Yesterday, I was teaching in Columbia’s flagship Columbia Senior Executive Program (which we call CSEP for short). We were discussing how difficult it can be to prevent competitive imitation of innovations in financial services, and… Read more »
Innovation
Corporate Venturing – Stop being so fickle!
Enthusiasm for corporate venturing (efforts by firms to create new businesses from within) come and go over time. Firms set up venture groups, get disillusioned with them, fold them back into the core business only… Read more »
Creating a more innovative culture
I was recently asked how one creates a more innovative culture within a company, with specific reference to Kodak. The difficulty is that as companies become successful, their performance increases to the extent that they… Read more »
Failing to invest in innovation when times are good
Yet another great company (in this case, Dell) has fallen victim to a failure to engage in business model innovation when times are good. We see this all the time – hugely successful corporations get… Read more »
Organizing Innovation Projects
A perennial question that comes up with respect to organizing innovation is whether ventures should be set up far apart from core business or within it? Unfortunately, both approaches to organization are problematic. While so-called… Read more »
Ten “worst practices” for gaining benefits from Innovation
Watch-out for these tell-tale signs of an innovation process that may be headed for big trouble 1. The plan for an innovation is all-or-nothing and looks only at the project as originally conceived; not at… Read more »
Ten “worst practices” for gaining benefits from Innovation
Watch-out for these tell-tale signs of an innovation process that may be headed for big trouble 1. The plan for an innovation is all-or-nothing and looks only at the project as originally conceived; not at… Read more »
The unexpected benefits of failure
Business Week just featured a cover story on how learning from failure can ultimately lead to success. Those who know us know that we’ve been on that theme for many years. The article is worth… Read more »
Wrong tools for the job of innovation
A mistake I see companies making all the time is to try to do new things with the tools that they are comfortable with from their existing businesses. Things like NPV, stage/gate planning, Six Sigma,… Read more »