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 »
Innovation
Thought Sparks Wrap Up – April 2022
Dear colleagues: Just when you thought the world has learned the many lessons of discovery-driven planning, some huge, ambitious project gets shot down yet again – whether for business reasons or otherwise – and we… 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 »
You can’t avoid the digital dimension of your business, even if you wanted to!
Asking what your digital strategy is today is a lot like asking what your electricity strategy was at the turn of the last century. Seems absurd. Yet both questions reflect how a shift in an… Read more »
Thought Sparks Wrap Up – March 2022
Dear colleagues: The first quarter of 2022 was as momentous as any I have ever experienced. It was emotional to join my colleagues from the LvBS Business School, the Business School of the Catholic University… Read more »
When terrible things happen to good innovation projects…
OK, we have finally realized that innovation and transformation are not optional for the long run well-being of a large enterprise. But that is a far cry from having the capability to do something with… Read more »
Knowing when to pull the plug – Part 2
With any corporate venturing program, one of the most important factors that will determine financial returns is the ability to stop investing in projects that simply won’t work out at all, or will be inconsequential… Read more »
Knowing when to pull the plug – Part 1
With any corporate venturing program, one of the most important factors that will determine financial returns is the ability to stop investing in projects that simply won’t work out at all, or will be inconsequential… Read more »
Thought Sparks Wrap Up – February 2022
Dear colleagues: Just when we begin to see glimmers of the emergence of whatever comes next, we are seemingly plunged into massive uncertainty once again, with geopolitical tensions and armed conflict that seemed unthinkable. The Washington… Read more »
Crazy, Unloved but Potentially Transformational – What’s in your Loonshot nursery?
Author Safi Bahcall introduced the term “loonshots” to describe ventures with game-changing potential that nobody thought would work and whose champions were ridiculed. Which raises the question of how you keep the crazy ideas alive… Read more »
Thought Sparks Wrap Up – January 2022
Dear colleagues: I just got used to the idea of not saying “Happy new year” and here it is, February. It’s been fun so far – I returned to teaching in person on campus in… Read more »
It worked great, until it didn’t: The surprising, but perhaps foreseeable, shutdown of Drinkworks
Two companies needed a new growth vector. One was great at branding alcoholic beverages. The other was great at making home appliances that customers could use to create self-serve beverages. A match made in heaven!… Read more »