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 »
Tools
Inflection Points Shift Key Metrics – Are You Paying Attention?
A potentially game-changing inflection point shows up when the key metrics underlying your business have the potential to change on a 10X scale. Here’s where to look to see if that is happening. As I… Read more »
“Oh, so that’s what you meant!” Using scorecards to simplify strategy
We see it all the time – strategies that are meant to align and energize people distract and confuse them instead. Creating a screening scorecard that anyone can use is a big help. The trouble… Read more »
The BareBones NPV tool: When you need to quantify, but really don’t have the information
Trying to figure out what a new initiative might do for you? A traditional approach is the net present value calculation. This nifty little tool offers an alternative with just 9 input metrics. The net… Read more »
Too Important to Ignore: Team Effectiveness
It’s hard to know how to respond to events of the magnitude of those that have been in the headlines, except to acknowledge that the quest for social justice feels really, really, enormous. As readers… 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 »
A Sample DDP for an entrepreneurial business
While looking for something else, I ran across this post which provides an outline for an entrepreneurial business using the discovery driven planning framework. I know many of you are always keen to find additional examples… Read more »
Questions to help you place projects on our Opportunity Portfolio
I had a most enjoyable day yesterday teaching in the Punch Sulzberger program, a joint venture between our Journalism and Business Schools at Columbia. The program seeks to help news journalists figure out what the… Read more »
BareBones NPV calculator file in Excel 2003 format
Many of you have expressed an interest in using the “BareBones” NPV calculator that we describe in the book. We’re in the process of getting this tool loaded on the Discovery Driven Growth web site,… Read more »
Consumer Leverage Ratio - A tool to measure the ticking credit time bomb lurking for your customers
My co-author, Ian MacMillan and one of his colleagues, William Jarvis have just weighed in on a topic near and dear to my heart—the deadly situations companies create when they lend more and more to… Read more »
Consumer Leverage Ratio – A tool to measure the ticking credit time bomb lurking for your customers
My co-author, Ian MacMillan and one of his colleagues, William Jarvis have just weighed in on a topic near and dear to my heart—the deadly situations companies create when they lend more and more to… Read more »
Software Tools that Support Discovery Driven Growth
Many of you have inquired about software tools that can support your efforts at thriving under uncertain conditions. MacMillan and I have partnered with Alan Abrahams of Virginia Tech to create and distribute some supporting… Read more »