Fromm"It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you."
— Tony BennBritish politician, in the Observer"The world is but a canvas to our imaginations."
— Henry David Thoreau"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."
— George Lois"If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original."
— Sir Ken Robinson"The joy is in creating, not maintaining."
— Vince Lombardi"Nothing is so embarrassing as watching someone do something that you said could not be done."
— Sam Ewing
25 Inspiring Innovation Quotes
1. “Innovation is anything, but business as usual.” (Anonymous).
2. “In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman”. (David Ogilvy).
3. “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there will be no hope for it.” (A. Einstein).
4. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” (A. Warhol).
5. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” (George Bernard Shaw).
6. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” (Alan Kay).
7. “There are no old roads to new directions.” (Advertisement of the Boston Consulting Group).
8. “Nothing is stronger than habit.” (Ovid).
9. “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” (A. Einstein).
10. “Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation.” (T. Levitt).
11. “It’s tough when markets change and your people within the company don’t.” (Harvard Business Review).
12. “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” (Goethe).
13. “What we’ve done to encourage innovation is make it ordinary.” (C. Wynett, Procter & Gamble).
14. “To gain customer insights, we must understand that we are prisoners of what we know and what we believe”. (Mohanbir Sawhney).
15. “He who ask a question is a fool for 5 minutes. He who does not ask a question remains a fool for ever.” (China)
16. “A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.” (A. von Szent-Gyorgyi).
17. “Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises”. (Demosthenes).
18. “You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” (Anonymous).
19. “People who don’t take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year, people who do take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year” (Peter Drucker).
20. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” (R. Emerson).
21. “The impossible is often the untried.” (J. Goodwin).
22. “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.” (Tao Te Ching).
23. “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” (D. Adams).
24. “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow” (Rupert Murdoch).
25. “The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear.” (Vincent Van Gogh).
2. “In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman”. (David Ogilvy).
3. “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there will be no hope for it.” (A. Einstein).
4. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” (A. Warhol).
5. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” (George Bernard Shaw).
6. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” (Alan Kay).
7. “There are no old roads to new directions.” (Advertisement of the Boston Consulting Group).
8. “Nothing is stronger than habit.” (Ovid).
9. “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” (A. Einstein).
10. “Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation.” (T. Levitt).
11. “It’s tough when markets change and your people within the company don’t.” (Harvard Business Review).
12. “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” (Goethe).
13. “What we’ve done to encourage innovation is make it ordinary.” (C. Wynett, Procter & Gamble).
14. “To gain customer insights, we must understand that we are prisoners of what we know and what we believe”. (Mohanbir Sawhney).
15. “He who ask a question is a fool for 5 minutes. He who does not ask a question remains a fool for ever.” (China)
16. “A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.” (A. von Szent-Gyorgyi).
17. “Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises”. (Demosthenes).
18. “You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” (Anonymous).
19. “People who don’t take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year, people who do take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year” (Peter Drucker).
20. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” (R. Emerson).
21. “The impossible is often the untried.” (J. Goodwin).
22. “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.” (Tao Te Ching).
23. “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” (D. Adams).
24. “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow” (Rupert Murdoch).
25. “The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear.” (Vincent Van Gogh).
55 Quotes To Inspire Creativity, Innovation and Action
“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off… They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.” - Pearl Buck
“F@*# self-doubt. I despise it. I hold it in contempt, along with the hell-spawned ooze-pit of Resistance from which it crawled. I will NEVER back off. I will NEVER give the work anything less than 100%. If I go down in flames, so be it. I’ll be back.” -Steven Pressfield
“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” -Rita Mae Brown
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”—Clay Shirky
“I am not afraid…I was born to do this.” - Joan of Arc
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” ~Antoine De Saint Exupery
“It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends.” - J. K. Rowling
“Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a f@*$%load of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.” - Dave Eggers
“Adversity is just change that we haven’t adapted ourselves to yet.” -Aimee Mullins
“The secret of life…is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” - Paulo Coelho, from The Alchemist
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” - Helen Keller
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only what you are expecting to give — which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.” - Katharine Hepburn
“Far better to live your own path imperfectly than to live another’s perfectly.” -Bhagavad Gita
“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent” – Thomas Edison
“The soul should always stand ajar. Ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” - Emily Dickinson
“To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.” - Robert McKee
“There is something deep within us that responds to those who level with us, who don’t suggest or compromise for us.” -Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership
“Each moment of our life, we either invoke or destroy our dreams.” -Stuart Wilde
“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” -Pearl S. Buck
“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” -Goethe
“When I was in the middle of writing Eat Pray Love and I fell into one of those pits of despair that we will fall into when we’re working on something that’s not coming and we think ‘this is going to be a disaster, this is going to be the worst book I’ve ever written — not just that but the worst book ever written … So I just lifted my face up from the manuscript and I directed my comments to an empty corner of the room and I said aloud ‘ Listen you, thing! You and I both know that if this book isn’t brilliant that is not entirely my fault, right? Because you can see I am putting everything I have into this, I don’t have any more than this, so if you want it to be better then you’ve got to show up and do your part of the deal, OK? But you know what? If you don’t do that then I’m going to keep writing because that’s my job and I would please like the record to reflect today that I showed up and did my part of the job!” — Elizabeth Gilbert
“We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve” -Albert Einstein
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can chagne the world.” - Margaret Mead
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart,…you’ll know when you find it.” — Steve Jobs
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” -Soren Kierkegaard
“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.” -Virginia Woolf
“People who don’t take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year, people who do take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year” -Peter Drucker
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou
“It’s not about breaking the rules. It is about abandoning the concept of rules altogether” - Paul Lemberg
“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” -Leo Burnett
“You can make mistakes, but you are not a failure until you blame others for those mistakes.” -John Wooden
“There’s only us, There’s only this, Forget regret, Or life is your to miss” - Mimi, Rent
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” -Marianne Williamson
“Don’t hire a dog, then bark yourself” -David Ogilvy
“Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.” - Martha Graham
“The only thing all successful people have in common is that they’re successful, so don’t waste your time copying “the successful strategies” of others.” -Seth Godin
“…before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World test everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. It’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’” -Paulo Coehlo
“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.” - Erica Jong
“Bold action in the face of uncertainty is not only terrifying, but necessary in the pursuit of great work. ” - Jonathan Fields
“The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.” -Twyla Tharp
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” - George Bernard Shaw
“Everything we say signifies; everything counts, that we put out into the world. It impacts on kids, it impacts on the zeitgeist of the time.” -Meryl Streep
“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself: What is my truest intention? Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it’s right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it.” -Oprah Winfrey
“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” — Aristotle
“Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” - Mark Twain
“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman
“It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.” — Roger von Oech
“We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don’t waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the “closed” mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the “open” mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.” -John Cleese
“The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—re the primary sources of creativity.” — Margaret J. Wheatley
“Too much of our work amounts to the drudgery of arranging means toward ends, mechanically placing the right foot in front of the left and the left in front of the right, moving down narrow corridors toward narrow goals. Play widens the halls. Work will always be with us, and many works are worthy. But the worthiest works of all often reflect an artful creativity that looks more like play than work.”— James Ogilvy
“In my experience, if you steer clear of dogma and muster up more love than you thought you had to give, then your vitality increases, satisfaction sets in, sweetness surfaces. I believe in the creative power of good feelings. I’m convinced that the desire to be real is everyone’s divine imperative.” -Danielle LaPorte
“Don’t worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test… Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap – but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.” -Guy Kawasaki
“Clarity of painting comes from clarity of vision. A painter has to be emotionally right out there and present, both to perceive and to express.” -Kate Palmer
“F@*# self-doubt. I despise it. I hold it in contempt, along with the hell-spawned ooze-pit of Resistance from which it crawled. I will NEVER back off. I will NEVER give the work anything less than 100%. If I go down in flames, so be it. I’ll be back.” -Steven Pressfield
“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” -Rita Mae Brown
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”—Clay Shirky
“I am not afraid…I was born to do this.” - Joan of Arc
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” ~Antoine De Saint Exupery
“It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends.” - J. K. Rowling
“Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a f@*$%load of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.” - Dave Eggers
“Adversity is just change that we haven’t adapted ourselves to yet.” -Aimee Mullins
“The secret of life…is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” - Paulo Coelho, from The Alchemist
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” - Helen Keller
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only what you are expecting to give — which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.” - Katharine Hepburn
“Far better to live your own path imperfectly than to live another’s perfectly.” -Bhagavad Gita
“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent” – Thomas Edison
“The soul should always stand ajar. Ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” - Emily Dickinson
“To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.” - Robert McKee
“There is something deep within us that responds to those who level with us, who don’t suggest or compromise for us.” -Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership
“Each moment of our life, we either invoke or destroy our dreams.” -Stuart Wilde
“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” -Pearl S. Buck
“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” -Goethe
“When I was in the middle of writing Eat Pray Love and I fell into one of those pits of despair that we will fall into when we’re working on something that’s not coming and we think ‘this is going to be a disaster, this is going to be the worst book I’ve ever written — not just that but the worst book ever written … So I just lifted my face up from the manuscript and I directed my comments to an empty corner of the room and I said aloud ‘ Listen you, thing! You and I both know that if this book isn’t brilliant that is not entirely my fault, right? Because you can see I am putting everything I have into this, I don’t have any more than this, so if you want it to be better then you’ve got to show up and do your part of the deal, OK? But you know what? If you don’t do that then I’m going to keep writing because that’s my job and I would please like the record to reflect today that I showed up and did my part of the job!” — Elizabeth Gilbert
“We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve” -Albert Einstein
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can chagne the world.” - Margaret Mead
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart,…you’ll know when you find it.” — Steve Jobs
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” -Soren Kierkegaard
“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.” -Virginia Woolf
“People who don’t take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year, people who do take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year” -Peter Drucker
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou
“It’s not about breaking the rules. It is about abandoning the concept of rules altogether” - Paul Lemberg
“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” -Leo Burnett
“You can make mistakes, but you are not a failure until you blame others for those mistakes.” -John Wooden
“There’s only us, There’s only this, Forget regret, Or life is your to miss” - Mimi, Rent
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” -Marianne Williamson
“Don’t hire a dog, then bark yourself” -David Ogilvy
“Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.” - Martha Graham
“The only thing all successful people have in common is that they’re successful, so don’t waste your time copying “the successful strategies” of others.” -Seth Godin
“…before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World test everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. It’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’” -Paulo Coehlo
“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.” - Erica Jong
“Bold action in the face of uncertainty is not only terrifying, but necessary in the pursuit of great work. ” - Jonathan Fields
“The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.” -Twyla Tharp
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” - George Bernard Shaw
“Everything we say signifies; everything counts, that we put out into the world. It impacts on kids, it impacts on the zeitgeist of the time.” -Meryl Streep
“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself: What is my truest intention? Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it’s right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it.” -Oprah Winfrey
“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” — Aristotle
“Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” - Mark Twain
“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman
“It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.” — Roger von Oech
“We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don’t waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the “closed” mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the “open” mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.” -John Cleese
“The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—re the primary sources of creativity.” — Margaret J. Wheatley
“Too much of our work amounts to the drudgery of arranging means toward ends, mechanically placing the right foot in front of the left and the left in front of the right, moving down narrow corridors toward narrow goals. Play widens the halls. Work will always be with us, and many works are worthy. But the worthiest works of all often reflect an artful creativity that looks more like play than work.”— James Ogilvy
“In my experience, if you steer clear of dogma and muster up more love than you thought you had to give, then your vitality increases, satisfaction sets in, sweetness surfaces. I believe in the creative power of good feelings. I’m convinced that the desire to be real is everyone’s divine imperative.” -Danielle LaPorte
“Don’t worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test… Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap – but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.” -Guy Kawasaki
“Clarity of painting comes from clarity of vision. A painter has to be emotionally right out there and present, both to perceive and to express.” -Kate Palmer
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Seven startup sins to avoid
Seven startup sins to avoidSeven common mistakes have led to the demise of thousands of startups, says Ben Parr. Here's what not to do.
by Ben Parr |March 21, 2012 4:05 PM PDT
Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey is a man who knows what causes most startups to fail.
I've seen thousands of startups fail, but they almost always fail for the same reasons. Most entrepreneurs fall into the same traps over and over again, despite how easy they are to avoid.
At the London Web Summit earlier this week, I told an audience of European entrepreneurs the seven mistakes I believe most often destroy promising startups.
These are my seven startup sins. Avoid these common mistakes at all costs:
1. Losing focus: If you're like the typical entrepreneur, you probably have hundreds of new ideas for your startup. But you must resist the urge to build lots of features, rather than focusing on the few that will actually take your product forward.
