Jeffrey Pfeffer, in his great book “The 7 Rules of Power” declares that “success excuses (almost) everything.” Success also determines which stories about the origins of that success get told and which headlines are buried. … Read more »
Growth
Think everybody has a positive view of creativity? Think again!
Of course, we believe that creativity is a universally great thing – thinking otherwise is like dismissing hope or truth! In his conversational, approachable book, New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning author Matt Richtel takes… Read more »
Three Kinds of Competition to Have on Your Radar
In traditional strategic thinking, beating the competition, by finding an attractive position in an attractive industry, is the name of the game. An updated perspective suggests you need to be paying attention to at least… Read more »
How LEGO used Agile Principles to Accelerate Innovation
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCXMx7RcZ5I Agile methods – in which work is done in parallel by cross-functionally staffed teams – has been the subject of a lot of hype. How refreshing, then, to discover examples of firms… Read more »
Flywheels vs. Relationships – Why your business architecture matters to your initial marketing plan
In developing an initial marketing plan, it is crucial not to be confused about what kind of business architecture you are building in order to establish your initial metrics for success. Geoffrey Moore has a great… Read more »
7 Ways to Take Smart Career Risks: Lessons from Sharon Price John, CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop
Fear is one of the great barriers to career advancement. Sharon Price John’s fabulous career is full of lessons on how to get past those fears and get out of your own way. Being afraid… Read more »
You can’t tackle complex systems with linear thinking
As Daniel Kahnemann has pointed out to us, while the human brain is a remarkable organ, it also has its limitations. One of these is that it is built to conserve energy. What that in turn… Read more »
Pandemic – and reopening – surprises
When an inflection point comes to a head, human beings are remarkably ingenious in adapting to its requirements. It may not be fun, but we figure it out. But when the changes wrought by the… Read more »
Who knew there is so much in common between the rare successes in mega-projects and innovation?
Photo: The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Gehry Bent Flyvbjerg studies spectacular mega-project flameouts. I study (often) spectacular innovation mis-steps. Who knew the process that produces both has so… Read more »
Counting down Our Top Ten List of Discovery Driven Planning misses – Part 1 (10 through 6)
Through Valize, Ron Boire and I have been working with clients to use the tools we have developed to bring Discovery Driven Planning / Discovery Driven Growth to life. Although we’ve got years of experience… Read more »
Startups in distress – we’ve seen this movie before
Wired magazine offered an article on the state of things in startup-land and discovered, astonishingly, that “The Bad times are Coming for Startups.” But not every startup, of course, mainly the ones that blithely ignore entrepreneurship… Read more »
Bright Promise and Dashed Hopes – The AT&T Media Strategy Saga
Big, expensive unions of large and unwieldy companies almost never work out well. The sudden termination of CNN+ is but the latest casualty in a long history of things that began with a lot of… Read more »