In part I of this blog, I covered various views on strategy, namely the distinction between strategy as a theory for competition and strategy as the realization of goals by all means necessary. We learned from the brilliant work of various though leaders including Porter, Christensen, Hamel, McGrath, Blank and Drucker that the formula for victory on the business battleground
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When working for a large company, I remember the arduous, but necessary process of yearly strategic planning, albeit I wasn’t personally invited to the swanky off-site or wherever “the generals gathered in their masses”. Now that I’m part of the management team of an early-stage biotech startup, I get invited to the party – yeah! Then it dawned on me
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You’ve probably heard the idiom, “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. Well, this is probably the last advice you should apply to early stage ventures. Guess what, it probably is broken and you need to fix it! Let me give you a couple of examples where the reverse is actually what’s needed (Break it before you can hope to
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I’m often asked the question “What is more important to corporate innovation or external financial investors – an idea that’s Magical (appeals to their creative or emotional side) or an idea that’s Logical (appeals to their critical reasoning, rational side)”? It reminds me of the question posed by Niccolo Machievelli in ‘The Prince’: Is it better for a ruler to
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What the diagnostics business can teach us about innovation investment decisions. There are easy businesses and there are hard businesses. Then there are REALLY HARD businesses. If you ask me (and I’m living it now in my current startup, Biological Dynamics), the hardest business of all is medical diagnostics, especially for initial disease screening (is the patient healthy or
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Taking a page from Lean Production (the rigorous scientific-like management practices used by Industrial Engineers since the day of mass production, coupled with a heavy dose of Japanese-management style employee engagement), the Lean Startup movement has taken the entrepreneurship world by storm – finally providing a playbook to make a system out of winning in what has previously seamed like
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When Christopher Columbus ‘pitched’ Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon to fund his golden voyage west bound to India, what do you think was the nature of the opportunity? Here’s one way to think about it. First, think about the ‘Prize’ – What was the intended prize for the second Iberian power (Portugal being first at the
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When the American auto industry desperately needed help in the 1980’s to catch up to foreign competition, namely from Japan, it essentially followed the motto: ”If you can’t beat them, join them.” Unconditionally, American auto companies gradually adopted a management philosophy that came to be known as “Lean Production” to improve competitiveness in operations, from logistics to manufacturing and sales.
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When formulating a new venture, consider the bond between invention and business model discipline – aka, Innovation. The birth of the Ford Motor Company story serves as a prime example. How many of you have ever heard of James Couzens? Without James Couzens, you probably would not have heard of Henry Ford. James Couzens completed Henry Ford. Ford, the visionary
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Necrophone 