Giving users many choices and features may seem like a good idea, but it just confuses them until they abandon a product in frustration. Simplicity and focus are the keys to building a great company. Google became a $100 billion-plus company with a text box and not much else. Square became a leader in mobile payments by not trying to do too many things at once.
Jack Dorsey
✔@jack Happy 3rd Birthday @Square! I'm so proud of all we've accomplished, & all we decided not to do. instagr.am/p/G4ioytAQ9x/
11 Feb 12 ReplyRetweetFavoriteDon't start building every idea that comes into your head. Make everything as simple and streamlined as possible, and don't build everything the customer wants -- you will simply end up with a bloated product nobody will use.
2. Ignoring cashflow: In the early days of a startup, cashflow is far more crucial than revenue or profit. Your job as an entrepreneur is to find ways to extend your company's runway for as long as possible.
It doesn't mean you have to be a penny-pincher, but make sure that every purchase you make will deliver greater benefits than its cost. My company buys the fastest MacBook Pros possible for our engineers because the increased productivity more than makes up for the upfront costs of the computer.
3. Obsessing over competition: Many startups worry too much what Google or another startup may be building. If you obsess over what they're building, you're going to start building products based on your fears. There will always be competition, but the best companies focus on user experience instead of focusing on the competition.
4. Failing slowly: Your first product is most likely going to fail. Whether it takes you weeks, months, or years before you realize your product is a dud is entirely up to your flexibility.
Find out quickly whether your idea will succeed or fail -- research, build, test, and iterate as quickly as you can. Don't be discouraged by setbacks, but if you can see the writing on the wall, don't ignore it -- figure out why your product isn't gaining traction and fix it. Tools like Google Analytics, RJMetrics, and Optimizely are great for gathering the information you need to make decisions quickly.
5. Ignoring company culture: It's easy, especially in the early days, to make company culture a lower priority. But much like plaster, once a company culture is set, it becomes very tough to reshape.
"Zappos sells shoes and apparel online, but what distinguished us from our competitors was that we'd put our company culture above all else," Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh famously said after the company was sold to Amazon. Zappos used that strong culture to successfully recruit employees and customers.
The most important job of a founder is company culture and recruitment. Most successful founders stop coding as their companies scale, but their example sets the tone for the work ethic, priorities, and morals of the companies they created.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET) Mark Zuckerberg understands the importance of company culture better than almost anybody. He famously takes engineers Facebook is trying to recruit on a walk in the woods of Palo Alto to build a relationship and explain the company's vision.
You should have a strong idea of what kind of company culture you want to build long before you hire your first employee.
6. Being complacent: No company is immune to catastrophic failure -- just ask Yahoo, Digg, MySpace, RIM, and Friendster. Don't confuse traction for victory, because that is what leads to a startup becoming complacent and getting blindsided by an upstart competitor.
7. Not building: You can worry about competitors and fundraising until you pass out, but there's no bigger sin than not building. Ideas are easy to come by -- it's execution that separates successful companies from thousands of could-have-beens.
At some point, you just have to build and see how it goes. That's the beauty of entrepreneurship -- it's democratic. The people, rather than investors or competitors, will ultimately decide your startup's fate.
by Ben Parr |March 21, 2012 4:05 PM PDT
Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey is a man who knows what causes most startups to fail.
I've seen thousands of startups fail, but they almost always fail for the same reasons. Most entrepreneurs fall into the same traps over and over again, despite how easy they are to avoid.
At the London Web Summit earlier this week, I told an audience of European entrepreneurs the seven mistakes I believe most often destroy promising startups.
These are my seven startup sins. Avoid these common mistakes at all costs:
1. Losing focus: If you're like the typical entrepreneur, you probably have hundreds of new ideas for your startup. But you must resist the urge to build lots of features, rather than focusing on the few that will actually take your product forward.
Giving users many choices and features may seem like a good idea, but it just confuses them until they abandon a product in frustration. Simplicity and focus are the keys to building a great company. Google became a $100 billion-plus company with a text box and not much else. Square became a leader in mobile payments by not trying to do too many things at once.
Jack Dorsey
✔@jack Happy 3rd Birthday @Square! I'm so proud of all we've accomplished, & all we decided not to do. instagr.am/p/G4ioytAQ9x/
11 Feb 12 ReplyRetweetFavoriteDon't start building every idea that comes into your head. Make everything as simple and streamlined as possible, and don't build everything the customer wants -- you will simply end up with a bloated product nobody will use.
2. Ignoring cashflow: In the early days of a startup, cashflow is far more crucial than revenue or profit. Your job as an entrepreneur is to find ways to extend your company's runway for as long as possible.
It doesn't mean you have to be a penny-pincher, but make sure that every purchase you make will deliver greater benefits than its cost. My company buys the fastest MacBook Pros possible for our engineers because the increased productivity more than makes up for the upfront costs of the computer.
3. Obsessing over competition: Many startups worry too much what Google or another startup may be building. If you obsess over what they're building, you're going to start building products based on your fears. There will always be competition, but the best companies focus on user experience instead of focusing on the competition.
4. Failing slowly: Your first product is most likely going to fail. Whether it takes you weeks, months, or years before you realize your product is a dud is entirely up to your flexibility.
Find out quickly whether your idea will succeed or fail -- research, build, test, and iterate as quickly as you can. Don't be discouraged by setbacks, but if you can see the writing on the wall, don't ignore it -- figure out why your product isn't gaining traction and fix it. Tools like Google Analytics, RJMetrics, and Optimizely are great for gathering the information you need to make decisions quickly.
5. Ignoring company culture: It's easy, especially in the early days, to make company culture a lower priority. But much like plaster, once a company culture is set, it becomes very tough to reshape.
"Zappos sells shoes and apparel online, but what distinguished us from our competitors was that we'd put our company culture above all else," Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh famously said after the company was sold to Amazon. Zappos used that strong culture to successfully recruit employees and customers.
The most important job of a founder is company culture and recruitment. Most successful founders stop coding as their companies scale, but their example sets the tone for the work ethic, priorities, and morals of the companies they created.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET) Mark Zuckerberg understands the importance of company culture better than almost anybody. He famously takes engineers Facebook is trying to recruit on a walk in the woods of Palo Alto to build a relationship and explain the company's vision.
You should have a strong idea of what kind of company culture you want to build long before you hire your first employee.
6. Being complacent: No company is immune to catastrophic failure -- just ask Yahoo, Digg, MySpace, RIM, and Friendster. Don't confuse traction for victory, because that is what leads to a startup becoming complacent and getting blindsided by an upstart competitor.
7. Not building: You can worry about competitors and fundraising until you pass out, but there's no bigger sin than not building. Ideas are easy to come by -- it's execution that separates successful companies from thousands of could-have-beens.
At some point, you just have to build and see how it goes. That's the beauty of entrepreneurship -- it's democratic. The people, rather than investors or competitors, will ultimately decide your startup's fate.
Innovation Is About Arguing, Not Brainstorming. Here’s How To Argue Productively
Innovation Is About Arguing, Not Brainstorming. Here’s How To Argue ProductivelyWritten by: Daniel Sobol
At Continuum, innovation’s secret sauce is deliberative discourse. Here’s how you do it.
Likes Turns out that brainstorming--that go-to approach to generating new ideas since the 1940s--isn’t the golden ticket to innovation after all. Both Jonah Lehrer, in a recent article in The New Yorker, and Susan Cain, in her new book Quiet, have asserted as much. Science shows that brainstorms can activate a neurological fear of rejection and that groups are not necessarily more creative than individuals. Brainstorming can actually be detrimental to good ideas.
But the idea behind brainstorming is right. To innovate, we need environments that support imaginative thinking, where we can go through many crazy, tangential, and even bad ideas to come up with good ones. We need to work both collaboratively and individually. We also need a healthy amount of heated discussion, even arguing. We need places where someone can throw out a thought, have it critiqued, and not feel so judged that they become defensive and shut down. Yet this creative process is not necessarily supported by the traditional tenets of brainstorming: group collaboration, all ideas held equal, nothing judged.
So if not from brainstorming, where do good ideas come from?
“The creative process isn’t supported by the traditional tenets of brainstorming.” At Continuum, we use deliberative discourse--or what we fondly call “Argue. Discuss. Argue. Discuss.” Deliberative discourse was originally articulated in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It refers to participative and collaborative (but not critique-free) communication. Multiple positions and views are expressed with a shared understanding that everyone is focused on a common goal. There is no hierarchy. It’s not debate because there are no opposing sides trying to “win.” Rather, it’s about working together to solve a problem and create new ideas.
So we argue. And discuss. And argue. A lot. But our process is far from freeform yelling. Here are five key rules of engagement that we’ve found to yield fruitful sessions and ultimately lead to meaningful ideas.
1. NO HIERARCHY
Breaking down hierarchy is critical for deliberative discourse. It’s essential to creating a space where everyone can truly contribute. My first week at Continuum, I joined a three-person team with one senior and one principal strategist. A recent graduate, I was one of the youngest members of the company. During our first session, the principal looked me in the eye and said, “You should know that you’re not doing your job if you don’t disagree with me at least once a day.” He gave me permission to voice my opinion openly, regardless of my seniority. This breakdown of hierarchy creates a space where ideas can be invented-- and challenged--without fear.
2. SAY “NO, BECAUSE”
It’s widely evangelized that successful brainstorms rely on acceptance of all ideas and judgment of none. Many refer to the cardinal rule of improv saying “Yes, AND”--for building on others’ ideas. As a former actor, I’m a major proponent of “Yes AND.”
But I’m also a fan of “no, BECAUSE.” No is a critical part of our process, but if you’re going to say no, you better be able to say why. Backing up an argument is integral in any deliberative discourse. And that “because” should be grounded in real people other than ourselves.
We conduct ethnographic research to inform our intuition, so we can understand people’s needs, problems, and values. We go out dancing with a group of women in a small Chinese village; we work in a fry shack in the deep South; we sit in living rooms and listen to caregivers discuss looking after a parent with Alzheimer’s. This research informs our intuitive “guts”--giving us both inspiration for ideas and rationale to defend or critique them.
During ideation, we constantly refer back to people, asking one another if our ideas are solving a real need that people expressed or that we witnessed. This keeps us accountable to something other than our own opinions, and it means we can push back on colleagues’ ideas without getting personal.
3. DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES
We’ve all heard of T-shaped people and of multidisciplinary teams. This model works for us because deliberative discourse requires a multiplicity of perspectives to shape ideas. We curate teams to create diversity: Walk into a project room and you may find an artist-turned-strategist, a biologist-turned-product designer, and an English professor-turned-innovation guru hashing it out together. True to form, my background is in theater and anthropology.
On a recent project, I realized the best way to tackle a particular problem was to apply a text analysis tool that actors use with new scripts. I taught this framework to the team, and we used it to generate ideas. Another time, a team member with a background in Wall Street banking wrote an equation on the whiteboard. It was exactly the framework we needed to jumpstart our next session.
When we enter deliberative discourse, arguing and discussing and arguing and discussing, we each bring different ways of looking at the world and solving problems to the table.
4. FOCUS ON A COMMON GOAL
Deliberative discourse is not just arguing for argument’s sake. Argument is productive for us because everyone knows that we’re working toward a shared goal. We develop a statement of purpose at the outset of each project and post it on the door of our project room. Every day when we walk into the room, we’re entering into a liminal play space--call it a playing field. The statement of purpose establishes the rules: It reminds us that we are working together to move the ball down the field. As much as we may argue and disagree, anything that happens in the room counts toward our shared goal. This enables us to argue and discuss without hurting one another.
5. KEEP IT FUN
We work on projects ranging from global banking for the poor to the future of pizza and life-saving medical devices. Our work requires intensity, thoughtfulness, and rigor. But no matter the nature of the project, we keep it fun. It’s rare for an hour to pass without laughter erupting from a project room. Deliberative discourse is a form of play, and for play to yield great ideas, we have to take it seriously.
But we don’t brainstorm. We deliberate.
[Images: Kazarlenya, aboikis, and Jakgree via Shutterstock]
At Continuum, innovation’s secret sauce is deliberative discourse. Here’s how you do it.
Likes Turns out that brainstorming--that go-to approach to generating new ideas since the 1940s--isn’t the golden ticket to innovation after all. Both Jonah Lehrer, in a recent article in The New Yorker, and Susan Cain, in her new book Quiet, have asserted as much. Science shows that brainstorms can activate a neurological fear of rejection and that groups are not necessarily more creative than individuals. Brainstorming can actually be detrimental to good ideas.
