In my forthcoming book, Seeing Around Corners (now available for pre-order wherever you buy books), one of the major themes is that a major blind spot for organizations is that they tend to see the world through the lens of their existing industry. There are a lot of good reasons for this, but it can…
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When Hierarchy Is Not an Option: A New Organizational Model for Fast-Moving Contexts
Earlier this month, I spoke at the Human Resources Directors Conference in the United Kingdom. At the conference, I shared some material excerpted from my forthcoming book, Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen, about how easy it is for executives to get trapped into an old way of…
10 Ways to Prepare for Career Changes in the Transient Advantage Economy
In the world of strategy, there’s been a long-held belief in a sustainable competitive advantage—you find an attractive place in an attractive industry, throw up entry barriers, and exploit the advantage for a long period of time. However, in more and more parts of our economy, competitive advantages just aren’t lasting as long as they…
How to Lead an Organization Through an Inflection Point
I was recently at a conference with Curt Carlson, a brilliant leader of innovation who for many years ran SRI, the research organization responsible for the invention of Apple’s Siri and many other multi-billion dollar products. The SRI story is one of an astonishing turnaround—when he took over as CEO in 1998, the organization had…
Decoding why digital is so disruptive
My colleague, Ryan P. McManus, is at CES this week and is much in demand for his perspective on why digital is so disruptive. He traces the evolution of digital from its 4G impact on consumer products and media through its current impact on business models. For a more detailed explanation, have a look at…
Preparing for Time Zero Events in Banking
We cannot predict the future, but we can prepare in advance. So how do you develop early warning signs that things are about to change in an industry? One technique for identifying leading indicators is envisioning time zero events—concrete events that represent things that could have a big impact on a business. As an example,…
There is such a thing as a repeatable startup methodology
Among the many myths that corporate types have about startups (whether standalone or of the corporate variety) is that there is some kind of alchemy involved. Sort of “Steve Jobs arrives on a clamshell and the world is changed forever!”. They think growing new businesses requires some instinctive DNA that founders are born with and…
Hello Tokyo!
I’m looking forward to visiting Japan next week with @Fujitsu_Global! In the meantime, here is an article about coming trends in autonomous vehicles that might be of interest to my Japanese friends.
Meet Alexander Osterwalder in person at Columbia workshop October 23
A great opportunity to meet my good friend and colleague, Alexander Osterwalder who will be visiting us at Columbia later this month! Invitation for Senior Leaders in Established Companies to Attend an Interactive Lecture-Workshop on Corporate Innovation with Internationally Recognized Thought Leader on Entrepreneurship and Innovation Dr. Alexander Osterwalder Register Today Tuesday, October 23 6:30 p.m.…
Fear of self-cannibalization, Facebook early warning
In this insightful article, Kara Swisher notes that one big reason that Instagram’s co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, decided to leave was that the popular site was pulling users away from the “big blue” platform that is the core Facebook product. Clanging sounds of early warnings of early-stage fading of advantage! Leaders can respond two ways when…