Picture this: In 1979, chances are you’d be reading your news in a printed newspaper or magazine. Today, you may well be reading your news on your computer, or perhaps your iPhone, Blackberry or iPad. It’s hardly a surprise that the Internet – along with...
Risk management may be the “great divide” that separates styles of innovation management and, for that matter, styles of management in general. Indeed, it’s often the risk management part of the corporate playbook that separates true innovation results from mere activity and, ultimately, success from...
Here’s another shocking proclamation: Not only is creativity a joke, so is innovation! That’s right, I’m proclaiming that innovation is a joke, too! Now why am I saying that? Because, for some reason individuals, especially inventors, are under the erroneous assumption that inventing stuff is...
I’ll make an educated guess that most readers have read at least a few other books, magazine articles, websites, blogs – you name it – on innovation. How to do it, how not to do it, why it works, why it doesn’t, and all of...
Ask almost anyone in a new product development function and they’ll tell you they’ve had experience with what I call a “staged approval system” model. For those who haven’t dealt withstaged approval systems, they are, as the name implies, models that break up the...
Sierra Nevada- more than great beer. You might be wondering, why did I feature a beer company as an Innovation SuperstarTM. After all, it’s not exactly high technology – which of course, is exactly my point. Sierra Nevada is not in the technology business, they’re not...
Years ago CRM systems came into vogue as the latest and greatest end-all mechanisms to connect to customers. Collect data from all customers at all “touch points” to the organization – sales, service, after-market sales, mouse clicks on company sites, overlay it with some...
I like “Project Xs.” Project Xs involve taking an external team, and creating a competitive technology to the technologies already in your product offering. We’ve been involved in five or six of these, and I don’t believe I’ve been in involved in one of these...
Great organizations like John Deere will go out into the field and spend months living with their customers. They observe the impact of fuel costs and the efficiency of being able to plant, manage, and harvest crops. They will look at every single ergonomic issue....
So what is customer value? More importantly, what is customer value today? The answer to that question is simple: It is something remarkable. In the old days, you could bring your product to market and “ad spend” your product to prosperity, at least to some...