But the idea behind brainstorming is right. To innovate, we need environments that support imaginative thinking, where we can go through many crazy, tangential, and even bad ideas to come up with good ones. We need to work both collaboratively and individually. We also need a healthy amount of heated discussion, even arguing. We need places where someone can throw out a thought, have it critiqued, and not feel so judged that they become defensive and shut down. Yet this creative process is not necessarily supported by the traditional tenets of brainstorming: group collaboration, all ideas held equal, nothing judged.
So if not from brainstorming, where do good ideas come from?
“The creative process isn’t supported by the traditional tenets of brainstorming.” At Continuum, we use deliberative discourse--or what we fondly call “Argue. Discuss. Argue. Discuss.” Deliberative discourse was originally articulated in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It refers to participative and collaborative (but not critique-free) communication. Multiple positions and views are expressed with a shared understanding that everyone is focused on a common goal. There is no hierarchy. It’s not debate because there are no opposing sides trying to “win.” Rather, it’s about working together to solve a problem and create new ideas.
So we argue. And discuss. And argue. A lot. But our process is far from freeform yelling. Here are five key rules of engagement that we’ve found to yield fruitful sessions and ultimately lead to meaningful ideas.
1. NO HIERARCHY
Breaking down hierarchy is critical for deliberative discourse. It’s essential to creating a space where everyone can truly contribute. My first week at Continuum, I joined a three-person team with one senior and one principal strategist. A recent graduate, I was one of the youngest members of the company. During our first session, the principal looked me in the eye and said, “You should know that you’re not doing your job if you don’t disagree with me at least once a day.” He gave me permission to voice my opinion openly, regardless of my seniority. This breakdown of hierarchy creates a space where ideas can be invented-- and challenged--without fear.
2. SAY “NO, BECAUSE”
It’s widely evangelized that successful brainstorms rely on acceptance of all ideas and judgment of none. Many refer to the cardinal rule of improv saying “Yes, AND”--for building on others’ ideas. As a former actor, I’m a major proponent of “Yes AND.”
But I’m also a fan of “no, BECAUSE.” No is a critical part of our process, but if you’re going to say no, you better be able to say why. Backing up an argument is integral in any deliberative discourse. And that “because” should be grounded in real people other than ourselves.
We conduct ethnographic research to inform our intuition, so we can understand people’s needs, problems, and values. We go out dancing with a group of women in a small Chinese village; we work in a fry shack in the deep South; we sit in living rooms and listen to caregivers discuss looking after a parent with Alzheimer’s. This research informs our intuitive “guts”--giving us both inspiration for ideas and rationale to defend or critique them.
During ideation, we constantly refer back to people, asking one another if our ideas are solving a real need that people expressed or that we witnessed. This keeps us accountable to something other than our own opinions, and it means we can push back on colleagues’ ideas without getting personal.
3. DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES
We’ve all heard of T-shaped people and of multidisciplinary teams. This model works for us because deliberative discourse requires a multiplicity of perspectives to shape ideas. We curate teams to create diversity: Walk into a project room and you may find an artist-turned-strategist, a biologist-turned-product designer, and an English professor-turned-innovation guru hashing it out together. True to form, my background is in theater and anthropology.
On a recent project, I realized the best way to tackle a particular problem was to apply a text analysis tool that actors use with new scripts. I taught this framework to the team, and we used it to generate ideas. Another time, a team member with a background in Wall Street banking wrote an equation on the whiteboard. It was exactly the framework we needed to jumpstart our next session.
When we enter deliberative discourse, arguing and discussing and arguing and discussing, we each bring different ways of looking at the world and solving problems to the table.
4. FOCUS ON A COMMON GOAL
Deliberative discourse is not just arguing for argument’s sake. Argument is productive for us because everyone knows that we’re working toward a shared goal. We develop a statement of purpose at the outset of each project and post it on the door of our project room. Every day when we walk into the room, we’re entering into a liminal play space--call it a playing field. The statement of purpose establishes the rules: It reminds us that we are working together to move the ball down the field. As much as we may argue and disagree, anything that happens in the room counts toward our shared goal. This enables us to argue and discuss without hurting one another.
5. KEEP IT FUN
We work on projects ranging from global banking for the poor to the future of pizza and life-saving medical devices. Our work requires intensity, thoughtfulness, and rigor. But no matter the nature of the project, we keep it fun. It’s rare for an hour to pass without laughter erupting from a project room. Deliberative discourse is a form of play, and for play to yield great ideas, we have to take it seriously.
But we don’t brainstorm. We deliberate.
[Images: Kazarlenya, aboikis, and Jakgree via Shutterstock]
Monday, March 26, 2012
Beyond Stage Gate – Repeating Disruptive Innovation
Beyond Stage Gate – Repeating Disruptive InnovationPosted on March 18, 2012 by Jose A. Briones, Ph.D.
Existing methods for the management of innovation projects have a low probability of success in the development of radical of disruptive innovations. A new spiral approach has been developed that provides the balance of flexibility and control needed for a repeatable and successful approach to disruptive innovation.
Product innovation has been described as the way out of today’s difficult business environment. However, the rate of success of development projects, in particular white space and disruptive innovation projects, remains low.
This low success rate can be attributed in part to the erroneous application of methods designed for incremental innovation to projects with high levels of uncertainty. Common approaches to the management of innovation projects, like Waterfall or Stage-Gate, follow a linear approach that does not provide the flexibility needed for disruptive innovation to be successful.
The key to success in disruptive innovation is the use of a strategy that reconciles opposite needs: flexibility and control. A framework of controlled iteration can provide the right level of flexibility while at the same time give management the information required for proper allocation of resources. It’s time for an innovation in innovation itself.
The need for effective approaches to the management of innovation projects led to the development of the Spiral System for disruptive innovation management. This method applies an iterative, agile approach to market and business development. Development projects are classified based on degree of uncertainty and managed along project tracks appropriate to the level of uncertainty. Finally, appropriate innovation tool sets are employed based on the best fit between information available and decision making needs.
The Spiral System offers a balanced, agile approach to innovation management. It preserves the metrics needed for measurement of project progress, but also provides the flexibility needed for high uncertainty innovation projects to succeed.
Problem Statement
Recent examples such as Blockbuster, Borders, Kodak, Nokia and Blackberry show that innovation has become a matter of life and death for companies today. But innovation may be costly.
Dr. William Strauss of FutureMetrics has documented that the ratio of R&D needed per unit of GDP output has gone from 1:1 in the early 90’s to ~3:1 in 2009. This increase can be attributed to the fact that the rate of success of innovation projects, particularly radical or new market innovation projects rarely exceeds 20% and may be as low as 2.5%.
Referring to classical innovation management processes such as Stage Gate, Clayton Christensen, author of the book “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, has stated:
“The Stage-Gate system assumes that the proposed strategy is the right strategy; the problem is that except in the case of incremental innovations, the right strategy cannot be completely known in advance. The Stage-Gate system is not suited to the task of assessing innovations whose purpose is to build new growth businesses, but most companies continue to follow it simply because they see no alternative.”
Christensen’s observation reflects the need for new management approaches that increase the probability of success, but at the same time preserve the metrics required for measurement of progress and resource allocation. The challenge is then to reconcile a formal management framework with the flexibility that is needed for innovation to thrive.
The Need for Iterations:
To develop disruptive innovations, 1 round of voice of the customer is not enough to be the cornerstone of a project. This is because customers cannot say that they want what they do not know, and can only provide feedback on incremental modifications on what they do know. As the American industrialist Henry Ford famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
The Spiral Solution
The solution to this challenge consists of 3 parts:
1. Classifying projects according to the degree of uncertainty
2. Adopting a controlled iterative process to discovery
3. Using the right analysis tools that correspond to the level of uncertainty at each iteration level
The practical framework that incorporates these solutions is show in Figure 1 below
Time is the X axis, resources is the Y axis. Center = 0 for both, thus they both grow from the center. This is visual way to indicate that time and resources allocated should be low for level 1 projects and grow as more information is obtained and uncertainty is reduced.
Keys to the Process:
•Time and resources required are low when uncertainty is high, but increase as the project advances through each iteration and likelihood of success increase.
•The analysis is repeated at each level, but the tools used for each level are different.
•The first iteration at level 1 uses tools more suitable for high levels of uncertainty, i.e. Discovery Driven Planning, Probabilistic Decision Analysis
•The 3rd level of iteration uses more conventional management tools, i.e. Linear Stage-Gate, Agile, NPV.
Benefits of the Spiral Approach:
The use of this framework offers the following advantages compared to traditional linear innovation management systems:
• For disruptive innovation projects iterations are needed where customers evaluate a prototype and a new cycle starts, complete with a new VOC, market and business analysis. This framework allows for the iterations to occur in a controlled manner;
• The use of this framework, combined with the right analysis tools, allows for effective financial forecasting even in the early stages of the innovation project where uncertainty is high.
• The initial iterations, where uncertainty and risk are high (represented by the inner spirals on the chart) can be completed quickly and at low cost. Ideas can be rapidly promoted to the next iteration – or discarded. Because initial resource allocation is minimal, resources are made available to focus on projects that have entered iteration 3
• The controlled iteration approach provides a way to properly define the right value for the product or offering, leading to more accurate price estimates.
• In this framework, allocation of time and resources starts at low levels. These increase as the levels go up and the uncertainty is reduced, thus minimizing risk.
• This approach does not compare incremental innovation projects to radical innovation projects in the early stages, a classical mistake made by established leaders which results in the early kill of radical innovation projects.
This framework for the management of innovation projects provides the flexibility needed for successful innovation projects in any industry and the metrics needed for proper measurement of progress and resource allocation. By utilizing this approach, managers insure that radical and disruptive innovation projects have a chance to prove their benefits and create the innovative products and services that companies need to remain competitive.
This method has been used to successfully introduce a disruptive innovation to the construction additives market in Europe. Compared to conventional innovation management approaches, this framework led to the switch from an incremental innovation goal to a disruptive innovation technology with an identified profit potential of 25 MM$/yr.
Resources
A short video that summarizes the Beyond Stage Gate framework for innovation
http://www.slideshare.net/Brioneja/a-new-approach-to-innovation-managment
“Beyond Stage Gate” Framework Presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/Brioneja/brioneja-beyond-stagegate-a-new-approach-for-innovation
Stage-Gate® is a registered trademark from Stage-Gate International’s Product Development Institute Inc.
The Vision, the Product Backlog and the Minimal Viable Product
The Vision, the Product Backlog and the Minimal Viable Product
I find the Lean Startup concept of a minimal viable product (MVP) rather exciting: It entails creating a first product version to test our ideas as quickly and cheaply as possible. This could be a throwaway prototype such as a mock-up or a product increment, working software that is tested and documented. The MVP works together with a build-measure-learn cycle: developing software, gathering customer feedback, and learning from it.
Build, Measure, Learn
With roots in the Scrum tradition, this sounds rather familiar to me: Validating assumptions by gathering customer feedback using product increments is called empirical management or inspect-and-adapt in Scrum.
But Scrum advocates the use of a product backlog containing the outstanding work necessary to create a successful product. How does the backlog fit into the picture? And can the product backlog be helpful to create a minimal viable product?
This blog posts answers this question and investigates how Lean Startup and Scrum concepts can be combined successfully.
The Product Vision
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses,” said Henry Ford famously. A vision, an idea of the future product, is the start of any successful innovation. Without a vision, we lack a shared goal, a common direction.
To reach our goal, we have to decide on an approach or strategy. This includes making assumptions about the target group, the needs the product should address, the key product features, and the value it should create for the organisation developing. I use my vision board to capture and visualise the product strategy.
The strategy’s assumptions must be validated. A great way to do this is to create the minimal viable product and to release it to the target customers and users.
The Product Backlog
Unfortunately, the product strategy is often too coarse-grained and partial to be used as a direct input for writing software. It can therefore be helpful to take an intermediate step, and to identify the work that is required to validate the strategy.
The corresponding items are placed in a sketchy, lightweight product backlog. To put it differently, the backlog is derived from the product strategy; it makes the strategy implementable.
Vision, Product Strategy, Product Backlog
From Backlog to Minimal Viable Product
Once we have a strategy and initial product backlog available, we create the minimum amount of functionality necessary to test our assumptions. This may take a day or two, or one or more sprints with a preference for the shorter timescales. Our goal is to find out quickly if the product generates a positive response amongst the target users and customers, and if the target group members use the product in the intended way. Once we’ve created the MVP, we release it and gather the relevant data.
Strategy, Backlog, and MVP
Note that releasing the MVP can be limited to a small group of users if the respondents are representative for the target group. Google, for instance, released early versions of its Chrome browser internally and asked its employees to test the software and to provide feedback before a first public beta was released in October 2008. A counter example is Google Buzz: The software was apparently loved by Google engineers, but unfortunately not by the rest of the world.
