in Innovation
As someone who at some point thought about choosing between becoming a spy or a Navy SEAL, I couldn’t hold myself back from not reading Ali Soufan’s The Black Banners: The Inside Story about 9/11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda.
Ali Soufan was the FBI’s top Al-Qaeda interrogator.
During his FBI stint from 1997 to 2005, Soufan was the lead investigator on major terror investigations such as the October 2000 attack on the Navy’s U.S.S. Cole which killed 17 sailors. He helped the agency investigate the attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in the late 1990s, and was a key interrogator of al Qaeda detainees after the 9/11 attacks. You can also visit https://investigatorsaustralia.com.au/ for more info.
To become the top Al-Qaeda interrogator he bluffed significant intelligence from major Al-Qaeda operatives. His secret: Knowledge.
Knowledge of the enemy to be exact.…
in Innovation, Questions
Should you give away ideas to potential clients before making a deal?
Ideas are a dime a dozen and coming up with them is really easy. Sometimes too easy. And as someone who is in ‘ideation mode’ all the time, I freely give them away to potential clients. A few of my partners don’t like this. It makes them uncomfortable because they think that we give away too much before we close the deal. It’s not strange to see that our proposals lay out an almost step-by-step strategy with as much details as possible.
The way I’ve always looked at it (and also because I think most of the proposal I’ve ever received all look alike and look more like a recipe for anyone) is that you make proposals with the intent of differentiating yourself too. With that mindset, your proposal should also ‘look and feel’ different.
But the issue is how much is too much?…
in Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
This gave me Goose Bumps! No really it did. That’s because I’m a gamer and loyal PlayStation owner. I empathized with this video immediately. I know almost every single character in that trailer and it gave me goose bumps watching them all interact.
This is AWESOME!
Long Live Play is PlayStation’s new campaign aimed to celebrate YOU the gamer:
Long Live Play honors gamers from all walks of life and recognizes you for making PlayStation who we are today.…
in Innovation
First of all, I’m not even sure what we want out of innovation. If we take what we see out there as a signal, then we sure aren’t innovating anything.
It’s gotten to that point where the word innovation is anything but meaningful. Were in the ‘over-innovation’ economy. Yes, over-innovation. As in, we’re over innovation. And this is because we are over-innovating? Or are we?
Alexis Madrigal makes a great point that we are indeed over-innovating:
Innovators innovate innovations, no? That word is everywhere these days. It’s a stand-in for: THAT THING THAT WILL SAVE THE ECONOMY FROM EVERLASTING DOOM. It’s seen as an unmitigated good.
At the same time, when you’re walking down a grocery store aisle staring at 40 brands of tortilla chips, you want to say, “Actually, maybe there’s been enough innovation in the corn chip industry. Time to move on guys. Barring the ability to innovate to the apotheosis of the tortilla chip, we have reached the pinnacle for this salty snack.” It’s times like that when you realize, there is such a thing as over-innovation.
Similarly, Just-Drinks columnist Richard Woodward makes a hilarious case for over-innovation in the spirits industry.
I call that insignificant innovation. Under-innovation.…
