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 [...]
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 [...]
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 distinction [...]
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 [...]
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 are [...]
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, [...]
The Potential Trap of Innovation Metrics
“Be careful what you wish for measure … you just may get it.” As my library of books on Innovation grows, I am seeing two somewhat conflicting themes emerging in regards to the role of metrics in Innovation. One sees up-front metrics as a key determinant of establishing efficient distribution of a firm’s resources across [...]
Improving Your Company’s Velocity – Practice, Practice, Practice
Not only is it a way to get to Carnegie Hall, but focused, repeated practice of your firm’s best business processes is one of the ways to improve your overall velocity. In sports, it’s called establishing “muscle memory” by the repeated execution of a golf or tennis swing (for example), first working on the proper [...]
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