Pivot or Persevere?
Once we’ve gathered and evaluated the feedback, we need to decide if and how to act upon it. If the feedback invalidates any assumptions in the product strategy – which is likely to be the case when a new product is developed – we should adjust it together with the product backlog. Making changes to the strategy is also called pivot.
We may decide to change the target group or the needs selected, for instance; maybe the features or the look and feel envisioned is not right; or the business model does not work as expected, for instance, users never click on the ads displayed. Changing the product strategy can require restocking the backlog. With the backlog updated, we continue with the next cycle, develop a new MVP, and gather new feedback.
Pivot
If the data confirms our strategy, we preserve and adapt the product backlog by incorporating the insights gained. Depending on the quality of the MVP, we may have to throw away any mock-ups and prototypes created so far, and start afresh developing tested and documented software using agile development practices. If the MVP is a product increment, we can progressively transform it into a shippable product using a series of sprints.
Persevere
Summary
Using a minimal viable product is a powerful concept to validate the product backlog that be used in harmony with Scrum’s approach of creating working software, exposing it to customers and users, investigating their feedback, and making the necessary adaptations. Many thanks to @stefanroock for feedback on the first MVP of this post.
If you’ve found this blog post interesting, you are likely to benefit from my Agile Product Management training. The course teaches a combination of Lean Startup, Scrum, Kanban, and Design Thinking techniques. Check it out!
I find the Lean Startup concept of a minimal viable product (MVP) rather exciting: It entails creating a first product version to test our ideas as quickly and cheaply as possible. This could be a throwaway prototype such as a mock-up or a product increment, working software that is tested and documented. The MVP works together with a build-measure-learn cycle: developing software, gathering customer feedback, and learning from it.
Build, Measure, Learn
With roots in the Scrum tradition, this sounds rather familiar to me: Validating assumptions by gathering customer feedback using product increments is called empirical management or inspect-and-adapt in Scrum.
But Scrum advocates the use of a product backlog containing the outstanding work necessary to create a successful product. How does the backlog fit into the picture? And can the product backlog be helpful to create a minimal viable product?
This blog posts answers this question and investigates how Lean Startup and Scrum concepts can be combined successfully.
The Product Vision
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses,” said Henry Ford famously. A vision, an idea of the future product, is the start of any successful innovation. Without a vision, we lack a shared goal, a common direction.
To reach our goal, we have to decide on an approach or strategy. This includes making assumptions about the target group, the needs the product should address, the key product features, and the value it should create for the organisation developing. I use my vision board to capture and visualise the product strategy.
The strategy’s assumptions must be validated. A great way to do this is to create the minimal viable product and to release it to the target customers and users.
The Product Backlog
Unfortunately, the product strategy is often too coarse-grained and partial to be used as a direct input for writing software. It can therefore be helpful to take an intermediate step, and to identify the work that is required to validate the strategy.
The corresponding items are placed in a sketchy, lightweight product backlog. To put it differently, the backlog is derived from the product strategy; it makes the strategy implementable.
Vision, Product Strategy, Product Backlog
From Backlog to Minimal Viable Product
Once we have a strategy and initial product backlog available, we create the minimum amount of functionality necessary to test our assumptions. This may take a day or two, or one or more sprints with a preference for the shorter timescales. Our goal is to find out quickly if the product generates a positive response amongst the target users and customers, and if the target group members use the product in the intended way. Once we’ve created the MVP, we release it and gather the relevant data.
Strategy, Backlog, and MVP
Note that releasing the MVP can be limited to a small group of users if the respondents are representative for the target group. Google, for instance, released early versions of its Chrome browser internally and asked its employees to test the software and to provide feedback before a first public beta was released in October 2008. A counter example is Google Buzz: The software was apparently loved by Google engineers, but unfortunately not by the rest of the world.
Pivot or Persevere?
Once we’ve gathered and evaluated the feedback, we need to decide if and how to act upon it. If the feedback invalidates any assumptions in the product strategy – which is likely to be the case when a new product is developed – we should adjust it together with the product backlog. Making changes to the strategy is also called pivot.
We may decide to change the target group or the needs selected, for instance; maybe the features or the look and feel envisioned is not right; or the business model does not work as expected, for instance, users never click on the ads displayed. Changing the product strategy can require restocking the backlog. With the backlog updated, we continue with the next cycle, develop a new MVP, and gather new feedback.
Pivot
If the data confirms our strategy, we preserve and adapt the product backlog by incorporating the insights gained. Depending on the quality of the MVP, we may have to throw away any mock-ups and prototypes created so far, and start afresh developing tested and documented software using agile development practices. If the MVP is a product increment, we can progressively transform it into a shippable product using a series of sprints.
Persevere
Summary
Using a minimal viable product is a powerful concept to validate the product backlog that be used in harmony with Scrum’s approach of creating working software, exposing it to customers and users, investigating their feedback, and making the necessary adaptations. Many thanks to @stefanroock for feedback on the first MVP of this post.
If you’ve found this blog post interesting, you are likely to benefit from my Agile Product Management training. The course teaches a combination of Lean Startup, Scrum, Kanban, and Design Thinking techniques. Check it out!
Friday, March 16, 2012
Karen Webster's Do's and Don'ts for Payments Innovation
Karen Webster's Do's and Don'ts for Payments Innovation
by Karen Webster
I had an awesome invitation to participate on a panel this year at BAI on Innovation in Financial Services and was not able to make it at the last minute. The format was a moderated Q&A and the laundry list of questions was focused on how FIs need to think about innovation and where to invest. Here is what I would have said had I been able to make it:
It’s a mindset not a business unit. Innovation isn’t the job of a person or a division, it’s what needs to drive the organization. Sure, it is okay to have a central group that is responsible for filtering ideas, even doing some incubating and then diffusing new ideas and products into the broader organization, but thinking that it is someone else’s job to innovate is a sure elevator ride down to the bottom floor. If you don’t believe me, look at the players who are kicking butt today in payments and financial services: PayPal, Intuit, Google, Green Dot (prepaid) and other companies who are defined by the innovation they produce, not by a couple of innovative products produced and launched every now and then.
Some things need to be broken before they can be innovated. This is the whole idea of creative destruction, but with a twist. Innovation is sometimes about improving a core product in new and different ways – such as online banking that becomes a mobile banking environment, for instance. Other times it’s about gutting and rebuilding from scratch. I would put loyalty in that category. Loyalty is one of those things that once made a difference to customers because they were really differentiated, but is now an undifferentiated morass, built primarily around points that are awarded for certain actions. Points, by and large that don’t mean as much as they used to. The new environment of offers and deals has shown the consumer not only that they can get better stuff that way but that rewards and points have become really meaningless and a currency that is not accepted at any of the places that people like to shop. There are exceptions of course, but thinking that loyalty can be innovated on the back of either an offers/deals or points-based scheme is thinking inside a box that first needs to be destroyed.
Just because a competitor is doing something doesn’t mean it’s innovative (or good enough for you to copy). Innovation isn’t necessarily copying what everyone else is doing (although in some cases imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery but a great way to free ride on someone else’s great idea) . My favorite example of this is NFC and mobile payments. Raise your hands if you remember a time a few years ago (a year ago?) when you were virtually tossed out of an issuers office if you tried to talk to them about anything but NFC as a mobile payments strategy. Why, because FIs drank the analyst NFC Kool-Aid (e.g. that 50% of all transactions will be done via NFC-enabled mobile phones by 2010) and no one wanted to risk bucking the pack to try something that actually had a chance of working. Those who did, are players like PayPal and emerging entrepreneurs who are using bar codes and other creative POS enablements to make mobile payments happen – today. Don’t be afraid to copy great ideas, but beware of the perils of groupthink.
Sometimes it’s better to buy or partner it and not build it. FIs are judged by how well they manage risk and protect their customer’s assets. That is big and important stuff. It is also the stuff that turns the IT folks into the corporate version of Cerberus, guarding the gates of hell while their hands are full with other things like compliance. Getting into that queue is a bear. Rather than try, it is often easier to buy or partner with innovators who have built great technology but need distribution and who would love nothing more than to do a deal with a FI. It makes the pace of moving innovation from the drawing board to the marketplace in the FI world a heck of a lot faster not to mention cheaper.
Innovation has to solve a real problem. Technology makes a whole bunch of stuff possible today but that doesn’t mean that it’s worth doing or that consumers will jump on board. Remember Blippy – the platform that posted your transactions to your Facebook news feed? Yep, technology and the Facebook API made that possible and the company CEO was convinced that young people would adopt it because they live such transparent lives. Blippy no longer exists, because even young people thought it was too creepy and it didn’t solve any real problem for them. What problem exists that posting transaction activity to Facebook would solve? Same gig with P2P. Sure, P2P is possible, but the often-described use cases for splitting the lunch check never made any sense because it is not the sort of problem that people lie in bed at night wishing for a solution. Ditto with the dual stripe plastic cards that are credit and debit cards in one. Technology makes it possible but consumers find it confusing. Consumers have to pull a card out of their wallet anyway at the point of sale, is it really that much harder to pull out THE card that she wanted to use? FIs should resist the siren song of innovation for that which really helps consumers solve a problem and for which they would trust their FI to help them solve.
The financial crisis and the difficult regulatory environment that followed really put FIs on the ropes for the last couple of years. So much of their world was in flux, that the last thing anyone thought about (or was rewarded by Wall Street for thinking about) was being innovative. Survival was the name of the game. We’re through that now and the environment for FIs to innovate is now pretty awesome. They have had the chance to evaluate what others have done to see what has worked and what hasn’t. First mover advantage, all of the empirical studies show, isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. It’s often much better to watch what others have done and adapt those learnings to your own market and customer base. That is the opportunity that FIs now have. They still have an amazing customer base, and a sticky one – for better or worse, it is still not all that easy to switch FIs right now. That won’t always be the case as the economy gets stronger. So, now is the time to thoughtfully innovate so that customers are not only well served while they are a somewhat captive audience, but satisfied enough not to switch if and when the time comes when they aren’t.
by Karen Webster
I had an awesome invitation to participate on a panel this year at BAI on Innovation in Financial Services and was not able to make it at the last minute. The format was a moderated Q&A and the laundry list of questions was focused on how FIs need to think about innovation and where to invest. Here is what I would have said had I been able to make it:
It’s a mindset not a business unit. Innovation isn’t the job of a person or a division, it’s what needs to drive the organization. Sure, it is okay to have a central group that is responsible for filtering ideas, even doing some incubating and then diffusing new ideas and products into the broader organization, but thinking that it is someone else’s job to innovate is a sure elevator ride down to the bottom floor. If you don’t believe me, look at the players who are kicking butt today in payments and financial services: PayPal, Intuit, Google, Green Dot (prepaid) and other companies who are defined by the innovation they produce, not by a couple of innovative products produced and launched every now and then.
Some things need to be broken before they can be innovated. This is the whole idea of creative destruction, but with a twist. Innovation is sometimes about improving a core product in new and different ways – such as online banking that becomes a mobile banking environment, for instance. Other times it’s about gutting and rebuilding from scratch. I would put loyalty in that category. Loyalty is one of those things that once made a difference to customers because they were really differentiated, but is now an undifferentiated morass, built primarily around points that are awarded for certain actions. Points, by and large that don’t mean as much as they used to. The new environment of offers and deals has shown the consumer not only that they can get better stuff that way but that rewards and points have become really meaningless and a currency that is not accepted at any of the places that people like to shop. There are exceptions of course, but thinking that loyalty can be innovated on the back of either an offers/deals or points-based scheme is thinking inside a box that first needs to be destroyed.
Just because a competitor is doing something doesn’t mean it’s innovative (or good enough for you to copy). Innovation isn’t necessarily copying what everyone else is doing (although in some cases imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery but a great way to free ride on someone else’s great idea) . My favorite example of this is NFC and mobile payments. Raise your hands if you remember a time a few years ago (a year ago?) when you were virtually tossed out of an issuers office if you tried to talk to them about anything but NFC as a mobile payments strategy. Why, because FIs drank the analyst NFC Kool-Aid (e.g. that 50% of all transactions will be done via NFC-enabled mobile phones by 2010) and no one wanted to risk bucking the pack to try something that actually had a chance of working. Those who did, are players like PayPal and emerging entrepreneurs who are using bar codes and other creative POS enablements to make mobile payments happen – today. Don’t be afraid to copy great ideas, but beware of the perils of groupthink.
