Are You Experienced…
…have you ever been experienced?
There’s been a lot of discussion over recent years as to the notion that the nature of the U.S. economy is transforming (yet again) from that of being primarily a service economy into an experience economy. This theory was first laid out by Pine and Gilmore in their book, “The Experience [...]
The Business Case as a Management Tool
Business cases & plans seem to have a bad reputation these days, particularly in the start-up/early-stage venues.
Why is this the case?
It appears that the aversion to business plans is the highly suspect nature of the financial business cases, particularly as they relate to sales revenue projections on the 2+ year horizon. Such skepticism may be [...]
Story-Telling: What Every Good Marketer Knows…
Seth Godin has reposted a list of insights and best marketing practices on his blog. I suggest you read (and save) his entire post as it is a manifesto on what 21st Century marketing should be.
Four of his points relate to the importance of story-telling in marketing:
Good marketers tell a story.
Effective stories match the worldview [...]
Marketing ROI?….Picking Up The Gauntlet
In his last post on The Challenge of Investing in People, Norm likened the current skepticism of many business leaders re “people investment” to that of the view of marketing 20+ years ago. He went on to state:
And still today no one has yet come up with a way of tying marketing dollars into actual [...]
Big Teams - Barriers to Innovation?
In his recent post “Is Design a Team Sports?”, Idris Mootee discusses the role of the individual designer versus a design team. During that discussion he broaches the question as to whether large teams are barriers to innovation. I think that there is a semantic trap in the question, becuase it potentially blurs the [...]
Is Stage-Gate a Barrier to Innovation?
In a recent, thought-provoking posting on his excellent Innovation Playground blog, Idris Mootee posits that the traditional product development stage-gate framework is a barrier to innovation.
The following is my comment posted to his blog:
Idris:
When I first read the title of this post, the “old school product manager” in me reacted viscerally. Then when I read [...]
Leadership: The Philosopher’s Stone of Innovation…? (Part 2)
The other end of the spectrum re strategic decision-making is where it is totally driven by the leadership of the company. This is very often the case with start-up, early-stage and founder-run, privately held firms. The potential advantages are somewhat obvious: strategy is driven by a focused vision, factors which may not be effectively quantifiable [...]
Leadership: The Philosopher’s Stone of Innovation…? (Part 1)
I had the opportunity to speak before the Association for Strategic Planning this week on the topic of Innovation - an inherently rather broad and deep subject, so my approach was one of surveying the various paradigms of innovation (creativity/ideation, invention, implementation, value-creation, etc.), and that all of these conceptual frameworks for understanding [...]
Innovation Risk Management & Product Success Rates
In my earlier post on the potential traps of metrics-based innovation management, I noted that while a significant amount of innovation appears to be driven out of smaller firms, there is an underlying, Darwinian dynamic by which we only see the relatively small percentage of successful outcomes, as compared to the very large numbers of [...]
Forthcoming Talk @ ASP Orange County on Innovation
Just a heads up that I’ll be speaking before the Orange County Chapter of the Association for Strategic Planning this coming Tuesday (Feb 19th) at the Doubletreee Club Hotel in Santa Ana. Details and registration info are available here.
Here’s the promotional blurb on the event….
Most companies are aware of the need for innovation, and [...]