Innovation Excellence The World's Most Popular Innovation Web Site

According to legend, Henry Ford scoffed at market research and what we now call Consumer Insights, proclaiming, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” While there is a certain degree of wisdom in this statement, it has been misquoted to justify bad, hubris-inspired product failures by too many corporate egos. Yes, to Ford’s ...

People ask me often about Innovation. No one has a clear definition. Innovation is one of those words that mean something different to anyone who hears it. Similar to other words that are filled with misunderstanding, such as creativity or strategy, innovation, requires a refining conversation to demystify and better understand. The first task is to name what is not ...

When organizations begin their innovation journey, they have no idea how to account for the many forms of value that get created. They may also have dormant fears about changing modes of work to effectively innovate. Yes, there is tangible value (read: real and significant ROI) generated from innovation, but there are also many other forms of value that range ...

We host several Innovation Bootcamps each month. After doing this work for years, you expect a predictable pattern at each session. Surprisingly, it’s not in the transformational new thinking about the enterprise and the potential value that is created. The pattern I am exploring here is subtle, having far-reaching implications. It happens within the professionals attending the session. Over the ...

Once Private Equity Groups understand how Innovation works and how it can be used to inspire transformative growth, Innovation will be one of the foremost toolkits in a segment that ignores its power.

This week there was an article on INC. magazine that was wildly popular on social media. Elon Musk named his favorite books and there was only one business book out of 10. The rest were Science Fiction, Classics, Great Books. Many were surprised to learn that Musk finds inspiration in the arts and other fields and finds the canon of ...

If you want to create a high-growth company or transform a slow- or flat-growth organization into a category-dominating leader, you cannot manage this type of growth with an MBA-styled leader who wants to function like a strategic CFO by mainly cutting costs and managing profit and loss. Companies looking to lead—to either invent or reset a category—need to study the ...

Corporations are not absolute and monolithic entities, but are instead as alive and dynamic as the people who work there. When corporations mistakenly presume rigidity, act as it immortal and refuse to adapt, they get a form of cultural cancer. Let’s explore this insidious conceit in more depth.

Part 3 of 3 Your marketers either need to create a fire or be fired. If you have uninspired and uninspiring marketing professionals on your team, be warned. Give him or her one chance to kick into high gear. Then act decisively. Fire them if they cannot change tempo. Be bold and be emboldened. Marketers are responsible for both your ...

One real power of a brand is that it serves as a tuning fork for an organization, helping them quicken strategic decisions, vetting new opportunities, and making hard choices when projections are slipping away from the target. Nothing kills brand value more than short-term revenue focus. When the deafening sirens of Wall Street start signing, listening to the essence of brand can keep a company from wrecking on its own overexcited ambition. Brand is the moral DNA of an organization, and therefore it’s crucial to...