Sometimes it’s better to buy or partner it and not build it. FIs are judged by how well they manage risk and protect their customer’s assets. That is big and important stuff. It is also the stuff that turns the IT folks into the corporate version of Cerberus, guarding the gates of hell while their hands are full with other things like compliance. Getting into that queue is a bear. Rather than try, it is often easier to buy or partner with innovators who have built great technology but need distribution and who would love nothing more than to do a deal with a FI. It makes the pace of moving innovation from the drawing board to the marketplace in the FI world a heck of a lot faster not to mention cheaper.
Innovation has to solve a real problem. Technology makes a whole bunch of stuff possible today but that doesn’t mean that it’s worth doing or that consumers will jump on board. Remember Blippy – the platform that posted your transactions to your Facebook news feed? Yep, technology and the Facebook API made that possible and the company CEO was convinced that young people would adopt it because they live such transparent lives. Blippy no longer exists, because even young people thought it was too creepy and it didn’t solve any real problem for them. What problem exists that posting transaction activity to Facebook would solve? Same gig with P2P. Sure, P2P is possible, but the often-described use cases for splitting the lunch check never made any sense because it is not the sort of problem that people lie in bed at night wishing for a solution. Ditto with the dual stripe plastic cards that are credit and debit cards in one. Technology makes it possible but consumers find it confusing. Consumers have to pull a card out of their wallet anyway at the point of sale, is it really that much harder to pull out THE card that she wanted to use? FIs should resist the siren song of innovation for that which really helps consumers solve a problem and for which they would trust their FI to help them solve.
The financial crisis and the difficult regulatory environment that followed really put FIs on the ropes for the last couple of years. So much of their world was in flux, that the last thing anyone thought about (or was rewarded by Wall Street for thinking about) was being innovative. Survival was the name of the game. We’re through that now and the environment for FIs to innovate is now pretty awesome. They have had the chance to evaluate what others have done to see what has worked and what hasn’t. First mover advantage, all of the empirical studies show, isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. It’s often much better to watch what others have done and adapt those learnings to your own market and customer base. That is the opportunity that FIs now have. They still have an amazing customer base, and a sticky one – for better or worse, it is still not all that easy to switch FIs right now. That won’t always be the case as the economy gets stronger. So, now is the time to thoughtfully innovate so that customers are not only well served while they are a somewhat captive audience, but satisfied enough not to switch if and when the time comes when they aren’t.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The 7 Deadly Sins of Innovation
Posted on January 31, 2012 by Matthew E May
According to Scott Anthony, who directs the Asia-Pacific office of innovation consulting and venture-capital firm Innosight, “the seven deadly sins have very clear parallels in the world of innovation, serving as a useful and memorable way to highlight an innovator’s most common mistakes. He highlights those in his recently published book, The Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do It, and shows you how to avoid them.
1. Pride
The sin of pride innovation is forcing your view of quality onto the marketplace, which often results in overshooting. The easiest way to avoid the sin of pride is by taking an external viewpoint to make sure you understand how the customer measures quality. Make sure you are grounded in what the market wants, not what you want.
2. Sloth
Are your innovation efforts slowing to a crawl? That’s sloth. More often than not, innovation simply takes too long. By the time a company gets around to doing something, the window of opportunity has closed. Why does innovation take so long? It’s not really laziness. It’s that people work on the wrong activities, typically by prioritizing analysis over action. It’s all too easy to fill your day with activities that make it feel as if you are making progress tackling a problem.
Avoid it by releasing your inner Edison: “genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.
3. Gluttony
Gluttony is suffering from an addiction to abundant resources and leads to overly slow, overly linear innovation efforts. Deep pockets allow companies to spend too many resources following the wrong strategy. They throw bodies against a problem, but everyone knows that small teams typically move faster than large teams.Avoid it by practicing selective scarcity: constrain resources in the early stages of innovation to enable creativity.
4. Lust
It’s easy to get tempted and distracted by pursuing too many bells and whistles, too many bright, shiny objects. Avoid it by focusing your innovation efforts, remembering that destruction often precedes creation. Stopping is as important as starting. Lust after too many things, and you’ll find that you end up with nothing. Good innovators carefully choose the opportunities they go after.
5. Envy
Envy occurs when innovators inside a company proclaim themselves the chosen ones, and create an us-vs-them relationship between your main business and your new growth areas. Remember, without that core business, there is no corporate innovation. Actively celebrate the efforts and successes of both old and new business areas to avoid the sin of Envy.
6. Wrath
A wrathful leader punishes innovation failures, using lines such as “Failure is not an option.” But in innovation failure is most certainly an option. What kind of message does it send if you punish people who take well-thought-out risks that don’t pan out? Beautiful business plans don’t always turn into beautiful businesses. A void wrath by rewarding behavior, not just outcomes.
7. Greed
Greed has its advantage, but innovators need to make sure they are greedy for the right thing. Greed is sinful when you’re being impatient about growth, and can lead to prioritizing low-potential markets and opportunities. If you look for quick growth, you are forced to look to what exists. The best innovators avoid the temptation to go after large, obvious, immediate markets. These people can be patient for growth. They should absolutely be greedy for results that demonstrate that the approach they are following has merits.
Which of the seven deadly sins are blocking your progress? Do something about it by using the seven avoidance strategies above!
According to Scott Anthony, who directs the Asia-Pacific office of innovation consulting and venture-capital firm Innosight, “the seven deadly sins have very clear parallels in the world of innovation, serving as a useful and memorable way to highlight an innovator’s most common mistakes. He highlights those in his recently published book, The Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works, How to Do It, and shows you how to avoid them.
1. Pride
The sin of pride innovation is forcing your view of quality onto the marketplace, which often results in overshooting. The easiest way to avoid the sin of pride is by taking an external viewpoint to make sure you understand how the customer measures quality. Make sure you are grounded in what the market wants, not what you want.
2. Sloth
Are your innovation efforts slowing to a crawl? That’s sloth. More often than not, innovation simply takes too long. By the time a company gets around to doing something, the window of opportunity has closed. Why does innovation take so long? It’s not really laziness. It’s that people work on the wrong activities, typically by prioritizing analysis over action. It’s all too easy to fill your day with activities that make it feel as if you are making progress tackling a problem.
Avoid it by releasing your inner Edison: “genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.
3. Gluttony
Gluttony is suffering from an addiction to abundant resources and leads to overly slow, overly linear innovation efforts. Deep pockets allow companies to spend too many resources following the wrong strategy. They throw bodies against a problem, but everyone knows that small teams typically move faster than large teams.Avoid it by practicing selective scarcity: constrain resources in the early stages of innovation to enable creativity.
4. Lust
It’s easy to get tempted and distracted by pursuing too many bells and whistles, too many bright, shiny objects. Avoid it by focusing your innovation efforts, remembering that destruction often precedes creation. Stopping is as important as starting. Lust after too many things, and you’ll find that you end up with nothing. Good innovators carefully choose the opportunities they go after.
5. Envy
Envy occurs when innovators inside a company proclaim themselves the chosen ones, and create an us-vs-them relationship between your main business and your new growth areas. Remember, without that core business, there is no corporate innovation. Actively celebrate the efforts and successes of both old and new business areas to avoid the sin of Envy.
6. Wrath
A wrathful leader punishes innovation failures, using lines such as “Failure is not an option.” But in innovation failure is most certainly an option. What kind of message does it send if you punish people who take well-thought-out risks that don’t pan out? Beautiful business plans don’t always turn into beautiful businesses. A void wrath by rewarding behavior, not just outcomes.
7. Greed
Greed has its advantage, but innovators need to make sure they are greedy for the right thing. Greed is sinful when you’re being impatient about growth, and can lead to prioritizing low-potential markets and opportunities. If you look for quick growth, you are forced to look to what exists. The best innovators avoid the temptation to go after large, obvious, immediate markets. These people can be patient for growth. They should absolutely be greedy for results that demonstrate that the approach they are following has merits.
Which of the seven deadly sins are blocking your progress? Do something about it by using the seven avoidance strategies above!
Monday, February 13, 2012
The 9 Most Common Start-up Mistakes
The 9 Most Common Start-up Mistakes
Mistakes are a great way to learn. But why not skip the pain and suffering yourself--at least on these 9 mistakes.
By Jeff Haden | @jeff_haden | Feb 8, 2012
Making mistakes is a great way to learn. Making mistakes is also not particularly fun.
It's a lot more fun to avoid them entirely.
Here are some of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs—and businesspeople in general—tend to make:
1. Think of a plan as an end result. Say you’re agonizing over a business plan; somewhere along the way you've forgotten your goal is to actually start the business. Establish goals, create long-range plans, make to-do lists, and get going.
Most successful people are solid planners and excellent adapters. Get started so you can start adapting.
2. Assume style indicates substance. Logos, identity packages, killer wardrobes, eccentric work spaces... none of those matter if you can't deliver. Businesses are built on go, not show. Your business or personal style will create a memorable brand as long as you deliver.
Just be you. And get to work.
3. Think of business as all-you-can-eat. Ideas are thrilling. Opportunities are tantalizing. Dreams are exciting.
Great, but execution is everything. Take on too much and you do few things well. Keep getting distracted by the latest trend and your best ideas get ignored.
Check out everything on the business menu, but only select a few items at a time. Don't be afraid, or have too big an ego, to start small. Small is almost always your start-up friend.
4. Underestimate the time required. Nothing ever goes as quickly as you predict; in a start-up, time passes in reverse dog years. Create timelines but always factor in scenarios and sensitivities. If you don't reach your estimated sales in six months, what will you do?
An estimate is theoretical. Plans are more concrete. Know what you will do if your timelines are wrong. They will be.
5. Assume perfection is required. Trying to create a product that meets every conceivable customer need? Sooner is almost always better than later, so do a Tim Gunn and make it work. Get to market and then start refining your products or services based on actual customer feedback.
6. Underestimate the money required. It’s easy to underestimate cost when you let hope creep into your calculations. A start-up, no matter how bootstrapped, always has unforeseen costs. Just because you really want something to work out doesn't mean it will magically cost less.
Apply sensitivities and create plans in case your estimates are wrong. Just like your time estimates, they will be.
7. Give up too soon. Success rhymes with excess for good reason: Entrepreneurs who succeed do so because they work harder and longer. Before you give up, take a step back and decide whether additional effort is all that's required to overcome roadblocks or hurdles.
Sometimes it's not the business or the market. Sometimes it's you. Never quit until you’re sure it’s not you.
8. Stop acting silly. If you’re like me your favorite childhood stories involve something stupid you did. (How else would I know the right mixture of sulfur and saltpeter will burn hot enough to turn a Tonka truck into a glop of metal?)
Business is serious enough. Every once in awhile, do something silly. Silly is memorable. Silly makes you feel like a kid again. Laughing at yourself will make the toughest day a lot easier.
9. Adopt expectations. We are all influenced to some extent by what other people think about us. But what do you want? What really matters to you? Live your life based on the opinions of others and you live their lives, not your own.
What matters most is what matters most to you. Always be sure you're living your life. It’s the only one you get.
Mistakes are a great way to learn. But why not skip the pain and suffering yourself--at least on these 9 mistakes.
By Jeff Haden | @jeff_haden | Feb 8, 2012
Making mistakes is a great way to learn. Making mistakes is also not particularly fun.
It's a lot more fun to avoid them entirely.
Here are some of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs—and businesspeople in general—tend to make:
1. Think of a plan as an end result. Say you’re agonizing over a business plan; somewhere along the way you've forgotten your goal is to actually start the business. Establish goals, create long-range plans, make to-do lists, and get going.
Most successful people are solid planners and excellent adapters. Get started so you can start adapting.
2. Assume style indicates substance. Logos, identity packages, killer wardrobes, eccentric work spaces... none of those matter if you can't deliver. Businesses are built on go, not show. Your business or personal style will create a memorable brand as long as you deliver.
Just be you. And get to work.
3. Think of business as all-you-can-eat. Ideas are thrilling. Opportunities are tantalizing. Dreams are exciting.
Great, but execution is everything. Take on too much and you do few things well. Keep getting distracted by the latest trend and your best ideas get ignored.
Check out everything on the business menu, but only select a few items at a time. Don't be afraid, or have too big an ego, to start small. Small is almost always your start-up friend.
4. Underestimate the time required. Nothing ever goes as quickly as you predict; in a start-up, time passes in reverse dog years. Create timelines but always factor in scenarios and sensitivities. If you don't reach your estimated sales in six months, what will you do?
An estimate is theoretical. Plans are more concrete. Know what you will do if your timelines are wrong. They will be.
5. Assume perfection is required. Trying to create a product that meets every conceivable customer need? Sooner is almost always better than later, so do a Tim Gunn and make it work. Get to market and then start refining your products or services based on actual customer feedback.
