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‘Construction Tech’ and ‘Real Estate Tech’ are the next greenfield market spaces. Every industry, every company, and every leader must recognize one simple fact: every product, service, process, and business model will be disrupted–it’s just a matter of time. Companies that think they’re immune to the trends and technologies upending every industry on the planet risk…
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Driving True Innovation Within Your Organization Means You Must Outline Your Goals and Priorities Clearly In January 1996, two Stanford PhD students started working on a research project that would change the world. They nicknamed their project BackRub, because it checked backlinks of websites to determine their importance. Today, that project has become known as…
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What is benchmarking, and what tools and templates can businesses use to benchmark more effectively? What you don’t know can hurt you. This is especially true in business. If you aren’t aware of what’s going on around you as a business leader, you may risk being left behind by your competitors. Even worse, your business…
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Managing projects with the Critical Path Method (CPM) allows teams to streamline processes that drive success even when the odds are stacked against you By upBOARD In the 1940s, the United States began working on a secretive program called the Manhattan Project. The project went on to develop the first functional nuclear weapons which…
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Sometimes, lasting innovation requires being slow, quiet and even a little bit boring By Upboard Every single business is unique in one way or another. Businesses vary greatly depending on the products that they provide, the business models they employ and the style of service they give to their customers. Most businesses struggle to…
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What can you learn about change from Baker’s Four Strategies of Influence? By UpBOARD Are you using the right persuasion tactics to influence the people you engage with? Whether you are trying to drive engagement within your team, make a business case to your boss, or sell a product or service to a…
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What is the Agile Innovation Process, and what are best practices, tools and online templates for teams and organizations? By Upboard Today, everyone wants to be agile. It’s seen as sexy and cool to be agile, but most people don’t know what the term really means. Still, concepts like agile design and agile software…
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How to drive better marketing outcomes through use of a marketing dashboard By upBOARD One of the most important parts of any business is selling. To do this, business leaders need to be able to effectively market and advertise their products and services to those in their target market. With the rise of technology,…
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Operations Management Dashboards Are Being Used More and More by Businesses Looking to Drive Change by upBOARD When pilots take off from an airport with a plane full of passengers, you might imagine that they simply set coordinates for their end location and count the minutes until they arrive. That could not be farther…
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A Balanced Scorecard Provides a Model for Businesses to Align High-Level Objectives With Their Mission and Vision by upBOARD Most businesses tend to manage their strategic mission and vision with a top down approach, all the while tracking metrics and key performance indicators from the bottom up, which can be messy. Unfortunately, this leaves…
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Why the Stage Gate Process is Being Used by More and More Organizations to Evaluate and Refine Their Next Big Ideas by upBOARD While every business wants to be seen as the creator of the next massively “disruptive” product or service, the truth is that most businesses won’t be able to disrupt the market in a…
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Concept development is where most businesses start when they think about launching a new product or service. by upBOARD It is one of the early stages of the innovation process, and it is integral to the continued success of any organization. In fact, one of the most important parts of running a successful business is…
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Change your company’s structure to get bigger and better ideas. Just about everyone wants more creativity and innovation these days. But what’s the secret to getting it? While most companies agree that innovation is vital, few actually spend time creating structures or devising rewards systems hinged on creativity. Many leaders also struggle with the fact that innovation comes from culture, something…
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The healthcare industry is an ecosystem. So are the companies disrupting it. This article is one more in a series I call Everything Transformed where I’m highlighting the disruptive forces revolutionizing just about every industry on the planet, including packaging, travel and hospitality, industrial safety, and more. This time it’s healthcare. It’s no secret. The healthcare industry is going through…
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Innovation is as much about choosing what not to do as it is about deciding what you’re going to do. I’ll never forget the words of a client of mine, an executive at PepsiCo: “We can do anything, but we can’t do everything,” he said to me. So true. But most companies forget this fact. They…
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“Decoupling” the value chain is the next big strategy for digital innovation and business models Digital disruption isn’t just about the internet or mobile technology. It’s about the digitally-driven business models that forever transform business as usual no matter what you’re doing. I recently had a chance to connect with Harvard Business School professor, Thales…
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Technology isn’t just for creating new products and services. Disruptive technologies are transforming the packaging that comes with just about everything we buy. Imagine a day when you receive an alert from your refrigerator as you walk past 7-11 because the carton of milk at your home just expired. Or a day when you receive…
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Airbnb disrupted hotels. Now big travel and hospitality companies are going after the next disruptive innovation themselves before getting blindsided yet again. If you’ve followed my Inc.com column, you know I work with both big companies and start-ups around the world. My research, consulting and speaking give me a glimpse into the fledgling trends and upstarts that will one day…
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A “lean” approach amplifies both profits and purpose. Corporate philanthropy. Benefit corporations. Nonprofits and non-governmental organizations. Doing well while doing good seems to be all the rage these days. Sounds ideal. But, if we are truly intent on achieving both, we need to start taking social impact just as seriously. Mission-driven organizations have an equal…
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Large scale 3D printing farms will create the next industrial revolution When it comes to business and the economy, there’s constant buzz about Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. There’s also been lots of attention lately on middle America and the loss of manufacturing jobs. At times these topics seem at odds – the new high-tech guard disrupting the old,…
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