Google Cloud Platform : Good Times Ahead
The tech behemoths Amazon, Microsoft & Google are established players in one of the battes that will change the future of customers view and investments of computing. This is an area with a potential hundred billion dollars plus that can be secured for the vendors – a lucrative space that each one wants to corner […]
IT survival in a digital world
Traditional IT skills center on technology and infrastructure like servers, databases, and telecom systems. Although important, these skills are rapidly becoming insufficient to meet the expectations of digital business. To be clear, traditional IT and the CIO are not going away anytime soon. Businesses and the government run on datacenters and applications that require traditional […]
Chasing Unknown Unknown, The Spirit Of Silicon Valley
A framework that I use to think about problems disruptive technology could help solve is based on what Donald Rumsfeld wrote in his memoir, Known and Unknown: Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We […]
Rate your company’s innovation culture
Culture. “Culture” is one of those terms. Hard to define, but you know it when you see it, right? I mean, we all understand what we’re talking about here, don’t we? I’d bet if you and I polled 10 people on the street, we’d get 10 different interpretations for culture. In the course of my work, […]
Radio Show Interview: Collaborative Innovation at Scale
The area of collaborative innovation is a natural extension of the social business movement. It’s the extension of social into purposeful collaboration, a term Alan Lepofsky uses to describe the evolution of the social business market. In the innovation-focused radio show, Women Who Innovate, host LeAnna Carey, innovation expert John Lewis and I talk about […]
Talk-n-Tweet | Collaborative Innovation at Scale
Previously, I’ve described Why Crowdsourcing Works. Crowdsourcing is a case where you get many people who don’t one another collaborating toward a defined outcome.To reiterate the principle points about the value of crowdsourcing: Diverse inputs drive superior solutions Cognitive diversity requires spanning gaps in social networks Simple enough, yet actually a rich field for work and […]
What if customers evaluated your company’s ideas?
At the 2014 HYPE Innovation Managers Forum in Bonn, I hosted a roundtable that looked at Involving Customers in the Innovation Process. There were over a dozen different corporations represented in the discussion. To spur the conversation, I mapped the points for customer involvement as: What customers want (jobs-to-be-done) ideas (open innovation) Feedback on options (collaborative design) As […]
Beyond Ideation: Four Fresh Ways to Generate Innovation
Innovation requires something new that changes the way in which an activity gets done. In this formulation, ideation is the processus maximus, the best way to get something new. It properly is the most frequent mode of innovation. It delivers results. But sometimes, it’s good to shake things up. Change up the routine to refresh the sources of […]
Consultant-Led Innovation
Finally, remember Innovation won’t come from plans or people outside your company – it will be found in the people you already have inside who understand your company’s strengths and its vulnerabilities. Steve Blank, Esade Business School Commencement Speech I think Steve Blank – well-respected thinker on innovation and entrepreneurship – has hit a key point […]
Keys to success with an innovation reward program
Cash, gift cards, electronics, extravagant trips…these are the rewards that make people innovate, no? Tee them up, announce their availability and let innovative minds go to work. When I say “rewards” and “innovation”, is that what springs to your mind? You’re not alone. It’s the default our minds run to. Maybe we’ve watched too many […]
Gmail offers surprising innovation lessons for the Fortune 500
If you’re familiar with the story of Gmail, you know – for a fact – that it was a 20% time employee project by Paul Buchheit. A little bottom-up experimentation that grew into something big. Surprise! That story is wrong. It was a desire by Google, the company, to offer its own email. From Harry McCracken’s great piece How […]
Is it innovation or just an improvement? Does it matter?
On the LinkedIn Front End of Innovation group, I saw this post: Interesting (and heated) discussions @ Unleashing Innovation Summit in Amsterdam earlier in the month: Incremental innovation is NOT innovation – it’s just marketing. REAL innovation is breakthrough/transformational… Agree or not? I’ve seen this debate before. Attempts to finally, once-and-for-all establish just where improvement […]
Four personalities that determine innovation success or failure
Innovation, done right, is an interactive flow of diverse contributions. For sure, it is a process of building on the knowledge, perspectives and heuristics of multiple people. It’s in this diversity where novel solutions emerge. But there’s another aspect to it. Think of innovation as a multi-act play. One in which distinct personalities enter the […]
Will customers adopt your innovation? Hope, fear and jobs-to-be-done
When will a customer decide your innovative product or service is worth adopting? It’s a question that marketers, strategists and others spend plenty of time thinking about. The factors are myriad and diverse. In this post, let’s examine two primary elements that influence both if an innovation will be adopted, and when it would happen: Decision weights assigned […]
Why crowdsourcing works
Crowdsourcing is a method of solving problems through the distributed contributions of multiple people. It’s used to address tough problems that happen everyday. Ideas for new opportunities. Ways to solve problems. Uncovering an existing approach that addresses your need. Time and again, crowdsourcing has been used successfully to solve challenges. But…why does it work? What’s […]