6. Underestimate the money required. It’s easy to underestimate cost when you let hope creep into your calculations. A start-up, no matter how bootstrapped, always has unforeseen costs. Just because you really want something to work out doesn't mean it will magically cost less.
Apply sensitivities and create plans in case your estimates are wrong. Just like your time estimates, they will be.
7. Give up too soon. Success rhymes with excess for good reason: Entrepreneurs who succeed do so because they work harder and longer. Before you give up, take a step back and decide whether additional effort is all that's required to overcome roadblocks or hurdles.
Sometimes it's not the business or the market. Sometimes it's you. Never quit until you’re sure it’s not you.
8. Stop acting silly. If you’re like me your favorite childhood stories involve something stupid you did. (How else would I know the right mixture of sulfur and saltpeter will burn hot enough to turn a Tonka truck into a glop of metal?)
Business is serious enough. Every once in awhile, do something silly. Silly is memorable. Silly makes you feel like a kid again. Laughing at yourself will make the toughest day a lot easier.
9. Adopt expectations. We are all influenced to some extent by what other people think about us. But what do you want? What really matters to you? Live your life based on the opinions of others and you live their lives, not your own.
What matters most is what matters most to you. Always be sure you're living your life. It’s the only one you get.
Why it is bad to fall in love with your own innovative ideas
I'll Never Fall in Love (with ideas) Again
With apologies to Burt Bacharach for liberating his song title, I want to develop the concept of the innovator as a cold hearted killer, a love 'em and leave 'm type more suited as the villain in a dime store novel more than the passionate, heroic leading man. Because people who fall in love with ideas, or products, often don't have the strength to do what they must. Create a new idea or new product that makes the old one obsolete.
Anyone who has worked as an innovator knows the risk. It's easy to fall in love with an idea. So many ideas are so perfect, so suited for the need or opportunity. But falling in love with an idea is dangerous. Falling in love with an idea means as an innovator you are too close to your ideas to evaluate them effectively, and will miss problems or conflicts in the idea. A good innovator must be as willing to rework ideas and yes, even kill ideas as he or she is to promote an idea. A detached aloofness is probably your best bet, emotion wise.
Falling in love with an idea, however, is an easily forgivable sin, while falling in love with an existing product or service is what stymies innovation and creates lethargy. Far too many organizations have far too many executives in love with ideas that, like fading soap opera actresses have starred in their roles for far too long. Falling in love with existing products or services isn't just dangerous, it's deadly. Look no further than Kodak for example. Kodak continued to stick with the fading actress of film, all the while courting the emerging actress digital, but never made the clean break. Too many people were entranced by film. Too many people were reliant on the business models, revenues and programs that film created. In the end, Kodak was wedded to a corpse, while a patient new bride waited to take its place. Now, that bride may find itself in the arms of another.
Innovators and executives need to be ruthless. In a training program today I asked the class "Who should force your own products into obsolescence?" There are only two possible answers - yourself or everyone else. If you fall in love with ideas or products, and ignore the signals of the market, you will suffer the same outcome as Kodak. If your innovation efforts can be as ruthless as JR Ewing, as cold hearted as Gordon Gecko and as decisive as Churchill, then your innovation efforts will not be in vain. If, on the other hand, you engage in a love affair with your ideas or your existing products, obsolescence will be your only friend.
Love the innovation process, love the creation of new ideas, love the exploration of customer needs. Act with reserve in the evaluation of ideas and be absolutely ruthless when considering the further life of existing products. Because that's how the firms seeking to disrupt your products will look at them.
With apologies to Burt Bacharach for liberating his song title, I want to develop the concept of the innovator as a cold hearted killer, a love 'em and leave 'm type more suited as the villain in a dime store novel more than the passionate, heroic leading man. Because people who fall in love with ideas, or products, often don't have the strength to do what they must. Create a new idea or new product that makes the old one obsolete.
Anyone who has worked as an innovator knows the risk. It's easy to fall in love with an idea. So many ideas are so perfect, so suited for the need or opportunity. But falling in love with an idea is dangerous. Falling in love with an idea means as an innovator you are too close to your ideas to evaluate them effectively, and will miss problems or conflicts in the idea. A good innovator must be as willing to rework ideas and yes, even kill ideas as he or she is to promote an idea. A detached aloofness is probably your best bet, emotion wise.
Falling in love with an idea, however, is an easily forgivable sin, while falling in love with an existing product or service is what stymies innovation and creates lethargy. Far too many organizations have far too many executives in love with ideas that, like fading soap opera actresses have starred in their roles for far too long. Falling in love with existing products or services isn't just dangerous, it's deadly. Look no further than Kodak for example. Kodak continued to stick with the fading actress of film, all the while courting the emerging actress digital, but never made the clean break. Too many people were entranced by film. Too many people were reliant on the business models, revenues and programs that film created. In the end, Kodak was wedded to a corpse, while a patient new bride waited to take its place. Now, that bride may find itself in the arms of another.
Innovators and executives need to be ruthless. In a training program today I asked the class "Who should force your own products into obsolescence?" There are only two possible answers - yourself or everyone else. If you fall in love with ideas or products, and ignore the signals of the market, you will suffer the same outcome as Kodak. If your innovation efforts can be as ruthless as JR Ewing, as cold hearted as Gordon Gecko and as decisive as Churchill, then your innovation efforts will not be in vain. If, on the other hand, you engage in a love affair with your ideas or your existing products, obsolescence will be your only friend.
Love the innovation process, love the creation of new ideas, love the exploration of customer needs. Act with reserve in the evaluation of ideas and be absolutely ruthless when considering the further life of existing products. Because that's how the firms seeking to disrupt your products will look at them.
What holds companies back from innovating?
Beyond Business as Usual
Posted on February 8, 2012 by Jeffrey Phillips
http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2012/02/08/beyond-business-as-usual/
Models and Other Barriers That Stymie Innovation
When I wrote Relentless Innovation, I hoped to uncover some of factors that allow firms like 3M, Google, Apple, P&G and Gore to sustain innovation over time, while remaining efficient and productive. In the book I identify two factors that sustain efficiency and can become barriers to innovation: “business as usual” operating models and middle managers who sustain business as usual. In this article, I’d like to build on those two factors by examining other, less evident barriers and conflicts that a modern business creates for innovation.
Here’s the question I’ve set myself, hoping to expound: Does the existing emphasis on efficiency and short term profitability create barriers for innovation? Honestly, I think the answer is “yes”, based on my consulting experiences and my observations of the struggles many firms have to become more innovative. If the answer to the first question is “yes”, then the next question is: what is it about a focus on efficiency and short term profitability that creates barriers to innovation. In this short paper I’ll look beyond business as usual to examine some of the mental models and resource constraints that block innovation.
Expectations
The first barrier to innovation is expectations. Many firms have a well-defined operating model with very specific processes. This operating model has been constantly refined over time, and it is efficient because the model works to a consistent set of inputs and outputs. The processes and models expect simple concepts and are engineered to accommodate products, services and business models that are closely aligned to the products, services and business models that preceded them. The model will remain highly efficient as long as expectations are met. The more new ideas and new products look like and act like existing ideas and products, the more efficient the model becomes. Thus, there is an inherent bias toward incremental change or even more simply continuous improvement. Existing models begin to break down when expectations change dramatically. If customer needs change significantly or the market shifts significantly or new competitors force significant change, existing operating models can’t adjust, because they are tuned to work under existing expectations.
No one wants to inflict change on a highly structured, highly engineered operating model. Everyone recognizes the investments that were necessary to construct and optimize the operating model, so rather than force changes or change expectations, managers insulate the operating model from outside influences and unnecessary change. These actions simply reinforce the rigid structure of the operating model, and make it even more difficult to introduce radically new products and services. Operating models are creatures of our own creation, but just when we need to change them they work against change.
Perspectives
The second barrier is based on our perspectives. A focus on short term profitability (ie making the next quarter) has radically reduced the vision and time horizons most businesses seek to understand and achieve. As the time horizons shrink, efforts to understand and uncover future trends and market needs seem less important. The focus on short term profitability creates a vicious circle, placing less and less emphasis on future needs, opportunities and threats and reinforcing the ever smaller time horizon, to the point where many firms have little or no understanding of the emerging trends and potential significant market shifts or competitive threats. As time horizons and perspectives shrink, managers and executives become ever more comfortable in the predictability of the adopted time horizon, and become uncomfortable with exploring time horizons that are beyond their comfort zone. Yet no firm can control the externalities and changes even within its chosen time horizons, and all are buffeted by changes outside of their control and chosen time horizons. Rather than seek to understand the potential future, executives become comfortable with what appears to be far more predictable short term horizons, constantly surprised by the shifts that are just outside their perspectives.
Worse, the acceptance of short term horizons creates the expectation of a future that looks very much like the present, and people and ideas that question a static future are rejected. What’s more, anything that can’t be predicted or scheduled is considered to be “uncertain”, and our perspectives reject any uncertainty within the operating model. At a time when managers should be broadening their perspectives, the emphasis is on a short term perspective.
Attitudes
The third barrier is attitudes. Many commentators, me included, have accused tools such as Six Sigma and Lean as contributing to the barriers to innovation. Thinking more deeply, it is obvious that the tools aren’t to blame, but the attitudes the tools promote are to blame. Six Sigma, Lean and other management tools are focused on improving what exists, taking out costs and redundancy and improving efficiency and productivity. While there is nothing wrong with incremental innovation, your most significant competitors aren’t focused on small changes. The disrupters in your market don’t plan to overtake you one small feature at a time. They hope to completely upset the existing order. At the same time, market shifts, customer expectations and new entrants are changing the playing field. Continuous improvement and incremental innovation are valuable as long as the product life cycles are long and entry into a market is difficult, but these barriers are falling rapidly.
Our attitudes are based on competition, markets, economies, product life cycles and profit curves that were true in the 80s, 90s and into the turn of the century, but are increasingly being called into question or have already been overturned. Our attitudes about competitors, new entrants, markets and customers have been shaped by forces that are changing. Therefore, our attitudes must change as well.
Risk tolerances
The fourth barrier is risk. Over time the balance between risk and reward has been lost. Many businesses seek to eliminate risk, rather than explore the tradeoffs between appropriate risk and ensuing reward. As time horizons shrink and efficiency measures increase, managers believe they have eliminated or tamed risk. Instead, what most businesses have created are organizations that reject all risk rather than seeking interesting, valuable opportunities with acceptable risk. Increasingly, any and all risk seems dangerous, rather than representing potential opportunities to exploit. Every action a business takes has risk associated with it, but the only risk that seems to matter is the risk of introducing new products or the risk of change. The risks of status quo are de-emphasized or ignored. The risk of standing still while the pace of change in the environment is accelerating is actually the greatest risk.
Over time, expectations, attitudes and perspectives have led many businesses to reject risk, or to seek to contain it. Anything new, any change or change that introduces uncertainty is deemed too risky to pursue. What’s strange is that every business is born from a risky decision – the entrepreneurial idea – but many become inured to risk and seek to isolate themselves from risk, rather than embracing risk in appropriate ways and at appropriate times. Too many managers are focusing on the wrong risks, while ignoring the greatest risk of all, the risk of doing nothing.
Resource Availability
The fifth barrier is resources. A constant, persistent focus on efficiency has left most firms operating on the bleeding edge of productivity, with no resources or bandwidth available for anything other than achieving short term financial goals. There is no time, no money, no interest in exploring new ideas, and even within the few people who have an interest, there is no incentive to do so. Everything in the business is optimized to focus on short term achievement of financial goals, efficient and productive. There’s simply no room, no resource, and increasingly no skill or capability to explore something new. Even if, by some unseen accident a valuable new idea is created, there’s no funding and no ability to convert the idea into a new product or service, and no marketing funds or personnel to launch a new concept effectively. The modern organization is a paragon of efficiency, to its innovation detriment.
All the while, markets, customers, competitors, demographics, and other factors are shifting and accelerating, increasing the demand for more new products with far different capabilities and features. Time scales are shifting and new business models are emerging. We’ve built, in many cases, a perfect operating model to compete in the market conditions extant in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when we need a corporate model that can compete effectively in a time that demands more agile, creative, insightful firms that anticipate customer needs and produce new products, services and business models far more quickly, and on a far more regular basis.
Conclusion
I’ve established that existing corporate models are paragons of efficiency and short term achievement. The “business as usual” frameworks are built to sustain efficiency and, based on the discussion above, reject or tamp down innovation. Yet we also know that a handful of firms manage to innovate and remain consistently efficient in their operations, demonstrating that the efficiency/innovation spectrum does not have to be mutually exclusive. What can we learn from firms like P&G, 3M, Apple, Google and Gore that we can use and translate into other businesses?
