Illustration credit Christian Laborin
Slaying giants is fun, almost every new disruptive company slays a giant or two. Last week I had a chat with a team based in Puebla Mexico working on a cool augmented reality application for museums. They asked for my thoughts on their app and business model, I happily answered their questions. One of those questions comes up every time I talk with startups: How do you protect yourself from giants who might copy your idea?
…
in Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
Ask any person or team who’s ever worked on and delivered a better future about their process and they’ll tell you it was a messy journey; not a straight line. Those of us who’ve been in the trenches know that delivering the future doesn’t happen in a straight line, as most things rarely do, yet most people want to believe there’s a silver bullet prescription, secret, hack, tip and the like to follow to avoid the mess that is innovation.
There isn’t one.
Sure, there are methodologies that are growing with popularity every day but following them to the T doesn’t guarantee anything. You might eliminate a few headaches here and there but for the most part their value is in helping you think through things, giving you a sense of security and certainty; not giving you the right answer. …
Established organizations want to better their operations, find a new way to go to market, increase customer loyalty or any other positive outcome that betters the business; with a predictable strategy.
But better and different outcomes are not achieved in a straight line; chaos is the norm. …
Michael Dearing, a venture capitalist, has developed strong views on the similarities of innovators after screening over three thousand founders and funding over sixty companies since 2006. Dearing observed that the most successful founders are prone to certain “cognitive distortions”: biased, even objectively inaccurate, ways they think of themselves and filter information that enable them to make quicker and better decisions, bounce back from setbacks, and attract talent.
Starting a business? On this episode of The Big Bang Podcast I talk to Ja-Naé Duane, serial entrepreneur and co-author of The Startup Equation, about her mission to help one million entrepreneurs worldwide create one trillion dollars for the global economy. …
in Innovation
I admit that I’m of the particular mindset of looking out into the world and find flaws— glitches in the system— and construct logical paths in my mind to fix them.
And, if I can start crafting a solution with a blank slate the better. Who doesn’t like thinking about what’s possible!
But, are all problems worth fixing?…
One of the hardest things to do when defining what your business does is explaining it in the simplest of terms; the key challenge is distinguishing between features and benefits. The reason that this is so vitally important is that, in the words of User Onboarding: “People don’t buy products; they buy better versions of themselves.”…
Are all innovators alike?