For whatever reason, corporate innovation has become synonymous with new business development – but that isn’t the only way to sense for change and encourage the bold and aggressive innovation that today’s world needs from large corporations, idling on the sidelines of cash while the very real game of human happiness sputters. Taking a step back, most agree with the
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Stumbled upon a quote by Peter Thiel about the motivation to start a company (or a new business within an established company, for that matter). “…You don’t start a company for the sake of starting a company. The good reason to start a company is because it’s the best way to solve some important problem that would otherwise not get
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Corporations have begun to adopt innovation methods and principles they observe in startups (having long forgotten their own entrepreneurial roots). For example, GE’s FastWorks program is modeled upon Eric Ries’s Lean Startup philosophy, aiming to radically transform the way the 122+ year old company introduces new products and services to market. GE deserves credit for its widespread approach to encouraging
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A ‘Minimum Viable Product’ or MVP is a business tool to reduce the inherent uncertainty with introducing new products in unknown market spaces. It is based on the age-old business practice that one must balance the level of investment with appropriate risk – that as one reduces business risk, one can gradually increase the level of investment. MVP’s reduce, not
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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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The new management fad is here: Teaching large companies to adopt Lean Startup thinking (Yes, I’m guilty as charged myself). But this is already off to a bad start if it is simply a hammer hitting another nail. The Classic Lean The two previous instantiations of Lean Thinking were certainly the right tool for the job. First applied to manufacturing, ‘classic’
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This three part blog series introduces a novel classification of innate user needs, aka ‘the basic ways we fight for happiness and progress (through consumption)’. Part I of the blog recapped the well known concept that market segmentation is not about demographics, but about seizing an unoccupied space in the mind and heart of the consumer. Part II of the
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In Part I of this blog, I introduced the age-old secret of entrepreneurship – understanding the essence of what you’re really selling, i.e. defining the intrinsic quality of your product or service that compels your customers to want it. This is also referred to as the ‘value proposition’ or ‘deep meaning’ of any particular offering, elucidating the reason ‘why’ someone
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My first ever (ad)venture was selling books door-to-door. Back during my college years at LSU, I badly needed to make money during the summer breaks to pay for the mounting costs of a higher education (and too much partying). Little did I know that my summer job was to be the real education – my door-to-door sales experience is where
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Back in 1999, minty-fresh from my Sloan MBA and stint at the Boston Consulting Group, I thought I knew all there was to know about ‘survival’ business jargon. This namely consisted of what I called the ‘big eight’ buzzwords: The first four related to top-line growth, namely: Strategy, Competitive Advantage, M&A (when you have no competitive advantage but you have
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Necrophone 