I think the most important idea is that existing “business as usual”, focused on efficiency and short term profitability, is important, but must not become the sole focus of the business. Historically there’s been a better balance between efficiency and innovation, and the best firms understand that that balance must be restored and maintained. Firms cannot reduce their focus on efficiency, but must increase their focus and capabilities where innovation is concerned, restoring a balance between short term profitability and efficiency and longer term investments in innovation. The relentless innovators I’ve described above understand this and manage to instill what I call an “innovation business as usual” operating model. In this model, efficiency is important but innovation is also valued. Equal weight and emphasis are placed on both goals, so that the firm uses inputs and resources effectively but also consistently generates valuable, interesting new products and services.
The longer a “business as usual” framework is in place and the more it is reinforced, the more this outcome effects expectations, perspectives, attitudes, resource levels and risk tolerances. As Aristotle said, “You are what you repeatedly do”. To paraphrase the rest of his quotation: “Innovation, then is not an act but a habit.” Without intending to do so, corporate thinking, time horizons and risk tolerances have become cramped, based on an increasing focus on efficiency and short term profitability, choking off the potential for innovation. We can’t simply become more innovative by introducing new tools and methods, we must understand the existing attitudes, expectations and perspectives and influence or change them as well.
Posted on February 8, 2012 by Jeffrey Phillips
http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2012/02/08/beyond-business-as-usual/
Models and Other Barriers That Stymie Innovation
When I wrote Relentless Innovation, I hoped to uncover some of factors that allow firms like 3M, Google, Apple, P&G and Gore to sustain innovation over time, while remaining efficient and productive. In the book I identify two factors that sustain efficiency and can become barriers to innovation: “business as usual” operating models and middle managers who sustain business as usual. In this article, I’d like to build on those two factors by examining other, less evident barriers and conflicts that a modern business creates for innovation.
Here’s the question I’ve set myself, hoping to expound: Does the existing emphasis on efficiency and short term profitability create barriers for innovation? Honestly, I think the answer is “yes”, based on my consulting experiences and my observations of the struggles many firms have to become more innovative. If the answer to the first question is “yes”, then the next question is: what is it about a focus on efficiency and short term profitability that creates barriers to innovation. In this short paper I’ll look beyond business as usual to examine some of the mental models and resource constraints that block innovation.
Expectations
The first barrier to innovation is expectations. Many firms have a well-defined operating model with very specific processes. This operating model has been constantly refined over time, and it is efficient because the model works to a consistent set of inputs and outputs. The processes and models expect simple concepts and are engineered to accommodate products, services and business models that are closely aligned to the products, services and business models that preceded them. The model will remain highly efficient as long as expectations are met. The more new ideas and new products look like and act like existing ideas and products, the more efficient the model becomes. Thus, there is an inherent bias toward incremental change or even more simply continuous improvement. Existing models begin to break down when expectations change dramatically. If customer needs change significantly or the market shifts significantly or new competitors force significant change, existing operating models can’t adjust, because they are tuned to work under existing expectations.
No one wants to inflict change on a highly structured, highly engineered operating model. Everyone recognizes the investments that were necessary to construct and optimize the operating model, so rather than force changes or change expectations, managers insulate the operating model from outside influences and unnecessary change. These actions simply reinforce the rigid structure of the operating model, and make it even more difficult to introduce radically new products and services. Operating models are creatures of our own creation, but just when we need to change them they work against change.
Perspectives
The second barrier is based on our perspectives. A focus on short term profitability (ie making the next quarter) has radically reduced the vision and time horizons most businesses seek to understand and achieve. As the time horizons shrink, efforts to understand and uncover future trends and market needs seem less important. The focus on short term profitability creates a vicious circle, placing less and less emphasis on future needs, opportunities and threats and reinforcing the ever smaller time horizon, to the point where many firms have little or no understanding of the emerging trends and potential significant market shifts or competitive threats. As time horizons and perspectives shrink, managers and executives become ever more comfortable in the predictability of the adopted time horizon, and become uncomfortable with exploring time horizons that are beyond their comfort zone. Yet no firm can control the externalities and changes even within its chosen time horizons, and all are buffeted by changes outside of their control and chosen time horizons. Rather than seek to understand the potential future, executives become comfortable with what appears to be far more predictable short term horizons, constantly surprised by the shifts that are just outside their perspectives.
Worse, the acceptance of short term horizons creates the expectation of a future that looks very much like the present, and people and ideas that question a static future are rejected. What’s more, anything that can’t be predicted or scheduled is considered to be “uncertain”, and our perspectives reject any uncertainty within the operating model. At a time when managers should be broadening their perspectives, the emphasis is on a short term perspective.
Attitudes
The third barrier is attitudes. Many commentators, me included, have accused tools such as Six Sigma and Lean as contributing to the barriers to innovation. Thinking more deeply, it is obvious that the tools aren’t to blame, but the attitudes the tools promote are to blame. Six Sigma, Lean and other management tools are focused on improving what exists, taking out costs and redundancy and improving efficiency and productivity. While there is nothing wrong with incremental innovation, your most significant competitors aren’t focused on small changes. The disrupters in your market don’t plan to overtake you one small feature at a time. They hope to completely upset the existing order. At the same time, market shifts, customer expectations and new entrants are changing the playing field. Continuous improvement and incremental innovation are valuable as long as the product life cycles are long and entry into a market is difficult, but these barriers are falling rapidly.
Our attitudes are based on competition, markets, economies, product life cycles and profit curves that were true in the 80s, 90s and into the turn of the century, but are increasingly being called into question or have already been overturned. Our attitudes about competitors, new entrants, markets and customers have been shaped by forces that are changing. Therefore, our attitudes must change as well.
Risk tolerances
The fourth barrier is risk. Over time the balance between risk and reward has been lost. Many businesses seek to eliminate risk, rather than explore the tradeoffs between appropriate risk and ensuing reward. As time horizons shrink and efficiency measures increase, managers believe they have eliminated or tamed risk. Instead, what most businesses have created are organizations that reject all risk rather than seeking interesting, valuable opportunities with acceptable risk. Increasingly, any and all risk seems dangerous, rather than representing potential opportunities to exploit. Every action a business takes has risk associated with it, but the only risk that seems to matter is the risk of introducing new products or the risk of change. The risks of status quo are de-emphasized or ignored. The risk of standing still while the pace of change in the environment is accelerating is actually the greatest risk.
Over time, expectations, attitudes and perspectives have led many businesses to reject risk, or to seek to contain it. Anything new, any change or change that introduces uncertainty is deemed too risky to pursue. What’s strange is that every business is born from a risky decision – the entrepreneurial idea – but many become inured to risk and seek to isolate themselves from risk, rather than embracing risk in appropriate ways and at appropriate times. Too many managers are focusing on the wrong risks, while ignoring the greatest risk of all, the risk of doing nothing.
Resource Availability
The fifth barrier is resources. A constant, persistent focus on efficiency has left most firms operating on the bleeding edge of productivity, with no resources or bandwidth available for anything other than achieving short term financial goals. There is no time, no money, no interest in exploring new ideas, and even within the few people who have an interest, there is no incentive to do so. Everything in the business is optimized to focus on short term achievement of financial goals, efficient and productive. There’s simply no room, no resource, and increasingly no skill or capability to explore something new. Even if, by some unseen accident a valuable new idea is created, there’s no funding and no ability to convert the idea into a new product or service, and no marketing funds or personnel to launch a new concept effectively. The modern organization is a paragon of efficiency, to its innovation detriment.
All the while, markets, customers, competitors, demographics, and other factors are shifting and accelerating, increasing the demand for more new products with far different capabilities and features. Time scales are shifting and new business models are emerging. We’ve built, in many cases, a perfect operating model to compete in the market conditions extant in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when we need a corporate model that can compete effectively in a time that demands more agile, creative, insightful firms that anticipate customer needs and produce new products, services and business models far more quickly, and on a far more regular basis.
Conclusion
I’ve established that existing corporate models are paragons of efficiency and short term achievement. The “business as usual” frameworks are built to sustain efficiency and, based on the discussion above, reject or tamp down innovation. Yet we also know that a handful of firms manage to innovate and remain consistently efficient in their operations, demonstrating that the efficiency/innovation spectrum does not have to be mutually exclusive. What can we learn from firms like P&G, 3M, Apple, Google and Gore that we can use and translate into other businesses?
I think the most important idea is that existing “business as usual”, focused on efficiency and short term profitability, is important, but must not become the sole focus of the business. Historically there’s been a better balance between efficiency and innovation, and the best firms understand that that balance must be restored and maintained. Firms cannot reduce their focus on efficiency, but must increase their focus and capabilities where innovation is concerned, restoring a balance between short term profitability and efficiency and longer term investments in innovation. The relentless innovators I’ve described above understand this and manage to instill what I call an “innovation business as usual” operating model. In this model, efficiency is important but innovation is also valued. Equal weight and emphasis are placed on both goals, so that the firm uses inputs and resources effectively but also consistently generates valuable, interesting new products and services.
The longer a “business as usual” framework is in place and the more it is reinforced, the more this outcome effects expectations, perspectives, attitudes, resource levels and risk tolerances. As Aristotle said, “You are what you repeatedly do”. To paraphrase the rest of his quotation: “Innovation, then is not an act but a habit.” Without intending to do so, corporate thinking, time horizons and risk tolerances have become cramped, based on an increasing focus on efficiency and short term profitability, choking off the potential for innovation. We can’t simply become more innovative by introducing new tools and methods, we must understand the existing attitudes, expectations and perspectives and influence or change them as well.
Five Essential Questions to test the Viability of an Idea
5 essential questions to test the viability of an idea February 8, 2012 | By Chuck Frey | Category: Best Practices
Send to a Friend Comments
Scott Anthony, author of the new book, The Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works. How To Do It, has developed a set of 5 questions that he uses to gauge the commercial viability of any new idea:
1. Is there an important problem that customers can't address because existing solutions are expensive or inconvenient? Is there a high-potential job to be done?
2. Is there a disruptive way to solve the problem in a simpler, more convenient or more affordable way?
3. Is there a plausible hypothesis about an economically attractive, scalable business model? Answering this question doesn't require a detailed financial model, but it does require a sensible story that's at least conceivable - an a plan to turn that hypothesis into reality.
4. Does the team have the right stuff to course-correct according to in-market learning? Remember, the odds are high that the first idea isn't quite right. A team that is dogmatic and keeps trying to prove it is right is the wrong team for many innovation efforts.
5. Can early profitability be a choice? Ultimate success requires a profitable model. The sooner there is a line of sight to profits, the better.
Anthony adds that looking at patterns is often a way to get an accurate read on the potential value of an idea:
"If you are trying to figure out if your idea, approach or plan has merit, go back and look at history. Look at what you or other people tried. What worked or what didn't? ...ask the question, 'What does history teach us?'"
While looking to the past may sound antithetical to innovation, it does have some merit. You already know from past experience what types of ideas are likely to be accepted in your organization, and those which tend to go down in flames because certain leaders and managers simply reject them outright. You can learn from past idea-selling efforts, and tailor your presentation for your new idea accordingly.
Send to a Friend Comments
Scott Anthony, author of the new book, The Little Black Book of Innovation: How It Works. How To Do It, has developed a set of 5 questions that he uses to gauge the commercial viability of any new idea:
1. Is there an important problem that customers can't address because existing solutions are expensive or inconvenient? Is there a high-potential job to be done?
2. Is there a disruptive way to solve the problem in a simpler, more convenient or more affordable way?
3. Is there a plausible hypothesis about an economically attractive, scalable business model? Answering this question doesn't require a detailed financial model, but it does require a sensible story that's at least conceivable - an a plan to turn that hypothesis into reality.
4. Does the team have the right stuff to course-correct according to in-market learning? Remember, the odds are high that the first idea isn't quite right. A team that is dogmatic and keeps trying to prove it is right is the wrong team for many innovation efforts.
5. Can early profitability be a choice? Ultimate success requires a profitable model. The sooner there is a line of sight to profits, the better.
Anthony adds that looking at patterns is often a way to get an accurate read on the potential value of an idea:
"If you are trying to figure out if your idea, approach or plan has merit, go back and look at history. Look at what you or other people tried. What worked or what didn't? ...ask the question, 'What does history teach us?'"
While looking to the past may sound antithetical to innovation, it does have some merit. You already know from past experience what types of ideas are likely to be accepted in your organization, and those which tend to go down in flames because certain leaders and managers simply reject them outright. You can learn from past idea-selling efforts, and tailor your presentation for your new idea accordingly.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The Corporate Innovation Machine
The Corporate Innovation MachineA simple model for implementing an idea management based innovation strategy in your firm
The corporate innovation machine is a model for understanding how to implement an effective, idea management based innovation strategy in your firm. As with any machine, the corporate innovation machine comprises several components, all of which must work together for the machine to function properly. When the entire machine does work, it builds ideas, evaluates those ideas and implements the best ideas as new product, service and operational improvements which translate into increased revenues for your firm.
