Category Archives: Strategy

Innovation lesson from Avatar: Learn or die

in Strategy

This past weekend I watched Avatar on my own screen with full attention to the dialogue and less attention to whether I was getting dizzy from the effect of the 3D glasses. In one of the scenes where Neytiri is training Jake in how to move through the jungle Jake says something that holds true for innovation: Learn or die.

 

We too are in the jungle, the world we live in never stops changing and we can never stop learning. The speed at which we learn has to be equal or faster than the market (jungle) we’re in and therefore keep evolving. Like the saying goes: Make change or be changed.

 

Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?

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Inspiration has no price

in Innovation, Strategy

http://s4.hubimg.com/u/180779_f520.jpg

 

“Great work is done by people who are not afraid to be great.” – Fernando Flores

 

This post was inspired by an interaction I had with a fellow down in Mexico and it reminded me that inspiration really has a price down here. Damn we have so much room for breakthrough!

 

My approach to everything is: You’re either great or your not. Period.

 

I have a poster in my room that reminds me of the importance of inspiration and delivering your best everyday. I also have a poster of a person whom I think embodies greatness in his craft and that man is Michael Jordan. Yet as powerful as inspiration is, a question I have trouble digesting is: Why is it that most people/businesses put inspiration in the backseat?

 

Commodities = no inspiration

Does doing your best work depend on the number on the check? Are you inspired more by a bigger number than the possibility of doing something unique? If it does then you’re a commodity my friend, it’s that simple, because anybody can do what you do and the only difference between you and someone else is your first and last name.

 

Being great means a lot of things but it doesn’t mean that ‘numbers’ determine your overall attitude. There’s no ‘if-then’ to do your best!

 

Labor has a price but inspiration? Please!

Do you think Picasso’s most famous paintings came from the thought that he might make more ‘numbers’ for it? Do you think Walt Disney was thinking about how much money he was going to make when he dreamed up Disneyland? Do you think Michael Jackson put a price on his songs before he produced them?

 

Don’t get me wrong getting paid your worth is important but there’s a BIG difference between ‘commodity thinking’ and ‘innovative thinking’ and that’s pure motivation, passion, inspiration. You don’t need to be pushed because you’re already pushing for something better!

 

Inspiration in a few places. Commodities everywhere.

Just like the offline world the web is full of commodities, how do we de-commoditize it? Here are some questions that may ring a bell!

 

  • Why is it that most products that are pushed to us through advertising are seen as irrelevant? Oh here’s a reason: Push = commodities.
  • Why is it that only a handful of products and services get our attention and we get pulled to them like a magnet? Oh here’s a reason: Pull = great stuff.

 

Conclusion: We pay attention to great stuff and usually it comes charged with an emotional appeal. It provokes!

 

Here then lies our challenge: How do we inspire greatness? How do we get people to think passion first numbers second? How do we create great stuff that provokes?

 

Closing thoughts…

Wooo! I needed to get that one off my chest and if you stuck around and made it all the way down here, I thank you!

You know we probably have better things to think about than this but I think most of the problems we encounter in the biz world (and everything else) have to do with lack of passion for what one does and more focus on the numbers. We’ve been programmed to think in terms of ‘make your numbers and thou shall be rewarded’ (how inspiring!) that passion gets flushed down the toilet!

 

Passion can’t be fabricated, it can’t be faked, it can’t be bought because it’s not a commodity. When one is inspired by what he does it shows, you attract attention, you provoke action, you bring out the best in others and all this turns into a virtuous cycle that keeps going and going and going and…

 

In writing this post I wrote down some questions that I ask myself unconsciously just like when I get a stomach ache when I encounter commodity behavior, without thinking. Feel free to add your own in the comments!

 

  • Do you bring your best everyday no matter what?
  • Do you make an impact?
  • Do you contribute to the bigger picture not just yourself?
  • Do you change the dynamics of the situation for the better?
  • Do you make others care?

 

Thanks for reading 🙂

Source: https://kryptoszene.de/bitcoin-robot/bitcoin-evolution/

Rethink your business by what you know not what you do

in competition, Innovation, Strategy

I was talking with a friend business owner this weekend about growth opportunities. Our conversation took a turn when he expressed to me that it’s hard to compete when there are a lot of other businesses offering the same thing he does. Well my friend, it doesn’t have to be that way.

