The word “strategy” has come to mean anything in an organization that is important. But great strategies drive real purpose and decision-making. Define one that is meaningful, and you can guide real-time choice-making across your… Read more »
Innovation
Thought Sparks Wrap Up – November 2021
The latest for the Flops File – Zillow Offers
It takes a special combination of ingredients to land in my “flops” file. You have to lose your parent company at least $50 million. You probably started out with big ambitious goals, all-at-once funding, leaders… Read more »
10 Questions to Ask Before You Believe in a Business Model
Some business models are inherently more attractive than others, yet investors and other stakeholders often don’t ask the obvious questions. Here’s a checklist that makes sure you are not one of them. People like to make… Read more »
Ecosystem Maturity and the Stepping-Stone Strategy
Introducing a new offering into an unripe ecosystem will doom your new venture. Instead, find a mini-ecosystem in which you can build a solution that works and use it as a steppingstone to reach your… Read more »
Positioning: Beyond the Statement
Developing a positioning statement is often done as a fill-in-the-blank “Mad Libs” exercise. The power of insightful positioning, however, goes right to the heart of how you are creating value, and for whom. In marketing… Read more »
Thought Sparks Wrap Up – September 2021
Dear colleagues, Hey, everybody! We’re already through September?—?back to school, back to work, back to thinking about Q4! This monthly wrap-up of my weekly Thought Sparks news pieces will give you a short summary and… Read more »
How a Growth Gap can Sneak Up On You
This article was co-developed with Alex van Putten, Partner at Cameron and Associates, and draws from our 2017 article “How to Set More Realistic Growth Targets.” It’s always easy to project rosy growth goals that… Read more »
Digital transformation, the discovery-driven way
Talking about digital transformation has a way of freaking people out. They then do the exact wrong thing, which is to throw money and effort at anyone who can promise that – Poof! – digital… Read more »
Discovering Perfectly Predictable Mistakes – Before You Make Them
There are no failures in Thoughtland – that mystical place where great ideas for new products and services are first born. But if you want to travel to the real world, you’ll need a different… Read more »
The Discipline that Turns Vision into Reality
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 »
You asked, We Answered: Questions on Innovation
Drop in on the Q&A portion of a recent innovation conference, sponsored by my colleagues at Visagio. I gave the keynote speech about Seeing Around Corners and the criticality of innovation. Here is an excerpt… Read more »