In the heady days of coming up with what you think is a breakthrough idea, it’s easy to get carried away by assumptions. Forcing yourself to create a deliverables specification can create powerful discipline. Entrepreneurs… Read more »
Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship
A no-nonsense guide to measuring innovation mastery
What is it like to work in an organization that has attained high levels of innovation mastery? It’s growth-oriented, future-focused and unrelentingly positive. And by taking small steps, the place you work can be more… Read more »
Unanticipated Consequences of a Potential Baby Bust
Although the early warning signs that an inflection point is on the way are often detectable years, even decades, in advance, trying to time most inflection points is incredibly frustrating. Not so with demographics. In… Read more »
Newsletter Anniversary Edition – Not A Moment Too Soon!
Seeing Around Corners: Anniversary Edition – Not a Moment too Soon! Hard as it is to believe it, Seeing Around Corners celebrated its first anniversary on September 3rd and even I could not have predicted… Read more »
Venture Capital 2.0: This Time, It’s Different?
Venture capitalists are partying as if it’s 1999—and we know how that went. Entrepreneurship 101 says startups should conserve cash, keep costs flexible, and operate with parsimony. Way too many founders in the 90’s laughed… Read more »
Finding your arena – a new book and new toolkit
I was delighted to read Steve Blank’s great post featuring the work of my friend and colleague Marc Gruber. Marc and I have been colleagues since my days in the entrepreneurship program at Wharton and… Read more »
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… Read more »
Forum for Dynamic Innovation at Columbia Event January 10
The last few years have seen a resurgence of what Steve Blank and other startups folks call ‘innovation theater‘. On January 10, I’ll be chatting with Steve and transformative CEO of HarperCollins, Brian Murray, about what… Read more »
Growth insights in a 45 minute Facebook live session!
No Powerpoints, no notes, just the team at Harvard Business Review, terrific and astute questions from viewers and a white board. Check out this free Facebook Live session that has already garnered over 132,000 views. In more news –… Read more »
Preparing for the 8th Annual Drucker Forum
A few years ago, I started attending the Global Peter Drucker Forum, which has become a real who’s who of management conferences. It takes place each November in Vienna and features luminaries and thought leaders… Read more »
What a startup can learn about customer needs from a medieval practice
In a recent article over at Fortune, I explore what Transferwise, a fast-growing new startup has rediscovered: an enduring customer need that is currently featuring in the migrant crisis, Hawala. The practice of Hawala originated centuries… Read more »
Now in development: Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship On-Line
What if you could take teams of people or individual contributors with an innovation mandate and have them go through a state of the art, hands-on and very applied journey through the essence of innovation… Read more »