For the sake of being practical, we humans like to categorize everything to most simple things, rules of thumb. They work for awhile, but the problem is that sooner than later they become rules we follow and we never stop to think why we actually follow them.…

Declare war on yourself

in Creativity, Innovation, Strategy, Thinking

assumptions

Being unconquerable lies within yourself.

The guys asked me for some blogging tips a few days ago and I posted some at BM that I’m sure will rattle some cages. One of the actions steps at that I recommend at the end of the post is to ‘declare war on yourself’, or more commonly known as .

Assumptions are the shortcuts, rules of thumb, conventional wisdom, common sense, stuff we take for granted, ordinary thinking that as humans we use to get through daily life, which work for awhile, but they soon become stale truths, like weights holding us back from new ways of seeing, thinking and behaving.

Assumptions get us stuck in a never ending loop of repetition, and you know that leads to more of the same.…

IBM: Early failure is a necessary investment in innovation

in Innovation, Strategy

I’m reading Switch: How to change things when change is hard by the Heath brothers and in one of the middle chapters called Grow your people there’s a very important lesson on the topic of the fear of failure when provoking change. Here are some thoughts:

Since everything is hard before it is easy, in order to create change we have to be able to move people to a different set of behaviors and most of the time this is where the problem exists because people fear situations that are unknown. To keep people motivated in the long road to change, you need to create the expectation of failure.

According to the Heath brothers learning from failure begins with having the right mindset. A person with a is more likely to view failure as learning as opposed to one who has a fixed mindset and prefers routine tasks, therefore we must work to cultivate a growth mindset in your organization.

I think this where it all starts because as humans we’ve been programmed to think that ‘failure is wrong’ when really and so we’re taught to ignore the middle part of the process where all the learning takes place. The middle is the journey, where the ups and downs happen and you need the will to break through.

As the Economist recently mentioned, the key to the success to any change initiative is that first:

 

Leaders of organizations should allow their innovators to be scientists and tell our teams we don’t expect 100 percent success in early experiments. The important thing is to learn from failed experiments early in the process and use those lessons to map out a path to success.

 

For the purpose of credibility here’s a story from the book that I think is worth highlighting:

*Failing is often the best way to learn and because of that early failure is a kind of necessary investment. A famous story about IBM makes the point well. In the 1960’s, an executive at IBM made a decision that ended up losing the company $10 million. The CEO of IBM, Tom Watson, summoned the offending executive to his office at corporate headquarters. The journalist Paul B. Carroll described what happened next:

 

As the executive cowered, Watson asked, “Do you know why I’ve asked you here?”

The man replied, “I assume I’m here so you can fire me.”

Watson looked surprised.

“Fire you?” he asked. “Of course not. I just spent $10 million educating you.”

 

I’m almost finished reading the book and will post any other thoughts I think are worth mentioning.

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A lesson in co-creation

in Strategy

Felt like writing this post because I think it’s pretty awesome.

 

I use Evernote religiously so I was ecstatic to hear that on the EN blog today. Why do this? To improve the product of course. Evernote has some pretty passionate fans (including me!) who care deeply about the product because it’s useful and it’s become part of their daily habits.

It really is like your second brain so who better than the loyal fans to know what might make it a lot better? 

 

 

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phil is done

 

When was the last time you heard a CEO answer people’s questions (all of them!) on a blog and even offer to chat by phone? Not everyday…You see forums, send us an email, a Twitter account, support phone but not the CEO on a ‘let’s improve the product Q&A’ ideation blog post.

 

Takeaway: If you’re a CEO and you’re interested in knowing what your customers think of your product, show it!

Beat your competitors by working outside their experience

in competition, Creativity, Strategy

fire dragon

 What is not different, is not strategic.

This past weekend I went to Ninjutsu camp (Otompo) for two days of training and war. First we train with some training weapons and at night we play war games that are meant to test our creative and strategic thinking as well as our hand to hand combat skills all under the light of the moon.…