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When we get called into a company it is often because a very expensive innovation effort failed. One of the huge global innovation firms was called in to create a new platform and what happens next is very much like a bad action movie—you know the story. No surprises. The company received breakthrough concepts but they don’t know what to do with them, ...

First off, you need to decide if you genuinely want to reboot a brand. Some people get so tethered to old ideas about the brand that there is resistance to rethink its meaning and potential. If you are serious about growth and see rebooting as the only path of salvation, read on.

Be clear with your product marketing! Many companies and people confuse what they mean when discussing Value Propositions, Benefits, and Features. Be clear with your product marketing. Value Prop: Definition: A value proposition is the concise statement of the overarching solution to your customer’s problem.  The solution then is not your product or its technical details, but the solution your ...

For authentic innovation to occur at an organization, you have to craft the culture of a place to accept and embrace new ways of working together and being in the market. More often than not, teams or outsourced agencies follow an innovation method, create many concepts that are new to the market and certain to create new value, but are ...

As strategy and innovation consultants, we get called in to organizations when they are exhausted from trying to grow significantly and not meeting their goals. In most cases, the organization is trying to do too many things without a way to tie them into a coherent meaning. Most of them need to either discover or rediscover and articulate what we ...

The role of design evolves at the speed of innovation—the dizzying, dynamic speed of the market. Design now has a seat at executive and board tables across the globe. More than ever, a holistic sense of design is valued as a legal means of significant competitive advantage. But it hasn’t always been this way. The journey from the cubicle to ...

Stephanie began with crisis, a story about the kitty litter business. Competitive pressures were high. Market share was being lost. They needed a new product, in a hurry. From concept to packaging, they needed it all: RTB, packaging design, product name, name and product fit with top benefits, and fully baked complete concepts to test against legacy products and competitive products.

I love the quote by the poet Muriel Rukeyser that says “The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” Humans live for stories. We learn from stories at home, school, from friends, and also very compellingly at work. Humans within a work culture are motivated by stories. Look at the famous founding myths of HP and Apple in the garages, of Fred Smith and FedEx, and ...

Notes from a keynote speech from The Market Research Event By Jonah Berger, Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania Berger starts the keynote session by playing a game, Which is Tastier? Where two images are shown: broccoli and a cheeseburger. The vote is cast: the majority vote, you guessed it, for the cheeseburger. The point is ...

This column was based on a presentation by Scott Jenkins, SVP of Innovation and Product Development of Deckers. Scott began this talk insisting on blending work and play.  His journey into “the sin of corporate innovation” happened eight years ago. At an early age Scott became fascinated with running shoes.  He met an inventor in 1978, when he was 18.  ...