Fifty years ago, a little-known children’s book introduced the “SCAMPER” model as way to help teachers foster creativity in their classrooms. It’s an amazingly simple tool, and unbelievably powerful for pushing thinking beyond “business as usual” to help teams innovate. SCAMPER is an acronym for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. Each letter prompts…
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Project Charters Are the Secret to Keeping Teams on Track. Real success occurs when you combine the big picture with concrete action. A mid-sized manufacturing company I recently worked with wanted to create a business strategy. The challenge was that their leaders had so many projects going, people barely had time to meet together to…
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Strategic plans become outdated the moment they’re created. Instead, create a one-page strategy map. Having run the internal strategy consulting group at HP, and then consulting to both startups and big companies like Disney, Visa, Colgate, Medtronic and others, I’ve created dozens of strategic plans. Business strategy used to be a clear and methodical process.…
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Culture is a key success factor for every organization. Shape it to get more innovation from your remote team. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Box, Slack, and Salesforce all say that employees can keep working remotely. We’re seeing a sea-change toward remote work. But what happens to the culture of teams and organizations in a virtual…
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Stop trying to disrupt. Start changing the world. In the late 1990’s when I was running the strategy consulting group at HP, we invited Clayton Christensen, the iconic Harvard professor who wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma and popularized the term “disruptive innovation,” to come speak to us. We asked him a simple question, “How do you…
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Innovation is an art and science. Here’s how to help your team generate and prioritize the best ideas and opportunities in today’s virtual world. Over the past 25 years, I have run hundreds of innovation sessions for high performing teams. My programs are often part of larger strategy and innovation initiatives. But they’re all focused…
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Management guru Peter Drucker once said, “What’s measured improves.” So true. The problem is that most teams don’t have clear key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of their strategies and projects. Sure, they may have goals, but without clear KPIs, they don’t have a way to know quantitatively that they’re on or off track. As a result, many teams wait until…
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Innovation is an art and science. Here’s the secret to identifying & prioritizing ideas in a virtual world. Over the past 25 years, I have run hundreds of innovation sessions with companies like NBCUniversal, Visa, Colgate, Kimberly-Clark, Red Bull, and dozens of others. My sessions are often part of larger strategy and growth initiatives. But…
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As the co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman once said that trying to innovate and scale a business quickly requires you to “throw yourself off a cliff and assemble your airplane on the way down.” Sounds risky. It doesn’t have to be. For most new upstarts — be it a startup or corporate venture — finding…
DetailsOver the last two decades, I have had the pleasure of working with some of the world’s most innovative business leaders to help develop innovative solutions and services for companies big and small. During that time, I have come across numerous methodologies for coming up with ground breaking innovations, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The power of the White…
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