The purpose of the corporation is arguably two-fold: To create customers, by making promises and to keep customers, by keeping promises. The goal seems clear: to win. The question is, at what cost? What are the rules of the game that determine a fair win? Shouldn’t the modern corporation abide by a set of bylaws that maximize the benefits of
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As you may have heard, crowd-sourced product developer Quirky has filed for bankruptcy, claiming its business model had scalability challenges (code word for losing money). Quirky did achieve success by some measures, including $185 Million raised, over 400 products launched, over $100 Million in revenue, a connected-home spin-off (Wink) and several corporate partnerships with the likes of GE, Mattel and
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An idea submission program can support the four basic use cases of employee driven innovation (vs. continuous improvement of existing job responsibilities) categorized by the intersection of the key defining parameters; the inspiration for the idea submission in the first place and the ongoing intentions of the submitter. In general, an idea can be submitted in an unsolicited fashion, on
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“In short, software is eating the world”, said Marc Andreessen back in 2011. Marc, a savvy entrepreneur and investor, was quick to note how software companies were not only some of the most valuable ventures on the planet but also transforming just about every known industry from manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, banking, medical devices, entertainment, etc. – even high-tech hardware is
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My days as a practitioner and student of Lean Production at AutoEuropa (VW) and MIT taught me a simple, but valuable lesson – “It’s the System, Stupid” All the different components of ‘how to do more with less’ were available (production efficiency and reliability, quality, supplier integration, employee involvement, etc.) – Toyota was the first to put them all under one
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If you want a simple measure of whether or not your company truly encourages ‘thinking and acting like a start-up’, aka believes in corporate entrepreneurship, you need only to measure the ratio of innovation self forming teams (ISFT’s) vs. the usual world of innovation by entitled corporate royalty, commanding siloed armies of conscripts. Think about it as the Athenian vs. Spartan ratio of innovation. There
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My name is Ricardo dos Santos and I’m an Innovation Competition-holic. Let me get started with what I mean by Innovation Competitions (you can also check out this presentation I uploaded on slideshare). My Definition of Innovation Competitions In this context, I use the term Innovation Competitions interchangeably with Inducement Prize Contests – these are distinctly different from recognition prizes in
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In Part I of this blog, I covered five common inhibitors to corporate entrepreneurship, namely: Lack of time Lack of connections Lack of CE skills (& context to learn them) Lack of executive visibility & resources Flawed risk/reward ratio and or misconceptions In Part II I introduce a programmatic example on how to deal with the above challenges – An
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Companies realize that they don’t innovate – their employees innovate. Companies are thus earnestly preaching: ‘Innovation is everyone’s job”! While the employees themselves want to become more innovative and entrepreneurial, they face five major structural inhibitors in attempting to do so (that only the most gifted, networked and experienced corporate entrepreneurs can overcome – unfortunately, there aren’t enough of them
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The unofficial economy, aka the parallel economy, second economy, informal economy, shadow economy, side-walk economy, etc. often provides heart warming stories of survival at the BoP, but nothing to be proud of. 93% of India’s jobs! 40% of Mexico’s and Brazil’s GDP! In extreme cases like Benin, 95% of jobs and 50-60% of GDP! Europe is not immune – wondered
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Necrophone 