Creating a solid business case is integral to the success of any new opportunity. The right business case can mean the difference between funding your idea and floundering to make it a reality. Many people fail to gain support for their ideas because they fail to create a compelling business case. For over 25 years, I’ve worked with innovation teams within big companies…
How does your team allocate time to driving innovation within your business? The 70-20-10 Rule is a strategy for determining how to allocate time and resources in order to make a successful innovation. Generally, the rule helps organizational stakeholders determine if they should make high risk/high reward innovations or improve upon existing products or…
Amazon’s unique approach to innovation helps teams “work backwards” to create breakthroughs The best business strategies focus on meeting and exceeding customer needs and expectations. This means envisioning customer problems as well as ideal solutions to those problems before actually developing a product or service–and this is exactly how Amazon innovates. Amazon’s secret to innovation is the…
A project plan is a list of ingredients. A project charter is the recipe. Having worked with both startups and big companies for more than 25 years, I’ve seen executives get so enamored of their “disruptive” future visions, they neglect the short-term plans that get things going. I’ve also seen leaders so focused on implementation they lose sight of their…
One of the longest standing questions in the field of innovation lies in the debate surrounding whether or not “creativity” is an innate trait or whether it’s something that can be learned. The answer has big implications. If you think creativity can be learned, you can then train people to be move innovative. If you…
Disruption is everywhere. Here are 10 trends that will create opportunities – and threats – in 2020. Twenty years ago, when I started advising startups and Fortune 500 companies on their innovation strategies, a “2020 vision” served as a key staple in most business planning efforts. The future is finally here. Emerging technologies catalyze disruption. But 2020 promises to be…
Being truthful and being trustworthy aren’t the same, which poses a problem for both society and the practice of leadership itself In today’s world, it’s hard to know who to listen to and what to believe. Who’s the best Presidential candidate? Is Brexit good or bad? Which college is best for my child? Usually there’s…
Getting the most out of meetings is easy if you know how to effectively design them. One of the biggest black holes in workplace productivity is the poorly designed, poorly run meeting. No wonder 71 percent of senior managers view their companies’ meetings as unproductive and inefficient. When meetings aren’t effective, the natural instinct is to schedule…
‘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…
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…