More than 50 years ago, U.S. President John F. Kennedy captured the world’s imagination when he said, “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” And thus, the term moonshot entered the lexicon as shorthand [...]
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When Karl Ronn recently said, “Companies that think they have an innovation problem don’t have an innovation problem. They have a leadership problem,” I listened carefully. I featured Ronn, a former P&G executive (and current executive coach and entrepreneur), in several places in The Little Black Book of Innovation, most notably for his rant against [...]
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Take a look at your innovation pipeline. Odds are it is overflowing with rich ideas brimming with growth potential… on paper at least. Look deeper. Identify the projects that are the most different and disruptive, the ones with the greatest potential to create new growth. How are they staffed? If you are like all too [...]
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Over the last three years I have consistently stated my belief that Asia was emerging as a global innovation powerhouse. It’s one of the primary reasons why I moved to Singapore in early 2010. In late 2011, I even wrote, “The overarching trend I continue to see is a shift in the world’s innovation energy [...]
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One question I’ve gotten about the e-book that I wrote with my colleague David Duncan, Building a Growth Factory, is where to start. The book’s central theme is that companies can improve their ability to create growth through innovation by developing four key management systems (click here for more details): a growth blueprint; production systems [...]
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An acquaintance of mine (let’s call him George) is an acknowledged thought leader on a topic that the senior-most executives at a particular company had placed high on their agenda. But the middle managers who contacted George to give a talk balked at his regular speaking fee, instead treating him like “a silicon chip supplier.” [...]
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Consider the oft-repeated statistic that about 90% of people self-identify as above-average drivers, a clear impossibility. Well-documented factors such as confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and the fundamental attribution error mean we — in the words of the Talmud — don’t see the world the way it is; we see the world as we are. (See [...]
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In today’s world, start-ups aren’t the only ones who can innovate. As I discussed in my post How Big Companies Can Save Innovation, large companies are now better positioned to innovate than ever before. Here’s why: the innovation revolution spurred by venture capitalists decades ago has created the conditions in which scale allows big companies [...]
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In my latest Harvard Business Review article, “The New Corporate Garage,” I argue that we’re transitioning into a new age where forward-thinking corporations that blend entrepreneurial behaviors with existing capabilities can have massive impact. The article is a call to arms for corporate innovators to seize the opportunities that only a big company can realize [...]
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It’s a paradox of the information age. The glut of information that bombards us daily too frequently obscures true insight. Intelligence should drive better innovation, but unless it is strategically collected and used, it functions like a summer beach novel — an engaging distraction. Thoughtful companies intertwine customer intelligence throughout the three phases that characterize [...]
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