Tag Archives: Strategy

Innovation posts of the week: Why firms don’t innovate

in Must reads of the week

The power of bringing in an outsider for innovation

in Innovation, Strategy

http://thecorner.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/28/outsider.jpg

, CEO of Rubicon Consulting, that if organizations want to be innovative they should stop hiring the same type of people just to meet the requirements of the job position:

It seems to me we ought to also know how to get diverse points of view into the system, because that is what allows us to see things from different angles and fundamentally shift our approach from seeing the problem the way it’s always been seen (and thus unsolved, one could presume) and see it afresh to create the shift in viewpoint that allows for a new creative act.

I think she makes a very important point, hiring an outsider or bringing in someone who is hasn’t worked in your industry, who has no experience in what you do can bring in a fresh perspective that can yield new insights. For example Henry Ford West Bloomfield is a well known hospital in the Detroit area, they recently built the first hotel since it’s founding in 1915. The new hospital is anything but a hospital, it was and to do this they brought in an outsider to spearhead the project:…

One question to ask yourself everyday to trump the status quo

in Greatness, Innovation, Strategy

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. – William Faulkner

You know the future looks very different than it does today, your business needs to evolve to meet the challenges of tomorrow. What brought you success yesterday might not work tomorrow, you need to keep pushing boundaries, testing new tools, trying new things, experimenting with new approaches to not let complacency set in.

You need to keep one foot in the present and the other one moving towards the future, for this you need to ask yourself one question everyday:

How can we do better tomorrow than we did today?

P.S. John Jantsch has .

Who do you NOT want to be?

in Leadership, Strategy

Here’s another take on a couple of posts I wrote a few weeks ago on and then .

 

Part of crafting a business strategy is defining a vision, mission and values. One of the problems I see with this is it’s done more like an uninspired exercise of ‘we have to do it because Strategic Planning for Dummies says so’ (Watch this great video to help set you on your way), a predictable outcome is ‘wished upon’ and what you get is ‘more of the same’ uninspired strategies. The goal of these exercises it seems to me is to just get started without answering ‘WHY’.

 

An unconventional idea I use to eliminate the ‘uninspired’ is to shift the perspective from ‘who I want to be’ to ‘who I don’t want to be’. Why? Because what you don’t want to do determines what you will do and since most people are judgmental, they can actually tell you more about what they don’t like than what they do.

 

Get down to the core

We are defined by our relationship to other people, as kids we tried to differentiate ourselves from other kids and would rebel just to be treated differently. Same thing happens in business, the more clearly you recognize who you do not want to be, then, the clearer your sense of identity and purpose will be. Focus on an enemy. It can be anyone or anything that blocks your path, it can be an abstract idea, a group of people with whom you don’t identify with.

 

This is clearly an unconventional idea, but like I said above, it shifts your thinking from I want to be a singer (just another singer) to I want to be a singer with these specific attributes, values and purpose. It helps you get down to the core!

 

Desire is born

All the ‘Greats’ have had an enemy. All we hear is where they got their inspiration but they all have an enemy, they might not explicitly say it, but if you read between the lines you’ll figure out who their enemy is or was. A recent example of this is Michael Jordan, just watch his and see how he thanks all the people who provided obstacles for him throughout his career which fueled him with desire and motivation.

 

An example of how I personally apply this idea is I DON’T WANT to grow old and become less mentally productive when I’m 100 years old. Why? Because I don’t like the fact that as humans we get less mentally productive as we age and so I WANT to grow old and still be able to think of wild ideas that contribute to the world and be as mentally sharp as I am right now. This clearly tells me what I should do and not do and it’s also one of the reasons I started this blog.

 

Who do you NOT want to be? Find out, declare war on it and use it as fuel to stoke your fire.

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Innovation posts of the week: If you want employees to be innovative, encourage it

in Must reads of the week

Innovation posts of the week: Six factors in emergent innovation

in Must reads of the week
 
 
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An analogy for using the Blue Ocean Strategy framework

in competition, Innovation, Strategy

If you’re a strategy guy, I’m sure you’re familiar with the , where you set out to create new value by not competing but rather creating and capturing new demand (new market) where you’re the only guy holding the flag.

In a nutshell, here’s what Blue Ocean Strategy proposes:

blue ocean strategy red versus blue

Sounds pretty damn good. But, the problem is it’s difficult to imagine and do. Worse yet, is it’s difficult to understand if you’re someone who’s not a CEO, strategist, consultant or marketer. To tackle this problem, I thought I’d uncover the hidden truth behind some of the key ideas of the approach.…