Powered by management
The corporate innovation machine is powered by management. Just as the most sophisticated machine will not run without a power source, likewise your corporate innovation strategy will go nowhere without top management taking the lead.
Management's main task is to create within the organisation a culture of innovation which will empower workers to think creatively, collaborate on ideas and contribute their ideas to the company. This is not an easy task, but done well it will make construction of the remainder of the innovation machine a relatively easy job.
Management must...
Ensure there is an environment of trust
Establish innovation goals
Designate responsibility and resources
Develop a communications plan
Demonstrate innovation
Reduce creative risk
Establish a rewards scheme
Idea Generator
If management is the power source of the innovation machine, then the idea generator – the tools and techniques for generating ideas – is the motor that drives the innovation process.
Principles
In order to understand how the tools and techniques function, it is important to understand a few key principles...
Creativity versus innovation
Individual creativity versus organisational creativity
Creative collaboration
- creative teams
- brainstorming groups
- networking
- open collaboration via Internet/intranet
Squelching (avoiding)
Tools & techniques
Organisations should have a small “toolbox” of tools and techniques for facilitating innovation. The central tool should be an idea management system capable of soliciting, capturing and evaluating ideas. Properly used, such a tool permits a steady stream of innovative ideas for implementation. Other tools, such as skunkworks, brainstorming, creative spaces and creative meetings further your organisation's innovation potential. Available tools include...
Suggestion scheme idea management: flawed
Campaign based idea management: best approach
- decentralised management
- total open collaboration
- open to entire workforce
- intuitive & easy to use
- semi-anonymous idea submission
Brainstorming
Skunkworks
Idea quality control: evaluation
The more successful an idea management programme is, the more ideas it will generate. As a result, you need an efficient quality control system. Some organisations have highly structured systems comprising multi-stepped systems for reviewing ideas. While this can be effective, it is also important to retain flexibility in the system. If an idea is clearly a winner, it is often wise to "run with it" immediately, before your competition learns of the idea.
Idea quality control has several components
Gut feeling
5x5 Evaluation matrix
Open analysis meeting
Pre-implementation
Output: implemented ideas
Once ideas pass all required quality control processes, they are ready to be implemented. Most companies already have effective implementation procedures for new products, services or operations. If you do not, you should run ideas campaigns on improving these procedures.
In addition, it is important to...
Monitor the results of the idea implementations
Communicate, via the communication plan (see above)
Reward the people who have submitted and implemented ideas
Maintaining the machine
It is important to monitor the results of your innovation strategy and tweak it over time in order to improve results. A major review after six months and annually thereafter allows you to evaluate the results, determine weak points and improve the functioning of your innovation strategy.
Beware the Cult of Ideas
Beware the Cult of IdeasThe Cult of Ideas is a dangerous cult lurking within the field of corporate innovation. It is a disturbing cult in which members worship massive numbers of ideas above all else. On the surface, this seems a good thing. After all, innovations are founded on ideas, are they not? So, if a company wants to innovate, the more ideas it creates the better. Sadly, however, the ugly truth is that the cult of ideas can actually stifle creativity and inhibit innovation.
What is the Cult of Ideas?
The Cult of Ideas is the worship of large numbers of ideas above all else in innovation. You see it when Starbucks proudly proclaims that they have received over 100,000 ideas from their on-line suggestion web site. You see it when IBM brags of Idea Jams that generate many tens of thousands of ideas. You see it whenever a company boasts of an innovation initiative solely based on the number of ideas collected.
It is easy to understand why the Cult of Ideas has grown so powerful in recent years. Most senior managers come from analytical backgrounds, often with MBAs from prestigious university. And that background has generally served them well as they manage operations in ever more complex businesses.
Unfortunately, finding meaningful numbers in the innovation process can be tricky. Technology and pharmaceutical companies can count their patents – and many do. But patents fail to measure operational efficiency and business model innovation, which are also important. Moreover, many innovative firms take out few if any patents. The number of new products launched every year, or the income generated by products introduced in the past five years is another approach for measuring product innovation – but it also fails to recognise other forms of innovation. Moreover, a visit to any supermarket suggests we must question whether the introduction of new products truly represents innovation. A look at all the variations of Nivea shampoo products, many of which claim to be “new”, for instance, is hardly indicative of product innovation.
So managers have latched on to the counting of ideas and the assumption that lots and lots of ideas must be a good thing. This has been enhanced by innovation service providers who also espouse the notion that more ideas are better than fewer. And from this situation has grown the Cult of Ideas.
Innovation Consultants Also to Blame
The Cult of Ideas is not inhabited only by analytical senior managers. Many innovation consultants, familiar with brainstorming methodology and creative problem solving, have learned to stress the importance of generating a lot of ideas in hopes of finding a few gems. Brainstorms, for instance, are often judged by the number of ideas generated. Likewise, idea management software vendors will boast about the number of ideas their software can generate, conveniently forgetting that it is employees and not the software that generates ideas.
Why Is This a Bad Thing?
Why is the Cult of Ideas a bad thing? Of course ideas in their own right are not bad at all. I should know, I have lots of them myself. So many, I sometimes want to switch them off. Indeed, it used to concern my girlfriend that I would always come up with ideas about new businesses to launch, new activities to do and new paths to follow. These ideas worried her. Surely, she thought, it could not be a good thing for me to do so many things or to throw away everything I have done professionally in order to follow some whim. But as she has come to know me, she has learned that I have even more ideas than she has shoes. She knows that I will talk about an idea today and forget about it tomorrow. So, today, she smiles knowingly whenever I announce a crazy idea and only begins to worry when I continue to talk about an idea for an extended period of time. Nevertheless, she reminds me from time to time, that my ideas can easily become a distraction from getting anything productive done.
She is right of course (but for goodness sakes, don’t tell her I said that!). Moreover, the same thing is true for companies. If they measure innovation by the number of ideas generated and focus too much on generating lots of ideas, rather than implementing ideas, they fail to get anything productive done. But, of course, innovation is not about ideas, it is about being productive with those ideas. It is about implementing them and generating value.
Real Innovators Demonstrate Innovation
Think about it for a moment. Companies – like Gore, Google, Apple and others – that we think of as true innovators never brag about how many ideas they generate in this initiative or that initiative. Rather they demonstrate innovation. Indeed, take a look at Fast Company’s list of most innovative companies (http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2011/). Those on the top ten are recognised for their innovations and not for quantities of ideas.
What Can You Do?
The solution is simple. If you want to innovate, you need to innovate. This means your focus should not be on the number of ideas generated, but the value generated through implemented ideas. A million ideas will do you no good if you do not implement any of them!
In order to innovate, you need an end to end innovation plan that looks not only at idea generation, but also on focusing idea generation on strategy, evaluating ideas efficiently and developing processes to implement the more outlandish ideas that could be breakthrough innovations. You can learn more about how to develop an innovation plan in my book The Way of the Innovation Master (see below).
Instead of simply trying to wring as many ideas as you can out of each employee, allow employees time to develop ideas. Companies like Google and 3M are famous for allowing their employees to use 20% of their time to work on personal projects. Many great ideas have come from this personal time. Indeed, Google’s founders have recently “tracked the progress of ideas that they had backed versus ideas that had been executed in the ranks without support from above, and discovered a higher success rate in the latter category.”(1)
Moreover, think about what you would like employees to be doing during that 20% of their time: generating as many ideas as they can or developing a small number of ideas into experimental projects.
Likewise, your company should not be focusing on generating as many ideas as possible. Rather it should be focusing on developing a small number of interesting ideas into trial projects.
References
1) Teresa M. Amabile and Mukti Khaire (October 2008) “Creativity and the Role of the Leader”, Harvard Business Review, http://hbr.org/2008/10/creativity-and-the-role-of-the-leader/ar/1
What is the Cult of Ideas?
The Cult of Ideas is the worship of large numbers of ideas above all else in innovation. You see it when Starbucks proudly proclaims that they have received over 100,000 ideas from their on-line suggestion web site. You see it when IBM brags of Idea Jams that generate many tens of thousands of ideas. You see it whenever a company boasts of an innovation initiative solely based on the number of ideas collected.
It is easy to understand why the Cult of Ideas has grown so powerful in recent years. Most senior managers come from analytical backgrounds, often with MBAs from prestigious university. And that background has generally served them well as they manage operations in ever more complex businesses.
Unfortunately, finding meaningful numbers in the innovation process can be tricky. Technology and pharmaceutical companies can count their patents – and many do. But patents fail to measure operational efficiency and business model innovation, which are also important. Moreover, many innovative firms take out few if any patents. The number of new products launched every year, or the income generated by products introduced in the past five years is another approach for measuring product innovation – but it also fails to recognise other forms of innovation. Moreover, a visit to any supermarket suggests we must question whether the introduction of new products truly represents innovation. A look at all the variations of Nivea shampoo products, many of which claim to be “new”, for instance, is hardly indicative of product innovation.
So managers have latched on to the counting of ideas and the assumption that lots and lots of ideas must be a good thing. This has been enhanced by innovation service providers who also espouse the notion that more ideas are better than fewer. And from this situation has grown the Cult of Ideas.
Innovation Consultants Also to Blame
The Cult of Ideas is not inhabited only by analytical senior managers. Many innovation consultants, familiar with brainstorming methodology and creative problem solving, have learned to stress the importance of generating a lot of ideas in hopes of finding a few gems. Brainstorms, for instance, are often judged by the number of ideas generated. Likewise, idea management software vendors will boast about the number of ideas their software can generate, conveniently forgetting that it is employees and not the software that generates ideas.
Why Is This a Bad Thing?
Why is the Cult of Ideas a bad thing? Of course ideas in their own right are not bad at all. I should know, I have lots of them myself. So many, I sometimes want to switch them off. Indeed, it used to concern my girlfriend that I would always come up with ideas about new businesses to launch, new activities to do and new paths to follow. These ideas worried her. Surely, she thought, it could not be a good thing for me to do so many things or to throw away everything I have done professionally in order to follow some whim. But as she has come to know me, she has learned that I have even more ideas than she has shoes. She knows that I will talk about an idea today and forget about it tomorrow. So, today, she smiles knowingly whenever I announce a crazy idea and only begins to worry when I continue to talk about an idea for an extended period of time. Nevertheless, she reminds me from time to time, that my ideas can easily become a distraction from getting anything productive done.
She is right of course (but for goodness sakes, don’t tell her I said that!). Moreover, the same thing is true for companies. If they measure innovation by the number of ideas generated and focus too much on generating lots of ideas, rather than implementing ideas, they fail to get anything productive done. But, of course, innovation is not about ideas, it is about being productive with those ideas. It is about implementing them and generating value.
Real Innovators Demonstrate Innovation
Think about it for a moment. Companies – like Gore, Google, Apple and others – that we think of as true innovators never brag about how many ideas they generate in this initiative or that initiative. Rather they demonstrate innovation. Indeed, take a look at Fast Company’s list of most innovative companies (http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2011/). Those on the top ten are recognised for their innovations and not for quantities of ideas.
What Can You Do?
The solution is simple. If you want to innovate, you need to innovate. This means your focus should not be on the number of ideas generated, but the value generated through implemented ideas. A million ideas will do you no good if you do not implement any of them!
In order to innovate, you need an end to end innovation plan that looks not only at idea generation, but also on focusing idea generation on strategy, evaluating ideas efficiently and developing processes to implement the more outlandish ideas that could be breakthrough innovations. You can learn more about how to develop an innovation plan in my book The Way of the Innovation Master (see below).
Instead of simply trying to wring as many ideas as you can out of each employee, allow employees time to develop ideas. Companies like Google and 3M are famous for allowing their employees to use 20% of their time to work on personal projects. Many great ideas have come from this personal time. Indeed, Google’s founders have recently “tracked the progress of ideas that they had backed versus ideas that had been executed in the ranks without support from above, and discovered a higher success rate in the latter category.”(1)
Moreover, think about what you would like employees to be doing during that 20% of their time: generating as many ideas as they can or developing a small number of ideas into experimental projects.
Likewise, your company should not be focusing on generating as many ideas as possible. Rather it should be focusing on developing a small number of interesting ideas into trial projects.
References
1) Teresa M. Amabile and Mukti Khaire (October 2008) “Creativity and the Role of the Leader”, Harvard Business Review, http://hbr.org/2008/10/creativity-and-the-role-of-the-leader/ar/1
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